"Now the chaff I am speaking of is the things of this world, the world perceived by the senses. Why worship the things that the eye beholds, when the eye is destined to grow dim? Why worship what the ear hears, because the ear will soon be deaf? Or what the tongue savors, for the tongue will soon taste only ash?
"Soon, very soon, he will come in person, bringing his kingdom with him. A terrible fire will spring from his eyes and consume the world of the Beast. Whatever there is in any man that belongs to the Beast will be burnt by the fire. Pity those who wear the mark of the Beast for nothing will be left of them but ashes which will blow away in the wind.
"Therefore waste no thought for this world but let your spirits rise up bright as the star that rises to herald the New Year. Know that you, who are nothing in this world, will be the princes and princesses of the one that is to come."
This oration was followed by a prayer that was followed by a rousing hymn. During the chorus an enraptured voice rose above the others from somewhere close behind me.
Heads turned, faces smiling with approval. The voice sounded awfully familiar.
Nero.
I only half succeeded in strangling a loud guffaw. Nero was wearing a cowl but what if he were recognized? How could the four Germans standing behind him defend him from the outrage of hundreds, even if one of them was the fabled Spiculus?
Rachel heard me, recognized Nero. An expression of loathing, too quick for her to check, flitted across her face. I preferred that to the expression of melting pity that she then turned on me.
While Rome Burns
July 17 – July 23, 64 A.D.
Rachel didn't return to the palace that night. The next morning I went to Antium with Nero. However as the Moon waxed she appeared to me frequently, slipping into my mind when I least expected her. Always she was as I'd last seen her, on her knees, hands clasped in prayer, face raised to heaven as I followed Nero and his bodyguards into the night. Praying for my soul.
Nero’s Antium palace, a vast new structure built over Augustus’s original villa, descended down the steep sea cliff in steps until it reached the water. Its most splendid architectural feature was a gigantic, semi circular peristyle crowned by a temple of Fortuna, patron goddess of the city. While Antium's sea air and the festive atmosphere made others languid, there was as usual no bounds to Nero's energy. He reveled late into the night with Poppaea, Tigellinus and the others, but while they slept late he was in the grand, two tiered theater at dawn, rehearsing. The conviction that he was destined to wage musical war against Christ and his followers obsessed him. "Your Christians haven't contacted you yet, have they?" he asked me one evening.
"No dominus, not yet."
“What not even that girl of Poppaea’s, the one they tell me you’ve taken a fancy to? She’s one of them, isn’t she?”
“Augustus, she disappeared after that Christian meeting where you sang.”
“Oh dear, I hope it wasn’t my voice!” he said, laughing at his joke before I dared to.
It was shortly after sunset and Nero was watching the Full Moon rise. As usual, courtiers were everywhere but he had waved them out of earshot. "I’m afraid of the Moon, Epaphroditus. Did I ever tell you that?” he said with a humble sincerity that borrowed nothing from the stage. “She always reminds me of mother, especially when she’s full or just beginning to wane. Balbillus says that astrologically speaking she actually is my mother. If it wasn’t for the Moon’s … I suppose ‘condition’ is the word, I would never have left Rome, not when something extraordinary might happen. I’ve told Tigellinus several times that I’m going to rush back immediately and perdition to the Moon. He won’t hear of it. He really is over concerned about my safety. If anything unusual does happen, be sure to tell me immediately. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
Afterwards I walked on the beach alone, my back towards the revelers who, soaked with wine and sea water, were cavorted around the tent in which the orchestra played. Why did their high spirits seem suddenly so hollow to me? Had Peter been right after all, was there the glimmering of a different life in me? Or was it Rachel? Was I nothing more than yet another star-crossed lover pining for someone I was destined never to have? I scooped up a handful of dry sand and threw it at the stars.
I searched the southern sky for the comet. It was no longer there! On the previous evening, July 16, it had been faint but still clearly visible at the tip of Hydra's tail. No longer. It had remained in the underworld, was unfastening the triple locks.
When it disappears, so will his world.
I shook off the invisible cold thing that rose up out of the sea and wrapped itself around me. I hurried back to the tent, to Nero.
He smiled when I told him that the comet had disappeared. "You see? Nothing happened. I didn't even sprain my ankle."
Just before midnight on July 18, Rome’s unluckiest day, the fire broke out.
There was nothing unusual about fire scares in Rome. Much of the city was connected by a spider web of alleys so narrow that buildings rubbed noses across them. In spite of Augustus's boast that he had left Rome a city of marble, she was still constructed largely of wood. With enough cooking fires alight to feed two million people, accidental fires large and small were a daily occurrence. But Rome had never experienced anything like this one.
An hour before dawn I had a dream. Phocion, dressed as I’d last seen him, was standing over my bed. “It is time for us to go to the temple,” he said. For a long moment I was sure it was the old astrologer, because I was aware that I was in bed and I could see him clearly looking down at me. I woke and he was gone and tears burnt my eyes.
It was indeed July 19, the morning that Sirius is reborn after being consumed by the Sun, the morning that Phocion would have been taking me for that vigil in Alexandria’s temple of Isis, knowledge that must have been hidden at the back of my mind until it revealed itself in the ghost of the astrologer who’d found the lucky stars the Copy Master had claimed were mine. Although my head still pounded from the excesses of the previous evening, I rose in honor of the man who was the closest I had to a father, someone who may actually have been my father. I threw on a light tunic, because it was a warm night, and opened my bedroom door. To my astonishment six or seven slaves, none of whom I knew, were kneeling in the corridor. They touched their heads to the carpet when they saw me.
“What are you doing here? Why do you kneel?” I asked. They kept their heads down and said nothing.
Puzzled, I walked up several flights of stairs to the semi circular peristyle and then some more to the temple of Fortuna which was the highest point of the palace.
The round bright Moon setting in the west revealed a single figure who was examining the eastern horizon intently through a glass lens of the type ground in Alexandria to correct nearsightedness. I could tell by the two yawning Praetorians standing guard a respectful distance away that it was Nero.
I’m not sure how he knew it was me but he did. It seemed as if he were expecting me. “Good morning, Epaphroditus,” he said. “I’m looking for Sirius. He’s just been reborn after being consumed the Sun. Marks the beginning of the Egyptian New Year, but I suppose you know all that already. It’s a very lucky day for you. Perhaps it’ll be a lucky day for me too.”
I thought of the slaves who had prostrated themselves outside my door. They’d looked Egyptian, but why had they bowed to me? Did they have anything do with my mysterious watchers? A few minutes later, there Sirius was, right on the horizon, flashing thousands of colors. “Further south, dominus.”
Nero followed my directions. “Ah yes, what a sight! If only they could improve on this cursed glass. It’s nothing more than a blur to me.”
Nero heard the news just after his dawn reception, brought by a fireman still sweating from his furious ride. A fire had broken out just before midnight on the north east side of the Circus Maximus in the paint warehouse.
At first Nero didn't appear to hear him. He was tuning a new kithara in pre
paration for his morning rehearsal. “Just an ordinary fire?” he said eventually. “No one coming down from heaven on clouds of glory?”
The fireman, puzzled, dropped his eyes. “Augustus?”
“Go on man,” Nero said. “Your report.”
“It’s bad Caesar but we expect it to be contained soon.”
It wasn’t contained. By dinner the news was grave. Tigellinus himself briefed Nero. "The east side of the Circus is in flames, Caesar. The fire is raging in the valley between the Palatine and the Caelian hills. The imperial palaces themselves might be in danger."
Nero lifted his lips from the decoction of boiled water cooled with snow that he'd been sipping for his voice. "The palaces? How did it get to my palaces? They’re full of irreplaceable works of art!"
"The firemen blame arsonists. Men have been caught setting fires. It looks like they’re trying to burn down the Palatine."
Nero struck a loud, ecstatic chord on his kithara. “It’s them! The Christians! Tell Rome her emperor is on his way!”
Four hours later we were in the city. The south side was a lake of fire. Nero ordered his staff to set up headquarters on the north east side in the Gardens of Maecenas which had been part of the palace complex since Augustus's time. The estate straddled the old republican wall as it ran up the Esquiline hill. From the vantage point of the wall, now a fashionable promenade, it was clear that the south east of the Palatine, which included the palace of Augustus, was already in flames.
As I hurried southwards with Nero along the arcades of the Transitional Palace, which linked the Palatine with Maecenas's Gardens, the black smoke billowing out of broken windows and gutted roofs assumed the dreadful shapes of alarm and confusion as it rushed at us like the army of the night. Every now and then its ranks would part long enough to reveal hundreds of palace slaves carrying paintings and books under both arms or statues on their backs. A garden cart piled high with art treasures rushed past us as its panicked horse fled the flames, spilling a king's ransom every time it hit a pot hole.
Faced with a seemingly endless list of awful choices, Nero didn’t sleep that night. Which buildings were to be destroyed as fire breaks so that not everything was lost? Soldiers had to be posted to protect the men making the fire breaks from mobs who were convinced they were helping the arsonists.
For five days the fire roared like a ravenous beast. Buildings collapsed with the sound of distant thunder. The air, hot as the breath of an oven, was alive with darting sparks. It was easy to confuse night and day, the shrouded sun with the bloody full Moon.
Historic shrines such as Vesta's temple, where the Roman household gods were stored, king Numa's house: all gone. Great centers of popular entertainment such as the Circus Maximus and the theater of Marcellus: gutted. Everywhere temples were ablaze or already ashes: Romulus's temple of Jupiter, the great altar of Hercules, the temples of Isis and Sarapis, Augustus's temple of Apollo, the temple of the Moon.
Dire predictions fed on fantastic rumors. Someone calculated that the fire had broken out precisely four-hundred-and-eighteen years, four-hundred-and-eighteen months and four-hundred-and-eighteen days after the burning of Rome by the Gauls. This symmetry proved beyond doubt that the conflagration was the work of Fate.
Supernatural voices were heard calling out warnings in the night. Huge, grimacing faces appeared in the smoke. Every time the Sun leapt into sight, it appeared to be larger, redder, hotter. It was late afternoon of the fifth day of the fire that Tigellinus brought the news.
Like Nero's, Tigellinus's face was drawn from lack of sleep, the brilliant velvet eyes bleary. “Augustus, finally we have one of them. He was run down by a mob. It's lucky a patrol rescued him before he was torn to pieces."
"You have him?"
"Yes Caesar and he admits to everything. He seems proud of it."
The arsonist was chained to an ornamental tree in the garden. His skin was so blackened by soot that at first I thought he was a Nubian. His eyes were shut although he was clearly not unconscious.
Nero squinted at the black, bearded figure. "Is there a bucket of water left in Rome? I'd like to see who I'm dealing with."
The arsonist was doused and his face wiped.
It was Zebah, the Jew with the beak of a nose.
He smiled contemptuously at Nero. "Hail Beast! You are about to burn in hell. Do you know that?"
Nero's lips twitched as he searched for the right words. "Are you a Christian?"
"Yes, just as you are the Beast whose name is a number."
Nero's voice was gentle. "Yes, I've heard that. Is it true that it was you Christians who set fire to the city?"
Zebah stuck his beak in my direction. “Ask your slave. Perhaps he has the answer.”
Nero turned to me, puzzled. “Well do you, Epaphroditus? I’ve been noticing that ever since we got here when some of the common people kneel to me they seem to be looking at you.”
“I’ve met this man, dominus. He was at one of those Christian meetings. I think he’s one of their leaders. Unfortunately that’s all I know.”
Zebah laughed. "No man started it, Beast, and no man can extinguish it for it is the fire which comes at the end of the world."
"So who’s spreading it?"
"Those of us who have seen the light."
"Why?"
"Because the prophet has instructed us to make smooth the path of the lord."
"A lord who glories in destruction?"
"In the destruction of your world, yes, for his kingdom has come and very soon he shall ride in on clouds of glory."
A mighty fire that will descend from heaven and consume the world of the Beast, a fire that enraptures the pure but tortures the impure throughout eternity – Mark the Lion’s prediction.
Excitement spread over Nero's face like flame over pitch. "When? When is he making his grand entrance?”
“He is already here. Everywhere. He walks in the flames.”
“Then there’s no time to lose. I must fight back! Orpheus's lyre charmed the beasts, Amphion's moved stones, but Nero's must save the world!"
Less than an hour later, while Rome burnt, Nero was singing from the top of Maecenas's tower, a spire of volcanic tufa so tall that its summit was hidden in the smoky pall which covered the city, waging musical war against Chaos itself. He was still singing when the rising Moon, waned to half already, began slicing her way like a bloody scythe through the black billows riding on the south wind, singing not only The Sack of Troy but favorite pieces from his other compositions as well.
A voice came out of the darkness. "Epaphroditus." She was blackened with soot but I recognized the eyes.
"What are you doing in the city?" I hissed at her. "You'll get yourself killed!"
She ignored my question, instead raised her eyes to where Nero, invisible in the smoke, was singing. "After all you have heard and seen, you still worship the Beast, don't you? Listen to him howling at the Moon like a dog while his city burns to the ground. Doesn't he disgust you?"
My voice crackled with irritation. "You don't know what you're talking about. While he'd been fighting this fire night and day your saintly side-kicks have been running around with matches helping it along. They're the ones that disgust me."
Nothing, it seemed, could touch the exultation that was shining through her grime. "When will you open your heart? Not only the end of Nero but the end of time itself is upon us, can't you tell?"
"Rachel, you're losing your grip on reality. It's a fire, that's all it is."
She laughed, yet there was no shrillness in it, only serene confidence. "Can't you feel it? Oh, how I wish you could! It's a spiritual flame that permeates everything, consumes everything. It has burnt away all my fear and all my doubt. Now I am one with its exquisite and eternal bliss. I’m in heaven already!"
"A man named Zebah has been caught spreading the fire. He's a Christian and he's talking about real fire, not spiritual fire."
Rachel grasped my hands. "Epaphroditus, th
e miracle of the return is so far beyond any previous human experience, is it any surprise that we interpret it in different ways? Spread the fire, try to put it out. Neither matters, the end of all things is close at hand. For your eternal soul's sake, pray, purify yourself, help us destroy the Beast, there is no more time!"
I looked up at Nero, a lonely figure at the top of the world. Imperceptibly, the crow of victory crept into his voice. It was because of what was happening to the crescent of fire that was spread like a dropped curtain at his feet. It was disappearing. I watched, astonished, as flames flickered and died, listened to the hoarse cheering of weary but victorious men.
Rachel's eyes were brimmed with tears. "I can feel Satan hardening your heart. Open your eyes. Share the holy spirit with me."
Her touch inflamed me. There was something I wanted to share with her but it wasn't religion. "You're right, I don't believe, but that has nothing to do with your Satan. There are no reports of fires, spiritual or otherwise, anywhere except here in Rome. It looks like this one is coming under control.”
She seemed to be swimming off into another world. “When the time comes…”
“It will never come. Just as you believe in a Christ who comes to destroy the world, I believe in Antichrist who has come to save it with music and art and literature. It's you who's been blinded, not me."
She dropped my hands. There was a terrible sweetness in her laugh. "You call this light that sets me on fire ‘blindness’? It's more real than you are.”
Poetic Justice
July 24, 64 A.D.
Nero was still in a state of nervous excitement when I returned to the palace. He'd slept for less than three hours after coming down from Maecenas’s tower and when he awoke he'd immediately called for Balbillus.
The Nero Prediction Page 20