The Nero Prediction

by Humphry Knipe

  "I hope you realize what you've done," he spat at me.

  The sudden agitation of servants, like the bow wave that runs before a ship, warned me that Nero was approaching.

  He was bursting out of his dusty, green charioteer's uniform and his eyes glowed with triumph. "Epaphroditus, how convenient, I've had the most wonderful idea and I want you to take it down before it cools." He threw out his arms to Poppaea in a theatrical gesture of greeting. "My love! No Ptolemy, you stay," he said to the astrologer who was shuffling backwards, "I need your professional opinion. Oh Poppaea, if only you could have been there! "

  Poppaea smiled faintly but her voice was flat and cold. "What for? To see the father of my child run over by a chariot driven by a slave?"

  "Slave! A charioteer is no longer a slave, not when his chariot is a thunderbolt flying in the teeth of a roaring tempest! Oh Poppaea, you should have heard the crowd when I whipped my horses to the front on the final straight! Then I was no longer merely Nero, I was Achilles racing round the walls of Troy with the body of Hector bouncing along behind me. It was then that the stars sent me this idea."

  Poppaea's jaundiced eyes lingered on the ample figure of her husband who'd had been transformed by the tight-fitting green uniform into something altogether too reminiscent of a frog. "What idea?"

  Nero turned to me. "Write this down. The vast sea of spectators gazes in astonishment at a seven-lane track dividing it into twelve equal segments like a horoscope. Each segment is labeled with the appropriate sign of the Zodiac. At the center of this gigantic horoscope, surrounded by the track, is a huge stage. At first the stage is empty. The orchestra strikes up with a melody expressing the confusion of chaos, oh I must begin composing it at once! Then seven chariots drive onto the track, each one decked up as one of the planets, each charioteer wearing the mask of the appropriate god. They don't line up-"

  Poppaea shook her head. "I'm so frightened-"

  Nero's stampede of words could not be slowed. "Just listen to this. They don't line up at the starter's gate, they take up apparently haphazard positions around the track. The audience doesn't know how to react. At first there's awed silence. The preparations have been done in secret. No one knows what's going on -"

  Poppaea sat herself up in bed. "The comet-"

  Nero didn't seem to hear her. "The really fascinating thing is that the crowd doesn't understand why the chariots aren't lined up at the starter's gates. They're given the tantalizing clue that each chariot's decked out as a particular planet, but still everyone's puzzled, perplexed. The chariot representing the Moon is on the inside track and is positioned in Cancer. Mercury is next and he's in Virgo. Then comes Venus in Libra, the Sun in Leo, Mars in Scorpio, Jupiter in Sagittarius and right on the outside lane Saturn in Capricorn."

  Poppaea was on her feet, her round belly thrusting at her silk robe, her face contorted. "You're not listening. The comet signifies my doom."

  "Doom? Nonsense!" He gripped her by the shoulders, his eyes on fire. "You see, the positions of the chariots aren't arbitrary, after all. Sooner or later someone in the vast crowd realizes that what they see in front of them is the Thema Mundi, the position of the planets at the birthday of the universe! His gasp of discovery becomes a murmur, the murmur becomes a mighty roar of frenzied applause. 'Nero! Nero!' they chant."

  The emperor released Poppaea's shoulders. She sank back onto the bed, a bewildered frown on her face as she watched her husband unwind the soiled handkerchief from his throat and solemnly raise it above his head. "A hundred thousand pairs of eyes are on me as I stride onto the empty stage and stand there, still as my colossus. There's an expectant hush. I drop the handkerchief. The chariot representing the Moon takes off at a furious pace leaving the others in the dust. The Sun plods along steadily at one twelfth the speed of the Moon. He's escorted by Mercury and Venus who dash ahead and then trail behind like hunting hounds but never stray very far from their master's horse. Mars's speed is also erratic, but its overall pace is half that of the Sun. By comparison Jupiter's advance is stately, about one twelfth that of the Sun while Saturn's chariot creaks forward so slowly that he hardly seems to be moving at all. Once the planets start following their orbits my fellow players join me on the stage for the performance: a depiction of the history of the universe from the first moment of time to the present. Throughout this performance, which takes place at the focus of the track, the ominous race of the planets continues without interruption from dawn until dusk by which time Saturn has made only one circuit of the track. Then, as the Sun sets and the final chorus sings its hymn of gratitude to the gods, the planetary chariots seem to break loose from their orbits as they take up their final positions. Now the Moon is in Leo, Mercury is in Sagittarius with the Sun and Mars, Venus is in Capricorn, Jupiter in Scorpio and Saturn in Virgo."

  "But those are -"

  Nero seemed to be on the point of exploding out of his uniform. "My stars! Exactly! Signifying the end of one era and the birth of another!"

  "The end of an era! That's precisely what will happen if you surrender your horoscope to your enemies."

  "Augustus did it, why shouldn't I? I'm not trying to hide anything. Just the opposite. Let all the world know my destiny. In fact when the planetary chariots reach their final positions, I plan to have gaily dressed children run out onto the track to mark out with ribbons my ascendant , my mid-heaven, my descendant and nadir, so that everyone will know precisely what the stars have in store for me. Oh how the crowd will applaud my fearless candor!"

  Poppaea was on her feet again, fear feeding her rage. "No! Fate sent the comet to drive you mad! Look at yourself, that silly green uniform makes you look like a toad! Don't you realize that even your parasites are beginning to laugh at you behind your back? You've become a fool, nothing but a pretentious fool!"

  The angry imperial foot lashed out at the Fortuna statue. Seeming to take its own deliberate time, the it tilted off its base and hit Poppaea’s stomach on its way to the floor. Poppaea’s eyes were riveted to the growing patch of wetness in the silk of her gown, her whisper was heavy with dread. "You've broken my waters!"

  Tears were running down Nero’s cheeks. "Poppaea, my love, you don't really think that, do you? You don't really think I'm pretentious?"

  Towards the middle of the night, while Poppaea babbled incoherently about comets and signs of the Zodiac, her premature infant slid out of her. After a few feeble gasps it died. It would have been a son.

  Nero's howls of grief told those of us gathered in the waiting room that the mother had slipped away in pursuit of the child.

  Melancholy draped Nero in a darkness much more profound than he’d suffered after the death of his infant daughter Claudia Augusta. At first he didn't appear to hear me when I told him, on September 22, that the comet had disappeared.

  “Eventually he said, in a dreadful monotone, “Ptolemy’s comet. Don’t mention him or that thing ever again.”

  Nothing I tried, not even singing Eurydice in falsetto, penetrated his gloom. He did preside over the deification of Poppaea (her body was embalmed in the Egyptian fashion and laid to rest in the mausoleum of Augustus where Agrippina had escaped the fangs of Lollia Paulina’s dog). He also made a long tearful speech at her public funeral service in the Forum about Poppaea’s beauty and the divine child she’d mothered. But it was all I could do to make him appear before the Senate for the New Year's Day pledge of allegiance. I shouldn't have bothered. He mumbled such a short, inane speech, most of it concerned with how guilty he felt about Poppaea’s death, how he didn’t know how he was going to live without her, that there were audible rumblings of alarm and dismay.

  Afterwards Tigellinus was grim, his violet eyes seemed to have lost some of their color. "I don't know how long he's going to last if he doesn't pull himself together," he told me.

  The winter rains set in with a vengeance and for weeks we didn't see the sky. Spring approached but did nothing to revive Nero. Not even the amber-haired freedwoman
I found for him, someone who looked a lot like Poppaea in the face although she unfortunately didn’t have her slender figure, appeased his grief. The baths buzzed with ominous rumors. Even if he hadn't lost his mind, they said, Nero was about to lose his head.

  The first nineteen days of February were shrouded in cloud. The next morning I was awoken two hours before dawn by my sleep-watcher, his voice hushed with awe. "Dominus, a dreadful visitation, another comet. This time a vast one.”

  Nero Unchained

  February 20, 66 A.D. – December, 67 A.D.

  I don't know for how long I gaped at it, insensible to the sharp bite of the February air. Its tail was already more than twenty times the diameter of the Moon: a majestic blue shaft of light that came to a point like a titanic dagger thrusting downwards at the earth.

  Had any reign, ever, in all the long history of the world, been so plagued by comets? When I recovered from the initial shock I persuaded myself that a comet signified nothing more to me than it meant to skeptical Cicero: it was just another aimless wanderer along the shores of earth.

  But that was certainly not how Balbillus was going to see it. He almost always declared comets to be evil omens. He was the one who’d advised Nero that the evil of the large comet that had appeared five years before should be washed away with noble blood. Whatever his false science told him, I was sure that he would use the apparition to caution Nero not to return to the stage because even a man of Balbillus’s integrity – I had no doubt that his faith in astrology was sincere - couldn’t rise above the temptation to believe what it was in his own interests to believe, nearly twenty years in the palace had taught me that. He would give Nero the warning that would seal the entrance to the cave of melancholy that imprisoned the genius of musical war. In his attempt to save his imperial patron he would destroy him.

  My eyes shifted from the comet to Nero's colossus, that majestic guardian of the portal of waking dreams. The great spikes of its radiate crown, the sunbeams of Apollo-Helius, stirred among the stars. Higher still was the torch it held aloft bringing enlightenment to the world. Nero deserved to be free. It was time to create the future.

  But it wasn't to Balbillus that I hurried on foot unattended and hopefully also unfollowed, through streets rapidly filling with panicked, half dressed people searching for an unobstructed view of the east. It was to Ptolemy Seleucus who’d been banned from court since he’d misinterpreted the comet that foretold Poppaea’s death as a sign that Nero was the next Orpheus.

  The slippery little snake was gazing at the spectral visitor down the sights of an astrolabe when I was shown up to his rooftop observatory. He pretended not to notice me, why should he? I'd robbed him of his imperial career.

  I nearly choked as I swallowed my pride. "Ptolemy, there's no time to waste."

  Only then did he look up, giving me the bright, insincere smile of a patron who finds a parasite at his door one morning too many. "Ah, Epaphroditus, what a pleasant surprise!"

  I came directly to the point. "You told Nero that the last comet promised him musical glory. Instead it presaged Poppaea’s death, at least that’s what he believes. I'm certain that Balbillus is going to use this to persuade Nero that comets are almost always omens of disaster.”

  Ptolemy lips flirted with a sneer. "I'm surprised you're not celebrating."

  I felt my blood boil but managed to keep a lid on it. "Nero needs something to snap him out of his depression. He needs to be encouraged, not cautioned."

  Ptolemy returned his eyes to the comet that was already beginning to dissolve in the gray gruel of dawn. "Why should I help you, you of all people?"

  "I can return you to imperial favor."

  "When?"

  "When Nero sees your prediction of musical greatness come true."

  "He's going to consult me?"

  "Yes, as soon as he's himself again. In the meantime I'll take your findings to him."

  Ptolemy had played this game before. He indulged himself in a pompous yawn as if this were just another one of the day's dull trivialities which had to be taken care of. "I'll need my fee in advance."

  The corridor outside the imperial bedroom was crowded with blond German bodyguards.

  "Is Balbillus here?" I asked Spiculus.

  His quick gray eyes took my measure as if I were an opponent in the arena before giving me the answer I wanted to hear. "He'd already left home by the time we got there. A hundred men are looking for him."

  Nero, shoulders hunched, was poring over his horoscope. His voice had the stilted accent of dramatic pathos. "Epaphroditus, where's Balbillus?"

  "He's certain to be already on his way, Caesar."

  A sigh, an abrupt shift to an unaffected intonation. "You've heard about it of course. So soon after the other one. Perhaps it's the same comet that took away Poppaea. Now it's come back for me."

  "Surely it would need to be placed correctly in your horoscope before any conclusions can be reached."

  "I know, I've been trying to do that. But the harder I try the more confused I get. I can tell something's going to happen but as soon as I start trying to work out what it is, I go blank. If only I'd studied astrology like Tiberius did, but I just don't have a head for figures, especially lately. I’ve even thought about sending for that quack Ptolemy, but I have to admit that his last prediction didn't bring me any luck," he wiped away a tear, "no, none at all."

  I grasped my opportunity delicately, like one takes hold of the prickly stem of a rose because I had Ptolemy’s new and very expensive prediction safely engraved in my memory. "For those of us who worship your music, Nero Caesar, we would be most reassured if the visitor pointed at your Venus."

  "Let's see. My astronomers tell me that the comet's head is at nine degrees of Aquarius. Why, its tail does point directly at my Venus! How fortunate! Come closer man, look for yourself!"

  I feigned reluctance but I obeyed the command. "Dominus it seems to me that this morning's Moon is in your fifth house, your House of Entertainment, and that she's in a fortunate trine to both your Venus and your Saturn. I don't know what Balbillus will make of it, but it seems to me that you are about to be the recipient of a period of divine inspiration."

  It worked! You could use astrology to create the future! Nero spat out six months of mourning and inhaled so deeply that he seemed to be breathing in the whole universe. "Astonishing! At last a signal for me to cross my Rubicon! Epaphroditus, you really are Fate's Anointed. That's what Tigellinus calls you, did you know that?"

  The door flew open and Balbillus emerged from the press of fidgety Germans standing guard outside. Only Spiculus, who showed him in, kept his icy calm.

  "Balbillus! Just listen to what Epaphroditus helped me discover about the comet!"

  Balbillus shot me a nasty look. "My apologies for taking so long, Caesar, but when my slaves woke me with news of the comet I thought it best to prepare an immediate delineation for you. This included going through some old Babylonian records concerning its color."

  "Its color? Why?"

  The astrologer drew a deep breath, his custom when he was about to say something profound. "Augustus, not only do the Babylonians believe that comets are planets but they claim to have determined the orbits of several of them. One of these is a great comet that returns once every seventy-six years, approximately. Since it last appeared five months after the death of your great-grandfather, Agrippa, we have been expecting its re-appearance for the past two years. In fact when we first sighted last year's comet we thought Agrippa's comet had returned as predicted. But that comet's white color gave it away as an impostor. However this one's pale blue color precisely matches the one that appeared seventy-seven years ago. I'm confident the visitor has returned."

  The joy faded from Nero's eyes. "You say it last appeared when Agrippa died? That's not particularly good news, is it?"

  "Indeed Caesar. In fact I'm much more perturbed by this comet than the last one-"

  "Epaphroditus, tell him!"

&nbs
p; I summarized Ptolemy's delineation: the comet pointed at Nero's Venus while the transit Moon was in his House of Entertainment.

  Balbillus picked his words as carefully as nits. "There is some merit to what Epaphroditus has said and I believe he ought to be congratulated on his new-found acquaintance with astrology. However I'm afraid that his interpretation, although enthusiastic, is fanciful."

  "For example?"

  "There really is no reason to believe that this comet is benevolent. The ancients agree that comets are almost always harbingers of disaster."

  There was no going back for me now. "Even though a comet hailed Augustus’s rise to the ultimate power? Even though this one's color is not red the color of Mars but blue the color of Venus?"

  There was an urgent knocking at the door. At Nero's nod I opened it.

  It was the freedman Helius, the Secretary of Protocol, his posture too pretentious to be noble. "Caesar, your morning salutation awaits you. There is considerable debate, some of it quite apprehensive, about the meaning of the comet so soon after the previous one. A reassuring word perhaps?"

  The frown left Nero's brow. His turned his eyes to heaven, the way he did when he listened to music only he could hear. "Tell them I'm coming and that I bring wonderful news."

  "Caesar, please, we need to talk!” Balbillus sounded as if he was in pain.

  Nero silenced him with a wave. "Don't go away Balbillus, I do want to go over this whole thing with you afterwards. In the meantime, see if there's anything else that Epaphroditus has to say for himself. So far he's proved very helpful. Very helpful indeed."

  By this time Balbillus's face was black with rage. "You fool!" he spat out as soon as we were alone. "Have you any idea what you've done?"

  I'd never seen him angry before. It didn't suit a scholar and a gentleman. In fact it levitated his gravity.

  I was pleased how unruffled I sounded. "Caesar asked me for my opinion. I gave it to him."