Ave, Caesarion

by Deborah Davitt

  Eurydice looked up over the edge of her scroll, feeling somehow ancient, instead of merely two years her sister’s elder. Because the secrets are dull, she wanted to say. They’re banal. And if you’re as much our mother’s daughter as I am, Selene, you’re going to be deeply disappointed in them. “Yes, the secrets,” Eurydice said out loud, rolling up her scroll and tying it off. “You’ll be swearing a solemn oath tonight. Before the very gods themselves. Never to reveal to a man what you hear and see at these rites.” Other than, of course, the man who put a stola and wig on, and somehow got past the door. I really want to ask some of the older women how they didn’t notice that they didn’t recognize the woman in question. Did he claim to be someone’s country cousin? Did he use a hoarse falsetto, like one of the actors in Lysistrata? She sighed, stood, and called one of the servants, who’d been cleaning the fountain, asking, “Could you put this in Caesarion’s study for me? Thank you.” Then she wrapped her palla around her shoulders more tightly. “Come along. The litters await.”

  Caesarion had been rather specific about her being accorded a separate litter, as well as a Praetorian escort to the house. So at least she didn’t have to listen to Selene and Octavia’s excited chattering on the way. She still couldn’t endure the swaying, gliding motion of the enclosed litter, and was quite nauseous by the time they reached the home of Praetor Marcus Antistius Labeo and his wife, Aulia. The servants set the litter on the ground, and Lurio, her usual Praetorian, helped her out of the litter. “Domina, you looked better in the mountains of Hispania, half-frozen in a blizzard,” the man muttered quietly, and with evident concern. “Are you well enough to attend the rites?”

  “I can’t swear that I won’t vomit on one of the Vestals,” Eurydice admitted between clenched teeth. “The litter-bearers do their best, I know, but if I could have, I would have walked the miles between our house on the outskirts, and this villa on the Palatine.”

  “You’d think our Emperor would move to the Hill himself,” Lurio murmured.

  He’s technically also pharaoh of Egypt, Eurydice thought, but carefully didn’t say out loud. He and I are fortunate just to be allowed to walk on the sacred soil of Rome. As Octavia and Selene tumbled out of their litter, still giggling and excited, Eurydice gave the marble pillars of the villa in front of them a grim look. “Come along,” she told the girls, and rattled up the steps as quickly as she could manage.

  Inside, the house, always colorful with its brilliant mosaic floors and frescoed walls, had been turned into a kind of jungle. Potted plants had been brought from a dozen patrician homes—including specimens doted on by gardeners year-round. Winter poppies and winter roses, white ornithogalum sprigs, anemones, and dozens of others perfumed the air, making Octavia and Selene sniff with delight and approval. The only forbidden bloom was the myrtle.

  Myrtle was sacred to Venus, goddess of love and sexuality. As such, her sacred flower wasn’t permitted in a bridal wreath, as marriage was Juno’s exclusive domain. Eurydice had read enough poetry by now—and had had enough sexual experience—to understand that the word myrtle, meaning the bud of the shrub, could also could refer to the sweet nubbin between her legs that her mother had told her to stroke when working her love-spell . . . and where Caesarion loved to touch her, as well. The myrtle bud, was therefore simultaneously the flower sacred to Venus, a place of exquisite pleasure, and a polite replacement word for the obscene term landica, which was usually used as a vile imprecation.

  Even to mention the word myrtle was forbidden tonight. Eurydice had patiently explained this to the two girls at breakfast. They’d looked bewildered, but had promised not to use the flower’s name, clearly not recognizing the freight of symbolic importance to it. Though Selene’s brow had crinkled a bit.

  Inside, dozens of female servants bustled around, taking pallas and whisking them away to anterooms. She could hear female lyre players and singers warming up in the atrium. And as they pushed through the entryway to the atrium itself, they ran more or less face-first into Aulia, the lady of the house, who’d positioned herself near the front of the area to greet her guests.

  Eurydice had braced herself for any reaction from the patrician women of Rome to her presence. She hadn’t, however, expected what actually occurred. Aulia, a sober matron in her fifties, with iron-gray hair, glanced at her, and then looked away. And smiled in greeting to the others with her. “Octavia Thurina! My dear, you’re looking so very grown-up tonight. Welcome, welcome. And you, Selene Julia, what a pleasure to have you here among us. Do help yourself to a cup of milk each—try not to drink too much, for you’re both still very young.” A heavy wink accompanied the term milk.

  Octavia twisted around to look at Eurydice. “Milk?” she said, crestfallen. “Only barbarians drink that!”

  “Oh, it’s not milk,” Aulia interposed swiftly, tittering into her hand. ‘That’s just what we call it tonight! And we pour it from a honey-jar, so mind how you speak of things!” She waved graciously now. “There are pastries and fruits and all manner of good things laid out on tables all through the bottom floor of the house. Do eat, my dears!”

  Octavia smiled radiantly at this welcome, but Selene looked back at Eurydice, her brow creasing. “I’m sorry,” Selene said hesitantly, “but perhaps you didn’t notice that my older sister is here? In order of precedence, you should have greeted her first, shouldn’t you have?” Her voice had risen to a squeak as all the words tumbled out in a rush.

  Ah, how kind you are, my sister, to remind a woman four times your age of her social obligations, Eurydice thought, raising her chin as Aulia, called on her bad manners, turned towards her now, her face tightening. And something sparked, deep within Eurydice’s breast, turning into open flame in her heart as she looked down into Aulia’s eyes. For the first time in her life, Eurydice realized that she wasn’t just gawky; she was tall compared to other Roman women. And she saw the woman flinch at meeting the yellow, pitiless gaze of a hawk in a human face. “It’s quite all right, Selene,” Eurydice said, letting her voice carry as the women around them hushed a little and turned to stare. “I’m quite small, you understand, and hardly noticeable. I’m quite sure that Lady Aulia didn’t mean any discourtesy.” She smiled at Aulia, not blinking. Mother and Caesarion keep telling me that I’m a queen. Tonight’s the first I’ve ever felt like one, however. “Did you, dear?” she asked, using the endearment generally reserved for use by an older woman to a child, or one of higher rank to one inferior, with great care.

  Aulia looked slapped. “Ah, no. Of course not. Forgive me, Lady Eurydice.” The words emerged reluctantly. “Please do, come in and make yourself welcome.”

  No effusive requests for me to try the wine or the dainties, Eurydice noted with distant humor as she shepherded her two charges through the atrium. Perhaps not a surprise, overall. Her husband has been an ardent Republican for over twenty years. Speaks out once a year in the Senate, calling for an end to the dictatorship of the Julii. She sighed, and took a cup from a tray at random before taking a sip of the wine in it. Falernian, and full-strength. Men could drink their wine unwatered at most sacrifices throughout the calendar; women were permitted this privilege only on this day. But in the main, most Romans drank their wine watered, mixed with honey or spices, not the raw fruit of the vine. “Our hostess is not stinting in her hospitality,” Eurydice told the two younger girls. “By all means, eat of the feast and drink the milk of the goddess.”

  “Is this it?” Selene asked after a few minutes of standing beside the table, nibbling on roasted almonds. A hint of disappointment sang through her voice.

  “No, they’ll sacrifice a sow in a bit,” Eurydice replied. Her primary entertainment at the moment lay in observing the widening ring of space around herself and her two young charges. Not one woman had yet approached them to offer greetings. “You know, I think the two of you might have more fun if you run along on your own. Go explore the other rooms. Listen to the music. You’re allowed to dance, if you find yourse
lves inspired by the Muses.”

  Selene, to her credit, looked concerned. “You’ll be all right on your own?” she asked softly. “I don’t like leaving you by yourself. That doesn’t seem like much fun.”

  “Go on. You two should have the joy of experiencing everything here for the first time yourselves.”

  They didn’t require a third hint, but ran off, hand-in-hand, giggling. Eurydice finished her own cup, and found a passing servant to take it away. Her head spun from the wine, and she’d not yet had a thing to eat, being nauseous from the litter ride. I should probably have at least a piece of bread, she decided, and found a table stacked high with panis and cheese. Since it was tucked in a dark corner, she found that as women filtered in and out of the room, they seemed not to notice her presence. And thus, she heard an array of conversations she might not have, otherwise, save through the keen ears of an owl.

  “Can you believe that Eurydice Julia actually showed her face here tonight? With all the talk about her and her brother, and their execrable tendencies—”

  “Now, now, that’s just a rumor,” a sly older voice put in. “The mere fact that she’s here tonight suggests that it can’t possibly be true. Why, even though they’re half-Egyptian, I would assume that they have some morals and shame.”

  A pause, and then another voice picked up the same thread, silkily, “Of course, if it were true, coming here tonight and trying to plaster an innocent face atop the sordid truth would be exactly the move I’d expect from Cleopatra. Perhaps like mother, like daughter.”

  Titters of laughter like broken glass. Eurydice kept her back to the room, and stolidly ate her bread and cheese, though her stomach felt as if she were once more crossing the Mediterranean during a storm. And once she was quite sure that they were gone, she turned and drifted room-to-room herself. Catching broken fragments of conversation as she passed, usually hastily silenced when one or more of the women realized that she was there.

  “Did you hear the scandalous rumor that Caesarion somehow put his legion up to giving her the grass crown?”

  “It’s outrageous! There’s no way for a woman to have earned that.”

  “It desecrates the memory of every man who’s ever earned that wreath—often at the expense of his life!—to have her given that false accolade.”

  No hint of belief in any of them, that any woman could possibly have earned the wreath, the approbation of an entire legion. They’re just as quick to disparage women as men are. Perhaps quicker, Eurydice thought, taking a bunch of grapes and walking past that group of women. Held her back straight, and forced every one of them to look up at her, making eye-contact. And watched them, too, flinch at meeting her stare.

  Spitting seeds discreetly into her hand as she walked, she found herself wandering through the ornate garden of the peristylium. Fragrant herbs, gone brown for the winter, and again, hundreds of potted plants, brought in for the occasion. Some so tall, she could stand behind them, unseen, and could dispose of her seeds on the ground without being noticed. And that was where she heard the next snatch of conversation.

  “Why, my dear, I think it’s obvious,” an older woman murmured smoothly on the other side of a jade-green frond. “If he’s having her ride a horse like a man, if she’s as tall as most men, if she goes off to war with the men—why, under her dress, she must be a man.”

  “Last I saw, she had breasts.” A sweet smile on that face. “Admittedly, not very large ones.”

  “Perhaps she’s half one thing, half the other, like Hermaphroditus.”

  “If that’s the case, then the rites this year will have to be redone, since they’ve been profaned by her presence,” another woman returned. “We should talk to the Vestals. She shouldn’t be here.”

  “Now, now, she could be perfectly female under it all. Just an Amazon.” Another titter wracked the group. “Can you imagine? She might have to cut off one of her breasts if she keeps going to war with the men.”

  Disgusted and disappointed, Eurydice turned her back and walked away, her stomach churning all the more. Head still spinning from wine, she eventually found the cubicula area of the house—which at first seemed blessedly devoid of people at the moment. However, she quickly realized that some people had sought solitude here as well. One door lay half open, and as she glanced in, curiously, she spotted two middle-aged matrons sharing a sleeping couch, kissing and rocking intimately into each other. So much for avoiding the myrtle, Eurydice thought, walking away on soft feet. And found Octavia around the next corner, kissing one of the dancers hired for the day almost as fervently as the two women in the sleeping chamber had been.

  Eurydice cleared her throat loudly, and patiently stared at Octavia until the tipsy young woman flushed red to the roots of her hair. “Oh, ah, I . . . didn’t see you there—”

  “No, you were rather occupied,” Eurydice replied, catching her by the arm and directing her back towards the main party area. Well, these are things that I didn’t see last year. Still, male fears about our unrestrained wantonness once we’re all in one place, have had strong drink, and they’re not around to control us, seem to be overblown.

  She only listened with half an ear as Octavia tried to formulate some tale or another, and finally told the younger girl, “I honestly don’t care, Octavia. I know full well that freedom is intoxicating when you’ve had little in your life. Just go sit down until your head stops spinning from the wine, so that I know you’ll be capable of making good decisions with your evening of independence.”

  A gong rang, calling them all in to the atrium for the sacrifice of the sow. Two of the Vestals had come out of seclusion for this rite—one of them, Fabia, was over seventy, and had been half-sister to Terentia, Cicero’s first wife. Eurydice found a pillar, put her back to it, and observed as the younger Vestal knelt, applying her knees and her weight to hold the squealing pig to the ground, and the aging Fabia took the knife and slashed it across the sow’s throat. “Blood for the good goddess,” Fabia announced, her voice cracking. “As it was in the earliest days of Rome, when we still had kings, so it is now. We women honor you, oh goddess. We honor you with your most secret and sacred names. Men call our city Roma, but what is Roma but Amor reversed? We know you, oh lady, we know your name, and it is love.”

  She ripped out the dying pig’s entrails, holding them up in gore-stained fists. Eurydice found that Selene had made her way to her side, and she saw tears streaking down her sister’s face. “I don’t want to be here,” Selene whispered to her. “Can’t we just go?”

  “And show ourselves not to be good Romans?” Eurydice whispered in return, wiping her sister’s eyes. “What’s wrong, little one? Has someone said something to you?”

  “Not to me,” Selene confessed. “But all I hear as I walk around are lies about you, and I can’t stand it.”

  Touched, Eurydice gave her sister a quick embrace. “Don’t worry about it,” she told Selene. “If I can bear it, it can’t hurt you.”

  As they spoke, the priestesses were offering reddened fingers to each of the women who filed by, receiving smears and daubs of the sow’s blood on their faces. Eurydice felt no urge at all to join with the rest, and stood with Selene, watching as the sow’s skin was flayed off expertly, and the limbs spitted to cook over a fire in the atrium—the mother’s hearth, so rarely seen in Roman homes these days. The atrium was always the mother’s room, Eurydice thought, dizzily, watching the sparks rise up to the sky with the smoke. But they’ve forgotten. It wasn’t the mother of the house’s chamber, open to the sky. It was the Mother of Rome’s chamber. Not just Roma, the spirit of the city, the people, personified. But the real mother, Venus herself, disguised and veiled behind epithets. Amor. Love. Unable to be worshipped openly as the mother of her people, thanks to the compact with the gods of Hellas, perhaps?

  Dizzying revelation, and yet, what could she do with it? It wasn’t as if any of these people here would hear her if she spoke. She wasn’t the hostess of this event. Until Caesa
rion publically proclaimed their marriage, she had no titles and no authority—and if she’d have any after that might be a matter of politics in the Senate. Being declared his Empress would be a different thing entirely than being recognized as such.

  So she bit her tongue for the moment, watching the blood pool on the tile floor of the atrium. Watching as the women ate the seared flesh of the sow, sharing it communally. And when the chief Vestal, Fabia, called out two names. “Cleopatra! Livia! Come to the front, and drink of the milk of the goddess with me. I would see you two friends before we all leave here this evening.”

  Eurydice, who hadn’t had a drop to drink since that first cup, now rather wished she had. “There’s a better chance of shades in Tartarus walking free than those two being made friends by a cup of milk,” she muttered to Selene, who’d found a bench beside her on which to sit and eat her roast pork. Selene chuckled in response, but her mouth was full, and she couldn’t reply.

  Standing at the back of the crowd, her back still against the pillar, Eurydice still had a good view as her mother reluctantly made her way forward. She hasn’t been Empress in two years, and people still make way for her. She has so much fierce presence, Eurydice noted proudly. For all that she still wears her short, graying hair down like an Egyptian, and came here tonight in a kalasiris, they still give way.

  Livia slid up to the front as well, her blond hair pinned up immaculately. Eleven years younger than Cleopatra, and a noted beauty, she faced Cleopatra along the length of the makeshift altar on which all the flowers and the ‘honey-jars’ of ‘milk,’ had been placed, and the aging Vestal stood between them, like a judge. For an instant, the tableaux seemed almost perfect. “Come,” Fabia said, her smile sending creases all through her face. “What must I do to have you two friends before we part? For the good of the people of Rome?”

  Eurydice hastily muffled her snort with her sleeve, and watched as Octavia wobbled over to sit beside Selene now, holding her head in her hands as if she feared she might be sick. As well she might be. I have no idea how much wine she’s had.