Master and God

by Lindsey Davis

  Feeling disadvantaged, Lucilla might have gone off to some other clique, had she not come across the epigrams of Martial. His first book was recently published. These poems were easy: they were short, rude, witty and unpretentious — so readable that Lucilla could now see no reason to bother with any verse that was long-winded, overwrought and obscure. She began to discriminate between what she liked and what was fashionable. Such naive honesty would, of course, bar her from the intelligentsia.

  Lucilla battled with epic. The success of Virgil’s Aeneid, with its undisguised grovelling to the Emperor Augustus, had encouraged writers of long heroic poems. Professionals like Statius blatantly hoped to win handouts whereas the upper classes, the amateurs, dreamed of retirement from public life, devoting themselves to ten-year labours over cherished epic manuscripts. Hence the Thebaid of Statius was now only one in a plethora of grandiose efforts: Valerius Flaccus, in his Argonautica, had begun the modern trend when he used Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece as a metaphor for the youthful Vespasian’s involvement in the invasion of Britain. It was Statius’ friend, the teacher Nemurus, who advised Lucilla against reading this; he told her the central hypothesis — that in capturing Britannia, Vespasian had opened up the seas in the same way as Jason — was so flimsy, the bluff old emperor himself must have guffawed. ‘All you get are tedious displays of erudition, exaggerated imagery, monotonous style and wilful dullness.’

  This was when Lucilla first decided Nemurus was worth cultivating.

  Epicry was like a plague. Rutilius Gallicus, the newly appointed Prefect of the City, was thought to be penning a little something. A career administrator from Northern Italy, he was such a plodder, nobody would even ask him about it. Silius Italicus, a lawyer with a suspect past (he had worked as an informer for Nero), kept his head down these days too, devoting himself to his Punica, which in a mammoth seventeen books related the conflict between Scipio and Hannibal. From what had leaked into public circulation (given a good shove off the slipway by the author, said Nemurus), his models were the historian Livy, Virgil naturally, and Lucan’s Pharsalia, written under Nero, which had retold the rivalry of Caesar and Pompey. Lucilla was disappointed to hear this was not glittering heroics. Caesar came across as unpleasant, Pompey as ineffectual. ‘However,’ (Nemurus again) ‘Pompey goes to his treacherous death with stoic poise.’

  Lucilla, usually so diffident, lost her temper. ‘That’s insulting to our soldiers. I knew a Guard who was killed in Dacia. Nobody will ever even learn what happened to him, but he too was ambushed and I don’t imagine he went down with “stoic poise”. I see him covered in blood, fighting to exhaustion; I hear him saying “bloody well annoyed to be landed in this shit by idiots”… Why can’t poetry be real?’

  The satirist Juvenal, happening to be present, fetched out a note tablet and scribbled words that he would work up later, excoriating Domitian and his advisory council by portraying them in a mock-debate about how to cook a monstrous turbot, when they ought to be applying themselves to Dacia.

  Lucilla never cared for Juvenal, not socially. His targets were indiscriminate; he had even insulted Statius, saying he prostituted his art by pandering to the popular taste, so desperate that he had once sold ballet scripts to Paris. Juvenal could be extremely funny, but like Martial he was always depicting his life as a desperate struggle to obtain money from disinterested patrons, rushing about in the hope someone would invite him to dinner, or attaching himself to the gullible rich in order to screw legacies out of them. Martial was warmer, and at least said he never used real people in his epigrams. Juvenal did, and had a bad habit of brutal exaggeration. Once he knew who she worked for, he was always asking Lucilla about the Emperor’s relationship with Julia, trying to get her to say Julia had experienced a whole series of abortions, all supposedly forced on her as a result of sex with her imperial uncle. Telling Juvenal it was untrue never deterred him.

  Lucilla had a distaste for men who chose not to work yet bewailed their poverty. So her preference was for the professional poets and other learned men who made up an income giving lessons. That said, even career teachers hung around hoping for imperial appointments, but as the Emperor and Empress continued to have no children, this was futile.

  Good poets had opportunities. In the year of the Fuscus disaster at Tapae, Domitian’s chief project at home had been reinstituting the Capitoline Games, in honour of Jupiter, for which he built a new Odeum and Stadium, deemed two of the most beautiful buildings in Rome. Held from then on every four years, these games were modelled on the ancient Olympics and attracted international competitors, though Domitian extended the repertoire to include not only athletics but literature and music. Two years later, after Tettius Julianus won the second Battle at Tapae and reversed Roman fortunes in Dacia, the Emperor would hold the Secular Games in Rome, which were by tradition only held once in anyone’s lifetime. He then founded the Alban Games, held annually at his summer court in honour of his patron goddess Minerva. He liked to attend the Games in Greek dress, wearing a gold crown.

  These years seemed to pass drably for Lucilla as her ache for Gaius Vinius slowly dulled. Finally, in the lull after the Alban Games, when those in her particular circle were upbeat and optimistic for their future because they were winning prizes, she decided to improve herself and first went to Nemurus to ask him to give her lessons. Although he felt instructing a female, a hairdresser, was demeaning for a man of his intellect, lack of a regular salary forced him to look receptive. Lucilla persisted; he agreed. He had been poor and had a one-time pauper’s terror of being poor again.

  They got off on the wrong foot. Nemurus mistakenly assumed she was illiterate. He began showing her the alphabet on placards. Lucilla explained gravely that, even if most were not trained to the standards of a Greek secretary, slaves in upper-class homes, as her mother had been, were required to be basically literate and numerate. Lachne had sent Lucilla herself to a morning infant school.

  ‘So what are you asking?’

  ‘I want to learn to read a poem and understand it.’

  Under encouragement from their mutual acquaintance, Statius, Nemurus caved in. The lessons had been Statius’ idea, in fact, because his own father was a teacher.

  Lucilla’s critical education began and seemed successful. Nemurus could be an unsympathetic taskmaster, but she bore it. Reproof made her concentrate harder. For one thing, she was paying with her own money, and had no intention of wasting it, so strictness worked. She was determined to siphon off everything Nemurus had to give her intellectually. She fell upon reading and only needed to be given guidance.

  For a time Nemurus was proud of her, or at least proud of his own achievement. They were on good terms — so good that Statius and his wife Claudia suggested that since both were single, they should get married. Though initially startled, Lucilla indicated that she would entertain the idea. Nemurus withdrew into himself, repeatedly begging advice from his male friends. But eventually he announced, as if the whole thing had been his idea, that this was what he wanted.

  A teacher? Dear gods, that stinks!

  Who are you with your unsolicited opinions?

  The name’s Vinius. Gaius Vinius.

  Go away; you’re a dead man.

  At least I don’t have to see you being shafted by an inkblot — who, I see, wears socks…

  Nemurus did wear socks, though Lucilla thought she could put up with it.

  Romans did occasionally wear socks. Nemurus adopted the fashion preferred by Egyptian pharaohs; his had separately knitted big toes, to enable toe-post sandals. When venturing into cold climates, anyone could stuff their boots with woollen or fur linings — most soldiers who had gone to Moesia would be doing that, while at the ends of the earth, for instance in Britain, the men would demand underpants. But on the Bay of Naples or in Rome, Lucilla knew in her heart, socks were inelegant and mildly eccentric.

  The socks would come to signify everything wrong about Nemurus. But at first, she told
herself they were a positive sign of character.

  This was the only visible disadvantage Nemurus exhibited. In his twenties, he was educated and well spoken, slightly old-fashioned in social matters maybe, but in a scenario full of dissipated eunuchs and slobbering fat cats, Lucilla found that reassuring. He had manners. He was extremely precise about eating in public; shepherding women through doorways; deferring to men with superior intellects.

  A lot of those, presumably!

  Oh get lost, Vinius.

  Apart from the fact that since she had no father, Lucilla could not be collected from her paternal home by her bridegroom, they had a full wedding. It took place in Rome, which allowed many women at whose marriages she and Lara had assisted to flock excitedly to hers. Suddenly she was the centre of attention as a bride should be, and realising how many good women cared about her.

  It was extremely odd, after preparing so many other brides, to have her own hair formally divided with a sword and arranged in seven locks, to have attendants putting her under a saffron veil. She knew, but had forgotten, that at a formal wedding the old-fashioned rubric — and Nemurus, naturally, went for the traditional version — included the vows ego Gaius, tu Gaia: ‘I am Gaius, you are Gaia…’

  Lucilla was nearly sick. Twittering women whisked her to one side and gave her water, telling everyone she was overcome by nerves.

  The marriage was a mistake. Still, teachers are generally civilised people and, as mistakes go, it was by no means fatal. They had never been to bed beforehand, or Lucilla might not have gone through with the wedding. She was also surprised to learn that her new husband was a year younger than she was; he always seemed quite a lot older.

  Lucilla realised on their wedding night that what she had construed as a promise of passion was only her husband’s urgency to achieve his own release. He must have slept with women, but not many, she decided. For Lucilla, their love life was to be disappointing. He would never improve. He was a three-minute jiggler. He slipped into her and out again, like an uncertain minnow, then occasionally turned her over and repeated the procedure, his idea of sophisticated sex.

  Nemurus had seen on the walls of taverns and bath houses pictures of women wearing nothing but a bustband, providing bedroom entertainment to well-endowed fellows, sometimes in intriguing threesomes, and with bug-eyed servants watching. That looked like a lot of fun, but he loathed himself for hankering after it. He did not believe such behaviour belonged in a harmonious marriage. He wanted a wife he could respect who would not try to alter his already settled habits. If he sought Lucilla in bed after their first few nights, it was merely for comfort, like a child falling asleep sucking a piece of old cloth. He had no interest in her feelings or her needs.

  He believed he treated her in an exemplary fashion. There was no point complaining; it would only lead to a quarrel. He was clever and extremely widely read, but it had given him no aptitude for real life.

  It worked for a year; they even stayed together longer.

  Soon Lucilla learned to hide her intellectual development. As her husband watched her bounding progress, he was no longer proud but jealous, resenting her loss of reliance on him for teaching. Still, his world was full of books. She could devour those, especially when he was not at home with her, which happened increasingly. He spent much of his time with male friends. This soon involved dicing and drinking, though in keeping with his character, he was restrained and wary, which at least saved him losing too much money. Lucilla heard herself say, ‘Well, if it keeps him happy…’ As she said it, she knew everything was all up with her.

  Lucilla was following the traditional wives’ habit of slipping the leash, though hardly in the traditional way. While Nemurus thought she was following his prescriptive curriculum, which involved intense study of many, many books of the historian Livy, Lucilla had discovered the erotic love poems of Catullus. These she read all the more joyously because she knew Nemurus would be annoyed.

  When she finally defied him and openly refused to read any more Livy, Nemurus let her try Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Lucilla had become a tricky student. ‘That Apollo — what a hunk! Now I’d really like to do his hair!’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘I am, dear.’ They called one another ‘dear’, instead of risking the intimacy of names. ‘For instance, I know that when a lecher, man or demigod, chases after a girl intending to rape her, she does not get conveniently turned into a tree. She will be raped.’

  ‘Is that your critical appreciation of Ovid?’

  ‘I think it’s my appreciation of all poets.’

  And people who teach poetry.

  You cannot mean that, dear.

  ‘Anyway,’ snarled Lucilla. ‘Who wants to be a laurel bush?’

  Julia died.

  She had been ill for a short time, but the situation had been covered up at court, with the usual whispers, hastily closed doors, hurrying feet, and sudden unexplained visits, sometimes at night, from medical practitioners. Even so, her death came unexpectedly. She was twenty-five, little older than Lucilla. Those who had attended her, especially her women, wept and were stricken. Though Lucilla knew Julia only tangentially, she was bonded in her colleagues’ heartbreak.

  Domitian was away at the time, either in Germany or Pannonia; there were dark fears how he was going to take this.

  Juvenal came nagging, ‘Was it an abortion that went wrong?’

  Lucilla was furious.

  After Julia’s funeral she withdrew into herself. When Lucilla and Nemurus were in Rome rather than at Alba, officially they lived with his parents. His mother inevitably thought Lucilla too common; she believed Nemurus had an exceptional talent, an opinion he encouraged. The good thing about coming from slave stock was that you had an endless facility for silent insubordination. Lachne had taught Lucilla how to put up with anything and to appear meek, while being insidiously mutinous. But it was no way to live.

  Now, citing the needs of her business, Lucilla returned most days to Plum Street, which had always been her refuge. Her husband never came. He liked the fact she had her own money; it saved her making demands on his. He generally enjoyed her connection with the imperial family, which he saw as potentially a useful connection for him. Otherwise, he took absolutely no interest in her work.

  The couple remained married, because it was convenient. But increasingly they were leading separate lives.

  Nemurus did not accept his fate meekly. As soon as he sensed Lucilla’s growing independence, he had recourse to the Roman husband’s most hackneyed weapon: he accused her of intending to commit adultery. Like many a Roman wife, Lucilla played the wounded innocent. While she dramatically bemoaned her husband’s injustice, she never confessed the truth: that her entire marriage felt to her, and had always felt, like a betrayal of her feelings for the lost Gaius Vinius.

  17

  It had rained all day and now there was snow again. ‘Crapping caryatids!’ groaned Gaius Vinius. ‘I have had enough of this.’

  Vinius, not dead. Vinius, utterly depressed and irritable.

  His head hurt. The ache was at last diminishing slightly, so he thought he would escape brain damage, although when he first regained consciousness he had self-diagnosed, in the absence of any medical aid, that he had suffered concussion and permanent harm was possible. More likely, he would simply go mad trying to endure life as a captive. The boredom and claustrophobia were dire.

  What in the world could be worse than to be stuck in an isolated mountain-girt, barbarian land on the wrong side of the frontier, a thousand miles from home, never knowing if or when they might be released, or whether anybody of their own even knew they were there?

  They thought nobody did know.

  The prisoners taken at Tapae, a mere handful of Roman survivors, had been picked up and transferred in crude carts to a half-deserted citadel whose name they were not told. They were dumped in a dilapidated compound on a small hillside terrace, over twenty men crammed into space once built for one
family. Their shelter comprised a couple of clay-floored rotten wattle huts that were too grim even to be pigsties, though their stink was distinctly animal. This was to be their home indefinitely.

  If the men had realised how many years it would be, how many years before any chance of rescue, they would have given up. All that kept them going was that the Dacians neither killed them nor made slaves of them. Dark stories were told of Dacians sacrificing defeated enemies to their warrior gods and hanging up armour as trophies in trees; these Romans had lost their weapons and valuables but were spared. It had to mean they were hostages, and for hostages there must always be a glimmering mirage, that thin possibility which they must never see as false: belief in returning to safety one day.

  Some died. There would be no return for them.

  They were all going to die, of dirt, disease and dismal despair, unless someone made an effort to preserve their health and sanity. Vinius had realised this in the first weeks, around the time he slowly ceased feeling nothing but distraught over losing his centurion and the battle, the time when he knew he would have to start fighting for his own survival, which at least was what Gracilis would have done and what he would want Vinius to do.

  The prisoners were an assortment from several legions. Numbers were few, though as time passed, Vinius picked up signals from occasional Dacians who did communicate; he suspected there were others held elsewhere. None in his group were officers. Vinius was the only Praetorian; moreover, he had been a centurion’s beneficarius. So, once he hauled himself out of his initial misery, he tried to pull everyone together. Vinius had to assume leadership. He must do what Gracilis would have done, what the mystic voice of Gracilis was even now instructing: rally them, keep up their spirits, drag them through this ordeal however long it lasted, find a way to co-exist with their captors, look for ways to escape but never try anything stupid.