Master and God

by Lindsey Davis

  Once again in his life Vinius Clodianus felt that other people were pushing him into something. He had acquired a dangerous level of involvement without even understanding that.

  He knew how things worked; if people were exposed for plotting, he would probably go down with them.

  When he talked it all through with Lucilla at home, he managed to convince himself that until an assassination attempt was imminent, which might be never, this could not be problematical. But he felt dispirited. Nothing was clear-cut, and to Gaius that meant there was a very high chance all this would go wrong.

  If he needed reassurance, it came in the absence of action from Parthenius. If the banished Abascantus really had passed a torch to the chamberlain, Parthenius must have immediately doused it. Nothing happened. There were no further meetings.

  Domitian meanwhile grew more unpredictable. Nobody knew the rules. People were lazy and wanted no trouble. They would knuckle under to any system, even bad ones, provided they could understand what was expected of them. With a ruler who was mentally disturbed, quiet periods lulled them into hoping everything had settled down, but then he offended them with some new outrage. They could not even rely on previous behaviour as an index. He would go back on himself, reviewing past incidents and reaching newly disturbing conclusions. It left everyone hysterical.

  A case in point was Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus had not only survived being close to Nero, Domitian too had accepted him as a secretary for years. When he suddenly banished the man, that was perturbing. Now he brooded again and suddenly recalled Epaphroditus from exile. As the freedman hobbled back to Rome, it was nearly three decades since his first master Nero committed suicide. Everyone knew that Epaphroditus helping him had been at the cowardly Nero’s own request. A loyal act, simple compassion.

  That did not stop Domitian deciding he would now make an example of his elderly secretary. He wanted others to see that causing the death of an emperor, even if he asked you, was a crime.

  Epaphroditus was executed.

  Worse followed. Domitian suddenly turned on Flavius Clemens. Even before his cousin’s consulship ended in April, there was a mysterious charge of ‘atheism’. Clemens and Domitilla were said to have engaged in ‘Jewish practices’. What these practices were remained obscure. When Vespasian and Titus returned from their conquest of Judaea they had brought many Jewish prisoners, so some of the war booty slaves may have ended up in the Clemens household; if so, none were specifically accused of converting their master. Christians, too, would subsequently claim the couple as saints, yet there was no evidence there either.

  The nebulous charge seemed to derive from Domitian’s own twisted imagination. Families tend to speak their minds. Perhaps at some private family occasion his cousins had scoffed at Domitian’s interpretation of himself as a god on earth. To them he was just a very tedious relative. Whatever Flavius Clemens did, or whether his mere existence as a potential rival coloured Domitian’s fears, the usual men with swords arrived one day, and that was the end of him.

  As soon as Lucilla heard, she rushed to Flavia Domitilla. Although the poor woman had been living in dread for months, Lucilla found her in a complete daze. The couple had been married over thirty years. There was no trial; there had been no time to get used to the possibility of losing her husband. This was hideous, far worse than illness or a fatal accident.

  There would be no public funeral. Certainly no interment in the great new Flavian mausoleum that had once been Clemens’ family home. Arrangements had to be scrimped and secretly conducted; Domitilla’s steward, Stephanus, arranged it.

  Domitilla had nobody to turn to. A woman who lost her husband ought to rely on family support, but Domitian was now her only adult male relative; he was also her terrifying enemy.

  Domitilla’s household staff were appalled. They clustered around her, most in tears. She was not condemned to death, but the Emperor had ordered that she should be taken from Rome to exile on the Island of Pandateria. Anyone who thought about it realised he could still change his mind and give worse orders. Even if not, Pandateria had a terrible reputation.

  While hasty preparations for this unsought journey were made by distraught slaves, Domitilla gave tremulous instructions for the welfare of her children, whom she had to leave. She was given no time even to explain the situation to them. No one could guess what fate lay ahead for the two sons Domitian had previously named as his heirs, though it seemed unlikely he would continue to view them in any friendly light. They and the five other distressed children were orphans in a harsh world. No one who feared Domitian would dare to show them kindness.

  Coming from outside, Flavia Lucilla had a clearer head than many. She discovered that although her heart was racing, she could stay calm in an emergency. She buckled to, helping Stephanus make rushed arrangements. An escort of soldiers arrived, while Lucilla was comforting her patroness; they were from the Urban Cohorts, none of them men she recognised. They were fairly polite, all awkward at having to give orders to an imperial lady, but there was underlying menace.

  A small group could travel with Domitilla to the coast. Stephanus insisted on going. A couple of hastily selected maids were taken. When the party set off, Domitilla seemed to welcome Lucilla’s presence, so she volunteered to go too. She had not thought about this in advance. She had no time to notify Gaius properly, though she sent him a message, keeping it vague so as not to implicate him in Domitilla’s disgrace.

  The journey to the coast took a couple of days, although the troops hurried them. Pandateria was a tiny volcanic island thirty miles off the fashionable Bay of Naples resorts of Baiae and Cumae. This remote dot in the Tyrrhenian Sea had long been a favourite location for imprisoning disgraced imperial women. The island hosted several of the Julio-Claudian family, some of whom had died there of deliberate starvation; others had been sent surprise executioners. Hardly any survived to leave. Few ships called there. The inhabitants must be accustomed to seeing themselves as jailers, jailers from whom cruelty would be welcomed by the authorities. Flavia Domitilla could only view her lonely incarceration with horror.

  She was to be transferred to the inhospitable caldera by a navy ship from the fleet at Puteoli; its oars were already manned in readiness. Stephanus was forbidden to accompany her. The loyal freedman tried to insist but was dragged back. As distraught farewells were said on the quayside, Lucilla was horrified that only pallid little slaves were to be companions for their mistress. She herself abruptly offered to continue to the island. She meant it; nevertheless she was relieved when Domitilla turned her down, telling her to enjoy her life instead. So they parted.

  Flavia Domitilla looked suddenly older. Despite her pampered prior existence, during the journey to Puteoli her face had acquired the lines of an elderly woman; even her hair, simply wound by Lucilla in an old-fashioned style today, seemed to have greyed, thinned and faded. Though widowed and torn from her children, she was still the granddaughter of the Divine Vespasian; she walked unaided up a narrow gangplank to be received by a naval captain who looked shamefaced. She spoke to him graciously. She never looked back.

  Lucilla waited with Stephanus on the quay until the ship had sailed out to sea so far they could no longer see it. Even when travellers are expected to return, the slow dwindling of a vessel into the far distance is a mournful sight. Lucilla knew she would never see Flavia Domitilla again.

  On their journey together back to Rome she and Stephanus spoke little. They were both raging at the injustice, but under Domitian no one openly showed such feelings if they wanted to survive. By the time they reached Rome, nonetheless, they had a shared understanding.

  Hurrying to Plum Street, even though it was late, Lucilla could tell Gaius was at home. They normally slept in her bed, but she found him in his old room, with the dog on his feet, forcing him to curl up. She crept into bed behind him. Gaius greeted her only with a bad-tempered grunt and did not turn around.

  Pressing her face between his shoulder-blades
, Lucilla murmured pleas against his unresponsive back. ‘I am sorry. Please don’t be angry. I was her freedwoman. I discovered that it meant something.’

  Gaius, a free citizen from birth, had spent the best part of a week depressed. He knew freed slaves had an obligation, but until now its importance to Lucilla had escaped him. He was jealous, he knew it. Lucilla heard his misery: ‘I thought you had left me.’

  ‘Don’t; please don’t upset yourself. I am here. I would have gone as her companion,’ Lucilla admitted. ‘But she knew you had a claim on me. I am so glad she said no. I wanted to come home to you.’

  Gaius pushed the dog off the bed with the flats of his feet so he could stretch out and turn round. He hauled Lucilla into his embrace. ‘Oh gods, am I glad to have you back…!’ He was warm-bodied and warm-hearted; despite the scare she had given him, he remained deeply affectionate.

  ‘It’s over. She is gone, Gaius. I know she will die there. She will never be allowed home. He means her to die. They will neglect her, and probably starve her, and because she has no hope she will surrender to her fate. That is how he wants it. So he does not have to see what happens, and can shed all responsibility.’

  Gaius wrapped himself around her until she felt like a kernel, safe in its nut. ‘There; let it out. You need to cry.’

  Lucilla took his comfort but she said, ‘I have not shed one tear since I watched her sail away. I am too angry.’

  Gaius was silent. He recognised that she had changed. He saw that he could indeed lose her — though of all the wild doubts he had ever harboured, losing Lucilla would not be in any way he had dreamed. No other man would lure her, nor would she tire of him. Even her long exposure to poets, teachers and philosophers had not achieved this. Flavia Lucilla had joined the opposition to Domitian.

  ‘It has to end.’ Lucilla’s voice was quiet, her tone stripped, her mood fatalistic. ‘People must do something. Whatever it takes, he will have to be stopped.’

  33

  Over a year passed, after Flavius Clemens died and his widow was banished. Nothing significant happened. It could be argued that this was because the conspirators took their time and planned things properly. Excuses, said Lucilla.

  Organisation did occur, however. A slow current of hatred had begun its drag. In the Senate, men confined themselves to muttering complaints, while Domitian knew they did so, and loathed them more as a result. At the Praetorian Camp, officers and soldiers took another New Year Oath, pledging loyalty to their emperor with set faces. Their Prefects waited, each with his motives. The army loved Domitian; legionary commanders and their provincial governors, with power in their hands, were his loyal appointees. He chose them personally, and they had seen what happened to anyone who challenged him. The public neither loved nor hated, grateful for gifts and favours, yet finding him a cold, distant ruler. The benefit of efficient government with many costly state occasions was that there were no riots — nor would there be, if their ruler was to fall to a well-constructed palace revolution, with the promise that life for the public would continue undisturbed. Juvenal’s famous slur was right; given bread and circuses, people would tolerate anything.

  A group of dedicated people worked secretly to identify who was sympathetic, indifferent, suspect or hostile. They rarely met formally. When they did, they chose the summer, so absences looked like normal holidays. Some of these people were senior officials, who were used to running the Empire. They knew how to hobnob. Because they were careful, their meetings often took place far from both Rome and Domitian’s fortress at Alba. So, in the middle of summer, Gaius Vinius and Flavia Lucilla travelled together down the Via Valeria, setting off like cheerful holidaymakers with light luggage, an obvious picnic basket, and their dog.

  There was a villa in the hills which by reputation was the farm given from his rich supporter Maecenas to the poet Horace. A will produced in a hurry when the poet died in delirium had bequeathed his entire estate to the Emperor Augustus. Horace had enjoyed imperial patronage and he was a childless bachelor, so no suggestion of sharp practice should be inferred.

  The poet’s beloved Sabine farm was swallowed up into the gigantic imperial portfolio, from which imperial freedmen were sometimes rewarded with spectacular presents. Some of the best properties in Italy passed from an emperor to a servant who worked hard, or who knew where the bodies were buried. When the state budget was tight, those who had made a packet from bribes could buy auctioned property at wincingly favourable rates, though sometimes there was a quid pro quo.

  Nearly a hundred years after Horace died, the small farm at the head of the wooded valley was in new ownership. Approached by its own informal road, it was encircled by low, scrubby hills with a crown of trees. The dark soil was thin, but supported modest agriculture; Horace had had his own flocks and was able to seal demijohns of his own wine. A small spring provided fresh water. A brook chattered.

  The living quarters remained modest, at least by contrast with the gross spreads flaunted by tycoons along the Bay of Naples. Even so, a luxurious redesign and make-over in the reign of Vespasian had improved both facilities and decor, with plenty of white and grey marble, all worked to a high standard. The most important rooms on the ground floor had impressive geometric mosaic floors in black and white, announcing that this was a high-status home. Pleasant suites occupied two storeys; some rooms opened onto internal courtyard gardens. The master dining room had a splendid view across a peristyle down the main axis towards a particularly striking hill in the distance. A short flight of steps led to a gently sloping garden, surrounded by shady colonnades, that included the usual topiary and urns, a large pool and scallop shell grotto. Natural woodland complemented the formal plantings.

  Only a staggeringly outsized bath house showed that although this delightful and very secluded house was in single private ownership, it was occasionally used by travelling rulers and their large, demanding retinues. Freedmen lived here. An emperor could enjoy the attractive dining and sleeping rooms, in the suave company of a host he knew and trusted, while his swarming backup team was foisted onto local villages or bivouacked in the grounds. This rural villa made an ideal stopping point on the way to Nero’s spectacular country palace in the hills at Sublacium, too far from Rome to be reached in one day, which had continued in use by the Flavians. Alternatively, with only a slight detour, this could serve as a way-station en route to Vespasian’s birthplace at Reate and other Flavian family compounds. Though close to the Via Valeria, the house lay down a minor road which lent privacy and made it very secure.

  A daytrip from Rome, Horace’s Villa had seemed in the past a superb place to plot. An equally long way from Alba, it still was.

  The current owner was Domitian’s great chamberlain, Parthenius. He took on the villa after other wealthy and influential freedmen and women, as he explained on the first evening while his group of visitors relaxed with nightcaps after their hot and bumping journey from Rome.

  ‘I find it entertaining — ’ Perhaps because he had worked for so long for an emperor with a macabre sense of humour, Parthenius was amused by situations that made other people feel faint — ‘that one of my predecessors was Claudia Epicharis. In view of our purpose, this seems a peculiar irony.’

  For those of his guests who either never knew or had forgotten, the genial host elucidated: Claudia Epicharis had been an influential freedwoman involved in the famous Pisonian plot against Nero. Epicharis tried on her own initiative to suborn the commander of the Misenum fleet, Volusius Proculus. She made a mistake there. He betrayed the plot to Nero’s chief secretary, Epaphroditus, the freedman Domitian had just eradicated.

  Epicharis was arrested and tortured, yet never identified her fellow-conspirators. After being broken on the rack, she was being carried for a new day’s questioning in a chair, since the injuries already inflicted on her meant she could no longer stand. Though in hideous pain, she managed to remove a bustband she was wearing; she fixed it to the chair and by straining on the materi
al somehow throttled herself.

  ‘The courageous Epicharis owned this villa. I like to think the Pisonian conspirators may have met and discussed their intentions here,’ Parthenius ended. ‘Where they failed, we must prosper.’

  A short time afterwards, the urbane freedman bade everyone goodnight; he sauntered out into the garden. There he noticed the tall figure of the one-eyed cornicularius, Clodianus. Arms folded, the disfigured Praetorian stood lost in thought. The impression he gave was gloomy.

  ‘Are you enjoying the balmy evening — or reviewing your options?’ asked Parthenius, coming up to him. ‘Not reconsidering, I hope?’ Clodianus acknowledged his presence, though did not respond to the question. Around them moths and insects darted, while the fountains on a great square water feature still tinkled, lit with dim lights. ‘Oh, I am so sorry — did my story of Epicharis and her suicide upset Flavia Lucilla?’

  ‘It upset me.’

  ‘You are naturally anxious about Lucilla’s safety.’

  ‘She is her own woman. I can only urge caution.’

  ‘I am sure she values what you say.’ Parthenius could be bland. She was not his girl.

  They were all putting themselves in great danger by this conspiracy and Gaius was suffering as he imagined the disaster of exposure, with Lucilla being tortured or suffering a hideous death. Alone of those here, he had in the course of his duties witnessed torture. Not often, but enough.

  Parthenius was married. His wife had been sufficiently visible for politeness, though it had been clear she would stay safely out of discussions tomorrow. There were children. Gaius had glimpsed a boy, Burrus, about twelve or thirteen; he was loafing about like any adolescent, staring at the new arrivals yet unwilling to communicate with his father’s visitors.