Nero_s Heirs

by Allan Massie

  'And in the third place,' I said, 'it is Vitellius, not we, who has charge of the imperial treasury and who can top any offer we make to them. He can produce gold now; we, only the promise of future gold.'

  Domitian relapsed into a sulk, for, as you know, he could never thole any dissent from his opinions, nor argue his case in a rational manner.

  Moreover, his eagerness for action was corrupted by his fear that even our conclaves were perilous.

  'If anyone knew we were meeting like this…' he would mutter, and draw his forefinger across his throat.

  He spoke truth, without necessity, for none of us doubted the danger that we ran.

  Flavius Sabinus had however a soft spot for his nephew. He considered that Domitian had indeed been unfairly disregarded by Vespasian, and he more than once said to me that, at bottom, the boy was good and not without talent. So he now hastened to apply ointment to Domitian's wounded pride.

  'What you say, nephew, is wise in general, misguided merely in particular. Few parties stand firm in a civil war, for everyone except those of outstanding virtue and those who have strong reason to be attached to one side or the other, stands loose in his allegiance. Since you have studied history, you will recall how L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, for example, deserted Mark Antony and crossed over to Octavian Caesar, the future Augustus, though he had received nothing but kindness from Antony, and was trusted by him implicitly. And Ahenobarbus was not an evil man. Treachery is contagious. I have no doubt that the new Praetorians will readily desert Vitellius, when the moment is ripe; but not now, while he is in a position to indulge them. There are others however whose desertion would be more useful, and may be more easily secured.'

  He paused and drank wine, while we kept silent, hearing only the confused night-noise of the city. Someone passed below the house singing a bawdy song about Nero. Two days previously Vitellius had caused an altar to be raised in the Campus Martius, and there performed funeral rites in honour of that Emperor whom he had himself served with such ignoble zeal.

  Flavius Sabinus said: Things are moving. Today Vitellius had word that the 3rd legion has repudiated him and sworn allegiance to Vespasian.' 'How did he receive the news?'

  'First, I'm told, he staggered and had to be revived with wine. Then he said, "It is only a single legion after all. The others remain loyal.'" 'What effect did his words have?'

  'His advisers were unsettled. They persuaded him that he must address the troops. Which, eventually, he did, declaring that vile rumours were being spread by the disbanded Praetorians, which no one should attach any importance to. He was careful not to mention Vespasian, and so gave the impression that he was faced with the mutiny of one legion, not with a challenge to his position. Then soldiers were dispersed through the city with orders to arrest anyone found spreading seditious rumours.'

  'Which,' I said, 'is just the sort of measure to give the rumours life.' 'Indeed, yes, a good day for us,' Rubrius Callus said.

  'It makes our immediate position all the more dangerous. Domitian is right there.' Flavius smiled at his nephew, as if approving his judgement. 'And he is right, too, in believing that our best course is to seek to detach some men of note from Vitellius. Now it so happens that I know what you may be ignorant of. You are all, of course, aware that Vitellius owes his present position not to his own efforts, which have been feeble and contemptible, but to his generals, Caecina and Valens. What you may not know is that they have come to detest and distrust each other. Caecina in particular is – shall we say? -disillusioned. His efforts have been equal to his colleague's. Yet he finds that Valens is in higher favour with Vitellius. I think we can play on his resentments.'

  The prospect was attractive. I immediately offered to act as an intermediary between Flavius and Caecina.

  Your enthusiasm does you credit,' Flavius said, 'but you will have sufficient nobility of soul not to resent my refusal. Rubrius here is the man for the job. He has served with Caecina in Germany, and earlier, too, in the wars against the Parthian Empire, in which Corbulo won that distinction which made him hateful to Nero. As an old comrade, able to share memories of happier days, he is better placed than you to work upon Caecina's resentments, fears and ambition.'

  So it was decided. A day or two later I watched the German legions and auxiliaries march to the north. Their appearance was very different from that which they had presented in Vitellius' day of triumph. They were not the men they had been. Wasted by disease and enervated by unaccustomed luxury, they seemed a spiritless rabble rather than an army. Grumbles about the heat, the dust and the weight of their baggage rose from the line of march. They looked like men ready to mutiny; and my heart lifted.

  XXXII

  Again I cannot sleep. I lay beside my woman, made perfunctory love to her, relief of the body if not the spirit, and then listened to her regular breathing while my own brain raced, irregularly.

  I rose and, leaving the house, walked down to the river, to a point a few miles before it loses itself in the marshes, forming different streams which make their way severally to the sea. The night was luminous, for a full moon drifted behind thin clouds and, casting deep but wavering shadows, gave all things a new and unexpected shape. It seemed to me that ghostly figures rose out of the mists that clung around the water.

  Near the end of the Jewish Wars, after Titus had taken Jerusalem, and destroyed their temple, which was like no other temple I have known, having no images of the god they worshipped within it, some of the fanatics among the enemy withdrew to a stronghold on a hill, by name Masada. This strange night allowed me to see that place again, though the landscape was so different, being desert, sand and rock, rather than river and marshland. So how this was, I know not; but the vagaries of mind, memory and imagination are incalculable. Perhaps it was not so strange, for the horror of Masada has never left me, and now I knew the need to speak of it.

  So I returned to the house and woke the boy Balthus and, telling him to put on a jacket of sheepskin for the air was chill, brought him with me back down to the river. There was no sense in doing so, for, as I say, there was no similarity to be found between that place and this; and yet it was there that I could speak of that concerning which I had remained silent for so long. The boy sat on the rotted trunk of a fallen tree and listened to what I had to say. Nor had he made any complaint at being torn from sleep.

  The Jewish remnant was there commanded by one Eleazar. He was a son of the man who had provoked the rebellion, and had been raised to be a more passionate Zealot than even his father. These Zealots combined an intense devotion to their nameless god with a savagery and austerity such as I had never witnessed, not even the savagery I had seen in Rome, concerning which I cannot yet bring myself to write my account for Tacitus.

  This Masada, being built on a rock which rises out of the desert, was fortified by nature beyond the skill of the greatest of engineers. So for a long time we besieged it, but we did not dare to try an assault. The rock was encompassed by valleys so deep that, standing above them, one could scarce discern movement at the bottom. Their walls were sheer, and only two narrow paths wound perilously to the summit. We got ourselves nevertheless to an extremity of the rock which is called the White Promontory, and there built, with great labour, an earthwork…

  The boy looked puzzled, for he had no knowledge of siegework; and I saw that the description was superfluous, being meaningless to him. So I said: 'No matter, it is not of our endeavours to take the place that I wish to speak.' And accordingly I leaped ahead of my tale.

  'We set fire,' I said, 'to the outer wall of the citadel, by piling burning branches against it. At first the wind blew so as to turn our fire against us, but then, by the kindness of the gods, the wind shifted in our favour, and the fire threatened the defenders. So a breach was made and we retired, ready to attack the following day…

  'Now, when Eleazar saw that the place could no longer be defended, he did not surrender, as a civilised man would. Instead he addressed, as we s
ubsequently learned, his people, relating the hardships that had befallen the Jewish nation – though he did not say that these had been provoked by him and his like… Instead, he said, as we learned, and as Josephus recounts in his History:

  ' "As for those who are dead, we should think them blessed, since they perished in defending the cause of liberty. As for the multitude who have submitted to the Romans, who would not pity their condition, and who would not make haste to die before he was compelled to share their miseries? For some have been put on the rack and tortured with fire and the whips, tortured even unto death. Others have been half-devoured by wild beasts, and yet preserved alive to be more thoroughly devoured in order to make sport for our enemies. And such as are still alive, is not their fate, longing for a death they are denied, the most piteous of all? And where now is Jerusalem the Golden, the city of our fathers, the city to which King David brought the Ark of the Covenant made with Israel? It is now demolished, razed to the ground. The lion and the lizard keep its courts, but the voice of man is silent. Now who is there that revolving these things in his mind, is yet able to bear the light of the sun, though he might live out of danger?"

  'So he went on, for a long time, posing questions, and inciting his followers to mingled fury and distress. They gave themselves up to wailing, and their cries cut the night air and made us fearful.

  'Then, as we learned later, Eleazar said: "We were born to die, as were those whom we have begotten. Nor is it in the power of the most fortunate of our race to avoid death. But other things -abuse and slavery and the sight of our wives and children led away to ignominy – these are not evils such as are natural and necessary to endure. Only those who prefer such miseries to death, on account of their cowardice, need submit to them. Let us, therefore, while we have swords in our hands die before we are enslaved by our enemies, and let us depart from this world, with our wives and children, in a state of freedom. This indeed is what our laws demand of us, and it is what our wives and children long for also. The Lord himself has brought this necessity upon us, while the Romans desire the contrary, and are afraid lest any of us die before we are in their hands. So, let us go, and instead of affording them the pleasure that they hope to receive by having us in their hateful power, let us leave them an example which shall arouse in them astonishment at our escape and admiration for the courage with which we have embraced our destiny."

  When he had finished speaking, there was a deep silence, lasting the time it might take a man to harness a horse. Then the men embraced their wives and children, some of whom wept, while others maintained a calm which any Stoic philosopher would admire, and so, drawing their swords, killed them, either by stabbing them or by cutting their throats. Then they piled the bodies of the dead together surrounded by faggots, and set fire to them. Whereupon, since the Laws of the Jews, unlike those of all civilised nations, forbid suicide, a dozen men were deputed to slay the remainder. Then the twelve cast lots among themselves to see which should take on the task of executioner of his fellows. When two alone were left they engaged in combat, that each might slay the other, and so both avoid the guilt of self-slaughter. And meanwhile the funeral pyre burned.

  'In the morning we made ready for the assault, putting our armour on, and nerving ourselves for what was to be a terrible battle, since none doubted the fierce tenacity of the enemy. But then, instead of the noise of preparation, we heard an awful silence, and saw smoke rising from the centre of the citadel. So we advanced hesitantly, and breached or scaled the walls, meeting no opposition, and advanced till we came upon the city of the dead. And when we saw them, we were all amazed, and many terrified.'

  I fell silent. The marshlands spread about us, an infinity of waste. A wind blew from the north, not hard but chilling. I sensed the boy pull his cloak more narrowly about him, but I could not look at him to see what effect my words had had. Perhaps, I thought, it is the memory of Masada that denies me sleep at night. But I knew that to be fanciful. I have other crimes on my conscience, and I did nothing at Masada to cause me shame. Yet nowhere have I felt such an expression of contempt for life, such a denial of all that has made Rome what it is. The dead Jews spat in the face of Empire. I have often pondered on that line of Virgil's where he declares Rome's duty to be 'to spare the subject and subdue the proud'. At Masada we were denied the opportunity either to spare or to subdue.

  Balthus said: 'How can you know what happened? How can you know what words that Eleazar spoke?' His voice was very low, as if the words were not his, but forced upon him. And yet the question was good.

  'There were certain old women, two or three, who either feared or despised death. And so, while Eleazar was speaking, and when they knew the import of his words, they slipped away, and hid in a cellar or, perhaps, a cleft of the rock; and so survived. And they came forward and told us all that had been said and done. When we asked them of the number who had been slain they said it was upwards of nine hundred and fewer than a thousand.'

  I could not bring myself to repeat to Balthus, even in this moment of a long-delayed confession which some need – I know not words for it – had dragged from me, the observation of our general, Flavius Silva, Procurator of Judaea and a cousin of Titus: that it was generous of Eleazar to save us the trouble of slaughtering his army. 'Was Eleazar himself among the dead?' Balthus asked.

  'It was assumed so, but many bodies had been destroyed or rendered unrecognisable in the flames.'

  'Why do you tell me this?' The boy raised his head as he spoke and his cheek was wet with tears. From the village came the crowing of a cock as the first rays of the rising sun touched the grey east with pink.

  What had I to reply? There is a line of Ovid's, from a poem composed in these mournful parts: 'To speak of some fatal evil is alleviation.' I shook my head, having no answer in my own mind. Was there cruelty in my forcing on him this story of the atrocious inhumanity of man? Was it because I resented his air of being at peace with the world, despite his condition, that I wished to destroy what I felt as his reproachful innocence? I had denied myself his body, though it tempted me. Did I now, vengefully, wish to assail his mind with horrors?

  I do not think so. Yet, as Cicero once wrote, 'Malice is cunning, and men's reason is deceitful in working mischief

  When Titus took and destroyed Jerusalem, with me by his side, he sent me and a freedman called Fronto to determine the fate of the captives. We picked out the tallest and most beautiful, and reserved them for Titus' triumph in Rome. Most of those who were above the age of seventeen we despatched to work as slaves in the mines of Egypt, where there was a shortage of labour. Others we sent to provincial cities, to make sport in the arenas. The young boys we reserved for the slave market. There was one lovely Jewish girl who begged with many tears for the life of her beloved, a handsome boy with fine features and red-gold hair. Their beauty won my clemency. Fronto and I drew lots; he got the boy and I the girl. She was my mistress for a month. Then one night she disappeared. Her body was discovered on the edge of the camp. She had been raped and her throat cut. The boy, receiving this news, refused all food and starved himself to death, an act which the Jews do not judge as suicide. His elder brother was one of those who walked, laden with chains, in Titus' triumph, a youth of remarkable beauty. 'I think you are troubled in your soul, master,' the boy said.*We have a saying in my country: "Courage is good, but endurance is better.'"

  And am I fated to endure, I all but said, seeing that such courage as I once possessed has drained from me. I have become a coward, afraid of my own memories, afraid of Rome's memories also. It seems to me that the most we have done in our mastery of the world is to make a desert and call it peace, and that the only free thing left in this Empire of ours is the wind that now blows chill from the north. I put my hand on the boy's shoulder and did not feel him resist.

  'You must return to your sleep,' I said. 'It was wrong in me to have deprived you of it.'

  Three cranes rose from the marshes and flew over us, their wings
beating slowly. Then they shifted direction and flew into the wind, towards the sea.

  You Romans,' the boy said, with a mischievous smile, 'would see an omen there, but they are only birds.'

  XXXIII

  Can there be a more trying ordeal than to be confined in a city under the government of your enemy while the forces of your ally or leader are campaigning some hundreds of miles away?

  That was our position. Vespasian himself had not yet left the East, but the Danube legions had crossed over through the passes of the Pannonian Alps.

  They had done so at the urging of Antonius Primus. There had been some who counselled delay. They argued that their forces were inferior in numbers, and advocated holding the mountain passes, but advancing no further till Vespasian, Titus or Mucianus brought up reinforcements. Meanwhile, they said, Vespasian's command of the sea ensured that Italy could be put in a state of siege. But Antonius Primus would have none of this. It was his opinion that delay is dangerous in a civil war. Moreover he despised Vitellius' troops, describing them (I am told) as being 'sunk in sloth, emasculated by the circus, the theatre and the pleasures of the capital'. But he argued that once in camp again, and perhaps strengthened by fresh blood from Gaul and Germany, they would regain their old levels of fitness and become more formidable than they were now. He talked much in this vein and overcame the hesitations of his colleagues.

  All this, of course, I learned later in conversation. But you may take it from me, Tacitus, that it is a true account. I suppose you will concoct some stirring speech for Antonius. You will be wise to do so; his own language would be quite unfitted for an elegant History. He was one of the foulest-mouthed brutes I ever encountered. Meanwhile we waited in the city. News was frequent, confused, contradictory, worthy only to be called rumour, never to be trusted. In turbulent times, when no word is to be relied on, men do not stop their ears and choose to believe nothing they are told. On the contrary, they believe anything, the opposite today to what they held incontrovertible truth yesterday.