Nero's Heirs

by Allan Massie

  Then he was marched slowly from the hill of Emperors. The soldiers who flanked him on either side, kept, at the tribune's command, their swords drawn, and raised so that the points pricked the underside of Vitellius' chin. So he was compelled to keep his head high, and could not shrink from the disgrace of his situation. In this manner they descended the Sacred Way.

  Only one incident disturbed the melancholy progress. A German soldier, one of Vitellius' personal guard (as was later confirmed) leaped from behind a column, his sword lifted above his head. It was, I believe, his intention to despatch his fallen lord, either in anger, more probably (as I choose to believe) from motives of pity: to save him from the further degradation that awaited him before death. But he was prevented. A legionary rushed on him. There was a scuffle. For a moment the German broke free. He swung his sword again, but, unable to reach Vitellius, succeeded only in slicing off the tribune's ear. Then two soldiers fell on him and sent him before his master to the darkness that beckons to us all.

  A crowd had gathered, alerted as ever by rumour of what was happening, and surged round the little column as it entered the Forum. There were many who had cheered Vitellius a few days before. There were, doubtless, some who were among those who had compelled him to break the agreement he had made with Flavius Sabinus -that agreement which had assured him of his safety, prosperity and a tranquil old age. Now they howled curses at him; some threw dung, others mud or whatever came to hand. With his robes in tatters, his face and neck daubed with filth, his head still compelled upright by the points of the swords, he presented a spectacle that was as pitiable as it was revolting. But there is no pity in a frenzied mob. So Vitellius suffered. Once, and I believe once only, his lips moved, and he was able to speak. Later it was said that his words did not lack dignity. Yet I was your Emperor.' But I do not know whether this was indeed what he spoke, or whether someone put suitable words later in his mouth. I was not close enough to hear. It is just as likely that he uttered a prayer for mercy, though he was beyond mercy.

  They led him in this fashion as far as the Gemonian Steps, where a few days earlier the body of Flavius Sabinus had been thrown. There they killed him, not in manly fashion with a single thrust of the sword, but slowly, with an accumulation of little cuts, until finally, the tribune, one hand clasping a cloth to his own wound, told the soldiers to stand aside, and himself hacked at Vitellius' neck till the head was half-severed from the body.

  Then this was dragged to the Tiber and consigned to waters that already ran red with blood from the battles fought further upstream.

  So ended . . .

  What more can I tell you, Tacitus?

  Nothing. I am glad to be rid of this task you set me, which I have acquitted painfully, with honesty and regard for truth. May you do as much in your History. I am sure it will be read when I am forgotten, for you are a great artist. I have never doubted that. I ask only that you pay me due honour in what you write and acknowledge my help. That will afford me a glimmering of immortality.

  What a vain desire!

  You will know, of course, that Domitian, emerging from hiding, at once played the part of the Emperor's son in so haughty and imperious a manner that any who observed him then might have guessed how he would conduct himself when his own hour arrived. But there is nothing of value I can tell you concerning that.

  So, farewell, and may good fortune guide you in your work and life.

  XXXIX

  It is some weeks now since I sent my last dispatch to Tacitus. I hoped then that I had done with memories of my dead life. Yet I cannot let them go like waste and debris that float down the incurious grey river to the indifferent sea.

  I left Rome as soon as I decently could after attending to my mother's funeral rites. Perhaps, if Domatilla had spoken then, she would have persuaded me to remain. In honesty, I doubt it. I was eager for new experience that might obliterate the horror of the past year. Such as I found confirmed the cynicism that the spectacle of Nero's heirs struggling for supremacy had bred in me.

  Titus gave me a position on his staff. He offered me also a free choice from his troupe of boy dancers and was amazed, or pretended to amazement, when I declined his offer.

  I still admired him, still felt a tenderness for him, no longer desired or loved him. I thought: this means only that I have grown up. I exchanged letters with Domatilla; hers were reticent, even banal. She said only one thing of note: that she accused herself of being the cause of my mother's death. I knew this not to be the case; nevertheless read in her words a growing distance between us. Other correspondents told me with what relish Domitian played the part of vice-Emperor, of how he boasted of his share in the Flavian triumph.

  By Titus' side, I took part in the siege and capture of Jerusalem. I have written something of that already. Enough indeed: to dwell longer on it would give me nightmares, if sleep was not already denied me.

  We destroyed the temple of the Jews. I entered its Holy of Holies - and found it empty. I had supposed it would contain some revelation, some hint as to what the Jews believe to be the meaning and purpose of life.

  Now I think that it may have done so: proclaiming that there is neither meaning nor purpose. Balthus disputes this; his loving god assures him of both. He still tries to convert me. I ward him off, telling him that the Christians being a proscribed sect, he is dependent on my ungodly protection. The irony escapes him. Perhaps I should supply him with a wife. When I suggested this, he shrank from the proposition. He finds female flesh and the smell of women repulsive. Strange. He is committed to chastity; there are some, he tells me, who have made themselves eunuchs for his Christ's sake.

  I took part in the triumph granted to Titus and Vespasian. Ostensibly the Senate accorded them this honour on account of their victory in the Jewish War. In reality Vespasian himself demanded it, and knew that he was actually celebrating his seizure of Empire and the deaths of tens of thousands of his fellow-citizens, some on his behalf, others resisting his usurpation of power.

  I rode on a bay horse alongside Domitian who was mounted on a white stallion. As we approached the Sacred Way, it shied and all but threw him.

  At dawn Vespasian and Titus had emerged from the palace, both crowned with laurel and dressed in purple. They proceeded to the portico of Octavia, sister of the Divine Augustus and unhappy wife of Mark Antony. The Senate, magistrates, and leading equestrians waited for them there. Vespasian gave the signal for silence which, in a little, was obeyed. Then, covering his head with his cloak, he rose to mutter the immemorial prayers. They were almost inaudible, muffled by the cloak and his provincial accent. Titus repeated them after him, more clearly but no more comprehensibly, since these prayers are in an antique dialect that no one now understands. I later asked Titus whether he had enquired of the priests if they could furnish him with the meaning of the words he had spoken. He laughed: 'Dear boy, what does it matter?'

  Having recited the prayers, they assumed their triumphal robes and sacrificed to the gods, and then commanded the procession to be set in motion. They rode together in a chariot, and Domitian and I were in the first rank behind them.

  The spectacle was magnificent. That was undeniable. No expense had been spared, and the war was depicted in numerous ingenious representations.

  Now you saw a prosperous country, far more fertile than Palestine, being laid waste. Now there were scenes showing whole armies of the enemy being slaughtered - armies far more formidable and better equipped than the miserable Jews had been - there they were shown in flight, there being led in chains into captivity. There were shows of cities and their defenders being overcome by the legions swarming the ramparts and walls. Blood was seen to flow, wretches raising their hands in surrender or supplication. Temples were fired, houses tumbled, and rivers flowed across a land given over to devastation, burning wherever you looked.

  It was, I suppose even now, superb; and the message was clear. This was the full terror of war from which Vespasian and Titus had rescued R
ome and Italy.

  Conspicuous above all else were the spoils of the temple of Jerusalem: golden vessels, golden tables, golden candelabra, and tablets inscribed with the laws of the defeated and despised Jews. Images of victory in gold and ivory were displayed, as the triumphal procession wound its way to the not yet restored Temple of Capitoline Jupiter.

  Vespasian, I was amused to note, wriggled with boredom.

  'What an old fool I was,' he muttered, 'to demand a triumph.'

  But Titus delighted in every moment of the day. Domitian looked sour and sulky.

  We waited before the temple till a messenger came, as was customary, from the Mamertine prison, to announce that the enemy general had been executed.

  This was a lie. No enemy general had been taken. But the people, being ignorant of this, were content.

  For the eight years of Vespasian's reign I was seldom in Rome. I pursued a military career on distant frontiers, mostly in Anatolia where rebellion was endemic. I was wounded three times, decorated for bravery, and in action stifled thought. I had not yet learned to distrust Titus' nobly-spoken dream of Empire. I believed that strenuous service in warfare, and my work in securing just administration of the conquered provinces could allow me to forget the stench of corruption in Rome itself. I did not realise that I was already infected with its germ.

  My correspondence with Domatilla withered. How could it be otherwise? Then she was married. Her husband was a man who had been an associate of Nero. Now he paid court to Caenis, Vespasian's low-born mistress. She promoted the match, hoping that by doing so she could secure her position of power and influence for the future, when Vespasian was no more. Vespasian could deny her nothing; he consented to the marriage, and Domatilla had no choice but to obey. As for me, there was no shortage of women in Anatolia, Circassian slave-girls who delighted the senses and made no demands on my heart.

  Vespasian died, hauled upright, because, as he said, 'An Emperor should die on his feet.' He was the first Emperor since the Divine Augustus to die a natural death; all the others were either murdered or, in Nero and Otho's case, committed suicide. Titus inherited, the first true-born son of an Emperor to do so. He abandoned the pretence, which Vespasian had honoured, of being merely, as Augustus had styled himself, the 'Princeps' or 'First Citizen'. My boyhood lover was happy to be addressed as 'God and Lord'. If Galba's accession had proved that an Emperor could be made elsewhere than in Rome, now Titus tore the facade of Republican respectability to shreds. Some were afraid; they said he would prove a second Nero, on account of his addiction to pleasure.

  But, unlike Nero, Titus revelled in the business of Empire. Administration delighted him. He had an eye to his own security, himself retained command of the Praetorians, flattered them, rewarded them lavishly. He enforced obedience and good conduct in the State. Detachments of the Guard habitually arrested any suspected of disloyalty or disaffection. Such arrests were often made in public places, like the theatre; this was an effective means of instilling fear and respect for the imperial power. Executions were summary, without the formality of trial.

  Titus brought me home, appointed me his deputy commander of the Guard. So he joined me with him in illegality. Yet at the same time we won the favour of the people by proceeding against the unpopular public informers, always ready, for payment, to bring accusations against their fellow-citizens. I took pleasure in ordering several to be whipped and deported from Rome. In this way, combining severity with what I privately regarded as the politics of gesture, Titus won for himself a popularity denied any Emperor since Augustus.

  So Titus charmed the people while suppressing sedition in the State. For a little it seemed as if the sun had broken through the dark clouds that had shrouded Rome.

  And the sun shone again in my own life also. I found Domatilla unhappy in her marriage, saddled with a husband for whom she felt neither affection nor respect. She was in the full flower of her beauty, but it was her new sad look that revived my old passion, and it was her misery which allowed me to persuade her to my bed. I knew, while Titus lived, what is surely the supreme joy granted a man: to be one with a woman who truly loves you. Now there is only the memory of her caresses to lighten the perpetual night of old age and exile. Then, in her arms, I felt for the only time in my life complete. I was able to forget the guilt of my association with that Empire which has destroyed liberty.

  But, inevitably, as it seems, I served that Empire. I could see no alternative. I have argued this question, often, with Tacitus, who, even when Domitian made him a Praetor and Senator, dreamed of the Republic. He would not believe, or accept, what was to me evident: that the conditions which made the Republic possible no longer existed. They had indeed been long gone. The Republic, I insisted, had been destroyed, not by loss of virtue, as he supposed, though that might be the consequence of its destruction, but by the very success of the Republican armies in extending Rome's sway over distant lands and peoples.

  Caesar was a product of the Republic, and his career was proof that it was dead. He had no need to murder it. You cannot kill a corpse. And when the self-styled Liberators made a corpse of Caesar himself, they could not breathe new life into their beloved Republic. Mark Antony knew this. Augustus saw it still more clearly. Tiberius, reluctantly, accepted the reality of Empire. It was clear to me that the horror of the year when Nero's heirs struggled for supremacy proved only this: that a strong Emperor, able to command the loyalty and obedience of the legions, was necessary. Vespasian proved such an Emperor. So, briefly, did Titus. Why should I condemn myself for acceding to the dictates of my reason and serving him?

  Yet I am haunted by my casual remark to Balthus: we make a desert and call it peace. The desert is not physical, for Rome and the Empire prosper. It is moral. Balthus would have me believe it is what he calls 'spiritual'; but that has no meaning for me. Yet there may be something in what the boy says. I see, from a distance now, my fellow Romans seek significance in the service of the mystery cults of the East. Many of my soldiers devoted themselves to the worship of Mithras, God of Light and, they averred, Guardian of the Legions. I looked on with superior disdain.

  And I am left with nothing.

  xxxx

  Titus died, suddenly. Officially he died of a fever, caught while on a journey to Sulmona, birthplace of the poet Ovid in whose Art of Love he had always delighted. He had been Emperor for only two years, not long enough to outlast his popularity.

  In fact, Domitian murdered him. I have never doubted that, though ignorant of how the poison was administered.

  Domitian had conspired against him since their father's death -previously also, I believe. Yet Titus always forgave him, and assured him of the love he felt for him as his brother and designated successor. Privately, he remarked to me, dismissing Domitian's latest clumsy plotting with associates of no account, 'Nobody will ever murder me to enable little Dom to wear the purple.' I warned him of Domitian's persistence. He paid no heed.

  In truth, Domitian had nothing to resent but his consciousness of his own inferiority to his brother. This persisted even after Titus' death. He was furious when people talked admiringly of Titus, and when the Senators spoke of the late Emperor with even more enthusiasm than when he was alive.

  A few days after his accession Domitian summoned me to the palace. I found him alone, paring his nails with a knife. He emphasised the change in our circumstances by declining to rise to greet me. We had been accustomed to embrace; I felt cold distance between us now. Even as Emperor, Titus had never failed to offer me his cheek when we met in private. Domitian sat at an angle to the window which gave on the valley of the Forum between the Palatine and the Capitol.

  'I have a vision for Rome,' he said. 'There must be moral renewal. The court must set an example.'

  Every Emperor, except Nero and Gaius Caligula, has, I suppose, commenced his reign with some such intention. Titus had even given up his troupe of dancing-boys; some of them had sufficient talent, charm and beauty to make a fort
une on the public stage.

  'I have ordered my brother's catamites to be rounded up and deported,' Domitian said, as if reading my mind. 'It would be absurd to think of restoring the Republic,' he said, 'but I shall re-establish Republican standards of virtue. I am told that some of the Vestal Virgins have broken their vows of chastity. So I have instituted an inquiry, and the guilty will be executed.'

  He examined his nails, and apparently dissatisfied, nibbled at the middle finger of his right hand.

  The practice,' he said, 'of making boys eunuchs revolts me. I am preparing an edict declaring that castration is a capital offence.

  'Nothing,' he said, 'that the Divine Augustus achieved was more important than the reformation of morality. Don't you agree?'

  'I'm aware that he attempted it. I'm not so sure of his success.'

  'That schoolmaster - Democritos - who so abused us . . . I'm having him sought out. I haven't yet decided how to put him to death. Whipping? That would be appropriate. Would that please you?'

  'It's a long time ago,' I said. 'He must be an old man now. What does it matter?'

  'It matters to me.' He gave me a quick dark glance, and then looked away.

  'You're an offender yourself,' he said. 'A criminal, an adulterer. You've been bedding my sister Domatilla. I won't have it. Under the Lex Julia, that decree of the Divine Augustus which prohibits adultery, you could be sent into exile, to a remote island and deprived of your fortune.'

  'I have no fortune,' I said. You know that. We were always poorer than our fellow students. As for Domatilla, I don't deny the charge. Her marriage is wretched. She would like to divorce her husband and marry me.'

  He turned on me, met my eyes, and looked away again. He tore with his thumbnail at the side of his index finger till spots of blood appeared.