The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  * * *

  • • •

  Rome has been virtually destroyed.” I stood before some fifteen men who had answered my summons. They were mainly senators, but my own staff were also present—Epaphroditus, my principal secretary; Phaon, my minister of accounts and revenues; and my architects, Severus and Celer; as well as the two Praetorian prefects, Tigellinus and Faenius; and Nymphidius, captain of the Vigiles. “But you do not need me to tell you this.”

  They looked back at me. Their eyes were wary, and they, like everyone else, had been severely tested in the ordeal, thankful to have survived.

  “What you need me to tell you is what we will do now.” But I had only a vague idea of what that would be. If they expected details, they would be disappointed.

  I took a deep breath. “When Troy burned, Aeneas did not stay in Troy but left the ruins behind and sailed away to found Rome. But we are not Aeneas, and we do not wish to abandon Rome. And it was not an enemy who destroyed it, as Troy was destroyed, but an accident. We have no reason to flee. But we can imagine a new Rome, finer and more shining than the old.”

  I heard murmuring, so I hastened on. “Yes, much has been lost. I have prepared a report detailing all of it, at least what we know so far. Temples, trophies, artwork, records—the old Rome that was our pride. But we are still here, and we can re-create it, give a glorious city to the future, when the old one has been long forgotten.” I nodded toward Severus and Celer. “With my architects, I will plan out a new city and present the design to you soon. For I think we must move quickly. There is no point in waiting; we need a city to live in, and the longer it takes to create it, the more the misery will swell.”

  “How can we afford it?” asked Publius, a senator from Tusculum.

  An astute and painful question. “We will afford it because we have no choice.” That was the honest answer.

  “Do you plan to do this on credit?”

  “No. The imperial treasury will bear most of the cost. We will also bring in contributions from the provinces, and there will be donations from wealthy people.” Like Seneca, I thought, but did not name him. “People who can afford it can rebuild at their own expense, and if they meet a deadline in completing it, they will receive a compensation bonus from the treasury.” I knew many people still had money; they had investments outside Rome, and not everyone had lost his house. Some had miraculously been spared.

  “What about the cause of the Fire?” asked Faenius. “Will the culprits be punished?”

  “How can we punish the wind, which whipped up the flames? Or the smoldering candle wick that set fire to rags?” I said.

  “Are we sure that is how it happened?” he persisted.

  “As sure as we can be,” I said. “But still, the gods must be appeased. And I will make the necessary ritual sacrifices to do so.”

  One senator said, “When will the plans be ready?”

  “As quickly as Celer, Severus, and I can do it. In the meantime, think of any changes you want to incorporate. This is your opportunity. We have a blank slate.”

  After they departed, Epaphroditus and Tigellinus lingered.

  “Yes?” I said, sitting glumly at my desk.

  “Seeing you gave the people comfort today,” Epaphroditus said. “I know that.”

  “It did the opposite for me.”

  “I know.”

  Suddenly I had a request. “Stay while I write a note for the lost-persons bulletin. There are several people whose safety I wish to know.”

  I pulled a piece of paper toward me and wrote:

  Anyone with knowledge about the following people contact the emperor through his representative Epaphroditus at the information station.

  Terpnus, a citharoede of the highest standing

  Apollonius, Greek athletic trainer

  Paris, a leading actor

  Appius, vocal instructor

  Vorax, madam in Subura

  I handed it to Epaphroditus.

  “A madam?” he said. “You want a madam to contact you?”

  “She is a friend,” I said. Tigellinus had introduced her to me on the eve of my first disastrous marriage, and she had imparted invaluable knowledge of a certain sort to a virginal boy, so I was forever grateful.

  “Ah, I have friends like that,” Tigellinus admitted, grinning.

  “Then best ask for them on the lost-persons board,” I said.

  “Well, if the emperor is bold enough to do so, so will I.” He winked, and left.

  As I watched Tigellinus’s retreating back, I was immensely thankful that he was still here with me. Others distrusted the closeness we shared, fearing that he had too much influence. But they had no way of knowing the bond that had formed between us at our first meeting, when I was still a child and he had entered the palace surreptitiously for the announcement of Mother’s marriage with Claudius. He was not welcome there but had dared to go anyway, which impressed me. When he told me he was a breeder of racehorses, I was instantly smitten. Both of us were rebels—he in trespassing where he did not belong, I in wanting to be around horses and charioteers, which Mother forbade. He promised to take me to the stables, and I promised not to betray that he was at the palace. Then and there we formed an alliance that had never been broken.

  The day had finally ended, and I thanked all the gods. Off with the toga. Down with a cup of wine. I would not think anymore. I could not bear it. Tomorrow I would face it all anew.

  As I readied for sleep, a servant pushed open the door; it turned silently on its hinge, and standing on the threshold was Poppaea, like an apparition. But she moved and came forward, and the servant closed the door behind her.

  I rushed to embrace her, the first time I had seen her since leaving that hot noon to rush to Rome. I held her in my arms, beyond joy to see her. All would be well, and now I knew Rome would rise anew and that its golden age was still before it, not behind it in the ashes. Poppaea was here with me, and all would be well.

  XI

  We stayed up talking, words spilling over one another in our rush to pour out all that we had experienced since our parting. My exhaustion fled, banished into the night skies, as I told her all.

  “I waited—I heard nothing—there was no way to know what had happened, or if you were safe—” She reached out and touched my hair. “Then there was a report that you had foolishly rushed into the Fire itself. And here is the proof. Burned hair.”

  “I didn’t rush into the Fire, I just came close enough to observe it and see how much of the Palatine was aflame.”

  “You were close enough to get burned.”

  “That was from flying sparks; the air was full of them. My arms were blistered, too, but not badly.” I was proud of that; I almost wished the blisters would never heal, a permanent reminder that when the hour came I had not flinched. But they were fading already, my proof of bravery along with them.

  “Waiting was torture,” she said. “Although I do not mean to suggest that it could compare to what you were facing.”

  “Not knowing what happened to someone is a torture all its own.” I thought of the people I had inquired about on the bulletin board, people I longed to know were safe. “A third of the city is now homeless, people looking for lost loved ones, camped out in all the public venues I could provide.”

  “I know, I passed by some on my way in. A sea of people! What are we do to with them?”

  “That is the question I am wrestling with. I met with the Consilium and will work with architects to design the new city.”

  “A new city?”

  “Yes. It has come to me that this is the opportunity to create a new Rome. A Rome beyond anyone’s imagining—a Rome that transcends all the old rules.”

  She lay back on the bed and stretched her arms. “How grandiose.”

  “Not grandiose. Visionary.”

/>   “Two names for the same thing.” She smiled. “Your enemies will call it one thing, your friends another.”

  “I care only what the future calls it. I am building for people not yet born. Contemporary judgment is often faulty and only corrected by later ages.”

  “But it works the opposite way, too,” she said. “What is acclaimed in one age is pilloried in the next.”

  Her voice faded in the background as the Rome of my imagination rose in shining towers. A Rome that would stun the world.

  We embraced on the bed, safe in one another’s arms, my burns soothed against the soft skin of her back. But my happiness was shaded by the dark awareness of the displaced people in the fields surrounding us.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Vatican residence was smaller than the late lost Domus Transitoria, and smaller even than the sprawling multilevel villa at Antium. I liked to call it my rural palace, lying in the fields across the Tiber from Rome. It had the theater where I had held the Juvenalia, my coming-of-age celebration, and the racetrack where lesser chariot races were run. It was much less formal than any other imperial venue. So it made a suitable place for me to meet with the engineers and architects to plan the reconstruction of Rome, for the homey setting was not intimidating.

  I had a large table constructed from flat boards in the middle of the meeting room; here we would build a model of the city. Wooden blocks of all sizes were at the ready, which could be stacked and rearranged, and a map of the old city plan. Severus and Celer, my trusted architects, stood by, waiting. Several engineers were also present, experts in water drainage, brick and stone properties, and vaulting and arches.

  They were all looking at me, waiting for me to begin. No one would speak until I did. So I took up my staff and pointed to the empty tabletop. “Two thirds of Rome has been destroyed,” I said. Taking chalk, I sketched the outlines of the geography of the area, the river, the hills, the low areas. I filled in the places untouched by the fire, mainly on the margins of the area. The middle was gapingly empty.

  “There must be no more fires,” I said. “If we are to create a new Rome, it must be invulnerable.”

  “There are always fires,” said one of the engineers. “Along with plagues and wars.”

  “Yes, because conditions favor them. The middle of the city was a crowded warren of twisted streets, overhanging wooden houses, and flammable goods. It must be rebuilt differently,” I said.

  “In what way?” Another of the engineers looked skeptical.

  “Well, it’s obvious,” said Severus. “Correct those three conditions and you will go a long way to eliminating fires. No more narrow streets—we will have wide ones. No more overhanging upper stories of houses; there should be open sky between houses. And the houses should not be of wood but built of Gabii or Alba stone, which is fireproof.”

  “And each house should have its own wall,” I added. “No common walls.”

  Celer spoke up. “The houses should be set back from the road.”

  “With porticos lining each side,” I said, picturing it.

  “Where shall these streets be built?” asked another of the engineers. “And where will the shrines and temples go? Those will have to be rebuilt. We can’t have a street plan until we have situated the large buildings.”

  “True,” I admitted. “I will draw up a list of the buildings we need to replace.” It would be a dreary list, a list of loss. “Then we can proceed from there.”

  “What about that low-lying area between the Esquiline and the Viminal? The section at the end of the Forum.”

  “It should stay open,” I said.

  “But it’s swampy and there’s no use for it,” Severus said.

  “Perhaps we could build a large artificial lake there. Like Agrippa’s in the Campus Martius. That is probably what it is best suited for.”

  “Do we need another lake?” the engineer Junius said. “We already have Agrippa’s, and Augustus’s naumachia across the river.”

  Suddenly a picture was forming in my mind, indistinct but compelling. “But they are on the outskirts. This would be in the heart of Rome.”

  I needed to be alone with Severus and Celer. So I told the others we would meet again the next day when I had the list of public buildings for us to plan around. After they left, I eagerly turned to my architects. “I have an idea,” I said. I took the chalk and drew a rectangle in the middle. “This can be the lake. And around it”—I took the miniature blocks and began to arrange them—“around the lake, woodlands. Fields.”

  “What?” Celer shook his head. “This is the middle of Rome. You can’t have woodlands there.”

  “But what if we did—open green fields, trees of all sorts, deer and herons and hawks? People flee to the country, to villas, because the central city is congested and foul, but this would bring the country into the city. And with the wide streets, and the open air, it would be a garden. A garden open to all of Rome.”

  “It would take up too much space. Real estate in the center of Rome would be sacrificed, and people would be angry. They would say, if we want fields and lakes, we can go to Campania.”

  “But now they would not have to travel to do so. It would soothe their spirits,” I said.

  “They care more about their purses and business dealings than their spirits,” said Celer.

  “I want you to draw up a plan for this,” I said stubbornly. “After we decide where the public buildings are going to be re-erected, we can design the rest.”

  “Your plans always seem to defy nature,” said Severus. “The Avernus–Ostia canal, for example. One hundred and twenty miles through difficult country, wide enough for two quinqueremes to pass abreast. We have only got a few miles into it; the engineering is challenging. And the Sublaqueum villa, wanting us to dam up a river and create three lakes.”

  “Well, you did it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but we have been accused of not respecting the bounds of nature.”

  “That is the cry of the timid,” I said.

  “No one can accuse you of that,” Celer said.

  “I have the greatest confidence that you can carry out these plans, whatever we decide.” The meeting was over.

  After dismissing them, I knew the next step was to inspect the shrines and public buildings—what was left of them—to decide which ones were the most urgent to replace. The engineers were right; those would have to be planned before we could allocate other space. I set out with Tigellinus and two other guards early the next morning. The bridge was intact, and we were able to cross over easily; inside the city the noise of carts, workers, and demolition made a strangely melodic background. Makeshift roads had been plowed through the areas. We no longer needed boots to wade through. It was eerie to see nothing higher than a bramble bush; everything had been leveled.

  “When the areas are cleared, we will survey and then let people return to rebuild,” I said. “I don’t want them there until it is safe and there are no grisly surprises to greet them.” My orders that kept people out still stood; treasure hunters and looters must be prevented.

  Piles of debris were being shoveled into carts, to be trundled down to the docks and loaded on barges. Workers had been doing this for some time now, and yet the mounds grew back again like mushrooms after rain. Charred beams, metal grates melted into twisted messes, headless statues, detached wheels, broken roof tiles, and pots with dead plants poked out from the piles of rubbish.

  Tigellinus shook his head. “The remnants of lives,” he said, with uncharacteristic melancholy. He stopped. “Where do you wish to go first?” he asked.

  “The Palatine,” I said. I needed to examine it more closely than my earlier quick visit had allowed. “We must assess and confirm the losses there.”

  Passing by the Temple of Vesta, which was a heap of broken stones, still preserving the
round shape of the temple by how they had fallen, we began to climb the Palatine. It was hot, of course, being high summer, but cold in comparison to the furnace blast of heat that had confronted me here last time. At last, cresting the hill, I looked out on a blackened expanse of seared trees, fallen buildings, and clumps of ash, all under a clear and soaring blue sky, the birds wheeling overhead.

  On my right, the old palace, the Domus Tiberius, was badly damaged, but portions of it still stood. I tried to remember exactly what was in each room, what irreplaceable treasures had been lost, but I could not. There must be an inventory somewhere—but it was probably lost as well. Luckily many of my personal possessions were in Antium and Sublaqueum, but not all. And the glorious bronze statues from Greece must now be melted lumps inside the palace, the genius of their creator fled from the inert material.

  Its annex, the Domus Transitoria, had fared worse, although I knew that, having smelled the smoke in it during the fire. But oh! I had designed it, had watched the painter at work, had selected the marble and planned the sunken fountain . . . this hurt much worse than the damage to the main palace.

  “There may be something to salvage here,” I said, seeing some of the floor design through the ashes.

  “Wishful thinking, Caesar,” said Tigellinus.

  Now we walked farther across the flat top of the hill, toward the Augustus section, where his modest house had stood, along with the Temple of Palatine Apollo and the sacred laurel grove. This side had suffered less damage, although the flames had been licking up just below from the Circus Maximus. Perhaps the wind had mercifully shifted at a crucial time.

  But still the devastation was great. The little temple to Luna Noctiluca—Luna Light of the Night, which was kept lit all night and glowed in beauty like a white lantern—had toppled and fallen. Next to it, her brother Apollo’s large temple still stood, but the portico with the fifty Danaid daughters in red and black marble had collapsed, and the statues fallen, broken. The library attached to the Temple was heavily damaged, the scrolls probably illegible. The precious Sibylline Books, though, had been rescued along with archival material from the Tabularium when the Fire had restarted on the sixth day. And we were fortunate that those things, so vital to Rome, had survived.