The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

I had finished dressing for the ceremony at Jupiter’s temple on the Capitoline. A new imperial purple toga, with a fold of it draped over my head. If I would face Jupiter, I must face him in the trappings of my high office—not only emperor but Pontifex Maximus.

  The outer grounds of the main palace were now connected to the Via Sacra, the Triumphal route that ran through the Forum and then up the steep path to the Temple of Jupiter. I set out, with all the ceremony needed to endow this action with its necessary gravitas, accompanied by my Praetorians and the many orders of priests of the Roman state religion. We passed the Temple of the Divine Julius, the two basilicas, the Rostra, the Temple of Saturn.

  I was walking the Triumphal route of Claudius that I had watched from a crowd when I was only seven, dazzled by the glory of the procession, standing on tiptoe to see over taller heads. Now others strained to see me. The day was sweetly warm, and the scent of roses from the quarters of the Vestal Virgins spread out over the Forum, strongest as we passed by.

  I came to the place where Claudius had descended from the Triumphal chariot and made his slow, painful way on foot up to the Temple of Jupiter. I would not have trouble with the path, but I wondered if there would be another Triumph during my reign. They celebrated military victories. But could there not be a Triumph celebrating achievements in other endeavors? Why only military?

  I approached the great, towering Temple that crowned the Capitoline Hill. Its vast dimensions made it a fitting dwelling for the ruler of all the gods. A huge seated statue of Jupiter awaited me, one of his feet peeking out from under his robe, his stern visage inspecting me. At the base of the statue lay withered wreaths of honor, plaques of vows and gratitude, and cut branches of evergreen oak and olive, sacred to him. I bowed and then knelt.

  “Jupiter, greatest and best, avenger of wrongs, and great guardian of my fate, who has saved me from the danger of this dagger by divine intervention, I dedicate this spoil to you.” I leaned forward and laid the dagger at his feet. “In thanksgiving, I vow a gold coin to Jupiter the Guardian, Jupiter Custos.”

  I stood, trembling. It was not hyperbole. To have come so close, to be delivered only hours before the assassination was to take place, and by the hands of those close to me who I trusted, could only have come from a god. The mightiest of them, the ruler of heaven, protecting their ruler on earth.

  * * *

  • • •

  The warm weather called me back to the pavilion of the Golden House, empty during the winter months while we lived in the main, better heated, palace below. Poppaea and I returned to it eagerly. The artists had been hard at work for several weeks, and the stonemasons had almost finished their installations. Now the polishers would buff and shine the marble. Painters were carefully applying gold leaf on the highest plaster of the ceilings.

  The midsummer sun streamed in, warming the rooms. In spite of their beauty, the rooms had melancholy echoes for me. I ordered the statue of Terpsichore to be moved out of the Odysseus room to an outside covered portico. There was no more writer’s room; I would never write a line there.

  Our black room was still beguiling, and Fabullus had finished the fresco in the Hector room, the one of Protesilaus that Poppaea had requested. We stood before it, appraising it.

  “It is dark,” she said.

  “It is a dark subject,” I replied. “The first death in the Trojan War, and a wife only allowed to see her husband again for three hours before he must return to the underworld.”

  “The colors are muted and murky,” she said.

  “As they should be.” I held her close to me. “But if we should ever lose one another, would not a cloudy glimpse be better than darkness?” I held her closer. She was almost entirely recovered now; none of the weakness that she had suffered earlier. Perhaps it had been the pregnancy after all.

  “Come, let us go outside.” We walked through an open door and out into the courtyard, where we could look down into the valley of the city. The gardens were taking shape; another growing season and they would look as we had envisioned them in the plans. The vines were growing lustily and the saplings had survived the winter and were covered with fresh new leaves and green-stemmed branches.

  “It is near the solstice,” said Poppaea. “The longest day of the year will soon be upon us.”

  The time when Sol would be riding highest. Sol, who had anointed me his chosen one, his son. I should have a celebration for him, but I did not want to plan one now. It was too soon after the conspiracy to celebrate anything. But in the autumn the second Neronian Games were scheduled, five years after the first ones. It would serve as a return to normalcy.

  We sat on a marble bench and felt the gentle wind, watched the white and yellow butterflies darting in and out of the bushes. The characteristic acrid smell of sun-warmed boxwood rode the breeze.

  Gardeners were working on the far side of the plot, their shoes crunching on the gravel, their low laughter a happy sound. But as we sat luxuriating in the majesty of early summer, a quicker crunching of footsteps hurried our way. Tigellinus came bearing a box.

  I rose. “What is this?” I asked.

  The sun struck his face, illuminating the high cheekbones, the strong jaw. His jaw was clenched. “It seems Petronius left you something in his will.” He handed me the box. “Shall I stay while you open it?”

  “If you wish.” It might have a cobra in it for all I knew. Or a poisoned pin. But most likely it contained a will in which he had left me, and Tigellinus, most of his estate, along with fulsome phrases of flattery. Almost all the other condemned men had composed such wills.

  The box was a richly ornamented one, citrus wood with inlaid ivory and shining brass hinges. I opened it slowly.

  Something glinted inside. As I raised the lid, the sunshine hit shards of precious stone, turning them into glowing rainbows. Pieces of his murrhine cups, the ones I had admired and offered to buy from him. I picked up one of the pieces, feeling a deep sense of loss. Such beauty destroyed. And for what?

  Underneath the shattered cups was a note.

  You wanted these. Now you have them!

  “The vindictive bastard,” said Tigellinus.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Here’s the will.” I unrolled a scroll and started to read it aloud, but soon stopped.

  The last will of Gaius Petronius Arbiter:

  I leave the items below to the emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus:

  Herein a list of the emperor’s sex romps and partners:

  With the lady Aelia, and the lady Junia at same time, at Piso’s villa, positions x, y, and z (see below for positions chart and key)

  With the courtesan Lucilia 3 times at Petronius’s villa in Cumae, positions f and g, with salt water and honey

  With the noted madam Maxima, in costume, at palace, with gold dust and olive oil, positions t, r, and q

  With Poppaea Sabina, then Otho’s wife, on Tigellinus’s pleasure boat on Lake of Augustus, under the sail covers, position t

  The list continued, a very long one.

  Poppaea had been reading it over my shoulder and burst out laughing.

  “How does he know all this?” she asked.

  “He liked to watch,” I admitted. “Not just me, everyone. He said he was taking notes for scenes in his Satyricon. Maybe he was.”

  “But how did he know about us on the boat?”

  “Someone must have told him. Maybe Otho himself. He seemed proud of it at the time.”

  She took the scroll away and read it down to the end, some twenty-five or thirty more names.

  “All that was before I knew you,” I said. It sounded a lame disclaimer, even to me.

  But she just laughed. “I like this one,” she said, pointing to the key for “position r.” “Shall we try it?”

  “I may have forgotten how,” I said. “It was a long time ago.” />
  “I am sure it will come back to you. It’s like swimming. Once you have done it, you never forget.”

  “Shall I leave you alone so you can pursue this?” asked Tigellinus. “I find it strange that you find it so amusing.”

  “He meant to hurt us, to crush us like he did the cups. Instead he has inspired us,” said Poppaea. “Yes! He miscalculated. It seems, my dear husband, he did not know you as well as he thought he did. Just one of his many misjudgments.” She rose, took my hand. “Come. And yes, Tigellinus, you may leave us now.”

  I handed him the box with the broken cups but kept the will. “We will need this,” I said. “A timely instruction manual.”

  Laughing, we ran through the gardens and back into the pavilion, hurrying to the black room, where the bed awaited. We fell on it, still laughing, and rolled over and over, tumbling like children, until we stopped, and the laughter ceased. My face was only a few inches from hers, and I looked at it in wonder, that such a creature was mine and could love me. She lay still, looking back at me. Then she kissed me, at first softly, then with eagerness and hunger. I slid my arms under her, pressing her to me, as if I would bind her to me forever, meld us into one.

  “Never mind about position r,” she whispered. “I cannot wait. Save it for later.”

  But I didn’t have to wait, as I hadn’t forgotten after all.

  XL

  LOCUSTA

  My suspicions were, alas, too real. But in my profession, an acutely sensitive sense of suspicion is a basic requirement. So there was a plot, a widespread one, against him. Forty-one people, including—most ominously—the military.

  From what I have heard, except for the two or three who wanted the Republic back, the rest were a sorry lot of mixed motives, mainly petty. Some had personal grievances against him—those were of his inner circle—and the soldiers disapproved of what they considered his embarrassing public performances. But Faenius, despite his high-sounding denunciations of the emperor’s behavior, actually was motivated more by personal jealousy of Tigellinus, who had the emperor’s ear, to the exclusion of Faenius.

  The conspiracy had no clear goal, except to remove Nero. Some wanted to replace him with Piso, but the soldiers preferred Seneca, and planned to kill Piso and exchange Seneca for him. It all came to nothing—because it was betrayed by a suspicious slave on the very morning it was to take place.

  Nero, however, believes that only Jupiter saved him at the last moment, that he was divinely protected. But he now takes measures to avert any repetition of this close call and has increased his oppressive spy network’s vigilance.

  In the first ten years of his rule, he was lenient and merciful. There were no executions and only two banishments, one for treason and one for libel on the emperor. Even in the aftermath of the conspiracy, more senators were banished than executed, and one of the conspirators was even acquitted. But his peace of mind is gone now.

  At present, in an attempt to start anew, as if the conspiracy was merely a detour from an otherwise straight track, Nero is preparing to put on the second Neronian Games in Rome. Whether the population will warm to this is anyone’s guess.

  I keep myself informed. I can only watch and wait and warn him if anything comes to my ears.

  XLI

  ACTE

  Oh, my heart aches for him—for them, yes, for her, too. The broad outlines of the plot were heard here in Velitrae, growing more and more detailed as the specific facts came out. The dagger and the slave. The coterie of his friends, not only the despicable Senecio (who has paid the price) but other friends of his idle hours like Petronius and Lucan. The Praetorians, pledged to defend his person against all enemies, becoming those enemies. Whatever world he believed he inhabited, it is shattered now.

  Even their child is lost, and I chide myself for my jealousy of her. She has sorrows enough without my wishing any on her.

  So we go on, walking ahead through a changed world, unbowed. We have no other choice. In this, and this only, we live.

  XLII

  NERO

  The glorious summer filled Rome, Sol himself reassuring me. That, and Tigellinus’s trained informers bringing him—and me—reports of what was happening around me. Never again would I slumber, trustingly, in my palace bed. Now the watchword was: on guard.

  Before the Fire, I had hosted all the city with games, lakeside entertainments, and banquets. Now the second quinquennial Neronia, the Greek-style competitions in the arts and athletics, would revive the tradition, reassure my people that the city, and their emperor, were restored. That all was well.

  I announced this to the Rump Senate (as I called it privately), adding that I planned to compete myself. Almost before I could finish, three senators rose and cried, “No need for that! We hereby offer you the crown for both eloquence and song. You need not lower yourself to compete with those—others.”

  “What about the chariot race? For I plan to compete there, too.”

  “Naturally you are entitled to the prize there as well.”

  How transparent they were, attempting to keep me off the stage. “No,” I said. “Why should I be exempt from competition? Let the judges decide. I am not afraid to be compared to the performances of others.” Without comparison, we can never know our true standing. Why should the emperor alone be denied this knowledge?

  * * *

  • • •

  Back in the imperial apartments, Poppaea and I laughed about it. All the windows were open so the summer air could circulate freely, and outside the bees were busy in the oleander bushes. The curtains rose and fell in warm puffs.

  “They were so serious,” I said. “It was comical.”

  “One of the complaints of the traitors concerned your lack of gravitas,” she said. “Perhaps you should be careful.”

  “I’m through with that,” I said. “Now I shall do as I please and just double the guards and informers. Whom do I hurt by performing? No one.”

  “Their sense of the old Roman ways, that is all.”

  “It’s a new Rome now, and it’s time they accepted it.” I sighed. “I am eager to go back to my music, so neglected. And to race again in the Circus.”

  “Just don’t neglect Rome itself,” she said. “If only to guarantee that you have a stage to perform upon.”

  “A stage . . . they accused me of performing while that stage, the city, burned. How dare they!”

  She rose and came over to me, standing behind me and draping her arms over my shoulders in the way I loved. She kissed my ear. “That is over. Do not dwell on it. It will eat at you, and there is nothing more futile than being devoured by the past, a past you cannot change. The only thing you can do to change it is to overwrite it, make the people forget it. Like the scribes overwrite old manuscripts.”

  I heeded her words and embraced my arts again with the eagerness of a reunion with a lost lover. I had hesitated to call Terpnus back, after his insinuations about the Fire, but I decided to forget about that, as Poppaea advised. As I knew only too well, my skills had declined with lack of practice, and he could revive them.

  Indeed, once he arrived, he did not allude to the Fire, and neither did I. Soon we were back in the old teacher-pupil relationship we had, where nothing mattered but the cithara and my expertise in it.

  Reluctantly he said, “You are better than I dared to hope after all this time away. It may not take too long for you to be back where you were.”

  “I want to be better than that,” I said. “But for now I will settle for reclaiming what I once had.”

  I spent evenings revising my Troia epic poem. I wondered at the advisability of reciting it, since I had been accused of performing it during the Fire, but it was the best poem I had written, and in a contest, why should I not offer my best? Second-rate poems would guarantee a second-place finish.

  And it was with immense joy that I returned to the stabl
es and the racetrack. Tigellinus kept me company, and I could leave the Praetorians at the palace under Faenius’s trusted replacement, Nymphidius Sabinus, promoted from head of the fire brigade. Being outside in the summer sun, straining to control the horses, practicing the turns, was as close as a mortal could get to flying—and leaving earthly cares behind.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Theater of Pompey was selected for the setting of the poetry and music competitions. It was a huge stone theater in the Campus Martius, undamaged by the Fire, that held some eleven thousand people, a fitting place for performances. Statues of the fourteen nations conquered by Pompey graced niches around the arena, and the building was well lighted.

  The Neronia started with a week of lesser contests and recitals. But today only the most acclaimed poets would read. Secretly I had packed all the accouterments of a citharoede: the flowing chiton, the light shoulder mantle, the special thick-soled boots for the feet, a gold wreath for the hair, nestled with the instrument itself and hidden offstage, for a different performance. But for now I concentrated on reciting my lines.

  Several others went before me, but Apollo help me, I did not really hear them, I was so keen on the moment I would follow them. It was all coming back—the anxiety, the racing heart. I strode out and took my place, seeing the audience as only a blur before me in their seats. My poor eyesight served me well now, sparing me from seeing individual faces.

  I acknowledged the judges and the audience, then began. There was a murmur as it became clear I was reciting a part of my Troia, daring the public audience from all walks of life to think badly of me, daring them to think of the Fire. But the murmurs faded away, as they were caught up in the story itself. After I finished, there was tremendous applause.

  I bowed and left the stage, while they cried, “No, don’t leave! You must show us all your accomplishments! We demand it!”