I motioned to a few of them, men I wished to speak with privately, and held them back. I invited them to come to the palace with me, so we could speak further on these things.
In the room I used for business, I bade them be seated and called for refreshments. They sank gratefully onto the stools and couches and took the drinks from the silver trays.
It had been a long day for them, and their faces showed it. “I know we are all tired,” I said, “so I will not keep you long. But we have been parted for a long time, much has happened, and now we have a crisis in one of the provinces. I know we will meet it; as it stands now, it is minor, compared to the one in Britain seven years ago and the one now being crushed in Judea by General Vespasian. But unhappy subjects anywhere make for an unhappy emperor.” I expected them to laugh at this, but they merely smiled wanly. Obviously they were tired. I would say only a little more.
“This is different, though, in that Britain and Judea wanted freedom from Rome. Vindex wants liberation from me. He wants another emperor in my place.”
A rotund senator said, “Perhaps your releasing Greece from its tax bonds to Rome has caused resentment with the other provinces. It is dangerous for the Pater Patriae of the empire to favor one province over another, Caesar. It can give rise to movements like Vindex’s.”
I nodded. He had a point. I had been too sanguine about it.
Silius Italicus said, “Perhaps you should visit other provinces as well as Greece. Let them see you in person. As it is, they have only seen your likeness on coins.”
“Ah, but have there not been complaints that I have been away from Rome so long? If I made like visits to all the provinces, I would never be here.” But suddenly I realized I had taken the loyalty of the faraway provinces too much for granted.
One of the oldest senators, who had been present thirteen years ago when I gave my first speech to the Senate as emperor, said, “You are needed here, at least for a good while. Much is in need of repair.” I knew he did not mean the aqueducts and roads. And I would be wise to heed his warning.
“Thank you, Gaius,” I said. I looked around. No need to continue the discussion with this exhausted group. It was full dark outside, and a brisk wind was rising.
“For your amusement, since you are here, I will show you a novelty—a water organ. Its tones vary by the pressure of the water . . .” I demonstrated it for a few minutes before bidding them good night.
* * *
• • •
The next day it was all over Rome that the emperor, after calling a trusted group of advisers to come to the palace, refused to discuss the crisis in Gaul, entertaining them by playing a water organ instead.
“It’s a lie!” I cried.
“Well, did you play the water organ? I know you were tinkering with it recently,” said Statilia.
“Yes, but—only after I had talked with them about Vindex and the state of the empire. They were tired; I thought to give them some little amusement before sending them home.”
“Obviously this rumor was spread by one of the men who was there,” she said. “No one else would have known about it.”
“Yes, but who? And why? You are such an expert in reading people’s minds, perhaps I should reconvene them and let you test them.”
“You are joking, right?”
“Only partially,” I admitted.
“These days it is hard to tell when you are serious.” She came over to me and massaged my shoulders. “I can feel how tense you are. I fear sometimes you are not thinking straight. You get so excited and flustered . . .”
I leaned back against her. “Wouldn’t you? Oh, I am so tired of all this! I wish—”
“Oh, don’t say you wish you had stayed in Greece. That’s so childish.”
“I wish—I wish—I could lay down the burden of being emperor.”
“Stop that!” she hissed close to my ear. “Someone might hear you and be all too glad to help you do it.”
“Not that way. Just to . . . resign, and go elsewhere. Not to Greece. To Egypt.”
“Egypt?”
“It has a mystique,” I said. I was curious about it.
“You need to stay here,” she said flatly. “The very existence of rumors like the one about the water organ, meant to discredit you and make you sound deranged, show that the danger is not over, no matter how many plots have been discovered and disrupted.”
Plots—here and far away. No safety anywhere. As it was when I was a child—danger all around me.
“I want to put this burden down,” I insisted. “I am tired of carrying it.”
“Augustus said the same thing, but he couldn’t. He was mature enough to know he couldn’t, or he would be damaging Rome.”
“Even Atlas wanted to put his burden down!”
“That’s a myth. You must stop confusing myth and reality. There never was an Atlas, and he never held up the earth. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” I said reluctantly. “But it is a pretty story.”
LXX
The days of April crept by. I saw spring come in all its glory to Rome, but I did not really see it. It was all happening outside my windows, while I kept inside, reading dispatches, pacing. Puffs of grass-scented breezes tantalized those of us held captive indoors and awaiting word of events hundreds of miles away.
Tigellinus did not improve, and I ordered him to go to his country house and recover. He protested, but I said I needed him at his best, and only rest could bring him back to that.
“Nymphidius can take over, at least for a little while,” I said.
He coughed. “Watch him,” he said. “I am not completely sure of him.”
“In what way?”
“Never forget who his father is,” said Tigellinus. “And if Caligula isn’t really his father, all the more reason to be wary, for it means he lies.”
I looked at him. He was pale and had grown noticeably thinner. “I thought you liked him.”
“Did I say I didn’t? But liking and trusting are not the same thing. Great Zeus, Caesar, you of all people should know that.”
His illness was making him tetchy.
Not long after he left, Statilia announced that she wanted to visit relatives in Campania. I let her go; there was no point her being held prisoner here, too.
But as a result I was soon more alone than I had been in some time. Alexandra and Ecloge, in my household since my childhood, steadfastly stayed in Rome, and it was them I saw first thing in the morning and last thing at night as they brought me morning drink and food and filled the oil lamps at dusk. It was a comfort, seeing the faces of those so loyal to me. Those had known me through my entire life. Such people were a rare thing.
The palace quieted at night, and I had solitude and privacy. I often played the flute or the cithara just for myself, or sometimes just listened to the night noises outside, the humming of the cicadas, the echoing voices of revelers out in the Roman streets, stumbling home.
I thought of sending for Acte, but I hesitated. Statilia was right—I was too tense to be good company now. Acte and I had shared glorious, happy moments in Greece, and I did not want to erase that memory in her mind so quickly. But oh! I wished I could see her. My first love, early found, early lost, now found once more, never to be lost again.
Alone, I brooded on the thought I had blurted out to Statilia. It had been half formed then, but just saying it had given it a shape and existence. I did wish I could lay down the burden. It was pressing me, draining me, like a stone pressing down on olives, crushing the oil out of them. The weight of the empire oppressed me.
An astrologer had told me once that I would fall into poverty. At the time I had answered that I could always support myself by my music. It had been half wishful thinking, half a question. If I lost the throne, would I be simply a penniless musician?
T
he idea of poverty did not bother me—or so I told myself. But as I looked around the room with its marble floor and ceiling, its precious art objects, I realized that wealth enveloped me like a blanket—or a shroud. Could I really live without it? And could I really be content to be Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus again, after years of being Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus? The first time I could not claim, to myself, that no one had the authority to forbid me anything, I would feel even more helpless than I did now. I would have no recourse but to endure the slights and insults heaped on the common man every day. To say I was not used to it was a vast understatement. It had been so long since I had experienced it, I honestly could not remember what it felt like.
Oh, but you will remember it soon enough when it happens.
The truth was, at this point I would make a poor private citizen; like an exotic plant, I had been in the hothouse too long to be transplanted.
* * *
• • •
The spring nights made for good sleeping. The sweetness of the cool air was lulling. I barely needed a light sheet. One night in bed I lay staring out the window, through the leaves of a tree that rustled and threw odd shadows, slithering and dancing, before I drifted into sleep.
I dropped through space, into an abyss that was gray and bare. I fell freely, turning over and over, and landed on a soft gray mound. Then, before me, I saw the Mausoleum of Augustus. Its round shape filled my whole vision, and then, slowly, the two great entrance doors began moving, opening, exposing the dark within. An echoing voice said, “Enter, Nero!”
I stood up, trembling.
“Enter, Nero!” the commanding voice repeated.
Inside were rows of urns containing the remains of Augustus and his family and descendants, their lives finished. I backed away, but a strong invisible power tried to envelop me and pull me in. I thrashed and cried, “No! No!”
I awoke, tangled in the sheet. That was what had enveloped and captured me. I untwisted it and flung it off.
A dream. It was only a dream. But so real . . . I could have sworn I was standing in the Campus Martius before the great hulk of a building.
As I looked beyond the foot of my bed, I saw that my own two bedroom doors were standing wide open. They had been firmly shut when I went to bed. I was sure of it. The force that had tried to suck me into the mausoleum had invaded my room.
I lay quiet until light stole into the room, freeing it from the grip of night. The yawning doors of the room stood as silent witnesses that it had not been entirely a dream. I got up, shakily, and closed them before attendants could arrive and wonder. Just walking in the light of day steadied me, and the shades of night and its terrors faded, blurring into invisibility.
The day itself seemed benign. The April sunshine was warm and beguiling. Suddenly I realized what day this was . . . April nineteenth, the anniversary of the day for my intended assassination three years ago. The evil had been averted, but did it linger still, attached to this date? Was that why the mausoleum was still hungry for me?
I had barely had time to think this when Nymphidius and Epaphroditus arrived, bearing dispatches. Their faces were grim, and they were sweating even on this cool morning.
They knelt and handed the messages to me, as if they could not look me in the eyes. I took them and unrolled them one at a time.
General Galba had given an address at a tribunal in New Carthage, announcing that he had joined Vindex in his rebellion and henceforth renounced his allegiance to me. He denounced me and my regime as tyrannical and unfit, and displayed statues and pictures of my victims. Then he announced that he was seizing all the imperial property in the province.
That was in the first dispatch. In the second one, the story continued. The audience hailed him as imperator, and Galba accepted the title, saying that he was now the representative of the Roman Senate and people but—with false modesty—said he could only assume the title after the Senate had formally granted it. He issued a proclamation calling upon the whole province to join the cause. Otho in Portugal came forward and joined, bringing gold and silver to be melted into coin, as he had no legion to contribute. So . . . it had taken six years, but Otho had his revenge on me.
I dropped the rolls on the table and let them rest there. I could hardly speak.
“Galba has only one legion, the Sixth, Victrix,” said Nymphidius. “One legion does not a revolution make.”
“And he’s old. He’s seventy-two, reportedly not in good health,” added Epaphroditus.
Seventy-two. Beware the seventy-third year.
Everything went black. Vaguely I felt myself falling, heard a clatter as I hit a chair, then nothing.
I awoke to find Ecloge and Alexandra bending over me, wiping my forehead. Nymphidius and Epaphroditus were nowhere to be seen. For a moment I thought I had been transported back in time, looking up into the faces of my childhood nurses. But the faces were lined now, and I was not a child. I tried to sit up.
“You have had a shock,” said Ecloge. “Do not move until you feel ready.” She wiped my face again, gently. Someone had put a pillow under my head, but I still lay sprawled on the floor where I had fallen, one leg twisted under me.
They must have told her the dreadful news. Or perhaps she had read the dispatches, lying open on the table. A civil war was beginning. The unthinkable, which the founding of the empire was supposed to prevent forever. This was much worse than Vindex’s declaration of rebellion. Galba was a trusted governor and a noted general, a stalwart member of the governing elite, and had now provisionally accepted the title of emperor. Emperor!
I still felt stunned, but then I sat up, despondency flooding me, grief taking possession of me. I reached for the neck of my tunic and ripped it, as mourners do, relishing the rasping sound of the tearing fabric, echoing the tearing within me. I beat my head against the legs of the table, hitting it again and again. “It is all over!” I cried. “The oracle foretold it. This is my assassination day after all.”
“You must bear up,” said Alexandra. “Rome will look to you now for guidance.”
Ecloge spoke calmly. “You have not been driven off the throne. You are secure here in Rome; Spain is far away. Your commander Verginius is moving toward Vindex and will likely fight him before Galba can reach him. Then Galba will be alone, stranded, and branded a traitor.”
She had always been sensible, tough-minded. Steadying. With her help, I stood up, shakily. Only with Ecloge and Alexandra could I openly show such weakness. It was comforting that I could, and I gave thanks for them.
* * *
• • •
Calm. I must pretend to a calmness I did not possess, if only to inspire it in others. I pulled myself together and called a meeting of the Senate the next day. Once again flanked by the consuls, I rose to address the senators.
“At our last meeting, we vowed to bring Vindex to justice,” I said. The faces looking back at me had worry writ large on them. “And we will,” I said.
Show no weakness or hesitation. What Ecloge and Alexandra saw—the emperor in despair—must never be seen by others.
“But a new danger has arisen. General Servius Sulpicius Galba, governor of Near Spain, has declared himself for Vindex and put his one legion at the rebel’s disposal. He has confiscated all the imperial property in the province, robbing us. But more dastardly, he has accepted the title of emperor, which the people there bestowed on him. He calls himself in the meantime the legate of the Senate and the people of Rome until you grant the actual imperial title to him. He shall get another title from you instead: enemy of the public! Declare him hostis, that damning judgment.”
I was yelling then, all my anger pouring out. Despondency had passed into rage.
They rose and did as I asked, pronouncing the sentence on him of public enemy of Rome. He was now officially a traitor.
The empire was in crisis. The
re was one more thing I must do now. I turned to the two consuls and said, “You must step down. I will take your places as the sole consul, as is traditional in emergencies. It is said, Only a consul can subdue Gaul. That consul should be the emperor.”
There was a controlled gasp from the floor. The faces showed different reactions: some frowned, some looked stunned, some were pleased.
“I will take sole command and deliver us from this danger,” I assured them.
I sounded so certain, even to myself.
* * *
• • •
In the days that followed my moods continued to fluctuate wildly—from abject despondency to intense and detailed planning. We heard nothing of Verginius and his legions and where they were. The five legions under Gallus and Turpilianus were on their way north. I did not give orders to prepare defenses in Rome, as there was no danger of being invaded. But I did have the breach in the wall filled in.
I went out to inspect the city to see if there were any other glaring weaknesses that needed to be repaired. As I made the rounds of the streets, I felt a surge of satisfaction in the rebuilding that had been completed in only four years. If Augustus could claim he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble, Nero could claim to have found Rome a city of ashes and left it a city of rational planning. My wide streets, my mandated fireproof stone, my open spaces and greenery were a vast improvement over Augustus’s narrow-streeted and congested Rome.
Returning to the palace, I saw with satisfaction that the statue, my colossus, was finally finished and stood tall over the city. It gleamed in the sunlight, dazzling from any vantage point, the final capstone of the rebuilding and remodeling of Rome. We were the greatest city in the world, and we should have the highest monument to proclaim it.
But no sooner was I back in my rooms than I was plunged into panic, the gloom that alternated with lucidity. It gripped me with its evil whispers, infecting my mind and enervating me. When I passed through the doors to the room, I remembered them swinging open to usher me to the mausoleum. Images of the withering laurel tree floated by. Beware the seventy-third year echoed in my head. I had other dreams, too, so that I dreaded to sleep at night. I was in the Theater of Pompey, where I had celebrated the Golden Day with Tiridates. This time the statues came to life and hemmed me in on the stage, giving me no escape, converging on me to crush me between them.
The Splendor Before the Dark Page 54