The Confessions of Young Nero

by Margaret George

  Time did not obediently stop, but I had no sense of it as I sat captive. At length (but after how long?) there was a knocking on the door and urgent cries of “Caesar! Caesar!”

  I ignored them, but they grew more insistent, and then there was the sound of someone beating against the door, trying to break it open.

  They thought I had come to harm. I had, but not in the way they feared. I rose and shuffled to the door. Two guards were standing just outside, one with his foot raised to kick the door.

  “Caesar! The day was at noon and you had not appeared. It was our duty—”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “But I am quite safe.” I started to close the door, to be alone again in my sadness. But standing right behind them was Epaphroditus, my secretary. “The Judean delegation,” he said. “They expected you this morning.” He looked at me. “Shall I tell them you are unwell?”

  They had already waited years. I could not make them wait longer. “No, I will come. Tell them I will be late but will see them this afternoon.”

  I let my chamber slaves dress me. So this was what it would be, life from now on. I would do my duties, perform as required, but that distance I had created between myself and others that had driven Acte away would remain, as it must. No one could know the truth about me and trust me, let alone love me. The only way I could approach others safely was to disguise myself through art.

  • • •

  I received the Judeans in the smaller of the reception halls. It was chilly in the mid-November afternoon, so I had braziers lit. The small group was huddled together in the middle of the hall, their translator standing by.

  “Great Caesar, we are grateful for your attention,” he said, bowing low.

  “I understand you have been waiting for some time,” I answered.

  They murmured among themselves, then the translator said, “Yes, Prefect Antonius Felix sent us here.”

  Felix! He had been out of office for almost two years already. “What is the nature of your embassy?” I asked. Looking at them more closely, I wondered why they were so thin and pinched. Were they not being fed?

  “We represent the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem. Our temple is the holy center of our Jewish religion, built according to the specifications of our god—whose name we cannot utter except in prayer or study, forgive me, Caesar. King Agrippa built a tower on his palace that allowed him to see into the inner yard of the temple, so we built a wall to block his view. He ordered it torn down, but we resisted. Finally Prefect Felix said this should be decided in Rome, and he sent us here.”

  What a silly and petty thing to be placed at my feet to decide. Why could they not have settled this themselves? I said as much.

  Epaphroditus whispered to me, “The tensions between the strict Jewish believers and the compromisers there are high. They quarrel over a straw. Felix did not wish to ignite anything, so he passed it on to Rome.”

  “He is rightly retired, if he could not manage better than this,” I muttered. Then I turned to the delegation. “You may keep your wall,” I said. “I regret that it has taken so long for you to get resolution on this matter.”

  As soon as the translator passed on my words, smiles broke out on their thin faces. “Caesar, we are deeply grateful,” they said.

  The business having been briskly dealt with—years of waiting settled in only a few moments—I asked them about their homeland.

  Their leader, a man named Jehoram, said, by way of the translator, “To be honest, Caesar, these are frightening times. We are plagued with assassins who go about attacking anyone they perceive as being part of the oppression or the opposition.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “The oppression is, forgive me, Caesar, Rome. The opposition is all those Jews who will settle for anything less than a pure Israel, utterly obedient to the law of Moses. That means anyone who has adopted Roman or Greek customs. So there are foreign enemies and home enemies.”

  “The zealots create terror everywhere as part of their opposition to the Romans—in the marketplace, the streets, even in the outer courts of the temple,” another man said.

  We would have to control this. I would inquire to Felix’s replacement, Festus, about it. “I assume you are not part of the group that has assimilated,” I said.

  “No, although some accuse the high priest himself of being corrupted that way. But we have subsisted on nuts and figs since we have been in Rome, because we are not allowed to eat meat that might have been sacrificed to your gods.”

  “You are purists, then,” I said. “I will fetch you meat straight from the pens that has never been presented to any god.”

  They looked uncomfortable. “With the greatest respect, we will wait until we return home and can have the meat properly butchered according to our ritual law.”

  What a strange, stubborn people! “Then I will make sure you have the best apples and grapes we can offer, along with the nuts and figs. And good wine. I assume you can drink that?”

  After the delegation left, bowing low on their way out, I pulled Epaphroditus aside. “I need a report on exactly how unstable that region is,” I said. “I want to know more about all these factions. We have a military fortress in Jerusalem with a garrison, but our prefect lives on the coast. And what is going on in the land in between?”

  “Nothing good, we can assume. Lately there has arisen yet another group from this volatile stew, a group of Jews who worship a criminal that a former prefect put to death about thirty years ago. The regular Jews hate them, and so do the Romans.”

  “Are they violent?”

  “No violence has been reported concerning them, except between themselves. They, like the regular Jews, argue about doctrine and ritual.”

  Oh, how tiresome! I could not imagine sensible Romans or Greeks getting into fights over Zeus or Hercules. I shrugged. “Get me a report,” I said.

  • • •

  Back in the privacy of my rooms, all thoughts of Jerusalem faded away and I sat watching the sun’s rays ebbing and withdrawing from the wall they had bathed so richly the day before at that time. The day before, when all was intact, when my world had not been shattered. But it was not truly intact, I told myself. It was already destroyed, I just had not known it.

  The slow dripping of the water clock on a table nearby made time tangible. On and on it went, in one direction only, and not all the will in the world—not even the emperor’s—could make the water drops flow upward and back into the clock.

  LVII

  There are so many prescribed remedies for pain—distraction, action, numbing oneself, escape—and I can attest that none of them work absolutely, but some work partially better than others. Perhaps I should write a treatise on this rather than the Trojan epic I am creating. Writing, itself an escape, has been a balm. The distraction of matters of state has been a blessing. Action has not been possible, as I have been too enervated. As always, music has soothed but in some ways actually worsened the pain, as it strikes so deep into the heart.

  But everything ebbs in its time. Nothing is forever—not winter, not summer, not youth or even the long, slow decline of age.

  People came and went; dinners were held, the Senate met, my secretaries for correspondence brought dispatches daily. There were more conferences about the Jerusalem problem, and my councilors were eager to debate it.

  “The legion in Jerusalem isn’t allowed to show the eagles or the images on the standards because of the prohibition against graven images in the Jewish religion,” said Beryllus with a nervous laugh. “We have coddled them and mollified them in ways we never would have done with any other people. And still they complain.”

  “It’s in their nature,” said Otho. He was sitting as calmly in my council as ever. “My wife knows a lot about them. In fact, at one point she was so taken with them she thought of converting.”

&nbs
p; “Why didn’t she?” asked Doryphorus.

  “They make it very difficult to join them. Too many barriers. It isn’t as bad for a woman as for a man, though. The men have to be circumcised.”

  All of us winced.

  Otho said lightly, “Caesar, I am sure Poppaea would be willing to talk to us about this sect, if we invited her.”

  I ignored the suggestion. I resented his jaunty dismissal of what he had brought about on the boat, as if it were of no importance. Perhaps it was not to him. Or to her. It was as if he had erased it from his mind, expecting me to do the same.

  “It can rest for now,” I said. “What of the situation in Britain? The king of the Iceni in southeastern Britain has died and left Rome half his legacy and the rest to his two daughters.”

  “His will is illegal,” said Seneca. “Roman law does not permit women to inherit their father’s estate.”

  “But he isn’t a Roman,” I said. “What is the law in the Icenian tribe?”

  “What difference does that make? He was a client king of Rome’s, and the will was written to be administered in Rome,” said Burrus. “Client kings retain their independence only for their lifetime. When they die, it all reverts to Rome. He knew better.”

  “I’ve called in my loans there,” said Seneca. “I don’t foresee any trouble, but it is too far away to have money lent out. After it’s been collected I’ll invest closer to home.”

  “We have four legions there,” I said. “I’ve ordered one, the Fourteenth Gemina, to go west to Wales and wipe out the Druids on Mona Island. That’s the heart of any future resistance to us.”

  Phaon, my minister of accounts and revenues, said, “I will have our agents go and collect the Icenian king’s treasure and announce to the daughters that they retain none of it.”

  “Isn’t that rather harsh?” I said. “Can we not leave them their personal jewelry and money?”

  “Very well,” said Phaon. “There will not be much of that. They are a simple people.”

  “What of the queen? Or was the king a widower?”

  “There’s a queen,” said Burrus, pulling out his notes and thumbing through them. “Her name is Boudicca.”

  • • •

  The days grew shorter and darker as my birthday approached. My birth was at the low point of the year, the turning point for the sun’s return. I would be twenty-two. The age did not matter to me. I was not like Caesar, comparing myself to Alexander at his age. There was no other ruler like me, no one I could measure myself against. None who was an artist as well as a sovereign.

  Saturnalia came on its heels two days later. Usually I hosted a party in the palace, but this year I had not planned anything; my lassitude excused me. But I received a cryptic invitation to a celebration at Petronius’s villa on the night of the full moon, which fell in the middle of the Saturnalia. The invitation was delivered in a sealed box with a band that had to be cut; within was a rolled paper with instructions:

  Tell no one.

  Password: Venationes.

  Bring: Your imagination.

  Leave: Your inhibitions.

  I turned it over and over, puzzled. But in the end I decided to go.

  I made ready, choosing a warm long tunic and cloak. My hair had grown long, and it framed my face in waves. I liked Poppaea’s suggestion; I no longer wanted to clip it off in imitation of Augustus. As I said, there was no one I need model myself on.

  • • •

  The villa was just outside the boundaries of the city, where the darkness would have been very deep if the searching white moon had not illuminated the countryside. Sharp shadows etched the reaped fallow fields and the boundary stones, making every detail visible. Around the walls of the villa torches flared and guards watched. At the gate, my head hooded, I gave the password and was allowed to pass inside.

  An aisle of torches led to a huge structure—a facsimile amphitheater, made of plaster and wood. I was ushered inside, where a large group of similarly hooded and cloaked figures waited silently. The moonlight showed a number of stakes, the sort that bound prisoners in the amphitheater who awaited execution by wild beasts. Large cages were placed around the perimeters of the space.

  Petronius stepped into the middle. “Greetings, all. I am honored that you have accepted my invitation to this Saturnalia celebration. And as you know, in the Saturnalia all things are reversed. So here we have a wild-beast show, but the wild beasts are—you.” He gestured to his slaves, who rolled a big cart out into the arena, heaped high with animal pelts. “You may choose your animal. You can be bears, wild boars, leopards, panthers, crocodiles. But there can be only one lion.” He extracted a lion skin and approached me. When he was close, he whispered, “Your hair is looking leonine these days, so this is appropriate.” He draped the skin over me, arranging its maned head over mine. Then he turned back to the others. “I am the master of these games, and I make the rules. Bound to these stakes will be tonight’s criminals, men and women. They will be unable to move and must wear flimsy robes, the better to be parted or ripped. Then you, the animals, will attack them, wherever you wish, but I would suggest—” He pointed to his crotch. A nervous titter spread through the crowd.

  Who were these people, my fellow celebrants?

  One by one, as they shed their cloaks and masks and assumed their scanty costumes, their identities were revealed. There were senators and their wives; Tigellinus; the young poet nephew of Seneca, Lucan; Senecio; Vitellius; Doryphorus; and Piso and his wife; as well as twenty or so others. Last of all to unmask were Otho and Poppaea.

  “Again, at a Saturnalia, all things are reversed. The venationes take place in the morning, but this is night. The emperor goes first, but here he shall go last. So, let us begin. To your cages!” He led five men, including Tigellinus, who had chosen to be a bear, to their cages. They crouched down and entered. In the meantime, other guests, several men and women, had been bound to stakes, draped in filmy gowns and tunics. Petronius signaled and a gong sounded. Slaves opened the cages and the men crawled out, growling and snarling.

  They seemed truly transformed into beasts and leapt upon the captive people, going for their necks, which they bit and sucked, then they clawed at their clothes, tearing them away. They licked and chewed on them everywhere, while the victims shrieked in false pain, but really (it soon became clear) in squealing ecstasy. Finally the beasts collapsed at the foot of the stakes, fully dispatched, and the prisoners were untied and carried away, limp from their pleasure.

  Others took their places and the procedure was repeated. Lucan was a leopard and he twined himself sensuously around Piso’s wife, Atria, while Piso himself, a crocodile, fondled and slobbered on one of the other senator’s wives. Perhaps he had always wanted to.

  Slowly the number of waiting people dwindled, and those who had finished were drinking and watching. Flickering torches and the moonlight competed to lighten the ground, red tinting the bright white light. Finally the last were led out to the stakes. Poppaea was bound to the middle one. Otho, who had not donned an animal skin, stood watching from the side. The other “victims”—an elderly senator; a slender slave girl; a burly legionary; Marcella, the wife of a senator—did not interest me. All I could see was Poppaea, crowned in silver light, her head held high.

  I was included in this round as an animal, and I crouched in my cage, waiting for the gong. Then I emerged, first on all fours, approaching the stake slowly, deliberately. I could see her bare feet, smooth like a statue’s, at the base. Then I rose up, not quite a leap, and went for her throat.

  The touch of her skin against my lips set something off within me. Part of me wanted revenge for what she and Otho had done to me; another part ached to repeat it. She stood still, not responding at all, truly like a statue, but a warm one.

  “How dared you?” I breathed in her ear.

  But she did not answer or in
dicate that she had even heard me. Cruel goddess. Since I had leave to do whatever I wished, I pressed myself up against her, the heavy lion’s pelt I wore cushioning whatever I could have felt. Under cover of the pelt, I kissed her belly, her thighs, all of her. I was intoxicated by her. But in the end I pulled away and motioned for one of the venatores to slay her while I stood by.

  “And that, dear friends, brings to a conclusion our executions by wild beasts,” said Petronius as the victims were freed from the stakes. “But, oh! That is not the end of our entertainment. No, no. For tonight you are privileged to witness a wedding, the like of which you have never seen.”

  He motioned to his slaves to bring out a chest, which they set down on the sand. With a flourish, he opened it and brought out a wedding veil, flowers, and a ring. To my shock, he approached me with them.

  “In the Saturnalia, there is no male or female, no emperor or slave, no bachelor or married man, no virgin or whore. All is fluid. Therefore, I invite you to become a bride.” He held out the marriage veil to me. “And you, Doryphorus, will marry this lovely maiden.”

  Why not? I put on the flame-colored veil, went through a mock ceremony with Petronius officiating, and afterward, when we were led to a little shelter, gave loud shrieks and cries like the proverbial virgin on her wedding night. Other people also went through mock ceremonies, men marrying men, women marrying women, and already married people marrying others. Whether they carried the pretense further and consummated the marriages I cannot say, for false yelps and moans sound like the real thing.

  I saw Poppaea and Otho by the refreshment table and walked over to them. Surely now they would finally say something about that night. But no, they just smiled at me and said nothing. I wanted to shatter their infuriating equanimity. Were they partners in tormenting me? They had cost me dear.