The Confessions of Young Nero

by Margaret George

  “That was interesting,” I said. “Otho, you did not participate.”

  “I prefer to watch.”

  “There is a name for that,” I said.

  “Doubtless,” he said, still smiling.

  “Poppaea, I would like to speak to you. Come to my palace apartments tomorrow.”

  Otho’s smile faded. But Poppaea’s expression did not change.

  • • •

  The night was far gone by the time I returned to the city, but I arose at dawn and called for certain record books, which I pored over, searching for particular information. When I was satisfied with what I had found, I asked Epaphroditus to fetch me some things from the archives and treasury. Then I went to the baths to steam all the impurities out of my skin, extract the fatigue from my limbs, and spread invisible balm over my overwrought brain. Floating in the hot water, I kept at bay the question: why did I ask Poppaea to come see me? What could possibly be achieved by that? I was tempted to send a messenger, canceling the appointment, but that would make me seem indecisive and unreliable—not ideal traits for an emperor. I would see her and end this strange silent tormenting ménage à trois between her, Otho, and me.

  She appeared in the late morning, was announced by my secretary, and walked in as if she was strolling on a country road, not the marble floor of the palace. “I am here,” she announced needlessly, untwining the thin veil that covered her hair and face.

  “So I see,” I said, rising to meet her. She retained no hint of weariness or lack of sleep, and, so I noted, no trace of any marks on her neck.

  She waited, saying nothing further. Outside, a crow gave a rasping caw and then choked, and we both laughed.

  “He ate too much,” she said. Without asking, she went to the window and looked out. The crow was madly flapping to retain his balance on the branch. We laughed again.

  “I’ve seen some senators do just that,” I said. “And they don’t always get back on their feet.”

  Our laughter died. I sat down and motioned for her to do the same, then held my silence. Usually that made people nervous and gave me the upper hand, but it did not seem to affect her. “I was reading some reports on Moesia,” I said, as if it was the most natural topic in the world, “and came across mention of your illustrious grandfather who served as proconsul there under Tiberius.”

  She continued to look calmly at me. “Yes?”

  “I wanted to learn more about the province. Rome is considering expanding farther into the surrounding area. The reports from those years are spotty. Did your family, by chance, ever discuss it? Do you retain any correspondence from those years?”

  “My grandfather died when I was five, and he died in Moesia. We visited him once there, but I have no memories of it, or of him. But my mother, if she were alive, could tell you more.”

  “The elder Poppaea,” I said. “A victim of Messalina. I, too, was a would-be victim of Messalina, but she failed with me.” Poppaea’s mother had been forced to commit suicide over the false accusations of Messalina.

  “Those were bad times,” she said. “But we survivors have a common bond and can rejoice together to be walking this earth, while our enemies Messalina and Sejanus lie beneath it.”

  “Your grandfather sent items back from Moesia over the years, and these were deposited in the archives and treasury of Rome.” I handed her a box of coins, minted in Moesia during the time her grandfather had been governor. A second box held a gold honorary Ovation medal that had been awarded to him by Tiberius for putting down a revolt in Thrace.

  She took them, opening the lids with a graceful motion, and stirred the coins with her finger. She stroked the medal. She smiled. “Thank you. It is very thoughtful of you. Now I shall have to think of a gift for you, but what can a simple person give an emperor?” Her eyes seemed to bore into mine.

  “A tour of Pompeii,” I said hastily. “Is not your family from Pompeii? Sometime when I am in Baiae”—but when would I ever want to go there again, even for her?—“perhaps you can show your hometown to me.”

  “Gladly,” she said.

  The meeting was ended. There was nothing more to say or do. I had failed to change anything or end anything or even understand anything between us three. Impulsively I added, “Otho says you know a great deal about Judaism. Perhaps I shall consult with you about that.” That would be useful, at least.

  “I would be pleased,” she said. On her way out, she said, “In answer to the question you did not ask, I did want what happened on the boat back into Rome, and I have not forgotten it, nor ever will. In answer to the other question you did not ask, I do love Otho.” She was almost out the door when she turned and added, “I am pleased you took my advice about your hair. It flatters you.”

  LVIII

  New Year’s Day, and once again I sat on the Rostra in the Forum with Octavia and accepted the pledge of loyalty from the legions far and wide. We wore the customary white robes with gold thread and accepted the pledges, our breath making white puffs in the cold air.

  Octavia sat stiffly; I might as well have put a statue in her seat. I had not seen her in many months. I looked over at her and attempted a smile; she gave me a tentative one back. Then we continued sitting in silence.

  It was painful to sit next to this person who had shared much of my childhood and was bound to me by politics now obsolete and superseded. But she was not the innocent that people assumed. There was her attempt to murder me, let me never forget. But in the world we lived in, that was just business as usual. We were not like other people; I must not forget that as well. Something that Acte could never understand, to our sorrow.

  Ranks and ranks of legionaries and their centurions stretched before us, in lines straighter than any plowed field, their precision a reflection of their organization and training. And these were just a token, a sample, of the entire army. I felt a surge of surprising excitement wondering what it would feel like to lead such men, to be a conqueror. I did have the blood of Germanicus in my veins, as well as Marc Antony. Some of it had survived to pulse strongly through me now.

  I leaned over to Octavia; under cover of the trumpets sounding the end of the ceremony I said, “It is necessary that we divorce.”

  She turned and looked at me. “As far as I am concerned, we are already divorced.”

  “Not in the eyes of the law,” I said. “We need to formalize what has long since happened in practice.”

  “I concur,” she said. And she turned away to look at the troops again, presenting her clean profile to me.

  • • •

  Burrus and Seneca did not concur. Meeting with them one chilly morning in my warmest small business chamber, I was unpleasantly surprised when Burrus crossed his arms and said, “Then give her back her dowry!”

  “Gladly,” I said. “Whatever it was, lands or gold or gems, I will happily grant so we can be free of one another.”

  “Her dowry is her inheritance as the emperor’s daughter,” said Seneca. “Her marriage to you cemented your claim to the throne, which was shaky.”

  “Shaky? I am a direct descendant of Augustus.”

  “So are Decimus and young Lucius Silanus of the Torquatus family. And Rubellius Plautus comes close to that, being descended from Octavia and Tiberius. But only you were the son of the reigning Augusta and the adopted son of the emperor and his son-in-law as well. That is what put you where you are. Do you want to jerk that foundation out from under yourself?”

  That and a dose of Locusta’s poison put me where I am, I thought. “All that is in the past. I have been emperor now for over five years; my position is secure. Whatever is, people come to accept it.”

  “Some people,” said Seneca. “Others see an opening for themselves. As I said, there are many descendants of Augustus.”

  Too many. Augustus was a brilliant statesman, giving king-phobic Rome a king under another
name—Princeps—First Citizen. But by pretending there was no monarchy, there could be no official line of succession. Instead, the throne went to the cleverest manipulator with the right pedigree—as Mother had proved. And that meant that within a certain circle, there were many potential contenders for it. The habit of the noble families’ intermarriage only deepened the competition, as at every generation the pool of descendants of either Augustus himself, his sister Octavia, or his wife Livia increased. They had to be constantly watched and guarded against, lest they make a threatening move. And many were eliminated by means both fair and foul. It was dangerous to possess that blood.

  “I cannot be bound to this forever! I am only twenty-two! If I live as long as Tiberius, that means another sixty years of this sham marriage.”

  Burrus gave a cough and rubbed his throat. “It is a small thing to endure. You can have any mistress you want. Or several.”

  “I don’t want a mistress, I want a genuine wife. I want a legitimate heir, not a bastard from a mistress. Octavia cannot give me a child. She is barren.” Not that I had given her much opportunity to prove otherwise.

  Seneca frowned. “Since boyhood, you have had foolish and romantic notions. So far none have cost you much—the singing at the Juvenalia did not damage you—”

  Damage me! It created me anew!

  “—but this is different. She is popular with the people, and divorcing her will alienate them.”

  “The people don’t know anything about her. She is a cipher to them.”

  “The better to project their own ideas onto her, then,” said Seneca. “That is what people do—what they imagine is more powerful than what is really there.”

  He sighed. “I am tired. I would like your leave to retire. I have served Rome for many years and now would like to spend my remaining time in quiet seclusion and study.” He did look old and hunched.

  “I am not ready to release you,” I said. “I still value your wise counsel.”

  “But you don’t take it,” he said.

  • • •

  Other meetings followed, as the days slowly warmed. I let the divorce simmer; sooner or later the two old councilors would come to accept it. I put the word about that it was being promulgated, as much to test public reaction as anything else.

  Seneca’s hopes of retirement quashed for the time being, he and Burrus turned their attention to matters outside Rome, and there were three of them—Britain, Armenia, and Judea.

  I made it my business to gather all the information I could about Britain, reading reports in the archives, studying the correspondence, and interviewing military commanders. Just as I did with legal cases I had to judge, I wanted to garner knowledge on my own before further consulting with others.

  Although we claimed that Julius Caesar had conquered Britain over a hundred years before, he had merely landed and done some reconnaissance. Caligula had planned an invasion that never happened. It was Claudius’s generals who finally got Roman troops across the channel and staked out Roman territory there, roughly the southern third of the island. What we found there were tribes who farmed and raised livestock, drove horse chariots, made jewelry, had a structured aristocracy and royalty, but would still be judged barbarian. Eleven tribal kings had submitted and pledged loyalty to Rome, and we had set up Camulodunum in the east as our Roman capital and headquarters. There was also a town on the river Thames, at its first crossable point, called Londinium and another north of it called Verulamium. Retired soldiers settled at Camulodunum and soon the town had Roman amenities, such as a theater, forum, and a magnificent temple dedicated to Claudius. We appointed two Britons annually to serve as priests in the temple. This had worked well in Gaul, binding the native temple priests to Roman culture.

  Although there were a multitude of tribes, there were three main ones with jurisdiction over the others: the Iceni and the Regni in eastern Britain under Rome, and the Brigantes outside our territory in the north.

  We had four legions stationed there: the Fourteenth Gemina Martia Victrix, the Second Augusta, the Ninth Hispana, and the Twentieth Valeria Victrix. All was quiet, or relatively so, except that the native religious cultists, the Druids, were violently hostile to us. Their stronghold was on their sacred island of Mona in northwestern Wales.

  Their priests perform human sacrifices in the groves where they worship their gods. They butcher their victims on an altar for augury and study their entrails. They collect booty and tithes from far corners of the island. They employ powerful magic and are the lawgivers and judges of tribes. Noble sons are sent to study with them, and followers make pilgrimages to the sacred island from as far away as Gaul. They give resistance fighters sanctuary.

  Thus said a report filed in the archives. I shuddered. These Druids were the main source of resistance against Rome, and Augustus had made it illegal for Roman citizens to follow the Druid religion; Claudius had banned the religion entirely, for citizens and noncitizens, throughout the empire. But it still held power in Britain.

  So I had ordered our governor, General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, to go to Mona and wipe out the Druids once and for all. He led the Fourteenth Legion west as soon as the spring mud had subsided and we were now awaiting news of his campaign.

  In another region of the island, the southeastern, there had been the unfortunate business of the Icenian king Prasutagus’s death and his invalid will. Presumably the agents of the procurator, Catus Decianus, had delivered the unwelcome news and transferred the title to Rome and settled with the family. I reviewed the case and thought it possible that we could restore some independence to the Iceni rather than so abruptly terminating the tribe’s rule. The widow, Boudicca, should be approached. But we had had a difficult time dealing with another British royal widow, Cartimandua of the Brigantes, so perhaps it was not a route to be pursued.

  I remembered the fair-haired Britons brought here for Claudius’s Triumph, pale skins and icy blue eyes. But from the reports, many others were ruddy, bushy bearded, and freckled. And with a penchant for body painting in lurid colors, running about bare chested. I opened a box stored in the archives with objects from Britain and spread them out before me. There were bronze drinking cups, with handles of swimming ducks with inlaid red enamel eyes, exquisitely modeled. Did they drink wine or beer from them, or some native intoxicating beverage? I turned one over in my hands, trying to imagine who had held it over there. There were silver coins with horse, boar, triangle, and portraits of people. One of them was labeled by its Roman curator “Prasutagus.” He looked young. Now there would be no king to mint Icenian coins. This was the last. There were three heavy, rigid gold necklaces, circular except for one opening, labeled “torque.” Apparently the tribes there used them to signify their wealth, and indeed there was a lot of gold in them. I was tempted to take one, but I had no woman to bestow it on. Not now. Acte was gone, and she did not fancy gold in any case. It could not win her back, to my sorrow. But once I held it in my hands I could not put it back. It possessed a power of its own. Perhaps I would wear it myself. Apparently they were worn in Britain by both men and women. I took it back to the palace, its smooth gold arc warm in my hand.

  I had planned to visit the baths that afternoon. Since their opening they had been enormously popular, and the especially hot water I had ordered for the caldarium had proved a draw. After that I would exercise in the yard next door, happy that warm weather allowed us outside again.

  But as I was instructing my slave to gather up the bath items, the strigils, oils, and towels to take along, another slave appeared at the threshold—one of Burrus’s.

  “Caesar, my master urgently requests your presence in the council chamber.”

  Damn! If only I had already left. I was yearning for the waters of the baths.

  “Tell him I will come in the late afternoon,” I said. I would not be deterred.

  “It is most pressing,” he said. “My m
aster is distraught.”

  Burrus? Distraught? Never in my experience. “Very well,” I said, sighing.

  Burrus was pacing the room when I arrived. His choppy hair was mussed as he was running his hands through it aimlessly. His riveting blue eyes stared at me, almost unseeing. Only after I looked around the room did I see the dusty military messenger sitting on a stool. On the worktable were dispatches, unrolled and held open with weights.

  “What is it?” I asked the messenger, as Burrus still had not spoken.

  “Britain,” he said. His voice was a croak. “Rebellion. Massacres. Bloody.” He pointed to the dispatches. “All the details.”

  “Tell me first,” I ordered. “It will take too long to read them now. Just relate the main story and I will then read the details. Burrus, come here and sit down.” I motioned to the slaves stationed around the room. “Bring us some wine.”

  Stiffly, Burrus obeyed and sank down on a stool.

  “Now, one thing at a time. The beginning,” I ordered the messenger.

  “Last autumn procurator Catus Decianus sent agents to the Iceni to take their property and transfer it into Roman hands,” he rasped. “Queen Boudicca refused and resisted. So they confiscated the property of the other leading families and returned later with a larger contingent of enforcers. They then stripped the queen—”

  “What? They stripped the queen?”

  “It is the standard punishment for resistance.” Burrus finally found his voice. “Stripping and beating with rods.”

  “So they stripped her and flogged her in front of her people,” the messenger continued. “And then they—they got carried away with vengeance—and raped her two daughters. Then they arrested all the king’s male relatives to sell into slavery.”

  “What?” Could I be hearing correctly? “They raped the princesses? Girls under the protection of their mother, a queen?”