The Confessions of Young Nero

by Margaret George

He had a boyish demeanor that made anything he said sound innocent. “Doing my duty,” he said. “It keeps me busy.” The rebuke to Tigellinus was quietly targeted.

  “And I’ve stocked the groves with imported animals and birds,” Tigellinus said, seeming not to hear him. “I want people to feel they are no longer in Rome. Not today, and not tonight.”

  “How many people are coming?” asked Faenius.

  Tigellinus shrugged. “I invited the whole city. So we’ll see.”

  A gasp of disbelief went through our group. “Are you insane?”

  “It’s the emperor’s bounty,” he said. “He cares for his people and wants to show it in the plainest way. They will never forget this.”

  As night fell, torches began to flicker among the trees, and the grove echoed with song and noise. People fell on the taverns for the free food and swamped the brothels. “Hail to Caesar!” they cried. I could hear it clearly across the water. “We love him!”

  “I told you so,” said Tigellinus, bending over and speaking in my ear. “A good investment, my lord.”

  Poppaea curled up next to me on a slippery pillow. “I remember the other boat ride,” she whispered. I held her to me. Yes, the other boat ride. The common people may have found the night’s activities transgressive, but they were tame compared to that boat ride back from the Juvenalia, at least for me.

  LXXVI

  We stood on the deck of the ship bringing us to Antium. On our left the shoreline streamed past fields and hills baking brown in the midsummer heat. On the right the open sea, mischievous and whitecapped, flung spray in our faces, stinging but refreshing. I grasped the rails and enjoyed the ride.

  “It is a pleasure to sail this time of year,” I said. “Smooth voyage and no dangers. If only we could say the same for the other half of the year.”

  Every year ships were wrecked making their way up the coast to Ostia, assaulted by wild winds and high waves and driven onto the shore.

  “When do you estimate the Avernus–Tiber canal will be finished?” asked Poppaea, drawing her scarf around her head; the playful breeze whipped it all around so it seemed to be flying.

  “It’s been started, and the diggers have made good progress, but with a hundred and twenty miles to go—”

  “How far have they gotten?”

  “They’ve begun at the Avernus end and gone some five miles,” I said. “Some Caecuban vineyards in Campania have been affected, unfortunately, by the changed water drainage. Some of the best.”

  “Petronius won’t like that,” she said.

  “Neither do the vineyard owners. But I have recompensed them. We must have this canal; it will ensure safe passage for the grain ships. No more food losses.”

  A wave of spray hit us, and we laughed like children.

  “You have a grand vision for projects,” she said. “A pity you meet resistance at every turn.”

  “Some people see only the loss in something, not the gain.”

  She smiled. “Are we speaking of the august Senate?”

  “We are indeed.” But the project had been audacious. And many were fearful of disturbing Lake Avernus, which still had the legend of Aeneas and the underworld clinging to it. People also remembered the disastrous Fucine Lake incident in Claudius’s time, the bungled engineering and the flooding. But I saw it as a way of solving the perennial problem of the sea passage up to Ostia, and if a few vineyards were lost, or the level of water in Avernus went down, so be it.

  We were on our way to spend July at Antium, until it was time to return for the annual Feriae Augusti games. I was also eager to see what progress had been made there; my renovations, transforming the villa into two parts—the higher, original one linked by descending terraces to a new one at sea level—had been well under way when we left the last time.

  “Will the theater be finished?” Poppaea mused.

  “I hope so.” My grand plan was for a long terrace linking the natural grotto at one end of the harbor to the breakwater at the other end, a place open to the public with gardens, fountains, and a drama theater. The population of Antium had grown, because I had named it an official Roman colony, and now many retired soldiers and their families had settled there. Of course the original town, with its homage to Aeneas, was still there, just swelled by the newcomers.

  “If it is, perhaps you can officially open it with a performance.”

  Ah. That would be gratifying, to have another chance to perform in public, but not in Rome. Not yet. “Perhaps,” I said. “Perhaps.” And how fitting, to sing near the place where I had first received the (then) mysterious mandate There is no respect for hidden music. Of course, there were some who didn’t respect my unhidden music, but it was my higher duty to obey the oracle.

  • • •

  It was dusk when we sailed into the artificial harbor at Antium—another of my projects. When I had become emperor, the harbor was a small natural one; I had enlarged it with two breakwaters extending far out to sea so that Antium could now boast the third-largest harbor, coming only after Ostia and Naples. The Roman invention of concrete that hardened underwater made such maritime engineering possible. Antium could now serve as emergency shelter for distressed ships not able to make the rest of the journey farther north. Of course, the new canal should make that situation obsolete, but that was still in the future. One engineering project rendered the last one outdated; such is the inherent nature of progress.

  I was proud to stand at the rails, sailing into the welcoming harbor I had created, its breakwaters and towers painted pink now by the last rays of the sun. We stepped off onto the dock, glad to be on solid ground, and made our way into the seaside pavilion.

  This time we would stay in the lower part of the villa, leaving the original part, with its now-painful birth room, empty. The new quarters gave us a new beginning, one with no memories. Our enormous bedroom looked west, out across the sea toward Sardinia and Corsica, though, at close to two hundred miles away, they were not visible; the horizon seemed endless.

  Later that evening, having settled in and dined, we strolled along the waterfront. The waves, tamed by the breakwaters, lapped harmlessly against the quay. A half-moon was rising, its light spilling down and coating the water and the walkways.

  “Oh, look!” Poppaea pointed to a rounded shape farther down. “It’s the theater!”

  In the moonlight we inspected the exterior. “I think it is finished!” I said. “No one told me—what a happy surprise.”

  “It’s a good omen,” she said, sliding her arm around my waist.

  That night we inaugurated the new bedroom of the villa, throwing open the windows so the briny air swept through the chamber, rustling the curtains and stirring the clothes we had discarded and draped over the chairs. All during the long sail down from Rome I had been afire to be alone with her, to touch her and hold her. Now we were together on the bed, made luxurious with perfumed sheets and pillows of swan’s down. Unlike the first time in the black room, when we were both frantic and hasty with desire, we had all the time in the world. I brushed her hair away from her forehead and caressed her face. I could barely make out her features in the dim light of the burning oil lamp nearby; it had the hazy contours of something seen in a dream. I could hardly speak for the desire welling up in me.

  “Whenever and wherever you are Gaius, then I am Gaia,” she murmured. She framed my face in her slender fingers. “That odd vow in the marriage ceremony haunts me. I think it means that we are the same person now.”

  Yes. We were. It was hard to say where I left off and she began. There was no part of me that she did not share, and no part of her, I hoped, that I did not share. All through my life, separated from and wary of others, I had not hoped to find this—a harbor safer and more mine than any I had built in Antium.

  I buried my head against her smooth, sweet shoulder. She ran her hands down my back,
tracing patterns, sending tingles all over me. The breeze blew over us, and, rather than cooling us, it heated us until we could bear it no longer.

  I have said we were not frantic, but there was urgency in our lovemaking, as if losing this chance would lose it for us forever. Foolish, but reason played no part in it. The more precious something is, the more we fear to lose it, even when we are clasping it tightly.

  The hours passed in a way difficult to measure, except in how many times we made love and how varied it was—not because we were trying to be inventive but because there was no perfect way to express exactly what we felt; each one fell short in some way, even as it was unsurpassed in pleasure.

  The night nearly spent, the oil lamp burned out, and Poppaea sleeping quietly, one arm hanging limply down over the side of the bed, I quietly slid off and walked to the open window. The half-moon was now shining directly into the room, bathing everything in a clear white light. Her sandals, my tunic, a three-legged bronze table, all were etched in sharp detail. An ivory inlay on a couch was turned a dazzling white rather than the muted cream color it normally was. I looked back at Poppaea’s face, touched by the unsparing white light. Even that could not diminish her beauty, transforming her into the finest marble.

  • • •

  We ventured to the upper portion of the villa the next day, climbing up the terraces to survey the new construction from a higher vantage point. It spread out along the edge of the sea, and people were strolling through the colonnades and gardens, lingering before the fountains.

  “Just what I had hoped for,” I said. “It should be open to the people. My gift to them.”

  The gardens on the upper grounds had expanded since my boyhood venture there. They now covered a wide, flat area and boasted not only roses but also larkspurs, poppies, irises, and grape arbors as well. In the center of the rose garden a mass of peonies bloomed. I bent over and picked several stems for Poppaea, sticking one of them in her hair, which she protested.

  As I parted the peony stalks, I saw the patterned back of a tortoise, dug in and resting in the shade of the leaves.

  “Oh, no!” I said. Could it be? I lifted him up and, sure enough, carved on his underside was PATER PATRIAE. “It’s the Augustus tortoise!” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Poppaea asked. “It’s just a tortoise.”

  “He’s very old,” I said. “I saw him as a boy. The gardener told me the words were probably carved to commemorate the day a commission came here to tell Augustus he had been named Pater Patriae—Father of His Country. At the time it just irritated me, because I was so tired of Augustus, and even here he appeared in the guise of a tortoise. Now I’m just glad to see the old fellow.”

  “I am glad you have gotten over your hostility to Augustus.”

  “I got over it when I realized I did not have to emulate him or be measured by him. Besides, they offered me the same title and I turned it down.”

  • • •

  The balmy days sped by at Antium, and we busied ourselves with overseeing the finishing touches on the construction. Now it was the artists who arrived to complete the work and make it wondrous. The people crowded around to watch, then thronged the buildings when they were declared open. I also took Poppaea to the Temple of Fortuna and the cove where Ascanius had landed.

  “I was awed by these when I was a boy,” I told her. We were standing off to the side watching suppliants approach the statue of the goddess and receive their fortunes, as I had—the fortune that had shaped my life.

  She twined her hand in mine. “One of the happy moments in your young life,” she said. “Or were you ever young? Can anyone in the imperial family be said to be truly young?”

  “At that time I was nearer being ordinary than I would ever be again,” I said. “I was not predicted to be emperor. I was but one of several descendants of Augustus, and only through the female line.” And where were those others now? Done away with in the ruthless pruning of the imperial tree. I myself had wielded—at a distance—the pruning shears. Now there was just me.

  “But your mother had plans for you,” she said.

  Nearby on the seashore, a line of visitors was approaching the statue of Aeneas, chattering away. Their leader was pointing to it, lecturing, doubtless, on the noble history of the former Trojan. One of the unruly children tried to jump into the water washing the base of the statue. We laughed.

  “Ambitious plans,” I said. “Audaciously ambitious plans.”

  “And she managed to carry them out.”

  “Yes, when it came to scheming, she was a genius.”

  But not as good as I. The pupil had, in the end, surpassed the teacher. But I did not wish to think further on that. “The imperial line has narrowed to just me,” I said. “We must help it branch out, provide it with new leaves. Healthy new leaves that will carry on the line of”—I pointed toward the statue—“the Julio-Claudian House.”

  “Then we should retire back to the villa this noon and carry on the project,” she said, laughing, leaning against me.

  • • •

  Here in Antium, I was able to concentrate on my Trojan War epic. Perhaps it was being away from Rome that lent itself to creative work; perhaps it was the sound of the sea, or the scent of ocean air, or even just the memory of myself as a child roaming the halls and cliffs, bursting with curiosity, learning from Anicetus and Beryllus, watching in wonder as my world expanded with knowledge, that launched me further in my attempts to make an old story new.

  The Trojan War . . . I had finished the first part, the opening when Paris is rediscovered by his family. His identity is revealed when he defeats Hector in a wrestling match. I took contrary pleasure in this. The Paris of The Iliad was dreamy, ineffectual, irresponsible. But my Paris was stronger than the vaunted warrior Hector. What Homer valued and celebrated I might not; Paris had gifts that I would laud. Paris had said something along the lines of “What golden gifts the gods give us we must not refuse, even if we would not have chosen them in the first place.” Paris’s gifts had not been appreciated in Homer’s version of Troy, but they would be in mine. And why could a dreamer not also be a formidable warrior?

  But since my daughter’s death, I had found myself drawn more to the last days of Troy, to the ending of things, the stern visage of fate that signaled destruction. And now, suddenly, the horrors of the fall of Troy, the killings, the destruction, the burning, haunted me as never before.

  Sitting at my work desk, I put aside the earlier sections of the manuscript and went directly to the last night of Troy’s existence. When one is longing to write something, one has to obey that command and leave the rest.

  I would start work when the sun rose and immerse myself so much in the faraway event that the sun had set before I stirred. Later I would return to it, writing furiously by lamplight. I was there; I was truly there. When the last stone fell and the city was consumed in flames, I was drained and grieving. I let the paper curl before me. I had said all I could. Now a melancholy swept over me. It was done. I could never write that scene again. And Troy was truly gone.

  • • •

  Do you think you will perform it for the drama festival?” asked Poppaea, standing over me. I had fallen asleep at the table, my head resting beside the manuscript. Sunlight was streaming in, hurting my eyes. Before me the yellowish paper lay where I had left it.

  “The drama festival?” I shook my head, trying to clear it. The screams of Troy still resounded in my ear, but they were fading.

  “The opening of your new theater! They are performing in three days, when the moon is full, calling it an homage to Diana.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the manuscript. Did I want to expose it to others so soon? There was a part of me that wanted to clasp it to myself a while longer. But it would be fitting if I, the patron of the theater, participated in its first performance. “Perhaps.”

 
; • • •

  Poppaea had been so patient while I abandoned all else to submerge myself in my writing that I had ordered a gift for her, something to express my gratitude for her understanding. Truly she was that rarity, a person who sensed the needs of another and stepped graciously aside to honor them. So I consulted with a trader from India to design a necklace for her that would be unique, at least in Rome.

  “In India we have a special necklace based on astrology,” he told me. Rome had a lively trade with India and formerly exotic goods were flooding in. “We call it the nine-gem necklace—oh, another word in our language, but the Latin describes it. There is a stone—and it must be a perfect stone, no flaws or blemishes—for each of the heavenly bodies. We believe it has a sort of magic when the stones are brought together, linked as they are above us in the heavens.”

  “What way? What are they?” He had my curiosity up.

  “Ruby for the sun, and it must always be in the center of the design, since the sun is the center of our heavens. Pearl for the moon, cinnamon stone for the waxing moon, and cat’s-eye for the waning moon. Red coral for Mars, emerald for Mercury, yellow sapphire for Jupiter, diamond for Venus, and blue sapphire for Saturn.”

  “Aside from the sun in the center, are you free to arrange the others any way you please?” Perfect specimens of all those stones would be wildly expensive, but so be it.

  “Yes, there is no set pattern, as all the planets and the moon move constantly.”

  Immediately I saw the arrangement I wanted. “A wide collar with the ruby in the center, and lower. On each side, red coral and emerald. Then the pearl above the ruby—as the moon is above the earth and sun. Then the orange-brown cinnamon stone balanced by the cat’s-eye, for the moon’s phases. Next, on either side, the yellow and blue sapphires. Finally, hanging beneath the ruby, the diamond. For the moon and Venus are the fairest in the night sky and should have a prominent place.”

  “Caesar, as you wish. I can procure these stones.”