Brides of Rome

by Debra May Macleod

  The priestess shook her head. It was no wonder that so many Vestal priestesses chose to remain with the order instead of getting married after completing their years of service to the goddess. If all husbands behaved so, it was a much better option.

  And yet she would have expected better from Quintus. Although he was so changed that the memory was hard to summon, she recalled the day she was told her father had been killed in battle. As a novice of only nine years old, she withheld her tears—priestesses of Vesta did not cry—and ran off into the Forum to hide. Fabiana, the other priestesses, the guards, and a number of priests and senators had spent hours searching for her.

  It was a young Quintus who found her crouched between two large piles of bricks and building material that had been stacked up alongside a section of the Forum’s encompassing wall. He had crawled over the broken brick and stone until his knees bled to sit beside her. Ashamed of her tears, Pomponia covered her face, but Quintus did not chastise her. That part of him was not yet formed. Instead, he gave her a handful of purple flowers he had stolen from the sacred garden behind Juno’s temple. My mother calls these flowers Juno’s tears, he told her. Maybe you will feel better if you know the goddess cries with you.

  But Pomponia knew the tenderness of a young boy could not last long in the world, and Quintus was no exception. His demeanor had grown harder with each passing year. His military service had also changed him, and although marriage managed to soften the hearts of many Roman men, it seemed to have done the opposite to Quintus.

  As Antony neared the end of his funeral oration, he approached the very front of the Rostra. Now that he had reminded the thousands of mourners present of how many military campaigns Caesar had won, of how many barbarians he had slain for Rome, and how many times he had filled Rome’s coffers with the spoils of war, he was getting set for a strong ending.

  There was no doubt in Pomponia’s mind that he had a purpose in all of this, one that went beyond eulogizing Caesar. She was proud of herself for thinking like this; Fabiana would be pleased. A Vestal had to think for herself.

  “My fellow citizens,” Antony cried out. “Hear me now. You were loved by the man who lies dead on this altar. A great man who many of you knew only as the great name you now call out—Caesar! Sacrosanct Caesar, who served as Pontifex Maximus, High Priest of Rome! A merciful man in peace but a fiery monster in wartime, a soldier who defended Rome’s honor in barbaric lands, who spent years in gory battle for the glory of our Eternal City.”

  In one swift movement, Antony lifted the purple cloak that was draped over Caesar’s body and grabbed the bloodied toga underneath. He took the Aquila out of Quintus’s hands and used it to thrust the toga high in the air. The white folds were drenched in Caesar’s blood, the fabric in shreds from the assassins’ daggers.

  The sight had the effect of a lightning bolt striking the crowd: they jumped where they stood, startled and shocked, and a chorus of cries and shouts went up.

  “Homo homini lupus est! ” cried Antony. Man is a wolf to his fellow man! “This soldier, this son of Rome, survived the swords of a thousand enemies, only to be ripped apart by the fangs of those he called friends!”

  The muscled arms of the robust general held the bloodied toga even higher. He looked up at the wax effigy of Caesar as if he were gazing at the face of a god.

  “Even Jupiter’s heart of stone must crack—” Antony’s voice broke.

  Many in the crowd began to openly weep.

  Lowering the Eagle and then holding the torn toga close to his chest, Antony ran his fingers over the dried blood. “Caesar’s blood, so often spilled on foreign soil, now stains his toga on the Rostra!” He choked back a sob and then bored his eyes into the crowd. “The assassins say they murdered Caesar to protect Rome. But I say that Caesar was Rome’s protector! Hear me, Father Jupiter,”—Antony shifted his eyes to the Capitoline Hill, which overlooked the Forum, the colossal red marble columns of the Temple of Jupiter standing bold against the blue sky—“I will avenge Caesar and the city he lived and died for.”

  Antony narrowed his eyes. Pomponia and the thousands of other mourners present followed his spear-like gaze as he pulled it away from the Capitoline and aimed it down at a number of senators, including Brutus and Cassius, who sat rigidly alongside the Rostra. Their faces had blanched with disbelief.

  This was not the diplomatic, unifying funeral speech that Antony had promised to deliver.

  But then, just as quickly, the general cast his piercing eyes upward again, this time to the heavens. He outstretched his arm, gesturing to the strange star that had mysteriously appeared in the sky shortly after Caesar’s assassination.

  “We have all been amazed at the brilliant star that hangs in the heavenly canopy above, that shines with equal light both day and night. The finest Roman, Greek, and Egyptian astronomers cannot explain this star—but we the people know what it is!”

  Pomponia glanced up. It was a strange sight: a star with a tail, one that hung suspended in the sky night and day. The priests had been beside themselves with speculation and study, and augurs had been taken on the hour since it first appeared. No one could explain it, but Antony seemed to have an explanation in mind.

  “It is Caesaris astrum!” he shouted. The star of Caesar! “Nay, the very soul of Caesar!”

  A mad cheer of wonder and jubilation swept through the Forum. Rome’s dispassionate state of wait-and-see had come to an end. It was all passion now.

  Antony didn’t let up. “Gaius Julius Caesar, Divus Julius! Once a son and father of Rome, now a god of Rome. Today, his place among the gods can be seen above us.” He placed his hands on his chest as if to stop his heart from breaking. “We must pay tribute to such celestial rebirth. The gods demand it. I therefore decree that the month of Quintilius, the month of Caesar’s mortal birth, be renamed in his honor—July!”

  A second cheer—this one pulsating with a volatile mixture of grief, anger, and awe—surged through the crowd of onlookers. History was being made on the Rostra before them, and they were witness to it. They were a part of it. They loved it.

  Antony pressed on. He could never have hoped it would go this well.

  Taking in a great breath through his nose, one that inflated his sizable chest even more, General Antony extended his arm and a soldier slapped a scroll into his palm. Pomponia recognized it instantly—she had hidden it in her palla, after all.

  “I have in my faithful hands the last will and testament of our great father,” said Antony, “kept unmolested and true by the Vestal priestesses in the temple.” He unrolled it before a starving crowd that was hungry for more. “It was the last wish of the divine Caesar that the Roman people, whom he loved as kin, take pleasure in the life that was denied him.”

  Antony nodded to a group of soldiers alongside the Rostra, and with some effort they hauled a gilded chest onto the platform. Antony plunged his hand into it and then held up a handful of coin, letting some of it slip through his fingers to land on the marble platform of the Rostra. “To each and every male Roman citizen, the divine Caesar bequeaths seventy-five drachmas.”

  Another wave of gasps—shock, joy, despair—moved through the mass of people.

  “To the people of Rome, the divine Caesar also leaves his private walks and orchards, which they may use for their pleasure. May they bring you as much peace as they brought our great father!”

  A shout went up from the crowd, and then another. Jostling. Pushing. Shoving. A forward thrust of thousands of bodies, all moving toward the Rostra.

  Antony’s rapier gaze settled once again on Brutus and Cassius, two of Caesar’s assassins. It was clear from their ashen complexions that they knew it was all about to come apart. Roman riots formed faster than storm clouds. The two men stood up slowly, cautiously inching toward their litters.

  That’s right you bastard dogs, thought Antony. Now it’s your turn to run
.

  Suddenly, Pomponia felt a firm hand on her shoulder. Quintus. “A priest can be flayed as well as any other man,” she said. “Do not touch me.”

  “Priestess Pomponia, it is time to leave,” he said. To Pomponia, it sounded too much like an order.

  “Perhaps you need a lesson in religious protocol,” said Pomponia. “A Vestal answers only to the Pontifex Maximus. And unless you have been promoted . . .”

  A deafening crash. A rush of people moving past her, knocking over chairs, climbing up onto the Rostra and heading toward the body of Caesar.

  Marc Antony gave a silent order to his soldiers—stand down. Let it happen.

  The impassioned mob swarmed Caesar’s body, and more cries went up at the sight of his pierced corpse. Blood spotted through the fabric of his death toga, mapping the blade wounds. His eyes were closed. In his mouth was a coin to pay the ferryman Charon for passage across the River Styx to the afterlife.

  Pomponia stood and watched in bewilderment as the mob lifted the body of Caesar onto their shoulders and carried him off the Rostra and into the mayhem of the Forum.

  She heard more chairs fall around her and noticed that she had been pushed away from her seat. The high priestess and the priestesses Nona and Tuccia were nowhere to be seen. No doubt their guards had swept them back to the safety of their lecticas and they were already being escorted back to the temple by soldiers.

  She spotted her guards, Caeso and Publius, calling out her name and trying to reach her. They held their daggers in the air as they pushed through the throngs of people, but in the madness they couldn’t get to her.

  Pomponia didn’t know what frightened her more: the idea of being at the mercy of the mob in the street or having to face Fabiana when and if she made it back to the temple. The Vestalis Maxima would be furious with her for not paying attention. The guards who had taken their eyes off her, probably distracted by Antony’s dramatics on the Rostra, would be lucky to escape with a lashing. Medousa would definitely get one.

  Quintus gripped her shoulder. “Come with me, Priestess,” he said. “Now.”

  Pomponia hated to do it, but she obeyed.

  They weaved for a long time through the riotous street and the frenzied crowd in the Forum, back toward the Temple of Vesta. It was the same direction in which the crowd was headed, still carrying Caesar’s body on their shoulders. Pomponia’s heart pounded as she watched the dead general’s limp arms and legs flail as his body moved ever closer to a makeshift funeral pyre the mob had started to build only steps away from Vesta’s temple.

  An endless flow of men and women came from all directions, and threw any kind of kindling they could find—baskets, wood benches, shopkeepers’ stands—under the body.

  A woman held up a torch lit by one of the firebowls near the temple. “Send him to Pluto in Vesta’s fire,” she shouted.

  And then the flames went up, strong and loud and hot, crackling sparks into the air and licking Caesar’s flesh with devouring heat. Women tore the jewelry off their necks and arms and threw it into the bonfire—the bone fire—of the funeral pyre. More gold to pay the greedy ferryman.

  At last, Pomponia and Quintus reached the steps of the round temple. As before, soldiers, priests, and centurions stood guard to protect those who protected the sacred flame. Breathless, Pomponia put her foot on the first step and then turned around to say something to Quintus.

  He stood several feet away, arguing with his frightened, disheveled young wife. “I knew you would be here!” she shrieked. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away.

  Pomponia climbed the white marble steps of the temple, pulled opened a bronze door, and shuffled toward the roaring red hearth within the temple’s inner sanctum. Fabiana embraced her. The other Vestals wiped their tears and made an offering of gratitude to the goddess.

  Pomponia lowered herself and sat cross-legged on the white-and-black mosaic floor, leaning her back against the cool marble of a column to catch her breath. She smoothed down her white veil and let the sacred space calm her.

  All six Vestals, her sisters, were together. The high priestess Fabiana and the elder Nona with their wise, age-worn, motherly faces. The lovely, softhearted Tuccia with her bright amber eyes and skin that Venus would envy. The studious and reliable Lucretia and Caecilia, always quick to smile and do their duty.

  The divine fire of Vesta burned in its hearth—a wide bronze firebowl set into a round marble pedestal that stood near the center of the sanctum. The fire had burned here, in this very spot, for centuries, surrounded and loved by priestesses no different from the ones who surrounded and loved it now.

  Pomponia watched Tuccia gently place kindling on the sacred fire as Fabiana poured a few drops of oil into it from a shallow patera. The flames roared and crackled, and the smoke floated upward, slipping through the hole in the middle of the domed bronze ceiling to rise over the Forum and reassure the people—even this mob—that all would be well. Dictators lived and died, but Vesta and Rome were eternal.

  Pomponia pushed herself to her feet and approached the hearth, staring into the moving red flames of the eternal fire and feeling its heat on her face.

  How strange. The dictator Julius Caesar was dead, now made Divus Julius, the divine Julius, a god. The maniacal mob was burning his body just steps away from the temple doors. A fearful omen hung in the sky. Antony had turned like a mad dog on those who thought they could leash him. Rome continued to convulse like a beast with no head.

  And yet all she could think about was Quintus’s hand on her shoulder.

  Chapter III

  Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferentes

  Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

  —Virgil

  greece, 43 bce

  One year later

  The only thing the young Livia Drusilla hated more than a fat old Roman man was a fat old Greek man.

  She reclined on the couch and swallowed the largest gulp of wine she could hold in her cheeks, not caring that it dribbled out the sides of her mouth and down her neck or that her midwife had warned her against excessive drink while pregnant.

  An arm’s length away, her husband Tiberius—middle-aged, round, and idiotic—chortled at a dirty joke told by his Greek friend Diodorus, owner of the villa they were visiting in Athens.

  Livia drained her cup. What further damage could she do to her baby? With a father like Tiberius, the child was destined to be a fat, vapid stultus anyway. Not only was Tiberius an idiot, he was her cousin. Apollo often cursed the infants of such coupling with both dullness and deformity.

  The baby kicked, and Livia shifted uncomfortably on the couch, suddenly suffering an unwelcome flashback of her first night with Tiberius. His weight had pushed the breath out of her, and when she turned her head to avoid his sloppy lips, she had caught a glimpse of his wide ass in the polished-bronze mirror beside the bed.

  She winced at the memory. The wine burned in her throat, and she tossed her cup onto the floor. She knew what would happen next. A female slave bent down to pick it up, and when she did, Tiberius slid his hand between her legs and squeezed his fingers into her body. “There’s room in here for both of us,” he chortled at Diodorus. Another stupid, stinking joke from a stupid, stinking fool.

  “I have to take a piss.” Diodorus stumbled to his feet and shuffled past Livia, glancing down at her reclining form on the couch and mischievously raising his eyebrows as he stole a look down her dress at her breasts.

  Feigning good sportsmanship, Livia grinned. She hated that she had to be nice to this hairy Greek pig, but she and Tiberius were dependent on his hospitality. In fact, thanks to her husband’s unbridled stupidity, their very lives depended on this Athenian refuge. She uttered a silent curse to Juno, goddess of marriage. Why had she been saddled with such a husband?

  Wrapping her palla around her chest, Livia wondered what was happening back in Rome
. It had all gone to Hades after Marc Antony’s rousing speech on the Rostra during Caesar’s funeral.

  Rome had split in half as influential men and families were forced to pick a side. You were either a supporter of Caesar’s assassins, led by Brutus and Cassius, or you were a supporter of Caesar’s allies, led by the general Marc Antony and some upstart nephew of Caesar’s named Octavian.

  The latter man—barely twenty years old—was Julius Caesar’s sole heir and posthumously adopted son. Octavian had been a nameless nobody a year earlier. Now he was the new Caesar.

  Between the two factions, there really was no contest when it came to strength. Antony and Octavian had all the muscle. They had the loyal support of the Roman army, commanding those mighty legions that had served Julius Caesar for years and that now regarded him as a god.

  On the other side, Caesar’s assassins—a bunch of lily-handed senators—were friendly with some of the wealthiest patrician families in Rome. Brutus and Cassius had money and connections, but no muscle.

  Livia had known from the beginning which side wielded the bigger sword. She was not surprised when her idiot husband chose the wrong side. He had openly supported Caesar’s assassins and given them coin.

  Shortly after that, Antony and Octavian had begun to hunt down anyone who had contributed to the assassins’ purse. Their brutality had prompted many of their opponents to tuck and run for their lives, fleeing Rome as if it were the burning city of Troy.

  And so here she was, hiding out in Greece, eating bad fish, and slumming in a villa that boasted all the style of a slave’s latrine, all to avoid Antony’s sword on their necks.