by Ken Parejko
Back at our apartment Lucius helped me unroll the memoir. The afternoon light was already fading, so we brought out as many oil-lamps as we could find.
We’d stumbled onto a bargain. Early on, when writing about the Varus disaster, Paterculus blamed the centurion Cassius Chaerea for the defeat. By all published histories, it was Chaerea’s heroism which saved the only surviving Roman century: eighty men out of thirty thousand who fought bravely on under Chaerea’s leadership. This was a story just right for the school-books, an epic struggle of eighty disciplined, courageous men fighting on under a dashing leader, and breaking into safety through the German lines. But in his secret memoir Paterculus told a different story.
In an interview with several of Chaerea’s eighty, Paterculus had learned that rather than leading his men through the German lines Chaerea had deserted and run for his life. It was only after the men had hacked their way through the Germans without their leader that he’d stumbled onto them, joined their retreat, and recreated himself as a hero.
I knew of no way of verifying the different versions. Chaerea, executed years before for the part he played in an assassination attempt on Caligula, Paterculus and most likely all the other survivors of the massacre were dead. But there seemed no reason for the men Paterculus mentioned to lie, and under the influence of political pressure and perhaps even bribes from Chaerea, plenty of reason for others to keep their mouths shut. So I would put it into my History, a single sentence which cost me all this effort and half a year’s rent: There are those, however, who say that Chaerea did not lead his men to safety, but rather followed them.
Late into that night I poured over the old papyrus, my eyes growing sore and tired. In it Paterculus had more to say about the Varus massacre. Whether he was creating a conspiracy theory out of bitterness, or actually had heard these stories from reliable un-named sources, he claimed that the Varus defeat could be blamed not only on the treachery of the Cheruscans, but from others within Varus' camp. Varus’ actions as commander, Paterculus claimed, were so arbitrary that some of his own aides sided with Arminius, before and during the battle. This was not popular history: it questioned the loyalty of commanders in the field, and it lay most of the blame for the loss of the legions not on Varus, but on the ineptitude of Augustus, for appointing him in the first place. Augustus, who bragged that he’d found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble, had been declared a god. No one would want to hear this other side of the story. It was unlikely, in fact, that anyone would ever know that I had read Paterculus' private memoirs.
Chapter 8
A few days later Lucius and I were passing on horseback under the aqueducts of the Porta Tiburtina, following first the via Tiburtina then the via Valeria eastward to a great spectacle being readied to celebrate the draining of Lake Fucino, a massive project as tangled in recent history as it was in not-so-recent politics.
After Claudius’ father, my dream-friend Drusus, died in Germany, Claudius’ mother Antonia chose her oldest son Germanicus to carry on the Julio-Claudian gens. Germanicus’ career prospered. His wife Agrippina bore him nine children, including Gaius Caligula who would become emperor, and the younger Agrippina, mother of the future-emperor Nero, for whom Ara Agripinnesis was named. Her father Germanicus’ military successes in Germania led him to be sent to secure the eastern front, where in Antioch he died suddenly under questionable circumstances.
Meanwhile withered by some disease and beset by stuttering and nervous tics, Germanicus’ brother Claudius slipped happily into the life of a scholar spent deep in the capitol’s many libraries, the same libraries I spent so much time in, and in time became the adviser to the Senate on questions of law and imperial history. He was a prolific author, wrote a dictionary of Etruscan, a book on playing dice, an autobiography, and encouraged by his friend the historian Livy, his own history of the empire. His history of Greece, written in Greek, so impressed the people of that country that they named a wing of Alexandria's museum after him.
But Claudius’ nephew Gaius Caligula’s reign slipped in only a matter of months from one of great hope to great disappointments. After four years of increasing madness Caligula was assassinated. It must have been quite a surprise to him when, in his last breaths, the taste of his own blood argued convincingly how wrong he’d been: he was in fact only a man, not a god.
Caligula’s wife Caesonia also fell under the sword, as did their infant Julia Drusilla. Hatred for Caligula fed a blood-lust which threatened to snuff out the entire Julian line, including Claudius. There was even talk of restoring the Republic. In the anarchy which followed Claudius sneaked off to hide in the Imperial Palace, where a Praetorian guardsman found him and dragged him off to the Guard’s camp just east of Rome. Claudius expected these to be the last moments of his life.
But the Guards didn’t know what to do with him. On the one hand Claudius had a strong following among the class of equites to which I belong. He was, importantly, also the last surviving male descendent of Julius Caesar. On the other hand, he was Caligula’s uncle and had played a part, small as it was, in the intimate circles of the despised ruler’s court. The Pretorian’s indecision whether or not to execute him saved his life. As anarchy grew in the streets the Guard, always ready to play a role in choosing a new emperor, decided that without a ruler the nation would disintegrate, and Claudius was better than no ruler at all. They informed him he would be the next emperor.
Claudius turned them down. He pointed out that so far as he knew, during the Senate’s debate about who would replace the hated Caligula, his name hadn’t even come up, that he had very little support among the common people, and having spent most of his life in the library, little political experience. And he asked a very cogent question: What would the rest of the world think of an empire ruled by a stuttering cripple? But the next day, as the mobs grew and the fires of anarchy licked at the city’s ancient edifices, the Pretorians ran out of patience. They put the point bluntly to Claudius: either become emperor, or die. Seen from that light, Claudius reconsidered.
The Senate, angry that the Guard had taken the future of the empire into their own hands and handed it to Claudius, searched for an alternate candidate. But unable to find one, and now convinced by the mayhem and rioting taking place in the streets that any action was better than none, they declared Claudius emperor and settled back to wait for him to come to the Curia Julia and accept their blessing. Fearing their power and the hesitance with which they'd chosen him, he made them wait a month. When at last he walked into the Curia he came surrounded by loyal generals and a heavy Praetorian guard.
As it turned out Claudius was just what the country needed -- a prudent administrator, a scholar with a deep understanding of the country’s history and the role he might play in it. In his reclusive life he’d developed few political ties and made few enemies. To the relief of many, his accession came without the usual bloody purges.
But political naivete comes with a cost. Without a base of advisers Claudius relied heavily on the advice of a few close associates. He depended especially on the freedmen Pallas and Narcissus, and perhaps more so than any emperor before him, on the counsel of his wives. Pallas, who after Messalina’s downfall had urged Agrippina as the new empress, was rewarded with one of the most powerful positions in the government when Claudius appointed him rationibus, imperial treasurer. It didn’t take Pallas long to use his position to amass a great fortune. He also talked Claudius into granting him the insignia of a praetor, and saw to it that his brother Felix, as ambitious though not as gifted as he, was granted procuratorship of Judea, an appointment unheard of for a freedman.
Narcissus, given the job of overseeing the draining of Lake Fucino, and putting together the spectacle which would mark the culmination of that project, was Pallas’ competitor for Claudius’ favor. Nearly every year the lake, a two or three days’ ride from the capitol, flooded local farm fields and the via Valeria. Augustus had considered draining Fucino and turning its f
ertile bottom soils into fields, but gave up on the project when told how much it would cost. Claudius took it up again, and it became the largest public works project in the country’s history.
If Claudius’ wife Agrippina was keeping score – and she always did -- Narcissus had two marks against him. Some years before she’d convinced her brother the emperor Caligula to appoint her lover Aemilus Lepidus as his successor to the throne. Lepidus was a handsome, ambitious and apparently impatient man who decided not to wait for Caligula to die. While stationed in Germany, and according to many with Agrippina's help, he set a coup in motion.
Lepidus invited Caligula to Mogantiacum, where he planned to poison the emperor, eight years before I had my Drusus dream there. But through the ever-present network of spies Narcissus learned of the plot, and passed what he knew on to Caligula, who turned the tables on the conspirators. Arriving in Mogantiacum Caligula had Lepidus and his co-conspirators arrested and executed. He confronted Agrippina, whose claim to not know anything about the coup was not believable. As penance he forced her to carry Lepidus’ ashes back to Rome. There as a new praetor Vespasian convinced the Senate that the traitor Lepidus didn't deserve burial. His ashes were thrown into the Tiber. Agrippina never forgave Narcissus nor Vespasian.
Then after Narcissus helped bring Claudius’ wife Messalina down he lobbied for Aelia Paetina to be the new empress rather than Agrippina. Once enthroned beside Claudius, Agrippina’s influence increased and Narcissus’ waned. So she made sure it was Narcissus who was given the Lake Fucino project, partly to get him out of town and partly because no one thought it could be pulled off. For Narcissus this was a chance, perhaps his last, to regain Claudius’ favor.
On his accession ten years before Claudius had no military triumphs to celebrate; had, in fact, almost no military experience at all. To prove himself he needed a campaign. It had been almost a century since Julius Caesar, Claudius’ great-grandfather, had first led Roman troops onto British soil. Caesar’s retreat left the island outside our influence, and like Germany a potential source of terrorism. Claudius decided that conquering Britannia would bring him the prestige he needed. He sent four legions under Aulus Plautius, who after subduing the British tribes was appointed governor of Britain.
With Plautius’ foothold on British soil well-established Claudius decided to follow in his great-grandfather’s footsteps and permanently plant the Roman flag on British soil. Leading our best legions with great pomp and circumstance he left the capitol and marched northward, up the new road he’d had built over the Alps, passing not far from my home on Lake Larius. Across the Alps he picked up four more legions from the Rhine troops, one led by Vespasian and one by Vespasian’s brother Sabinus. The massive army moved down-river to Vetera, then across the channel to England. Success did not come quickly, but it came. Vespasian and Sabinus were given the crucial task of subduing the southern part of the island, which they accomplished with the help of siege engines Vespasian used brilliantly. Claudius returned from Britain to great acclaim. Triumphal arches were thrown up and coins minted celebrating the expansion of the empire’s boundaries. Claudius’ son born to Messalina was renamed Britannicus, after the campaigns in Britain, as Claudius’ brother Germanicus had been named for the campaigns led by their father Drusus in Germania. Claudius and Vespasian became good friends: Claudius would not forget the acclaim Vespasian’s victories had brought him.
Recently he’d sent Vespasian back to Britain, to put down a dangerous rebellion by Caratacos, son of the Welsh king Cymbeline. With the help of the British queen Cartimandua, Vespasian defeated Caratacos, put him in chains and dragged him back to Rome. It was on that trip I first met Vespasian.
That was all in the past, but the present, in which Lucius and I were head eastward, is only the shadow the past throws into the future, in particular the draining of Lake Fucino.
We’d left our Subura apartment before dawn and were outside the city before the sun rose in front of us. By late afternoon we were passing the lovely waterfall of the Anio and the beautiful city of Tibur, where Horace and others of Rome’s wealthy had grand summer villas.
The city of Tiber's necropolis held the remains of many important Roman families. One of the best-known mausoleums was the circular monument to the Plautii. As we passed it I pointed it out to Lucius.
“This is where Aulus Plautius, who conquered Britain, will some day be buried.”
“Yes,” Lucius agreed. He knew that. But he knew something I didn’t. He’d come to know Plautius’ wife Pomponia Graecina, though he knew her by her baptized name Lucina. When Plautius was off fighting the Brits, his wife had converted to the new eastern cult which Lucius followed, and through her friend Julia, Tiberius’ grand-daughter, was introduced to a man named Simon Peter, recently arrived in Rome from Jerusalem. Amid a small gathering of aristocratic Romans this Peter talked about his teacher, the martyr Christus. Peter emanated such an impressive, charismatic presence that both women converted. Lucius had met Lucina after she’d taken on mourning black in memory of her friend – some said lover -- Julia, murdered during one of Messalina’s paranoiac spasms.
We spent the first night out of Rome at a small but comfortable inn on Mount Tibertino, and started again early the next morning. We traveled all that day, taking time off only to eat. I used the afternoon on horseback to dictate to Lucius a long list of as many domesticated animals as I could remember, and anecdotes about each. As we made our way eastward the crowds thickened. Now around us was a constant stream of traffic, on foot and horseback, heading to the spectacle Claudius promised.
We came up behind a litter of expensive ebony elaborately decorated with ivory and gold and carried by six strong Ethiopians. I passed them on the right. Lucius took the opportunity of separating himself from me by going around on the other side. A red velvet curtain of the sedan opened a crack. From inside came a man’s voice. “Why, Gaius Plinius!”
I slowed my horse alongside.
The curtain opened farther. A thin aquiline nose appeared, then the small dark eyes of Manius Hosidius Geta, a former and progressive senator, author of a wide-ranging agrarian reform which never got passed.
“Hosidius,” I responded. The old man smiled a thin smile. Seated beside him in the darkness of the litter I could see his wife, Vibia. They’d remained childless. The last time I talked with him, a few months before, he'd complained about the swarms of legacy-hunters who followed him around. These parasites courted childless old men, for whom they promised to erect and maintain elaborate tombs and publish encomiums and eulogies for years after their deaths. They lavished huge banquets on their clients, and gave them the finest wines, flowers and exotic foods, all in hope of gaining a mention in the old man’s will. But bothersome as they were, it was because of them that Hosidius and his wife lived a far more luxurious life than they could otherwise afford.
Hosidius’ skin was drawn and pale. To manipulate the manipulators he chewed cumin seeds, which caused his skin to turn white and though he was otherwise healthy, gave him the complexion of someone close to dying. When I was a student some of my friends, after staying up all night drinking, would chew cumin so in the morning they could claim to be sick and miss their classes.
“What a surprise,” Hosidius said, coughing weakly. “So you’ve come to watch Narrcissus’ folly, eh? Don’t you just hate these crowds,” he complained, a thin hand flicking away the throngs which made their way around us.
From inside the litter Vibia waved curtly. It was said she’d once been a beautiful woman. Now that was hard to believe. Even her eyes, once bright and lively, had gone dry and dead: eyes which had seen too much, sated eyes which had explored and forced the boundaries of human experience. Eyes for which a flower, the full moon, a mountain’s graceful rise, or simple human joy meant little or nothing.
Sitting in the sedan, Vibia constantly moved her hands over her arms, rubbing them, as though trying to extinguish a fire burning from within. Perhaps that was it, I thou
ght. Perhaps her soul is aflame, and she’s trying to extinguish it. Or perhaps she can’t stand an instant without sensual input, so she rubs and rubs, to know herself alive. Most likely, I thought, she suffers from gout, which won’t give her a moment’s rest.
Gout is a disease but also a symptom of the disease called overindulgence. Until recently women weren’t allowed to drink wine in public, so it was a disease they seldom suffered. But some women, shoved off the stage of everyday society and with slaves to take care of their households, turned to wine for something to do. Some took to drinking with the thought: well, if we can’t make the rules, at least we can break them.
It was common knowledge that Hosidius had not been faithful to Vibia, even from the start. That in itself was neither unusual nor scandalous. But perhaps her own infidelities were so blatant or public that he began using his affairs as weapons, displaying and bragging about them to her, one after the other. She accepted his gestures as an invitation to a kind of dance, which she joined with enthusiasm. In time each attempted to out-hurt the other, and in the end it devolved into a sordid orgy of sadism. While with her lovers she discovered that to the pleasure of illicit sex was added the pleasure of vengeance. Soon she was describing her lover’s bodies to her husband, and how they so much more skillfully pleasured her than he could.
Recently, on one of the few nights, anymore, that they shared a bed, Hosidius asked one of his lovers to enter their bedroom. Naked, she slipped alongside him while Vibia was forced to hear and watch their love-making.
Vibia in turn took three men at the same time, and had each write a short sonnet describing the experience. As pleased with their poetic efforts as she had been with their love-making, she had the poems delivered to her husband while he was in session in the Senate. As he read them he blanched, but to prove himself immune to her wounds, scribbled off a response, written as a sonnet, complimenting her creativity.
