by Ken Parejko
“Anyway as I was saying,” Vespasian said as he joined me again. “Claudius and I got the Iceni in order, but the fellows who followed us made a mess of it. They treated the locals like slaves, stole their property and their women. Nothing new there. As their king Prasutagus was dying he drew up a will which left half his wealth to us and half to his wife and daughters. But as you know, our laws won’t let women inherit property, so Catis Decianus, procurator, declared the will illegal. Prasutagus was barely cold when we moved into his house, hauled off his wealth, threw his wife Boudicca in prison, and to top it all off some of the centurions raped his daughters.”
“But then Boudicaa escaped, and broadcast up and down the countryside how we’d treated her. The result, naturally, another rebellion. Will we ever learn?”
“Our garrisons on the island were under-staffed. Nothing new there either. United, her tribes headed first to Camulodunum. The city sent a courier begging Decianus for help. He sent two hundred men who arrived just in time to be massacred with the rest of the city. Sensing a brush-fire about to erupt, Decianus then sent the 9th legion, under Cerialis. Too little, too late. Cerialis was lucky to escape alive. We lost most of the legion.”
“They overran village after village, Boudicca’s chariot in front, her blonde hair falling to her waist, around her neck a big gold torque. A real British Amazon.”
“Decianus fled across the channel and left command of the two remaining legions to Paulinus Suetonius. He took the Brits on near Londinium. Suetonius set his troops in front of a thick woods and swamp, so they could only be attacked from the front. Though the we were outnumbered our discipline and Suetonius’ tactics held the day. It was a slaughter. So she wouldn't end up prisoner, Boudicca killed herself.”
“Things had taken a sharp turn for the better for us Flavians. Cerialis’ defeat was revenged. Here as Nero's madness grew the calming effect my brother Sabinus had as commander of the city’s guards helped, too. So, I've come back to test the waters, see if I can rebuild connections I'd built before Nero sent me away. Now, my friend, I’ve done all the talking. Time for me to listen.”
We’d returned to the marble bench and sat down beside my copy of Varro. It was growing a bit dark, and thankfully cooler.
“Well, did I tell you sister Plinia’s had a child?”
“No. So it’s Uncle Plinius, then.”
“Yes. It does take getting used to. They named him Gaius Caecilius. His mother's very proud of him. She says he was already speaking in sentences at two. She wrote one time how he tried to tell her about a goat-cart ride he'd just had. The cart apparently sped off out of control down the path, careening this way and that. “Capra,” he'd beamed to her, pointing to the path, “Caecilius, capra, celere,” he said, over and over, his eyes lighting up with joy.”
Vespasian, himself a father, clearly enjoyed the story.
“The boy's father has started trading with the Rhaetians, at Colicum.”
“Good, good! The Pliny gens is on the rise...and mind you, there’ll be no keeping it down! And you’ve had another book published?”
“Yes, a textbook on oratory. I’ve got mixed feelings about that, you know. After it came out I realized there was no way I could stop sleazy lawyers from using it to advance their careers instead of helping the cause of justice.”
“That’s their problem, not yours.”
“Yes and no. To be honest I’m sick and tired of the city. It’s too much for me, Nero and all...”
“So?”
“So I’m moving back home.”
“When?”
“Soon as I can. Any day.”
“I don’t blame you. Escaping to Reate was just the thing for me. Only let’s be sure to stay in touch. At least the mail still gets through.”
We said our goodbyes. I watched him as he disappeared down towards the Forum on his way home to the Quirinal. I stood, stretched my legs, and tucked my Varro into a pocket. I looked forward to sharing Varro's thoughts on farming with my father.
It was good being home on the lake again, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed being an uncle. Little Caecilius was four now, and as curious and talkative as my mother claimed I’d been at the same age. I walked him around the yard, telling him all about the plants, rocks, and birds we encountered. He absorbed it like a big sponge.
With my biography of Pomponius Secundus, manual on javelins, the German History and the rhetoric, I’d made something of a name for myself. But that was all behind me. In my heart I'd already moved on to the next project.
The window of my room looked out over the lake and across it the villages and hills. All around the room papyri were thrown this way and that, on the floor, under the bed, strewn across all the horizontal surfaces. Some were copies of my own corpus, which like my body expanded with each passing year. Piled along the walls of the room was my personal library, its Aristotle, Theophrastus, Polybius, Eratosthenes, Niger, Herodotus, Bassus, and scores of others. I plowed profits from my books back into the library.
I’d found three cypress tables at a furniture shop in Comum which I lined up alongside one another along the far wall of the room, under the window I sometimes dangled a line from down into the lake. On the tables little notes to myself were stacked like sheaves of wheat in a field. Historical facts and anecdotes were on the left table, in the middle biology, on the right astronomical, mineralogical and geological. When I learned something new and interesting I’d jot down a note and put it on one of the tables. I’d begun these notes more than a year ago and already the stacks had spread til they sometimes fell off the tabletops like leaves in a big wind. For the moment I had only a vague idea what I would do with them.
I was happily building my own little world in the comfort of my room. News reaching me from the capitol only pushed me further inside myself. But news from the capitol was still interesting, and I was saddened when I heard of a great fire that destroyed much of the city.
Fires were nothing new to the capitol. Augustus had established the city's first fire brigade, and had the men properly trained, equipped and housed in barracks scattered around the city’s different districts.
Now, five years after Agrippina’s murder, and with Nero at the height of his power, the city had suffered one of its worst fires ever. Once again sacred temples and busy imperial offices were licked clean by devouring tongues of flame, destroying countless priceless documents, books, and works of art. Damage to the Forum was limited, but the hungry fire-gods ravished the Palatine. Many poorer sections of the city, we were told, had been reduced to ash. Even Nero’s palace, which sprawled from the base of the Palatine to the Esquiline, was badly damaged.
I learned that Nero was at his residence at Actium enjoying the sea-breezes when the fire started. Hearing how bad it was he hurried to Rome where for a while he personally directed the fire-fighters’ efforts. But summer winds fanned the flames out of control. Deciding that the gods meant for Rome to burn, he turned and walked away. For a better view he climbed the tower of Maecenas and recited impromptu verses about the fire's terrible beauty. Then perhaps seeing himself as a new Priam, as the city went up in flames he recited, to the soft tones of a lyre, in its tedious entirety The Fall of Troy.
On the one hand I wanted to travel down to see how the city had fared, on the other I was afraid of the devastation I’d find. I forced myself to wait a month, to allow time for the worst casualties to be cared for, the aqueducts brought back into service, and some semblance of order returned to the flow of commerce which kept the city alive.
I said my goodbyes to the family. Caecilius cried as I left. I had no idea when I’d be back. The trip to the capitol was uneventful, though as I got closer I was astonished how many refugees crowded along the road. I spent the last night in a mansio on the via Flaminia. As a veteran of the cavalry I had access to these inns placed for the benefit of military and civic officials every fifteen miles or so along imperial highways. There I enjoyed a hot meal and grain and a stall fo
r my new mare, named after faithful Lightning, who'd died the previous winter. The inn, crowded with refugees from the fire, was full and noisy. Over an evening meal and glass of wine I learned what I could about the fire from a courier heading north.
The fire, he said, had started on the evening of July 18 near the Circus Maximus. Nero, who reveled in spectacle, had squandered immense amounts on enlarging the Circus, and vendors’ booths, thrown together of wood and canvas, had sprung up in its shadow. One of the food-vendor’s fires got out of hand, and his booth caught fire. The flames jumped to nearby booths and in a matter of only minutes were completely out of control. The night sky over the city turned orange as the fire climbed up and over the Palatine then across the city. For six days and nights it burned, gulping the city like a gigantic famished monster. Seemingly sated it died down but then a day later leapt back into action near the Circus Flaminius. By the time it was done ten of the city’s fourteen districts were badly burned, three completely destroyed.
There were rumors that Nero, who wanted property for his new palace, had ordered the fire started. I asked the courier if he believed the rumors. He shrugged. Who knows? But that so many did believe them showed what the public thought of their emperor. Nero ordered the Campus Martius cleared out to make room for those who’d lost their homes, then had hundreds of loads of grain brought up from Ostia to feed the tens of thousands of homeless. Many were camped out in the cemeteries ringing the city walls, sleeping among the tombs of family and stranger alike.
As the city went about its rebuilding, Nero ordered that no new structures be higher than two stories, that stone walls be built between every other building, and that streets whenever possible be widened to slow the spread of fires. He beefed up the fire-fighting guilds and established a Fire Relief Fund. Aqueducts were enlarged to assure there was enough water in every neighborhood to fight any future fires.
But Nero had to put to rest the rumors that he’d started the fire. He found his scapegoat in the new religious sect which had taken root in the city. Growing especially rapidly among slaves and the poorer classes, these Christi preached a strong other-worldliness and would not recognize civic authority over their lives. Mindful of Spartacus’ rebellion, they were deeply distrusted by the upper classes. Some of the cult’s leaders – one Saul of Tarsus and a certain Simon Peter – were already in prison. Nero sent the urban cohorts, under Vespasian’s brother Sabinus, across the city to randomly arrest them. Under torture names were named and soon enough thousands were in hand.
They preached that Rome was a new Babylon, and given that, Nero argued, what was there to prevent them from an act of terrorism driven by their religious fanaticism? The priests of our official cults implicated them in a different way. Since the gods determine our fate, they argued, and it is our regular sacrifices and temple worship that keep them happy, in refusing to worship our gods the Christi had visited this catastrophe on us.
So to deflect blame from himself Nero filled the squares and remaining amphitheaters of the city, still acrid with the smoke of its destruction, with spectacles of torture and execution. Hundreds were crucified. Others were wrapped in cow-skins and thrown to rabid dogs, others thrown to the arena’s hungry lions.
The city I entered through the Porta Flaminia was not the city I’d left less than a year before. Though efforts were being made to keep the wide, colonnaded street clear for traffic, the poor and hungry homeless had settled into every available space. As I passed through I had to take care so Lightning wouldn’t step on the injured, the hungry, the infants lying like flotsam on a storm-tossed beach. I was relieved to see that the marble cylinder of Augustus’ gigantic mausoleum, topped with earth and a grove of trees, still stood in the midst of all this chaos.
The smell of the fire and its destruction still hung in the air. The open field of the Campus Martius, where as a student I’d learned horsemanship, was filled with a sorry sea of humanity. Here, try as they might, the city officials could not provide adequate sewers and trash collection, and the stench tightened my lungs. As I rode under the arch Claudius built to celebrate his victory in Britain I remembered my conversation at Ara Agripinnensis, when Vespasian predicted hard times ahead. On left and right as I approached the city center there rose above the crowds, like a grove of grotesque saplings rising from a grassy field, evidence of his prescience. Crows wheeled around these stark trees, arguing over the fruit they found, the blackened flesh of Christi recently crucified and even before they were dead their bodies set afire to light the crowds below with eerie dancing flames. Most bodies were so badly charred I couldn’t even tell if they’d been man or woman.
I looked away. This was not the city I'd learned to love. The capitol had been devoured by more than a fire, had lost her heart and soul to the vengeful whims of a madman. The destruction of the temples, libraries, and houses was bad enough, but it was the suffering caused not by nature but by mankind’s cruelty that bothered me most. I thought for a moment of wheeling Lightning around and heading back to the calm shores of the Lake. But I’d come to offer what help I could, and would do my best.
There was plenty of work to be done. By next morning I was out helping clear away the charred remains of houses, shops and stables around the Capitoline Hill. Though I’d tied a cloth over my face the dust and ashes which rose as I pulled boards out from the tangled remains stuck in my lungs and choked me. My body was complaining, and not quietly. The next morning I put myself to better use, organizing and directing the wagon-loads of bread made available to the refugees.
I spent the morning directing traffic and recording how many loads were sent to each region of the city. I was working from an area cleared of debris at the bottom of the Viminal, below where Crassus had built his magnificent house, shaded by six tall lotus trees. When I was studying under Pomponius the house was owned by Caecina Largus and by then, with the proliferation of luxuria it had become only one of many opulent residences. Pomponius had pointed the gigantic trees out to me. They were more than two hundred years old, he said. But now when I looked I saw only six tall charred skeletons.
I sat for a break on an ash- and dust-covered bench to wash bread and olives down with tepid water. I’d just started eating when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Pliny, you old soldier, what a surprise!”
I turned around then stood and wiped the breadcrumbs from my tunic. “Titus Flavius!” I set the bread down and we held hands for a moment, surprised to see each other.
“I thought you were up at the family digs,” Titus said. “Dad told me you’d grown sick of us lawyers and retreated to the Lake.”
“Yes, well, yes I was. But the fire...”
“Of course. If there’s work to be done, you can’t stay away can you? Sit down, sit down.” I sat again, Titus beside me. Vespasian’s son was a handsome twenty-five year-old, a master on a horse and with a sword, known for his poetry and the clarity of his rhetoric.
“Your father, and the rest of the family? How are they?” I asked, offering Titus some bread.
“Father’s fine. Domitian, who’d taken his toga virilis just before the fire, and the rest of the family are fine too.”
“Your house?”
“Little damage up on the Quirinal,” Titus said, “We got off easy. But what a mess, eh?” he said, looking up at the charred trees rising up toward the Palatine.
“The libraries on the Palatine?”
“I haven’t been there,” Titus confessed, picking up a stick and drawing circles in the dust and ashes at his feet. “But I heard they were badly burned. Which books survived, if any, only time will tell.”
I offered him some of my water. While serving together in Germany, we’d become quite close.
“And where’s the emperor gone? I heard he isn’t in the city.”
Titus sipped the water, shook his head. “No one knows for sure. For a while he seemed to actually care, to have a heart. But you know, he lost his palace too. The last I heard he’s s
wallowed up a big chunk of land off the other side of the Palatine. Big plans. He’s a man of big, big plans. It’s said he’s going to build a monstrous place plump down in the middle of a hundred acres.”
I shook my head. “And you?” I asked.
“Me? I’m fine. As you know, the law is pretty boring, mostly, though the occasional interesting case does come along. And I have to thank you for my success.”
“Me? How?”
“Your Oratory.”
“Ah, well.”
“Tertulla and I had a daughter last year. Julia. Hoping for a son next, of course. And you, what’ve you been doing, up there in the wilderness?”
I coughed, paused long enough for a few deep breaths. “I’m filling my study with rocks, shells, flowers and scribbled notes about just about everything.”
“So, you’ve transformed yourself again my friend, this time from cavalry officer to naturalist...” He gave my leg a friendly shove.
“I couldn’t stand it here, you know...”
“I can barely stand it myself. Mostly we just tread water, til Nero’s out of the picture. Which, by my guess,” he said, speaking more quietly, “won’t be long.”
“That would be good. Well, ” I said, standing. “Lucius has come down from Comum after me. I’m to meet him at our apartment after lunch.”
“Where you staying?”
“I found an empty room, nothing more, up your way actually.”
“Why don’t you stay with us? Too bad, but father’s up at Reate. He’d love to see you.”
I looked my friend in the eyes. The invitation was more than just an empty courtesy. “I just might,” I said. “Hard to get a decent bath in all this mess.”
“Ours are up and running,” Titus offered. “See you for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, if I can find Lucius. Funny, I miss him. If not tonight, I’ll send a note, and we’ll make it tomorrow night instead?”
