by David Blixt
Ironically, the only man on the lake not obviously enjoying himself was the inventor of the revels himself. Tigellinus looked sour. Though he tried to smile and laugh with the rest, he grimaced each time he shifted. It looked as though his belly was indeed roiled. Was it ulcers, wondered his companions, or simply too indulgent a life?
Whatever, Caesar clearly did not suffer from the same. Nero was clapping and dancing high upon his painted toes. “This! This! This is living! O, on New Year's Day I shall summon the Senate and rewrite the laws. No more togas, no more tunics. It's the synthesis from now on, and freedman caps for all. This lake shall be open to all, and we'll make the taverns permanent. It will be Saturnalia every day!”
There were many raised eyebrows at that. Yes, Saturnalia had expanded from its original three days to seven. And there were more revels coming in the Opalia, celebrating Saturn's wife. But the New Year marked the return to sanity. To declare an eternal Saturnalia was to upend the order of the world. A thought that might appeal to Nero, but the common Roman would not like it. Romans were, as a rule, a conservative people. They liked tradition and order. Already Nero was tempting their displeasure, with his hair as long as a dancing girl's and his odd facial hair.
It was Vitellius who said, “I love the idea, Caesar. But are you not fearful that by making it the rule, it will cease to be special?”
Pulling an incredulous face, Nero waved his hand around them. “How could this ever cease to be special?”
* * *
Patting the weeping Greek on the shoulder, Clemens found himself one half of an odd conversation. It began when, between tears, Spiros asked, “Do you know much about theatre?”
The question was so unexpected, Clemens had to laugh. “Yes, actually. Quite a bit.”
“You know what Aristotle says marks the difference between Comedy and Tragedy?”
Though he knew the gist, Clemens had to think for a moment to summarize it. “Tragedy is about grand things and noble people, while Comedy is about small things and ignoble people.”
Spiros looked up in surprise. “Yes. And as I look at my life I wonder, is this a Comedy? Or a Tragedy? Is this a Tragedy of noble Caesar and his love? Am I destined for greatness as a woman, consort to the greatest man in the world? Or is this a Comedy, and I'm just a boy who lost his balls because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Am I a Tragic figure, or just the butt of the joke?”
Sitting close to this bewigged and scented and painted man barely younger than himself, Clemens had a wave of compassion roll over him. “Sometimes life doesn't fall into those categories. It's not all theatre. Sometimes, life is both at once.”
Spiros laughed at that, still in his simpering falsetto that he was forced to use every day. But it was at least akin to a real laugh. “Thank you,” he said. Then the smile became more sly as an idea came into his mind. “I know you came looking for a woman, not a man. But I'm hardly a man anymore. And one port is as good as another.”
Clemens edged away. “What are you—?”
“I'd like to let Caesar kiss the mouth that's been around your cock, is what I'm saying. That would be great theatre. What do you say?”
As the wigged and painted boy began moving across the bed in a most sultry and feminine way, Clemens began to panic. His head turned. “Did you hear something?”
“No,” said Spiros, sliding a hand under the edge of Clemens' garment. “No, I did not.”
Clemens stood. “I'm serious. I heard something.”
Spiros sighed. “I'm not even to have the satisfaction of a petty revenge? I could weep!”
* * *
Domitian's breathing had begun to ease. Domitia stroked his hair, feeling oddly compassionate to this broken man just a few years older than herself. She saw her own pain mirrored in him, saw her own rage and despair and impotence. Leaning down, she pressed her lips to his ear. “I know. I know.”
His reaction was instant and violent. Wrenching himself away from her, Domitian struck her with his fist, sending her sprawling onto her naked back. Even as she scrambled onto her hands and heels, hissing in a fit of betrayed anger, she recognized his impulse. It was the thing she most wanted to do – strike out at the world that demeaned her, devalued her, deprived her of her father and her future.
Understanding did not stop her from hurling a curse at him – or starting to. From below there was a shudder, as if the whole fake temple was sighing. “How dare you, you irrumator – what's happening?”
* * *
Dressed again, Perel watched with tense concentration as Sabinus returned to the small, chill chamber just above the water-line. He walked purposefully down the steps, carrying one of the many weapons that lined the upstairs central room. It was a pilum, a short spear with a leaf-shaped head that tapered to a wicked point.
“Go stand on the stairs and hold on,” she heard him say.
Even as she obeyed, she said, “What are you doing?”
“Performing a small act of defiance. I hope you can swim.”
Eyes widening in comprehension, she almost laughed. How brave! How brilliant! And how gallant. This man, a Roman senator, was protecting her. More, he was risking himself to do so.
As she reached the short stairway, she turned and watched as he jabbed through the hanging tapestry on the right side of the chamber. There was a tremendous popping sound as he pierced the bladder holding up this portion of the floating temple.
Jabbing again at the same bladder, he pulled it with a hearty tug to rip the stitched animal-hide apart. Then he dropped the spear and, turning to her, smiled thinly. “Time to run.”
* * *
Verulana's partner was eager, and finished long before she was done with him. The moment he relaxed she had raked him again with her nails and reached down to start working on renewing the erection. At the same time she flipped over, waggling her backside in his face and issuing instructions, barking and hissing them like an angry general. “Play with my clitoris!” He hadn't seemed to know what that was. So she showed him. Then she gasped as he surprised her by the placement of two of his fingers.
They were so busy they did not notice as the room began to tilt. Only when the shouting started did they emerge from their endeavours to realize the temple was sinking.
* * *
It took several moments for anyone outside to realize anything was the matter. It seemed that the floating temple was simply listing a little. Then the rear-right bladder lost enough air to force the whole thing off-kilter. The structure began to tilt, with the door angling up towards the heavens at an awkward angle.
Suddenly all eyes on the barge were fixed upon the sinking structure. It was Old Sabinus who said, “Jupiter! One of us Flavians has used his battering ram so much, he's knocked down the temple!”
Gales of laughter erupted from the barge even as men and women began leaping from the up-angled door. There was Tertius first, a naked woman in his arms. Then the architect Gaudentius, holding an ancient whore Nero had planted for his own amusement. Then had come Spiros, wig firmly in place. Everyone wondered who, if any, had met that challenge. Three more women, then Domitian and Clemens leapt from the doorframe even as half the structure slipped below the water.
Old Sabinus had a bad moment. But his son's head emerged from under the water – after making sure of his family's safety, he'd swum out last of all.
The barge was too far for them to reach, so they swam for shore. The old whore was laughing as she was fished out of the water. Domitia was sporting a swollen eye that would be puffy and purple on the morrow – perhaps she'd gotten it in the collapse of the temple. She was looking more embarrassed than her friend Verulana, standing brazenly naked and making coy looks at Tertius. Clemens helped Spiros out of the water and was about to say something, but Nero's latest wife prevented him from a possible social gaffe by walking firmly away in his best mincing gait. He walked along the edge of the stagnum and waved to Nero, who ordered his rowers to take them to that spot.
Sabinus was talking even as he walked up the ramp to the barge. “I don't know how it happened, Caesar. There was a popping noise—”
“We all heard it,” said Clemens.
“And then we were listing and scrambling for our lives.”
Nero was torn between annoyance and amusement. He shot a glance at Tigellinus. “Have the engineers flogged.”
“Yes, Caesar,” said Tigellinus sharply.
“A good thing you were not on board when the thing sank, Caesar,” observed Vitellius over his mulsum. “Otherwise they would say this was an attempt at murder.”
Nero's laugh was perfectly genuine. “Rubbish! Me, die? I need not fear death until I am seventy-three years old. The Oracle of Delphi said so – even if I sank her temple, she can't take it back!”
Old Sabinus leaned over and whispered in his son's water-logged ear. “I'm glad he chose to interpret it that way. Otherwise he might deem it prudent that every Roman over the age of seventy be executed. I'd like to live beyond the next decade.”
“Don't give him ideas,” whispered Sabinus, relieved that Nero had claimed the deed of sinking the temple as his own. He felt at once both brave, and cowardly. He had defied Nero. But only he and the girl Perel knew it.
That will have to be enough.
* * *
Across the Tuscan sea, in Hispania, Governor Servius Sulpicius Galba took time from his duties to celebrate the day. It was not only the final day of the Saturnalia. It was also his seventy-third birthday.
XV
Though Nero went ahead with his plan to create an unending Saturnalia, the Senate did score a victory of sorts in that they convinced him not to do it at law. Was it fitting, they asked, to impose disorder in an orderly way? How could one pass laws to institute a period of lawlessness? Instead the senators suggested he lead by example. Which he was more than happy to do.
Yet Nero did insist upon overturning a few laws – old laws, ancient laws, laws regarding slaves, gifts, and certain elements of public indecency. All opening up license for behaviors that were frowned upon outside those blessed seven days each December. Some of these laws had long been winked at, even ignored outright. Yet never had they been openly repealed – until now. Thus was Saturnalia brought to the Roman world, year-round.
But Rome had other gods besides Saturn, gods with their own rules and standards, gods with written contracts with the Roman people going back to the time of the kings, back even to Aeneas and his son Ascanius. When those just, orderly, legally-binding contracts were broken, or when some force interrupted the flow of their divinity, Jupiter Best and Greatest was swift to punish. And his favourite tool for punishment was that most devoted enemy of order, chaos.
Chaos comes in multitudinous forms. Events like fires, storms, or diseases might descend in a moment and create tumultus – a legal state recognized by the Senate, wherein normal procedures are suspended in favour of decisive action.
Yet some chaotic events were not overt manifestations of divine fury, arriving instead in the creeping and preventable actions of men. Individually, these events might mean nothing. Taken together, they were unmistakable signs of gods at work. For if there were no guiding hand behind it all, then the world was unendurably mad.
The chaos began that very New Year's Day, at the inauguration ceremony honouring the Princeps and the new consuls. The senior consul was Publius Galerius Trachalus, a famous orator with so musical a voice that his career had been hampered by Nero's jealousy. But in this new Rome of eternal arts, the Princeps had decided the Senate should be led by a man of natural musicality.
The junior consul was even more an artist. Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus, a native of Padua, was a learned man who dabbled in poetry. His many admirers lamented his foray into politics, wishing he would devote his time to the verses that he showed such skill at. By elevating a potential poet to the consulship, Nero was hoping to spur both art and politics at once.
After the night-watch of the consuls, who had to sit through the whole night staring at the sky for omens, Nero arrived for the official augury. Just as the first sacrificial bull was struck by the stunning hammer, Nero's new boy-wife made him a gift in front of all the people. It was an ill-timed gesture, as Caesar was busy taking the auspices in his role of Pontifex Maximus. While watching the massive axe fall across the bull's neck, the Princeps found a ring being slipped upon his finger. This ring bore a polished purple gem engraved with a depiction of the Rape of Proserpina. Thus, on the most ominous and portentous day of the whole year, Nero Caesar was given a token depicting a descent into Hades just as the blood from the first bull spilled onto the paving stones.
It was a quirk of Roman law that such ceremonies had to be flawless, and if anything untoward occurred, the ceremony must be repeated. But Nero did not restart the proceedings. Neither did he rebuke either the omen or the person who had caused it. Nero simply kissed his boy-wife in thanks. At that moment, Spiros' eyes blazed with something very like pride. Or was it vengeance?
Two more evil signs occurred that day. The statues of the household gods in his palace on the Palatine, decorated for the day, tumbled to the earth and shattered. And when the crowds came to wish him well on the Capitoline steps, the keys to the gate were not to be found. Rome itself had shut its doors on Nero.
The next sign related to those laughably treasonous letters from Vindex. Evidently the Gaulish governor had sent out a new spate of them after Nero's Triumph, urging all good Romans to throw off the yoke of the pleasure-driven sexual deviant who now wore the laurel. As pretext, he was now using the forced suicide of the military hero Marcus Ostorius Scapula, and the suicide of his disgraced wife Faustina. He wrote, 'If Caesar keeps causing the deaths of future great Romans, then Rome has no future under this Caesar!'
Apprised of these missives, Nero chose to ignore Vindex, who was certain to dash himself on the rocks of his own ambition.
This assessment bore fruit in March, when Vindex declared open revolt. He did so without a single Roman legion, only thousands of Gauls from four rebellious tribes. As no Roman soldiers were involved, this was not classified a true mutiny, merely a minor provincial uprising. Receiving the news over lunch while visiting Neapolis, Nero serenely ordered his general in Lower Germania to deal with the matter. He paid no more attention to Vindex that day, following his plans to participate in a chariot-race. Naturally, he won – and attended the victory feast wearing his Greek robe instead of a toga. Tradition be damned.
But Vindex spurred the Princeps to rage the following week. A letter had been published listing Nero's sins. Among charges of murder, robbery, incest, treason, homosexuality, rapacity, matricide, fratricide, and patricide, Vindex also accused Nero of playing the lyre badly.
“I want his head!” screamed Nero, offering a huge reward for that grisly trophy. He then rode in a tear to Rome and called an urgent meeting of the Senate in the Curia Hostilia. But not to discuss Vindex's revolt. Rather, the thirty year-old ruler of the world happily informed that august body of his peers that he had discovered a way to produce a more resonant sound from a water-organ, treating the incredulous senators to an hours-long explanation of the new mechanism. The senators were dismayed to find their presence was required the following day for a demonstration, one at which Nero would both play and sing.
When he had concluded and the dismayed senators were all exiting, Nero called out to Sabinus. “Oh Titus Flavius? Tell your cousin Gaudentius that I require his services. It seems I need to build my tomb! For Vindex will surely be the death of me!” Caesar's laughter rang around the hall, echoed by those licker-fish who trailed in his wake. Sabinus blinked, could think of nothing whatsoever to say, and so departed.
The next day every Roman nobleman within the
city walls dutifully entered the wooden theatre Nero had ordered constructed on the Campus Martius after the fire consumed the Amphitheatre of Taurus. Two years back he'd held gladiatorial games here, with senators forced to perform as gladiators and with common people as the spectators. Employing blunt weapons, it had been a ludicrous display, and Caesar had been beside himself laughing.
But today the senators, knights, and members of the First Class were in the stands, looking down on a stage erected in the theatre's center. There was the water-organ, or hydraulis, with its octagonal base and series of twenty-four pipes rising into the air, each higher than the last. There were three men on separate hoses to provide the air that would churn the water within the base, fed by an artificial stream Nero had clearly ordered for this performance. Once churned, the water would turn an internal wheel, while the air escaped through whatever pipe was opened by the performer's fingers, playing across a series of flat levers that were the keys to opening each pipe.
“This is going to be murderous,” said Old Sabinus, eyeing the contraption as they took their seats on a wooden tier. He spoke quite openly, as if he had no fear of reprisals. Sabinus shot his father a stern look. “Oh pshh,” answered the old man, flapping a hand. “I meant the sun. It's in my eyes.”
“Just as well,” said Clemens. “If you had meant the sun-god, it might have been the death of you, avus.”
Rather than rebuke his grandson, Old Sabinus looked thunderstruck. He kept repeating in a voice both awed and a little pleased, “The death of me. The death of me…”
When Nero entered, every man leapt to his feet to applaud, and many stamped their approval on the wooden slats under their feet. Today he was dressed as a Greek poet, with gold dust in his hair and purple make-up around his eyes. His hair was so long now he might have been mistaken for a girl if his frame were not so solid. His belly was certainly expanding. After a short speech and a quick song performed without instrument, Nero ascended to his place behind the organ and placed his hands upon the levers. At the same moment the three blowers began working their hoses, moving the water and allowing Nero Caesar to play.
