Family Favourites

by Alfred Duggan

  I remember one great dinner at the palace, because I was roped in at the last minute to fill a vacant couch; that afternoon an invited guest had died of apoplexy, and it spoils a party if two men are set down at a table laid for three. As a rule I was not asked to these feasts, because I was even then too old and staid to fit in with a group of wild young men; but the Emperor still liked and trusted me, and often commanded me to attend his private race-meetings in the gardens.

  With the invitation to dinner the Emperor sent my party clothes. The guests of honour were the leading charioteers of the Blue faction, and all the guests wore blue silk, provided free by the privy purse. But this was a small party of only thirty covers, so the cost of clothing us was not excessive.

  We dined beside the swimming-pool of the palace baths. The furnace had been damped and the room was not unpleasantly hot, though the smell of the scented water was a little overpowering. I resigned myself to getting wet before the end of the evening, since otherwise there would be no point in dining beside the pool. At least this great hall was covered with a solid ceiling, so there was no danger that rose-leaves falling from above would get into the food; the Emperor was too fond of that charming fancy, which will ruin the flavour of the best roast.

  My place was a lowly one, a long way from the Emperor. My two table-companions were evidently old friends, who compared at length the charms of fashionable harlots, an expert conversation in which I could not join; at least it was a change from that endless discussion of pretty boys that you heard all over the palace. We began with very good oysters, and masses of them. You often get oysters at parties, but hosts are inclined to count them; I settled down to eat as many as I wanted, a rare treat.

  While we ate we were entertained by a troupe of swimmers dressed in imitation seaweed to represent Tritons and Nereids. The Emperor’s fancy revelled in complication, and I noted at a second glance that the bearded Tritons were girls and the long-haired Nereids boys. A similar conceit was evident among the waiters. Just when I had made up my mind that they were boys dressed as Athenian maidens I realized that some were girls after all; though it was almost impossible to tell the difference.

  When we had finished our oysters the Emperor plunged into the pool; of course his guests must follow him. Since he had dived in naked we also took off our tunics, and I was relieved to observe that all the invited guests were definitely male – at least anatomically.

  After a short swim among the Nereids we came back for the second course. Servants dried us with linen towels (no wool was used in the palace), and dressed us in tunics of a different shade of blue. While we ate a great marble basin was drawn in on wheels; and in it, swimming in sea water, a dolphin. The dolphin was tipped out on a marble slab where we could all watch him die; but to me it did not seem that he changed colour. We were advised to dally over our stuffed eggs in rich sauce, and then swim again; while the dolphin was cooked for the next course.

  In the Aegean they consider dolphin a great delicacy, but it must be cooked fresh; the pickled fish sold in Rome is not nearly so good. This dolphin had been netted in the Propontis; a fast dispatch boat had brought him alive to Rome.

  Swimming, even in warm scented water, I found trying to my middle-aged stomach. When at last the dolphin was ready for the table I willingly changed plates with my neighbours, who had been served with an imitation steak made of wax. This I cut into small pieces and burned in a nearby lamp, where it stank horribly; we all knew that when the Emperor played this childish trick of serving imitation food the guest must empty his plate somehow. He would have been vexed if I had merely pushed it aside untouched. But it was also the custom that I might keep the silver plate on which the imitation had been served, as compensation for taking the joke in good part. My neighbour, a rich young rake, would rather dine well than take home a few pounds of silver.

  During the roast (Libyan giraffe stuffed with mushrooms) my couch subsided to the floor. Under the blue silk it had been made of oiled canvas, inflated with air; at a signal from the Emperor a waiter had pricked it. I was unlucky to be the victim of two jokes during one dinner, but then the plate of wax dolphin had not been intended for me. What seems enormously funny to a sixteen-year-old does not always amuse a middle-aged veteran; but the Emperor gave so many of these parties that he could not be expected to invent fresh jokes for each one.

  My memory of what happened after the roast has grown a little hazy; we were drinking the most marvellous wine. At some period in the evening Spintrians gave their usual performance; but what that was you may read in the Life of the Divine Tiberius by Suetonius, not in this memoir. Presently my companions drew me out about my travels, and I gave them a highly-coloured description of the grove of Daphne near Antioch, which cannot be matched even in cosmopolitan Rome. When we had finished eating, by this time quite sodden with repeated plunges into the pool, we were handed little cups of strong wine flavoured with pine-cones. This is supposed to make you sober, for a few minutes at least. I drank three of them, as did most of the guests, for we wanted our wits about us for the climax of the evening, the lottery.

  There was a ticket for each guest, though that did not mean a real prize for everyone. The first ticket drawn represented literally a fortune, a strongbox full of gold pieces equal to half the Emperor’s revenue for that day. I didn’t get it. The other good prizes were costly but embarrassing: a live elephant, a choir of eunuchs, a team of four unbroken horses. One man drew a beautiful concubine, but he had to possess her then and there, before the whole company; the next got a withered old hag, and must pay the same forfeit. My ticket entitled me to a hamper containing one dead dog, which was comparatively easy to dispose of; the Emperor would not inquire how my pet was getting on in its new home, as he would of the winner of the elephant. There were cheers when a portly Senator drew Ixion’s Wheel. Nobody liked Glabrio, who ought to have stuck with the faction of the respectable Senators; he dined with the Emperor because he thought himself younger than he was, and because he hoped to make money out of the lottery.

  Ixion’s Wheel was a novelty to me; though the others were familiar with it, for the Emperor rarely thought of a new joke. Someone explained to me that Ixion is one of the mortals eternally punished in Hades for crimes committed on earth, and that his Wheel simulated his punishment. It was a large water-wheel, brought in and erected on the edge of the pool. Glabrio was bound to it; then servants turned it so that at each revolution he got a ducking.

  It was dawn before the Emperor dismissed us. By the end of the long night the drink had died in me, and I was beginning to feel the sober depression of the morning after. I was also feeling sorry for my poor young lord. He tried so hard to be a wicked debauchee, after the manner of Nero or Caligula; but it is difficult to earn a reputation for wickedness if you have sworn an oath never to give pain to an innocent subject.

  The Emperor found an outlet for his high spirits in repeating these lotteries in public. At the circus he threw among the crowd little tokens marked with the number Ten. The lucky holder of a token might exchange it at the treasury for ten objects, and the joke was that he could not know what kind of objects. He might get ten dead dogs, or ten purses of gold, perhaps ten strokes of the birch, perhaps ten camels. Animal prizes of any kind the winner was expected to keep as souvenirs of imperial favour.

  The Emperor liked also to display his power over nature. In the height of summer he caused wagon-loads of snow to be heaped up in his garden, ostensibly to see if it would make the place any cooler; but the real object was to have snow carried from the mountains to Rome so swiftly that it would not melt on the way. Once he turned out all the police and watchmen of Rome to gather a thousand pounds’ weight of cobwebs; they did it, too, and made a most imposing pile. But when he offered a live phoenix as a prize in his lottery he found there were limits even to his power. The legate commanding in Arabia reported that he could not catch one; which was not surprising, since there is only one phoenix in the world, who renews himse
lf by rising from the funeral pyre after he has died of old age.

  The stable boy who won the phoenix thought himself well compensated by a thousand pounds’ weight of gold instead. So much gold in private hands, untouched by the tax-gatherer, is as remarkable as any phoenix.

  Unfortunately this gesture cost money, when the treasury was hard put to it to make ends meet. Collecting cobwebs or snow only made work for servants or soldiers whom the state must support anyway, and who may as well be kept busy at some absorbing task. But any gold that comes into the hands of the government ought to be used to pay the soldiers.

  The Augusta warned the Emperor of the perils of extravagance, and he promised to abandon his lotteries. Instead he took up as hobbies kindness to animals and kindness to women, whom he regarded as comparable species. In the palace he sheltered animals of every kind, from mangy lions too old for the amphitheatre to unwanted cur-dogs. He decreed that these should eat what he ate, since nothing was too good for them. Dogs and lions managed fairly well, but the oxen he had rescued from over-work at the plough mostly died of indigestion.

  The pensioned lions had the run of the palace. It was officially stated that well-fed beasts of prey will never attack man, and the Augusta reinforced this hopeful theory by having their teeth pulled out. In fact I never heard of an accident while these creatures roamed the corridors; but the story went round Rome that some guests from an imperial supper, staggering home late at night, had bumped into a group of lions and died of fright.

  The Emperor’s concern for female welfare was a more serious project. Of course the only women who interested him were harlots; he could never subdue his curiosity about normal intercourse between the sexes. The police were ordered to draw up a list of every free courtesan in Rome, a task into which Gordius threw all his energies. Free courtesans are those who live by themselves and manage their own affairs, as opposed to those who work in brothels and the private concubines of rich men.

  When the list had been compiled the Emperor marked their dwellings on a big map of the City, and called in experienced staff officers to help him plan a route. After long effort they plotted one that would enable the Emperor, who drove faster than anyone else in Rome, to visit them all in one day. He took me with him in his chariot; because, he said, I did not get enough fresh air, cooped up in the palace guard-room all day.

  The Emperor did not plan to visit these women on business. No man could have carried out such a programme in one day, and for him even one woman would be too many. But I was mildly surprised when he merely dashed up to each in turn (of course they were all waiting at home for him, in their most attractive undress) and presented her with a single gold piece – ‘a present from Antoninus Elagabalus’.

  He said afterwards that he had been inspecting their living conditions, an important duty shamefully neglected by the police. His gallop set up a record for chariots driven through heavy traffic which has never been equalled to this day.

  Then he conceived the idea of meeting every loose woman in Rome, brothel workers and kept concubines as well as courtesan, the whole lot of them. Gordius pointed out that he could not visit them all unless he devoted the rest of his life to doing nothing else; and if they all came to him there was no hall in the palace big enough to hold them. Undeterred, the Emperor ordered them to be assembled in the circus, where he inspected them from the imperial box. I suppose he thought that if he looked at them long enough he might discover what made them attractive to normal men, and so himself become a normal man; or he may have hoped they would tell him their experiences, for on that subject he was madly curious. He was doubly disappointed. A whole circus full of low-class harlots is a most dispiriting sight, calculated to make the wildest rake eager for marriage and respectability; and the women were much too frightened to speak to him even when he asked them intimate questions. In the end, rather than go away without anything done, he was reduced to delivering a rousing harangue in which he exhorted them to perform their essential service with due regard to duty but to go on strike if their masters tried to cheat them of their pay. He then withdrew amid cheers.

  The great investigation into harlotry became the talk of Rome. That was when I first heard it suggested that the Emperor was mad. Of course he was completely sane; but he had nothing important with which to occupy his time, he delighted in eccentric behaviour, and he knew that sexually he was unlike the majority of his subjects. It was unfortunate that he could not resign himself to the difference, and cease prying into a question he would never solve.

  Then something happened that no one could have foreseen. Just about the time of his seventeenth birthday the Emperor fell in love with a woman. He could not have chosen anyone less suitable, if he had raked through that circus full of whores; but so it is that Cupid often strikes.

  The lady of his choice was Annia Faustina. She was in fact a lady of good birth and excellent reputation, the kind of well-bred Roman matron any respectable Emperor might marry amid the applause of his subjects. But she happened to be the widow of Pomponius Bassus, who had been compelled to kill himself as an accomplice of Seius Carus; and she was in her middle forties, old enough to be his mother. In fact she was older than her closest friend, his aunt the lady Mamea.

  It was just possible to discern the qualities that made her attractive to the Emperor. She was soft and pink-and-white and motherly, with a knack of putting young men at their ease. Nothing could shock her, though her own conduct was always correct. She could talk by the hour about the gods, and was especially learned in the rituals of Syria. She knew the points of a horse, and could watch a race intelligently. What clinched it was that she had the courage, and the ambition, to wish to be Empress even if it meant marrying the Emperor Elagabalus.

  When I first heard the rumour that a lady was visiting the Pincian gardens I refused to believe it. A few days later I myself was commanded there, and was thunderstruck to meet the lady Faustina driving sedately in a two-girl carriage. As a compliment the Emperor had lent her his best team; the girls, who were twins and a perfect pair, answered the bit without trouble and ran nearly as fast as real horses.

  The Emperor’s carriage pattered beside hers. He was gazing into her cow-like eyes as a dog gazes at a bone.

  Six days later they were married. The courtiers began to adjust themselves to the new situation, like ants repairing their nest after it has been trodden on.

  First to take advantage of the new state of affairs was the lady Mamea. Any unprejudiced observer could see that the new Empress was past childbearing; but the Emperor was not unprejudiced, and it was not difficult to persuade him that he might soon be a father. Since his son would be his heir that would settle the succession. But in the meantime, Mamea suggested a Syrian with a proper respect for the ties of kinship ought to recognize his cousin Alexianus as Caesar and heir presumptive. The graceful compliment would mean nothing, but the denial of it might seem a slur on the best friend of the Empress, the lady Mamea. The whole imperial family united to press this proposal on the Emperor. Shortly afterwards the Senate and the magistrates were summoned to witness the public adoption of the Caesar Alexianus, who from that moment became in law the son of Antoninus Elagabalus. The father was seventeen years of age and the son thirteen; but in the past the Purple has been transmitted by less plausible adoptions.

  The stable boys worried about their future. Hitherto they had done no harm to anybody, and the great point in their favour was that their maintenance cost the treasury very little. Every Emperor chooses favourites; in the nature of the case Senators will object to the low birth of these favourites; but if they are genuinely sprung from the dregs of the people, as were the stable boys, they will be content with soft living from day to day, knowing themselves unfit to govern provinces or command armies.

  Now Gordius and Protogenes set themselves to make money while the sun still shone on them. As Praefect of the Watch Gordius could put the screw on all the bad characters of Rome, brothel-keepers, hired bullies, an
d the owners of low drinking-dens; though he was restrained from going too far by the knowledge that the Emperor liked people of this kind. The cost of loose living rose, but the rakes of Rome could well afford it.

  Protogenes had less to work with, nothing but his voice in the Senate. He began quietly by speaking for various private interests; but there was not much money in that, since under our system of taxation a private interest can only flourish if it is completely unnoticed by the government. Soon he was blackmailing other Senators, threatening to accuse them of treason unless they paid him to keep his mouth shut. That is perhaps the most dastardly crime a public man can commit, and it made him hated even by the lower orders. He was not really a wicked man; but since our Emperor came to Rome there had not been a single delation, so he did not realize the full horror of his conduct.

  Claudius the Barber was already on such a good thing, the control of the corn supply, that he grew rich without effort. He was hated by the peasantry, who saw their crops taken to feed idlers better off than themselves; but even an honest Praefect of the corn supply would be hated by the peasantry.

  A new favourite, a cook named Zoticus, caused even more trouble. He was one of the finest men I have ever seen, tall with broad shoulders and a slim waist; he looked worthy of a place in the front rank of the Praetorians, and was in fact a chicken-livered scoundrel. He was a new arrival from the east, brought to Rome by a cousin among the stable boys, and he did not understand the fundamental kindliness of the Emperor. In the imperial bedchamber he had taken over some of the duties hitherto performed by Gordius; he was so high in favour that there were rumours of another marriage ceremony, though I myself doubted it. This rascal began to sell the Emperor’s forgiveness to rich men who had never been in genuine danger. He would emerge from the bedchamber to whisper that the Emperor was looking for estates to confiscate, and promise to put in a good word for anyone who would reward him. Since the Emperor never wished to confiscate a great estate the good word put in by Zoticus never failed of its effect. But whenever he sold the Emperor’s imaginary forgiveness some important noble went away hating the Emperor as an avaricious despot.