Claudius Caesar did not travel lightly. There were hundreds of us. Those who you could not accommodate in your home set up camp near the olive grove. In the evening, the musicians and dancers performed. There wasn’t room in your garden, so ground was cleared on a nearby hill. Torches were lit. Wine was poured.
My uncle sat beside you. The two of you talked and talked. Mother insisted I sit close by, in order to hear how kings and emperors conversed. I remember Caesar sought your advice about Britannia, how to supress a tribe that was bristling under Roman rule. You told Caesar there was nothing to be done. ‘One tribe or another will always be looking for a fight,’ you said, ‘whether against another tribe or Rome itself. That is the nature of the land you have conquered.’
My uncle responded with platitudes of the principate’s unrivalled power. I will never forget your reply. You looked at Caesar – then, master of all – and said: ‘Power is a ghost. One that will tire of haunting you soon enough.’
You spoke treason; yet Claudius did not have you arrested, or give you the back of his hand. He chewed on your words a while, then gave a slight nod of his head.
Your advice had great import for the Emperor then, and it has some for the Emperor now. You see: I find myself surrounded by men who marvel at my divinity, and commend my stewardship of the Empire – a stewardship that will last, according to them, sometime between now and eternity. But tonight, as I ready for bed, after a string of dark portents and evil dreams, I wonder: what would Caratacus say to me? What advice would Rome’s most famous prisoner give?
It is an interesting topic: the nature of Caesar’s power. Unfortunately, I cannot debate such things – at least not with my subjects. You have ruled; you understand. Men spy weakness like a hawk circling from above. Thoughtfulness is often twisted into vulnerability.
So I have imputed your past advice to my current circumstance. And I have considered your words for half the night. What is my response? Your advice contains some truth; I must concede the point. There have been four emperors before me. All met their end eventually. But your advice is premature. I grow more confident of this fact as I write. There will come a day when you are right, old friend, but today you are wrong.
Thank you for letting your Emperor write what he cannot say. The treasonous advice you gave to my uncle all those years ago, and which I imputed to you this evening – it is forgiven. You mean a great deal to me, as you did to my uncle. Plus, you were a king. You are given allowances others are not.
Send your prince some lemons so he knows you are well.
Yours,
Nero Claudius Caesar Imperator
Beneventum, 16 January [A.D. 65]
My Dear Emperor:
Of course I remember when we first met. It was a fine evening. The moon was full, which augured well, and the air was unseasonably crisp. It reminded me of home. I remember you were timid for a future emperor, soft-spoken and deferential, but bold in your own way. I watched you sit in rapt attention to the poets. I remember thinking, he is an artist – a good thing for a king to be, especially a Roman king. Romans lack artistry. Yours is an empire of engineers, heavy drinkers, and thieves. Roman art is merely Greek art, stolen and carted back on your well-built roads. An artist prince of Rome, I thought, now that would be a welcome change.
Never conflate hard truths with treason, my young king. That way tyranny lies. All things come to an end. To say as much does not amount to treason. It is merely honest observation. Which is something you, like your uncle before you, do not receive from your subjects and why letters are delivered to me with lunar regularity. And please do not misconstrue honest observation with desire. I hope your rule lasts as long as your astrologer predicts. Rome needs its artist prince.
You write asking for advice. But then, in the same letter, you anticipate and dismiss my advice. This is a trick of kings, I think; one I lost with my crown.
My advice – should you still covet it – is simple: drink, laugh, sing, read – read poetry and history and philosophy; travel and see the world. Love. You are still young – at least in this old man’s eyes. Guzzle down all that life has to offer, while you can.
What news from the capital? My slave visited the market yesterday and returned with bad tidings. She reports that a woman was arrested in Miscenum on charges of treason. Word from the horse’s mouth would be welcome, should you wish to give it, to fill my quiet days on the farm.
I hope you enjoy the lemons.
Yours,
Caratacus
Rome, 18 February [A.D. 65]
Dear Caratacus:
Much has happened since I wrote you last. The full details are yet unknown. This is what we do know.
The slave woman you refer to was arrested in Miscenum after she asked a local captain to participate in a conspiracy to murder me, their Emperor. (I have great difficulty writing this even now, weeks later. Rage makes my arm shake.) She was arrested and questioned, but apparently knew little of the plot itself. It was not until recently that the simmering pot of intrigue finally boiled over.
Six nights ago, Flavius Scaevinus (a lazy, contemptible senator) emerged from a long, private conversation with Natlis, a knight with known republican sympathies. Scaevinus ordered his freedman, a man by the name of Milichus, to sharpen a blade. Scaeinus then revised his will, gave freedom to his favourite slaves and – boldest of all – had bandages prepared to staunch wounds he had not yet received.
This man Milichus put two and two together and, realising there was more to be gained by reporting what he had witnessed rather than being silent, ran to find me at the Servilian garden.
Scaevinus and Natalis were arrested and questioned under threat of torture until they named three conspirators, two senators and one knight. These three were brought to the Palace, separated, questioned, and each named two more accomplices.
There is a phenomenon I witnessed once when crossing the Alps. Snow – an army of it, miles wide – will slide down the face of a mountain, crushing everything in its path, building momentum as it falls. It is called an ‘avalanche’. This is the only apt comparison to what transpired next. As we accumulated more names and brought those persons in for questioning, more names were given. This process was repeated again and again. And, like an avalanche, the momentum was devastating. We are still investigating with no end in sight.
Many have taken their own lives before they could be arrested; older, more distinguished patricians have been given the chance to do the same. The funeral pyres of the guilty, lit by their families, have been burning for two days. The devastation is so great that the very sky above the city is black with smoke and an acrid stench of burnt flesh fills my lungs this very moment. The white marble walls of the palace and forum and the city’s temples are streaked black, and the populace wears black – nearly every citizen – so wide and pervasive was the conspiracy.
I began questioning conspirators hoping to learn the reason for their treachery. I had to stop. There was no thread of reason, no common cause. Some sought revenge for affronts, however slight; some wanted the chance to rise with another; some thought me not worthy of the principate because I ride chariots in the circus and composed poetry and ‘acted the Greek’ – as though their lives weren’t perfectly content otherwise.
Have you ever dealt with such a thing? You ruled for years, barbarians at that. Did you ever face such treachery?
Yours,
Nero Claudius Caesar Imperator
Beneventum, 1 March [A.D. 65]
My Dear Emperor:
I have your letter of 18 February and the advantage of further news from Rome. I have heard the man who orchestrated the plot was the elder Piso and, to escape the odium of his failed treachery, he has opened his veins.
I met Piso once, years ago. I recall he was quite tall, even by Celtic standards, with a little nose always aimed at the sky. He informed me of his noble birth the moment we met. Second only to your pedigree, he said, with ties to the royal family, stretching back to Rome’s fir
st kings. I am not surprised such a man was involved in the attempt on your life, only that he was their chosen leader. How could they not see his cruelty? His meanness? Such are coups, I suppose. One sees the chance to rise and little else.
I am also surprised – shocked, even – that your tutor, the great Seneca was involved. I am sorry, my friend. I know how much he meant to you. These are truly dark days.
To answer your question: no, I never dealt with such treachery. I believe that I benefited from factors beyond my control. In Britannia we had a common enemy: Rome. With our lives and freedom in the balance, we had no time to plot and conspire against one another. We focused our energies elsewhere, on Rome, on surviving. And my job was not desirable. Most didn’t think themselves up to the task. Your circumstances are different. Rome has no enemies and your subjects see you enjoying life – the circus, your evenings spent gallivanting from one pub to the next (I have heard the stories), your beautiful wives and strapping young slaves. The crown did not appear heavy, but rather attractive.
There is a third factor, but I am not sure I have the words for it. It concerns your countrymen’s endless desire to fight one another, the need for one citizen to sink his teeth into the next. The curse of the wolf is how it was explained to me, when I first came to Rome. A story for another day, perhaps.
Be well.
Caratacus
Rome, 7 April [A.D. 65]
Dear Caratacus:
The news, as you have heard it, is more or less correct, except for one point: Seneca was not in league with Piso – not directly. His involvement was more duplicitous. Seneca was asked to participate in the coup and, although he declined, he chose not to warn me. My former tutor – the man who guided me through my youth – knew I was to be killed. Yet he said nothing. It was an ingenious plan, I must admit. He stood to benefit whether the coup succeeded or not. If Piso was successful, he would have awarded Seneca for keeping quiet, and he would have required Seneca’s experience as a statesman. It was Seneca’s ticket back to Rome after I had sent him away. But if Piso was unsuccessful, Seneca remained uninvolved. Of course, Seneca failed to plan for the unlikely chance his meeting with Piso was observed and knowledge of the plot could be traced back to him.
One senator in particular was instrumental in bringing Seneca’s involvement to light. His name is Cocceius Nerva. He produced two witnesses to the meeting between Piso and Seneca. They may have been spies planted by Nerva (I am not altogether naive), but their intelligence was corroborated and deemed correct.
I am trying to move on. At Nerva’s suggestion, we have tried to recast the narrative. Piso and his colleagues intended to commit the deed in the Temple of the Sun. So there we have made sacrifices to the sun god, rams and cattle, thanking the god for delivering me from peril. As for the sword Scaevinus sharpened the night before he was discovered, I have inscribed on it ‘To Jupiter the Avenger’, and it will now be kept in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline. The message: the gods are with Caesar; you should be as well.
What do you know of the curse of the wolf? I should like to hear a barbarian king’s view on Rome’s dark, bloody history, and your first days in Rome.
Sincerely,
Caesar
Beneventum, 8 April [A.D. 65]
My Dear Emperor:
If you want the story, then I must start at the beginning. I cannot recall what I told you of my first years in the capital. Forgive me if I trudge over ground already tilled.
After I lost the war, I was taken to Rome. It was my first time in Italy, my first time seeing the city the world never ceases to talk about. ‘Welcome to civilisation,’ they said when they dragged me to the city gates, chained like a criminal. I knew Latin even then. I’d learned it as a boy, when I travelled south to Gaul. My father had insisted, ‘If you are to lead,’ he said, ‘you must learn the language of those men who rule to the south, those who will come for us one day, with their big noses and little legs and shining engines of war.’ I learned a great deal – more than any Celt I knew – but I never understood this word, ‘civilisation’. My tutor would often say, ‘You come from the wilds, not civilisation.’ But in Britannia – before the Romans came – we had cities and roads; we smelted iron and worked metal; we danced and sang and laughed and made love; we had kings – too many kings! ‘Why,’ I would ask my tutor, again and again, ‘is my home “the Wilds”?’ I never received an adequate reply.
It was not until I was standing outside the walls of Rome, defeated and chained, that the word was finally defined for me------ – not in words, but in the form of a city. And I thought: you can keep it.
Yes, in a way, their city – your city – was impressive: white marble and red brick everywhere, temples as tall as trees, arcades as long as valleys, and people – more people than I had ever seen, all milling around an expanse of brick and stone as though they owned it, with that peculiar Roman swagger; all manner of folk of every size, shape and shade. But gods was it loud, loud and dirty – dirtier than any village in Britannia. (Piss is meant for the forest, at the foot of a tree, seeping down into the roots. It is madness that you Romans collect it in jugs, walk around the city with it sloshing around, spilling out over the edge and on to the street or any passerby, and then use it to wash – wash! – your linen. Madness.) As I stood there in chains, I thought: this confluence of noise, dirt and piss was ‘civilisation’? Who would choose this sea of filth and noise? Civilisation? No, I’d rather not.
I was kept locked away, somewhere beneath the city, a room with no windows, only walls of rough stone and the sound of water dripping, dripping, dripping. I had visitors, more than you would expect: rich men and their friends, their wives, sometimes even their children, who came to see a barbarian king under the yoke. They spoke assuming I couldn’t understand them, discussing me like I was an animal. ‘Oh, he is ghastly, isn’t he dear?’ ‘Lucius, take a good look. If you are not good, he will come for you in the night.’ ‘Let’s have a look at his cock!’ I would sit there quietly, hoping to maintain my dignity, whatever of it remained.
One night, a woman visited me. Locusta. I had heard the name before, even far away in the ‘wilds’ of Britannia; a witch, famed for her spells and poisons. I had expected an ugly woman, old, with moles and wrinkles. (That’s what witches are like in the north.) She was nothing of the kind. She had dark, lustrous hair, large purple eyes, and breasts that I will never forget bound up under a black stola and shawl; an ocean of flowing dark against perfect, milky white skin, like the moon against the night sky.
‘I require the blood and semen of a king,’ she said, holding a knife and a vial. ‘How would you prefer to give it?’
Wanting to sound gallant for the beauty I saw before me, aching for any human contact, even a witch of Rome, I said, ‘How ever you’d like.’
She was a vicious lover, pulling on my beard, biting my neck, scratching my back and my thighs, my scalp and my belly. She would take me inside her, reach around and grab my sack and then twist it, all while pulling my hair and screeching with evil pleasure, like an angry owl scaring away the day. She stayed with me the entire night. In between each tryst, she would lie quietly with her head on my chest, as a wife would, as mine had with me. Only once did she draw blood from my veins, dripping it into her vial for a purpose I did not care to know. It was during one of these interludes that she spoke to me of Rome and its dark history.
‘There’s no harm in you knowing the truth,’ she said.
‘Because I am to die.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You will not die – at least not for many years. But you will never leave Italy. No harm can come from your knowing Rome’s secrets.’
And then she told me the story of the wolf.
‘Rome is cursed,’ she said. ‘Some believe the blight originates in fratricide, when Romulus slew his brother Remus and drew the scorn of the gods. But this is incorrect. The curse predates the murder, to the wolf that suckled them as babes. You know of the twins, no?’
Her head was on my chest. When she asked this, she looked up at me, with her dark purple eyes, digging her chin into my chest and her hot breath blowing onto my clammy skin.
‘Before Rome,’ she said ‘the great power in Italy was Alba Longa. Its king was Numitor. One day, Numitor’s brother Amulius rose up, imprisoned Numitor, killed his sons and sold his daughter to the worshipers of Vestal, where she was to be a virgin dedicated to the gods. Though sworn to chastity, she nevertheless conceived after she was forced to lie with man or god. Some say it was Mars. Some say Hercules. Some say it was the pig farmer down the road. When Amulius learned his niece had produced not one but two contenders to his throne, he stole the twin babes, carted them off to the Tiber, and left them to die in the reeds.’
By this point, the witch had folded her arms on top my chest and was staring straight into my eyes, and I could feel the beating of her heart against my belly.
‘They were left to die,’ she continued. ‘But a she-wolf rescued them, offering them her milk. Many forget now, with the way Rome has mastered all, but wolves were once man’s greatest enemy, hunting and eating our kin. The battle between man and wolf was waged for centuries. This is the source of Rome’s taint. The she-wolf was not sent by the gods. She was evil, hate transformed into solidity, and her milk was a primordial blight that infected the twins who consumed it. It made the twins militant and strong, with more cunning and endurance than any man in the whole of Latium, skills that would be passed on to successive generations and lead to empire, but it turned them, twisting their souls; greed and ambition festered. When the twins grew into men, before claiming their right to the crown, Romulus slew his brother Remus. Because of the blight, this was simply a matter of time, and an act which would repeat itself again and again. Brother was to kill brother, citizen would kill citizen, for eternity, until time itself swallows up the empire and the world is at an end.’
David Page 29
