by Mika Waltari
“I’d* never dare,” I said, trying to make light of it all. “From now on I’ll take to my heels whenever I see you. You treated me roughly.”
Yet I did not take to my heels, but in fact accompanied Sabina back to the Prefect’s house. Her greenish eyes were full of laughter and her bare arm was as smooth as marble. A week later, my father and his following of two hundred clients and slaves were taken to Flavius Sabinus’ house to present my proposal.
Tullia and Aunt Laelia had other ideas in mind, but this betrothal was by no means a bad one. The Flavius family was poor, but my father’s fortune balanced this.
At Sabina’s request, we were married according to the longer form, although I had no intention of entering a College of any kind. But Sabina said she wanted to be married for life and did not want a divorce, and naturally I did as she wished. We had not been married all that long before I noticed that I let her have her own way in many more ways than that.
But our wedding feast was a fine one. At my father’s expense and in the name of the City Prefect, all the people were invited to a free meal, not only the Senate and the knights. Nero came to the feast himself and appeared in the wedding procession as well as singing an indecent wedding hymn he himself had composed to the music of a flute.
Finally he politely turned his torch upside down and left without fuss.
I took the scarlet veil from Sabina’s head and lifted the yellow mantle from her shoulders. But when I wanted to untie the two hard knots in her linen girdle, she sat down, her green eyes flashing, and cried, “I am a Sabine woman. Take me as the Sabine women were taken.”
But I did not even have a horse, nor was I good at the kind of plundering she wished for. I did not even understand what she wanted, for in my love for Claudia, I had become used to tenderness and mutual concessions.
Sabina was disappointed, but she closed her eyes and clenched her fists and let me do what I wanted and what the red veil obliged me to do. Finally she flung her strong arms around my neck, gave me a swift kiss and turned her back on me to go to sleep. I persuaded myself that we were both as happy as two wedding-tired people can be and fell asleep with a sigh of contentment.
Not until much later did I discover what Sabina had hoped for in physical love. The scars on my face had made her think I was quite different from what I am. Our first meeting in the street at night had made her dream that I could do to her what she wanted, but in that she was mistaken.
I bear her no grudge. She became even more disappointed in me than I in her. How and why she became what she did, I cannot explain. Venus is a capricious and often cruel goddess. Juno is more trustworthy from a family point of view, but in other matters of marriage, dull in the long run.
Book VII
Agrippina
As we spent the hottest part of the summer on the coast at Caere, my wife Flavia Sabina found an outlet for her need for activity in building us a new modern summer dwelling, instead of the old rush-roofed fisherman’s hut. At the same time she observed me and my weaknesses, without my knowledge, and without mention of my future plans, for she noticed that the mere mention of office depressed me. After our return to the city, she consulted her father, with the result that the City Prefect, Flavius Sabinus, sent for me.
“The wooden amphitheater is just being completed and Nero himself is to be present at the opening ceremony,” he told me. “I am having trouble with the valuable wild animals which keep arriving from all corners of the world. The old menagerie in the via Flaminia is much too small, and Nero is making special demands. He wants trained animals which can perform acts which have never before been seen, and senators and knights are to give demonstrations of their hunting skills in the arena. So the animals which care to be hunted mustn’t be too wild. On the other hand, the animals which are to fight each other must be exciting enough to watch. What we need is a reliable superintendent who will be responsible for the animals and who will also arrange all that part of the program. Nero is willing to nominate you for the post, as you have some experience with wild animals, and it is a worthy office in the service of the State.”
I suppose I had only myself to blame for this, as I had happened to boast that as a boy I had once captured a lion alive, and among the brigands in Cilicia I had once saved the lives of my companions when a brigand chieftain amused himself by chasing us into a bear’s cave. But to care for hundreds of wild animals and arrange performances in the amphitheater was such a responsibility that I did not consider I had the right qualifications to fill the post.
When I said this to my father-in-law, he replied caustically, “You’ll receive whatever money you need from the Imperial treasury. The most experienced animal trainers from every country will be competing to enter the service of Rome. Nothing more is asked of you than good judgment and good taste in choosing the programs. Sabina will help you. She has been running around the menagerie since she was a child and loves taming animals.”
This was news to me. Cursing my fate, I returned home and complained bitterly to Sabina.
“I’’d rather take the post of Quaestor to please you than be an animal trainer,” I said.
Sabina looked at me, as if summing me up, then put her head on one side.
“No, you’d never be a consul, you poor thing,” she said. “So why shouldn’t you have an exciting and interesting life as superintendent of the menagerie? There’s never been anyone in that post with the rank of knight before.”
I told her my interests lay more in a bookish direction.
“What’s a reputation earned in a lecture room worth,” she said scornfully, “where fifty or a hundred people clap their hands in gratitude when you at last stop reading? You’re an unenterprising idler. You’ve no ambition at all.”
Sabina was so angry that I did not dare annoy her even more, although the reputation to be gained from stinking wild animals did not appeal to me. We went at once to the menagerie, and during our brief tour, I could see that matters were even worse than the City Prefect had described.
The animals were starving after their long journeys and they had no suitable food. A valuable tiger lay dying, and no one had any real idea what the rhinos, which had been brought from Africa at great expense, normally ate, for they had trampled their experienced keeper to death. The drinking water was foul, and the elephants would not eat. The cages were much too cramped and dirty. The giraffes were practically dying of fright because they had been placed next to the lions’ cages.
The bellowing and roaring from the harassed animals made my head spin and the stench was overpowering. None of the foremen and slaves in the menagerie wished to be responsible for anything. “Not my job,” was the usual reply when I attempted to ask anyone anything. They even protested that hungry and frightened animals fought better in the arena, as long as one could keep them more or less alive until the day of the performance.
Sabina was most interested in two enormous hairy apes, larger than men, which had been brought to Rome from some unknown part of Africa. They took no notice of the meat offered to them and would not even drink.
“The whole place must be rebuilt,” I said decisively. ‘The animal trainers must have enough space and the cages must be big enough for the animals to be able to move about. Running water must be brought to them. Every species of animal must be fed and cared for by especially appointed men who know their habits.”
The foreman with me shook his head.
“What’s the point of that?” he said. “The animals will die in the arena anyhow.”
Infuriated by all these objections, I flung the apple I had been eating at the cage of giant apes.
“Must the first thing I do be to flog you all,” I shouted, “so that you learn your trade?”
Sabina put her hand on my arm to calm me, at the same time nodding toward the apes. I watched in wonder as a hairy arm reached out for the apple, and then the beast bared its frightful teeth and crunched up the apple in one bite. I frowned and looked as ster
n as I could.
“Give them a basket of fruit,” I said, “and fresh water in a clean vessel.”
The keeper burst out laughing.
“Wild animals like that are meat eaters,” he said. “You can see that from their teeth.”
Sabina snatched the whip from his hand and struck him across the face.
“Is that the way to speak to your master?” she cried.
The man was both frightened and angry, but to show me up, he fetched a basket of fruit and emptied it into the cage. The starving animals came to life and fell on the food, and to my own surprise, they even liked grapes. This was so strange to the keepers that they all gathered around to watch and stopped laughing at my orders.
When my authority had been established, I soon noticed that the main failing was not lack of experience but a general indifference and lack of discipline. From foreman down to slaves, it was considered a natural right to steal some of the ingredients of the animals’ food and so the animals were haphazardly fed.
The architect who had designed Nero’s wooden amphitheater and was responsible for its construction considered it beneath him to trouble with animals cages and exercising yards. But when he saw my drawings and heard Sabina’s explanations of what was involved, in fact an entirely new section of the city, he became interested.
I dismissed or gave other work to all the men who were amusing themselves by tormenting the animals, or who were too frightened of them. Sabina and I thought up an attractive uniform for the menagerie’s many employees, and we also built ourselves a house within the menagerie grounds, for I soon noticed that I had to be at the place day and night if I really wished to care for these valuable animals properly.
We abandoned all social life and devoted ourselves completely to the animals, even to the extent of Sabina’s keeping lion cubs in our bed and forcing me to feed them from a horn when their mother died at their birth. Our own married life we forgot in the rush, for to supervise a menagerie is undoubtedly an exciting and responsible task.
When we had cleaned up the menagerie, found sufficient regular provisions and appointed efficient and interested keepers for all the different animals, we had to begin planning the events for the inaugural performance in the amphitheater, the day of which was approaching with alarming speed.
I had watched a sufficient number of animal fights to know how hunts should be organized in the arena to be as safe as possible for the huntsmen but yet look exciting. It was more difficult to decide which animals should be set against which, for the crowd was used to seeing the most remarkable combinations of this kind. I had great hopes of. the displays by the trained animals, for skilled animal trainers from every country were constantly offering me their services.
The actual practicing for these displays proved less difficult than trying to keep them secret until the day. We were constantly overrun with spectators who wanted to come into the menagerie, so in the end I decided on an entry fee for those who wished to walk about. The money that came in in this way, I used for the menagerie itself, although I could have kept it, as had been my initial idea. Children and slaves came in free, if the crowds were not too great.
A week before the inauguration, a lame bearded man came to see me, and I did not recognize him as Simon the magician until he began to speak to me. The ban on fortunetelling by the stars was still in force, so he could no longer use his handsome Chaldaean cloak covered with the signs of the zodiac. He looked wretched and destitute, his eyes restless, and he made such a strange request that at first I thought he had lost his reason. He wished to give a public demonstration of flying in the amphitheater to retrieve his good name and reputation.
As far as I could make out from his confused account, his powers of faith-healing had declined and he was no longer fashionable. His daughter had died from the intrigues of hostile magicians, he maintained. The Christians in Rome, in particular, had hated and persecuted him to such an extent that he was threatened with destitution and an insecure old age. So now he wished to demonstrate his divine powers to all the people.
“I know that I can fly,” he said. “Before, I flew in front of great crowds and appeared from a cloud, until one of the Christian messengers came with their sorcery and made me fall in the forum and break my knee. I want to prove that I can still fly, to myself as well as others. I once threw myself down from the Aventine tower at night in a heavy storm and spread out my cloak for wings. I flew without any difficulty and landed unscathed on my feet.”
“In truth, I never believed you flew,” I said, “but simply distorted people’s eyes so that they believed they had seen you flying.”
Simon the magician twisted his gnarled hands and scratched his bearded chin.
“Perhaps I did distort people’s eyes,” he said, “but no matter. I was forced to persuade myself that I was flying, with such power that I still believe I have flown. But I do not strive to reach the clouds any longer. It will be sufficient for me if I succeed in flying once or twice around the amphitheater. Then I shall believe in my own power and that my angels are holding me up in the air,”
The thought of flying was the only thing in his head, so in the end I asked how he thought he was going to arrange it. He explained that a high mast could be erected in the middle of the amphitheater and he could be pulled up to the top in a basket so that he would be sufficiently high, for he could not raise himself from the ground with a hundred thousand people looking on. He stared at me with his piercing eyes and spoke so convincingly that my head whirled. At least, I thought, this would be an event which had never before been seen in any amphitheater, and it was Simon the magician’s own business if he felt he had to risk breaking his neck. Perhaps he might even succeed in his reckless attempt.
Nero came to the amphitheater to watch when several Greek youths were practicing a sword dance. It was a hot autumn day, and Nero wore nothing but a sweat-drenched tunic as he shouted praises and urged the youths on, occasionally taking a part in the dance himself to set an example to them. When I put Simon the magician’s proposal to him, he was at once enthusiastic.
“Flying is remarkable enough in itself,” he added, “but we must find an artistic framework to make an exceptional event of it. He can be Icarus, but we must get Daedalus and his masterpiece in too. Why not Pasiphae too, so the crowd can have some fun?”
His imagination began to work with such liveliness that I was thankful for my good fortune. We also agreed that Simon should shave off his beard, dress up as a Greek youth, and have glittering gilded wings fastened to his back.
When I put these Imperial demands to Simon, at first he refused point-blank to shave, maintaining that it would take his powers away. He had no objections to the wings. When I spoke of Daedalus and the wooden cow, he told me of the Jewish myth about Sampson, who had lost all his strength when a strange woman had cut off his hair. But when I suggested that he obviously had little faith in his ability to fly, he agreed to the demands. I asked him whether he wanted the mast erected at once to give him time to practice, but he said practicing would only weaken his powers. It would be better if he fasted and read incantations in solitude to gather his strength for the day of the performance.
Nero had prescribed that the program should both edify and entertain the public. For the first time in history, a huge show of this kind was to take place without the deliberate spilling of human blood. Thus the people had to be made to laugh as much as possible between the exciting and artistically excellent events. During unavoidable intervals, gifts were to be thrown to the crowd, such as roasted birds, fruit and cakes, and ivory lottery tablets, from which lots for corn, clothes, silver and gold, draft oxen, slaves and even land would be drawn later on.
Nero did not want to have professional gladiators at all. So, and to emphasize the worthiness and dignity of his show, he ordered that the games should be introduced with a battle between four hundred senators and six hundred knights. It amused the people to see important men of irreproachable re
putation battering at each other with wooden swords and blunted lances. Groups of elite warriors also displayed their skills, but the crowd was dissatisfied when no one was injured, and began to mate itself heard volubly on this point. The soldiers on guard began to move in, but Nero made it known that he wished them to withdraw so that the people of Rome should get used to freedom.
This command roused applause and general delight. The malcontents restrained themselves, to show that they were worthy of the Emperor’s confidence. A duel with nets and tridents between two fat and breathless senators was so comical that the crowd let out a giant roar of laughter, and both gentlemen in fact became so angry with each other that they would certainly have been hurt had the tridents been sharpened or if the nets had had the usual lead weights on them.
Three men displaying giant snakes caused considerable horror when they allowed the snakes to crawl all over them, but Nero was not pleased when no one realized they were supposed to represent Laocoon and his sons. The lion, tiger and bison hunts ran their course without mishap, much to the disappointment of the crowd, for which the young knights representing the huntsmen had me to thank as I had had protective towers built for them here and there in the arena. I myself disliked this display because I had already become so fond of my animals that I did not like to see them killed.
There was gigantic applause for a young lion-tamer, a supple young woman who came rushing out of a dark entrance, straight across the arena, with three apparently raging lions at her heels. A great hum went through the crowd, but the woman halted the lions with her whip in the middle of the sand and made them sit down obediently like dogs, and jump through hoops at her commands.
The noise and applause must have upset the lions, for when the woman did her boldest act, forcing the great male lion to open his mouth and placing her own head inside it, the lion quite unexpectedly closed his jaws again and bit into her head. This surprise caused such jubilation and such a storm of applause that I had time to rescue the lions.
