The Nero Prediction

by Humphry Knipe

  Nero, who looked a little tearful as he waved his mother good-bye from the palace steps, brightened when he saw the horses. "Look at them Epaphroditus!" he said, squinting at them, "Aren't they beautiful? Arabians, all the way from Alexandria. The chap who brought them for me, an old friend of mother's actually, swears they're the fastest team in Rome and he ought to know, he made the Greens top dogs in Caligula's time. Promises he can do the same for me. Also, he’s going to be giving me driving lessons, they say he’s the best trainer in the empire. Why are you looking so glum? C'mon man, spit it out!"

  I wished I could but my tongue had turned to lead. It was Tigellinus driving the chariot, Tigellinus once more hoping to ride into favor on horseback.

  That evening Euodus took me to him in the suite of rooms Nero had given him near the stables on the south side of the Palatine where he wouldn't be far from the horses. Earlier I'd seen the congratulatory squeeze he'd had given the imperial shoulder after Nero had driven his Egyptian team around the Palatine track at break-neck speed. With a sinking feeling I'd watched him monopolize Nero's ear with horse talk at dinner. He’d moved to southern Italy shortly after Claudius’s death, Tigellinus said. Bought some property there where he was breeding champions with Arabians he’d brought from Alexandria.

  The spider moving ever closer to the center of the web.

  Tigellinus was out on the balcony gazing at the vastness of the star-lit Circus Maximus, merely a picture no longer. “Well done Epaphroditus, I’m proud of you. Splendid job you've done over the years. It’s almost as if you really do have extraordinary stars, instead of…”

  I felt my forehead crease in a frown. “What do you mean?”

  Tigellinus took a heavy bag of coins out of his pocket and dangled it in front of me like bait. I hadn’t seen it for more than six years. Phocion’s old moneybag, wrinkled as his face was, marked with the astrological X, the intersection of the Zodiac with the celestial equator, I knew that now. “Here’s the key.”

  “The key to what?”

  “The key to your success.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “You soon will. First a question. Was your astrologer friend a wealthy man?”

  “No. As I’m sure you know Phocion was an ex-slave who had a small stall in the market where he read tourists’ horoscopes for coppers.”

  “Then why was he carrying a small fortune in his pocket when he met you shortly after leaving the Records Office?”

  “It must have been everything he owned.”

  “You think he earned enough to save this much money?”

  “Possibly. Over the years.”

  “And he just happened to be carrying his life savings around with him in his pocket?”

  I could feel myself beginning to sweat. “He must have brought the money in case he couldn’t find my certificate before someone else did because then I’d need cash to get away.”

  “Exactly one hundred tetradrachmas?”

  “I never had time to count them.”

  “The Copy Master did.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the advance he paid Phocion for the work of discovering the birth time of the boy Agrippina was looking for. Phocion didn’t go to the Records Office to steal your certificate. He went there with the auspicious birth time he’d discovered, to collect the balance of his commission.”

  The cry sprang from my heart. “No!”

  Tigellinus smiled coldly. “Then all the Copy Master had to do was write the birth time on someone’s certificate of ownership, someone who was more or less sixteen and then claim the reward for himself, a thousand tetradrachmas, a small fortune, minus a small commission for his pet astrologer.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Why?”

  “Because it doesn’t make sense. Why would Phocion invent my horoscope, sell it to the Copy Master then tell me to run for my life?”

  My bold language didn’t ruffle Tigellinus’s chilling calm. “Tell me, Epaphroditus, was Phocion a vain man?”

  “No.”

  “Even about his astrological skills?”

  “He was proud of them but admitted that there were astrologers who knew more than he did.”

  “I’ve kept it to myself, of course, but shortly after you sailed one of my men told me that early in the morning of the day that Phocion went to the Records Office he visited Phocion in that market stall of his. Thought Phocion might have done horoscopes for a few sixteen-year-olds born in July. Fortunately for you my man went a little too far. He told Phocion the actual day in July on which the boy was born. Since he knew the day, all Phocion had to do was find the lucky time, took it as a challenge, perhaps. There’s only one time that jumps out at you and he probably found it within a few minutes. He rushed it to his old friend the Copy Master.”

  My laugh sounded hollow. “Why would he do that?”

  “According to the Copy Master he dropped in on Phocion earlier in the day, before my man visited him, told him about the search and about the reward. Said he gave him a hundred in advance -” he jingled that bag, “-this hundred, promised him another if he came up with the right birth time. Turned out he did.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “We have the Copy Master’s word.”

  “Not given freely. Given under torture.”

  Tigellinus gaze carried a hint of something frightening. “Is there any difference?”

  “None of this explains why Phocion gave me the money and told me to flee.”

  “This does. The Copy Master didn’t tell Phocion that he intended to forge the birth time onto your certificate. When the Copy Master told him that, Phocion panicked. It was then he must have realized that both he and the Copy Master had been blinded by greed, that they’d forgotten that we’d do a background check, that we’d force the truth out of them. Tell me, did Phocion know about your little enterprise with the Copy Master, all those forged letters?”

  “Yes, when it started I asked him what to do. He said I could do nothing about it. Said something about rendering unto Caesar.”

  “There! Phocion knew that your little forgery racket would come out as well, that you’d at least lose your hand.”

  I fought the dreadful numbness that was spreading through me. “But the opposite could equally be true. Phocion didn’t give my birth time to the Copy Master. The Copy Master was tipped off that I was the one by Phocion’s attempt to get into the Records Office. He guessed correctly that it was my certificate Phocion was after. He looked up my certificate, submitted it. The birth time already on it proved to be the correct one. Lies were tortured out of him, and out of Phocion, lies that matched your suspicions, your wishes. Phocion believed in Christ. Herod’s soldiers searched for the infant Christ because of his horoscope, because it was predicted that he was the King of the Jews and the Messiah. Phocion must have been afraid that there was something that threatened the emperor in my horoscope, that the Romans had been told to find me and kill me. That’s why he gave me his advance and told me to disappear.”

  Tigellinus laughed, teeth as white as a shark’s. “You’re not telling me you’re the Messiah, are you?”

  “No, of course not.” I was fighting a losing battle, I felt that now. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Even though I was nearly twenty-three I was fighting back tears. “Everything you say could be a fabrication. There’s no hard evidence. Not a scrap.”

  In his moment of triumph the Sicilian’s smile was almost warm. “Oh yes there is! There’s the hundred in Phocion’s moneybag, the one he gave you, and there’s this.”

  The sheet of papyrus he passed me was written by the hand I’d thrown into the sea off Alexandria. It read, “Letter of Agreement between Phocion the astrologer and the Copy Master of the Museum of Alexandria. Phocion hereby accepts one hundred tetradrachmas for astrological services in connection with the discovery of a certain birth time. If the birth time proves to be correct he shall be paid another hundred tetradrachm
as by said Copy Master. If it is not correct he shall return the hundred that has been advanced to him. Signed Copy Master. Also signed Phocion, astrologer.” I was certain the writing and the signatures were genuine.

  Tigellinus didn’t crow. Instead he sounded like a friendly uncle. “Face it, Epaphroditus. You’re a cuckoo’s egg laid in a serpent’s nest. No one else knows except you and I and of course Euodus. Make sure it stays that way.”

  When Tigellinus snatched away my stars it hurt like a bandage being ripped off a suppurating abrasion. Inwardly I was screaming with a deep, hollow pain. Outwardly I straightened my back and said, "Sir, are you telling me that I have no stars?”

  “Why of course you have stars,” he said sounding like he was consoling a child. “Everyone has. The only problem is, no one knows what yours really are.”

  “Even so, as I understand it, I now serve the emperor."

  There was something gently mocking in the way Tigellinus nodded his head. "Of course and so do I. But we must remember that he's a mere boy of seventeen and not even a mature seventeen, someone who’s still more interested in music and chariot racing than military or political affairs. He needs to be defended from the serpents of this world for a few more years until he's strong enough to hold the reigns of empire in his own hands. Most of all he needs to be defended from his mother, a powerful woman in spite of her no longer being on the Palatine, a mother who still strives to rule the empire through him. It is I, working with you, who will help Nero break free."

  I felt exhausted. "What do you want me to do?"

  "It's probably safer if we don't appear to be too close. Carry on exactly as before. Keep your ear to the keyhole. Pass on anything you hear to Euodus."

  I raised an eyebrow at this. "Including matters concerning the emperor?"

  "Of course. I must know everything of importance if I'm to help him."

  "If he finds out…”

  A dangerous spark chased the shadows out of the dark blue eyes. “Make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Musical War

  January 56 A.D. – February 59 A.D.

  I read Cicero’s On Fate. I convinced myself that astrology was a false science even though Chance was such a dull god compared with the planets. I was no longer able to open my heart to the stars and feel the melting sensation of being one with the universe. I stopped gazing at the portrait of the young, victorious Tiberius. I wasn’t destined to be a hero, I was a parasite that fed on Agrippina’s gullibility. No hidden hand of Fate was guiding her actions. She was driven by her unscrupulous lust for power, nothing else. I was no more destined to be Nero’s shield than the slave who emptied his chamber pot. Euodus knew it, he must have known it all along. I was a worm wriggling on a hook. No, I was less than that. I was Tigellinus’s creature. At least I could sink no lower.

  My feet hit the ground when I accepted that. Tigellinus would guard my secret, he had everything to lose by revealing it. As long as he kept it he owned me, and as long as everyone else believed in my lucky stars they believed in me. A cuckoo in a serpent’s nest, he’d called me. Very well, I would peck my way out of my shell. Serpents are poisonous, but they can’t fly. That’s what I had to do, fly high and fast on the wings of my wits. My inspiration must come from earth, not heaven.

  Eight months after the death of Britannicus I found that inspiration. Nero had a revelation. As I've already mentioned, after his adoption by Claudius I'd helped him develop his musical skills by bribing his tutors not to tell Seneca, or his mother, about his absence from their classes. So it was appropriate that he revealed Musical War to me first.

  It was a chilly evening in early November. All day I'd been in the imperial box in Pompey's theater with Nero, cheering and jeering with the crowd as we reveled in the genius of the pantomime dancers. How was in possible for a man, mute except for the movement of his body, to so perfectly capture in dance every nuance of the human experience, to create out of nothing but his cloak the Fury's flail or the tail of the divine swan as Zeus seduced Leda? Of course the music helped, the rhythmic crashing of the scabellum's metal plates keeping the time, the brass instruments braying from everywhere in the crowded auditorium, the seductive movements of the on-stage flutes as they swayed in harmony with the pantomime's movements. Fueling the frenzy of excitement was the competition between factions in the audience who worshipped particular pantomime artists. Inside the theater hostility went no further than ear-splitting whistles and screams of verbal abuse. But once the crowds spilt into the street they rioted.

  "Quick, help me!" yelled Nero who'd flung a cloak over his shoulders and was busy pulling on a wig of long curly yellow hair, the sort prostitutes wore. I straightened it for him but he was out the dressing room before I'd finished. Missiles were already flying by the time we rushed into the night. Nero instantly threw himself into this battle of the pantomime dancers, as it was later called, raiding the barrows of squawking hawkers and hurling their wares at members of the rival faction who were answering with anything they could lay their hands on.

  It was hours before Nero allowed me to take him home. By this time the master of the world was bespattered with filth from head to foot. Yet I'd never seen him in higher spirits.

  "Oh Epaphroditus!" he crowed, "Now I know how Alexander felt after the battle of Granicus and Octavian after Actium! No more swords and shields, no more siege engines, no more blood, no more death. From now on attacks will be made with lyres instead of lances, choruses instead of cohorts. Unhappy world weep no more for Nero brings you musical war!"

  I didn't get the point. "Do you mean musical contests?" I asked.

  "No, you fool, musical war is what takes place every time an orchestra or a performer strives to captivate an audience. With orchestras great enough, with performers inspired enough, the whole world may be conquered. Now do you understand?"

  I did. The idea was a brilliant synthesis of Greek artistic genius and Roman will-to-power, well it seemed brilliant to me then. I would have embraced Nero if I'd dared. Instead I fell to my knees and wiped away my tears of joy with the soiled hem of his cloak. "Dominus," I said, "dominus, it's true! You are destined to rule over a golden age."

  However by the time we got back to the Palatine my head had cooled and a cool head is no place for musical war. I reported the incident, more or less exactly as it happened, to Euodus. He frowned a little but made no comment. The next day he told me that Tigellinus wanted to see me in the stables. I swiped at flies for half an hour, cursing, while I waited for him to finish a horsy conversation with a chariot driver.

  When finally he was done he walked over to me with a grin that was black as coal in spite of his white teeth and squeezed my shoulder so hard it hurt. "Ah Epaphroditus. Sorry to drag you away from your papers and pens but this musical war thing intrigues me. Do you think he means it seriously?"

  "Yes dominus, I do," I said looking him squarely in the eye. For the second time I saw that icy look of his clouded by a storm of thought.

  "Hmm. Could be a real pleb pleaser although I can't imagine the idea going down particularly well with the patricians, particularly coming from an eighteen-year-old who's still wet behind the ears. We're going to have to work together, you and I, to persuade him to keep musical war to himself until he stands up a bit straighter in his chariot."

  Two-and-a-half years passed during which I watched helplessly from the sidelines as Tigellinus, exploiting the horse connection, wormed his way into Nero's confidence. Three months after his arrival he was appointed trainer-in-chief of the imperial chariot racing faction the Greens (The others were the Reds, the Whites and the Blues and they all had huge followings among patricians and plebs alike.) Because of a run of good luck or perhaps by good management - even I'll admit that Tigellinus had a way with men as well as horses - the Greens' record improved dramatically.

  More sinister was the way he encouraged Nero to bring the Syrian goddess Atargatis, half woman, half fish, back into his life. Nero had no doubt first l
earnt about her cult from Messalina but he was far too young, only eleven when she died, to be admitted to her mysteries.

  I was there when Nero broached the subject in one of the palace gardens lit by a bright Moon. While I sat in a chair with my notebook ready on my lap, he and Tigellinus lounged on couches, attended by pretty young slave girls dressed as nymphs. “I know the full Moon ought to make me think about mother but she doesn’t,” Nero said. “She always makes me think of Messalina.”

  Tigellinus caressed the bubble bottom of the nymph who was filling his goblet, slid a probing hand between her legs. He raised the goblet in a toast. “Messalina! Now there was a woman!”

  “She worshipped Atargatis,” Nero said, the Moon in his eyes. “Actually became Atargatis. She let me watch her dress up sometimes. Except for her gilded nipples she was bare to the waist. From there on down she wore this tight shimmering sheath of cloth covered with green scales. She looked magnificent.”

  “As you must know Caesar,” Tigellinus said, “The cult of Atargatis is still very much alive.”

  “Of course I know that, but who could replace Messalina?”

  Tigellinus took a long sip of his wine. He beckoned to the girl he had touched. “I know someone who’s an initiate. I’m sure he can arrange something quite special.”

  She was an extraordinary creature all right when she appeared through the veil of incense plumes on the dais of Messalina’s crypt in the bowels of the palace, Nero had insisted that the ceremony take place there. She was naked from the waist up, her nipples were gilded and she wore a tight fitting sheath, decorated with glittering green scales, that was split up the front to reveal the insides of her legs all the way up to her public hair. Nero hadn’t mentioned that detail when he described Messalina’s costume, although it was so provocative it’s hard to believe he hadn’t noticed. Lithe as a dancer, with her high forehead, flashing eyes, long neck and curly black hair that swept in ringlets over her shoulders, she looked a lot like the dead empress which I was certain was not coincidental. She swished a whip made from a bull’s dried penis.