by Allan Massie
When he realised that I was prepared to admire his verses and yet not yield to his advances, he was seized with rashness. The hints he had already dropped concerning his engagement in a matter of great moment were now amplified. He was, he told me flatly, one of a conspiracy against the Emperor. Indeed he was one of its most ardent spirits. What did I think of that? 'I think you are unwise to tell me,' I said.
'I tell you,' he replied, 'to demonstrate that my love is such that I am ready to put my life in your hands.'
'Your life, and the life of others,' I replied. Yet, despite everything, I would not yield. His eyes, I have remembered, were small and too closely pressing on his nose.
I was however sufficiently touched by the candour he had displayed to me, even though I was in no doubt as to the motive, to draw on my conversation with Titus in order to convey some sort of warning to my admirer.
So I asked him what measures he and his friends had taken to secure the support of the legions.
'The army,' he said, 'will be obedient to the Republic which will speak through the Senate.' Then, young though I was, I knew that he was lost in silly dreams.
Naturally I reported our conversations to Titus, employing, as I had promised, the cipher he had taught me. Lucan was not, as I learned much later, central to the conspiracy. His suggestion to me that he was proved to be only another example of that vanity characteristic of literary men. The head of the conspiracy was a man of much higher birth, G. Calpurnius Piso. (He had a nephew whom I often saw with Lucan at the baths; perhaps it was through him that Lucan became involved.) Even Piso may only have been the nominal head. He certainly wasn't cut out for that sort of thing. For instance, when it was proposed that Nero should be invited to Piso's villa near Velletri and murdered there, after a banquet, Piso vetoed the plan. He said that to stain his hospitality in this manner would create a bad impression. Even Lucan, with his absurd admiration for that 'Republican virtue', belonging to an age which had vanished, found this ridiculous.
'Really,' he said, 'if you are murdering an emperor, it's an excess of delicacy to worry about the abuse of hospitality.'
That bon mot was often quoted, subsequently; 'excess of delicacy' became a sort of catch-phrase, as in, for example, 'It would be an excess of delicacy not to bugger that boy.'
Curiously, however, I believe that Lucan's admiration for Piso was enhanced rather than diminished by this evidence of his leader's scruples. I even once heard him compare Piso to Marcus Brutus, his Republican hero. Not that Brutus showed any 'excess of delicacy' when despatching Julius Caesar on the Ides of March.
The second plan was apparently to dispose of Nero in his box at the Games. One of the conspirators would approach him, and throw himself at his feet as if begging a favour. Then he would seize Nero's ankles and pull him to the ground to allow his fellow-conspirators to rush in with their daggers. No doubt the intention was that they should then all leap up crying that Liberty had been restored to Rome.
Even as a boy I could see that this imitation of the murder of Julius was grotesque. I could imagine Titus laughing aloud when he read my account of what was proposed, before inveighing against the folly of the times. Lucan on the other hand was offended when I told him that this scheme was ridiculous and could never succeed.
In short the whole thing was amateurish. It would have been discovered even if Lucan had never blabbed to me and if I had not recounted all he said in my letters to Titus. As it happens, I have never known whether Titus made any use of my information.
I can't recall now how many executions took place when discovery was finally made. The story circulated that the conspiracy was revealed by a freedman in the employment of Flavius Scaevinus, who had volunteered (as had others, including, by his own account, Lucan) to strike the first blow. It was said that in his excitement he had blabbed at his own dinner-table. Perhaps so. It was certainly convenient that a freedman should be held responsible.
What is certain is that investigations ordered by the Emperor were first conducted by Faenius Rufus, who shared command of the Praetorian Guard with Tigellinus, the most disgusting of Nero's creatures, and a colonel of the Guard called Subirius Flavus. Both men were actually privy to the conspiracy. Yet, in their degenerate panic, they did not hesitate to connive at the torture and subsequent execution of their comrades. I am not sure if Tacitus knows this; Faenius Rufus, who was connected in some way with my friend's revered father-in-law Agricola, was by way of being a hero of his. So he may not be ready to admit his depravity to his record of history. Even the most scrupulous works of history are deformed by personal affections, and personal prejudices.
Word went round that Nero asked Subirius Flavus, when his role in the conspiracy was at last uncovered, why he had broken his oath of loyalty, and that he had replied; 'Because I hate you. I remained as loyal as anyone while you deserved my loyalty. But I turned against you when you murdered your wife and mother, and became charioteer, actor and fire-raiser.' Domitian was much impressed by the nobility of this reply. 'It sounds to me,' I said, 'like something invented by his friends.'
Lucan was ordered to kill himself, and obeyed. He would have described his act as an example of Republican virtue. I thought it contemptible, even then.
Now? Yes, it still seems contemptible, a piece of play-acting. But I despise it less than I did, because to abandon hope and yield to what appears to be necessity, is only too easily understandable.
V
My dear Cornelius Tacitus: You reproach me for my tardiness, and also for the quality of the information I have sent you. You do not realise how painful it is for me, marooned in this frontier region, to cast my mind back to the days of my youth. Even the image of afternoon dying in the Gardens of Lucullus and the setting sun turning the pine trees of the Palatine a soft dusky purple-blue disables me for hours. And when in memory's ear I listen to the babble of the streets and the raucous cries of the stall-holders calling to customers, I am seized with so sharp a pang of nostalgia that I dissolve in tears or drown my sorrows in a flask of sour wine. And I have other distractions here, though I shall not weary you with an account of them.
You say – having first asked me for memories of Domitian's childhood – that this does not interest you now, and that what you wish to learn is what he did and how he conducted himself in the terrible months that followed the revolt of the legions against Nero.
But how can I tell a story without an introduction? And, even granting that all you seek from me is notes towards the making of your History, how can I be certain that you will use my notes aright, if I do not supply at least a sketch of the background – however familiar this may already appear to you?
I add that qualification for this reason, though it may irritate you: I do not believe there is, or ever can be, a fully accurate history. One man's impression of events runs counter to another's. Surely your experience of marriage has taught you that. But I am quite happy to heed your request and skip over the years of my adolescence. I shall therefore spare you my memories of the Great Fire which raged through the city for six days and left so much of it in smouldering ruins. I could write of it vividly, for I climbed the Janiculum, along with many others who lived on the 'wrong' side of the river, to get a good view. Then, in the days that followed, I picked my way through the embers, amazed at the destruction and yet – I confess with some degree of shame – also elated. But you will have many other sources to draw on for your account of the disaster.
I wonder, however, whether you will hold Nero himself responsible, as so many did at the time – and not only because he took advantage of the devastation to create his ideal rural landscape within the city bounds and to start work on what was to be his masterpiece, the Golden House. People held him guilty before these plans were known, and it was said that he had chanted verses of his own composition celebrating Troy in flames as he watched the blaze.
Well, you will make up your own mind as to his guilt. You may even conclude, as he pretended to, t
hat the real arsonists were the wretched sect of slaves and freedmen known as Christians, delinquent Jews whom he punished so severely.
But I shall not weary you with such speculations. It is of Domitian that you wish me to write.
He was always a difficult friend, more so as we grew older and approached the threshold of adult life. In Nero's last year, or perhaps a little earlier, he became more withdrawn, more bitter, more full of resentment. His sister Domatilla feared for his sanity, or said she did. His affair with the senator Claudius Pollio was over – if it was an affair, and not merely a friendship, as Domitian, blushing, swore. They had fallen out. He let me understand that this was because Pollio sought to leap the bounds of friendship, even assaulting his virtue. That may have been so. But many years later Pollio used to boast that he had a letter from the young Domitian promising to go to bed with him. In his cups he once promised to show it me, never did however. So who knows? Both men being liars, where is the truth? One can only guess.
In any case, there were other causes of Domitian's instability. There was matter close at hand. He was jealous of my friendship with his sister. She used to complain that he wanted to possess her entirely; but then I felt that he demanded the same of me. 'He's obsessed,' she said, 'with keeping me safe, and would make me a prisoner if he could.' No doubt this was the case. Yet he also sulked whenever I preferred another's company to his, and would question me severely as to my doings when we were not together.
Domatilla was fond of him, distressed by his evident unhappiness. She felt sorry for him because he lacked Titus' charm and, as she said, seemed in need of her protection himself.
'It's difficult,' she said. 'I seek to protect him while also wanting to enjoy myself, and he would deny me any enjoyment except in his company. It's not easy.'
Domitian also resented the fact that he had as yet no share in the improving fortunes of his family. Vespasian had been made Governor of the province of Judaea, where Jewish extremists had revolted against our Empire. The origins of the revolt are obscure, as indeed are most matters concerning that turbulent and disagreeable people. It began, apparently, with a dispute between Jews and Greeks in the city of Caesarea. The Greeks attacked the Jewish quarter, intending to drive them out of the city; the usual sort of ethnic violence you get when distinct communities live cheek by jowl. The Greeks' initial success stimulated a response, even though the respectable element among the Jews – the better-born and the religious leaders – tried to restrain the fanatics. They failed. Our garrison in Jerusalem was massacred. Then, when Cestius Gallus, Proconsul in Syria, marched against the city, he was alarmed by the strength of the Jewish resistance, lost his nerve, and ordered a retreat which turned into a shameful rout.
It was at this time that Vespasian was put in command, recalled from obscurity. Nero chose him for three reasons. The first was his low birth, which made Nero suppose that no success won by Vespasian could make him a rival, since he had no independent support among the nobility; Nero could not conceive that they would ever submit to one so low-born as Vespasian. Second, as I have mentioned, Nero had always made Vespasian the butt of his impertinent and indeed adolescent wit, and quite liked him for that reason. Finally, the choice was limited. He had ordered the greatest general of our time, Corbulo, to kill himself a few months previously.
Titus was delighted by his father's appointment. He was certain it would be the making of his own career. He wrote to me in a tone of great enthusiasm, then remarked that, while Domitian would be eager to join his father in Judaea, this was not a proposal to be encouraged. 'Domitian disturbs him,' he wrote, 'though I don't know exactly why. Perhaps you have some inkling. You know my little brother better than I do, and I respect your opinion. But do what you can to soothe his feelings. Perhaps you could suggest that my father will rely on him to send reports of how things stand in the city. You will realise this suggestion is ridiculous. Father depends on the information his brother Flavius Sabinus sends him. But if you can pull this particular wool over Domitian's eyes, then you will be doing me a service -which is of course your greatest pleasure, isn't it? The fact is that Domitian is not ready for military life. He may never indeed be suited to command.'
Naturally I did as he asked, but I failed to convince Domitian. He saw that the reassurances I offered were the veriest nonsense, and guessed that I was his brother's mouthpiece.
That's what Titus told you to tell me,' he said. 'He's determined to keep me in the shade. Well, he shan't succeed.'
All the same, despite this petulance, it was in the shade that he remained. He became more moody and more disagreeable, sometimes going for days without speaking. 'I think he's forgotten how to smile,' Domatilla said.
Only my mother seemed to understand him. She said he was like a bird with a broken wing. She felt sorry for anyone who had set his heart on something beyond his reach. When he visited us, he relaxed in my mother's company. It may even be that he felt a disinterested affection for her.
I am weary and shall resume this letter later. But meanwhile the messenger has come to inform me that the boat is about to sail. So I shall send this now, as evidence of my willingness to help you -though I fear you will find it inadequate.
VI
Tacitus will be irritated that I sent him only an extract from Titus' letter. There were sentences too intimate for me to wish to disclose them to his disapproving scrutiny. But why I should wish Tacitus to think better of me than I think of him, especially since we shall never meet again, baffles me. Yet it is so.
He is so suspicious that he may even think I have concocted that letter. But I have always hoarded correspondence and, though some has gone missing, much remains. When I was condemned to exile, I arranged to have several boxes of documents forwarded to me by way of my bankers.
1 do not know how much that is private and not public I can bring myself to reveal to Tacitus.
I have no reason to protect Domitian's memory, and yet I am reluctant to tell him all that I know about the late Emperor: for instance, that he once, at least, sought to bed his sister Domatilla. This happened later, when she was a married woman. I didn't hear of it at the time – I was soldiering in the East. But it was soon after my return that she told me – in her bed, as it happens. Since her confession came post-coitum, after our own act of adultery, when her hair lay on my damp shoulder, and her flesh was pressed against mine, I did not doubt her. I could not then doubt either that she had refused him, though, jealousy working in its crab-like fashion, I was subsequently for months tormented by the suspicion that she had not done so, but had lied to me, even while lying with me. And this suspicion was magnified by the vivid memory of a dream or nightmare I had had in the year of terror which Tacitus has asked me to recall. Was that dream a premonition? The thought tormented me or, rather, I tormented myself by indulging it.
But, at the moment that she told me of her brother's criminal assault – with her soft lips mouthing my ear – I felt pity for Domitian rather than indignation. That he should have been so driven by incestuous lust, and yet denied what I had just enjoyed!
Will Tacitus, or rather would Tacitus, for I shall not tell him, believe that? I don't think so. Human nature is too complicated for the schematic ways of historians.
The truth is that Tacitus will present men and women as if they are capable of being understood. There is no other way of writing history perhaps. It is the historian's impulse to make sense of what happens. But can the sense they create be true to experience? I think not. Does any man really understand even himself? And if that is beyond us, how can one pretend to understand other people whom we know only by observation and intermittent congress?
Of course I did not think like this when I was young. In those days I had few doubts, and was confident of conquering the world, and winning love where I chose. I had been certain that Titus loved me. Now that I had, at the age of seventeen, assumed the toga virilis and had entered on adult life, that love properly fell away, or rather was tr
ansformed into, as I thought, the friendship between equals, formed of mutual respect and affection, which Roman noblemen have always valued as the foundation of social and political life. Or so I told myself, Titus being absent in the East.
Moreover, I was at that stage when the developing soul turns its most ardent and compelling desires from the immature passions of boyhood, characteristically addressed to others of one's own sex, to the other and more mysterious opposite. So, as I watched Domatilla push her hair away from her eyes with a rapid, unconscious flickering of her long pale fingers, and saw Titus reflected in that gesture, I sensed that he had been the forerunner, and told myself that Domatilla was the love of my life, that perfect other half, union with whom would bring me that harmonious joining of souls which Plato affirms is the supreme experience and the goal of love.
Such at least were my dreams, in that last early summer before Rome tore itself apart and I was forced into a premature and morally corrupting knowledge of the vileness of men, and found my character so deformed by what I learned that I emerged incapable of generosity of spirit, incapable of love but only of lust. That year – I tell myself now – killed most that was good in me, as in many others. As for Domatilla… what can I say? Even now the thought of her is too painful. It quickens my senses, and then I remember how, at last, she turned away from me, because (she said) I demanded everything, entire possession, and she was not to be possessed by anyone. Her husband, she said, was a man who asked little of her, only the appearance of virtue. 'When we were young,' she said, 'I loved you. Now…' she stroked my cheek with soft fluttering fingers, 'no, not now…'
Can I understand this? Can I make sense of the barriers that were erected between us? Not at all. So I question the possibility of understanding another person. Yet Tacitus is certain he understands Nero – even Nero. Well, I had a closer acquaintance – too close on that occasion I have alluded to – with the tyrant than Tacitus, who indeed had no personal knowledge of him, and was only fourteen or fifteen when Nero fell, but I do not claim to know how or why the young man whom my mother remembered (before the murder of Britannicus) as 'charming, ingenuous, a little naive, shy, and lacking in self-confidence', should have been transformed into a perverted and vicious monster.
