by Allan Massie
XXI
There was a reserve in Titus' manner. Though he had embraced me warmly on my arrival, the frank affection characteristic of his letters was missing from his conversation. When I explained how I had come to be there, I felt, sensed, his distrust.
He reclined on a couch and dipped his hand in a bowl of water scented with rose petals.
'My father wants to see you,' he said. 'You haven't met him since you were a small boy, have you?'
During supper he ignored me and carried on a conversation with the Jew Josephus, a lean dark man with a pointed beard. They spoke in Greek, and Josephus' accent being unfamiliar to me, and obscurely provincial, I found it difficult at first to follow his side of the conversation. But it seemed that Titus was more interested in the religious practices of the different Jewish sects than in the disposition of the rebel armies. I wondered if the matter of the talk had been chosen simply to exclude me.
Josephus gave no sign that my presence either interested or disturbed him. As far as he was concerned, I was merely a young Roman noble of neither achievement nor significance. I began to fear his view was justified. My interview with Otho, and the commission he had given me, seemed ridiculous and remote.
Titus said: Your explanations, my dear Josephus, are admirably clear, and it's evident that you yourself are pious in your faith. But hasn't it occurred to you how strange it is that, alone among nations, you refuse to recognise that other gods and other faiths may have their merits -their apprehension of ultimate realities – or that, again alone among nations, you refuse to make an image of your god which may appeal to the senses, and thus stimulate the piety of worshippers?'
I thought: this is deliberately unkind; what have I done to chill the love you have so often protested that you feel for me? It seemed that I had never been to Titus anything more than a sort of toy, a trivial amusement. I bit my lip to prevent it from quivering and tried to conjure up an image of Domatilla. I told myself it was absurd to feel aggrieved, since I had long decided that I wished no further sexual relations with Titus. And yet I wanted him still to admire me, and put me in the centre of his world.
Josephus said: 'You are accustomed to tease me with this question, my lord, which must bore your young friend here excessively.'
That is immaterial,' said Titus. 'In any case it will be good for him to learn that adult men can concern themselves with intellectual matters.'
'I do not understand this "intellectual matters",' Josephus said, 'though of course commentaries on the sacred books require the exercise of the intellectual faculties, faith itself is not a matter of intellect, but of history. The Lord God made a covenant with Israel, and named us his Chosen People.'
'If I may intervene,' I said, aware (with permissible pride) of the purity of my Greek, 'from what I have heard of the present war, it would seem that your god has broken any covenant he may have made with you. For certainly the actions of the rebels seem to be driven by folly, and to be without the sort of wisdom which you might expect from people guided by a god.' 'The Lord chastises those whom he loves,' Josephus said. Titus smirked. That is the only way to describe his smile. When we were alone, he said, 'I was nasty to you. You didn't like that. It serves you right. You deserve punishment, for you have disobeyed my instructions.'
'What sort of language is this?' I said. 'Disobey… instructions… am I your servant, your slave? We may no longer be lovers but I thought our friendship secure.'
'I needed you in Rome,' he said, breaking off the leg of a roast pheasant and gnawing it.
'How could I remain in Rome when the Emperor commanded me to come here?' 'Emperor? Otho?' 'Emperor for the time being at least… besides, I bring you news of Rome such as it might be dangerous to write…' 'So you say. But why should I believe you?' I wept that night. I am not ashamed to remember, and say so. It seemed that friendship was a mere bubble, and I had trusted in friendship. But the next morning Titus was in a different mood. We rode into the desert. Josephus accompanied us. But this time he was the third member of the party, the superfluous one. Titus talked to me alone, and with a gaiety and affection that caused my last night's fears and misgivings to fall away. I thought: he is a creature of mood, and last night I was merely so unfortunate as to find him in a mood where I had no place. He pointed to distant hills, rising purple-black against an azure sky.
'That's where the rebels lurk,' he said, 'the so-called Zealots. There are innumerable bands of them couched in those hills like wild beasts. They are fanatics and death means nothing to them. Civilised men respect Death and give him a wide berth, unless Necessity demands otherwise. But these young men – they are mostly very young who form these bands – are infatuated with Death. It makes them difficult to deal with. They don't understand the rational arguments of civilised men. They don't understand that when two opposed interests clash, it is wise and expedient to seek a middle way.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I think that's what Otho is seeking. I found him likeable, you know.'
'Oh,'Titus said, 'almost everybody has always liked Otho. He's never found any difficulty in being liked. It's a matter of whether he deserves respect or trust, and that's rather different.'
A hawk hovered overhead. We drew rein and watched it. Then it dropped true as a stone. You were always curious, I remember, Tacitus, about this journey of mine to the East. When I told you, once, that I had undertaken it at Otho's command, you were incredulous, and ascribed my statement either to my vanity or my lamentable habit of making jokes. As it happened I was more amused than irritated by your inability to accept the truth. Now I wonder if this lack of simplicity in your nature will impair your History. Do not think me impertinent if I tell you that you are too inclined to look for hidden meanings lurking behind straightforward words and actions. Such are not always there. Lucan once said to me that 'only shallow people do not judge by appearances', and I thought that a characteristically clever-silly remark. But there is something in it. I would never call you shallow, but you suffer from a psychological deformity which apparently makes it impossible for you to accept the simple and obvious explanation.
However I shall give you more details now, instead of teasing you with silences and hints of I-could-if-I-would with which I sought to tantalise you in the past.
The suspicion with which Titus received me was not shared by his father. And yet it is possible that beneath, or rather behind, his bluff, even coarse, exterior Vespasian was a more subtle man than his elder son.
Titus accompanied me to the Governor's palace which Vespasian had made his headquarters. Mucianus was there, too. The generals made a compelling contrast. Vespasian was on his feet when we entered or, rather, bounded to his feet when we were announced; you will not have forgotten how difficult he always found it to keep still, and how he would disrupt the reception of, say, ambassadors by scratching himself, bobbing up and down, pulling his ear, twisting in his seat, and then getting to his feet and circling the chamber. Now he clapped me on the back, ruffled my hair, told me I had grown, looked quite soldierly now (which I didn't, but the compliment pleased me) and then started scratching under his armpits.
Mucianus reclined on a couch, resting against cushions. His long pale fingers, with their painted nails, toyed with the stem of a wine-cup. He fluttered his other hand feebly in my direction.
'Knew yer father, boy,' he said, 'you don't resemble him, fortunate for you. Bit of a shit, yer father, if y' don't mind me sayin' so.'
As if exhausted by the effort of speech, he sipped wine and then fanned his face with a kid-skin fan decorated with cupids.
Everything about him spoke of lethargy. Five or six little dogs shared the couch with him, now and then crawling over his body to be fondled, licking his hands, face, and even lips. He made no move to restrain them, and neither Vespasian nor Titus appeared to find anything remarkable in the spectacle their colleague offered. So I concluded it was customary.
Vespasian was never one for long speeches, or for approaching a subject de
licately. 'My brother tells me you've a brain in your head, and that your mother's brought you up to be honourable. That so?' Tm grateful he should think so.' 'Don't fence, boy. Are you honourable?' 'I hope so. I believe I am.'
'Poor dear,' Mucianus said, 'and you such a beauty. Honour belonged to the days of the Republic, my dear. The Divine Augustus stifled the idea of honour as he stifled liberty and all virtues. So nowadays we all look after number one, don'y' know that?'
Vespasian flapped his hand at his colleague, and scratched himself again, this time in the belly.
That's as may be,' he said. 'Not going to argue with you. Waste of time. Point is, this young man comes here with a message. From Otho, he says. Question is, do we believe him?'
'No reason not to, darling,' Mucianus said. His voice was a languid drawl; he drew out the syllables of some words as if loth to let them slip, and abbreviated others as though the effort of speech was too wearisome. 'Boy's not a fool, you say. So there's no reason to question his coming. Point is, do we believe Otho? Just what did the man say?'
I gave them, in as brief and military fashion as I could muster, Otho's proposals.
To my surprise they were ready to discuss them in my presence. Now, I wonder to what extent their arguments had already been rehearsed, since Titus had certainly informed his father and Mucianus of the gist of Otho's offer; and therefore whether the intention was that I should repeat to Otho the doubts and hesitations they now expressed. Yet certainly they could not have wished me to report everything, for all three spoke of Otho with unmingled contempt. To my further surprise, this irritated me. Though I was accustomed to think of myself as bound to Titus, and therefore to his party, I had been touched by something in Otho's manner and speech, which aroused in me the desire to protect, or at least stand up for him. But now I kept silence when I heard him derided.
'In my opinion,' Titus said, 'we should hasten slowly. That was a favourite saying of the Divine Augustus, I've been told, and it remains a good one. It certainly proved a good principle in his case.'
Vespasian said, 'What do we have to lose if we assent to Otho's proposals?' Mucianus said, There's Vitellius, of course. A buffoon, admittedly, but not backed by buffoons. He's their puppet, y' know. Suppose he wins.'
Titus said, 'Suppose Otho wins, even with our help? Will he pay his debt? How long can a Triumvirate last? The history of the two earlier ones…'
Mucianus said, 'I know Otho. He's weak. He would like to be loved. OF Tiberius never cared a pigeon's fart for that. He knew the nature of men: that they hesitate less to offend a man who has made himself loved than one whom they fear. For love binds only by a chain of obligation, which is easily broken, but fear by dread of punishment, which never fails. What a long speech! I'm quite fatigued. But the words came to me and I couldn't hold them back…'
'So Otho's weak,' Vespasian said. 'Better he win then, with our help.' Mucianus fondled his dogs, Titus smiled, we drank wine.
I shan't send this passage to Tacitus. It's too shameful to confess myself a gull. The truth is, men are blind throughout their entire lives. The Jew Josephus said that to me once when I had the audacity to ask him how it felt to be a traitor. He added, 'Look in your own heart; recall what and whom you have betrayed in life. No one is innocent of some act of treachery.'
I spent two days with Titus before a ship could be found to carry me back to Italy. Titus was in sunny mood, regretting only the absence of Berenice, which denied me the promised chance of meeting her daughters.
'Believe me,' he said, 'the secret of reaping the richest harvest from life, and the most intense enjoyment, is simple: it is to live dangerously.'
'If you and your father had decided otherwise,' 1 said, 'your brother Domitian would be in mortal danger.'
'Domitian has too little imagination to live dangerously,' Titus said. 'He's not like you and me. Trust in me, my dear, and I shall lead you to wonderful times. You must return now, to give our message to Otho, and then perhaps you will come back here to help me suppress these wretched Jews, who fight with a fanatical determination and then, who knows? The world is ours, our plaything, our oyster. On such a day as this I feel unrivalled strength. Open yourself to chance and the future
It was then that he told me of his visit to the Temple of the Paphian Venus.
XXII
I assume, Tacitus, you are relying principally on my memories to enable you to catch something of the mood in the city during the weeks of Otho's ascendancy when, at his command, I was lodged in the palace. You were, of course, still a boy yourself – fourteen or fifteen if I calculate rightly; and, as I recall you once telling me, your mother had prudently removed herself and all the household, including you and your sisters – what by the way became of the most beautiful of them, Cornelia, with whom I once engaged in a charming flirtation in your father-in-law Agricola's Sabine villa? Now I have lost myself in this sentence. Where was I? (You see how rusty my command of the written language is; it runs with my thoughts in no ordered rhetoric. I apologise; no doubt you will, sternly, despise my incapacity and apology alike.) Ah yes, your mother had removed you to the safety of her father's estates in Campania. I believe you have always resented this – as, if I may say so, so much else. Indeed your resentment was formerly so great that I have heard you speak as if you had indeed been in the city that spring and summer, and a witness of all the horrors then enacted. But I knew otherwise, though I kept silent then.
So I shall now give you what will be of certain use in your great work, and something which you could not have without my assistance. For you can learn of actions from records, and you can dissect character from what you read, from letters and speeches which were recorded, as well as from public documents. But for that shifting and evanescent thing we call mood or atmosphere, you require the testimony of one who lived at the time and saw and felt all. Furthermore, I can supply you also with the gossip and wild stories that did the rounds; and these will lend animation to your History. Some of them were, as you may imagine, choicely absurd.
For instance, prodigies were daily reported. It was said that in the porch of the Capitol, the reins of the chariot on which the Goddess of Victory rides eternally to battle, dropped from her hands, a gloomy omen; that the statue of the Divine Julius, on the Tiber island, turned from the west to face to the east, and this – it was added with many shakes of the head – on a day when there was no breath of wind, as though it would have required a gale to shift the statue east-facing. Someone else had seen a form bigger than any man burst forth from the Temple of Juno bearing a mighty sword. Others reported that an ox in Etruria had spoken, in hexameters moreover, and that a goat had given birth to a calf (predominantly white, with black patches). In short rumour ran on winged feet, and no story was too absurd to find creditors. Domitian, who had been given a post of some sort in the palace, was torn, when we conversed, between credulity and disdain. His intellect told him such tales were nonsense; his fears denied the reasoning of his mind.
A sudden thaw melted snow in the mountains and, being succeeded by three days of incessant rain which led fools to assert that the heavens wept for Rome, caused the Tiber to break its banks and flood. Not only the low-lying and flat districts of the city were under the turbulent waters, even parts long thought safe from flooding found the water lapping at their doors. I required a boat to visit my mother and bring her supplies, which however were scarce. Scores of people were drowned, many more were maroooned in shops, their workplaces or their homes. The foundations of countless slum dwellings were sapped by the force of the waters and gave way when the river returned to its usual channel. It was impossible for the troops to parade in the Campus Martius; they would have had to swim.
The capital was astir, and the ravages of the flood only mirrored the disorder in men's minds. It was said that Vitellius had infiltrated soldiers into the city, in civilian disguise, who were ready, at a given signal, to assassinate the partisans of Otho. So suspicion lurked behind every sentence s
poken, and men dared not look each other in the eye. The state of public affairs was even worse. Nobody knew what the future held and opinions shifted with every rumour relayed. When the Senate was in session, many Senators absented themselves on grounds of ill-health. Those who did attend flattered the Emperor who, accustomed from his days as Nero's favourite to such language, treated it with the contempt it merited. But the next minute the flatterers, realising that their words might be held against them, should Otho lose the war that could be only a few weeks distant, tried to give them a double meaning; and so, in most cases, rendered them senseless. When they were called upon to brand Vitellius a traitor and public enemy, the more cautious did so in such general and indeed hackneyed language that none could think them sincere, for their words appeared as a parody of the genuine accusations of treason of which our history already afforded so many shameful examples. Others employed a more cunning ruse. They arranged that, when they rose to speak, their friends and cousins should raise such a hubbub of noise as to make them quite inaudible. So they could subsequently claim that they had done their duty, whoever enquired of them; and they could not be gainsaid.
Otho still hesitated. He received the report of my embassy to Vespasian and Mucianus with equanimity rather then pleasure. He commended my speed and my honesty, then, as if thinking aloud, said, 'All war is ruinous; civil war most ruinous of all.' He recollected my presence, smiled, and said, 'You may find these strange thoughts of an Emperor committed to the defence of his cause, who has just received, thanks to you, the welcome news of the goodwill that the commanders of the Eastern armies feel for me. Yet I would still wish to avoid war, and I wonder whether this assurance can be employed to that purpose. For surely, if Vitellius learns that I have joined Vespasian and Mucianus with me in defence of the Republic – as for convenience we may still call it – then perhaps he will desist and be ready to negotiate terms. Vitellius is no man of war. He's a lazy fellow, timid too, and I can't believe he has stomach for the fight.'
