Nero's Heirs

by Allan Massie

  Was it that evening or one a few days later that, shortly after I had retired to bed, where I lay sleepless, listening to the ever-changing sounds of the night city that refused to surrender to silence, I heard a scratching at the outer door of our apartment? It was a gentle noise, calculated, as I supposed, to alarm nobody. Yet its persistence suggested anxiety, even fear. I rose, put on a dressing-gown and, picking up the cudgel which we kept in a stand by the door, listened to the renewed scratching.

  'Please help,' came a thin high voice. 'Please let me in.'

  I did not recognise the young man who stumbled through the door, falling against me. I pushed him off, and he swayed, and would have fainted (as I supposed) had I not taken him by the shoulder and guided him to a stool by the table. He sat for a moment with his back to the wall, his legs quivering. His face was streaked with dirt and tears and what might have been blood, and his tunic was torn. Then he uttered a deep sob and buried his face in his hands so that I could not see his features but only the tangle of black curls now presented to me.

  My mother, aroused by the sounds, joined us from her chamber. She took one look at the young man, who had, with a start of terror, lifted his head.

  'Sporus?' she said. 'So the Emperor is dead?'

  'At my hand,' he said. 'Perhaps. In part. I don't know. I hope not. It was terrible.'

  My mother told me to fetch wine, while she busied herself heating up what remained of the broth we had had for our supper. Sporus gulped down the first cup of Marino wine as a parched traveller drinks water from a well, and held out his cup for more. I sipped mine and watched him. His hand still shook, and every now and then, though he must have known he was for the time being safe, he darted anxious looks at the door.

  'Were you followed here?' I asked.

  He shook his head, but there was no certainty, only hope, in the gesture.

  'Let the boy be,' my mother said. 'Give him time. He's worn out, and no wonder. He'll tell what he has to tell when he has some food and drink in him.'

  She placed bread on the table, and then soup. Sporus hesitated, as if the thought of sustenance disgusted him.

  'Eat,' my mother said, 'then drink more wine.'

  At last he was ready.

  This is his account. I assure you it is authentic. I wrote down his story when he had finished speaking and fallen asleep. I have kept the document with me throughout the upheavals of life. You know yourself, Tacitus, that I have ever been an orderly man, and one who sets great store on documentary evidence.

  He told the story haltingly, with false starts and changes of direction. I've tried to capture the way he gave it to us, but I admit I've tidied it up a bit. After all, it went on till dawn's pink fingers were touching the sky.

  So he said: 'He was lost. I think he has been losing himself for a long time, and now he had lost the world. He knew that, but he wouldn't confront the reality. So his plans changed all the time, and he couldn't give his mind to them because his mind recoiled. Once he even interrupted a meeting of the loyal advisers who remained to him because one of Phaon's slave-girls, a virgin, ten or eleven, had caught his eye, and he had to have her without delay. It let him suppose things weren't as they were. Another time, when he was dictating a letter he was going to send to the Senate, a letter in very high and serious tones, he had me - I'm sorry, milady, but I have to try to tell it as it was, for my own sake, though I don't know why - he had me masturbate him as he dictated. When he got hard ... no, I'm sorry, I won't go on, I can see it disgusts you. But that's the life I've been compelled to live for years, you know, ever since . . . let's just say, ever since he first caught sight of me. And yet, can you believe it, I was fond of him, he could be charming and . . . no, let it pass . . .

  'This was when we were in Phaon's villa. That's four miles out of town, between the Nomentana and the Salaria. Phaon was one of his freedmen, you won't know him. We had come to Rome the day before, nobody knew that because we'd slipped in by night and nobody recognised him as we hurried to the palace. He'd a cloak over his face. I think that's when I knew it was all over, and the only questions remaining were how and when. I mean, that the Emperor didn't dare show his face in Rome, it was unthinkable. That night he had a new plan. He was going to appear on the rostra and beg the people's mercy - ask for pardon for all he'd done that had displeased them. It might have worked. That's what I thought then anyway. Whatever people say he was a good actor, nobody could play a part like him. I've never known anyone who could sound more sincere, when he chose, and you had to know him as well as I came to do to realise that when he was most humble and contrite he was laughing at the fools he deceived. I've heard that he could always convince even Seneca of his sincerity, and everyone says Seneca was one of the wisest of men. Till near the end he could convince Seneca, they say. Now he was so excited by the idea that he even dictated the speech he would make. He said, just before we went to sleep, "You never know, they might agree to make me Prefect of Egypt, even if they won't let me remain Emperor. We could have a marvellous time in Egypt, it's a remarkable country."

  'I think that was the last real hope he had. He'd been drinking, of course. We all had. When annihilation stares you in the face, it's natural to turn to wine, isn't it?

  'It was different in the morning. He woke before it was light, and discovered that his bodyguard had deserted him. They'd just slipped away. So had most of his friends. There were only half a dozen of us remaining. Imagine that, half a dozen in that vast palace, the corridors and all the dormitories empty. And still it wasn't light. That's when he first talked of killing himself. It's when I was first really frightened, too. He called for Spiculus to despatch him. That was one of his freedmen, a gladiator who had caught his fancy, a great brute of a German. But

  Spiculus had run away. That was when Phaon suggested we returned to his villa. Nero agreed. "I need only some quiet place where I can collect my thoughts," he said. So we found horses and set off. Cocks were crowing in the suburbs and the mist lay heavy, promising a fine day. Odd that that was what I thought of. We passed quite close to the Guards' camp, which made the Emperor tremble. But when his horse shied at a dead body lying in the road, and the scarf he had tied over the lower part of his face to disguise him fell away, he was recognised by a veteran who, astonished, still saluted him. Nero didn't return the salute. I think he hoped the man would think he was mistaken. When we approached the villa, Phaon, whose teeth were chattering either with the cold of the morning or with terror, suggested we should hide in a gravel pit till someone went ahead to see if the villa was still safe. But Nero wouldn't have that. "I won't go underground till I die," he muttered. He went on repeating the line as if it was the chorus of a song.

  'We got into the villa. But that, too, was deserted, except for Phaon's wife and daughters. Nero didn't even look at them. He sank down on a couch, saying, "This is the end, there's no way out for poor Nero now. Have they really declared me a public enemy? Poor Nero, poor Nero. And I had such wonderful plans." Phaon kept his head. He urged Nero to make for the coast, where (he said) they would be sure to find a boat. "Don't give up." We all told him not to give up. I don't know why.

  'Then someone came in to say that he had seen a troop of cavalry approaching. Nero picked up two daggers and tested their points. "How ugly and vulgar my life has become," he said, but still couldn't bring himself to . . . "I'm such a coward. Set me an example, Phaon," he said. But Phaon shook his head. He didn't see any reason why he should kill himself to encourage Nero. By this time I was in tears, which pleased the Emperor. So was Acte, the slave-girl who, alone of his women, really loved him. "This is nice," he said, "someone at least is going to mourn for me. Someone at least is sorry to see me in this state. But it's no credit to me that I can't . . . Come on, Nero," he said, speaking as if we weren't there, "be a man, play the man." Then he held one of the daggers against his throat and began to sob, and his secretary Epaphroditus stepped forward and, taking his hand that held the dagger, thrust it i
nto his neck. He gurgled, still tried to speak, lifted his head and managed to say, "What an artist ... so great an artist to die like this."

  Epaphroditus took the other dagger and stabbed him again, also in the throat.

  'It was just then, while he was still alive, that the officer commanding the troop of cavalry found us. He looked at Nero, and said, "I'd orders to take him alive, but it's better like this." Acte threw herself at his feet, sobbing. She caught hold of his legs, and said that Nero had begged her not to let them cut his head off, but have him buried in one piece. I don't know when he made this request. I hadn't heard him say this. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. I wanted to close them, he seemed to be looking at me, and I couldn't. Acte then begged them to let her take charge of the body. The officer said it was nothing to do with him. He'd been told to take Nero alive, but since he was dead, it didn't matter to him. "I'd throw him in a ditch myself," he said. Then he hurried away. I suppose he wanted to be first with the news, and get some sort of reward. As for me, I couldn't stay, it was all too horrible. But I've been afraid all day that someone would recognise me as Nero's boy, and ... So that's why I've come here, you were the only person, milady, I could turn to. You won't let them do anything to me, will you?'

  'Of course I won't,' my mother said.

  She was full of pity. She told me when she had put Sporus to bed, that he was a poor abused child, though of course he was older than I was myself.

  She kept him in our apartment for a few days. Then one night when I returned home he had gone. For a long time she wouldn't tell me where. Eventually I learned that she had sent him to the house of one of her cousins in Calabria. Later I believe he kept a brothel in Corinth. I don't suppose there was much else he could have been expected to do. Though my mother was ignorant of the fact, I have reason to suppose that Sporus had hidden some of the jewels he had got from Nero and at some point retrieved them, thus financing his enterprise. In my opinion, he had earned the jewels.

  VIII

  I confess to having framed my last letter in such a way as to irritate Tacitus. The sympathy expressed for Sporus will infuriate him indeed. He hates everything that smacks of degeneracy, and talks sometimes as if poor things like Sporus are responsible for their unhappy condition. It's too ridiculous. Actually, for all his gifts, his History will suffer from his lack of imagination. He can never put himself in another's place.

  Still, enough of Nero; a wretched tawdry fellow when all is said and done. One last comment is appropriate and I must remember to pass it on to Tacitus in my next letter: Nero was a liar to the last, claiming that he died an artist. The trouble was he was never an artist, he was merely artistic.

  Now for Galba.

  How much shall I tell him?

  Quite a lot, because Galba has always been by way of being a hero of my friend Tacitus. In later years, when we were together in the Senate, I have heard him speak of Galba's nobility and of the great service he did the State before he won the imperial crown. He has even said that, given the chance, and better fortune, Galba would have made a great Emperor, being at heart a Republican and a respecter of the Senate. He was extremely displeased when I remarked that everyone would have thought Galba capable of Empire - if he had never been Emperor.

  All the same, though he disliked what I said, he couldn't deny its truth. I even saw him make a note of my words. It will be amusing if he repeats them in his History.

  Not, of course, that I care how much he steals from me. The more he steals the better his History, and I have no desire for literary renown. What would I do with it here?

  Galba then: just the sort of jerk Tacitus would admire. Galba was immensely proud of his ancestry: so proud that he embellished it and, on a public inscription, traced it back to Jupiter on his father's side and to Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete, on his mother's. I have never had patience with such nonsense. His great-grandfather was one of Caesar's murderers, joining the conspiracy because he had been passed over for the consulship . . . The future Emperor's grandfather wrote a huge unreadable work of history, but I can't recall the subject. And his father was a hunchback. The story went round that when he was first with his future wife - I think her name was Achaica and she was descended from that Lucius Memmius who disgracefully sacked Corinth, destroying much of historical and artistic interest - he stripped to the waist, revealing his hump and declaring that he would never hide anything from her. If he kept this vow he was unique among husbands . . .

  The future Emperor was born some ten years before the death of Augustus. He had an elder brother who became a bankrupt and cut his throat because Tiberius denied him a provincial command which he didn't deserve, but had hoped to use to mend his fortunes by screwing the provincials in the fine old Republican fashion, as practised by that arch-hypocrite Marcus Brutus. Galba liked to put it about that when he was a small boy the Emperor Augustus had prophesied a great future for him, even that he would eventually be Emperor himself. This was fanciful; everyone knows that Augustus was determined to keep the succession in his own family and, in any case, always carefully described himself as Princeps, not Emperor, a title which (he said) had a purely military association.

  There were signs that Galba was destined for great things, all the same. When his grandfather, the historian, was sacrificing one day, an eagle swooped down and snatched the entrails from his hands, carrying them off to an oak tree well laden with acorns. The hunchback said this portended great honour for the family. The historian was more sceptical: 'Yes,' he reputedly said, 'on the day a mule foals!' Later Galba let it be known that a mule had foaled the day he heard of the Gallic rebellion led by Vindex, and decided this gave him a chance to aim for Empire himself. This story was widely believed - such is credulity.

  Somebody also once told Tiberius that Galba would eventually be Emperor, when an old man. 'That doesn't worry me a bit,' the real Emperor replied.

  All this is by the way and I've no doubt Tacitus already knows these stories and will repeat them if it suits him.

  One reason why my friend so admires Galba is that he saw him as an exemplar of old-fashioned Republican virtue. For instance, he was delighted to learn that Galba followed the old practice of summoning all his household slaves, morning and evening, to say good-day and good-night to him. A perfectly pointless exercise, if you ask me.

  Galba toadied up to the Augusta, Livia, when he was a young man and I believe she left him something in her will. Some say it was to please her that, when he was aedile in charge of the Games, he introduced the novelty of elephants walking a tightrope. That's ridiculous; Livia Augusta was never amused by such nonsenses.

  He had a long career of public service, and didn't do badly, but never so well as to arouse the jealousy of emperors. That he survived both Gaius Caligula and Nero is to my mind evidence of his essential mediocrity. But he liked to pose as a disciplinarian of the old school. For instance, when he was Governor in Spain he crucified a Roman citizen who was said to have poisoned his ward, even though the evidence was provided by people who had an interest in the man's conviction. He didn't respond to pleas that it was wrong to crucify a citizen, except by commanding the cross to be taller than other crosses and white-washed to make it still more conspicuous.

  Galba married only once. He disliked his wife, who was also named Livia, as I recall, and ignored his sons, showing no emotion when they died young. But, hypocrite that he was, he gave the love he had borne his dead wife as the reason why he never married again. Actually, he had no taste for women, nor indeed for boys, but only for mature men. Since everyone despises the man who, though an adult, takes the part of the woman in bed, he concealed this taste as best he could till he became Emperor. Then he was so excited when news was brought him of Nero's death that he seized hold of his freedman Icelus, a handsome swarthy brute, slobbered kisses over him, and told him to undress at once and pleasure him. I wonder what Tacitus will make of that story. Nothing, I dare say.

  IX

&n
bsp; It was, all the same, my dear Tacitus, whatever you might like to think, with apprehension that we awaited Galba's arrival in the capital. Word came that his advance was slow and blood-stained. Those suspected of being less than enthusiastic for his elevation were, as the saying went, 'eliminated'. Varro, Consul elect, and Petronius Turpilianus, a man of consular rank, were both put to death, without trial. Or so we heard.

  Then the Praetorians were agitated. They already regretted Nero who had treated them so indulgently. Their prefect Nymphidius saw in their mood his opportunity to strike for Empire. He made sure that they learned of Galba's response to their demand for the customary donative: 'I choose my soldiers; I do not buy them.' Domitian said to me: What a fool the old man must be; generals have had to buy their troops since Pompey's day. I know enough history to know that, even if I don't bury my nose in the stuff as you do. Tiberius alone could express such sentiments and survive them. But then Tiberius was a great general, which Galba isn't, and a man of matchless authority.' This wasn't the first time I had heard Domitian speak admiringly of that Emperor, on whom, as you know, he was to brood long and lovingly in years to come. Old-style Republicans (of your stamp, my dear) purred as they approvingly repeated what they termed 'Galba's most noble sentiments', which certainly inspired Nymphidius to promote a mutiny. For a couple of days he was master of the city; Flavius Sabinus told his nephew Domitian that for those hours he went in fear of death, even though Nymphidius was his cousin.