Nero's Heirs

by Allan Massie

  Otho thanked Paullinus for his advice, and for speaking so frankly. Then he bit his nails while he waited to see who was eager to follow the first speaker. Marius Celsus got to his feet.

  'I've had my quarrels with Paullinus in the past,' he said, 'and I still hold that he was wrong to halt the pursuit in the last battle. But what's done is done. You can never alter yesterday's course. Now Paullinus talks sense. Everything comes to he who waits, as the proverb says. All we have to do is sit tight, hold our position, and Vitellius will be like a rotten fruit that falls from the tree. Why risk defeat in battle when victory is ours if we do not do anything rash?'

  A young blond legate, who had nodded to me approvingly when he saw me silence the catamites, and whom I now recognised as one whom I had been accustomed to see, years previously, in Lucan's company at the baths, now stood up. He wore the short military tunic and rubbed his hands down his thighs as if they were sweating. His thighs, I recall noticing, were shapely and free of hair. Not many men have the cool self-esteem to shave their legs on campaign. He addressed Otho in a dandified voice, with a note of haughty reserve.

  'Permit me,' he said, 'to introduce myself, for few of you will know me, while those who do may be surprised to see me at this council. My name is Caesius Bassus, and I am attached to the staff of Annius Gallus. As you know, my general had a heavy fall from his horse a few days ago, and is presently laid up. Therefore he sent me here, that I might read to you a paper which he has written giving his views of what should best be done. I see no reason not to say straightaway that he is in substantial agreement with Paullinus. Nevertheless, since his reasons for advocating this course are not identical, which you may consider adds weight to the argument, I request your permission, sir, to proceed.'

  As he read his general's document, a line of verse floated for a moment just out of reach. Domatilla had quoted it, I knew that, and named the author as Caesius Bassus, which meant nothing to me then. Now the three things came all at once together, Domatilla's lips framing the line as we gathered our things and looked round the garden before returning to the villa, the line itself - 'Stark autumn closed on us, to a crackling wind from the west' - and the image of the poet stretched out on a bench at the baths, caressing himself, as Lucan urged in a voice that grew sharper the more his friend ignored it, some wild course, but what I know not. How strange, I thought, to find him here, so untouched by war, untouched even by time, for he, who was several years older than myself, now appeared to me to be my equal in age.

  He finished speaking made a curt bow towards the Emperor, and turned away, as if indifferent to the effect of his words which, I suspected, might have been written by him, for Annius Gallus was not reputed to have any skill in rhetoric or letters.

  It seemed to me that the argument for delay was cogent, and I also believed it would accord with Otho's own predilection for postponing. But I had reckoned without the influence of his brother Titianus, who spoke up for immediate war. He was supported by the Prefect of the Praetorians, one Proculus, an ignorant and short-tempered man. Their chief argument was that delay in a civil war encourages desertions and that the troops should not be given time to consider whether they might find better fortune in Vitellius' army. This argument, though expressed inelegantly and without any attempt to appeal to reason, nevertheless prevailed. It did so because it played on men's fears, and fear is a more potent advocate than good sense. Even as Proculus spoke, I could see Otho begin to twitch; he had told me only that morning that he had dreamed of waking, naked but for a single sheet, in a vast desert; a cold wind was blowing and vultures hovered in the air. Poor man, he had no confidence in the loyalty of either his soldiers or their officers. Having won the Empire by an act condemned as treasonable by so many, he saw traitors lurking at every corner of the road he was compelled to travel.

  Then Titianus, either because he sought to reserve glory for himself, or perhaps because he had a certain affection for his brother Otho, which I find hard to credit, proposed that the Emperor should not command the army in person - or rather should not remain with the army command of which he had surrendered to his brother - but should withdraw to Bedriacum some dozen miles to the rear. There, he said, the Emperor would be secure from danger and able to occupy himself with the administration of Empire.

  Otho received this speech with a blank expression on his face. I don't think he knew what his brother had been going to propose; and the words pained him. They suggested that he was useless, an embarrassment to the troops, some of whom would have to die to maintain him as Emperor. He looked around as if seeking someone to oppose his brother's motion. His gaze fell on Caesius Bassus, who held it a moment and then lowered his eyes. Otho's mouth trembled. When he saw that no one was going to demand that he remained with his army, he gave a little shrug of his shoulders, clapped his hands, and called for wine for the council. Unusually, there had been none provided beforehand, perhaps because Marius Celsus was known to be intemperate.

  The gathering broke up into little groups. I felt a hand laid on my shoulder. I turned to see Caesius Bassus.

  He said, 'So we've made two bad decisions.' He smiled, as if making bad decisions was matter for indifference. 'You're attached to the Emperor's personal staff, 1 think,' he continued. 'So I'm afraid you will see no immediate action. But I hear you have already distinguished yourself. I congratulate you. To display virtue in war is all that is left to us, now that civic virtue has been outlawed. You must not be surprised that I know of your doings. It is not just that they have been much spoken of. I had my eye on you in any case. You were a friend of my friend Lucan, I think.'

  'That does me too much honour,' I said. 'I was a mere boy. We were not equals. Therefore we could not be friends.'

  'No?' he said, and smiled. 'At any rate, he admired you greatly.'

  'I admired his verses,' I said.

  'Yes, of course.'

  'One of your lines ran in my head as you were reading your general's dispatch.'

  I quoted it to him.

  'Do you know,' he said, 'I can't for the life of me remember the next line. A poet who forgets his own verses - not, I assure you, a being you are often likely to encounter.'

  'I'm afraid it's the only line of that poem I know. It was a girl who quoted it to me. The girl I'm in love with actually.'

  'Ah, yes, my verses appeal to lovely girls. And to some boys also, I'm glad to say, even some lovely boys.'

  He laid his hand on my shoulder again, and squeezed it gently.

  'I often think I should have died with Lucan. I'm rather ashamed I didn't. Well, I don't suppose it will be long now. Not after the decisions taken here tonight. Take care of yourself, and remember me. Get your girl to recite the rest of the poem. It was rather good, I think. Sad that I've forgotten it myself

  That night Otho dictated to me for a long time, letters to the commander of the 14th legion, to Vespasian and to Mucianus. He spoke confidently of his expectation of victory and of how he looked forward to their meeting to discuss the government of the Empire.

  But, every few minutes, between phrases, his eyes shifted and he looked into the night.

  XXV

  I do not know why I sent these last pages, with the record of that conversation with Caesius Bassus, to Tacitus. I regret it. I feel as if I had given something of myself away. But how can that matter? Do I care whether Tacitus thinks well or ill of me? I have no reason to. I am cast up here. He writes again that there is no reason why I should not return to Rome, now that law has been restored, and no one is condemned merely by the caprice of the Emperor. No doubt he speaks truth. He still does not understand that exile has become my choice - or my destiny.

  Besides, what would I do in Rome? Who would I know? Who would remember me? Who would greet me kindly?

  Even my friendship, such as it is, with Tacitus is one that can be maintained only at a distance, by post. With several hundred miles separating us, I can be amused by his narrow puritan censoriousness. It would bor
e and irritate me if we met and spent time together. That used not to be so; I was then delighted by his wit and intelligence. But now I could not abide his certainty of being always right, of being justified; I scorn his consciousness of his own virtue. Actually, I find I dislike him. But he amuses me - at a distance.

  In his last letter he said, 'You forget that the murder of Galba made Otho odious and terrible.' Strange adjectives to use of that unfortunate man.

  Balthus is lying stretched out before the fire, asleep. One of my hounds has placed his leg over the boy's thigh, pushing the skirt of his tunic up to reveal a long line of naked flesh. The skin is pale, though the flames dance red-gold over it. It is deep night. I kept the boy with me rather than being compelled to solitude. Minerva's bird utters its warning cry. Bitterns boom in the reeds by the inland sea. From the bedroom beyond comes the, as it were, answering snores of my woman. She has never had a disturbed night in her life, and she tells me she never dreams. Indeed I once, years ago, had to explain to her what a dream was.

  There are pictures in the fire. Some nights they frighten me. Balthus utters a little moan. It sounds contented. But it may have been the hound that uttered.

  Two nights after that staff council, I was released by Otho when he declared himself at last ready to retire. He had talked of doing so several times, and I was beginning to think we would see the dawn, as we had done on other occasions. But this night he said, 'I really think I may sleep', and let me go. We were lodged in a villa, from which the owner had fled, or which he had perhaps been persuaded to surrender to the Emperor, and I had secured for myself a little room by the gatehouse.

  When I entered, I found Caesius Bassus reclining on my couch with a wine-flask by his side.

  'I had your servant stoke the stove,' he said. 'You don't mind that I've come here? Look, I've brought wine.'

  He poured me a cup.

  Tm very tired,' I said, ungraciously.

  'Who knows? I may be dead tomorrow. I've remembered how that poem goes.'

  He recited it to me.

  'It's good,' he said, 'isn't it? One of my best. I can't think how I came to forget it.'

  'It's sad, certainly,' I said, 'and beautiful, like the last colours of the evening sky. But you didn't ride here to recite a poem to me.'

  'Why not? I am a poet, after all, with all the poetic vanity. And being a poet, writing poems, that's the best of me, the only good in me, I have often thought. And I was touched that you remembered that line your girl quoted to you, even if you would not perhaps have done so but for the girl. But I admit, the poem was an excuse. I wanted to see you again. To talk. To unburden myself. To speak to someone who knew Lucan and was loved by Lucan, and to kill the night with talk of Lucan, and life, and love and this awful war, this so uncivil civil war.'

  'Lucan talked, to seduce me,' I said. 'That was all. He didn't succeed.'

  'You can't reproach him for that ambition,' he said. 'You were very desirable. You still are, if you don't mind my saying so. To me, you are in that most delicious of stages, no longer a boy, not yet a man. But that's not why I've come here. Oh, if you were to invite me to tumble you on your bed, I should accept, of course. But I don't expect you to do so and, even if you did, and we took pleasure in each other, what would that amount to? The brief opening of a window in the blank wall of weariness, no more than that. For me now, even satisfied lust tastes sour, like new wine poured yesterday, drunk today.'

  He fell silent. I could not read his expression, for his face was in half-shadow. A moth fluttered against the lamp, burned its wings and fell to the table.

  '"The shadow of a great name",' he said, quoting Lucan. 'I think he meant Caesar, but the great name in whose shadow we all live is Rome itself, and Rome is now, like Troy, in flames. Nothing that was Rome remains - except the name. We were Republicans, you know. We dreamed that it might be possible, Nero dead, to restore the Republic. It was only a dream, foolish and insubstantial. We proved that, betraying ourselves and each other in our fear. No one in our generation has the fortitude of our forefathers. They tortured me, you know, but only a little. That was all that was necessary to make me betray Lucan. And Lucan himself tried - oh, so meanly - to cast the blame for his conduct on his mother. Perhaps he had Rome in mind. I should like to think so. For we had - it was a bond between us - a certain idea of Rome, which however in no way corresponded to the reality. I crawled to Nero: to save my life which, ever since, has seemed to me worthless. And so now, we are caught up in the struggle between two worthless men, Otho and Vitellius, and I ask myself, does it matter which of them feasts on the dead body of Rome? There's no good answer I can think of. One of them will win, the other lose, and who gives a tinker's cuss? Then your friends, Vespasian and Titus, will engage in a new war.'

  What could I reply? The shameful thought came to me that the disillusion, so plangently expressed by Caesius Bassus, might be a ruse, that he might have been sent to prove my loyalty to Otho, and that an unwary word might invite my ruin - arrest, a cursory trial and ignominious death.

  He seemed indifferent to my silence.

  'We hoped to restore a time when men might think what they wished and say what they thought. Yet, when we came to the test, we stifled our thoughts and said what was required. There was no need of enemies; friends were only too ready to destroy each other. We thought of ourselves as the best but, when even the best are subject to moral corruption, the worst triumph. I have never ceased to reproach myself that I am still alive. Fortune may see to it that this battle tomorrow answers my self-reproach.'

  He smiled, and drank more wine.

  'Do you know what I am?' he said. 'I am a man with a great future behind him.'

  I do not pretend that I recall his every word throughout this conversation which was really a soliloquy, a threnody with corruption as its theme. Yet some of the words are those he spoke, and the sense is all his. So, too, is what I may call the music. It has remained with me all these years, throughout so many vicissitudes, because this poet, whom I scarcely knew, who had singled me out almost by chance, and who met the next day the death he sought, expressed with an irony so detached from his personality as to seem cruel all that I have come to feel concerning the horrors of the age in which we have been condemned to live and in which the reward for virtue has been certain doom.

  Before taking his leave, he said, You will have heard that our two emperors, Otho and Vitellius, accuse each other of monstrous debaucheries. Neither is lying. How strange that both should stumble into truth?'

  There can be no emotion more debilitating than self-contempt; yet who that ever aspired to virtue can escape it in our time?

  Balthus stirs on the rush-matting before the fire. The hound protests and, shifting position, now lies athwart the boy. Waking, the boy's face often wears a troubled look. His eyes are narrowed and there are lines made by anxiety running from them. His mouth hangs a little open, as if he would speak but dare not, as if inviting kisses which nevertheless he would try to ward off. But in sleep he looks contented, contented indeed as the unreflective hound.

  He spoke to me earlier this evening of his god, in whom he declares an absolute trust. It appears that the poor child believes that his god has a special care for him, and indeed for all those he terms 'true believers'. He would like me to become one. Yet it is all absurdity. Everyone who has thought about these matters and who has had any experience of life knows that whatever gods exist are perfectly indifferent to the fortunes of men. If they care at all, it is not for our safety, but for our punishment. His Christianity is a slave's religion, and I suppose this is natural. Slaves dare not look reality in the face. They keep their eyes lowered to the ground. No wonder they cherish in their sad deluded hearts some notion of enjoying the favour of the gods in another life.

  Strange though that his absurd religion gives him an assurance and a comfort I cannot look to have. In my experience, virtue is punished and crimes rewarded, until hubris overtakes the criminal.

>   XXVI

  I fretted, Tacitus, to be kept at the Emperor's side. Yet there was nothing I could do about it. Otho protested that he needed me. He told me I was his talisman. Yet he spoke in a tone of despondency. Civil war, he told me, was wicked. Neither he nor Vitellius would be forgiven for having subjected Italy to its miseries.

  'It is no wonder,' he said, 'that the merchants and common people of the towns already regret Nero. What harm did he do them, they ask, compared to the ruin that the rivalries of Otho and Vitellius threaten to bring on us?'

  And it was true, he added, that Nero had directed his cruelties only at members of the senatorial class, and had pleased the populace by the lavish entertainment he had promoted on their behalf.

  The Emperor had refused to take the omens on the day assigned to battle, and when the priests who had done so came to inform him of their message, he waved them angrily away. He sent forward a succession of runners urging his brother Titianus and his second-in-command Proculus to make all possible haste towards the confluence of the Po and the Adda, by which march it was hoped that they would cut off the enemy's retreat and draw a circle round their camp. I later learned that Celsus and Paullinus had argued against exposing the troops, who were heavily burdened with baggage, to such a hazardous plan. They would rather we had stood and fought on ground of our own choosing. But Titianus, with all the arrogance of incompetence, waved these arguments aside. He was infatuated with the beauty of his plan, and did not realise that battles are fought in the field, not on map-tables. But the disagreement between the generals becoming known, the men were disheartened, and many talked, I am told, of their fear that they had been betrayed.