The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  Now for the thunderclap. I stood up again. “I am reserving the center of Rome for imperial grounds, which will include a palace, gardens, a lake, the Temple of Claudius, and a porticoed walk connecting the park to the Forum. It will be an integrated whole.”

  Now they stirred; now there were whispers.

  “These grounds will be open to the people; they will belong to all of Rome.” I raised my voice. “Rome will become, at one stroke, the most beautiful city on earth. A golden palace, the Domus Aurea, will crown the golden age of Rome, the new age of Apollo!”

  A senator stood to speak. He was fairly close to me, and I saw that it was Plautius Lateranus, that giant of a man. “Where do the people go who are displaced for this . . . this imperial playground?” he asked. His deep voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well.

  “They will be compensated and settled elsewhere,” I said. “And it is their park as well.”

  “Wouldn’t they rather just have a house to live in than a park to stroll in?” another senator, the flighty Quintianus, stood and asked.

  “It is not one or the other,” I said. “They will get a new house as well.”

  “This would bankrupt even Croesus,” said Scaevinus, his puckered mouth twisted in disapproval. “It is too . . . ambitious.” He all but mouthed the word “outrageous” before he replaced it with “ambitious.”

  “Croesus is not known for anything now but his gold, but this will give Rome a reputation for the ages,” I said.

  “Yes, a reputation for waste and folly.” Thrasea Paetus now stood. The Stoic senator had dared to say the words the others skirted around.

  “It is not folly to wish our city beauty and admiration, but perhaps we should build everything else first to see what the treasury can bear.” This was Piso, always the smooth conciliator.

  “No, it should be done all of a piece,” I said. “So when it is finished, it is truly finished.” I waited. No other comments. “There is nothing more tedious than a road that is always being repaired, a building that is never finished, endless construction work with dust and mess and detours. No, we want our city back, and quickly. In time for the second Neronian Games, a little over a year from now. Yes, when that day comes, you will walk on new paved roads, past rebuilt houses, into the wide avenues of the new Rome, and we shall have a grand reception in the open vestibule of the Domus Aurea.”

  I had wished to describe the particulars, to share my excitement with them. But I hesitated now.

  Suddenly another senator rose—it was Lucan, recently elected. “Shouldn’t the person—or persons—responsible for the Fire be culpable? Shouldn’t they pay?”

  “Since it was an accident, how would that be possible?” I asked. “If it was a person who knocked over a lamp, it was not done purposely. Even now the person may not be aware of it, if he even survived.”

  “People are calling down curses on whoever started it,” he said. “They give no names, but they seem to feel that someone did.”

  “And perhaps it says much that they don’t name a name,” said Scaevinus. “They know it but dare not say it.”

  He might as well have pointed a finger at me and said, You are the man! as the prophet Nathan did to King David. But Scaevinus was no prophet, and unlike David with Bathsheba, I was not guilty. So I did not answer I have sinned because I had not. But suddenly I was furious with the continuing accusations against me.

  And what if it was true . . . someone had started the Fire? The people felt it was no accident but could not identify the culprits. So they blamed it on me.

  “So, good senators, now I have my task set before me,” I said gravely. “Not only to rebuild the city but to track down and punish the guilty, if they truly exist.

  “But first the gods of Rome must be propitiated for the violation of their shrines by these evil persons, whoever they may be.” I meant it, and I was serving notice to those who disrespected and even suspected me—some of them in this very room.

  The room was quiet. I then gave the senators the imperial dismissal and took my leave, walking slowly toward the great doors and out into the blinding light of the Forum. The purple toga seemed to shimmer. Remember you are emperor, it seemed to whisper. You rule, not them.

  Beside me, Faenius and Subrius were silent and I could not read their faces.

  * * *

  • • •

  That was unpleasant,” I told Poppaea when we were alone in our quarters. Both Subrius and Faenius had hurried away as soon as we were back at the palace. I called for an attendant to disrobe me from the enveloping toga, which was a heavy weight in this weather. Looking at it folded neatly, I wondered how many shellfish had been crushed to dye it. This was a particularly deep purple, so it had been dyed twice at least.

  “You did not expect it to be otherwise, did you?” she asked. “No one is going to applaud your plan for Rome.”

  “The Senate has been docile a long time; why would they change now?” I sank down on a cushioned bench and motioned for a drink, my decocta Neronis, water that had been boiled and cooled in snow. A supply was always on hand, for I found it to be the most refreshing of any liquid. Soon a cup was put in my hand and I downed the drink. It had been so hot in the Curia.

  Poppaea also motioned for a cup. After sipping it, she said, “They agreed that the death of your mother was suicide following discovered treason—you can thank Seneca for crafting that defense—and they vote you honors on the slightest pretext, but this is different. First of all, you are rewriting what Rome is. Second, and probably more important to them, your ideas cost them money. It didn’t cost them anything to condemn your mother or decree that your speeches must be engraved in silver and read throughout the empire, but this hits them in the most tender of spots—their purses. Some of them will lose property in the middle of Rome to your grand redesign.”

  “Of course you are right,” I admitted. “But the Fire has cost everyone dear.”

  I patted the folded toga absentmindedly, feeling adrift.

  “Something else is bothering you,” she said. How well she knew me. But we had always been reflections of one another, sharing the same sensibilities and moods.

  “They keep blaming me! They think I started the Fire!” I burst out.

  She frowned, put down her cup. “Who is ‘they’?”

  “Everyone! Senator Scaevinus all but accused me directly. And there was no dissent from the rest of the room. They just sat there, staring!”

  She shrugged. “Scaevinus is a pompous snob,” she said. “He is hardly to be heeded when he speaks.”

  “He seemed to be quite well heeded,” I said. “And Lucan said that the people were cursing the person who started the Fire, without actually naming him. Implying that to do so would run afoul of someone powerful: the emperor.”

  She made a face. “Lucan? That poet nephew of Seneca’s? He’s jealous of you because you are a better writer than he is.”

  I shook my head. “There’s more to it than that.” As for his writing, he was very talented and gave me close competition. “It wasn’t just the senators, anyway. A few days ago my old cithara teacher Terpnus told me that the rumor that I had sung of the Fall of Troy while Rome burned was still rife. Worst of all, he believed it. I know he did; I could tell. And the other story making the rounds is that I myself set fire to Rome so I could rebuild it and name it after myself. I suppose there’s a combination story that I set fire to Rome and then grabbed my cithara and rushed off to sing, while renaming Rome after myself.” Anger enveloped me, but it did not quench the deep sorrow underneath at these accusations, the sense of betrayal by both the people and the Senate. “I didn’t tell you about it. I should have.”

  She came over to me and embraced me from the back, putting her head on my shoulders and entwining our fingers together. “You should tell me everything. You know we are one and the same, forged toget
her forever.”

  “Yes.” I held her fingers more tightly. “We are.”

  She nudged my head with hers, as if she would meld them. “What if someone really did start the Fire?” she said. “It is entirely possible.”

  “But to what end?”

  She thought a long moment. “There are madmen who like to destroy or who are enthralled by watching flames. Those we can never discover. But suppose there was a group that had a purpose in kindling the Fire?”

  “I can’t imagine such a group. The army? No. The slaves? No; too many of them would perish even if a few gained their freedom. The foreigners who live here? No; they are here for trade and because they prefer living here to their home countries. The Jews? No. They may be violent in Jerusalem, but that is because we are occupying their home. Those are the main distinct groups we have.”

  “You left one out,” she said.

  “Which one?”

  “The Christians,” she said. “You must remember our conversation about them after you let that Paul of Tarsus go. I told you they were dangerous. You laughed and gave me a lecture—you really are insufferable when you give one of your little lectures, dear—about how I was exaggerating and even how having them in my household would cause no trouble.”

  “Oh, yes. I do remember. You said many converts were here in the palace. But you failed to convince me what was so bad about them. You disliked them because they are an offshoot of Judaism, which you feel kindly toward.”

  “Everyone hates them! They refuse to participate in the rites of Rome, they meet secretly at night—which is illegal, as you know—they worship a man executed as a traitor to Rome. Shall I go on?”

  “No,” I said. She was quite irrational on this subject, I now recalled. I was not in the mood for a diatribe. I took a deep breath, my mind made up. “I will propitiate the gods of Rome whom we may have offended, with the prescribed rituals. Perhaps that will placate the people and these rumors will die out. If not—”

  If not, my rule was threatened.

  We left the conversation off then, but after dinner I stood looking out the window to the palace grounds below, still full of tents of the displaced, although there were fewer now, as people were returning to the city or moving elsewhere. Torches flickered below, lighting the grounds.

  Torches. What of the men throwing torches into burning buildings, praising Jesus during the height of the Fire? And the others who said they were acting under orders? That there had been some deliberate fire setting, I had seen with my own eyes. And what was it that Poppaea had asked Paul directly? Something about the end of the world and how Jesus would return, bringing fire with him. Yes. Poppaea claimed their leader had said he had come to cast fire upon the earth and that he wished it was already kindled. Paul had deflected the question, not denying it but saying he had never heard Jesus say that. The truth was he hadn’t heard Jesus say anything because he had never met him! I would find out more about this sect, but through less biased eyes than my wife’s.

  * * *

  • • •

  The sacred days of propitiation were here. I had consulted the Sibylline Books, rescued from the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and been directed to lead prayers to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpine, with a public banquet to follow. Juno would be honored by rites led by the matrons of Rome.

  The timing could not have been more auspicious, for Vulcan’s feast day was almost a month since the Fire had burned itself out, and already the city was recovering. Vulcan’s altar stood near the mundus of Ceres in the Forum, the ritual vaulted pit whose cover was removed once a year to allow the spirits of the dead to mingle with the living. It was also the spot where Romulus, the founder of Rome, had disappeared.

  On August twenty-third, the day of Vulcan’s annual observance, I stood before his altar near the Curia and intoned the ritual prayers, making a vow to set up altars all over the city on his feast day henceforth, to appease him and protect us from fire. Behind me, spread out all over the Forum were crowds of the common people, watching and wondering. The next day, August twenty-fourth, I invoked Ceres and her daughter as the cover was solemnly removed from the yawning pit to the underworld, offering them gifts and prayers.

  The ritual completed, I turned to the people, a blur before me, their clothes making a welcome change from the dull gray of the gutted Forum.

  “The rites to honor and thank Juno will be completed by the matrons of Rome. Her temple will be cleansed and fresh sea water sprinkled on her statues, and there will be vigils and banquets tonight. Those the matrons will keep privately, but we will banquet here in the Forum after sunset, and all are invited!” Loud cheers went up.

  “For we celebrate the rebirth of Rome!” I cried. “The gods have blessed it—as you know, the Fire started on the exact same day as the deadly fire over four hundred years ago when the Gauls sacked and destroyed much of Rome. But Juno’s sacred geese on the Capitoline warned of the attack then, saving many things. And once again Juno’s temple has been spared. When Rome was rebuilt the first time, it was done in haste and disarray. But here, before the very sacred site of Romulus, I promise him a new city, planned and executed with care and thought. It is rising grander than ever before and will be done as quickly as the former, but more thoroughly. I, your emperor, vow to you that this time next year you will stand in the new Rome and your eyes will be so dazzled you will blink, and your feet will walk on precious marble.” I then bent and dropped an offering into the mundus. It was so deep I could not hear it hit bottom. As it fell, I whispered the secret name of Rome into the darkness, bringing the sacred city back to life.

  * * *

  • • •

  A huge table was set up at that end of the Forum, with couches for some fifty high-ranking persons around it. I had invited certain senators, as well as the priests attached to the select gods, military leaders, and wealthy patricians. The people would help themselves to food and drink from tables throughout the Forum—I had ordered two hundred of them. They were free to walk about and mingle and even approach the imperial banquet table, and many did. I welcomed them all, getting up from my couch to talk to them, to hear their concerns. Mostly they seemed dazed by what had happened and what promised to emerge from the ruins as the new Rome. I heard no criticism. Perhaps the reports that people blamed me were exaggerated or coming from only one segment. Or . . . perhaps they were hiding their true feelings.

  Settling back onto my couch, I faced the pulvinar, the ceremonial banquet couch of the gods present at sacred events. There were images of Vulcan, Ceres, Proserpine, Juno, and Claudia Augusta. Claudia, my lost baby daughter. The Senate had voted her a place on the gods’ couch after her deification.

  I stared at the statue. It was an idealized portrait, a perfect baby with perfect features. The sculptor had never seen her. Perhaps it was kinder this way, that it not look like her. To see her again as she had really looked would have been painful. Now I saw only a representation.

  I reached out and took Poppaea’s hand. She, too, was looking at the statue.

  I promise you a Rome worthy of your memory, I told Claudia silently.

  * * *

  • • •

  A few days later Phaon, my minister of accounts and revenues, placed a paper before me and stepped back.

  I reached out to take it. “You act as if this is a poisonous snake,” I said, picking it up.

  “It is definitely something poisonous,” he said.

  I spread it out before me and stared at the figures, covering the entire page, in columns and boxes. Finally I located the summation: twenty-two thousand million sesterces. Was I reading this correctly?

  “Is this twenty-two thousand million?”

  “That is my finding,” he said. “It covers everything.” Phaon seldom frowned, and he did not even now. He was relentlessly cheerful and optimistic. “Considering what it includes—a bargain.
Just for you, sir, I will give it to you for what it cost me, but I am a poor man—” He wheedled, spreading his palms. We both burst out laughing.

  “Can you—can you throw in another temple, sir, if I meet this price—” I countered.

  “Only if we use inferior stone, and the emperor has forbidden me to traffic in such goods.”

  We stopped laughing.

  I had known it would be costly. But until I saw the figures . . . still, I could not change course now. The city was gone; it had to be rebuilt. There was no choice.

  Of course, it did not need to be rebuilt of marble, or the transparent stone from Cappadocia I had ordered for one of the temples, and perhaps I should not have offered to pay for the porticoes. And the Domus Aurea and its grounds—need they be so extensive?

  The answer was Yes! It all had to be done, it had all been promised, promised to the gods, promised to the people of Rome. And it had to be done as promised, not stinted upon.

  I put down the paper. “Is there any way we could raise more money?” I asked.

  “My thoughts exactly, Caesar. You know there are many wealthy freedmen.”

  “Yes, you should know, you are one.”

  “And we long to be full Roman citizens, but only our children are allowed that privilege. What if you decreed that any freedman who had more than two hundred thousand sesterces and committed one hundred thousand of them to building a house in Rome could become a citizen? You would have many volunteers, I daresay.”

  “You already have a villa here,” I said. “So that leaves you out.”

  “I am only one of many in that class of people, but it is a problem—wealthy people with no position in society.”