The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  Meet for his crimes

  A scourge will fall upon him

  Let his proud majesty build marble halls

  And roof his courts with gold

  The time will come, the day will surely come

  When he will pay with his own poisoned life

  The forfeit of his crimes; the day when he,

  Ruined, abandoned, naked to the world,

  Will bow his neck beneath his enemy’s sword.

  Build marble halls and roof his courts with gold . . . the Golden House! And an avenging Fury loosed on me?

  Then she spoke of the most dreadful crime that she had committed, the incest that I had told no one. Had Seneca guessed at it, or was this just his most foul imagination?

  Would that wild beasts had torn my womb to pieces

  Ere I had brought into the light that child

  Or held him to my breast.

  You would have died all mine, flesh of my flesh

  Yes, that was what you wanted, Mother, me all yours, and flesh of your flesh. I had thought death had sundered us. Now I was not so sure. I shuddered. I had put those thoughts far away, and now they were back like a screaming throng.

  And she did not spare Poppaea.

  My bleeding hands infernal torches bring

  To greet this impious marriage; by their light

  My son shall wed Poppaea: these bright flames

  The avenging hands of his infuriate mother

  Shall turn to funeral fires.

  But this was a play, a play written by a man, not a ghost. Obviously a man who hated me. Still, it was a work of imagination, not fact.

  And there was something else. Octavia described Poppaea thus:

  His haughty concubine goes proudly decked

  In stolen riches of the royal house

  This could have been Mother protesting. Once I had gifted her with a jeweled dress from the royal wardrobe. Instead of thanking me, she complained that I had cheated her, as once she had had all of the wardrobe at her disposal and now I returned her only one small part of it. What bounty was it, she asked, to be given back what was already hers?

  Poppaea had taken a fancy to the dress and worn it once. I had ordered her to take it off. I could not bear to see it again, nor to see Poppaea wearing it. Too much of Mother lingered in it.

  XXXIII

  I awoke on the morning of my birthday aware of an unnatural light in the room. Poppaea was in her own quarters; I was alone. The shutters were closed, but somehow the strange illumination seeped in around them.

  I got up and made my way barefoot across the chilled floor, sliding on the smooth marble. I pushed open the shutters, and they creaked as they swung on their hinges to reveal a blindingly white world. Rome was covered in snow! The sunlight dazzled as it struck the drifts and mounds, and the sky was ringingly blue.

  It was hushed and still outside. No one had ventured out yet, and the world looked new-made, unsullied. Sharp corners and smudges were blanketed and erased. I stood breathless before it, overcome by its crystalline beauty.

  “Rome has given you a birthday gift.” I had been so transfixed by the scene outside that I had not heard Poppaea steal into the room and come up behind me.

  “The best one I have ever had,” I said, turning to her as she embraced me. “It so seldom snows in Rome, and almost never this deep.”

  “Now you need to bask in the first rays of sunlight, like you did on the day you were born,” she said.

  I was standing in the sunlight but did not consider it a reenactment. Some things happen only once, giving rise to personal myths. Such was the story of my birth. “I am just happy to see the sun again,” I said. “It has been so gloomy and muffled for days.”

  “If the snow stays, how will that affect Saturnalia?” she asked.

  “Nothing will stop Saturnalia,” I said, laughing. “Nothing in the world, not even a volcano. Romans must have their holiday.”

  “Look, the snow is floating in clumps on the lake,” she said in childish glee. “Like foam on ocean waves.”

  To me it looked like clouds on a blue sky, upside down. So the world was already upside down, ready for Saturnalia.

  * * *

  • • •

  Two days later I stood in the Temple of Saturn in the Forum to offer prayers and formally proclaim the festival in his name. Whether Saturn really had any concern with it was irrelevant at this point. What did the gods really think of us and the things we claimed for them?

  The snow had not melted, and it was bitter cold. Paths had been cleared through the Forum and the steps of the Temple were shoveled, but our thick mantles dragged in the snow anyway. However, the sparkling city had everyone in a jolly mood, cold and wet mantles be damned.

  Back in the palace, the first thing I had to do was attend the daily “Friends of Caesar” reception. Normally the people lined up to pay their respects to me; now I must pay respects to them, as Saturnalia demanded.

  They were gathered in the atrium, clustered around the blue-tiled impluvium. This first reception was limited to an elite group, deemed to be especially important or close to me. Another, larger group came to a later reception. To be banished from the “Friends of Caesar” membership was a sign of their being out of my favor.

  Now the figures turned toward me as I approached. Instead of smiling, they scowled. Everything must be reversed.

  I went down the row, making humble obeisance to them, fawning and uttering outlandish compliments to them. To a bald senator I praised his shining pate. To a rotund man I praised his athletic prowess. To a plain praetor I praised his Apollonian looks. I hoped in this they would recognize how comical their effusive compliments sounded to me every day.

  Back in my quarters, Faenius and Subrius were on duty but not in uniform. Instead they wore loose long-sleeved tunics and civilian shoes. I almost did not recognize them.

  They lifted up a cuirass and helmet and ordered me to put them on. “You need to protect us,” said Faenius. “As we do you, day in and day out.”

  “Yes, your safety is paramount with us,” said Subrius. “We think of nothing else, no matter where our duty calls us.”

  There was an undertone to his words that betrayed something beyond a lighthearted game.

  “I know you do,” I said. “And I trust you with my life.” I put on the cold metal helmet and strapped on the weighty leather cuirass. Suddenly I felt invincible, military, stalwart. I laughed. “I feel quite transformed,” I said. “Now you must trust me with your lives.”

  They looked at one another. “Of course,” they said in unison. “Absolutely.”

  In my military glory, I went to Poppaea’s apartments. People blinked when they saw me, taken aback. I loved it.

  I went through the nest of rooms to reach Poppaea’s. She was seated on a chair high on her dais, with her slaves and servers looking on. But no! It was Sporus in the chair, and Poppaea attending him, wearing the gown of a slave. But even this became her. For a fleeting instant I remembered Acte serving Octavia in her household, with grace and dignity. But I had never truly thought of her as a slave, although others did.

  Sporus looked up haughtily. “Do we welcome the great Germanicus?”

  I bowed slightly. “At your service.”

  “Ah, I see the family resemblance to the emperor. But it can’t be Nero, because he doesn’t know a gladius from a pilum.”

  Saturnalian license to speak words forbidden any other time . . . I felt my face growing red while the company laughed uproarishly. And I wasn’t that ignorant of arms!

  “My grandson fights in other fields,” I said, defending myself.

  “Yes, the effete parlors of poetry!” a slave yelled.

  “He is rather skilled with chariots,” I said.

  “Yes, once,” the taunter continued. “But could h
e do it again? Not like you, mighty warrior, who had the barbaric hairy Germans on the run.”

  “We shall see,” I said, leaving the field of retorts. I took my place at the back of the room while Poppaea ostentatiously waited on her double. I was stung by the insult, but I determined not to let it show. It is better to know secret thoughts than to be ignorant of them, keep ears open rather than shut them.

  * * *

  • • •

  Should I apologize for Sporus?” asked Poppaea when we were getting ready for Petronius’s party. “I know it hurt your feelings.”

  “No, no, it didn’t,” I insisted. “But I won’t wear these again. It was Faenius and Subrius who put them on me.” The helmet and cuirass were sitting neatly on a table. “I will go as something so far from what I am that there can be no comparisons. I will go as”—I thought fast—“a muleteer.”

  She burst out laughing. “With a mule in tow?”

  “Let’s get one of the slaves to dress as one,” I said. “But since everything is unreal, he will be a talking mule.”

  “I shall go as myself, but veiled. What would that make me? What anyone wants to imagine. And it saves me the trouble of thinking of a costume.”

  “If you don’t feel up to it, you needn’t go.”

  “I feel better today. If I need to, I can leave early.”

  Suited up in my muleteer’s outfit—thick boots, leather leg wrappings, a long-sleeved unbleached tunic, a greasy mantle—we set out in a litter toward Petronius’s dwelling on the Aventine after sunset, the pretend mule sitting behind us in his furry costume with big ears. Although it was barely dark, the streets were thronged with costumed revelers, shouting and pushing, most of them drunk. They jostled and tilted the litter; in spite of my disguise, I was recognized, and leering faces peered in at me. One woman, in rags—was she really a beggar or disguised as one?—thrust a doll at me, saying it would protect me against assassins. Before I could respond, she was swept away in the crowd.

  I turned it over. It was a simple cloth doll, the sort children have. Its features were crudely drawn and its hair yarn. I set it down in the litter. But Poppaea clutched my arm. “Didn’t someone hand Caesar a doll when he was on his way to the Senate on the ides of March?”

  “It was a note, and he didn’t read it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It had the details of the plot. But he just stuck it with the bundle of petitions to read later.”

  “Don’t go to Petronius’s!” she cried. She leaned forward to the bearers. “Turn around!” she said.

  I pulled her hand off my arm. “Don’t be foolish,” I said. “I am sure Petronius has guards, and we are among friends. Where is the bold Poppaea of old, the Poppaea I married?” I turned the doll in my hand. “This is just a child’s toy.” I started to throw it out the litter, but she grabbed it.

  “No!” She held it to her chest. “That would be as foolhardy as Caesar.”

  Our litter climbed the hill overlooking the Circus Maximus, a not very steep grade. Even here the crowds were thick, careening and bumping. The snow crunched underfoot and the damp air stung; it had an astringent smell not unlike weak vinegar. Bobbing torches were a swirl of yellow moons.

  A variety of buildings covered the Aventine, from luxurious mansions to more humble dwellings. Our bearers set the litter down before an elegant jewel of a house and announced, “The residence of Gaius Petronius Arbiter.”

  Its size was modest, but its design was innovative, daring, and extravagant, a child of the reborn Rome. We made our way to the door, I leading my mule, who had hooves of polished ebony and ears that waved over his head, stiffened with wire. A slave opened the door, but no, it was Atria, Piso’s wife. I started to greet her as such, but she put her finger to her lips.

  “Lesbia, to serve you and welcome you to the home of Catullus.” So that was who Petronius claimed to be tonight. She bowed and ushered us in. The atrium was crowded, almost as crowded as the streets. People were wading in the impluvium, baring their legs and shrieking. Mounds of food listed from overladen tables, making the floor slippery with crushed grapes.

  “The private party is this way,” she said, steering us through the atrium and a doorway into a surprisingly large room off an indoor garden. Opulently dressed slaves welcomed us to “the garden of delights,” and indeed, flowers—lilies, roses, iris—were fastened around the walls, imported from warm countries, and heady clouds of sandalwood incense spewed from censers hanging from the ceiling.

  “Oh, my, a mule driver!” Petronius was beside us. “And his mule. With what is he laden?”

  “Some tokens that can be redeemed with the puzzles.”

  “Oh, good! We are about to begin the games.”

  He looked at Poppaea. “The goddess of Fortune?” he asked.

  “The goddess of my fortune,” I said. “You can ask her a question.”

  Petronius cocked his head. “Will my venture succeed?”

  Muffled behind her veil, Poppaea said, “You must describe the venture in more detail. You must have several ventures upon which you await the outcome.”

  “Ah, if you were a true prophetess, you would know which venture.” He winked. “But it is better if you don’t. Come, partake of some refreshments.”

  In the middle of the room stood a silver-legged table bedecked with at least thirty pots and dishes. Petronius was eager to show them off, but in truth they were merely one type of food disguised as another—pastry that mimicked meat, meat that looked like fruit, and so on. After our visit to Locusta we were loath to eat anything here; too many people had access to it. I even demurred about the wine, confounding Petronius.

  In an adjoining room a master of ceremonies was announcing the beginning of the questions and forfeits. It was impossible for someone of Lateranus’s size to disguise himself, so I recognized him despite the mask, the wild wig, and the barbarian trousers that ballooned out around his treelike legs.

  “I, the master of revels, will put a question to you all. Answer it as best you can. But be careful. A wrong answer gets a punishment.” He turned his backside out and slapped his butt. Turning back, he asked, “What is the best time of day to have sex?”

  Someone dressed as a pirate said, “Midnight.”

  “I said day!” roared Lateranus. “Paddle him!” he ordered one of the slaves.

  “Right as the sun comes up,” said a gladiator—who turned out to be Vestinus.

  “That’s because you are old!” said Lateranus. “The only time you have enough energy! Paddle him!”

  “I’m not that old,” protested Vestinus. But he submitted good-naturedly.

  “I say right after the baths,” said Quintianus—I recognized his voice, coming from a Circe costume.

  “Wrong! That’s backward. You should take a bath afterward, not before. But then, you probably want to smell like perfumed oil. The paddle for you!”

  After many wrong answers, my mule said, “Any time of day!”

  Lateranus swung around. “Leave it to a dumb animal to know the best time for sex! All the time! Yes! Here’s our winner!”

  “And he gets a reward from his very own pack,” I said, opening his saddlebag and pulling out a token, labeled “a parrot with an obscene vocabulary.” There was a squawky one at the palace I wanted to rid myself of.

  There were many other questions and riddles. How many cups of wine make a man drunk? What’s the rarest hair color? Is there a foolproof test for virginity? Has anyone ever brought a dead person back to life?

  But other people ignored the puzzles and continued talking with one another, downing cup after cup of wine, answering the question for themselves of how many cups were needed.

  Suddenly Lucan, wearing an ivy wreath, took the floor, shoving Lateranus aside. He swayed slightly on his feet, swishing his wine cup aimlessly.

  “T
he Greeks knew their w-wine! Yes, the great poet Euboulos said, ‘I prepare only th-three cups for m’ guests—the first f’r health, the second f’r love and pleasure, the third f’r s-sleep.’” Lucan drained his. “This is my suh-sixth! So what does he say about th-that? ‘The f-fourth is not the host’s any longer but buh-longs to bad buh-havior, the fifth is for shouting, and the suh-sixth is for rudeness and insults.’ So here is wh-where I am!”

  “You stammer like Claudius,” said Piso, coming out of the shadows.

  “You don’t need six cups of wine to be rude and insulting,” I said, glaring at him. Let him know I knew about the latrine joke. “You can do it dead sober.”

  He turned slowly, trying to focus his eyes. He shrugged. Perhaps nothing could penetrate his mind at this moment. “More!” he cried, holding out his cup, and General Vespasian, dressed as a slave, filled it. “Now,” said Lucan, licking his lips. “Number seven—hmm—‘seven is f’r fights.’”

  He deserved a fight, but it was not fair to fight with a man so drunk he could barely stand. I turned away. When I confronted him, it would be at a time he couldn’t hide behind Bacchus.

  “Riddle, riddle!” called Lateranus, seeking to regain control. “Does anyone know the rest of the rhyme? Our friend here is too drunk to proceed.” He motioned for someone to pull Lucan away from the center. True to the poem, he tried to fight, but he was so uncoordinated he fell in a heap and was dragged away into the shadows.

  “Yes,” said a throaty deep voice I thought I recognized. A woman dressed as Boudicca, tossing her head with its long red wig, tapping her spear, said, “The eighth is for lawless behavior, the ninth for vomiting, and the tenth for insanity.” As if on cue, the sound of vomiting came in the direction where Lucan was last seen. “He must have skipped the eighth,” said Boudicca. Everyone howled.

  Lateranus continued smoothly. “So, here is another riddle! What is it that is both mortal and immortal but lives as neither god nor man, is born anew and dies each day? Is seen by no one but known to all?”

  While everyone was thinking, I looked around. I knew most of the people, but some were strangers. The disguises did not help. The smoke from the censers blurred the faces, and the corners of the room were murky. Petronius looked on, arms crossed. What was going through his mind? I had never understood him; he seemed to stand outside the general breed of men yet desired to be part of that company, hosting entertainments and presiding over clubs, but always at a remove. So was he here—looking on from the shadows.