The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  It was beautiful beyond words. No wonder Apollo had sought it out for his home, no wonder the Muses lived on the mountain. This was the lodestone that had drawn me all my life, and now I stood at its threshold.

  People were gathering around me, but for a few moments all I was aware of was the jagged shape of the sacred mountain and the slender cypresses standing like nymphs on the slopes. I could see the outline of the monuments scattered on the heights.

  No one could move until I did. Finally the spell was broken and I said, “Come,” and we set out toward the site. The ground rose slowly, rugged rocks guarding the pathway, while pines, cedars, and laurel rustled in the sweet wind. The only colors were stone gray and dark green, restrained and calm.

  Halfway up, the path became steeper. The air was clearer and delicately scented with wild thyme and fennel, as well as the warm fragrance of the bay laurel, Apollo’s own plant. Ahead of us, at a bend of the path, the rock-cut basin for the Castalian Spring greeted us, dappled light playing across its surface.

  “Are you going to bathe in it?” asked Statilia, who had huffed up the path behind me.

  I looked at the rippling water, being fed from its source higher up. Should I bathe in it, or drink from it merely?

  “Some people wash only their hands or hair, but murderers have to wash completely,” she said.

  Murderers. If I bathed in it, would everyone assume I was trying to cleanse myself of guilt?

  “Are you planning to visit the oracle?” she persisted. “If so, you have to purify yourself.”

  “Not today. Today I drink from it, imbibe the source of literary inspiration.” I motioned to my body slave, who proffered a golden cup. I went to the edge of the water and dipped it in. The water was pure as rock crystal. I sipped. It was cold and had an indefinable taste, something that, if it had been a color, would have been pale blue.

  “Now, Apollo,” I whispered, “nourish the artist inside me.”

  Statilia held out her hand. “Let me taste it.”

  I held on to the cup. “No. Each person must have his own.” I indicated that the slave should hand her a cup.

  She plunged it into the water, bringing it out dripping. She took a long swallow. “Cold. Rather tasteless,” she said. “I don’t feel moved to create.”

  Tasteless? Perhaps only some people could taste it; perhaps it kept its secret flavor for those sensitive enough to discern it.

  Walking ever upward, now on the Sacred Way, we soon came upon the splendor of the vast Apollonian site, the buildings strung out like beads of a necklace on the slope, cascading in seven terraces.

  Building after building crowded the terraces, some small, some large, but the long colonnaded Temple of Apollo dominated the scene. Within was the famous oracle, where people came from all the world to seek advice. I, too, would, but not today. I had to ready myself for it. I stood in the outer courtyard and looked into the shaded interior. On the entrance portal was carved KNOW THYSELF, NOTHING IN EXCESS, and MAKE A PLEDGE AND MISCHIEF IS NIGH. I could embrace the first but not the second, and as for the third, I believed in pledges and always tried to keep them, even if mischief followed, for a vow should be honored.

  Above the temple, hovering on a terrace, was the theater where the music and drama contests would be held, honoring Apollo. Soon I would stand on its stage and make my offering to the god.

  * * *

  • • •

  We were housed in luxurious quarters to one side of the theater, built for us. They overlooked the entire valley, and when shadows crept down the mountainside at sunset, the valley glowed with blue mist for a short time. Then the glory faded.

  That evening I studied my lines from Niobe, which I would perform in a few days. The story had gripped me always, and the villa at Sublaqueum had a group of statues depicting the stricken and dying sons and daughters of the proud queen. In my sleeping chamber there was one statue in particular of a woman who was either asleep or dead, her head resting sideways, showing how one state could shade into another. Whenever I gazed on it upon awakening, it made me grateful that my sleep was not of the eternal kind.

  There was another statue in the atrium of a son wounded in his back, thrown off balance and trying not to fall, an expression of surprise and dismay on his face.

  Another showed a woman, half kneeling, reaching behind herself, trying in vain to pull an arrow from her back. Niobe had had seven sons and seven daughters, and incurred the wrath of Leto, the mother of Artemis and Apollo, by saying she had the better of her, with more children.

  But Leto was a goddess and no one has the better of a god or goddess. So she ordered her children to slay Niobe’s. They shot them down without pity, until fourteen bodies lay before their tragic mother. She wept so incessantly that the gods took pity on her and changed her into a rock, from which streams of water flowed.

  Both Sophocles and Aeschylus had written plays about Niobe, and I chose the one by Sophocles. In the one by Aeschylus, Niobe sits mourning in silence, and that is no way to win a drama contest! Silence may be eloquent, but it does not allow us to display our emotions.

  I needed to be alone to summon up the proper mood, so I dismissed everyone and sat by myself, willing myself to become Niobe, to experience her profound grief at the irreversible loss of her children, in spite of her pleas to the hardhearted Apollo and Artemis. I knew the pain of losing my daughter, and sons too young to survive, also stricken by the gods. Yes, there was no other explanation for it. The gods, envious of the happiness Poppaea and I shared, decided to punish us, to inflict crushing pain on us. A mother’s grief is different from a father’s, and I could only become Niobe by becoming Poppaea first.

  I had had a mask made in her likeness, and I would wear it when performing, share the experience with Poppaea, bring her back to life in front of the audience. Yes, the play was about irreversible loss, but I would show that it was possible to reverse it, if only for a brief hour on the stage.

  I put the mask down on a table, propped up so I could study it. The eyes were empty, waiting to be filled by a living presence, but the rest of the face reproduced her features in perfect detail. I could see the small dimple that had been on one side of her mouth only, could see the line of her high cheekbones that gave such definition to her face.

  “Why aren’t you real?” I cried. “How can you be so real, and not speak?”

  I would speak for her. I would give her words and life again. And her cries for our lost children would embody and echo those of Niobe.

  It was late. The hours I had spent sharing Niobe’s grief had somehow flown. Sporus glided in, so quietly I did not know he was there until he stood behind me, gazing on the mask.

  “The likeness is uncanny,” he said. “That makes it more painful.”

  I looked up at him. “I could say the same for you,” I said. “Unlike a mask, you can move and talk and toss your head.” His likeness to her, especially in the dim lamplight, was as good as the mask’s.

  He bent down and took the mask in his hands, examining it. The two identical profiles seemed two halves of a whole. He put on the mask and turned to me.

  “Is she here now?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” I knew she wasn’t . . . was she?

  “I think I can do better than this,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I sensed danger, although of what kind, I could not articulate.

  “There is one thing lacking,” he said. “Or rather, there should be something lacking that is not.”

  “What is lacking is the breath of life,” I said. “Poppaea lies in the tomb, and we cannot restore her.”

  “Are you sure of that?” he asked.

  “I am not sure of anything anymore,” I admitted. Not of friendship, nor of promises, nor of endings.

  “You will see,” he said.

  LVII

 
I spent the next few days exploring Delphi and practicing Niobe. The sacred site bristled with donated artworks, exquisite marble and bronze statues that in any other place would reign supreme and solitary, here so crowded together that masterpieces looked commonplace. A bronze of a winning charioteer, along with his horses, had been given to commemorate the victory of Polyzalos of Syracuse. It showed him in his slow triumphal lap, after the race was won, all calmness and control, rather than in the heat and strain of the race itself. That was the Greek ideal: calm and order. But after winning a race a Roman charioteer was anything but that—he was exultant and covered with sweat and dust. In that I was more Roman than Greek.

  I passed the Temple of Apollo at least once a day, seeing the pilgrims entering, seeing the smoke rising from the sacrifices. At some point I would enter myself, put a question to the oracle. If I did not, I was a coward, since other rulers had dared to ask their fates. But the oracle was known to be tricky and misleading. Inhaling the fumes from the deep fissure underneath the temple, she entered another state of mind, where she heard Apollo speak, but sometimes in a garbled manner.

  Sometimes her translation of it was puzzling and tantalizing. To one man, asking advice about whether he should go to war, the oracle replied, Go, return not die in war. Was the correct interpretation Go, return not, die in war or Go, return, not die in war?

  King Croesus of Lydia was told that if he made war on the Persians, he would destroy a mighty empire. It turned out to be his own.

  Alexander, angry that the oracle had not confirmed his own belief that he would soon conquer the known world, telling him to come back later, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her outside until she screamed, “You are invincible, my son!” As soon as she said it, he let her go, saying, “Now I have my answer!”

  Alexander put much stock in prophecies. In Egypt, at the oasis of Siwa, the oracle there recognized him as the son of Ammon, and from that moment on he behaved as if he were truly invincible, chosen.

  Would I believe what she said? How much would I allow myself to?

  I continued to delay my visit, and the days passed pleasantly, or would have, had I not grown more and more nervous as the contests drew near. First was the drama competition, and two days later was the music contest. The athletic events would be last. Preparing for them all was harrowing—I hardly knew which one to concentrate on. But obviously the drama, coming first, ought to receive the most attention.

  The night before the contest, the closest members of my company gathered in the atrium of our quarters. Tigellinus said offhandedly, “Another day, another competition. Caesar, you must be used to it by now.” He popped a handful of walnuts into his mouth, crunching them.

  If only he could know, could understand. It did not matter how many times a performer stood in front of an audience; each time was terrifying in its own way. And here, where the best in the world would stand on the same stage, it was overwhelming. Last night I had hardly slept.

  “A true artist never gets accustomed to it,” said Epaphroditus, trying to reassure me. “Only a pedestrian performer is not concerned. After all, he has nothing to live up to.”

  “But he enjoys himself more,” said Tigellinus.

  “What will you be wearing?” asked Phaon.

  I showed them the traditional thick-soled boots worn for tragedy, the purple robe for majesty and goddesses with its gold border, and finally the mask. The mask stunned everyone into silence.

  “Yes, it is the late empress. For the performance, she and Niobe are one,” I said. “United in sorrow for their lost children.” I put it down and changed the conversation. “I believe there are twenty other competitors. One has come from Rhodes, another from Cyprus.”

  “A long way to travel just to lose,” said Tigellinus, with a hearty laugh.

  Everyone politely joined in. I did not.

  Statilia, from her chair farther back, said, “You realize that the competition can never answer the question of who is best?”

  “It’s subjective,” said Epaphroditus. “That’s the trouble with art, unlike numerical figures.”

  “No, I mean that the judges cannot rule against you. Even if Apollo himself were competing against you.”

  How dare she? What if Apollo heard? And especially as I was performing Niobe, in which he avenged an insult.

  “I disagree,” I said. “They are to forget I am emperor.”

  She laughed. “As if anyone could, even behind the mask.”

  “When I perform, I am no longer the emperor,” I said. “I am someone else.” That was the wonder of it, the mystery and the escape.

  “To yourself, perhaps, but not to anyone else,” she stubbornly persisted.

  “Where is Sporus?” asked Tigellinus suddenly, looking around, to draw attention elsewhere.

  I shook my head. “I have not seen him since yesterday,” I said. I only just now noticed.

  After everyone had gone their ways to bed, I took Statilia to task. “Why did you say that about the competition in front of everyone?”

  She twitched her mouth. “I was not thinking,” she said. “I should not have said it publicly. But it is what everyone knows.”

  “My athletic coach said the same thing once. He said I could never have a fair competition.” Your competing days are over . . . No one will risk beating the emperor. So you are doomed to never truly know your worth on the field of competition. “But I thought—I hoped—I dreamed—that at this very highest level, beyond the local boys’ races and the festivals, it would be different.”

  She sighed and touched my arm. “The emperor is always the emperor, even at the far-flung corners of the empire. More so there, perhaps.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The afternoon was fair and calm, a halcyon day sent by Apollo himself, a day touched with only the faintest hint of autumn, and a soothing golden sun. I had asked to be in the middle of the contestants. I had no wish to be first or to be last. It was not modesty. People are overly critical of the first performers and bored by the time the last finally appear.

  I watched, my heart hammering, as the first declaimed their parts on the stage. In these contests, the entire play is not performed, only an excerpt, chosen for its poetry and its action. Thus, Agamemnon being stabbed in the bathtub, Oedipus blinding himself, and Medea killing her children were favorites. But the judges’ familiarity with them might rob them of some of their impact. Niobe was not so often performed.

  Then the moment came. I walked out onto the stage, seeing the world through Poppaea’s eyes, becoming her and Niobe. The words flowed as if I had spontaneously thought them, as if Sophocles had nothing to do with it, coming from the queen herself. Out in the audience, I could see heads but it was a blur; they were hardly real to me. Some were bowed, as if deep in thought. Others were staring straight ahead, riveted. I felt the bond between them and me, or rather, between them and Niobe.

  At last it was over. It seemed to have lasted forever, as long as it had taken Apollo and Artemis in real life to slay all the children. It seemed to have passed in an instant.

  Then I had to step down, and the next ten followed me.

  The judges huddled after the stage was cleared and all the performers had returned to their seats. Then they rose as a body and held up the laurel wreath, cut from the sacred tree of Apollo.

  “We award the emperor Nero Caesar the crown for his performance of the tragedy of Niobe,” they said. The theater burst into cheers.

  I felt that I would die with relief and exaltation. I rose and went over to them, lowering my head for them to place the crown—oh, sweetest crown of leaves, fairer than any of gold!—on my head. Then I turned to the people. “I accept this crown in the name of the Roman people and the empire.” Yes, the victory was ours together. I did this for the glory of Rome as well as my own. Only later did someone notice that I had omitted t
he customary “and the Senate.”

  Afterward I hosted a great celebration. Wine, food, dancers, and music—not by me but by the other musicians in the company, professionals. A sea of heads bobbed in the open-air terrace where the festivity was held. I saw Tullia, who rushed over to congratulate me.

  “Wonderful!” she said, her face flushed with excitement.

  “Thank you,” I replied. “I know it will be a while yet before you yourself compete, but may the day be as fair for you as this one was for me.”

  “I am drinking in all of it,” she said. “I thank you for making it possible for me to come. All of us girls from Rome scarcely believe we are here.”

  “Believe it,” I said. But I knew how she felt.

  Tigellinus sidled up a few minutes later. “Very impressive, Caesar,” he said. “You make a convincing woman.” He laughed his horsey laugh, close to a whinny.

  Right behind him, General Vespasian was eyeing me. Tigellinus stepped back, then said, “General, I saw that you were so lost in the performance it looked as if you slept.”

  Vespasian glared at him. “I wasn’t sleeping, although one of the ushers thought so and prodded me!”

  “I am honored if you tried to close your eyes and concentrate on the words,” I assured him.

  “I watched as well,” he said. “Truly a magnificent performance. And to see the empress again, with us in person . . . beyond pleasure.”

  Tigellinus rolled his eyes. Vespasian did not see.

  * * *

  • • •

  Our guest quarters were large enough to permit Statilia and me to have separate apartments, and tonight I wished to be alone. My foray into the forbidden realm of bringing Poppaea back, letting her participate in my life again, had left me strangely agitated, and I needed solitude. Her mask rested on a table, and beside it, the laurel wreath. Both together. In the dim light of the oil lamps, the mask seemed to glow like ivory, but then her complexion had been her pride, often compared to ivory. I stood up, walked over, and ran my hand over its smooth surface. But of course it was not warm, thereby betraying its true nature: inanimate.