The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  But for now, there were only a few days left in Delphi. The athletic contests were next, and the games would conclude with the equestrian events. Despite the words of the oracle, I would not leave Delphi until I was ready. But her words haunted me—the gods expelling me from their presence.

  Perversely, I decided I would enact Orestes in the next dramatic contest. Let me embrace my fellow matricide, then. Let me take my place in that brotherhood—all of us having done away with our mothers, but as I had cried in vain, for a reason, for a reason! The mothers were not innocent, and their sons were avenging wrongs. Still, the stain remained, and no waters of Castalia or anywhere else could wash it away, she said. So that meant I could never go to Eleusis or be initiated into the Mysteries there. And if I went near Athens, would the Furies pursue me as they had Orestes?

  But the world was a wide place, and if those were the only two places barred to me, I would not challenge it.

  * * *

  • • •

  Sporus returned from wherever he had gone to be by himself and heal and took his place in my company again. I welcomed him, not asking where he had been. It was enough that he was back.

  He looked more like Poppaea than ever, probably because he was rested and at peace with himself.

  “You are no longer Sporus,” I said. “From now on you are Sabina. You had long served that family, and now you shall have their name.” I could not call him Poppaea, but her full name had been Poppaea Sabina, and so he would share part of it.

  Whatever people thought, they kept it to themselves. I was past caring, as having the pseudo-Poppaea nearby made me happier than I had been. To outsiders it would appear scandalous, but so be it.

  Our last night in Delphi, we sat watching the dark terraces below, illuminated here and there by torches, which made the gold statues glint. The white stone buildings seemed to glow, as if they had stored up light during the day. Truly this was a sacred place.

  Tigellinus said, “Before we leave, let us have that wedding I offered to celebrate. The emperor and his bride!” He stood and took Sabina’s hand and joined it to mine. “We are here in the center of the world, are we not? At the very navel of it. Then, what better place, where everything whirls together?”

  I looked at Sabina. Yes, let us make this gesture, theatrical as a mask, artificial as anything on the stage. Were we not at the very birthplace of theater? And was this not the ultimate act of theater?

  We were “married” by Tigellinus in the early-morning sunlight, Sabina wearing the traditional bridal veil, I acting as groom. Not only our own inner circle of friends and attendants, but whatever passersby happened along, were witnesses. It was, as I said, a piece of theater. But at a deeper level, I had accepted his sacrifice and bestowed my blessing upon it. Since there was no undoing it, it would have been the cruelest act to reject the gift.

  * * *

  • • •

  As we prepared to leave Delphi, couriers arrived, fresh from Brundisium, with chilling news. There had been another conspiracy, this one centered in the town of Beneventum, a place we had passed through on our way to the port. I received the messengers in the cool of the early evening on the terrace overlooking the valley below, as the deepening twilight grew more purple.

  The taller of the two couriers, a soldier, looked grim as he handed me the message in its wrappings. His companion kept his expression blank and his posture rigid.

  I quickly skimmed the contents. The plot had centered on our passage through the town, but the conspirators had been unable to organize in time, and thus we had come and gone unharmed. The head of it was Annius Vinicianus, a Roman consul who had escorted Tiridates to Rome.

  “He is also the son of a conspirator against the life of Claudius,” Tigellinus reminded me when I handed him the report.

  I remembered Vinicianus—a young man, not yet thirty, but with a face leathery from his time out in the field. He had served in General Corbulo’s forces in Armenia and had married Corbulo’s daughter.

  “Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo!” said Epaphroditus ominously. “If the Piso plot failed for lack of a suitable leader, a conspiracy with Corbulo as its figurehead would have no such weakness. He is the foremost general of our age. And rumor has it that he feels unappreciated by you. A dangerous combination.”

  I took the report back. “It is your duty to report all such rumors to me,” I upbraided him.

  “Very well, then,” said Epaphroditus, “there are rumors as well about the Scribonius brothers, Rufus and Proculus, the governors of Upper and Lower Germany.”

  “What sort of rumors? Spit it out!”

  “They are disaffected and in questionable communication with Corbulo.”

  “If the generals of the western and eastern armies joined forces against an emperor they perceive as unmilitary . . .” said Tigellinus.

  The words of a Praetorian conspirator, accusing me of unmanly conduct, echoed: I was as loyal as any soldier in the realm as long as you deserved my respect. Were these men feeling the same way?

  The tall soldier broke in. “The conspiracy at Beneventum has been crushed. Helios had the traitors executed. But the generals, that is a bigger question. They are still in command. Rufus has the armies of Upper Germany, Proculus of Lower Germany. Together they command seven legions. And Corbulo is without command at the moment but revered by the troops in the east.”

  Was this never going to stop? Would I never be safe? And how dare they disrupt my peace of mind at a time like this, when I was in the very cradle of art and beauty?

  “Tell Helios to gather more information,” I said. “And as for the rest of you, never keep rumors from me again.”

  After they left, I stood looking down the steep slopes to the valley, completely dark now. I felt as if the darkness were creeping upward to engulf me, too.

  * * *

  • • •

  We left Delphi and its sacred mountain behind and set out slowly for the plains of Argos, where we would winter, waiting for spring and the resumption of the games. We wound our way down through the Isthmus at Corinth, bypassing Athens. I would not give the Furies a chance to attack me by coming anywhere near it. What need I of Furies to torment me when I had ever-new conspiracies at my back?

  The city of Corinth was an impressive one, really two cities in one—a lower one that had the port, and a high one on the slopes looking down. It had been utterly destroyed by the Romans and then rebuilt by Julius Caesar, so it was a little outpost of Rome here in the midst of sublime Greece. It hosted the Isthmian Games, in which I would compete later.

  As we crossed the narrow isthmus, where I could see the sea on either side, it was so close, I suddenly envisioned a canal cutting through it, allowing ships to avoid the dangerous sailing around the Peloponnese. I mentioned this to Phaon. He groaned.

  “Not another engineering project!” he said.

  “This seems more feasible than the one from Lake Avernus to Ostia,” I said. “This one would be only about four miles long.”

  “You are overly fond of canals,” he said.

  “No one could accuse me of doing it to glorify myself,” I said. The accusations about the Domus Aurea still stung. “This would benefit commerce.”

  “Yes, but at what cost?” he said. His round face seemed to deflate.

  “That, my dear minister of accounts and revenues, is for you to investigate,” I said. “I would like to bestow a gift on Greece, as a token of my esteem. And to help them, as they are struggling against poverty.”

  “Beware of a Roman bearing gifts to the Greeks,” he said.

  “Very funny,” I said. “Just find out what it would cost—if it is even feasible.”

  More news filtered in about Corbulo and the Scribonius brothers, and it was dark. Corbulo, at large in the east with no command, was in communication with them, and making no secret of the fact th
at he would like a command. A big one.

  “A command beyond the army,” said Tigellinus. “A command of the empire.”

  We were sitting in the main room of our winter quarters near Mycenae. I had insisted on lodging there to be near the legendary home of Agamemnon, although few traces of it remained. We were staying on a windy plain, flat and well-watered, close to many sites that loomed large in epics.

  Several braziers were burning; Greece in winter had a stinging damp cold. We huddled around the largest one, warming our hands. “That’s absurd,” I said. “He has no connection to the imperial line.”

  “Does he need to?” asked Statilia. She often joined in consultations, and I welcomed her incisive intelligence. Her amused tolerance of Sabina sealed my appreciation of her; truly she was an unusual woman.

  “Of course he does,” I said. If that were not so, all my cousins had perished in vain.

  “Piso did not, and neither did Seneca,” she said. “Perhaps a day is coming when emperors will come from another source.”

  “A more likely source is the military,” said Epaphroditus. “That is where Caesar came from. A general is always an attractive figure, able to draw followers. And their followers are armed soldiers, not the crowd at a market.”

  Or at a concert. Or at a chariot race. Or at a drama. He did not need to name them: my followers.

  They all looked at me, waiting for direction. It was an order I had thought to leave behind, to be done with. But safety is never permanent. The Nero who knew how to respond to danger had not flown away; he had but merely rested.

  “Send a command to Corbulo, Proculus Scribonius, and Rufus Scribonius to report to Corinth immediately. Tell Corbulo there will be important orders awaiting him.”

  Then I settled in for the winter. It would take the men weeks to arrive. In the meantime I tried to put it out of my mind. I was, after all, in the very heart of Greece, of the places that I had long known by name, the places where Hercules had performed his labors: Lerna, where he slew the Hydra; Nemea, where he killed the lion; Olympia, where he cleaned the stables; Stymphalos, where he overcame the evil birds. Hercules—he who, in a fit of madness brought on by his enemy the goddess Hera, killed his wife and children and was tormented by guilt. Apollo had provided the only remedy: redemption through heroic works.

  I visited Lerna, seeking out the swamp where the many-headed Hydra had lived, now a famed spot. The swamp was filled with reeds, but there had been an underwater den where the Hydra had lurked. I stood looking at the bubbles forming in the murky water, rising and bursting with evil smells, and thought how like Hercules’ my own journey was, as I was tormented by the death of Poppaea, trying to bring her back. These Greek games and competitions were my labors, and the benefits I wanted to bestow on Greece were my good deeds.

  “I can’t slay a lion,” I said to whatever gods still listened at this place, “or visit Hades and bypass Cerberus—although I have tried to—but forgive me my lapses.”

  As I stood there in silence, an idea came to me. There were still other feats I could undertake. Was not the bottomless Lake of Alcyon near Lerna? Was it truly bottomless? Could I find out? Could I verify the story, or disprove it, add to our knowledge of the world, a science esteemed by the Greeks?

  * * *

  • • •

  The Lake of Alcyon was small and it was black, as if it truly was bottomless. I stood on its reedy shore with two Praetorians and a local man who supplied a small boat for us, as well as rope with lead weights and length measurements. But it wasn’t long enough. It was only about three hundred feet. I ordered it to be doubled, and by noon the man had returned with another rope, which he fastened to it. But that still made it only six hundred feet long. I wanted another four hundred.

  “If after a thousand feet it has not touched bottom, we can say it is a good day’s work,” I said. “Obviously if it is truly bottomless, no rope would be long enough.”

  By the time we had the coils of rope in the boat, there was room for only two of us. I left one Praetorian on the shore with the boat owner and we set out to row to the middle of the lake, getting clear of the reeds that bristled along the rim but did not extend far, a clue that the lake was, if not bottomless, quickly very deep. I peered down into it, unable to see anything but black. Perhaps it was like a well, not large in diameter but a funnel deep in the earth. When we reached the middle—it did not take long—I ordered the Praetorian to begin lowering the rope.

  He stood up carefully and, taking the end of the rope with the lead weight, bent over the side of the boat and dropped it. Quickly, like a serpent, the rope began to uncoil, making the boat lurch. The Praetorian grabbed it to gain control, and then lowered it little by little by his own hand.

  The coil grew smaller.

  “I don’t feel anything yet,” he said, when he reached the end of the first rope, at three hundred feet.

  “Keep going,” I said, peering over the side of the boat. The water, although dark from its depth, was clear and showed the rope as a pale snake disappearing into the darkness.

  We came to the end of the second rope. “Six hundred feet,” the Praetorian said.

  “Keep going,” I said. Now I wished I had asked for more rope, although it would have required a larger boat.

  Hand over hand he played out the rope until it came to the end. “A thousand feet,” he said. “And I still feel no bottom. The rope is swinging free.”

  I was disappointed. All I had proved was that it was at least a thousand feet deep, not that it was bottomless. But to show it was bottomless, there was not enough rope in Greece, or in the whole world. Perhaps, as with all true mysteries, we must content ourselves with half answers.

  * * *

  • • •

  Corbulo and the Scribonius brothers arrived in Corinth two months later, where they were handed, instead of promotions and recognition, orders to commit suicide.

  Corbulo obeyed immediately, drawing his sword and stabbing himself in public, saying only Axios—Greek for “you deserved it” before he fell to the ground.

  The word was customarily said in acclaiming an athlete’s victory. So what did he mean? Was he admitting that he deserved the punishment? Was he angry at himself for being caught? Whatever he meant, like the true depth of Lake Alcyon, it would remain a mystery.

  The Scribonius brothers, handed their orders, obeyed and committed suicide privately in a meek and quiet manner, uttering no complaints or comments for people to puzzle over.

  I appointed Verginius Rufus as governor of Upper Germany and Fonteius Capito as governor of Lower Germany, both men who had no imperial descent and no personal ambition. It turned out that the Scribonius brothers had had some imperial blood connections after all, as well as descent from Pompey the Great. I would not make that mistake again, appointing such men to positions of power.

  LX

  True winter closed in with fierce winds and icy rain. Even then, Greece had a sublime beauty. The very starkness revealed the intricate patterns of bare-branched trees against the white sky. Mornings spread a carpet of glistening frost across the fields.

  This was not the time for practicing for the chariot race; the frozen and uneven ground was dangerous for the horses. But it was perfect for practicing indoor events, music and drama. I particularly pursued the drama, now that I had decided to perform Orestes. I would also perform Hercules Gone Mad, as well as Cadace in Labor, a scene from the Aeolus. I embraced my past, as that was the only way to acknowledge it and rid myself of the curse of it.

  Greek playwrights did not shrink from the subject, and neither should I. As I fastened the heavy tragic mask and willed myself to become Orestes or Hercules, I felt every drop of their suffering and every curse hurled at them. Such is the power of art.

  When I put on the Poppaea mask to play Niobe or Cadace, I transformed myself into a woman. I became entirely fe
male and discovered—there is not that much difference. Where does being a man leave off and being a woman begin? There were of course stories about that, such as the one about Tiresias, who went back and forth between being a woman and being a man, being thus part man and part female. But are not we all?

  Now I could unleash to my attraction to men as well as women. Beauty was my criterion and always had been, but now it need not be confined to one type of person only. Oh, the freedom of Greece! What vistas had it opened to me!

  Rome seemed very far away—and it was.

  But its troubles were not. Ominous messages came, concerning the province of Judea. More couriers, more dispatches.

  Judea had long been a troubled spot in the empire. It was a small country but a fiercely xenophobic one. They did not submit readily or easily to being under the control of Rome, and trouble flared up periodically. But it was nothing we could not manage. The Jews, who resolutely refused to acknowledge or worship any god but their own, had wangled the concession from us that they would sacrifice for the emperor but not to him at their temple in Jerusalem. All very well. A compromise that saved honor on both sides.

  Two soldiers and a courier scrambled over the bumpy ground to my quarters one dreary day, their heavy wool cloaks stained and studded with burs. They begged to see me immediately, and Epaphroditus complied. Usually he detained such visitors and questioned them, but he looked dismayed and frightened as he presented them straightaway.

  “Gaius Erucius, centurion, and Publius Hosidius, tribune,” he said. “They are from Caesarea, the prefect’s headquarters. Marcus Liganus, official courier.”

  I stood, eyeing them. “Yes?”

  “Caesar, the situation in Judea is almost out of control,” said Publius.