The Confessions of Young Nero

by Margaret George

  She was disappointed but acquiesced. She looked at me again. “Perhaps it is just as well. You will need to look your absolute best when you celebrate the royal birth. I hate to say it, but you are starting to put on weight. Nothing that you can’t lose by January, though.”

  • • •

  The morning of October thirteenth was clear and cold. The sun streamed through the window, shadowed only by the branches outside, rapidly losing their leaves. Eight years since the dawn had come and Claudius lay propped in bed while acrobats danced before his corpse. While Mother held Britannicus and Octavia captive so I could walk forth unhindered. All of them gone now, gone to join Claudius. And where was the young Nero who had assumed the purple that day? Where had he gone?

  I held up a large polished bronze mirror and studied my image. I had heeded Poppaea’s suggestion that I adopt a new hairstyle, one that gave me a row of waves across my forehead, the opposite of the straight, forehead-hiding style favored by aristocrats and old people. I thought it a welcome change. But was my face fatter? I turned it this way and that, trying to see it from different angles. It was hard to tell if I was gaining weight. I certainly was not going down to the market and getting onto a food scale to find out. My tunics and togas were loose fitting so I couldn’t measure any expanding girth by their fit. But perhaps she was right. I would have to resume the athletic training I had let slide in recent months.

  “Yes, it is becoming, and you are by any measure a striking emperor.” Poppaea had entered the room silently and watched me consulting the mirror.

  “I’ve had a few critical remarks from old senators about the hair,” I admitted, “but I barely hear their mumbles anymore.” I put my arm around her. She leaned up against me, her firm, hard, swollen belly a reassurance and a promise.

  “Even if you do not choose to formally celebrate your accession, I am here to do it privately.”

  “We will hear the loyalty oaths from the legions this afternoon,” I said. “They renew them on this anniversary and at New Year’s. But that is all I will do publicly.”

  “I have an idea,” she said, smiling slyly. “Something to mark this anniversary.”

  It would be something on a large scale, and she did not just now think of it, that I knew. Still I played her game. “And what might that be? Perhaps a fine dinner? A concert by a new musician you have discovered?”

  “A place where dinners and musicians can indulge in grandeur.”

  “Will you remodel the villa? Now is the time, since it is still undergoing repairs.”

  She snuggled within her warm palla. “Not the villa.” She walked slowly across the floor to the balcony and opened the door, stepping out into the cold. “Look straight out. What do you see?”

  I joined her. “I see the Forum below us. The Temple of Vesta, and the House of the Vestals. Off to their left, the Temple of Castor. And—”

  “No, no. Look beyond that.”

  “I see the Esquiline Hill, and to its left, the Viminal Hill.”

  “And on those hills?”

  “I don’t see that well!” I laughed. “You know I am shortsighted.” I still used a large cut emerald to try to see at distance, but I had trouble nonetheless.

  “The Gardens of Maecenas,” she said. “Look, they spread across part of the hill, next to the Lamian Gardens.”

  “I take your word for it.” What of it?

  “The Gardens of Maecenas are imperial property, are they not? Did not Maecenas give them to his friend Augustus?”

  “Yes.” Again, what of it?

  “You inherited this palace from Claudius, who inherited it from Tiberius. Few changes have been made. It is old-fashioned and beneath you to settle for this. Should you not have a palace worthy of your imperium?”

  “It is an improvement over Augustus’s,” I said.

  “That goes even further back,” she said. “Even while he lived, it was more a shrine than a home. No, you need something new and opulent, befitting your own splendor. I propose that we extend this building and link it to the Garden of Maecenas and other imperial property between them.”

  “But the gardens are a good mile away from this palace.”

  “Is that a stumbling block to the emperor, the most powerful man in the world? What is a mile to him?”

  “It’s a lot of mosaic, marble, workmen, and expense, that’s what it is to the emperor.”

  She stood on tiptoe and took my face in her slender, cool hands. “You must learn to see the greater stage you are set upon. To expand your vision. Do not hold back. Little people hold back. Not heroes.”

  “Heroes often come to a fiery end.” Fire will be your undoing flashed through my mind, a warning.

  “But with a glorious finale, a blaze that burns in memory forever.”

  “Let’s go back inside.” I detached her hands from my (expanding?) cheeks.

  • • •

  She prevailed. I was anxious to please her; with the coming child, she must be kept calm and placated. But as I thought of it, the idea took hold of me, burrowing into my dreams and waking thoughts, rising up like a phantom beckoning me toward it. A new palace, incorporating the latest styles of painting, flooring, and architecture. Just the linking of the two sites would be a challenge, a creative venture, for this would be no ordinary building. Soon she and I were consulting with my favored architects, Celer and Severus, who had executed the difficult design for Sublaqueum. Beginning at the edge of the original palace, built by Tiberius, the new one would have a sunken garden with a long, colonnaded fountain fed by a series of waterfall steps. At one end would be a dining pavilion to eat and relax either in the cool of the evening or in the midday heat, because it would be shielded from the sun and cooled by the flowing water. A set of marble stairs would lead to a higher level of the palace, the part that would snake across the hill and hollow and climb up to the Garden of Maecenas.

  We had a large container of marble samples for the floors. We put various squares next to one another to see how the colors complemented one another, and Poppaea sketched designs for the patterns. She favored twining, circular, curving ones, and we both liked the purple porphyry set against variegated white and black marble.

  “With a touch of green serpentine to set it off,” she said.

  “But we don’t want too many colors.”

  “But a little yellow to frame the green,” she said. “Tunisian limestone is a good stone for that.” She laid the samples side by side. “Do you see?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “It does show the green to advantage. Now, about the rooms coming off the sunken garden, and the vaulting of the sunken portico that will stretch to the Esquiline—the background of the wall paintings should be white. Pure white.”

  “White? But no one does white.”

  “Red is the common color, but it is passé.”

  “What about black?”

  I ran my hand over her shoulders and whispered, “You know I am partial to black rooms. Or rather, one black room in particular. But no, white is what we must use here. The paintings can be delicate and show up well against it. And it will lighten the entire space, make it seem airy and open.”

  “The fact that no one does it means it is not suitable. What about yellow?”

  “Even more passé than red,” I said. “And the fact that no one has done it only means no one has thought to try it. We will bring it to the world.”

  Immersed in our planning, we were close partners and the days flew. Building began on the new palace, so quickly that everyone was stunned. But the noise and dust from the construction rendered the old palace unpleasant. So I decided that we would move to Antium, and the baby would be born there. In the same room where I had been born.

  LXX

  With winter closing in, we did not take the sea route to Antium, but traveled by land. It was a pity we could not land at
the new extension of the palace I had built by the seashore, but safety was now the most important thing and I would not chance a sea mishap. The Senate had called down heaven’s blessing on the pregnancy and made vows of loyalty to the coming child, and I beseeched all the gods to protect us.

  Poppaea seemed to delight in the villa, almost skipping through the rooms with the paintings that had so intrigued me as a child. When I was a child . . . and did not know the things I knew now. When Mother brought Crispus there and told me she was marrying him, and I never sensed any danger for him, whereas now I knew it lurked under the most innocuous plant. But I would bar the door to it; it could not enter here, just as Hercules fought with Death at the palace of Admetus, choked his cold neck, crushed his bony fingers, and turned him away.

  The airy, light-filled room where I had been born and where my child would be had been refurbished and shone with anticipation. The balcony overlooking the sea had new marble tiles, and the row of eastern windows were draped in sheerest silk, pale as the dawn. Gilded benches lined the walls, and the bed had ivory fittings. Poppaea exclaimed over it and said, “Surely this is a sacred place.”

  “That is going a bit far, but it has been a fortunate place.”

  “It is sacred because you were born in it,” she said. “I loved the story I heard long ago about how the sun shone on you before it touched anything else.”

  “It may or may not be true,” I said with a smile. “I certainly don’t remember.” Stories attach themselves to events and cling like mists, true or not.

  All was in readiness. There were two physicians and three midwives, all the expertise, herbs, and instruments that could be mustered. Poppaea did not seem worried or fretful, but I was. New Year’s passed, then the Festival of Carmentalia, honoring the guardian of pregnancy and patron of midwives, an auspicious sign. Seven days after that, Poppaea’s pains began and she took to the chamber, surrounded by a swarm of attendants.

  I waited in a room that had various paintings of the Trojan War, remembering what Anicetus had told me long before, explaining about Helen of Troy and her unattainable beauty. But I had attained her; I had held her in my arms, and now she was bearing my child.

  Hours passed. The sun was sinking, splashing the sea with fiery color before it disappeared. Servants kept bringing plates of food—cheese and eggs and dates—but they sat untouched. The stillness in the outer room was oppressive, but there were muffled cries from the birth room. I wanted to run into the chamber but knew that was foolish, perhaps even harmful. But how much longer could I stand this?

  It was full dark, and torches had been lit, before a sweaty and exhausted midwife, flanked by an equally depleted physician, emerged. I jumped up and ran to them. “Yes, yes, what?” I cried.

  The midwife pushed her damp hair off her forehead. “Caesar, you have a beautiful daughter.”

  A daughter! “And her mother?” Was she safe?

  “Well, and resting.”

  “I must see them!”

  The physician tried to restrain me. “Caesar, perhaps you should wait.”

  “No, no!” I could not wait, it was impossible. Leaving them behind, I ran into the room.

  In spite of the torches and lamps, it was rather dark, as the room was large. But I saw Poppaea lying in bed, propped up on a pillow, her hair matted with sweat and her face still unwashed. But never had she been more beautiful to me. Her eyes were closed. I took her head in my hands and covered her salty face with kisses, unable even to talk. My joy was beyond expression.

  “Here is your daughter,” one of the midwives said, holding out a wrapped bundle. I took it—it was so light!—and peered down at the face, enveloped in its coverings. Its eyes were shut fast, and then they opened slowly and looked right at me, a blurry stare that burned into my soul and bound me to her with hoops of love.

  “Claudia,” I said, pronouncing her name for the first time. Claudia! Claudia! The most beautiful name in the world, Claudia my daughter.

  • • •

  The Senate decreed a day of thanksgiving and celebratory games in honor of Claudia’s birth, and a temple of fertility to be dedicated to Poppaea. Ten days after the birth, the entire Senate came to Antium to pay their respects and be present for the formal naming. By then Poppaea had gained strength and was resplendent in a gown of sea green. Little Claudia’s eyes were bright and open, deep blue and fringed with dark lashes; her hair was golden and promised to be wavy. She looked around alertly when the room was crowded with visitors.

  There were so many of them—nearly two hundred—that I held the audience in the largest room, the one nearest the edge of the bluff. Outside, the blustery winds sought entrance into the room, and the pounding of the wintry sea below rang in our ears. I welcomed them, looking around at their faces, all seemingly benign and well-wishing. The only one who had seemed hostile to me and my reign, Thrasea Paetus, I had forbidden to come. I would have no apple of discord at this gathering. I announced the baby’s name and then added, “And her title is Augusta, like her mother’s.”

  None could keep the shock from his face. To name an infant Augusta, that exalted title for a woman of power and distinction, was scandalous. They stared back at me but did not dare to murmur any dissent. One, in fact, said, “Glorious, O Caesar! To have two Augustas in his household! Blessed be Caesar and Poppaea Augusta and Claudia Augusta.”

  Well, they would get used to her title. They would have to.

  • • •

  After they departed—we housed and fed them for two days—I sat with Poppaea in the room, the room that had opened the door of ultimate joy to me. Drooping in her chair, she moved to lie on her couch.

  “These days have exhausted me, worse than the birth itself,” she said.

  “The Senate will do that,” I said with a laugh. I took her hand and kissed it. “You gave them every hospitality. It was honorable of them to make the journey. A vote of confidence for us and our dynasty.”

  “We don’t know what they are really thinking,” she said.

  “We never know that about anyone. All we can say is, they came.”

  • • •

  For the remainder of January and all of February I stayed at Antium, held captive by my adoration of my daughter. I never tired of looking at her, holding her, trying to see, by a miracle, how she would look as she grew up, what her character would be.

  “For one so young,” said Poppaea, holding her, “it is impossible to know what she will be. Will she like music? Reading? Will she be shy or friendly? It takes so long before that is revealed.” She handed her to me.

  “We know she is not fretful or troublesome,” I said. “She seems to have a quiet soul. A contemplative baby.”

  “Contemplative!” Poppaea laughed. “Only you would choose to assign that trait to a baby.”

  Claudia started to wiggle and turn. I looked down at her face, changed from the red flush when she was first born. Her skin was pale, her lips rosy. “Her skin shows the colors we chose for the new palace—white and red,” I said.

  “Do you know how comical you sound?” asked Poppaea. “Really, you are worse than a love-soaked poet.”

  “I am love soaked!” I said. “And, if you must know, I have composed several poems for her and am setting them to music. I shall sing them soon.”

  “Alas, no sun shone on her when she was born, as it was at night.”

  “The moon did,” I said. “I saw it outside the window, rising just as they called me in.”

  She smiled indulgently. “Even if it did not, I am sure you saw it.”

  • • •

  Affairs of state called me away in March. By this time the seas had opened and I took a ship back to Rome, landing at Ostia and then sailing up the Tiber. Spring had begun; green fuzz outlined the tree branches and already the fields had cast off their winter brown. Overhead, in the clear sky, flashes
of white from the wings of returning birds winked at me. The world was reborn, and at long last I belonged to that world and its rebirth. The ugliness of my inheritance and lineage were put to rest, and the future flashed bright like the birds’ wings.

  Striding into the palace, I saw that workmen had completed a great deal of the new construction, but it was still not ready. The mounds of dirt had been cleared away, but the pavement had yet to be laid and the final artistic touches were missing.

  By summer, though, we should be able to use it.

  I had been called back by urgent news about the eastern campaign in Armenia. When Burrus was still alive, the Consilium had hewed to an aggressive military policy, dispatching General Domitius Corbulo and General Caesennius Paetus to fight against the Parthians in hopes of annexing Armenia outright and putting an end to the tug-of-war between Rome and Parthia over this country in the middle. I had misgivings but allowed this stratagem to continue.

  Now my misgivings had been justified. General Paetus had been soundly beaten by the Parthians, surrounded north of the river Murat, captured, and, to gain his freedom, forced to agree to the Roman evacuation of Armenia until the Parthian king Vologases and I could settle the matter. Once free, Paetus behaved in a dishonorable fashion, abandoning his wounded troops and rushing back to Rome at the phenomenal rate of forty miles a day, as if a demon was chasing him. Now this disgraced general awaited me in the palace.

  For this audience I would wear a toga, as I had for the reception of the Senate in Antium. I would receive him in one of the reception rooms designated for the purpose. It had frescoes of Achilles in various battles on all the walls, a silent rebuke to the cowardly warrior I would now meet.

  He stood in the middle of the room, wearing civilian clothes. Perhaps his military garb had been surrendered to the Parthians as a trophy. Or perhaps, even if he still retained it, he did not think himself worthy to wear it.