Nero's Heirs (12 page)

'Like Galba's,' Domitian muttered.

Piso survived till near night. He had crept into the temple of the Vestal Virgins and remained hidden for some hours. But information was laid and a soldier belonging to the British auxiliary infantry (and therefore indifferent to the crime of sacrilege) forced his way in, disregarding the protest of the priestesses, dragged that morning's deputy-emperor into the street, and cut his throat. Otho is said to have received Piso's head with unmingled joy.

By this time Domitian and I had returned to his aunt's house. It was from Flavius Sabinus that I later received the full and exact account of these murders or executions - call them what you will. During the day we had been buoyed up by excitement and the quivering uncertainty of the changing moment. We had not even felt the cold tremble of fear. Now, safe before the stove, nursing goblets of mulled wine and listening to the scolding of the aunt - she had a voice like a seagull when alarmed - I found I could not stop shaking. Domitian sat still as a monument but for a nerve that twitched in his right cheek. Twice he lifted his hand and placed it on the side of his face, as if to arrest that movement. But, when he lowered it again, the twitch still zig-zagged.

A rap at the door brought us to our feet. My hand stretched out in search of a weapon. But it was Flavius Sabinus who entered. And he was smiling.

XV

I cursed Tacitus for making me relive that day. He will judge (when he has doctored my account) that its horrors were the consequence of the degeneracy into which the loss of Republican virtue and liberty had thrust us. 'Never surely,' he wrote in a recent letter in which he urged me to delve more deeply into the putrid sink of memory, 'was there more conclusive evidence that the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment.' I would not dispute that, merely observe that licence was as unbounded in the days of the Republic from which only the wise government of Augustus and Tiberius rescued us. The horror of the years that succeeded Nero was not the result of one particular form of government, as my old friend, so full of imaginative sympathy with the distant past, supposes; it was the ineluctable consequence of the failure of government.

Philosophers have argued much concerning the nature of men, whether we are actuated by virtue or by fear. For my part, I know from bitter experience, from reflection and self-study, from the observation of others and from my reading of history, that men are born wicked; that virtue is something only laboriously achieved, in spite of nature; and that the driving force in any man who has achieved any degree of power - even power over his own household, family and slaves - is fierce, dictatorial, destructive, even if also self-destructive. Pride, jealousy, anger, the desire for revenge on account of slights real or imagined, are forces few can, or wish to, resist.

Consider Galba. At the age of seventy-three he had enjoyed prosperity all his days. He was rich, had won the esteem, or at least the respect, of his peers. Why should he put all that at risk merely to wear the purple and be saluted as Emperor?

And Otho? A man you would have said formed for pleasure. Was that not enough to content him? There are pleasant orange groves, soft breezes and lovely docile girls in Lusitania. Yet he, too, would be called Emperor, by men no one of intelligence or taste could respect.

'Isn't it the case,' I remember saying to Domitian - perhaps not that evening, but one soon after - 'that the condition of man is a war of everyone against everyone?'

I did not believe this. That is, I did not believe it should be so. Or did I? Should be? What is there to form 'should be'?

Domitian said: 'If you are right, and life is warfare, then it behoves one to make sure of winning.'

Flavius Sabinus laughed. You speak like a child,' he said. 'It is not in mortals to command success. Therefore . . .'

'Therefore, what?' I said. 'Trust to the gods? They are deaf. Seek to deserve it? I have not noticed that merit is rewarded.'

Flavius picked up the dice-box and threw.

'A pair of sixes,' he said.

'There's no merit in that, sir,' I replied.

'Who said there was?'

Domitian said, 'It is wrong to speak against the gods. I myself have a particular devotion to Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, and I believe she rewards her devotees by guiding them on the true path.'

'The bird of Minerva flies only by night,' I said.

What is that supposed to mean?'

'I don't know, I'm sure,' I said. 'It's something I heard a philosopher, a Greek sophist, say once. It may not mean anything, like most that philosophers say, but it's stuck in my mind and I daresay it makes as much sense as your belief that Minerva has a care for you. If she does, why' - and I threw, I recall, a cushion at him - 'are you such an ass?'

Flavius Sabinus again rattled the bones and once again threw a pair of sixes.

'Do it a third time, and I'll be Emperor,' Domitian cried out.

'Silly,' Domatilla said. Turning to me she added, 'What will you be if uncle throws again and Dom wears the purple?'

'His fool, I suppose,' I said and, turning, smiled to her, as the dice-box rattled, and a pair of sixes were disclosed on the table.

The German boy Balthus tells me he belongs to the tribe of the Chatti, and that his father was taken captive in Domitian's campaign against them. I remember that campaign and the sweet valley of the Neckar and a German woman I took as my concubine. Remembering made me sentimental. I drank wine with the boy and did no more than stroke his cheek and kiss him a couple of times. He protested, but gently. Then he looked at me in fear, aware of his slave-status.

XVI

A letter from Titus, undated but received (I surmise) early in February:

Dear Boy: your account is riveting. What a catalogue of folly! I am grateful to you for restraining my little brother, but I do wish you had sent me a copy of his poem in praise of Galba. I have become a connoisseur of bad verses.

And of other things too, for I have a new diversion of which you are not to be jealous, for, be assured, you retain a special place in my heart. This diversion is a lady, a queen indeed, Berenice by name. She is the daughter of Herod Agrippa who was reared
in
the court of Tiberius and befriended by the Emperor Gaius. So Berenice knows our ways, for she was not herself brought up to respect all the narrow superstitions of the Jews. She is, I confess, somewhat older than I am, and has been married two or three times - sometimes she talks as if she has had so many husbands she has lost count. Moreover, when I first heard of her, I was told she had lain incestuously with her brother the king, Herod Agrippa II. Add to this that she is as beautiful as the loveliest depiction of Venus you have ever seen, and is possessed of more arts of love than Ovid told of in that poem which you will remember reading with me, delightedly, on the shores of the Bay of Naples, and indeed of more than I have ever found in any Greek courtesan, even from Corinth, and you will understand that she is, to one of my temperament, utterly irresistible. In short, if that great-great - is there one more great? - uncle of yours, by marriage as I don't forget, Mark Antony, of whom you have so often spoken to me with a very natural and unstinted pride, thought the world well lost for love of his Eastern beauty Cleopatra, why then, I too - the Antony of our days - am utterly consumed with passion for Berenice, and would let war, Empire, glory, reputation go hang themselves, if they were to be found in competition with my love.

Fortunately, it is not so, for Berenice is herself a politician!

So congratulate me and when at last I am able to bring you to this East - a garden where all we have ever dreamed of is given to us - see if I don't supply you with a girl who will offer you whatever you desire; my Berenice has two daughters ripe for gentle plucking.

Is love not better than Empire? Is it not the true empire of the heart? Ah, my dear, in the words of a Persian poet which my Berenice has taught me, 'God planted a rose and a woman bloomed.'

'But,' you may say, 'this outpouring of delight is poor return for the grim and grisly chronicle I sent Titus. Does he not reckon what is happening in Rome equal at least in the balance to his bed-tumblings?' So you will chide me, Best (in his own way) Beloved.

Therefore I shall desist from one seriousness - for love is . . . oh, hang it, I am out of such language. Let me just say, love is one thing, war and politics another, and for the moment you, dear boy, are caught up
in
the latter.

So, first, what of the war here? We make progress. We have reduced most of the cities and strongholds of Judaea: wearisome work of sieges, and much digging for the troops. But we get on top of the revolt. The better class of Jews have returned to their duty, chief among them their most able general, one Josephus. You would be impressed by him, as I am, for he has none of the bitter temper characteristic of the Jews, but is possessed of a breadth of knowledge and a rare capacity to weigh what is essential against what is inessential, and to judge the advantages and disadvantages of a case. So he has concluded that, since our Empire cannot be overthrown, it must be the will of the Jewish god that we prevail, and therefore it behoves him to collaborate with us; and this conclusion is very helpful to our cause.

Furthermore, Josephus understands what he has learned by experience: that the revolt (in which he formerly took part) is aimed not only at our rule, but at the overthrow of all that is worthy of respect in Jewry itself. 'For,' he says, '"the Zealots",' which is the name given to the most extreme and violent enemies of Rome, 'seek not only to throw off your yoke, but to effect a social revolution also. They would destroy the authority of the High Priests, and raise up the poor and malignant to a position of power. Therefore if we are to defend what has long been established among our People, and the natural order of society, we must ally ourselves with the Romans against these maniacs, who can build nothing but seek only to destroy what has been the work of centuries approved by Almighty God.'

You won't, of course, make any sense of his conception of this 'Almighty God', for whom by the way the Jews have no name (or, if they have, it is one which they dare not utter). You must understand however that this strange people see the purpose of their god in every unfolding of history. This is odd, but makes some sense to them as I cannot doubt, having spoken at length with this Josephus whom I have come to respect.

Moreover, at certain moments anyway, Josephus understands that the day of small nations, or small nation-states, is over. He sees, too, that if the narrow exclusivity of the Jews has maintained their sense of themselves and of their religion (which, as I say, is unlike any other, for they have no image of their god and call the reverence we pay to images, idolatry), it has also denied them opportunities of acquiring a greater culture, and also prosperity. We have had long talks, and I have opened out to him my theory of the new Imperialism which, though it derives from Rome, is more than Roman, and would be diminished if it was only Roman. Consider, my dear: that a huge Empire has grown up around us, full of problems on which our previous experience sheds little light. Our motives in winning this Empire were not admirable. I can't pretend they were. We were driven on by greed and lust for power. Nor was our government good
in
the days of the Republican empire. Then the only thought of our Proconsuls was to exploit their provinces and enrich themselves. They were extortioners. The noble Marcus Junius Brutus, making loans to the provincials under his care in Cyprus, levied interest at the rate of eighty per cent; deplorable and, by any standard you choose to apply, unethical. It was, as I have learned from my studies, that much maligned Emperor Tiberius who succeeded where even Augustus had struggled in bringing an end to such practices. He said the provincials were his sheep, and must be only sheared, not skinned.

Now things must change, Tiberius' way. No state owes its greatness in any true sense to its material strength, but to the ideas it embodies. And at the heart of our Roman world is the belief in Law, not the Law that is imposed by tyrants, but the true Law that regulates relations between free citizens; and the basis of that Law is contract.

Josephus accepts this, but then he asks, provocatively, why it was necessary for us Romans to range the world and add states and kingdoms, once free and independent, to our Empire. I could enquire of him what their freedom meant - without an understanding of the law of contract; but I choose not to, and I admit that, as I have said, we acquired Empire for no noble motive. And yet, to you, I may say that the extension of our Empire was also necessary to cure the disease of the Roman State. We were like a man fainting from foul air and revived under the winds of heaven. Indeed, I shall put this argument, which I have just thought of, to my friend Josephus and invite him to apply it to his own nation - pestilential narrow-minded monotheists, who in their own eyes are ever right and all the world wrong. Will they not, I shall ask him, expand and fructify if liberated from their narrow estate and set to roam
in
the lanes and highways of the world? That indeed is why this Jewish War, which I detest, must be carried to a successful conclusion: that the Jews may also become part of the great imperial scheme.