I pray that Roman civilization never comes to Britannia.
As you may imagine, about everything that happened in Rome was known to the slaves in an imperial household, often before it was known to their masters, and our household was no exception. Just at the moment of which I am writing, the affair of Sejanus and Livilla was the favorite meat of the gossipers. They chewed upon it and rolled it about their tongues as the choicest of morsels. How they would have pricked up their ears and licked their chops had I told them what I had seen. But I didn't. I won't deny that I listened to gossip, but I didn't indulge in it. I might gossip with Tibur occasionally but not with the others, and of this matter I did not even speak to him. I cannot explain exactly why, but somehow I felt that it would be disloyal to Tiberius. Then, too, I had sense enough to realize that a slave who had too much knowledge and revealed it, might be thought to have too much for the good of his health. Perhaps the Via Flaminia influenced me.
The family was at dinner one evening a couple of weeks after my release from the Tullianum. I was, as usual standing behind Caligula, where I was compelled to listen to the usual family wrangling without being able to choke any of them. Agrippina had been lecturing Nero on his dissolute conduct and he was sitting sullen and morose. Drusus Caesar egged her on, although he was just as vicious as his brother.
"You needn't talk," said Agrippina Minor. "I heard you come in this morning, and I saw you, too."
"Shut your mouth, fungus," growled Drusus Caesar.
"Yah!" countered Agrippina Minor, and stuck out her tongue at him.
"Children!" snapped Agrippina.
Caligula, who was sitting next to the eight-year-old horror, pricked her leg with a fork, whereupon she slapped his face and began to bawl. It was a pretty scene of domestic felicity, but one to which I was thoroughly accustomed.
"These brats," said Nero, "should not be allowed to come to the table until they know how to behave. They should eat with the slaves."
"That," said Caligula, "would be preferable to eating with a conceited ass who smells of brothels."
Nero seized a large silver saltcellar and threw it at Caligula's head. It missed and hit Agrippina Minor, unfortunately but a glancing blow. Nero was but demonstrating that total abandonment of discretion which seems to be an outstanding characteristic of the epileptic branch of the imperial family.
"Children!" This time Agrippina stood up and screamed it, and it had the desired effect. The surly brood returned to the business of fortifying themselves for future family pleasantries. They now ate in silence, but their eyes and facial muscles bespoke eloquently their mutual loathing. All but Drusilla. She was by far the best of them, but she was only six and might outgrow it.
Following the main part of the meal, Agrippina arose and offered the mola salsa to the household gods. I wondered what they thought of those who were propitiating them, but as they were the spirits of the family ancestors, they doubtless took some of the burden of responsibility on their own shoulders and merely said. "Ho hum!"
During the dessert, a freedman entered and whispered something to Agrippina. I thought that it must be good news, for her face lighted up. and she looked almost pleasant. It crossed my mind that something unpleasant must have happened to someone. I was right.
"Children." she said, "the Emperor's son. Nero Claudius Drusus Caesar, is dead." Nero made no effort to conceal his elation: another obstacle had been removed from his path to the throne-and from the path of Caligula, too; but no one gave any thought to that, unless it might have been Caligula himself.
"You forget Tiberius Gemellus," he said.
"He is only four," snapped Agrippina, "and something might happen to him."
"Something might happen to Nero," said Drusus. I think that everyone there thought that they knew what was in his mind. In another family it would have seemed horrible, but in this one it was only natural.
"Nothing will happen to me," said Nero, "before it happens to you. Don't forget that, my sweet brother."
"I was only thinking of what might happen to anyone in a drunken brawl," said Drusus, "just by the way of cautioning you because of my brotherly love for you." Nero ignored that one. "The old goat will have to make me his heir now." "I don't see what else he can do," said Agrippina. "He hates us and he would like to destroy us as he did your father, but he does not dare, the legions and the people would tear him to pieces."
"How about Uncle Claudius?" asked Caligula.
"He's a half-witted fool," said Nero. "Tiberius would never inflict him on the Roman people."
"What makes you think he'll inflict you?" inquired Caligula. "At least, Claudius wouldn't rule from a lupanar."
Nero reached for another saltcellar.
"Children!" screamed Agrippina.
Chapter XII
A.U.C.776 [A.D. 23]
THE MAIN streets of Rome on a pleasant morning were, at the time of which I write, much as they are today: busy thoroughfares filled with jostling crowds moving in both directions, opening for the passage of the litters and the sedan chairs of the rich and powerful and closing again behind them, as the waters of the sea divide before the prow of a ship and, after it has passed, reunite, leaving no sign of the wound other than the momentary scar of the wake.
So narrow and so crooked are the streets of Rome that no wagons or carriages are permitted upon them during the first ten hours of the day, a traffic regulation to which there are but few exception s. But even so, early in the morning, the great throngs of pedestrians, the litters, and the sedan chairs often cause congestion as they converge upon the Forum, the heart of the great city.
It was so on a morning some two weeks after my liberation from the Tullianum as I was returning along the Vicus Tuscus after completing an errand upon which Agrippina had sent me. I was wondering, as I often had, why the old girl so often chose me to bear her messages or to execute small commissions for her, rather than one of her own numerous personal slaves. It wasn't because she loved me. Perhaps it was because she had learned that I would carry out her instructions with dispatch and intelligence; but more likely it was in the hope that something would happen to me and that I should never return.
The streets were filled with that heterogeneous mass of humanity that wages its bitter, eternal struggle for existence in poverty, in squalor, in vice, in crime, in riches, or in luxury within the walls of the capital of the world: unimportant little clerks scurrying importantly hither and thither; tall, blond Gauls; bearded Germans with their reddyed hair and rough tunics of the skins of the wild beasts of their forests; togaed Greeks, moving with conscious dignity and, I am sure, a feeling of contempt for their upstart conquerors; sleek, brown, shifty-eyed Egyptians; bearded Jews; black Ethiopians; ragged plebs; soldiers; sailors; hawkers; beggars.
As I approached the Basilica of Julius, I was forced to stop while a great man passed in his litter borne by four slaves. He was a magistrate, and preceding him were his lictors, carrying the fasces symbolic of his authority, while surrounding or following his litter were other slaves and freedmen attached to his family and the sycophants and parasites who were included in the considerable number of clients to whose support the great man must contribute.
No sooner had pedestrian traffic been permitted to move again after the passing of the magistrate and his retinue than it was again held up by the approach of another litter, the curtains of which were tightly drawn, doubtless to conceal from the view of the common herd the features of some noble Roman lady.
The litter was accompanied by a few slaves and freedmen who acted as a guard, pushing aside whoever chanced to obstruct the passage of the favored one. As it came opposite me, I saw the insignia of Helvidius Pius painted upon the litter, and immediately I was all eyes, for several female slaves walked beside it. Suddenly my heart behaved in a most ridiculous fashion, seeming, apparently, to be essaying the impossible feat of mingling with my tonsils-for there was Attica! I called her name aloud. She turned in surprise and looked at m
e, and when she recognized me, her little chin went up in the air and she marched past me with her eyes straight to the front. My heart dropped. I should not have been surprised had I heard it splash upon the pavement.
I was dumfounded. What had I done to deserve so cruel a cut as this? I racked my brain. I had done nothing-other than to have just barely missed crucifixion because of having saved her from two thugs.
So this was the sort of fickle baggage I had almost given my heart to! Almost? If not completely, why was I so depressed? I determined to put her from my mind and never think of her again, whereupon I proceeded to think of nothing else. Argue as I would that I was most fortunate to have found her out before it was too late, my obsession with the subject and my hideous mental depression might have suggested to a more acute intelligence that it already was too late.
I was in no pleasant mood when I reached home, nor did Caligula's greeting tend other than to increase my irascibility. "It's about time, slave!" he snapped. "One day you will keep Caesar waiting too long while you loaf and idle about the streets of the city. You will exhaust Caesar's patience, and then--"
"Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!" I mimicked. "Leave me alone!" I fairly shouted, "or Rome will be better off by one less Caesar."
It is seldom that I so lose self-control, but the edges of my temper were raw, and Caligula had applied an abrasive. With the passing years, he had become more and more irritating as his true character developed. What it might lead to, unless I kept myself well in hand, the gods alone might know. It was increasingly a question with me as to whether I should keep most in mind the crosses along the Via Flaminia or the fact that I was the great-grandson of Cingetorix. The two points of view were never in pleasing concord.
Of course, we were still both boys, and much of Caligula's bombast was but the empty boasting of a child. Our clashes were soon forgotten in a game of backgammon or dice, a visit to the Praetorian Camp or to the stables of the Green syndicate where the charioteers, trainers, and stable boys made as much of the nephew of the emperor as the soldiers did of the son of Germanicus.
Yet, subconsciously, these clashes must have had some effect upon our long-standing friendship: more upon the attachment of Caligula for me than upon the sentiments that I entertained for him, which, I must confess, are rather difficult to explain. When he had been a little fellow, I had felt a certain affection for him, and, as the years passed, something very much akin to loyalty, but these sentiments had always been clouded and oftentimes absolutely obscured by the contempt I felt for him.
Caligula, I am sure, never felt true, unselfish affection or loyalty for anyone during the entire course of his life. He realized that I was extremely useful to him, and that was about as near to affection for me as he ever came. Also, he was an arrant coward, morally and physically, and all his life he was afraid of me. It may sound ridiculous to say that a Caesar was afraid of a slave, but I know that it was true, and not even his mother knew Caligula as well as I knew him. The very fact that I never bent the knee to him, either literally or figuratively, even after he became emperor, and that I said to him with impunity what not even the most powerful senator would have dared say, and that I outlived him, proves my point.
It is true that he was constantly threatening me with scourgings, exile, the mines, or crucifixion, but it is also true that he never once carried out a single threat to punish me.
And so it was upon this occasion that Caesar subsided and that presently we were upon good terms again, though I am afraid that I was not the best of company that day. I could not keep my thoughts from dwelling on the strange and inexplicable attitude of Attica upon our meeting in the Forum. In a score of ways I sought to explain it: someone had carried false tales of me to her; she loved Numerius and this was her way of showing me that she no longer desired to see me. But I knew that all this reasoning was specious, for it was based upon the ridiculous assumption that Attica had entertained toward me a sentiment stronger than friendship or that she knew that I loved her. She couldn't have known any such thing, for I had just learned it myself-to my sorrow. And as for her feeling anything more than friendship for me, that was quite ridiculous. She scarcely knew me. She might have felt gratitude, but one might feel gratitude toward a perfect stranger who helped one to his feet after having fallen in the mud. However, one would not of necessity have to fall in love with the stranger, nor even fold him to one's bosom as a friend.
On the other hand, love would not necessarily be engendered in the heart of the stranger. How came it, then, that I had fallen in love with Attica? It was all very confusing, especially when I analyzed Attica's cruel snub. It must have been a reaction to something, but a reaction is only as violent as the state which it attempts to oppose. Therefore, Attica's act presupposed a former sentiment toward me much stronger than friendship; but such an assumption was ridiculous. I gave the whole thing up as insoluble, and determined to give it no more thought.
I was still thinking about it a week later when a solution offered itself. Following the death of his son, Drusus, Tiberius shut himself up in a remote part of his palace, refusing to see anyone. He was inconsolable, nor had he many friends to offer consolation with sincerity, so successful had been the fulminations of Agrippina and her party against him.
After the trial of Piso upon the ridiculous charge of having poisoned Germanicus, near the end of which Piso committed suicide, Agrippina and her adherents were inflamed to fury because, through the intervention of Livia, the Empress-Mother, the accused's wife, Plancina, had found protection.
Night after night I had to listen to the brazen conspiracies of Agrippina and her followers to undermine the authority of the Emperor and place the half-crazy wastrel, Nero Caesar, upon the imperial throne. It is impossible that knowledge of this treason could have been kept from Tiberius, and yet so patient and forgiving was he that he took no step to end these seditious activities for six long years.
During these years, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, whom rumor linked with Livilla in the murder of her husband, the son of the emperor, wormed his way further into the confidence of Tiberius until he was second in power only to the Emperor himself and unquestionably was planning to succeed him. As commander of the praetorian cohorts he was justly feared by all, especially by Agrippina, who knew that she and her sons were the greatest obstacles to the fruition of Sejanus' grandiose ambition. It was in this atmosphere of intrigue, fear, and hatred that the imperial family lived, and the effect upon their ill-balanced minds may easily be imagined. They saw poison in every cup, a dagger beneath every tunic. The great hope that sustained Agrippina was that one day she would be empress-mother and reign as regent during the minority of Nero Caesar and thereafter as the power behind the throne.
Every nature of foul gossip was spread by one faction against the other; perhaps the most preposterous were the whispered calumnies against Agrippina's morals, as you may have gathered, I had little love for Agrippina. She was haughty, arrogant, cruel, bitter, half-insane, and wholly dominated by a fanatical desire for power, but morally she was above reproach. Even the sainted Livia could lay claim to no greater purity. I loathed the atmosphere that permeated the palace of Agrippina. It seemed that I breathed suspicion, hatred, and intrigue, and my state of mind was not improved during the week that I brooded over the cruel slight put upon me by a little slave girl. But what was I to do? I was a slave. If I ran away, death or the mines would be my portion were I caught, as I most assuredly should have been; yet, boylike, I used to lie awake nights dreaming of leading such an insurrection as that of the gladiators and slaves under Spartacus, which had terrorized all of southern Italy nearly a hundred year before. But when I reflected that after their defeat six thousand of them had been crucified along the road from Capua to Rome, I decided to cast about for something less spectacular.
If only I had had some hope of happiness in the future! If I could have but looked forward to an occasional hour of relaxation in the company of--well, somebody like Attica. Not
Attica, of course: I had put her entirely from my mind. But where was I to find anybody like Attica? There was probably no one like her in the whole world, and certainly not in the household of Agrippina Major. Water clocks stopped when any of Agrippina's female slaves approached. There had been some rather cute ones before Nero and Drusus approached manhood, but after that, Agrippina got rid of them as fast as she could.
I was brooding over my sad lot one day in the garden behind the palace when one of the clockstoppers approached. As she saw me, she stopped suddenly. "Well, of all things!" she exclaimed. "Here I've been carrying this letter around for I don't know how long, and never thought to give it to you." She reached inside her tunic and drew out a folded piece of papyrus. I took it from her. Who would be writing me a letter? Breaking the seal, I opened it. It was dated three weeks before, and started,
"To Britannicus,
"From Attica,
"Greetings: "
I could have, with pleasure, murdered that fright of a slave woman. I shall always think that she had deliberately withheld the letter from me, influenced by that turpitude which flowed from the head of the family to pervade the entire household to a greater or lesser degree.
"I have just learned, dear Britannicus, of your trial, condemnation, and pardon, and, for the last, may the blessings of the gods be upon Tiberius. You must have thought it strange that you had no word from me, the innocent but nonetheless actual cause of your persecution, but believe me, dear Britannicus, had I known, I should have come to you at once. I must see you, and soon, to express again my gratitude for all that you have suffered on my account. Between the sixth and seventh hours, my mistress takes her siesta. At that time I am free, and if you care to see me again after all the sorrow I have caused you, you will find me strolling on the Via Appia between the house of Helvidius Pius and the Capena Gate at that hour on the morrow and the day after. But if your duties are such that you cannot come, I pray that you will dispatch a letter to me suggesting some other plan."