Mirrors

  SAPPHO

  Of Sappho not much is known.

  They say she was born twenty-six hundred years ago on the island of Lesbos, thus giving lesbians their name.

  They say she was married, that she had a son, and that she threw herself off a cliff because a sailor paid her no heed. They also say she was short and ugly.

  Who knows? We men do not like it when a woman prefers another woman instead of succumbing to our irresistible charms. In the year 1703, the Catholic Church, bastion of male power, ordered all of Sappho’s books burned.

  A handful of poems survived.

  EPICURIUS

  In his garden in Athens, Epicurius spoke out against fear. Against fear of the gods, death, pain, and failure.

  It is simply vanity, he said, to believe the gods care about us. From their bastion of immortality, their perfection, they offer neither prizes nor punishments. Why fear the gods when we fleeting, sorry beings merit no more than their indifference?

  Death is not frightening either, he said. While we exist, death does not, and when death exists, we no longer do.

  Fear pain? Fear of pain is what hurts most, and nothing gives more pleasure than pain’s departure.

  Fear failure? What failure? Nothing is enough if enough is too little, but what glory could compare to the delight of conversing with friends on a sunny afternoon? What power equals the urge to love, to eat, to drink?

  Let’s turn our inescapable mortality, Epicurius suggested, into an eternal feast.

  ORIGIN OF INSECURITY

  Greek democracy loved freedom but lived off its prisoners. Slaves, male and female, worked the land,

  built the roads,

  mined the mountains in search of silver and stone,

  erected the houses,

  wove the clothes,

  sewed the shoes,

  cooked,

  washed,

  swept,

  forged lances and shields, hoes and hammers,

  gave pleasure at parties and in brothels,

  and raised the children of their owners.

  A slave was cheaper than a mule. Slavery, despicable topic, rarely appeared in poetry or onstage or in the paintings that decorated urns and walls. Philosophers ignored it, except to confirm it as the natural fate of inferior beings, and to sound the alarm. Watch out, warned Plato. Slaves, he said, unavoidably hate their owners and only constant vigilance can keep them from murdering us all.

  And Aristotle maintained that military training for the citizenry was crucial, given the climate of insecurity.

  SLAVERY ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE

  One who is a human being belonging by nature not to himself but to another is by nature a slave; and being a man he is an article of property, and an article of property is an instrument . . . The slave is a living tool, just as a tool is an inanimate slave.

  Hence there are by nature various classes of rulers and ruled. For the freeman rules the slave, the male the female, and the man the child.

  The art of war includes hunting, an art which we ought to practice against wild beasts and against men who, though intended by nature to be governed, refuse to submit; for war of such a kind is naturally just.

  Bodily service for the necessities of life is forthcoming from both, from slaves and from domestic animals alike. The intention of nature therefore is to make the bodies of freemen and of slaves different.

  WATCH OUT FOR THE BACCHANALIA

  In Rome, too, slaves were the sunshine of every day and the nightmare of every night. Slavery stoked the empire’s life and its dread.

  Even the festivals of Bacchus posed a threat to stability, for in those nighttime rituals the walls between slaves and freemen crumbled, and wine allowed what the law forbade.

  Subversion of hierarchies by lust: those wild parties, people suspected, people knew, had a lot to do with the slave rebellions breaking out in the south.

  Rome did not stand put. A couple of centuries before Christ, the Senate accused the followers of Bacchus of conspiracy and gave two consuls, Marcius and Postumius, the mission to extinguish all trace of bacchanalia throughout the empire.

  Blood flowed.

  The bacchanalia continued. The rebellions as well.

  ANTIOCHUS, KING

  His owner used him as a jester at banquets.

  The slave Eunus would fall into a trance and blow smoke and fire and prophecies from his mouth, sending the guests into fits of laughter.

  At one of these big feasts, after the flames and delight died down, Eunus announced solemnly that he would be king of this island. Sicily will be my kingdom, he said, and he said he was told as much by the goddess Demeter.

  The guests laughed so hard they rolled on the floor.

  A few days later, the slave was king. Breathing fire from his mouth, he slit his owner’s throat and unleashed a slave revolt that engulfed towns and cities and crowned Eunus king of Sicily.

  The island was ablaze. The new monarch ordered all prisoners killed, save those who knew how to make weapons, and he issued coins stamped with his new name, Antiochus, beside the likeness of the goddess Demeter.

  The reign of Antiochus lasted four years, until he was betrayed, deposed, jailed, and devoured by fleas.

  Half a century later, Spartacus arrived.

  SPARTACUS

  He was a shepherd in Thrace, a soldier in Rome, a gladiator in Capua.

  He was a runaway slave who fled armed with a kitchen knife. At the foot of Mount Vesuvius he formed a legion of free men that gathered strength as it roamed and soon became an army.

  One morning, seventy-two years before Christ, Rome trembled. The Romans saw that Spartacus’s men saw them. At dawn, the crests of the hills bristled with lances. From there, the slaves contemplated the temples and palaces of the queen of cities, the one that had the world at her beck and call: within reach, touched by their eyes, was the place that had torn from them their names and their memories, and had turned them into things to be lashed, sold, or given away.

  The attack did not occur. It was never known if Spartacus and his troops had really been that close, or if they were specters conjured up by fear. For at the time, the slaves were humiliating the legions on the battlefield.

  A guerrilla war kept the empire on edge for two years.

  Then the rebels, surrounded in the mountains of Lucania, were at last annihilated by soldiers recruited in Rome under a young officer named Julius Caesar.

  When Spartacus saw he was beaten, he leaned against his horse, head to head, his forehead pressed to the forelock of his companion in every battle. He thrust in the long blade and sliced open the horse’s heart.

  Crucifixions lined the entire Via Appia from Capua all the way to Rome.

  ROME TOUR

  Manual labor was for slaves.

  Thought not enslaved, day laborers and artisans practiced “vile occupations.” Cicero, who practiced the noble occupation of usury, defined the labor hierarchy:

  “The least honorable are all that serve gluttony, like sausage-makers, chicken and fishmongers, cooks . . . ”

  The most respectable Romans were warlords, who rarely went into battle, and landowners, who rarely set foot on their land.

  To be poor was an unpardonable crime. To dissemble their disgrace, the formerly wealthy went into debt and, if lucky, pursued successful careers in politics, which they undertook in the service of their creditors.

  The sale of sexual favors was a reliable source of wealth. So was the sale of political or bureaucratic favors. These activities shared a single name. Pimps and lobbyists were both called proxenetas.

  JULIUS CAESAR

  They called him “the bald whorer,” said he was the husband of every woman and the wife of every man.

  Those in the know contend he spent several months in Cleopatra’s bedroom without even peeking out.

  He returned to Rome from Alexandria with her, his trophy. Crowning his victorious campaigns in Europe and Africa, he paid homage to his own glory by o
rdering a multitude of gladiators to fight to the death, and by showing off the giraffes and other rarities Cleopatra had given him.

  Rome dressed him in the only purple toga in the entire empire, and wrapped his forehead in a laurel wreath. And Virgil, the official poet, celebrated his divine lineage, descending from Aeneas, Mars, and Venus.

  Not long after, from the height of heights, he proclaimed himself dictator for life and announced reforms that threatened the sacrosanct privileges of his own class.

  And his people, the patricians, decided that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.

  Marked for death, all-powerful Caesar was surrounded by his intimates, and his beloved Brutus, who may have been his son, embraced him first and plunged the first knife into his back.

  Other knives riddled him and were raised, red, to the heavens. And there he lay on the stone floor. Not even his slaves dared to touch him.

  SALT OF THE EMPIRE

  In the year 31 before Christ, Rome went to war against Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, inheritor of Caesar’s fame and Caesar’s dame.

  That was when Emperor Augustus bought popularity by handing out salt.

  The patricians had already given the lower orders the right to salt, but Augustus increased the ration.

  Rome loved salt. There was always salt, either rock salt or sea salt, near the cities the Romans founded.

  “Via Salaria” was the name of the first imperial road, built to bring salt from the beach at Ostia, and the word “salary” comes from the payment in salt, which the legionaries received during military campaigns.

  CLEOPATRA

  Her courtiers bathe her in donkey’s milk and honey.

  After anointing her with nectar of jasmine, lily, and honeysuckle, they place her naked body on silk pillows filled with feathers.

  On her closed eyelids lie thinly sliced discs of aloe. On her face and neck, plasters made of ox bile, ostrich eggs, and beeswax.

  When she awakens from her nap, the moon is high in the sky.

  The courtiers impregnate her hands with essence of roses and perfume her feet with elixirs of almonds and orange blossoms. Her nostrils exhale fragrances of lime and cinnamon, while dates from the desert sweeten her hair, shining with walnut oil.

  And the time for makeup arrives. Beetle dust colors her cheeks and lips. Antimony dust outlines her eyebrows. Lapis lazuli and malachite paint a veil of blue and green shadows around her eyes.

  In her palace at Alexandria, Cleopatra begins her final night.

  The last of the pharaohs,

  who was not as beautiful as they say,

  who was a better queen than they say,

  who spoke several languages and understood economics and other

  male mysteries,

  who astonished Rome,

  who challenged Rome,

  who shared bed and power with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony,

  now dresses in her most outlandish outfit and slowly sits down on

  her throne, while the Roman troops advance against her.

  Julius Caesar is dead, Mark Anthony is dead.

  The Egyptian defenses crumble.

  Cleopatra orders the straw basket opened.

  The rattle resounds.

  The serpent slithers.

  And the queen of the Nile opens her tunic and offers it her bare breasts, shining with gold dust.

  CONTRACEPTIVE METHODS OF PROVEN EFFECTIVENESS

  In Rome, many women avoided having children by sneezing immediately after making love, but the professionals preferred shaking their hips at the moment of climax to divert the seed. Pliny the Elder recounted how poor women avoided having children by hanging from their necks before dawn an amulet made of worms extracted from the head of a furry spider, wrapped in elk skin. Upper-class women warded off pregnancy by carrying a small ivory tube containing a slice of the uterus of a lioness or the liver of a cat.

  A long time later, in Spain, believers practiced an infallible prayer:

  Saint Joseph, you who had without doing make it so that I do without having.

  SHOW BUSINESS

  Silence. The priests consult the gods. They slice open a white bull, read his entrails. Suddenly the band strikes up and the stadium howls: yes, the gods say yes. They too are burning with desire for the revelry to begin.

  The gladiators, who are going to die, raise their weapons to salute the emperor’s box. Mostly they are slaves or criminals sentenced to death, though a few are professionals who trained long for a short career that ends the day the emperor gives the thumbs-down.

  Cameos, badges, and clay pots decorated with the faces of the most popular gladiators sell like hotcakes in the stands, while the crowd goes wild making bets and hurling abuse and praise.

  The show might last several days. Private entrepreneurs sell the tickets and prices are high, but sometimes politicians put on the killings for free. That’s when the stands fill up with pennants and banners exhorting all to vote for the friend of the people, the only one who keeps his promises.

  Arena of sand, sodden with blood. A Christian named Telemaco won sainthood for leaping between two gladiators in the midst of a fight. The crowd made mincemeat of him, pelting him with stones for interrupting the show.

  FAMILY PORTRAIT IN ROME

  For three centuries, hell was Rome and devils were its emperors. To the delight of the public, they threw Christians to hungry lions in the pits of the Coliseum. Those luncheons were not to be missed.

  According to Hollywood’s historians, Nero was worst of all. They say he had the apostle Saint Peter crucified upside down, and that he set fire to Rome in order to lay blame on the Christians. And he kept up the imperial tradition of exterminating his own family.

  He gave his Aunt Lepida, who had raised him, a lethal laxative, and with poison mushrooms he bid goodbye to his half-brother Britannicus.

  After marrying his half-sister Octavia, he sent her into exile and ordered her strangled. Widowed and free, he openly wooed the incomparable beauty Poppaea, whom he made empress until he tired of her and with one kick sent her on to the other world.

  Agrippina was the toughest to kill. Nero owed her because he was the fruit of her womb, and also because she had poisoned her husband, Emperor Claudius, so that he, her little boy, could ascend to the throne. But Agrippina, beloved mother, did not let him rule and at every chance slipped into his bed and feigned sleep. Getting rid of her was no easy task. Happily, you have but one mother. Nero toasted her health with toxic potions, previously tested on slaves and animals, he made the roof over her bed fall in, he knocked holes in the hull of her ship . . . At last he was able to grieve for her.

  Afterward he killed Poppaea’s son Rufrius Crispinus, who was vying to become emperor.

  And then, sticking a knife in his own throat, he did in the only relative he had left.

  THE POET WHO POKED FUN AT ROME

  Spain was his place of birth and death, but the poet Martial lived and wrote in Rome.

  It was the age of Nero, and in fashion were wigs made of the hair of barbarians, as Germans were called:

  That blond hair is all her own.

  So she says, and she won’t lie.

  Where she bought it knows none but I.

  And false eyelashes:

  Keep on winking with that eyelid

  you pulled from a drawer this morning.

  Death improved poets, then as now:

  Only the dead do honors gain.

  I prefer to carry on

  alive and without acclaim.

  A doctor’s house call could prove fatal:

  Before you came, a fever I had not.

  But then you saw me, thanks a lot.

  And justice could be unjust:

  Who said the adulterer’s nose one should snip?

  To betray you he did not use that tip.

  LAUGH THERAPY

  Galen, hero of doctors everywhere, started out healing the wounds of gladiators and ended up as physician to Emp
eror Marcus Aurelius.

  He believed in experience and distrusted speculation:

  “I prefer the long hard road to the short easy path.”

  In his years of working with the sick, he came to see that habit is second nature and that health and illness are ways of life. He advised patients who were ill by nature to change their habits.

  He discovered or described hundreds of afflictions and cures, and by testing remedies he concluded:

  “Laughter is the best medicine.”

  JOKES

  The Andalusian emperor of Rome, Hadrian, said farewell to his soul when he knew his last morning had arrived:

  Little soul,

  fragile wanderer,

  my body’s guest and companion,

  where will you go now?

  To what pale, tough, barren places will you go?

  You won’t be telling jokes anymore.

  THE LOOKING-GLASS WORLD MOCKED THE REAL ONE

  Roman women enjoyed one day of absolute power. During the festival of Matronalia, the she’s gave the orders, and the he’s took them.

  The Saturnalia, descended from Sacaea of ancient Babylon, lasted a week and were, like the Matronalia, an occasion to let loose. Hierarchies were inverted: the rich served the poor, who invaded their homes, wore their clothes, ate at their tables, and slept in their beds. Saturnalia, homage to the god Saturn, culminated on December 25. That was the day of Sol Invictus, Unconquered Sun, which centuries later became Christmas by Catholic decree.