husband, she said, was a man who asked little of her, only the appearance of virtue. 'When we were young,' she said, 'I loved you. Now…' she stroked my cheek with soft fluttering fingers, 'no, not now…'
Can I understand this? Can I make sense of the barriers that were erected between us? Not at all. So I question the possibility of understanding another person. Yet Tacitus is certain he understands Nero – even Nero. Well, I had a closer acquaintance – too close on that occasion I have alluded to – with the tyrant than Tacitus, who indeed had no personal knowledge of him, and was only fourteen or fifteen when Nero fell, but I do not claim to know how or why the young man whom my mother remembered (before the murder of Britannicus) as 'charming, ingenuous, a little naive, shy, and lacking in self-confidence', should have been transformed into a perverted and vicious monster.
Tacitus believes that character is fixed, so that what emerges at one stage in life was merely hidden before. He may therefore conclude that the young Nero was merely a hypocrite concealing his true nature. I have indeed heard him make this argument. He takes the same view of the Emperor Tiberius.
Then, tracing Nero's degeneration, he will undoubtedly blame Greek influences. I remember how often in our late-night conversations over another flask of wine – and Tacitus in his early thirties was as hard a drinker as myself, or indeed as Tiberius is reputed to have been – he would curse the foreign tastes which were, he said, 'reducing our youth to a bunch of gymnasts, loafers, and perverts. The Emperor and Senate,' he would mutter, 'are to blame. They not only allow these vices and practise them themselves, but they even force Roman nobles to debase themselves by appearing on the stage to sing, declaim and dance. They indulge in Greek athletics, stripping naked, putting on boxing-gloves and sparring, rather than toughening themselves by serving in the army.'
The truth is that Tacitus, priding himself on his old-fashioned ways and, taking Cato as his hero, has always had a vulgar taste for blood and slaughter. He relishes cruelly, even though it may also repel him. Complicated fellow. I was too well-mannered to say so, and used to content myself with teasing him.
'I don't suppose,' I would say, 'that you have often been invited to strip and display your charms.'
There would be trouble for anyone who made such a suggestion to me.'
Oh dear, I never could resist teasing him. I can't even now. It really surprises me that my old friend has become so great a man, if, that is, a mere historian can be thought great. He talks of greatness, writes longingly of greatness. But what has he ever done that was great?
Nothing disgusted him more than the story of Nero and his catamite, Sporus; and yet he could never leave it alone, but reverted to it frequently in conversation.
Sporus, a Greek boy, had been a slave in the household of my mother's sister when Nero first saw him. The boy was only twelve, but, according to my mother, already very pretty, with soft dark curls, silky skin, high cheek- bones, strangely narrow eyes. The young Emperor at once lusted after him and commanded him as a gift. What could my aunt do but part with the child? Nero had him castrated, on account, he said, of the purity of the boy's voice which he pretended was what had first enchanted him. A couple of years later he went through a form of marriage with him, the boy being dressed as a bride, and wearing a garland of red roses. After the ceremony, a parody of the real thing, he retired with him to a bridal chamber, and poor Sporus had to scream as if he was a virgin being ravished. I believe Nero even wounded him so that the sheets would be bloody. All this was perfectly disgusting, but it was rather harsh and quite unreasonable of Tacitus to speak with such contempt of the boy. What choice had he? My mother, having a better understanding than the future historian, always spoke sympathetically, even tenderly, of poor Sporus. I mention these circumstances now because of the part the boy subsequently found himself playing.
Nero's excesses are not my subject. Tacitus will revel in describing them. Let him do so. My memories of the last year of Nero's life are very different, and delightful. What did I care if he, in his mad extravagance, was taking advantage of the destruction wrought by the Great Fire four years previously to create his new palace and rural landscape, with its groves, pastures, herds of cattle, wild animals and grottoes where the mean houses of citizens had once crowded about each other? What did I care if men said in bitterness that all Rome was being transformed into Nero's villa, and if satirists advised the citizens to flee to Veii, assuming, that was, the villa did not get there first? What did I care, even, if every week brought news of some plot against the tyrant, followed by the melancholy report of yet another suicide of some exposed and terrified conspirator?
For me that year was dominated by love. For me now, in cold and wretched exile, it is a time of sunlit afternoon. Summer afternoon, but summer afternoon with the freshness of spring.
Domatilla… I have only to form her name to find myself near to weeping.
There was the moment that summer when she was transformed from a girl I had always known and liked and been happy to amuse, to… how shall I put it? Not a goddess; I leave that nonsense to poets. No, but just as the Emperor's Golden House spread itself in unimaginable delights over the dull city, so my life too was made golden by this hitherto scarcely imagined girl. Perhaps intense love is never anything but a projection of the imagination on the other.
It was one afternoon at the seaside, and if I was to narrate what happened that afternoon, it would appear perfectly commonplace. Domatilla had some friends with her. We played some ball-game. Domitian lost his temper and shouted at his sister, accusing her of having infringed some rule of the game. She lowered her eyes and spoke gently, seeking to pacify him. But he, giving way to a mood which I knew only too well, refused to be mollified, turned away, and strode off towards the woods. She called after him, appealingly and then, when he paid no heed, her upper lip, which was long and a little too thick for perfect beauty, trembled. But she shrugged, scuffed her feet uncertainly in the sand, and suggested we resume the game, for which, however, no one now had any heart. 'Bother him,' she said, recognising and resenting her brother's ability to impose his sullen will on the company – even by withdrawing his presence.
Nothing, you see, nothing. Yet it was in that moment when she looked after him and scuffed her feet in the sand that she became no longer the girl I had known all my life, but someone quite new to me, whom I experienced the absolute need to know perfectly and thoroughly.
I followed her to the house, where I found her drinking a glass of lemon squash.
'He's so silly,' she said, and a tear escaped her eye, trickling down her cheek which was flushed, either from the game or as a result of her emotion. I wanted to take her in my arms, and lick the tears which she now began to shed in profusion as she gave way to great sobs. I was at a loss to understand why she was so moved, and I did nothing. I could speak no words to comfort her. But I felt much.
VII
You chide me, Tacitus, for being dilatory, as you call it. May I remind you that you are the historian, not me, and that I am doing you a favour, or endeavouring to do you a favour, in excavating painful memories?
But I am glad that you now at last ask me specific questions. In particular, you seek to know what it was like in Rome when Galba, who had been proclaimed Emperor by the legions in Spain, entered the city. You weren't there yourself, you say. Indeed you weren't, and I was. If this part of your History is to be authentic, you must rely on me. Don't forget that. No doubt you have other informants, and will study documents. But if you seek an eye- witness account from one who understands, or once understood, politics, then you must put your trust in me. For which reason you should remember your manners.
I don't pretend to know everything, but I can promise you that I won't pretend either to more knowledge than I truly possess. What you get from me is authentic, from the horse's mouth, as we say in these barbarian parts, where the horse is highly revered. And you must allow me to approach it in my own way. The years, and my bitter experiences, have deprived me of the literary skills I once was so proud of.
What, I wonder, do you really know of Nero's death? There are more than a dozen stories that have gone the rounds, not least, of course, those which assert that he didn't die then but escaped. You will remember that in the subsequent few years at least half a dozen false Neros presented themselves. And what will you make of that, if you happen to mention it? Perhaps you won't mention it, because it points to something which you will not readily wish to admit. These false Neros all gathered support from the common people wherever they presented themselves. Why? Because, outside the senatorial class to which we both belong (you uncertainly, if you don't mind me saying so) Nero was popular. And not only with the riff-raff. Respectable provincials had a high regard for
