When the boys and girls had been released and led away, still shaking with fright, Nero crept out of the lion’s head and asked proudly whether he had managed to convince me with his acting, despite my experience with wild animals. Of course, I assured him that I had believed in the lion.
Nero showed me the steel springs and technical equipment of the lion costume, as well as the bag of blood which Epaphroditus had punctured with his sword. I have often wondered since about this absurd game, which seemed to give Nero great satisfaction but which he was in some way ashamed of and allowed only a few of his friends to see.
When he had in this way shown his confidence in me, he looked at me cunningly with feigned placidness.
“There is evidence of Antonia’s guilt,” he said, “and I must believe it, however much I may grieve that she has to die. She is, after all, my half sister. You were the one to open my eyes. So you shall have the honor of going to her and opening her veins. If I allowed her to do it voluntarily I should not be making a public affair of it. My own reputation is at stake too. I shall give her a State burial and have her urn put in the god Augustus’ mausoleum. I shall tell the Senate and the people that she committed suicide while her mind was confused, in order to be spared a fatal disease. One can always find a reason as long as she behaves and makes no fuss.”
I was so surprised that my words fastened in my throat, for Nero had forestalled me. I had thought of asking him for the favor of taking the message to Antonia myself, to be able to spend the last moments with her and hold her hand as the blood left her lovely body. This had helped me endure the tension of that long day.
Nero misunderstood my silence. He laughed, slapped me on the back and said contemptuously, “I realize that you think it unpleasant to have to reveal yourself as an informer to Antonia. You must have had something between you at your secret meetings. I know Antonia.”
But I do not seriously believe he imagined that Antonia would have lowered herself to a man like me when she had rejected Nero himself.
By sending me to Antonia, Nero thought he was humiliating me, for inwardly he despised all informers. But there are differences between informers, as I think I have shown in my story. My own motives were more noble than selfish. I was thinking of you my son, and through you of the future of the Julian family. To preserve my life was less important to me. Nero, however, by mistake granted me the greatest joy I could have hoped for at the moment when he thought he was humiliating me.
This I saw in Antonia’s radiant face when once again she saw me after believing that we had parted forever. I do not think anyone has received a sentence of death with such outstretched arms, such radiant eyes and smiling face. She showed her joy so openly that I at once told the tribune and his soldiers to go away. It would be sufficient if they guarded the house from outside.
I knew that Nero was impatiently waiting for the news of Antonia’s death. It was not easy for him either. But I presumed that he realized it might take some time to persuade Antonia to commit suicide without a fuss. Of course we did not need to say a single word, but Nero could not know that.
I did not want to waste precious time by asking Antonia about Piso’s necklace, although I felt burning jealousy over it. We sank together once again into our last embrace, though I perhaps, exhausted by tension and lack of sleep, did not excel as a lover, but we could relax together in each other’s arms, as close as two people can come to each other.
Meanwhile her slave-woman prepared a hot bath in her porphyritic pool. Naked, she went into the bathroom before me and asked me with tears in her eyes to do everything as swiftly as possible. I opened the vein in the fold of her elbow as tenderly and painlessly as I could with a sharp knife in the hot water. She tried to ignore the pain so as not to hurt me, but could not keep back a slight groan.
When the blood began to well up to the surface of the water and color the balsam-scented bath red, Antonia asked me to forgive her for her weakness, and told me that because of her rich and sheltered life, she had never become used to even the least unpleasantness. She used to stick pins into the breast of the slave-woman who brushed her fair hair if the woman pulled it.
As I held Antonia, leaning over her bath, one arm around the back of her neck, my mouth against hers, her hand in mine, my own life seemed so worthless that I asked to be allowed to die with her.
“That’s the greatest courtesy any man has ever paid me,” she whispered in a feeble voice, kissing my ear. “But you must go on living for the sake of our son. Don’t forget all the advice I have given you for his future. And remember, too, to put one of your old Etruscan gold pieces in my mouth before my jaw is bound and I am made ready for the pyre. That will be the most beloved and the last gift I shall receive from you, although I have to give it to Charon to pay him. He’ll know then to treat me according to my rank. I should not want to be crowded by the mob on the ferry.”
A moment later her lips parted under mine and her grip on my hand loosened. But I continued to hold her slim fingers and kiss her beloved face until the end came.
When she was dead and I could not feel the smallest breath, I carried her bloodstained body back to the bed and quickly washed the bloodstains from myself. To my delight I saw that Antonia used my Gallic freedman’s latest Egyptian soap. Naturally it was not exactly Egyptian, but manufactured in Rome like all his other soaps and popular tooth powders. But people paid more for soaps if he gave them fine names.
After I had dressed, I called in the centurion and the soldiers to witness that Antonia had voluntarily committed suicide, and then I left her body to the slave-woman, after first putting into her mouth one of the ancient gold pieces which my freedman had found in some old graves in Caere. I asked her steward to see that it was not stolen, for I had to hurry back to Nero.
In the tension of waiting, Nero had drunk quite a quantity of wine after his lion game, and he thanked me in surprise for having fulfilled my unpleasant task so rapidly. Once again he assured me that I could retain my inherited land in Britain and he himself would put in a word for me in the Curia so that I should receive a senator’s stool. But I have told you about that. I am relieved to have got the saddest part of my story written down.
Compared with all that, it seemed a mere bagatelle when two weeks later I nearly lost my life because of Antonia. Fortunately I had friends who informed me of the investigations Nero had started in connection with Antonia’s will. In this way I could prepare Claudia in time, although the whole of my plan was distasteful to her.
I still do not know why Antonia, an experienced and politically minded woman, felt she had to remember you in her will, although I had warned her against just that. Before her death I did not mention her will again. We had other things to talk about and to be honest, I completely forgot about the thoughtless promise she had made when she wanted you to take the name of Antonianus.
Now I had to be rid of Rubria immediately, for as the eldest of the Vestals, she was the only legal witness to your real origins. I do not wish to tell you any more of my meeting with her. All I shall say is that before that I had to go and see old Locusta in the pleasant country place which Nero had given her. In the garden she and her pupils cultivated many medicinal herbs while, with superstitious thoroughness, she observed the positions of the stars and the phases of the moon at the sowing and harvesting of her seeds and roots.
To my delight, Rubria’s unexpected death did not arouse any surprise among the physicians. Her face had not even darkened, so well had Locusta developed her art in her old age. But Nero was glad to allow her to test some of her medicines on certain criminals who deserved nothing better.
My visit to Rubria did not lead to any questions, for she usually had many visitors in the Vestals’ atrium. So I was able to wall into my secret hiding place the sealed document in which she had certified Claudia’s descent, repeated the confession of the dead Paulina and confirmed that Antonia had regarded your mother Claudia as her real half sister, and in confirmation had given you the name Antonianus.
From several outward signs I noticed beforehand that I had fallen in disfavor and so was not surprised when Nero summoned me. Indeed, I thought I was well prepared.
“Tell me about your marriage, Manilianus,” said Nero, chewing his lips, his chin trembling a little, “as I know nothing about it. Try to give me a credible explanation of why Antonia has remembered your son in her will and has even given him her own name. I did not even know you had a son except Epaphroditus’ bastard.”
I avoided his eyes and tried to the best of my ability to tremble with fright, and I must say that I did not have to make all that great an effort to do so. Nero thought I was hiding something.
“I should have understood if Antonia had been content to leave the boy just her Uncle Sejanus’ signet ring,” Nero went on. “But it’s incredible that she has left him some of the Julian family jewels which she inherited from Claudius’ mother, old Antonia. Included in them, among other things, is a shoulder insignia which the god Augustus
