mysteries.
“We have nothing to be ashamed of,” he explained. “We demand cleanliness, honesty and manliness from those who follow our god Mithras for peace in their souls and a good life the other side of death. Your face is clean and your stance upright, so I think you will like our god. But please do not talk about him unnecessarily to outsiders.”
In the room was a crowd of men both old and young. Among them I recognized to my astonishment several tribunes and centurions from the Praetorian Guard. Several were veterans and war invalids. All were dressed in clean clothes and wore the sacred Mithraic insignia of rank, according to the degree of initiation they had reached. In this respect, their army rank or personal wealth seemed to make no difference. Barbus explained that if an irreproachable veteran were initiated with blood baptism, then it was the wealthier initiates who paid for the ox. He himself was content with the raven degree, for he had not led an entirely blameless life and did not always remember to keep to the truth.
The light was so dim in the underground room that one could not distinguish many faces. But I could see an altar and on it an image of a god with a crown on his head, killing a bull. Then silence fell. The eldest in the congregation began to intone sacred texts which he knew by heart. They were in Latin and I could understand nearly all of them. I learned that according to their teachings, a constant battle between light and darkness, good and evil, was being waged in the world. Finally the last light was extinguished, I heard a secretive splash of water and a silvery bell began to ring. Many people sighed heavily and Barbus squeezed my arm hard. Lights from hidden apertures in the walls slowly began to illuminate the crown and image of Mithras.
I ought not to reveal any more about the mysteries, but I was convinced by the Mithras worshippers’ solemn piety and the trust in their life to come. After the victory of light and the forces of good, the torches in the room were lit and a modest meal brought in. The people seemed relaxed, their faces radiating joy, and they conversed together with friendliness, regardless of rank and degree of initiation. The food consisted of tough ox meat and the cheap sour wine of military camps.
From their pious songs and their talk, I had the impression that they were all honest if also simple men who were righteously striving to live a blameless life. Most of them were widowers or unmarried and found consolation and security in this victorious Sun God and in the companionship of their equals. At least they had no fear of magic and respected no other omens than their own.
I thought that they could only be of use and help to Barbus. But the Mithraic ceremonies did not appeal to me. Perhaps I felt much too civilized and young among all those serious-minded grown men. At the end of the meal, they did in fact begin to tell stories, but they were the same stories one can hear without any ceremonies around any campfire throughout the Roman Empire.
But my mind was often still in turmoil. At such moments I took my wooden goblet from my locked chest, caressed it and thought about my Greek mother, whom I had never known. Then I drank a little wine from the goblet to the memory of my mother and was at the same time a little ashamed of my own superstition. I did in fact feel my mother’s good and gentle presence. But I could never have told anyone about this habit.
I also began to torment myself with unsparing riding exercises, for I seemed to feel greater satisfaction from controlling a difficult horse and exhausting my body, than spending a tearful night with Claudia. Thus I escaped both a guilty conscience and interminable self-reproaches.
Young Lucius Domitius still excelled on the riding field, but his greatest ambition was to ride beautifully on a well-schooled horse. He was chosen as the best of the youths in the Order, and to please Agrippina, we other members of the Noble Order of Knights agreed to have a new gold piece struck in his honor. Only a year had elapsed before Emperor Claudius had adopted him.
On the one side of the coin, we impressed his clear-cut boy’s profile and around the portrait his new adoptive names: To Nero Claudius Drusus, and in memory of his maternal grandfather, Claudius’ brother, Germanicus. The inscription on the other side ran: The Noble Order of Knights rejoices in their leader. In fact it was Agrippina who paid for it and it was distributed as a souvenir gift in all the provinces, but was of course legal currency, as were all the gold pieces struck in the temple of Juno Moneta.
Naturally Agrippina could well afford this little political demonstration to her son’s advantage. From her second husband, Passesnus Crisus, who was only briefly stepfather to Lucius Domitius, she had inherited a fortune of two hundred million sesterces and knew how to increase it by her position as wife of the Emperor and close friend of the Procurator of the State Treasury.
The name Germanicus had older traditions and was grander than Britannicus, whom we did not like because of his epilepsy and his allergy to horses. Many stories circulated about his real descent, since Emperor Gaius had so suddenly and unexpectedly married the fifteen-year-old Messalina to the decrepit Claudius.
As one of Lucius’ friends, I was invited to the adoption feast and the sacrificial ceremonies connected with it. The whole of Rome recognized that Lucius Domitius had earned his new position by his noble descent as well as his own brilliant and pleasing nature. From this time on we called him only Nero. His adoptive names had been chosen by Claudius in memory of his own father, younger brother to Emperor Tiberius.
Lucius Domitius, or Nero, was the most versatile and talented of all the young men I knew, and was both physically and spiritually more precocious than his contemporaries. He liked wresding and defeated them all, although he was so much admired th‹at no one seriously tried to defeat him, to avoid hurting his feelings. Nero could still burst into tears if his mother or Seneca reproached him too severely. He was taught by the best teachers in Rome and Seneca was his oratory tutor. I had nothing against my young friend Nero, although I noticed he could lie both skillfully and plausibly if he had done something Seneca considered wrong. But all boys do that, and no one could be angry with Nero for long.
Agrippina saw to it that Nero was allowed to take part in Claudius’ official banquets and sit at the end of his couch as near as Britannicus. In this way, both the nobles of Rome and envoys from the provinces became acquainted with Nero and had the opportunity to compare the two boys, the cheerful and delightful Nero and the sullen Britannicus.
Agrippina invited the sons of the most noble families in Rome to meals with both the boys. Nero acted as host and Seneca led the conversation, in that he gave the subject to each one of them to speak on. I suspect he gave Nero his subject beforehand and helped him with his speech, for every time Nero excelled with his easy, beautiful oratory.
I was often invited to these meals, for at least half of the guests had already received their man-togas, and Nero seemed genuinely to like me. But I grew tired of listening to speakers constantly peppering their speeches with worn-out verses from Virgil and Horace or quotations from Greek poets. So I began to prepare for the invitations by reading Seneca’s works and learning by heart his favorite pieces on keeping one’s temper, the brevity of life and the imperturbable calm of the wise man in the vicissitudes of fate.
Since meeting Seneca, I had come to hold him in great esteem, for there was nothing on this earth upon which he could not give a sensible, mild and considered opinion in his well-schooled voice. But I wanted to see if the wise man’s imperturbability also withstood man’s natural conceit.
Of course Seneca saw through me. He was not stupid, but it must have pleased him to hear his own thoughts quoted alongside those of the authorities of the past. I was also cunning enough never to mention his name in my quotations, since that would have been rather too crude flattery, but I just said, “The other day I read somewhere,” or “I’ll always remember a word… “
Puberty to Nero was sheer torment, and then he received his man-toga when he was fourteen. He carried out the sacrifice to Jupiter like a man, neither breaking down nor repeating himself as he read the sacrificial litany. The liver showed nothing but good omens. He summoned back Rome’s youth and the Senate agreed unanimously, without the slightest protest, that he should receive the rank of Consul when he was twenty, and thus as Consul, the right to a seat in the Senate.
At this point an envoy arrived from the famous island of philosophers, Rhodes, to apply for the reinstatement of freedom and self-government to the island. I do not know if Claudius had become more favorably inclined toward the people of Rhodes, but Seneca considered that it was the most favorable moment for Nero to make his maiden speech in the Curia. With Seneca’s help, Nero secretly prepared for it with great care.
My father told me that he had been astounded when Nero, after the envoy’s speech and a few sarcastic remarks from the Senate, shyly rose to his feet and said: “Honored fathers.” Everyone came awake. When Claudius nodded his consent, Nero moved to the oratory platform and enthusiastically outlined the history of Rhodes, the island’s famous philosophers and the great Romans who had completed their education there.
