longer use his handsome Chaldaean cloak covered with the signs of the zodiac. He looked wretched and destitute, his eyes restless, and he made such a strange request that at first I thought he had lost his reason. He wished to give a public demonstration of flying in the amphitheater to retrieve his good name and reputation.
As far as I could make out from his confused account, his powers of faith-healing had declined and he was no longer fashionable. His daughter had died from the intrigues of hostile magicians, he maintained. The Christians in Rome, in particular, had hated and persecuted him to such an extent that he was threatened with destitution and an insecure old age. So now he wished to demonstrate his divine powers to all the people.
“I know that I can fly,” he said. “Before, I flew in front of great crowds and appeared from a cloud, until one of the Christian messengers came with their sorcery and made me fall in the forum and break my knee. I want to prove that I can still fly, to myself as well as others. I once threw myself down from the Aventine tower at night in a heavy storm and spread out my cloak for wings. I flew without any difficulty and landed unscathed on my feet.”
“In truth, I never believed you flew,” I said, “but simply distorted people’s eyes so that they believed they had seen you flying.”
Simon the magician twisted his gnarled hands and scratched his bearded chin.
“Perhaps I did distort people’s eyes,” he said, “but no matter. I was forced to persuade myself that I was flying, with such power that I still believe I have flown. But I do not strive to reach the clouds any longer. It will be sufficient for me if I succeed in flying once or twice around the amphitheater. Then I shall believe in my own power and that my angels are holding me up in the air,”
The thought of flying was the only thing in his head, so in the end I asked how he thought he was going to arrange it. He explained that a high mast could be erected in the middle of the amphitheater and he could be pulled up to the top in a basket so that he would be sufficiently high, for he could not raise himself from the ground with a hundred thousand people looking on. He stared at me with his piercing eyes and spoke so convincingly that my head whirled. At least, I thought, this would be an event which had never before been seen in any amphitheater, and it was Simon the magician’s own business if he felt he had to risk breaking his neck. Perhaps he might even succeed in his reckless attempt.
Nero came to the amphitheater to watch when several Greek youths were practicing a sword dance. It was a hot autumn day, and Nero wore nothing but a sweat-drenched tunic as he shouted praises and urged the youths on, occasionally taking a part in the dance himself to set an example to them. When I put Simon the magician’s proposal to him, he was at once enthusiastic.
“Flying is remarkable enough in itself,” he added, “but we must find an artistic framework to make an exceptional event of it. He can be Icarus, but we must get Daedalus and his masterpiece in too. Why not Pasiphae too, so the crowd can have some fun?”
His imagination began to work with such liveliness that I was thankful for my good fortune. We also agreed that Simon should shave off his beard, dress up as a Greek youth, and have glittering gilded wings fastened to his back.
When I put these Imperial demands to Simon, at first he refused point-blank to shave, maintaining that it would take his powers away. He had no objections to the wings. When I spoke of Daedalus and the wooden cow, he told me of the Jewish myth about Sampson, who had lost all his strength when a strange woman had cut off his hair. But when I suggested that he obviously had little faith in his ability to fly, he agreed to the demands. I asked him whether he wanted the mast erected at once to give him time to practice, but he said practicing would only weaken his powers. It would be better if he fasted and read incantations in solitude to gather his strength for the day of the performance.
Nero had prescribed that the program should both edify and entertain the public. For the first time in history, a huge show of this kind was to take place without the deliberate spilling of human blood. Thus the people had to be made to laugh as much as possible between the exciting and artistically excellent events. During unavoidable intervals, gifts were to be thrown to the crowd, such as roasted birds, fruit and cakes, and ivory lottery tablets, from which lots for corn, clothes, silver and gold, draft oxen, slaves and even land would be drawn later on.
Nero did not want to have professional gladiators at all. So, and to emphasize the worthiness and dignity of his show, he ordered that the games should be introduced with a battle between four hundred senators and six hundred knights. It amused the people to see important men of irreproachable reputation battering at each other with wooden swords and blunted lances. Groups of elite warriors also displayed their skills, but the crowd was dissatisfied when no one was injured, and began to mate itself heard volubly on this point. The soldiers on guard began to move in, but Nero made it known that he wished them to withdraw so that the people of Rome should get used to freedom.
This command roused applause and general delight. The malcontents restrained themselves, to show that they were worthy of the Emperor’s confidence. A duel with nets and tridents between two fat and breathless senators was so comical that the crowd let out a giant roar of laughter, and both gentlemen in fact became so angry with each other that they would certainly have been hurt had the tridents been sharpened or if the nets had had the usual lead weights on them.
Three men displaying giant snakes caused considerable horror when they allowed the snakes to crawl all over them, but Nero was not pleased when no one realized they were supposed to represent Laocoon and his sons. The lion, tiger and bison hunts ran their course without mishap, much to the disappointment of the crowd, for which the young knights representing the huntsmen had me to thank as I had had protective towers built for them here and there in the arena. I myself disliked this display because I had already become so fond of my animals that I did not like to see them killed.
There was gigantic applause for a young lion-tamer, a supple young woman who came rushing out of a dark entrance, straight across the arena, with three apparently raging lions at her heels. A great hum went through the crowd, but the woman halted the lions with her whip in the middle of the sand and made them sit down obediently like dogs, and jump through hoops at her commands.
The noise and applause must have upset the lions, for when the woman did her boldest act, forcing the great male lion to open his mouth and placing her own head inside it, the lion quite unexpectedly closed his jaws again and bit into her head. This surprise caused such jubilation and such a storm of applause that I had time to rescue the lions.
A chain of slaves equipped with burning torches and red-hot bars hastily surrounded them and drove them back into their cages. Otherwise the mounted archers would have been forced to kill them. To tell the truth, I was so anxious about my valuable lions that I jumped unarmed into the arena to issue orders to the slaves.
I was, however, so incensed that I gave the male lion a kick under the jaw with my iron-shod boot to make him loosen his grip on his mistress’ head. The lion growled angrily but was probably so upset by the accident that he did not attack me.
After a troupe of painted Negroes had baited a rhino, a wooden cow was carried into the arena and the clown Paris performed the story of Daedalus and Pasiphae, while a giant bull so eagerly mounted the hollow wooden cow that most of the crowd believed that Pasiphae really had hidden herself inside it.
Simon the magician with his huge golden wings was a spectacle which surprised everyone. With gesticulations Paris tried to induce him to do some dance steps, but Simon rejected the attempt with the swirl of his magnificent wings. Two sailors hoisted him up to a platform at the top of the immensely high mast. In the upper galleries, several Jews began to shout curses, but the crowd silenced them and Simon turned in all directions to greet the people as he stood up on the mast on this, the most solemn moment of his life. I think that right up to lie very last moment, he was convinced he would conquer and crush his rivals.
So he swung his wings once more and leaped out into the air in the direction of the Imperial box, only to fall immediately, so close to Nero that several drops of blood splashed on the Emperor. He died instantly, of course, and afterwards it was discussed whether he really had flown or not. Some people maintained they had seen his left wing damaged as he was being hoisted up in the basket. Others thought the Jews’ terrible curses had made him fall. Perhaps he would have succeeded if he had been allowed to retain his beard.
Anyhow, the performances had to continue. The sailors now fastened a thick rope between the first gallery and the foot of the mast. To the great surprise of the crowd, an elephant then carefully walked along the rope from the gallery to the arena, a knight known all over Rome for his foolhardiness seated on its neck. He had not taught the elephant tightrope-walking, of course, for it was used to doing this without a rider. But he received the final applause for a display of skills and daring never before seen in any amphitheater.
