I made inquiries and discovered that no one had asked after Simon the magician’s body in time, so it had been given to the animals to eat, as was the usual practice in the menagerie with the bodies of slaves. I did not like this practice, but of course it reduced costs as long as one saw to it that the flesh was healthy. I had forbidden my subordinates to use the bodies of people who had died of diseases for feeding to the animals.
In this case, I thought Sabina had been too hasty. Simon the magician had been a respected man in his own circles and had deserved a burial according to his own people’s customs. In fact a chewed skull and a few vertebrae were all the slaves could find after they had chased the angry lions away from their meal.
I had the remains put in a hastily acquired urn and handed it to Aunt Laelia, telling her not to have it opened for the sake of her own peace of mind. Sabina openly showed her contempt for our softhearted-ness.
After that evening, we slept in separate rooms. In spite of the bitterness I felt, I slept markedly better than I had done for a long time, now that I did not have lion cubs climbing all over me. They had now grown knifelike teeth.
After Simon the magician’s death, Aunt Laelia soon lost her will to live and what reason she had possessed. She had, of course, long been an elderly woman. But instead of trying to hide this, as she had done hitherto with clothes, wigs and paint, she now gave up the struggle and for the most part remained hidden indoors, muttering to herself and talking about the old days, which she remembered far better than the present.
When I realized that she no longer even knew who was Emperor and that she was confusing me with my father, I thought I ought to stay overnight as often as possible in my old house on Aventine. Sabina had no objections, and in fact seemed pleased to be able to supervise the menagerie on her own.
Sabina was happy with the animal trainers, although, in spite of their much respected professional skill, they were mostly ignorant people who could talk of nothing else but their animals. Sabina was also good at supervising the unloading of the wild animals from the ships and was better than I was at haggling over the price. First and foremost, she maintained ruthless discipline among the employees in the menagerie.
I soon noticed that I had much less to do as long as I arranged for Sabina to have enough money for the menagerie, for the grant from the Imperial treasury did not go far toward maintenance and provisions. That was why I had been given to understand that the post of superintendent was an honorary office which presupposed one used one’s own means.
Thanks to my Gallic freedman, money poured in from his soap factory. One of my Egyptian freedmen manufactured expensive salves for women, and Hierex sent me handsome gifts from Corinth. But my freedmen liked to put their profits into new business enterprises. The soap maker expanded his business to all the big cities in the Empire and Hierex was speculating in sites in Corinth. My father remarked mildly that the menagerie was not a very profitable business.
To help mitigate the housing shortage, I had several seven-story blocks of dwellings built on a burned-out site which I had acquired cheaply thanks to my father-in-law. I also earned a little by equipping and sending out expeditions to Thessalia, Armenia and Africa, and selling the surplus animals to games in the provincial cities. Naturally we kept the best animals for ourselves.
My largest income came from the ships, in which I had the right to buy shares, which sailed to India from the Red Sea, officially to be able to transport rare animals from India. The goods were brought to Rome via Alexandria, and manufactured products from Gaul and wines from Campania were taken to India in exchange.
Through an agreement with the Arabian princes, Rome was allowed a base on the southern point of the Red Sea with the right to maintain a garrison there. This was already necessary because the demand for luxury goods rose as the prosperity of the nation increased, and the Parthians would not allow Rome’s caravans through their country without taking an intermediary share in the profits on the goods.
Alexandria gained from the new order, but large trading centers such as Antioch and Jerusalem suffered from the falling prices of Indian goods. So the great merchant princes in Syria, via their agents, “began to spread the idea in Rome that war with Parthia would sooner or later be inevitable, to open a direct overland trade route to India.
When the situation in Armenia had calmed down, Rome had made connections with the Hyrcanians, who controlled the salty Caspian Sea north of Parthia. In this way, a trade route to China was established, circumventing the Parthians and bringing both silk and porcelain to Rome across the Black Sea. It must be said that my grasp of the whole situation was not particularly clear, and this was also true with other noblemen in Rome. It was said that it took two whole years to bring goods on camels from China to the Black Sea coast. Most reasonable people did not believe that any country could possibly be that far away and said that this was an invention of the caravan merchants to justify their extortionate prices.
In her more sullen moments, Sabina used to urge me to go to India myself to fetch tigers, or to China for the legendary dragons, or to travel up the Nile to darkest Nubia for rhinos. Bitter as I was, I sometimes felt like setting out on a long journey, but then my reason would return to me and I would realize that there were experienced men more suited to the task and the rigors of the journeys than I.
So every year on the anniversary of my mother’s death, I used to free one of the menagerie’s slaves and equip him for a journey. One of my travel-hungry Greek freedmen I sent to Hyrcania to try to get to China. He had the advantage of being able to write, and I had hoped that he would be able to give a useful account of his journey which I could then have made into a book. But I never heard from him again.
After my marriage and the death of Britannicus, I had to some extent begun to avoid Nero. When I think about it now, I see that my marriage to Sabina was in some ways an escape from the closed circle around Nero, which perhaps accounts for my sudden and foolish attraction to her.
When I again had more time to myself, I began to arrange modest receptions for Roman authors at my house. Annaeus Lucanus, the son of one of Seneca’s cousins, was pleased when I unrestrainedly praised his poetic talents. Petronius, who was a few years older than I, liked the little book I had written about the brigands in Cilicia for its deliberate use of the simple language of the people.
Petronius himself was a refined man and had as his ambition, after fulfilling his political duties, to develop life into a fine art. He was a trying friend to have inasmuch as he liked to sleep in the daytime and stay awake at night, on the grounds that the noise of the traffic in Rome at night prevented him from sleeping.
I began to plan and partly wrote a handbook on wild animals, their capture, transportation, care and training. To make it useful to the audience, I recounted many exciting incidents I had myself witnessed or heard described by others, and only exaggerated as much as an author has a right to do to hold his public’s interest. Petronius thought it would be an excellent book of lasting value, and he himself borrowed from it some of the coarser expressions in the language of the amphitheater.
I no longer took part in Nero’s nighttime escapades in the less reputable parts of Rome, for my father-in-law was the City Prefect. In this I behaved wisely, for these wild pleasures came to a sad end.
Nero never bore a grudge against anyone if he were beaten in a fight, but just took this as a sign that the fight had been an honest one. But an unfortunate senator, defending his wife’s honor, happened to hit him very hard on the head, and was then stupid enough to write an apologetic letter to Nero afterwards when he discovered to his horror whom he had struck. Nero had no alternative then but to marvel that a man who had struck his Emperor could continue to live and also boast of his deed in shameless letters. So the senator had his physician open his veins.
Seneca was annoyed at this incident and considered it necessary to find other outlets for Nero’s wildness. So he had Emperor Gaius’ circus on the edge of Vatican set up as a private pleasure ground for Nero. There, with reliable friends and noblemen as spectators, he could at last practice the art of driving a team of horses to his heart’s content.
Agrippina gave him her gardens, which stretched all the way to Janiculus, with its many brothels. Seneca hoped that the athletics, which Nero practiced in semisecrecy, would lessen his, for an Emperor, exaggerated pleasure in music and singing. Nero soon became a bold and fearless driver, for he had of course loved horses ever since his childhood.
In fact he seldom needed to look around on the race course for fear that others would tip his chariot over, but the art of controlling a Spanish team on the curves of the circus is not given to every man. Many a racing enthusiast has broken his neck on the race course, or been crippled for life by falling from his chariot and failing to loosen the reins from his body in time.
In Britain, Flavius Vespasian had had a serious dispute with Oc-torius and was finally ordered home. Young Titus had begun to distinguish himself in his service and once had courageously taken command of a cavalry division
