darkness, and the great swirls of smoke and fire seemed to reach right up into the sky.
Nero could wait no longer.
“In front of us lies a sight such as no mortal man has seen since the destruction of Troy,” he said in ringing tones. “Apollo himself has come down to me in a dream. When I awoke from this dream, stanzas came welling out from my heart as if in divine madness. I shall sing to you a verse I have composed on the burning of Troy. I think these stanzas will reverberate through the years to come and will make Nero immortal as a poet.”
A herald repeated his words as Nero climbed up the tower. There was not room for many people but naturally we did our best to get as near to him as possible. Nero began to sing, accompanying himself. His powerful voice rang out high above the sound of the fire and reached his hearers in the surrounding gardens. He sang as if bewitched and his poetry secretary supplied him with stanza after stanza which had been dictated during the day. But during the song, Nero composed new ones and another scribe was kept fully occupied writing more and more stanzas.
I had been to the theater to hear the classical drama often enough to know that he was quoting freely and had changed well-known verses either unconsciously in the moment of inspiration or using the license an artist is entitled to in such things. He sang for several hours on end. The centurions were hard put to keep the exhausted Praetorians awake with their batons.
But the experts kept saying that they had never heard such brilliant singing against such a splendid background. They applauded loudly in the intervals and said that what they had just experienced would be something to tell their children and grandchildren in times to come.
In the back of my mind, I wondered if Nero could possibly have become mentally deranged to choose to perform on a night like this. But I comforted myself with the thought that he had probably been deeply hurt by the accusations made by the people and so had transferred his great burden to artistic inspiration to relieve his feelings.
He stopped when the smoke forced him to and he began to cough and blow his nose. Then we took the chance to call out as one man, begging him to preserve his divine voice. But afterwards he was still scarlet in the face and radiant with sweat and triumph, promising to continue the following evening. Here and there on the edges of the fire, great clouds of steam rose into the sky as the aqueducts were opened and the water poured out into the smoking ruins of the city.
Tullia’s house on Viminalis lay quite near at hand, so I decided to go there and get a little sleep during the hours of the morning. I had not been worried about my father hitherto, for their house was safe for the time being. I did not even know whether he had come in from the country or not, but I could not see him among the other senators in Nero’s audience.
I found him alone, guarding his almost abandoned house, his eyes inflamed by the smoke. He told me that Tullia, with the help of a thousand slaves, had on the first day of the fire moved all the articles of value from the house out to a country property.
Jucundus, who had had his boy’s hair cut in the spring and had a narrow red border on his tunic, had run off to look at the fire with his friends from the Palatine school. Both his feet had been badly burned when a stream of molten metal had suddenly poured down a slope from one of the burning temples. He had been carried home and Tullia had taken him with her into the country. My father thought he would be a cripple for life.
“Then your son at least won’t have to do military service,” he added, stammering a little, “and spill his blood in the deserts of the East somewhere beyond the Euphrates.”
I was surprised to see that my father had been drinking too much wine, but I realized that he was very shaken by Jucundus’ accident. He saw me looking at him.
“It doesn’t matter that I am drinking wine again for once,” he said angrily. “I think the day of my death is approaching. I am not grieving over Jucundus. His feet were much too swift and had already taken him along dangerous paths. It is better to find the kingdom of God as a cripple than to let your heart be destroyed. I myself have been a spiritual cripple ever since your mother’s death, Minutus.”
My father was already well over sixty and he liked to return to the past in his memories. One thinks about death much more at his age than mine, so I did not take much notice at the time.
“What were you muttering about the deserts of the East and the Euphrates?” I asked him.
My father took a large gulp of the dark wine in his gold goblet and then turned to me.
“Among Jucundus’ school friends,” he said, “are the sons of kings from the East. Their parents, who are friendly to Rome, consider the crushing of Parthia absolutely vital to the East. These youngsters are more Roman than the Romans themselves, and Jucundus will soon be the same. In the Senate’s Eastern committee the question has been brought up many times. As soon as Corbulo has achieved peace in Armenia, Rome will have support there and Parthia will be caught between the two.”
“How can you think about war now when Rome is suffering a disaster?” I cried. “Three whole sections of the city lie in ruins and six others are still burning. Ancient landmarks have vanished in the flames. The Vesta temple has been burned to the ground, the tabularium too, with all the law tablets. Rebuilding Rome alone will take many years and will cost such an enormous amount that I can’t even imagine it. How can you think that a war is even possible at all?”
“Just because of that,” my father said thoughtfully. “I neither see visions nor have revelations, although I have begun to have such premonitory dreams that I must think about their contents. But dreams are dreams. Speaking logically, I think the rebuilding of Rome is going to mean heavy taxation in the provinces. This will arouse discontent, for the wealthy and the merchants usually let the people pay the taxes. When this discontent spreads, the government will be blamed. According to the greatest statesmanship, a war is the best way to provide an outlet for internal discontent. And when the war has once started, there is always money to keep it going.
“You yourself know,” he went on, “that in many quarters there are complaints that Rome has grown weak and that her warlike virtues have vanished. It is true that the young laugh at the virtues of their forefathers and perform parodies of Livy’s historical tales. But they still have wolf blood in their veins.”
“Nero does not want war,” I protested. “He was even prepared to give up Britain. Artistic laurels are all he strives for.”
“A ruler is always forced to follow the will of the people when necessary, otherwise he won’t stay long on his throne,” said my father. “Of course the people don’t want war, but bread and games in the circus. But underneath it all, powerful forces lie hidden who think they’ll do well out of war. Never before in history have such huge fortunes been made as are being made by individuals today. Freed slaves live more sumptuously than noblemen in Rome, for no traditions bind them to care for the State more than themselves. You don’t yet know, Minutus, what enormous power money has when it is combined with more money to reach its own objectives.
“Talking of money,” he said suddenly, “there are fortunately some things which are worth more. You have your mother’s wooden goblet in safekeeping, I suppose?”
I felt violently agitated, for during my quarrel with Claudia I had completely forgotten about the magic goblet. As far as I knew, my house had long since been lost and the goblet with it. I rose at once.
“My dear father,” I said, “you are more drunk than you know. It would be best if we forgot your fantasies. Go to bed now, for I must go back to my duties. You’re not the only one being attacked by furies tonight.”
In the mawkish way drunkards have, my father appealed to me not to forget his presentiments when he was dead, which would not be long now. I left his house and headed toward Aventine, skirting the edges of the fire. The heat forced me to cross the bridge into the Jewish section of the city and then have myself rowed back across farther up-river. Everyone who owned a boat was making a fortune ferrying refugees across the Tiber.
To my surprise, the Aventine slope on the river side seemed still quite untouched. Several times I went astray in the clouds of smoke, and among other things I saw that the Moon temple and its surroundings were nothing but smoking ruins. But just beside the fire area, my own house stood unscathed. There was no other explanation except that the wind, which elsewhere had had such a devastating effect, seemed to have kept the fire away from the top of Aventine although there was not even a proper fire-break. Only a few houses had been deliberately demolished.
The eighth morning of the fire dawned on the desolation. Hundreds of people lay tightly packed in my garden-men, women and children. Even the empty water-tanks were full of sleeping people. Taking long strides over them, I reached the house, into which no one had dared to go although the doors were wide open.
I rushed to my room, found the locked chest and at the bottom of it the wooden goblet in its silk cloth. When I took it in my hands, I was seized in my exhaustion with superstitious fear, as if I really were holding a miracle-
