are the world’s most beautiful; Artemisia and Chrysanthe are proof. But here, what’s this?”
Sunlight glinted across the gold amulet that Kaeso was wearing on a chain around his neck. With a bemused expression, Claudius reached out to touch it. Kaeso smiled. “It’s a fascinum, according to our father, though you wouldn’t know to look at it. He told us it was very old, maybe even older than Roma itself.”
“Ah, yes, I thought it looked familiar. By Hercules, I had forgotten all about it! It was I who informed your father about this amulet’s history, before you boys were born. So, when he died, he p-p-passed the fascinum to you, Kaeso? I can use it to tell the two of you apart. I never knew twins who looked more alike!”
“I’m afraid you’ll need to learn some other trick to distinguish us, then,” said Kaeso. “Father’s will didn’t specify which of us should inherit it, but since his estate was split equally between us, we’ve agreed to share the fascinum. Sometimes I wear it. Sometimes Titus does.”
“Then twins can get along. You have improved upon the example of Romulus and Remus! I’ll wager your father never told you that it was I who came up with names for the two of you. No? It’s true. When he learned that Acilia had given b-b-birth to twins, he was in a quandary over which of you to give his own name, since Lucius had long been the traditional name bestowed on the firstborn male Pinarius. But the midwife made such a jumble of things that there was no way to tell which of you had come first. Besides, you were so identical in every way, it seemed unfair, perhaps even unlucky, to honour one of you with the firstborn’s name and slight the other. So your father decided to break with tradition and name neither of you Lucius. He asked for my advice. We decided to name one of you Kaeso, after a famous ancestor of yours from the Fabius family, a man who wore that very fascinum about four hundred years ago, if my theory is correct.”
“What about my name?” asked Titus.
“That was in memory of my mentor, the great scholar Titus Livius. Surely you’ve read his history of Roma? No? Not even the p-p-parts about the ancient Pinarii?” Claudius shook his head. “I’m sure I gave your father a copy, long ago.”
“I think it’s among the books we brought with us from Alexandria,” said Titus.
“I wonder if your father ever read it. Ah well, neither he nor his father had much interest in the past. But a man must honour his ancestors. Who else made us, and how else did we come to exist?”
“I’d prefer to live for the future,” said Kaeso with a faraway look, fingering the fascinum at his throat.
“And I’d prefer to live in the present!” Titus laughed. “But speaking of the future, how soon might we have the honour of meeting the emperor? We should like to thank him in person, not just for allowing us to return, but for restoring the honour of our father’s name. With our full rights as citizens and patricians restored, someday we might even be able to gain admission to the college of augurs.”
“How that would please the shade of your father!” said Claudius. “Of course I’d be proud to oversee your studies, and to sponsor one or b-b-both of you for admission.”
Kaeso made a face. “It’s Titus who dreams of becoming an augur, not I.”
“I brought father’s old trabea and lituus with me, from Alexandria,” said Titus. “But what about meeting the emperor?”
Claudius averted his eyes. “Yes, well, if the emperor should summon you for an audience, of course you must go. But in the great press of affairs – Caligula is so generous to so many of his subjects – it’s entirely p-possible he will forget all about this particular instance of generosity, and if that should happen, well, perhaps it’s best if you don’t remind him. Indeed, it might be b-b-best if you do nothing at all to call attention to yourselves.”
Titus furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, cousin Claudius?”
“How can I explain? Exile is a curse, but it can also b-be a blessing. Despite his sorrow at being sent so far from the city he loved, your father was fortunate to miss the terror visited on this city by Sejanus, and all the casual cruelties of Tiberius. Then, when my nephew succeeded Tiberius, it seemed that a new era was dawning, a time of hope and fresh confidence. I was eager for your father to return. So was he. P-p-perhaps we were too eager. P-p- perhaps we should have been less optimistic, and waited a little longer.” He shook his head. “It was Caligula’s father, my brother Germanicus, who should have become emperor. Everyone says so. My brother’s military skills were first-rate. His temperament was ideal. Germanicus was loved by the legions, by the people, even by the Senate. But not so loved by the gods, who saw fit to take him from us – the gods, or else Sejanus, or Livia, or Tiberius. What does it matter? They’re all dead now. All dead.”
Kaeso put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “What are you trying to tell us, Claudius?”
“Unlike his father, my nephew was always a bit… unsound.” Claudius twitched. He wiped away a bit of drool. “I suppose that sounds judgemental, even absurd, coming from the likes of me, but it’s true. As a b-b-boy, little Gaius was troubled with the falling sickness.”
“So was the Divine Julius,” said Titus.
“Perhaps, but I suspect Caligula’s case was rather more severe than that of Julius Caesar. All through his youth he was struck by spells that rendered him b-b-barely able to walk, or to stand, or even to hold up his head. He would be dazed afterwards, unable to collect his thoughts, but he always recovered. As he grew to manhood, he seemed to outgrow the affliction, and that gave us hope. We certainly never had cause to worry about his… sanity.”
“And now?” said Kaeso.
Claudius hesitated, but once again he could not resist the need to unburden himself. “The change occurred suddenly – overnight, in fact. It was caused by a love p-p-potion given to him by that horrible wife of his, Caesonia. She’s much older; she was already a mother of three when they began carrying on. If you ask me, it’s unnatural for a young man to take an older partner; it should be the other way around, don’t you think? As it is with m-m-myself and Messalina.”
“Quite,” agreed Titus. “But you were telling us about the emperor.”
“Yes. Well, apparently Caligula’s lovemaking was a disappointment to Caesonia – a harlot of such vast experience – so Caesonia decided to remedy the situation by giving the boy an aphrodisiac. The gossips say she fed him the substance the Greeks call hippomanes – a fleshy mass sometimes found on the forehead of a newborn foal.”
Kaeso wrinkled his nose. “It sounds disgusting.”
“Does it work?” asked Titus.
“One m-mixes it with wine and herbs to make it palatable,” said Claudius. “It’s a well-known aphrodisiac – various scholars mention it – but in all my research I can find no other case where it drove a man m-mmad. I suspect Caesonia adulterated it with some other ingredient.”
“She deliberately poisoned him?” said Titus.
“No. Whatever ingredient she added was probably harmless by itself, but when mixed with the hippomanes created a combination that was toxic. That at least is my theory. I have a suspicion that Caesonia may have duplicated the very love p-p-potion that drove Lucretius mad.”
The twins looked at him blankly.
“The p-p-poet Lucretius,” he explained, “who lived in the days of the Divine Julius. They say Lucretius’s madness came and went. In his lucid moments he was able to write his great work, On the Nature of Things, but eventually he was driven to suicide.”
“Are you afraid Caligula may kill himself?” said Kaeso.
Claudius shivered, hugged himself, and whinnied like a horse. The twins feared he was having a fit, but he was only laughing. “Oh, no, Kaeso, that is not what I’m afraid of! Caligula’s behaviour makes even the worst excesses of Tiberius seem trivial. The stories I could tell you – but look, here’s Messalina, and your lovely wives.”
The women rejoined their husbands. In all of Roma, it was unlikely that one could find three more beautiful women standing side by side. The twins had chosen wives who might have passed for siblings themselves; Artemisia and Chrysanthe both had buxom figures and wore their thick black hair in long plaits, after the Egyptian fashion. Messalina was the youngest of the three, but she affected a matronly look, with her black hair pulled back from her face and pinned in an elaborate coiffure, and a voluminous stola that covered her from head to foot and concealed her arms as well. At a distance, the loose stola concealed her condition; seen closer, her swollen breasts and protruding belly made it obvious that she was pregnant.
“What have you lovely females been talking about all this time?” said Titus, glancing at Messalina’s breasts even as he took Chrysanthe’s hand.
“This and that,” his wife said. “Hairstyles, mostly. Artemisia and I look terribly provincial. Messalina promises
