must be more than 200 senators present.
Once all the senators were seated, Nero arrived. Followed by Seneca and a retinue of scribes and secretaries, he strode up the length of the hall to take his chair on the dais at the far end. To Titus, it seemed that the young emperor did not walk with his usual self-confident swagger; had the sight of the gathering outside unnerved him as much as it had the senators? Titus also took note of the emperor’s appearance. Nero had grown a beard, or at least a partial beard, something no emperor had worn before him; the hair was trimmed to leave only the growth beneath his jaw, while his cheeks and chin were clean-shaven. The effect was to provide a golden frame for his square face.
Even more striking was the emperor’s costume. Since the death of Agrippina, Nero’s mode of dress had grown more eccentric. On this occasion he was outfitted in his customary purple and gold, but his garment was not a toga but a gown of the sort either a man or woman might wear at home in the evening, and on his feet were what looked like slippers rather than proper shoes.
The garment left much of Nero’s arms bare. Gone, Titus noticed, was the golden arm bracelet encasing the lucky snakeskin that Nero had long worn to honour his mother. After Agrippina’s death, Nero had declared that he could no longer stand the touch of the bracelet on his skin, indeed could not stand even to look at it, and had thrown it into the sea from the terrace of his villa at Baiae. The emperor no longer has his amulet, thought Titus, and nor do I, wishing as he often did that he still possessed the fascinum of his ancestors. He could have used a bit of luck on this day.
The preliminary business of the Senate was dispensed with quickly so that the members could deal at once with the pressing issue of the murder of Lucius Pedanius Secundus and the punishment of his household slaves. The facts of the case were read aloud by a scribe. The man’s delivery, even when reading the most salacious details, was completely without emotion, but at various points some of the senators made rude, mocking noises. To be killed by a slave was shocking but also shameful, and to have it happen under such circumstances – a rivalry over yet another slave – was the stuff of scandal. If Pedanius had escaped death, he would have been a laughing stock. Instead, he was a victim of the most frightening crime imaginable, a deliberate act of violence perpetrated in his own house by one of his own possessions.
The texts of the relevant laws were then read aloud. The statutes were just as Titus had remembered and recited to his brother the day before. If a slave should murder his master, all the slaves in the household must be interrogated under torture and punished with death, without exception. The 400 slaves had already been interrogated. Now they were confined under guard in the house of Pedanius to await the judgement of the Senate. Meanwhile, in preparation for immediate executions, crucifixes were being prepared along the Appian Way outside the city.
Nero, on his dais, said nothing and merely observed the proceedings, as he often did when the Senate was carrying out its routine business.
The members were invited to rise and address the question at hand: on this occasion, was the law to be carried out fully and faithfully, without amendment or mitigation?
Without waiting to be called on, many of the senators simply shouted their opinions, and a general clamour filled the hall. Titus heard cries of “Kill them now, at once!” and “The law is the law!” But he also heard a substantial number of voices shouting, “Too harsh!” and “Mercy!” and “There should be exceptions!”
Nero covered his ears, as if the cacophony caused him pain. He gestured to Seneca, who stepped forward and called for order. “Will anyone speak formally in favour of rescinding or mitigating the penalty?” said Seneca.
There was a hubbub in the hall and a great many heads turned, but no one stood. Seneca was opening his mouth to speak again when Titus loudly cleared his throat and rose to his feet.
Seneca looked at him in surprise. “Do you wish to speak, Senator Pinarius?”
“I do.”
All eyes turned to Titus. His face grew hot. He felt light-headed. His palms were suddenly sweaty. If he wasn’t careful, the wax tablet containing his notes would slip right out of his hands -
He realized that his hands were empty. The tablet! Where was it? Titus looked around and saw it nowhere. Had he been holding it earlier, during the taking of the auspices? He couldn’t remember. Could he have left it in the hired sedan? Titus felt completely at a loss. Meanwhile, the eyes of the entire Senate were boring into him. The room was utterly silent.
He would either have to sit down without saying a word, and look a complete fool, or he would have to speak without his notes. Could he do that? He had pored over them so intently, surely he could remember at least the major points, if not all the elegant phrases he had labouriously worked out. Titus cleared his throat again and took a deep breath.
“Caesar,” he began, nodding to Nero, “and my esteemed fellow senators, we are all aware of the crowd that’s gathered outside our front door. I must say it took me quite by surprise when I arrived here. I think it’s taken us all by surprise. I’ve never seen anything like, have you?”
“No, but I’ve never seen a herd of giraffes, either,” shouted one of the senators. “What has either to do with the law?” This was met with scattered guffaws and a few cries of “Hear, hear!”
“Well,” said Titus, feeling flustered, “once upon a time the common people had their own assembly, and they did have some say in the making of laws…” Titus realized that he was straying far from his notes.
“What sort of talk is this?” someone shouted
“Seditious talk!” someone said. “Rabble-rousing!”
Titus raised his hands to quiet the clamour. “I’m merely saying that something has stirred up all those people. Every one of you in this chamber is stirred up, as well. Perhaps we should at least state the case of those who are asking for mercy, so that we can examine the argument clearly.” There, that was better, he thought, feeling that he had quieted his listeners and regained their full attention. He noticed that a scribe was taking down his words, no doubt using the shorthand famously invented by Cicero’s secretary, Tiro.
“Given the circumstance of this atrocious crime,” he went on, “who can doubt that the vast majority of slaves in the household of Pedanius are completely innocent of any wrongdoing? This appears to be a crime of passion, not a conspiracy involving other slaves and hatched over time. Unless a slave was actually in the room, or at least close enough to overhear what was happening, how could that slave possibly have prevented the crime? There is also the fact that in such a large household – four hundred or more slaves – there must be a great many who are old and infirm, or young and frail, or women, some of whom may be pregnant. Shall all those slaves die, despite their innocence? What if a slave is blind? What if he is deaf, or mute-”
“And what if a slave is blind, deaf, and mute?” shouted someone.
“Then put him to death for sure, since he’s no good to anyone!” shouted another, prompting a gale of laughter.
“Unless he’s as pretty as that boy Pedanius was diddling,” said someone else. This went too far. The offending senator received boos and angry looks.
“Senators!” shouted Titus, trying to regain their attention. “I have asked myself, why has this proceeding elicited such an unprecedented response from so many common citizens? I think I know some of the reasons. First, there has been no crime like this in recent memory, nor has there been the prospect of a slaughter of slaves on such a massive scale, at least not here in Roma. If such crimes occurred, and such massive punishments were exacted, it must have happened at a farm or country villa, where those slaves were unknown to anyone outside their own household. But this household of slaves is different. They reside here in the city, where they live and work and move about freely. These slaves must be known not only to fellow slaves in other households, but to shopkeepers and artisans and all sorts of citizens who have dealings with them. Some are errand boys and messengers, some are seamstresses and hairdressers, some are cooks and cleaners, some are bookkeepers and scribes, highly educated and valuable slaves deserving a degree of respect. Some are near the age of death. Some are newborn, just beginning life. Some are in the prime of life, at the peak of their usefulness and value. Some are pregnant and about to bring forth new life. These victims of the law are not a faceless crowd but are human beings known to their neighbours, and so we cannot be surprised if there are murmurs throughout the city that the law is too harsh.
When there is such an outcry, even here in the Senate, can no exception to the law be made?”
Well, thought Titus, that was not so hard after all. He felt rather pleased with himself. In his fantasies, this was the point at which the entire chamber erupted in applause, even from those who opposed him but admired his
