“What are you saying, Pinarius?”
“What greater role could there be for the greatest of all actors? You will be the fallen hero, the god-emperor made to suffer the most terrible and disgraceful of deaths. Your execution will take place with all Roma watching. Everyone in the city will see you naked. Everyone will see you suffer and bleed. Everyone will see you soil yourself and weep and beg for mercy. Everyone will see you die. No one will ever forget the end of Nero. Your public execution will be the crowning per formance of a lifetime!”
Nero stared back at him, his mouth agape. For a moment he seemed to seriously consider what Titus had said. He slowly nodded. Then he shuddered and staggered back, shaking his head and waving his hands before his face. “Madness! What you say is madness, Pinarius!”
Suddenly Nero froze. He looked down at his right arm, and gripped it with his left hand. “Where is it?” he shrieked.
“What, Caesar?” said Epaphroditus.
“My bracelet! Where is the golden bracelet my mother gave me, the amulet that holds my lucky snakeskin?”
“Do you not remember?” said Epaphroditus. “Caesar cast it away long ago. Caesar declared it was hateful to him, after the death of his mother.”
Nero gazed at Epaphroditus, baffled, then gave a start. From the dusty courtyard came the sound of rumbling hoof-beats.
They gazed out the window. The men arriving on horseback were armed Praetorians.
“They must have followed Epictetus,” whispered Phaon. He set about gathering up the stools and bits of debris from the hole in the wall, stacking everything he could find against the door in an effort to block it.
The Praetorians quickly dismounted. Some of them seized Epictetus as he tried to limp away from them. One of them studied the building for a moment, then drew his sword and began to walk towards the entrance.
Sporus pulled at his hair and wailed. His shrill cries caused hackles to rise on the back of Titus’s neck. He gazed at Nero. Suddenly he saw not a god, not a genius, but a mere mortal, pitiful and afraid.
Nero ran to Epaphroditus. “Give me your dagger! Quickly!”
Epaphroditus handed him the knife.
Nero held the point to his breast, then hesitated. He looked at the others. “Will one of you not kill yourself first, to give me courage?”
Sporus continued to wail. The others stood frozen to the spot. From the vestibule, they heard the Praetorian bang the pommel of his sword against the door.
“Jupiter, what an artist perishes in me!” cried Nero. He pushed the dagger into his belly, but he could not drive it all the way. Blood stained his coarse tunic as he fell to the ground. He writhed in agony.
“Help me!” he whimpered.
Epaphroditus knelt beside him. His eyes glistened with tears but his hands were steady. He rolled Nero onto his back and pulled the dagger from his belly. He placed the dagger above Nero’s heart, gathered his strength, and drove the blade deep into the flesh.
Nero convulsed. Blood flowed from his mouth and his nostrils.
The Praetorian pushed open the door, scattering the stools stacked against it. He paused for a moment in the vestibule to let his eyes adjust to the dim light, then rushed into the room. Titus recognized the young messenger they had met at the bridge. The shocked expression on his face made him look almost childlike. The Praetorian pulled off his cloak and threw it over Nero’s bleeding wounds. He knelt beside the emperor.
“Too late!” Nero gasped, taking the soldier’s hand. “Too late, my faithful warrior!”
The emperor writhed, vomited more blood, clenched his teeth, and then suddenly went stiff. His glassy eyes were wide open. His mouth was fixed in a bloody grimace so awful that even the Praetorian shuddered and everyone in the room looked away – everyone except Titus, who stared spellbound at the agonized face of Nero.
To Titus, the horror of the moment was exquisite beyond bearing. Even Seneca at his goriest had never contrived a scene to rival this. Nero’s end had been unspeakably tawdry and pathetic. Watching, Titus had been moved to uttermost terror and pity. Even in the instant of death Nero had played the actor, making his face into a mask that could have made a strong man faint.
Nero had been right and Titus had been wrong. A public execution in the ancient manner would have been gaudy and overstated, an unseemly waste of Nero’s talents before an audience unworthy of his genius. Instead, Nero’s end had been a private performance played out before the eyes of a privileged few. Titus felt honoured beyond measure to have witnessed the final scene of the greatest artist who had ever lived.
Titus looked at the others in the room. Epaphroditus, Phaon, and Sporus were mere freedmen and courtiers and might yet hope to escape execution. But Titus was a senator, and as an augur he had declared divine approval for Nero’s every action. With Nero dead, Titus had no doubt that he would be tried and executed. If that were to happen, his family would be disinherited, disgraced, and driven from Roma. Only if Titus were to die by his own hand might his wife and son and daughters hope to escape retribution.
Titus gripped Epaphroditus by the wrist.
“Make a vow, Epaphroditus! Swear by Nero’s shade! If you survive this day, promise me you’ll do all you can to look after Lucius, my son.”
Overwhelmed by emotion and unable to speak, Epaphroditus could only nod.
More Praetorians came rushing into the little room, their swords drawn. Before they could reach him, Titus pulled out his dagger and plunged it into his chest.
PART III
LUCIUS
The Seeker
AD 69
Lucius Pinarius sighed. “If only Otho were still alive, and mperor. You were able to twist Otho around your little finger.”
Sporus, wearing an elegant silk robe, made only a grunt for an answer. She – for Lucius always thought of Sporus as “she,” and Sporus preferred to be addressed as a woman – stretched with feline grace on the couch next to Lucius. Side by side, the two friends gazed up at the elaborate scene painted on the ceiling, its vivid colours softened by the slanting winter sunlight. The scene depicted the abduction of Ganymede by Jupiter; the naked, beautiful youth was clutching a toy hoop in one hand and a cockerel, Jupiter’s courtship gift, in the other, while the king of the gods stood with muscular arms spread, ready to make himself into an eagle to carry the object of his desire to Olympus.
“Is there a prettier room in all the Golden House?” said Sporus. “I love these apartments, don’t you?”
“I’d love them more if I were only a visitor, and Epaphroditus would agree to let me to return to my own house and family,” said Lucius.
“He’s only doing what he thinks is best for you. He made a promise to your father to look after you; I witnessed the vow. If Epaphroditus says you’re safer living here, then you should be glad he still has these apartments, despite all the changes, and gladder still that he has space for you.
Besides, if you were no longer here, I should grow awfully lonely without you, Lucius.”
Lucius smiled. “A year and a half ago, we hardly knew each other.”
“A year and a half ago, many things were different. Nero still lived. Imagine that – a world grand enough to contain Nero in it! Nero was too big for this world. Galba was too little.”
“Galba might still be emperor, if he had paid the Praetorians what he owed them.”
“Galba was a bore!” declared Sporus. “A miser and a bore. His reign was seven months of misery for everyone, including himself. The soldiers were right to kill the old fool. And right to make Otho emperor in his place.
