then smiled graciously at Asiaticus.
“The audience will consist of the emperor’s closest friends and advisers. Men of high rank and exquisite taste.”
“Will you be there?” said Lucius. He kept a straight face. Sporus covered her laugh with a cough.
Asiaticus stared at Lucius for a moment, then grinned. “Oh, yes, I’ll be there. And so will you, young Pinarius. And so will your host, Epaphroditus. The emperor wouldn’t want either of you to miss Sporus’s performance.”
“Performance?” Sporus brightened.
“Did I not explain? You’ll play Lucretia.”
“I?” Sporus sprang to her feet and perused the scroll with greater interest.
“There’ll be a rehearsal tonight for the performance at the banquet tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! But I can’t possibly-”
“You don’t have that many lines.” Asiaticus stepped closer. Lucius was struck by how slender and delicate Sporus looked face-to-face with Asiaticus, who was only a little taller but massively broader. “If you forget a line, don’t worry. I shall be there to whisper it in your ear. Like this.” Asiaticus drew closer and blew into Sporus’s ear.
Sporus flinched and stepped back. “You?”
“Did I not explain? I’m to play Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the king. The villain who rapes Lucretia.”
Sporus took another step back. She opened the scroll with both hands, interposing it between herself and Asiaticus. “I see. You and I are to act in the emperor’s play together, performing opposite each other?”
“Exactly. I’ll leave you now. Try to get those lines into your pretty head, and do whatever else you need to prepare yourself. We’ll stage a private rehearsal for the emperor tonight while he dines.” Asiaticus looked Sporus up and down. The smirk vanished, replaced by a vacant, slack-jawed expression that Lucius found even more disturbing. Then he swaggered out of the room.
“This is ridiculous!” said Lucius.
“Ridiculous?” Sporus stood erect. “Do you think me incapable? I didn’t spend all that time at Nero’s side without picking up some knowledge of acting. Here, Epictetus, you and I will read the play together, and you’ll help me with my lines.”
As Asiaticus had noted, the so-called play was quite short. It could hardly be intended as the main part of an evening’s entertainment. It was more likely a vignette to fill out the programme; Vitellius’s parties typically included dancing boys and girls and gladiators fighting to the death along with declaiming poets and comic actors.
The story required little in the way of background. Everyone in the audience would know the tale already. When a friend of the king’s son boasted of his wife’s virtue, the reckless Sextus Tarquinius felt obliged to take it from her; arriving while her husband was away, he took advantage of Lucretia’s hospitality and raped her. Unable to bear her shame, Lucretia used a dagger to kill herself. When her body was shown to an angry crowd in the Forum, King Tarquinius and his wicked son were driven from Roma and the Republic was founded.
Epictetus quickly scanned the text. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Hardly more than a vulgar mime show,” he declared. “According to the stage instructions, the rape takes place right on stage, and so does Lucre- tia’s suicide.”
“Seneca saw fit to include all sorts of shock effects in his plays,” noted Sporus. “Thyestes eats his roasted children right in front of the audience, and Oedipus gouges out his eyes. They use hidden bladders and pig’s blood.”
“If Vitellius thinks he’s another Seneca, he’s completely deluded,” said Lucius, taking his turn at scanning the text. “This dialogue is utter drivel.”
Sporus shrugged. “Still, if this is the sort of thing Vitellius likes, it’s a chance for me to please him.”
Lucius shook his head. “I didn’t like Asiaticus’s manner. What an oily fellow!”
“Yes, he wasn’t quite what I expected, either,” said Sporus. “Men seldom are. Still, he has a certain beast- like appeal. If you imagine him outfitted as a gladiator-”
“I’ll let you get on with it, then,” said Lucius, glad that Sporus had chosen Epictetus to practise with her and not him. Asiaticus’s visit had put him in a foul mood. He needed to take a walk. Epaphroditus’s apartments were off the long portico that fronted the meadows and the man-made lake at the heart of the Golden House. Perhaps he would walk all the way around the lake.
He fetched a cloak, though for such a mild winter day he probably wouldn’t need it. As he made ready to leave, he heard Sporus and Epictetus declaiming their lines.
“Who is at the door?”
“It is I, Sextus Tarquinius, your husband’s friend and the son of the king.”
“But my husband is not home tonight.”
“I know. But would you deny me your hospitality? Open your door to me, Lucretia. Let me in!”
Lucius smiled. Epictetus seemed to be getting into the spirit of the thing, despite his avowed disdain for the material. It occurred to Lucius that the slave might be taking a certain vicarious pleasure in playing such a role opposite the unobtainable object of his affection.
It also occurred to Lucius that Sporus might be imagining yet another return to imperial favour. Why not? Nero had married her. Otho had made her his mistress. Vitellius might be oblivious to her charms, preferring a more “beast-like” partner (to use Sporus’s word), but Asiaticus had blatantly displayed his attraction, and Asiaticus was a powerful man.
Lucius sighed. As he left the apartments he heard a last exchange of dialogue.
“No! Unhand me, brute! I am faithful to my husband!”
“Yield to me, Lucretia! I will have my way with you!” Epictetus declaimed with such vigour that his voice broke. He cleared his throat, then spoke again, sounding rather chagrined. “And then the stage directions say that we struggle a bit, and then I tear your gown
…”
At sundown, a group of Praetorians arrived to escort them to the emperor’s private quarters. Sporus walked ahead of the others, conscious of her special status. Lucius and Epaphroditus followed. Epictetus came along as well, ostensibly to attend to his master.
They were shown to a large, octagonal banquet room. The walls were of dazzling multicoloured marble and there was a splashing fountain at the entrance. Lucius had never seen the room, but it was obviously quite familiar to Sporus, who must have spent many happy hours in this room, first with Nero, then with Otho. Lucius heard her sigh as she gazed about, assessing the changes wrought by Vitellius and his wife, Galeria, who was said to find Nero’s taste too understated. A great many statues, decorative lamps, bronze vases, ivory screens, and woven hangings had been crowded into the room, filling the spaces against the walls and between the dining couches.
The only part of the room not cluttered with precious objects was a raised dais against one wall. The dais’s sole decoration was a larger-than-life marble statue of Nero, who was depicted in Greek dress with a laurel crown on his head. It appeared that this dais was to serve as the stage for the play, since the dining couches where arrayed before it in a semicircle.
All the couches were empty except for two in centre of the front row. Upon one reclined the emperor’s wife, Galeria, and their seven-year-old son, Germanicus. Upon the other couch, occupying the entire space, lay the emperor. A Molossian mastiff almost as big as a man lay curled before his couch. The dog sprang up and growled when Lucius and the others entered, then came to heel when its master made a shushing sound.
As Vitellius roused himself and stood, Lucius pondered the considerable energy required to set in motion such an imposing mass of flesh. The emperor was very tall, with big arms and a huge belly and the flushed face of a heavy drinker. As he took a few steps towards them, he limped slightly. Vitellius’s lameness was said to be the result of a long-ago chariot accident in the days of his debauched youth; Caligula had been driving.
Vitellius held a sword, clutching the handle in his right fist and fondling the blade with the fingertips of his left hand. The pommel was ornately decorated and the blade was covered with gold. Lucius let out a little gasp when he realized what he was seeing: the sword of the Divine Julius. One of Vitellius’s followers had stolen Caesar’s sword from its sacred place in the Shrine of Mars and presented to Vitellius when he was first proclaimed emperor. Vitellius carried it in place of the traditional dagger that his predecessors kept on their person as a symbol of the power of life and death they wielded over their subjects. He kept it always at his side like a lucky talisman. He even
