roasted and glazed with honey, was in fact made entirely out of sugar. And what exquisite imagination had gone into creating that boiled hare, which had then had its fur sewn back on, and kestrels’ wings attached to its back, so that it looked like some kind of strange miniature Pegasus!
The whole thing was an absolute triumph of Roman taste and creativity, and the magnificence of the banquet was greeted with almost universal acclamation. The guests ate and drank with gusto, and retired frequently to void their bladders, their stomachs, or both.
There was the usual dinner-party conversation: about the dreadful hot weather they’d been having recently, and how they longed to get out to their little place in the country, just as soon as the triumph was over. The quality of life was so much better in the hills of Campania this time of year, and so much nicer for the children, too. And the impoverished country people could be quite charming, in their funny, uneducated attitudes and opinions.
The guests paused to take another frog’s leg or two from the silver dish before them, to crease up their faces and break wind, or to cleanse their fingers in golden bowls scented with rose petals, and dry them on the hair of a passing slave.
One could still pick up a very nice little villa, with a few acres of vines and olive trees, for really very little. They had heard good things about the area around Beneventum, for instance, that lovely old colonial town on the Via Appia, beyond Capua. A little remote and primitive, it was true, and not as easy to get to as Capua; but nevertheless charming, simply charming. Capua had been rather ‘discovered’ nowadays, and was suffering from what they called ‘Neapolitan overspill’, whereas further up into the hills, around Caudium and Beneventum, one still felt one was in the real Italy. The Via Appia was not as well-maintained as in the past, of course – they lowered their voices a little here – and one tended to arrive rather travel-sore. And one couldn’t get fresh oysters for one’s dinner parties in the local shops there for love nor money. One rather had to ‘make do’ with what local produce was on offer, which could sometimes be somewhat rough and ready: barley bread, horsemeat sausages, figs, that sort of thing. But all the same, a few weeks in the hills of Campania, at one’s little villa, could be such a relief from Rome. One did need it, really.
Then they talked about the ridiculous property prices in the city: now even apartments on the Aventine were sought after. Soon people would be claiming that it was fashionable to live west of the river! And there were grumbles about economic migrants from the north, especially Germans, and how they had no manners, no sense of law and order, and lowered the tone of an entire neighbourhood when they moved in. They wore ridiculous trousers, had too many children, and smelt funny.
At last, with wine-jugs and dishes nearly empty, the court chamberlain arose, banged his golden staff on the ground, and prayed silence.
‘Your Divine Majesty,’ he said, bowing so low to the emperor that it looked as if he might slip a disc. ‘The most beauteous Princess Galla, senators, masters-general, prefects praetorian, magistrates, bishops, legates, quaestors, lictors, ladies and gentlemen assembled, I give you our most esteemed poet, the equal of Lucretius, nay, Virgil, nay of great Homer himself – ladies and gentlemen: pray silence for Claudius Claudianus.’
To a rather thin scattering of applause, a fat, sweaty, dark-complexioned man got to his feet and looked anxiously around at the three hundred guests. One or two smiled politely back. They knew what was coming.
The poet craved their pardon, begged their indulgence, and nodded and bobbed repeatedly towards the imperial dais, although he never quite managed to raise his eyes directly to it, for fear, no doubt, that he might be dazzled and blinded for life by His Imperial Majesty’s effulgence. Then, producing an ominously thick scroll from the folds of his toga, he declared, in a surprisingly strong and sonorous voice, that he would like to read to the assembled company a brief panegyric he had dashed off that morning, in praise of the emperor’s magnificent victory over the barbarian hordes; and he asked his listeners’ forbearance, since he had only had so brief a time to work on it.
In fact, it was well-known that Claudian had literally dozens of panegyrics already written and stashed away in the library of his handsome villa on the Esquiline, designed to cover every conceivable occasion, and to be brought out as and when required. But everyone was too polite to say so. Besides, for all the snide comments made behind his back, Claudian was very popular with the emperor.
He coughed once and began.
‘O beloved Prince, fairer by far than the day star,
Who shootest thine arrows with an aim more sure than the Parthians,
What stumbling praise of mine shall match thy lofty mind?
What encomia thy brilliance and thy beauty?
‘On a couch of gold midst Tyrian purples didst thy mother give thee birth,
And then what presages were there for good fortune!
Horned Ammon and Delphi, so long dumb, now broke their silence,
And the rock of Cumae, shrine of the raging Sibyl, spoke again!’
The burly legate beside Stilicho shifted on his elbow and muttered sourly, ‘Don’t remember that myself.’
‘I think I’m going to puke,’ mumbled the general in return. ‘And it’s not those dodgy British oysters, either.’
The two men bowed their heads and stifled their chuckles.
On the dais, Galla turned her head.
There was more.
‘When in the heat of the chase, thou guidest thy coursing steed
Amid the towering holm-oaks, thy tossing locks streaming out in the wind,
Surely the beasts of their own accord fall before thine arrows,
And the lion, right gladly wounded by a prince’s sacred hand,
Welcomes thy spear and is proud so to die!
‘When after thy toils of venery thou seekest the shade of the woods,
And freest thy weary limbs in dreaming sleep,
What a passion of love inflames the Dryads’ hearts,
How many a Naiad steals up with trembling foot to snatch an unmarked kiss!’
Many guests chuckled appreciatively at this delightful image. Even the emperor himself giggled into his goblet. Claudian paused generously to allow him to do so, before resuming again.
For there was yet more.
‘Who, though he be more uncivilised than the wild Scythian,
And more cruel than the beasts, but will,
On seeing near at hand thy transcendent loveliness,
Not readily seize the chains of slavery,
And offer thee a ready servitude?’
Attila tested the little fruit-knife against his thumb-pad.
‘Then shall all the world bow to thee, O most noble Prince!
E’en now I foresee the sack of distant Babylon,
Bactria subjected to the Law, the fearful pallor of the Ganges’ banks before thy name!
For to you all the world shall bend the knee;
The Red Sea give you precious shells, India her ivory,
Panchaia perfumes, and China bolts of yellow silk.
And all the world confess your name, your empery
That is without limit, without age or boundary!’
The applause lasted almost as long as the poem.
A little later on in the banquet, Galla was passing behind the couches, on her way to speak to one of her chamberlains, when she happened to overhear a drunken and indiscreet guest asking his neighbour absent-mindedly if the emperor himself had even been at the Triumph that day?
‘Because if he was, I certainly didn’t notice him,’ slurred the guest. ‘Like everyone else, I was all eyes on the divine Stilicho!’
Galla paused.
Unaware that they were being listened to, the other guest said sotto voce, ‘Our Sacred Majesty was probably too busy feeding his pet chickens.’
They chuckled furtively into their goblets of wine. Then one of them glanced up and caught sight of the
