to be landed in this shit by idiots”… Why can’t poetry be real?’
The satirist Juvenal, happening to be present, fetched out a note tablet and scribbled words that he would work up later, excoriating Domitian and his advisory council by portraying them in a mock-debate about how to cook a monstrous turbot, when they ought to be applying themselves to Dacia.
Lucilla never cared for Juvenal, not socially. His targets were indiscriminate; he had even insulted Statius, saying he prostituted his art by pandering to the popular taste, so desperate that he had once sold ballet scripts to Paris. Juvenal could be extremely funny, but like Martial he was always depicting his life as a desperate struggle to obtain money from disinterested patrons, rushing about in the hope someone would invite him to dinner, or attaching himself to the gullible rich in order to screw legacies out of them. Martial was warmer, and at least said he never used real people in his epigrams. Juvenal did, and had a bad habit of brutal exaggeration. Once he knew who she worked for, he was always asking Lucilla about the Emperor’s relationship with Julia, trying to get her to say Julia had experienced a whole series of abortions, all supposedly forced on her as a result of sex with her imperial uncle. Telling Juvenal it was untrue never deterred him.
Lucilla had a distaste for men who chose not to work yet bewailed their poverty. So her preference was for the professional poets and other learned men who made up an income giving lessons. That said, even career teachers hung around hoping for imperial appointments, but as the Emperor and Empress continued to have no children, this was futile.
Good poets had opportunities. In the year of the Fuscus disaster at Tapae, Domitian’s chief project at home had been reinstituting the Capitoline Games, in honour of Jupiter, for which he built a new Odeum and Stadium, deemed two of the most beautiful buildings in Rome. Held from then on every four years, these games were modelled on the ancient Olympics and attracted international competitors, though Domitian extended the repertoire to include not only athletics but literature and music. Two years later, after Tettius Julianus won the second Battle at Tapae and reversed Roman fortunes in Dacia, the Emperor would hold the Secular Games in Rome, which were by tradition only held once in anyone’s lifetime. He then founded the Alban Games, held annually at his summer court in honour of his patron goddess Minerva. He liked to attend the Games in Greek dress, wearing a gold crown.
These years seemed to pass drably for Lucilla as her ache for Gaius Vinius slowly dulled. Finally, in the lull after the Alban Games, when those in her particular circle were upbeat and optimistic for their future because they were winning prizes, she decided to improve herself and first went to Nemurus to ask him to give her lessons. Although he felt instructing a female, a hairdresser, was demeaning for a man of his intellect, lack of a regular salary forced him to look receptive. Lucilla persisted; he agreed. He had been poor and had a one-time pauper’s terror of being poor again.
They got off on the wrong foot. Nemurus mistakenly assumed she was illiterate. He began showing her the alphabet on placards. Lucilla explained gravely that, even if most were not trained to the standards of a Greek secretary, slaves in upper-class homes, as her mother had been, were required to be basically literate and numerate. Lachne had sent Lucilla herself to a morning infant school.
‘So what are you asking?’
‘I want to learn to read a poem and understand it.’
Under encouragement from their mutual acquaintance, Statius, Nemurus caved in. The lessons had been Statius’ idea, in fact, because his own father was a teacher.
Lucilla’s critical education began and seemed successful. Nemurus could be an unsympathetic taskmaster, but she bore it. Reproof made her concentrate harder. For one thing, she was paying with her own money, and had no intention of wasting it, so strictness worked. She was determined to siphon off everything Nemurus had to give her intellectually. She fell upon reading and only needed to be given guidance.
For a time Nemurus was proud of her, or at least proud of his own achievement. They were on good terms — so good that Statius and his wife Claudia suggested that since both were single, they should get married. Though initially startled, Lucilla indicated that she would entertain the idea. Nemurus withdrew into himself, repeatedly begging advice from his male friends. But eventually he announced, as if the whole thing had been his idea, that this was what he wanted.
A teacher? Dear gods, that stinks!
Who are you with your unsolicited opinions?
The name’s Vinius. Gaius Vinius.
Go away; you’re a dead man.
At least I don’t have to see you being shafted by an inkblot — who, I see, wears socks…
Nemurus did wear socks, though Lucilla thought she could put up with it.
Romans did occasionally wear socks. Nemurus adopted the fashion preferred by Egyptian pharaohs; his had separately knitted big toes, to enable toe-post sandals. When venturing into cold climates, anyone could stuff their boots with woollen or fur linings — most soldiers who had gone to Moesia would be doing that, while at the ends of the earth, for instance in Britain, the men would demand underpants. But on the Bay of Naples or in Rome, Lucilla knew in her heart, socks were inelegant and mildly eccentric.
The socks would come to signify everything wrong about Nemurus. But at first, she told herself they were a positive sign of character.
This was the only visible disadvantage Nemurus exhibited. In his twenties, he was educated and well spoken, slightly old-fashioned in social matters maybe, but in a scenario full of dissipated eunuchs and slobbering fat cats, Lucilla found that reassuring. He had manners. He was extremely precise about eating in public; shepherding women through doorways; deferring to men with superior intellects.
A lot of those, presumably!
Oh get lost, Vinius.
Apart from the fact that since she had no father, Lucilla could not be collected from her paternal home by her bridegroom, they had a full wedding. It took place in Rome, which allowed many women at whose marriages she and Lara had assisted to flock excitedly to hers. Suddenly she was the centre of attention as a bride should be, and realising how many good women cared about her.
It was extremely odd, after preparing so many other brides, to have her own hair formally divided with a sword and arranged in seven locks, to have attendants putting her under a saffron veil. She knew, but had forgotten, that at a formal wedding the old-fashioned rubric — and Nemurus, naturally, went for the traditional version — included the vows ego Gaius, tu Gaia: ‘I am Gaius, you are Gaia…’
Lucilla was nearly sick. Twittering women whisked her to one side and gave her water, telling everyone she was overcome by nerves.
The marriage was a mistake. Still, teachers are generally civilised people and, as mistakes go, it was by no means fatal. They had never been to bed beforehand, or Lucilla might not have gone through with the wedding. She was also surprised to learn that her new husband was a year younger than she was; he always seemed quite a lot older.
Lucilla realised on their wedding night that what she had construed as a promise of passion was only her husband’s urgency to achieve his own release. He must have slept with women, but not many, she decided. For Lucilla, their love life was to be disappointing. He would never improve. He was a three-minute jiggler. He slipped into her and out again, like an uncertain minnow, then occasionally turned her over and repeated the procedure, his idea of sophisticated sex.
Nemurus had seen on the walls of taverns and bath houses pictures of women wearing nothing but a bustband, providing bedroom entertainment to well-endowed fellows, sometimes in intriguing threesomes, and with bug-eyed servants watching. That looked like a lot of fun, but he loathed himself for hankering after it. He did not believe such behaviour belonged in a harmonious marriage. He wanted a wife he could respect who would not try to alter his already settled habits. If he sought Lucilla in bed after their first few nights, it was merely for comfort, like a child falling asleep sucking a piece of old cloth. He had no interest in her feelings or her needs.
He believed he treated her in an exemplary fashion. There was no point complaining; it would only lead to a quarrel. He was clever and extremely widely read, but it had given him no aptitude for real life.
It worked for a year; they even stayed together longer.
Soon Lucilla learned to hide her intellectual development. As her husband watched her bounding progress, he was no longer proud but jealous, resenting her loss of reliance on him for teaching. Still, his world was full of books. She could devour those, especially when he was not at home with her, which happened increasingly. He spent much
