Next, he tried a clear pavement law for Rome: the city was like a vast emporium, its highways clogged with barbers’ stools, vegetable stalls, money-changers’ tables, pots and baskets for sale. Goods hung off every pillar and awning. Most clutter was tawdry. Some was dangerous. Domitian passed a law that all this encroaching paraphernalia must be kept back behind the frontage line. That failed to bring him popularity, too.
Some people rejoiced that Rome had been restored to them; most bewailed the inconvenience and loss of character. In Plum Street, the previously spreading tables outside the Scallopshell were folded away, though Cretticus allowed the bar to use part of his garden instead. Even Lucilla’s assistants, Glyke and Calliste, had to stop carrying out manicures outside their salon and make everyone move indoors. It was a nightmare for gossipmongers. Closeted in the narrow shops or workshops that lined the streets, they missed half of what was going on.
While people grumbled, worse happened. This was the year when, for those in public life, real fear began.
Domitian said an emperor who had to execute only a few opponents was just lucky. Compared with past and future emperors, he was in fact restrained, though there was a keen sense that he hated the Senate, and many who escaped with their lives were exiled instead. Trajan was to say pithily that Domitian was the worst emperor but had the best amici (Trajan himself being one). Trajan was safe; he earned Domitian’s trust during the Saturninus Revolt and now he was serving as governor of Pannonia, one of the Empire’s danger zones.
Crucially aware of his own competence, during the Reign of Terror, Trajan was on the up. Still, he would have seen other governors of provinces executed without trial when Domitian doubted their loyalty. He would also have seen what happened to Agricola — a man whose unusually long posting of seven years had added most of Britain to Roman control, despite climate, terrain and implacable natives. But to Agricola’s disgust, when Domitian then needed troops on the Danube, the vital British legions were reduced and the army ordered to retreat from its hard-won territory in Caledonia. On Agricola’s return to Rome, he received triumphal honours, though it must have seemed grudging since he was then denied the plum posting to Africa or Asia that should have been his right. His son-in-law Tacitus would even claim that Domitian tried to poison off the slighted general.
Ingratitude was there, certainly. It rankled more when Agricola died that year. Those loyal to him felt Agricola had been finished off prematurely by the Emperor’s poor treatment. Gaius Vinius, for one, thought so; he had served in Britain under Julius Agricola and soldiers are traditionally nostalgic about the commanders of their youth. Every time Domitian’s antipathy to the senatorial classes led to some spiteful act against an individual, such ripples spread. He could kill a man who offended him, yet he left everyone who had ever been impressed by that man feeling angry. He had enough acumen to feel the growing backlash, though that only increased his isolation and mistrust.
Domitian’s friends had lost any management of him. Julia’s softening influence was gone, and Domitia seemed powerless. Perhaps, in what had become an empty marriage, she lost interest in trying. With the gradual deterioration of the Emperor’s mind came crueller and more abrupt actions. A man was overheard saying that a Thracian gladiator might beat his Gallic opponent but was no match for the patron of the Games — Domitian; the speaker was dragged from his seat and immediately thrown into the arena to be torn apart by dogs.
Such was the Emperor’s reputation that people actually shook with terror in his presence. As despots do, he noticed with grim amusement. Everything was summed up in his known wish to be addressed as dominus et deus, Master and God. ‘Master’ was commonplace; it would ruffle no plumage, because it was a normal mark of respect used by everyone from soldiers to schoolchildren. But to call any living person a god aroused revulsion. Even deified Roman emperors were a recent phenomenon; they had to be awarded transubstantiation by their successor or the Senate, and they definitely had to die first. Domitian’s own father had made a joke about that, as Vespasian realised he had a fatal illness.
Domitian publicly denied any formal claim to Master and God, yet he accepted the title, seemed to want it — and openly used it in his own correspondence. Sycophants took the hint.
As in all courts full of terror, shameless fawning occurred. In the glistening halls on the Palatine and the remote citadel of Alba, Domitian basked in flattery. People bowed; visitors flung themselves into inappropriate acts of obeisance; there was vile foot-kissing. The careful myth promulgated by the Emperor Augustus, that Rome’s leader should be a normal man living modestly, merely the ‘first among equals’, had always been a sham; it was now completely cast away.
There would never be an organised intellectual opposition. Nonetheless, even though life under a despot grew nerve-racking some still dared to react against it.
First, the Younger Pliny and Herrenius Senecio, himself a Spaniard, joined forces to prosecute Baebius Massa, the governor of Hispania Baetica, for maladministration. It was all the braver because Baebius was a friend of Domitian’s. They won their case. Baebius had to surrender his property to pay off the provincials he had swindled, but with Domitian behind him he survived politically. He retaliated and prosecuted Senecio for treason. The charge failed, but then Mettius Carus, the man who had prosecuted the Vestal Cornelia, took it up in his usual abrasive style.
This was the final stage of a long confrontation with a group of entrenched republicans with stoic beliefs that went right back to the reign of Nero. It led to deaths, and to suspicion of philosophers. It even led to the unlikely spectacle of Nemurus, the closet practitioner of stoic values, visiting his ex-wife to beg for information, hoping she could squeeze her tame Praetorian.
The bony academic managed to turn up at Plum Street not only when Lucilla was out, attending to a customer at the woman’s home, but Vinius was in. For Nemurus this was the worst possible scenario. It forced the two men into an awkward tryst, seated on the balcony in the late afternoon with a bowl of fried stuffed dates and cups of watered wine, while they awaited Lucilla’s return. Nemurus writhed. Vinius (handing snacks po-faced) thought it was very funny.
‘I hope you like these. I made them myself.’ He guessed Nemurus was helpless in a kitchen. The man looked horrified. ‘I don’t expect Lucilla to do everything at home. She works so hard on her own account. She deserves spoiling.’
After a frozen silence, Nemurus caught on. ‘Are you two…?’
‘Oh! Sorry. Yes, we are.’
Nemurus became desperate to leave but was too gauche to extract himself.
Flavia Lucilla arrived shortly. Vinius left the balcony, deliberately pulling a door closed. Nemurus heard him greet Lucilla in a low voice, ‘Your ex is here.’ A silence followed. Nemurus imagined them canoodling. A petrifying dog then pushed open the folding door and growled at him.
Vinius came back, bringing a third chair which he placed close to his own. ‘Put him down, Terror!.. She’s coming.’
Nemurus was now trapped on this small balcony, in the kind of evening the couple must enjoy regularly, either alone or with friends or family. Muted sunshine. Wine and titbits. Pleasant conversation. Laughter. Things that made him nervous.
The awful dog clambered on top of the Praetorian when he resumed his seat. He played with the beast, airily showing off how easy and commanding he was with it.
Lucilla appeared. At once she dived into the stuffed dates, eating with one hand while with the other she removed her sandals and rubbed her feet. Always a wearer of silly shoes, the straps had dug into her, not badly but enough. With her mouth full, she said nothing to Nemurus, just raised an eyebrow questioning his visit. The dog left the Praetorian and lay down by her chair. Using the creature as a footstool, Lucilla buried her bare feet in its horrid fur, wriggling her toes. There could be no doubt, this dreadful pet was beloved of both of them.
‘Oh — would you two like to be left alone?’ Vinius asked suddenly, as if he had only just thought of it. Polite. Considerate. Sickening.
Of course he made it impossible. Nemurus had to say no, no; nothing he wanted to discuss was confidential… This cut across the first principle of the great stoic philosopher Epictetus, who said that people should not lie.
‘So what do you want to talk about?’ demanded Lucilla bluntly.
Nemurus had to come clean. He harboured a suspicion Lucilla and Vinius were laughing at him. He felt constantly uncomfortable.
One of the charges against Domitian was that in the aftermath of the Saturninus Revolt he had forced confessions by ordering men’s genitals to be set on fire. Vinius Clodianus had reduced Nemurus to a wreck by simply handing round canapes. Lucilla was still enjoying the sweetmeats, unaware that her ex-husband was imagining her lover ramming snacks down a suspect’s throat…
