swing of a legionary sword caught him behind the knee. He fell to the ground and another legionary pinned his body to the earth. This happened just outside the Temple of the Divine Julius. Laco was, I believe, murdered soon after his master. Icelus, being a freedman, was reserved for public execution.
The whole thing was over in less time than it takes to tell it. We had a new Emperor, Otho, who later in the day, when it was already dark, attended the Senate where he was greeted with cheers and acclamation. They hurried to confer the tribunician power on him, rendering his person inviolate. 'Like Galba's,' Domitian muttered.
Piso survived till near night. He had crept into the temple of the Vestal Virgins and remained hidden for some hours. But information was laid and a soldier belonging to the British auxiliary infantry (and therefore indifferent to the crime of sacrilege) forced his way in, disregarding the protest of the priestesses, dragged that morning's deputy-emperor into the street, and cut his throat. Otho is said to have received Piso's head with unmingled joy. By this time Domitian and I had returned to his aunt's house. It was from Flavius Sabinus that I later received the full and exact account of these murders or executions – call them what you will. During the day we had been buoyed up by excitement and the quivering uncertainty of the changing moment. We had not even felt the cold tremble of fear. Now, safe before the stove, nursing goblets of mulled wine and listening to the scolding of the aunt – she had a voice like a seagull when alarmed – I found I could not stop shaking. Domitian sat still as a monument but for a nerve that twitched in his right cheek. Twice he lifted his hand and placed it on the side of his face, as if to arrest that movement. But, when he lowered it again, the twitch still zig-zagged.
A rap at the door brought us to our feet. My hand stretched out in search of a weapon. But it was Flavius Sabinus who entered. And he was smiling.
XV
I cursed Tacitus for making me relive that day. He will judge (when he has doctored my account) that its horrors were the consequence of the degeneracy into which the loss of Republican virtue and liberty had thrust us. 'Never surely,' he wrote in a recent letter in which he urged me to delve more deeply into the putrid sink of memory, 'was there more conclusive evidence that the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment.' I would not dispute that, merely observe that licence was as unbounded in the days of the Republic from which only the wise government of Augustus and Tiberius rescued us. The horror of the years that succeeded Nero was not the result of one particular form of government, as my old friend, so full of imaginative sympathy with the distant past, supposes; it was the ineluctable consequence of the failure of government.
Philosophers have argued much concerning the nature of men, whether we are actuated by virtue or by fear. For my part, I know from bitter experience, from reflection and self-study, from the observation of others and from my reading of history, that men are born wicked; that virtue is something only laboriously achieved, in spite of nature; and that the driving force in any man who has achieved any degree of power – even power over his own household, family and slaves – is fierce, dictatorial, destructive, even if also self-destructive. Pride, jealousy, anger, the desire for revenge on account of slights real or imagined, are forces few can, or wish to, resist.
Consider Galba. At the age of seventy-three he had enjoyed prosperity all his days. He was rich, had won the esteem, or at least the respect, of his peers. Why should he put all that at risk merely to wear the purple and be saluted as Emperor?
And Otho? A man you would have said formed for pleasure. Was that not enough to content him? There are pleasant orange groves, soft breezes and lovely docile girls in Lusitania. Yet he, too, would be called Emperor, by men no one of intelligence or taste could respect.
'Isn't it the case,' I remember saying to Domitian – perhaps not that evening, but one soon after – 'that the condition of man is a war of everyone against everyone?'
I did not believe this. That is, I did not believe it should be so. Or did I? Should be? What is there to form 'should be'?
Domitian said: 'If you are right, and life is warfare, then it behoves one to make sure of winning.'
Flavius Sabinus laughed. You speak like a child,' he said. 'It is not in mortals to command success. Therefore…'
'Therefore, what?' I said. 'Trust to the gods? They are deaf. Seek to deserve it? I have not noticed that merit is rewarded.' Flavius picked up the dice-box and threw. 'A pair of sixes,' he said. 'There's no merit in that, sir,' I replied. 'Who said there was?'
Domitian said, 'It is wrong to speak against the gods. I myself have a particular devotion to Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, and I believe she rewards her devotees by guiding them on the true path.' 'The bird of Minerva flies only by night,' I said. What is that supposed to mean?'
'I don't know, I'm sure,' I said. 'It's something I heard a philosopher, a Greek sophist, say once. It may not mean anything, like most that philosophers say, but it's stuck in my mind and I daresay it makes as much sense as your belief that Minerva has a care for you. If she does, why' – and I threw, I recall, a cushion at him – 'are you such an ass?'
Flavius Sabinus again rattled the bones and once again threw a pair of sixes. 'Do it a third time, and I'll be Emperor,' Domitian cried out.
'Silly,' Domatilla said. Turning to me she added, 'What will you be if uncle throws again and Dom wears the purple?'
'His fool, I suppose,' I said and, turning, smiled to her, as the dice-box rattled, and a pair of sixes were disclosed on the table. The German boy Balthus tells me he belongs to the tribe of the Chatti, and that his father was taken captive in Domitian's campaign against them. I remember that campaign and the sweet valley of the Neckar and a German woman I took as my concubine. Remembering made me sentimental. I drank wine with the boy and did no more than stroke his cheek and kiss him a couple of times. He protested, but gently. Then he looked at me in fear, aware of his slave-status.
XVI
A letter from Titus, undated but received (I surmise) early in February: Dear Boy: your account is riveting. What a catalogue of folly! I am grateful to you for restraining my little brother, but I do wish you had sent me a copy of his poem in praise of Galba. I have become a connoisseur of bad verses.
And of other things too, for I have a new diversion of which you are not to be jealous, for, be assured, you retain a special place in my heart. This diversion is a lady, a queen indeed, Berenice by name. She is the daughter of Herod Agrippa who was reared in the court of Tiberius and befriended by the Emperor Gaius. So Berenice knows our ways, for she was not herself brought up to respect all the narrow superstitions of the Jews. She is, I confess, somewhat older than I am, and has been married two or three times – sometimes she talks as if she has had so many husbands she has lost count. Moreover, when I first heard of her, I was told she had lain incestuously with her brother the king, Herod Agrippa II. Add to this that she is as beautiful as the loveliest depiction of Venus you have ever seen, and is possessed of more arts of love than Ovid told of in that poem which you will remember reading with me, delightedly, on the shores of the Bay of Naples, and indeed of more than I have ever found in any Greek courtesan, even from Corinth, and you will understand that she is, to one of my temperament, utterly irresistible. In short, if that great-great – is there one more great? – uncle of yours, by marriage as I don't forget, Mark Antony, of whom you have so often spoken to me with a very natural and unstinted pride, thought the world well lost for love of his Eastern beauty Cleopatra, why then, I too – the Antony of our days – am utterly consumed with passion for Berenice, and would let war, Empire, glory, reputation go hang themselves, if they were to be found in competition with my love. Fortunately, it is not so, for Berenice is herself a politician!
So congratulate me and when at last I am able to bring you to this East – a garden where all we have ever dreamed of is given to us – see if I don't supply you with a girl who will offer you whatever you desire; my Berenice has two daughters ripe for gentle plucking.
Is love not better than Empire? Is it not the true empire of the heart? Ah, my dear, in the words of a Persian
