consciousness of his own virtue. Actually, I find I dislike him. But he amuses me – at a distance.
In his last letter he said, 'You forget that the murder of Galba made Otho odious and terrible.' Strange adjectives to use of that unfortunate man.
Balthus is lying stretched out before the fire, asleep. One of my hounds has placed his leg over the boy's thigh, pushing the skirt of his tunic up to reveal a long line of naked flesh. The skin is pale, though the flames dance red-gold over it. It is deep night. I kept the boy with me rather than being compelled to solitude. Minerva's bird utters its warning cry. Bitterns boom in the reeds by the inland sea. From the bedroom beyond comes the, as it were, answering snores of my woman. She has never had a disturbed night in her life, and she tells me she never dreams. Indeed I once, years ago, had to explain to her what a dream was.
There are pictures in the fire. Some nights they frighten me. Balthus utters a little moan. It sounds contented. But it may have been the hound that uttered.
Two nights after that staff council, I was released by Otho when he declared himself at last ready to retire. He had talked of doing so several times, and I was beginning to think we would see the dawn, as we had done on other occasions. But this night he said, 'I really think I may sleep', and let me go. We were lodged in a villa, from which the owner had fled, or which he had perhaps been persuaded to surrender to the Emperor, and I had secured for myself a little room by the gatehouse.
When I entered, I found Caesius Bassus reclining on my couch with a wine-flask by his side.
'I had your servant stoke the stove,' he said. 'You don't mind that I've come here? Look, I've brought wine.' He poured me a cup. Tm very tired,' I said, ungraciously.
'Who knows? I may be dead tomorrow. I've remembered how that poem goes.' He recited it to me.
'It's good,' he said, 'isn't it? One of my best. I can't think how I came to forget it.'
'It's sad, certainly,' I said, 'and beautiful, like the last colours of the evening sky. But you didn't ride here to recite a poem to me.'
'Why not? I am a poet, after all, with all the poetic vanity. And being a poet, writing poems, that's the best of me, the only good in me, I have often thought. And I was touched that you remembered that line your girl quoted to you, even if you would not perhaps have done so but for the girl. But I admit, the poem was an excuse. I wanted to see you again. To talk. To unburden myself. To speak to someone who knew Lucan and was loved by Lucan, and to kill the night with talk of Lucan, and life, and love and this awful war, this so uncivil civil war.'
'Lucan talked, to seduce me,' I said. 'That was all. He didn't succeed.'
'You can't reproach him for that ambition,' he said. 'You were very desirable. You still are, if you don't mind my saying so. To me, you are in that most delicious of stages, no longer a boy, not yet a man. But that's not why I've come here. Oh, if you were to invite me to tumble you on your bed, I should accept, of course. But I don't expect you to do so and, even if you did, and we took pleasure in each other, what would that amount to? The brief opening of a window in the blank wall of weariness, no more than that. For me now, even satisfied lust tastes sour, like new wine poured yesterday, drunk today.'
He fell silent. I could not read his expression, for his face was in half-shadow. A moth fluttered against the lamp, burned its wings and fell to the table.
''The shadow of a great name',' he said, quoting Lucan. 'I think he meant Caesar, but the great name in whose shadow we all live is Rome itself, and Rome is now, like Troy, in flames. Nothing that was Rome remains – except the name. We were Republicans, you know. We dreamed that it might be possible, Nero dead, to restore the Republic. It was only a dream, foolish and insubstantial. We proved that, betraying ourselves and each other in our fear. No one in our generation has the fortitude of our forefathers. They tortured me, you know, but only a little. That was all that was necessary to make me betray Lucan. And Lucan himself tried – oh, so meanly – to cast the blame for his conduct on his mother. Perhaps he had Rome in mind. I should like to think so. For we had – it was a bond between us – a certain idea of Rome, which however in no way corresponded to the reality. I crawled to Nero: to save my life which, ever since, has seemed to me worthless. And so now, we are caught up in the struggle between two worthless men, Otho and Vitellius, and I ask myself, does it matter which of them feasts on the dead body of Rome? There's no good answer I can think of. One of them will win, the other lose, and who gives a tinker's cuss? Then your friends, Vespasian and Titus, will engage in a new war.'
What could I reply? The shameful thought came to me that the disillusion, so plangently expressed by Caesius Bassus, might be a ruse, that he might have been sent to prove my loyalty to Otho, and that an unwary word might invite my ruin – arrest, a cursory trial and ignominious death. He seemed indifferent to my silence.
'We hoped to restore a time when men might think what they wished and say what they thought. Yet, when we came to the test, we stifled our thoughts and said what was required. There was no need of enemies; friends were only too ready to destroy each other. We thought of ourselves as the best but, when even the best are subject to moral corruption, the worst triumph. I have never ceased to reproach myself that I am still alive. Fortune may see to it that this battle tomorrow answers my self-reproach.' He smiled, and drank more wine.
'Do you know what I am?' he said. 'I am a man with a great future behind him.'
I do not pretend that I recall his every word throughout this conversation which was really a soliloquy, a threnody with corruption as its theme. Yet some of the words are those he spoke, and the sense is all his. So, too, is what I may call the music. It has remained with me all these years, throughout so many vicissitudes, because this poet, whom I scarcely knew, who had singled me out almost by chance, and who met the next day the death he sought, expressed with an irony so detached from his personality as to seem cruel all that I have come to feel concerning the horrors of the age in which we have been condemned to live and in which the reward for virtue has been certain doom.
Before taking his leave, he said, You will have heard that our two emperors, Otho and Vitellius, accuse each other of monstrous debaucheries. Neither is lying. How strange that both should stumble into truth?'
There can be no emotion more debilitating than self-contempt; yet who that ever aspired to virtue can escape it in our time?
Balthus stirs on the rush-matting before the fire. The hound protests and, shifting position, now lies athwart the boy. Waking, the boy's face often wears a troubled look. His eyes are narrowed and there are lines made by anxiety running from them. His mouth hangs a little open, as if he would speak but dare not, as if inviting kisses which nevertheless he would try to ward off. But in sleep he looks contented, contented indeed as the unreflective hound.
He spoke to me earlier this evening of his god, in whom he declares an absolute trust. It appears that the poor child believes that his god has a special care for him, and indeed for all those he terms 'true believers'. He would like me to become one. Yet it is all absurdity. Everyone who has thought about these matters and who has had any experience of life knows that whatever gods exist are perfectly indifferent to the fortunes of men. If they care at all, it is not for our safety, but for our punishment. His Christianity is a slave's religion, and I suppose this is natural. Slaves dare not look reality in the face. They keep their eyes lowered to the ground. No wonder they cherish in their sad deluded hearts some notion of enjoying the favour of the gods in another life.
Strange though that his absurd religion gives him an assurance and a comfort I cannot look to have. In my experience, virtue is punished and crimes rewarded, until hubris overtakes the criminal.
XXVI
I fretted, Tacitus, to be kept at the Emperor's side. Yet there was nothing I could do about it. Otho protested that he needed me. He told me I was his talisman. Yet he spoke in a tone of despondency. Civil war, he told me, was wicked. Neither he nor Vitellius would be forgiven for having subjected Italy to its miseries.
'It is no wonder,' he said, 'that the merchants and common people of the towns already regret Nero. What harm did he do them, they ask, compared to the ruin that the rivalries of Otho and Vitellius threaten to bring on us?'
And it was true, he added, that Nero had directed his cruelties only at members of the senatorial class, and had pleased the populace by the lavish entertainment he had promoted on their behalf.
The Emperor had refused to take the omens on the day assigned to battle, and when the priests who had done so came to inform him of their message, he waved them angrily away. He sent forward a succession of runners urging his brother Titianus and his second-in-command Proculus to make all possible haste towards the
