The Praetorians took a menacing step forward, hands resting on the hilts of their swords. Among the guests, hearts froze but faces remained under control. It was crucial not to show fear, not to betray the smallest doubt about the emperor’s good will. A frightened man was a guilty man.
“I’ll lead the way,” Atilius Regulus called out. “Hercules wasn’t afraid to visit Hades, and I think I’m as good a man as he!” The rest of them took up his light-hearted tone as best they could. There was simply nothing else to do.
“I pray I don’t meet my first husband down there,” cackled Arulena Rustica, the much-married wife of a general.
“I think I’ll just stay there until my creditors go away” cried the gourmand Gavius Apicius, who had squandered a king’s ransom on oysters.
Their lips twisted in desperate hilarity, the guests descended, half-stumbling, into the black pit. One elderly senator turned and tried to claw his way up again, but was borne down by the weight of the others. At the foot of the stairs, moved by invisible hands, a door swung inward on screeching hinges
“Nice dog, Cerberus!” joked someone, but there was no laughter.
They were plunged into darkness. Suddenly Pliny could not breathe, and the blood pounded in his temples. Whichever way he turned, other bodies pressed against him. He had no idea where the stairs were. The air stank of burnt charcoal. It was obvious they were in the furnace room which, in wintertime provided currents of hot air to warm the floors above.
Then a line of tiny lights appeared in the blackness. As Pliny watched spellbound, the lights advanced in a double column, drew nearer, divided and formed a circle around the huddled guests. When they were just an arm’s length away, he saw in astonishment that each was a candle held by a little boy, who was entirely naked and black.
“Your name, master?” whispered a little candle-bearer. The accent was of the Roman streets, not Africa-the child’s color was painted on.
Pliny croaked a reply. In the crepuscular glow of the gathered candles, rows of chairs could just be made out, and beside each a dark object of some sort, standing about waist high. The child took his hand and led him to a chair. The candle dipped and gave its light to an oil lamp on a stand, the sort of lamp that hangs in tombs. Then pointing to the slab-shaped thing beside the chair, the child commanded Pliny in a piping voice to read his fate. All around him other demon-children were doing likewise and other guests were helplessly obeying. Pliny heard their gasps and stifled cries and a rising commotion of angry and frightened voices. He examined the thing, touched it. It was a plank in the shape of a gravestone and on it was carved his name.
From somewhere a double-flute began to play a funeral dirge and the naked boys, gliding like phantoms, performed a weird circle dance, weaving patterns in and out with their glowing candles. Now black-clad servants appeared, carrying tables with trays on them which they set before each place. Pliny peered at his. Black dishes containing black fruits and flowers-offerings to the dead. When a hand touched his shoulder he nearly leapt straight out of his chair. But it was the city prefect. “Ready to do your duty,” Fulvus whispered into his ear, and then moved away.
Now, over the shrilling of the flute, a disembodied voice began to chant Homer’s dismal verses which describe the pitiful, squeaking shades of the dead. There was no mistaking that voice. Frightened whispers hissed around him.
“Tell him, Publius, for the sake of the children!”
“It’s a trick, shut up!”
“ Tell him!” Other voices: “We adore your image every day at sunrise, Caesar!” “We shut our doors to our son and his republican friends.” “We rejoiced when the criminals, Senecio and Priscus, were put to death.” “And when you drove the rabble of philosophers from the city.”
“O, Lord and God, spare us,” a woman beside Pliny sobbed. “We never hid the traitor, Musonius, in our house, never! Torture our slaves, they’ll tell you who…”
Her husband clapped his hand over her mouth, but not before Pliny recognized her voice. He recognized them all, and in that instant, realizing why he was here, he groaned with shame. More guests leapt to their feet, upsetting the lamp stands and “tombstones” with a clatter, and all trying to be heard at once. They were innocent. They swore it on their children’s heads. But they knew who his secret enemies were, if he would only spare their lives…!
Then one voice made itself heard above all the others. “Hush, all of you! Silence, I say! Caesar, this excellent joke is worthy of your divine wit. Why, our friends who are not here tonight will feel themselves slighted when we tell them what fun we’ve had! But I fear some of your guests, and particularly the ladies, are taking it entirely too seriously. It would be unkind to encourage them further. I, for one, am hungry and want my dinner.” The speech ended with a forced laugh.
Old Cocceius Nerva, thought Pliny. An ornament of the Senate for more than forty years. Smooth, adaptable, a friend of the dynasty or, at least, not an enemy. He had never, before tonight, been remarkable for courage, but this was a brave thing he was doing.
There followed a tense silence which lasted until Pliny thought he could not bear it another moment, and then a trap door opened above them, letting in a shaft of light, and the distinguished lords and ladies, the flower of Rome’s aristocracy, made an unseemly dash for the stairs.
Above ground, the Praetorians were gone and Parthenius, smiling blandly, congratulated them all on their return from dead. But his hooded eyes said something else. Pliny stole a look at his companions. Women, bewigged and bejeweled, tried to repair tear-streaked makeup. The men avoided each other’s eyes, but all gazed at the tall, stooped figure of Nerva, their savior.
As though nothing were amiss, Parthenius, clasping his hands and smiling wetly, led them back the way they had come to the entrance to “Jupiter’s Banquet Hall” for the real dinner. Here, servants in white livery removed their shoes and led them in groups to their tables. Pliny noted that he, the city prefect and the informer Regulus, their companion of the evening, were each placed at a different table-to continue eavesdropping, of course. Pliny felt sick to his stomach and prayed that his face did not give him away. Had things come to this? A dynasty that had started off so fair? He would march into the prefect’s office tomorrow at daybreak and resign his post.
It had been only that morning, coming on the heels of the excitement over Verpa, that a message had arrived from the Prefecture.
“To Gaius Plinius Secundus, greetings from Aurelius Fulvus. Your presence is commanded at the palace at the ninth hour for dinner. Wives are particularly invited.” Pliny raised an eyebrow at this; as a rule, the emperor had little use for senatorial wives. “We will meet on the steps and go in together. Be prompt. Farewell.”
Curt and faintly unpleasant, as usual. Pliny disliked his superior. Some months ago he had been plucked from his civil law practice and asked to assist the Prefecture in clearing away a great backlog of criminal cases. Not long afterward, one of the deputy prefects, a man tortured by ulcers, committed suicide, inconveniencing everyone, and Pliny was moved into his position. Only for a few days, he was assured, but days had stretched into weeks with no end in sight. It was another feather in his cap, no doubt, but the job was irksome.
The sun was still high and the heat oppressive as his litter-bearers had snaked along the teeming streets, holding him high above the filth. The narrow streets of Rome were clogged with thousands of visitors streaming into the city to enjoy the revels that would occupy the next fifteen days: tomorrow the Ludi Romani, the Roman Games, began.
The palace sprawled over half the Palatine Hill, rising up “like seven mountains piled one atop the other, reaching to the sky,” said a flattering poet. It was divided into a public and a domestic wing. In the former, the Domus Flavia, toiled a thousand imperial slaves and freedmen-the clerks, scribes, and accountants whose drudgery made the vast Roman Empire run, while in the latter, the Domus Augustana, other slaves, sleek and perfumed, performed more intimate services for their “Lord and God.”
The building was entirely Domitian’s creation; he had supervised the design of it down to the smallest detail. His father and elder brother in their lifetimes had both been content with far more modest quarters.
When they had arrived that evening at the breathtaking sweep of steps that led up to the monumental gates, Pliny had been astonished to see among the company several known critics of the regime. Could reconciliation be in the wind? He had heard no such rumors, but the thought gave him pleasure.
Catching sight of his chief, Pliny had made his way toward him. The city prefect, a sallow, long-jawed man, gripped his forearm with false bonhomie and intentional pain. Aurelius Fulvus had been a stalwart of the regime for
