years. Raised to senatorial rank by Vespasian as a reward for his family’s loyalty in the civil war, he now held this powerful and lucrative office which was far beyond his modest intellect and sluggish nature. By his side was Atilius Regulus-senator, lawyer, informer-a man Pliny despised. Was he on the prefect’s payroll too? Regulus threw a friendly arm around Pliny and brushed his cheek with his lips.
“I regret that the Lady Calpurnia…” Pliny had begun.
“Yes, yes, never mind,” said Fulvus, “We didn’t bring ours either.” He drew the two of them close and whispered over the hubbub. “We are not here tonight to enjoy ourselves. Our instructions are to look sharp and listen well. Those were Our Lord and God’s precise words.” Lord and God. How easily the phrase rolled off Fulvus’ tongue.
“And for what precisely are we listening?” Pliny had asked, but at that moment, the tall gates of gilded bronze had swung open and the elegant mob swarmed up the steps between a double line of Praetorian Guardsmen in their white tunics and scarlet cloaks.
…Yes, he would resign his post. This embarrassing charade was the last straw. He was a Roman senator, not a common spy.
“You are all looking well, my friends. Hale and strong. No need for any of you to fear Hades!” Domitianus Caesar, Conqueror of Germany, Conqueror of Dacia, Pontifex Maximus, Consul, Lord and God, regarded them all with a tight smile. Like his father Vespasian before him, the emperor was thick-bodied, big-shouldered, and bull- necked. He had managed to enter the hall ahead of them through some secret passageway, no doubt, and was already reclining beside his wife on the imperial couch, raised upon its dais. An exuberant laurel wreath failed to conceal his thinning hair. When some of the guests began laboriously to kneel, Parthenius assured them that the emperor did not wish to stand on ceremony tonight and the prostration could be omitted. “My only thought,” Domitian continued, “was to honor Pluto on the night before we honor his more genial brother, Jupiter.” Vigorous nods of approval. Fixed smiles. “Cocceius Nerva, I believe, is hungry? Am I right, Nerva, it was you, wasn’t it, who said so?” “I am perishing of hunger, Caesar.” In fact, Nerva was a martyr to indigestion and seldom took anything but porridge.
“Perishing! Well, we shouldn’t allow that. Best eat your fill tonight, my friend, for who knows what tomorrow may bring, as some poet has no doubt said.”
The air crackled with malice.
Trying his best not to overhear any of the conversation around him, Pliny’s eyes strayed to the imperial couple. Domitian was a man of forty-five who had once been thought handsome. Now baldness and a paunch had ruined his looks. Beneath dense black brows, quick, mistrustful eyes peered out.
Behind him, as always, stood his cup-bearer and bed-mate, Earinus, a young boy of exceptional beauty except that his head was grotesquely small. As the boy leaned over to refill his master’s goblet, Domitian reached under his red tunic-the youth always wore red-and ran his hand up the inside of his smooth leg. Earinus smiled. The empress, however, did not. Domitia Longina Augusta, stared stonily ahead of her, putting not a morsel of food to her lips. A man of breeding does not fondle his pet boy in his wife’s presence.
She was a proud woman, the daughter of Nero’s best general. She had inherited her father’s strength of character, but, sad to say, his looks as well. She was as tall as a man, with a square jaw and prominent nose. Her face was thickly coated with powder of white lead-some said, to hide the bruises made by her husband’s fists.
It was not only with boys that he humiliated her. If one believed the palace “smoke,” Domitian had committed incest with Julia, his niece, a pale and delicate girl, and then forced her to have a near fatal abortion.
At a signal from Parthenius, waiters-Ethiopians, Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, all of them beautiful young boys-came round with the appetizer course on trays of solid gold. On offer were baked dormice rolled in honey and poppy seed, Lucrine oysters, pickled eggs, and snails fattened on milk.
Course succeeded course without pause: sow’s womb stuffed with herbs and surrounded by the teats boiled in milk, lamprey eels from the straits of Messina, roast boar, mullet, hams ingeniously carved in the shape of pigeons, an enormous lobster garnished with asparagus, goose livers with truffles, and sea urchins. For drink there was Falernian wine, strained through snow. The beautiful boys refilled the crystal goblets as fast as they were emptied. Other slaves hovered about the guests, ready with silver ewers of rosewater to pour on greasy fingers and to offer their long hair with which to dry them.
Pliny was offended in his philosopher’s soul by these grotesque displays. He took just a little of each dish and drank abstemiously, as ever. He doubted whether anyone had much of an appetite left after what they’d been through. Still, his table fellows outdid each other in praising the fare, heaped up their plates, and belched enthusiastically.
Meanwhile, to entertain them, dwarfs dressed in miniature suits of Greek armor fought bare-breasted Amazons. The guests did their best to look entertained but their laughter was too gay, their smiles tense and wary. The only safe topic for dinner table conversation was tomorrow’s great sacrifice to be followed by days of theater and chariot racing.
As the dessert course of imported fruit and honeyed wine came round, the emperor rapped for silence. “Papinius Statius,” he called out, gesturing to the couch alongside him, “one of the few living poets worth hearing, is with us tonight. Though he is weighed down by years, he has obliged me by coming up to Rome to attend the Games and immortalize them in verse. I have asked him to recite to us from a work in progress.”
This was received with dutiful murmurs of thanks. The emperor’s love of poetry was genuine; he rewarded poets lavishly and provided copies of their works to the public libraries.
Statius, a frail old man with wispy white hair, got shakily to his feet. His bearing was patrician. He gravely acknowledged the emperor and empress, calling them “our own Jupiter and Juno.” In a quavering voice he read portions of an epic poem on which he was engaged and, soon running out of strength, sank down on his couch again. The guests applauded warmly, especially Pliny, who dabbled at poetry himself. Domitian, in a voice noticeably thick with wine, praised the old fellow’s years of loyalty and service to the Flavian House. “Where will I find your like again, Statius. Nothing but your poetry gives me pleasure any more.” It seemed sincerely meant. A mood almost of warmth had been created by Statius’ presence, but it wasn’t to last long.
The emperor’s tone changed in an instant. “I have lost a close friend today,” he said in a somber voice. “A pillar of the government. A colleague of yours, Senators. I heard of his death this morning with a sense of shock and”-he selected a succulent mushroom-“outrage.”
“Oh, irreparable loss,” murmured Regulus with feeling. Others felt differently. Lackey of the regime, enemy of his own class, one of Domitian’s most notorious and best paid informers, compared with whom Regulus was a mere tyro, who else but Ingentius Verpa? No one had dared to speak his name all evening, though his murder was uppermost in everyone’s mind. Now the emperor himself was going to confront them with it.
“It’s said he was killed by a slave,” Domitian looked hard into their faces. “Perhaps. Such things have happened. And yet there may be something deeper at work here. Atheism. Atheism! Verpa had uncovered its poison in the bosom of my own family. And, though it saddened me, I punished it as it deserved. Now, I swear to you, Senators, I do not take this lightly. Aurelius Fulvus is going to give his immediate attention to the case-we have already spoken about it-and I promise you, punishment will be swift.”
This was answered with loud “hear, hears” from the guests, whose sentiments, this time, were genuine. No one lamented Verpa, nor did any of them have much of an opinion about this atheism, which seemed to exercise the emperor so much. Still, Verpa was a Roman senator and a slave owner like themselves. That was enough.
“…swift…” the emperor’s words trailed off and he sank back on his couch. He held out his cup to Earinus for more wine. Momentarily his eyes closed. Pliny was struck suddenly by how tired he looked.
The soiree, it seemed, was over. At a gesture from Parthenius, the dining room doors swung open and the servants crowded in carrying the guests’ outdoor shoes. Pliny stood up with the others.
“You and I will remain a moment,” Fulvus whispered close beside him.
With a curt gesture Domitian dismissed his wife. “You! You ate nothing tonight,” he shouted at her departing back. “Did you think your food was poisoned? I don’t need poison to deal with you.”
“Earinus, leave us.” He addressed his pet in a gentler tone. “Parthenius, get rid of those donkeys.” He meant the slaves, who were making a racket with the plates. They fled.
“And will you be needing me further, Master?” the chamberlain murmured.
“Need you? Mehercule, what would I do without you!” Parthenius accepted this tribute with bowed head.
