More guests arrived in the imperial box. Leading the party was Seneca. Since the death of Agrippina, he had become more powerful than ever, though Titus had heard rumours of growing discord between the emperor and his chief adviser; the strains of dealing with the aftermath of the fire were taking a toll on everyone. Arriving with Seneca was his wife, Paulina; now that he was in his sixties and she was nearly forty, the gap in their ages was not as striking as it once had been.
Also with Seneca was his handsome nephew. Lucan was two years younger than Nero and their shared love of poetry had made them close friends. Like Nero, Lucan had bloomed early. At the age of eleven he had created a sensation with his first poem, about the combat between Hector and Achilles, and at twenty-five he was the city’s most famous poet. On this occasion, he wore an augur’s trabea. Nero had seen fit to induct Lucan into the college well ahead of the prescribed age, just as previous emperors had done for Titus and his father.
Lucan was accompanied by his wife. Polla Argentaria was almost as famous as her husband, thanks to the verses he had written praising her. She was the daughter of a wealthy senator and, like Seneca’s wife, had received an unusually extensive education for a woman. Argentaria was said to be her husband’s muse and amanuensis, and perhaps even his collaborator, as she tirelessly helped him revise and perfect his verses.
Gaius Petronius was next to arrive. The emperor’s arbiter of elegance was not quite forty and had flecks of silver in his hair. Titus found it impossible to put his finger on what set the man apart from all others; Petronius wore a toga about which there was nothing extraordinary, and his grooming, while impeccable, was not in any way unusual. Still, the man cast a spell by his very presence. Perhaps it was the effortless grace with which he moved, or his inscrutable expression. Even when he was most serious, there were flashes of amusement in his pale grey eyes.
Titus felt privileged to be in such illustrious company, but he also found it rather stressful, since he had difficulty keeping up with the conversation, which revolved largely around the three men’s literary projects and was full of puns and allusions and double entendres, many of which Titus couldn’t decipher. Lucan, he gathered, was about to publish the next volume of his epic poem about the civil war between Caesar and Pompeius, a work full of violent action and scenes of epic grandeur. Seneca, who had been reading the work in progress, thought that his nephew sided perhaps too much with Pompeius and the Republican cause against the Divine Julius, a point of view sure to stir controversy.
Petronius was working on something very different, a long work in which his narrator recounted a series of erotic misadventures and comical disasters, all related, to heighten the irony, in the most elegant and rarefied prose. Knowing how Nero relied on Petronius for advice on all matters to do with good taste, Titus asked him if he was responsible for staging the spectacles they were about to witness.
Petronius narrowed his eyes. “I contributed very little. Caesar devised most of the entertainments. The emperor threw himself into this project as he enters into all his endeavours, with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm. But what about you, Seneca – what are you working on these days, when you’re not out mining gold to build the emperor’s new house?”
Seneca smiled. “I’ve finally finished the play about Pasiphae.” He noted the blank look on Lucius’s face. “Do you know the tale, young Pinarius?”
“I’m afraid not,” admitted Lucius. Titus winced. His son’s education reflected on himself.
“Pasiphae was the wife of King Minos of Crete,” said Seneca. “She was cursed by Neptune to crave intercourse with a bull.”
“What woman has not?” said Petronius. Chrysanthe blushed, Lucius giggled nervously, and Titus himself was startled by the comment, but the others seemed to find it quite amusing.
“Just so,” conceded Seneca with a wry smile, “but Pasiphae did something about it. She ordered the inventor Daedalus to construct an effigy of a heifer so realistic that even a bull would find it convincing, then she concealed herself inside the mock heifer and seduced the bull into gratifying her. Nine months later, Pasiphae gave birth to a child with a bull’s head – the minotaur.”
“Who but Seneca would bring such material to the stage?” said Petronius. It was impossible to tell whether his tone was respectful or sardonic. “Has the emperor read it yet?”
“The emperor is always my first reader, and invariably the most astute. I’m happy to say that Caesar seemed quite fascinated by the tragedy of Pasiphae. Ah, here he is now!”
They rose to their feet as Nero entered the box with Poppaea beside him. People in the crowd saw him enter, and a thrill ran up and down the stands. But the response was mixed. Just as earlier Titus had heard shouts of “Hail Caesar!” in the streets, so many in the crowd now shouted accolades, but there was a low grumbling as well, and scattered hisses.
Nero escorted Poppaea to her seat, then stepped forward and raised his hands. With his fair hair and purple-and-gold robes, he was visible and instantly recognizable to everyone in the circus. The crowd fell silent. For a moment, it appeared that Nero might address the crowd. Indeed, Nero had wanted to deliver the opening speech, but Seneca had persuaded him not to do so: there were simply too many problems that might arise when an emperor directly addressed such a large and unpredictable gathering.
Instead, Nero gestured to a public crier, who stepped forward. With his powerful, trained voice, the man was able to make himself heard from end to end of the circus. While he spoke, Titus could see that Nero moved his lips along with the crier, like a proud author in the theatre mouthing lines spoken by an actor.
“Senators and people of Roma, you are here today at Caesar’s invitation. Welcome! But if you have come expecting a mere entertainment, you may be surprised at what you are about to witness. Today you will not see charioteers race. You will not see gladiators fight to the death. You will not see wild animals hunted. You will not see captives of war made to reenact a famous battle for your amusement. You will not see actors perform a comedy or a drama. What you will see is an act of justice, carried out under the open sky so that all the gods and the people of Roma may witness the proceedings.
“The criminals you will see punished today are guilty of arson and murder. They have conspired against the Roman state. They have plotted the destruction of the Roman people. Even those not directly guilty of setting fires must be punished. Their notorious hatred of the gods, of mankind, and of life itself makes them a menace to us all.
“Because of the fire, many of you are still without proper homes. Because of the fire, many of you lost your most cherished possessions. Because of the fire, many of you lost loved ones, whose cries of anguish still ring in your ears. Our city – the most beloved by the gods of all cities on earth – has been devastated. The gods themselves weep at the destruction of Roma and the suffering of the Roman people.
“Thanks to the vigilance of your emperor, the arsonists who perpetrated this misery have been apprehended. They call themselves Christians. The name comes from Christus, the founder of their sect, a criminal who suffered the extreme penalty at the hands of Pontius Pilatus, one of our procurators in Judaea during the reign of Tiberius. Thanks to Pilatus, the insidious superstition propagated by this Christus was checked – but only for a short while, because it quickly broke out again, not only in Judaea, the first source of this evil, but in many places across the empire, even here in Roma. Lurking among us, the followers of Christus have plotted our destruction.