Lucius looked at Epictetus to see his reaction. The Stoic’s face was turned away from the others, as if something at the far corner of the garden had drawn his interest. When Epictetus turned back, his face showed no emotion.
Martial laughed. “Sporus was pretty but had an ugly end. Vitellius was ugly, and had an uglier end! Perhaps you should write a discourse comparing those two, Dio.”
Dio shook his head. “As a rule, I avoid discussing the lives of our emperors, even those who came to a bad end. My object is to deliver morals, not debate politics.”
“But haven’t you heard?” said Martial. “Our enlightened new emperor has declared free speech for all. No subject or person is off-limits, not even Titus himself. Allow me to quote my patron: ‘It is impossible for me to be insulted or abused in any way, since I do nothing that deserves censure, and falsehoods are beneath my notice. As for emperors dead and gone, they can avenge themselves if anyone should slander them, if in fact they are demigods and possess divine power.’”
“Did you write that speech for him?” asked Lucius.
“I most certainly did not,” said Martial. “Titus is quite capable of writing his own speeches. And what he says, he means. There’ll be no more payments to those who turn in others for seditious talk, as happened under his father. We all know Vespasian had an army of paid informers, and there are whole rooms in the imperial library filled with dossiers about perfectly innocuous citizens. I suspect there’s a file on every one of us here. But Titus has pledged to burn those documents, and to put the informers out of work. He’ll even punish the most notorious of them, who maliciously spread lies about innocent men.”
Lucius sighed. “The subject shifts to politics – at last!”
“I thought politics bored you,” said Martial.
“Yes, but only one thing bores me more: talk about pretty boys.” The others laughed. “No, hear me out,” said Lucius. “Every one of us here is a bachelor, true, but we are not all boy-lovers. I think I must suffer from the emperor Claudius’s complaint. My father, who knew him quite well, told me for a fact that cousin Claudius was aroused only by girls or women; he had no interest in boys or men. The beauty of Melancomas would have been lost on him. A discussion of male beauty, no matter how grandiose, would have bored him to tears.”
Martial laughed “As it b-b-bores you, Lucius? I think your cousin Claudius simply never met the right b-b-boy!”
“Our reigning emperor certainly doesn’t suffer from Claudius’s complaint,” observed Dio. “Titus buried his first wife, divorced the second, and, despite his reputed dalliance with the beautiful queen of the Jews – and with brawny Melancomas here – he seems to like eunuchs best of all. Is it true, Martial, that Titus keeps a whole stable of pretty eunuchs in the palace?”
“It’s true. Each is prettier than the other.”
“A fact which provides yet more evidence for my thesis regarding the triumph of Persian standards,” said Dio. “You’d think the emperor would seek another Melancomas. Instead, he surrounds himself with castrated boys.”
Lucius laughed and threw up his hands. “Do you see what’s happened? The conversation veered briefly to politics, then circled directly back to sex.”
“The subject is eunuchs, who have no sex,” said Martial.
“Enough!” declared their host. “To please Lucius Pinarius, we will talk about something else. Surely there must be some other topic worthy of discussion, in a world so enormous.”
“We could talk about the world itself,” suggested Lucius. “Did you know that the general Agricola has discovered that Britannia is an island? It’s true. The land mass to the uttermost north doesn’t go on forever, as people thought. It ends in a stormy, frigid sea.”
Dio laughed. “That information might be of some interest, if anyone had a reason to go to Britannia. I’d much prefer to travel south. Epictetus, you’ve hardly said a word. Didn’t you just come back from Campania?”
“Yes. I took a brief trip down to Herculaneum and Pompeii, and then across the bay to Baiae. I may have found a rather lucrative position in the home of a very wealthy garum maker. His villa is built right next to the manufactory, which stinks of fermenting fish, but the house has a spectacular view of the bay, and the brat I’ll be teaching is not a complete barbarian.”
“But how could you bear to leave the city?” asked Martial.
“Granted, Campania isn’t Roma,” said Epictetus, “but anyone who’s anyone in Roma has a second home on the bay, so interesting people are always coming and going. The social scene is the same as in Roma, but along with dinner parties they have boating excursions and banquets on the beach. Some people live there year-round, like your friend Pliny.”
“You dropped in on him, as I suggested?” said Martial. “Good old Pliny, a bit of a bore but always good for a drop of wine and a bed for the night.”
“I didn’t find him boring at all. In fact, he told me about some rather odd things going on down there.”
“What sort of things?” said Lucius.
“Strange phenomena,” said Epictetus.
“Oh, Pliny loves that sort of thing,” said Martial. “Collects every odd fact in the world and puts them in a book.”
“He’s rather worried about the earthquakes they’ve been having.”
“You’ll have to get used to earthquakes if you move to Campania,” noted Epaphroditus. “There were a couple of big ones back in Nero’s reign. You must remember, Epictetus, you were there with me when Nero performed for the very first time in public, in Neapolis. An earthquake struck the theatre in the middle of his song – the ground surged like a stormy sea – but Nero just kept singing. No one dared to get up! Afterwards, he told me that he considered the earthquake a good omen, because the gods were applauding him by shaking the ground. The moment he was finished, everyone got up and ran for the exits. And no sooner was the place emptied than the whole building collapsed! And what did Nero do? He composed a new song, an ode of thanks to the gods, since they saw fit to stave off the catastrophe until after he finished his performance, and not a single person was injured. Ah, Nero!” Epaphroditus wiped a nostalgic tear from his eye.
Epictetus responded to the story with a brittle smile. Now that he was a freedman, he no longer needed to pretend to share his former master’s fond memories of Nero, but he was discreet enough to keep his opinions about the late emperor to himself. “Yes, earthquakes are common in Campania,” he said, “but lately they’ve been having two or three tremors every day. It was nerve-rattling, let me tell you. And earlier this month, a great many springs and wells in the vicinity ran dry, sources of water that have always been reliable in the past. Pliny says that something must be happening deep in the earth. It has people worried. They say…” He lowered his voice. “They say that gigantic beings have been seen, walking through the cities by night. They skulk in the forests. They even fly through the air.”
“Giants?” said Lucius.
“Titans, one presumes. The gods of Olympus defeated them aeons ago and imprisoned them in Tartarus, the deepest caverns of the underworld. The people in Campania are afraid the Titans have broken free and made their way to the surface. That would explain the tremors and the divergence of the subterranean water channels. These Titans are always seen coming from the direction of Mount Vesuvius.”
“Aren’t there caves at the summit of Vesuvius?” said Lucius. “I know there’s a circular valley with steep sides at the top. The rebel slave Spartacus camped there with his army of gladiators.”
Epaphroditus cocked his head. “You’ve been reading Titus Livius.”
Lucius nodded. “I take down the scrolls I inherited from my father and dip into his history every so often.”
Epictetus continued. “To the locals, Vesuvius is best known for the vineyards and gardens on the slopes. The soil is amazingly fertile. But yes, Spartacus did hide his army there, in the early days of the great slave revolt. It’s a substantial mountain, visible for miles around and far out to sea, but not too difficult to scale because the slope is so gradual. At the top there’s a kind of hollowed-out depression, a desolate, rocky, flat place surrounded by steep, craggy walls – a perfect place for Spartacus to make his camp, since it’s hidden from sight and the walls form a kind of natural parapet all around. It occurs to me that the summit of Vesuvius is not unlike the new amphitheatre over there, if you imagine the amphitheatre set atop a great mountain with the slopes coming up to its rim – though of course the crater atop Vesuvius is much larger. Among the rocks there are fissures that appear to have been singed by flame, as if they once spat fire. You see that sort of phenomenon still active in places all around Campania, but on Vesuvius the fuel long ago gave out and the fissures closed up.”