Bruce Macbain - Roman Games

“Have you seen many cases, then?”

“Well, actually, no. One doesn’t come across these things every day. And so I would be most grateful, sir, if you would permit me to examine the lady while she is at rest.”

“Saving her modesty, of course,” Pliny warned.

“Oh, absolutely. I will avert my eyes; I can tell a great deal by touch alone. I’ll just get my kit and then if you’ll leave us for a few minutes?”

A quarter of an hour later, the doctor emerged, frowning in puzzlement. In his hand he held a contraption such as Pliny had never seen before. It was made of bronze and comprised four prongs whose distance from each other could be adjusted by means of a screw-threaded handle and crossbar mechanism. Soranus set it on the table between them. “A speculum of my own design,” he explained. “I call it the dioptra. It allows me to look through the cervix.”

To Pliny’s eye it looked like some dreadful instrument of torture. “You examined her with that thing!”

The physician looked a bit sheepish. “Well, just a peek, sir. I mean, in the interests of science. And I can state with confidence that the lady’s womb is precisely where it should be. In one way, however, the traditional wisdom has proven to be true. It’s no wonder she suffers from hysteria. It’s a very common effect of sexual deprivation in a passionate woman. It is, in short, a virgin’s disease. And this lady, sir, is a virgin, astonishing as that sounds.”

Pliny felt his heart flutter. But hadn’t he already guessed?

“Well, ah, I mean, was a virgin,” the doctor blinked rapidly, “that is, I fear I inadvertently did her a little damage. I mean, how was I to know?”

“You what? Out! Out of my house, you butcher!”

Pliny, on his feet, his hands balled into fists, watched the physician’s disappearing back. He felt as though all the air had suddenly been let out of him.

“Husband, I heard you shouting.” Calpurnia tottered unsteadily toward him. “How can our dear Amatia be a virgin if she is the mother of five daughters?”

Pliny could only shake his head silently. The implications were just beginning to sink in. Amatia and Verpa. He tried to erase the picture from his mind but couldn’t. A shudder of dread -something from deep in the racial memory-ran through him. A Vestal Virgin polluted by man’s touch and by death. “Go back to bed, dear.” “But-” “Go back to bed!”

Calpurnia’s door had hardly closed when Amatia’s opened. She held on to the doorposts, her face drained of blood, her hair down across her face, and gazed at him with eyes of stone. “What-have-you-done to-me?”

There was no turning back now.

Pliny swallowed hard. “I know who you are, Purissima. I know what you did. With a heavy heart, I charge you with the murder of Sextus Ingentius Verpa. If it were up to me, I would award you the Civic Crown for patriotism, but the Law thinks otherwise. It’s all been a pack of lies, hasn’t it? The family in Lugdunum, the pilgrimage to Isis…I am an officer of the State. I must go to the Prefecture and tell the prefect what I know. He will report to the emperor.” She took a step forward, swaying on her feet, and clutched his arm. “Wait, please!” He pulled away from her. “I warn you, you’re playing a dangerous game. I’m not a fool.” “No indeed. You’re much cleverer than I thought. Too clever for me.

“Before Iatrides died, he spoke the name of Clemens. This touches on the emperor’s family-on the emperor himself. What is it all about? Why have you been hiding in my house? You have lied to me and my wife, who adores you. I have never been more angry than at this moment.”

“ You are angry?” she shot back. “Your anger is a small thing compared to mine! I have nothing to say to you-and very soon it won’t matter anyway.”

“Then I will go to the Prefecture at once.” He turned from her.

“No, stay a minute! Whatever you do, you mustn’t hate me. I-I want to tell you something about myself. Perhaps it will answer one of your questions.” She was playing for time. Surely, by now the final steps were in motion. She would say anything to keep him here. She sat down and motioned him to sit beside her.

Pliny hesitated.

“I was six years old when I was taken. Without spot or blemish, as sacral law demands. It was in the first year of Nero’s reign. He must have been no more than seventeen. I can still remember that pudgy face and those insolent eyes. He thought the whole thing was a huge joke. When he called me ‘Beloved’ according to the ritual formula, he licked his lips and smirked at me. I was too young to understand.

“The Vestalis Maxima in those days was a horrid, shriveled old woman who smelled of decay. But there was another Vestal there, only a few years older than me and she became like an older sister to me. Her name was Cornelia. I loved her from the first and, in time, we became everything to each other. Everything. The years passed happily for us. I never missed the “world.” I had everything I wanted within the small round world of the temple. And then six years ago catastrophe struck us. The tyrant Domitian conceived a hatred for our Order. Three Vestals were falsely charged with unchastity and forced to commit suicide. I never dreamed it could happen to Cornelia, who by then was the Vestalis Maxima-a woman of nearly fifty, who had not known a man in her whole life, who had never loved anyone but me…” She turned away, her shoulders working with grief.

Pliny said nothing. He knew all about the Chief Vestal, Cornelia-or, at least, what the Senate had been told: how she had been caught in flagrante with her lover. Pliny had stayed away from the execution, but everyone in Rome knew what had happened. Cornelia was bound and gagged and carried in a closed litter through the Forum to the Colline Gate. The crowd drew back from the cortege in shocked silence. Since a Vestal’s blood could not be shed, she would die by suffocation in an airless underground chamber with a bed, a loaf of bread, and a jug of water. Rome hadn’t seen this ancient penalty exacted in generations.

“We were made to watch,” Amatia continued. “While the other pontiffs turned away, the tyrant dragged her to the lip of the chamber. She cried out and prayed to Vesta although her head was muffled with a cloth. The public executioner set her foot on the ladder and forced her down. Her dress caught and she tried to free it. The executioner reached out his hand to help her but she shrank back. She would not let her chaste body be touched by the foulness of death. Then they pulled up the ladder and shoveled earth over the opening until it was level with the ground. I felt my throat constrict as hers must have, felt black death cover my eyes. They say I fainted and began to thrash. My hysteria dates from that moment.

“The night she died I tried to hang myself. My faithful Virgins prevented me-and they were right, my life was not mine to throw away. As the next oldest I, Amatia, was forced to take her place as Vestalis Maxima. And I have tried to be everything to my girls, my daughters, as much as if they sprang from my own womb. Just as she was to me.

“But from that day on I swore vengeance on Domitian, and I have waited for the moment of my revenge. Waited six years while I stood beside him at all our holy rites, while I smiled and bowed my head to him, deferred to him and praised him-that murderer of all I loved! The effort of dissembling has worn me down to nearly nothing. We Vestals could do nothing by ourselves, but when we learned that others were leading the way and invited us to help them, we-I-eagerly accepted. The younger Vestals know nothing about this, and I have no living family; they all died in the ruins of Pompeii, where I was born. And that, Gaius Plinius, is all I will tell you.”