Allan Massie - Nero_s Heirs

'We got into the villa. But that, too, was deserted, except for Phaon's wife and daughters. Nero didn't even look at them. He sank down on a couch, saying, "This is the end, there's no way out for poor Nero now. Have they really declared me a public enemy? Poor Nero, poor Nero. And I had such wonderful plans." Phaon kept his head. He urged Nero to make for the coast, where (he said) they would be sure to find a boat. "Don't give up." We all told him not to give up. I don't know why.

'Then someone came in to say that he had seen a troop of cavalry approaching. Nero picked up two daggers and tested their points. "How ugly and vulgar my life has become," he said, but still couldn't bring himself to… "I'm such a coward. Set me an example, Phaon," he said. But Phaon shook his head. He didn't see any reason why he should kill himself to encourage Nero. By this time I was in tears, which pleased the Emperor. So was Acte, the slave-girl who, alone of his women, really loved him. "This is nice," he said, "someone at least is going to mourn for me. Someone at least is sorry to see me in this state. But it's no credit to me that I can't… Come on, Nero," he said, speaking as if we weren't there, "be a man, play the man." Then he held one of the daggers against his throat and began to sob, and his secretary Epaphroditus stepped forward and, taking his hand that held the dagger, thrust it into his neck. He gurgled, still tried to speak, lifted his head and managed to say, "What an artist… so great an artist to die like this." Epaphroditus took the other dagger and stabbed him again, also in the throat.

'It was just then, while he was still alive, that the officer commanding the troop of cavalry found us. He looked at Nero, and said, "I'd orders to take him alive, but it's better like this." Acte threw herself at his feet, sobbing. She caught hold of his legs, and said that Nero had begged her not to let them cut his head off, but have him buried in one piece. I don't know when he made this request. I hadn't heard him say this. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. I wanted to close them, he seemed to be looking at me, and I couldn't. Acte then begged them to let her take charge of the body. The officer said it was nothing to do with him. He'd been told to take Nero alive, but since he was dead, it didn't matter to him. "I'd throw him in a ditch myself," he said. Then he hurried away. I suppose he wanted to be first with the news, and get some sort of reward. As for me, I couldn't stay, it was all too horrible. But I've been afraid all day that someone would recognise me as Nero's boy, and… So that's why I've come here, you were the only person, milady, I could turn to. You won't let them do anything to me, will you?' 'Of course I won't,' my mother said.

She was full of pity. She told me when she had put Sporus to bed, that he was a poor abused child, though of course he was older than I was myself.

She kept him in our apartment for a few days. Then one night when I returned home he had gone. For a long time she wouldn't tell me where. Eventually I learned that she had sent him to the house of one of her cousins in Calabria. Later I believe he kept a brothel in Corinth. I don't suppose there was much else he could have been expected to do. Though my mother was ignorant of the fact, I have reason to suppose that Sporus had hidden some of the jewels he had got from Nero and at some point retrieved them, thus financing his enterprise. In my opinion, he had earned the jewels.

I confess to having framed my last letter in such a way as to irritate Tacitus. The sympathy expressed for Sporus will infuriate him indeed. He hates everything that smacks of degeneracy, and talks sometimes as if poor things like Sporus are responsible for their unhappy condition. It's too ridiculous. Actually, for all his gifts, his History will suffer from his lack of imagination. He can never put himself in another's place.

Still, enough of Nero; a wretched tawdry fellow when all is said and done. One last comment is appropriate and I must remember to pass it on to Tacitus in my next letter: Nero was a liar to the last, claiming that he died an artist. The trouble was he was never an artist, he was merely artistic. Now for Galba. How much shall I tell him?

Quite a lot, because Galba has always been by way of being a hero of my friend Tacitus. In later years, when we were together in the Senate, I have heard him speak of Galba's nobility and of the great service he did the State before he won the imperial crown. He has even said that, given the chance, and better fortune, Galba would have made a great Emperor, being at heart a Republican and a respecter of the Senate. He was extremely displeased when I remarked that everyone would have thought Galba capable of Empire – if he had never been Emperor.

All the same, though he disliked what I said, he couldn't deny its truth. I even saw him make a note of my words. It will be amusing if he repeats them in his History. Not, of course, that I care how much he steals from me. The more he steals the better his History, and I have no desire for literary renown. What would I do with it here?

Galba then: just the sort of jerk Tacitus would admire. Galba was immensely proud of his ancestry: so proud that he embellished it and, on a public inscription, traced it back to Jupiter on his father's side and to Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete, on his mother's. I have never had patience with such nonsense. His great-grandfather was one of Caesar's murderers, joining the conspiracy because he had been passed over for the consulship… The future Emperor's grandfather wrote a huge unreadable work of history, but I can't recall the subject. And his father was a hunchback. The story went round that when he was first with his future wife – I think her name was Achaica and she was descended from that Lucius Memmius who disgracefully sacked Corinth, destroying much of historical and artistic interest – he stripped to the waist, revealing his hump and declaring that he would never hide anything from her. If he kept this vow he was unique among husbands…

The future Emperor was born some ten years before the death of Augustus. He had an elder brother who became a bankrupt and cut his throat because Tiberius denied him a provincial command which he didn't deserve, but had hoped to use to mend his fortunes by screwing the provincials in the fine old Republican fashion, as practised by that arch-hypocrite Marcus Brutus. Galba liked to put it about that when he was a small boy the Emperor Augustus had prophesied a great future for him, even that he would eventually be Emperor himself. This was fanciful; everyone knows that Augustus was determined to keep the succession in his own family and, in any case, always carefully described himself as Princeps, not Emperor, a title which (he said) had a purely military association.

There were signs that Galba was destined for great things, all the same. When his grandfather, the historian, was sacrificing one day, an eagle swooped down and snatched the entrails from his hands, carrying them off to an oak tree well laden with acorns. The hunchback said this portended great honour for the family. The historian was more sceptical: 'Yes,' he reputedly said, 'on the day a mule foals!' Later Galba let it be known that a mule had foaled the day he heard of the Gallic rebellion led by Vindex, and decided this gave him a chance to aim for Empire himself. This story was widely believed – such is credulity.

Somebody also once told Tiberius that Galba would eventually be Emperor, when an old man. 'That doesn't worry me a bit,' the real Emperor replied.

All this is by the way and I've no doubt Tacitus already knows these stories and will repeat them if it suits him.

One reason why my friend so admires Galba is that he saw him as an exemplar of old-fashioned Republican virtue. For instance, he was delighted to learn that Galba followed the old practice of summoning all his household slaves, morning and evening, to say good-day and good-night to him. A perfectly pointless exercise, if you ask me.