Allan Massie - Nero_s Heirs

Not knowing my informant, I had no means of judging how much of what he said was true, and how much was spiteful rumour. But it was remarkable that he should have been so ready to tell me what, if I were to divulge it, would certainly lead to his arrest and execution. I asked him why he was so bold.

'I care for nothing,' he said. Vitellius betrayed my two sons to Nero's lustful vengeance, and now I look forward only to death. But first I should like to spit in this so-called Emperor's face.'

'Why should you suppose that this Asiaticus, who must owe a debt to Vitellius, should tell me anything to his discredit?'

'Because it is impossible for anyone to speak of such a thing as Vitellius without revealing him for what he is.'

I confess I was tempted to seek out this Asiaticus. It was not that I hoped to learn anything. Already I knew as much of Vitellius as I cared to know and it was, in any case, improbable that the degraded creature described to me could tell me anything of value. My motive -or rather, the inclination which I felt draw me to his tavern-brothel -was of a still lower sort. All my life I have known in myself an impulse towards acts which in anticipation excite me and which in retrospect fill me with self-loathing. I could picture so vividly the type of women and boys who would frequent the tavern, and the knowing leer with which this Asiaticus would make my choice available to me. I saw my hands push a tunic away from yielding flesh, and felt myself thrust at a creature I despised only less than I despised myself for wanting it. My lust was sharpened by the thought of my terrible dream and by the doubts it had, however absurdly, inspired concerning Domatilla's virtue. I held the image of my lust in action before my inward eye till my balls ached.

The memory of that moment rises sharp and exciting at a distance of more than thirty years. The rain spat from the cobbles and a north wind from the mountains cut through the city. Darkness fell.

The wind blows outside my villa now, from the waste plains to the far north, a barbarian wind. Balthus lies among the hounds before the stove. His soft boy's legs show their inviting nakedness to me. In sleep his hand has crept under his tunic. I think his dreams are not of the Christian chastity of which he, barely comprehensibly, has spoken. This religion of which he has told me much perplexes me. It brings him peace. I can't doubt that. And yet it is absurd. Its greatest prize would appear to be renunciation of the world we inhabit. You might think this would appeal to me in my fallen state. But I have not renounced the world; the world has rejected me. When I talk to him about the desire for power and the struggle for honour which, to my mind and in my experience, informs all men's conduct in affairs of state, he listens, with his soft inviting mouth a little open, his red lips quivering with, perhaps, disgust, and shakes his head. It makes no sense to him. I have tried to explain to him what we mean by virtue – that determination to be whatever becomes a man – and he sighs and says, 'Master, I fear you have lived your life in the Kingdom of the Wicked.' He speaks, curiously, with affection. I think he is indeed now fond of me, perhaps because he is grateful for my restraint in regard to him.

Yet at times it seems to me that his affection springs from something other than this gratitude; that he sees something good in me which I cannot recognise, and which, it may be, is far removed from what I understand by virtue.

One day, he said to me, 'Master, I think you are not always far from Christ.'

I would have whipped any other slave or freedman who had the impertinence to join my name to that of a Jewish agitator who, it seems, impersonated a god, like those deluded beings who, in the years of which I write, presented themselves as Nero escaped from his enemies and come to regain his throne. They were all imposters, madmen – for who else would wish to be Nero?

When earlier I read that last chapter of my memoirs (one which I certainly will not send to Tacitus) aloud to the boy, for he now has enough Latin to understand even elegant prose and no longer merely the dog-Latin of the camp and tavern, he said: 'You lived in a most horrible and wicked world.' I could not deny its horror. But I said: 'I write of the world as it is.' 'But not as it need be,' he said. 'As it has always been,' I replied.

Then I told him something, of which I may write later, of my experiences in the war in Judaea. For these Christians, among whom he numbers himself, are in origin a Jewish sect, and the cruelties, barbarities and lust for self-destruction which the Jews revealed in that war speak of no better world. I hoped to hurt him by my harsh honesty. Why?

Is it because I do not care to see anyone contented? Is it because it seems absurd that a boy such as Balthus, enslaved, mine, even now, to do with as I choose, should seem to have attained a serenity denied me, a serenity which this act of memory in which I am engaged continues to deny me. My woman has, of course, a brute contentment. For her the affairs of the house and of our children are sufficient. But I have never envied her as I envy, to my angry amazement, this boy.

One day he said to me: 'Master, I have heard you rail at the Fate which drove you from your position in the world, and landed you on this barren shore. But it seems to me, so wicked is the world in which you strove, that God has granted you a great blessing, by removing you from it, and giving you the chance, in this remote spot, to make your peace with yourself, and so redeem your soul. Master, I beg you, let it go. Let your resentments slip from you and be carried out to sea as a river bears all that is thrown in it – all foul things – away.'

His smile was very sweet, his eyes appealing. I could have flogged him, with pleasure.

It is necessary now, Tacitus, to speak of what was happening in the East, even as we awaited Vitellius in Rome. Of course, what I now have to relate is of a different order from what has gone before, since I cannot serve as an eye-witness. You will have also other sources of information, which you may indeed prefer to mine. That's up to you. I would however assure you that what I have to say is authentic, in as much as any one-sided version of a story may be that. You will understand that my informant was Titus. You will therefore make allowances for the likelihood that he gave to me the version of events, and the analysis of the situation, which he would have liked to see accepted by historians such as yourself. But you will also understand that even so partisan a version has its value; and I have no doubt you will set it against other accounts which you will receive from your other witnesses and informants, some of which may well contradict what I have now to relate. So be it.

As you know, the Eastern Generals had meditated an assault on the Empire even while Otho was alive. Now, for a little, they hesitated. The delay irked Titus. He understood however that his father was held from action, not on account of fear or lack of ambition, but because it was his habit to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of any proposed course of action. Vespasian was sixty. Some men grow bolder, others more cautious, in old age. Vespasian had never been rash. It was natural to him to hesitate now. He had good reason for caution. In the first place, he knew the quality of the German legions, some of which he had himself commanded. It impressed him that, with all the strength of Otho's defensive position, Vitellius' men had had the resolution to overcome him. They had shown no disinclination to slay their fellow-citizens in a civil war. He could not be certain that his own troops would show a similar lack of scruple. Moreover, Vitellius now had the advantage of the defensive position which Otho had so rashly thrown away. Though Vespasian had no respect for Vitellius, he knew Caecina and Valens to be men of ability. He knew, too, that the fortune of war is never settled, its outcome never to be exactly calculated in advance. He had struggled through many difficulties to attain his present honourable position; he was loth to hazard all on the throw of the dice.