Allan Massie: Nero_s Heirs

Nero, he told me, hated soldiers. He was not only jealous of any who had ever achieved military renown; he both feared and detested them. 'It can't last,' Titus said. 'Rome is its army first and foremost, and it is impossible that the Empire should be governed by a man that the legions have learned to despise.' He smiled and ran his hand through my curls to fondle my cheek, then let his fingers dance along the line of my lips. You won't talk of this, will you, now? It would be as much as my life is worth. In speaking to you in this manner I am indeed putting my life in your hands. But then where could it better be?' I nibbled his finger like a pet dog. One day that summer Titus sought permission from my mother, to whom he was unfailingly courteous, that I might accompany him for a few days to a villa near Laurentum which belonged to his uncle Flavius Sabinus, who then held the post of Prefect of the City. My mother, who knew and approved of the passionate friendship between me and Titus, naturally consented, though she declined the suggestion that she, too, should accompany us.

'No,' she said, 'such a visit would recall happier days to me, and disturb the accommodation with misfortune which I have made.' My revered mother, for all her virtues, was inclined to take pleasure in her misery.

'Don't you think you should invite Domitian, too?' I said. 'He'll be awfully put out if you don't.'

'Not he. My little brother has already accepted an invitation from his admirer, Claudius Pollio, to join him for a few days hunting in the Alban Hills. It seems that my brother would rather kill wild animals than enjoy the beauties of the seaside and the pleasure it can offer.'

The villa was indeed beautiful. I need not describe it, for you know it well, my dear Tacitus, since it was later bought by our friend Pliny and you have often been a guest there yourself.

So you will recall – though with less immediate pleasure than I do – that portico beyond the garden, that looks out on to the sea which lies below it, separated by a sandy beach and a rocky hillside covered with juniper and thyme. On the terrace before the portico we lay one afternoon after bathing in an air fragrant with the scent of violets. We had lunched on prawns, caught that morning, cheese, olives and the first peaches of the season, and had drunk a flask of Falernian. Titus was in his most affectionate mood, and then we slept a little.

When we woke the sun had moved round and a cool breeze blew from the sea.

'I didn't bring you here only for pleasure,' Titus said, 'but because there is nowhere I know where I think more clearly than in this charming place, and I wish to share my thoughts with you. You are only a boy, but you will soon be a man and will enter on the world which I myself am only beginning to understand.

'I have said to you before that Nero's rule cannot last, any more than Caligula's did. One year? Two? Five? No more than that, surely. He is despised by the soldiers and the aristocracy alike. He spends his time in pursuits which, while they might be thought tolerable if indulged in by a private citizen, are quite ridiculous in an Emperor: acting, singing, taking part in chariot-races. You can't wonder that I think him a buffoon.

'But he is a bloody-minded buffoon. He is a coward, and all cowards are dangerous. You, kid, belong by birth to the highest rank of the old aristocracy, as I don't. There is scarcely a single man of your birth who does not view Nero with contempt. They know how to get rid of Emperors. How many of those who have ruled the state have died natural deaths?' 'Augustus himself,' I replied. Tiberius perhaps.'

'Exactly. Pompey was murdered. Julius Caesar also, Gaius Caligula, and in my opinion Claudius. And none of them was as despised as Nero. So he can't last.'

I looked out to sea. It was calm, deep blue, untroubled. If I had been alone I might have fancied I could hear the Sirens sing. I nibbled a stem of grass. Titus ruffled my hair.

'Last week,' he said, 'I was made party to a conspiracy. At least I think I was. Hints were dropped. There were many "if onlys" and "do you thinks". I turned away. Why did I do that, kid?'

'Do you want an answer?' I said. 'Or is the question addressed to yourself? And why are you telling me this? Isn't it dangerous? Dangerous, I mean, to speak of these things.'

'Nero murdered my friend, Britannicus,' he said. 'Nero has no children, brothers or nephews. Do you realise what that means? It means that when he is… disposed of, as he will be, somehow, the Empire will be a prize to be won. The secret of Empire will be revealed: that Emperors can be made elsewhere than in Rome. Emperors will be made by the legions. That is why I turned away from an aristocratic conspiracy. It's the wrong way to go about things, if we seek stability. Don't look like that. None of this is over your head.' I watched a lizard skim up the wall of the terrace.

'My mother's father,' I said, 'was cousin to the Emperor Tiberius. She always says he would have liked to restore the Republic'

'If I crushed that lizard with a rock,' Titus said, 'could you restore it to life?'

'I shouldn't think so, except by magic, if such magic is to be found…'

'Even Tiberius discovered that the Republic was as dead as that lizard would be then.' 'If the Emperor is to be made elsewhere than in Rome,' I said, 'then whoever commands the best legions will wear the purple. How many legions has your father, Titus?' Very few. At present.'

'So there's not much chance of him becoming Emperor, and then you succeeding him,' I said. 'Rather a pity. You'd make a wonderful Emperor.' 'I'm glad you think so, too.'

'Well, naturally. And if you were Emperor, or even heir to the Empire, then I could hope to restore the fortunes of my family, couldn't I?' 'It would be my first concern,' Titus said. 'I think we should sleep on that.' 'Sleep?' You may dismiss this conversation, Tacitus, as a sort of verbal love-making, to excite us both. As indeed it did, very pleasingly. I can understand why you should do so. I was only a boy, and Titus was scarcely a grown man, though older, as he reminded me, than Octavian Caesar was when he embarked on the great adventure that in time made him Augustus and Master of the World. But you would be mistaken. Oh, I admit that Titus was showing off, to impress me. But there was more to it than that. He had sniffed the wind, and I am certain now that during this visit to Rome, when he had talked at length with his uncle, the Prefect of the City, and been admitted to at least the fringes of a company of disaffected nobles, he had caught a glimpse of his future. He had seen – what I could not then have credited – that his father Vespasian, however lowly his birth and comparatively humble his present position, could not be excluded from the struggle for Empire which he foresaw. Vespasian was, after all, a general whom the soldiers trusted; and there were few such left. And before Titus left Rome, to return to his father, he had done two things: he had taken soundings and estimated the strength and purpose of the opposition to Nero; and he had commissioned me to send him reports of what I learned of happenings in the city. When I protested that I was still a boy and therefore unlikely to learn of great events anything more than was the gossip of the market-place, he smiled and said, 'I think better of you than that.' He even taught me a simple cipher in which to write to him. So you see he was serious.

There are things I choose not to write to my friend Tacitus. I did not, for instance, send all that last letter, but only an edited version of the first part. Nor could I reveal the nature of my congress with Titus, which still returns to me in dreams wherein I cross the threshold of the perfection of all physical delights before clouds roll up and all is lost to memory.