Allan Massie - Nero_s Heirs

I do not think so. Yet, as Cicero once wrote, 'Malice is cunning, and men's reason is deceitful in working mischief

When Titus took and destroyed Jerusalem, with me by his side, he sent me and a freedman called Fronto to determine the fate of the captives. We picked out the tallest and most beautiful, and reserved them for Titus' triumph in Rome. Most of those who were above the age of seventeen we despatched to work as slaves in the mines of Egypt, where there was a shortage of labour. Others we sent to provincial cities, to make sport in the arenas. The young boys we reserved for the slave market. There was one lovely Jewish girl who begged with many tears for the life of her beloved, a handsome boy with fine features and red-gold hair. Their beauty won my clemency. Fronto and I drew lots; he got the boy and I the girl. She was my mistress for a month. Then one night she disappeared. Her body was discovered on the edge of the camp. She had been raped and her throat cut. The boy, receiving this news, refused all food and starved himself to death, an act which the Jews do not judge as suicide. His elder brother was one of those who walked, laden with chains, in Titus' triumph, a youth of remarkable beauty. 'I think you are troubled in your soul, master,' the boy said.*We have a saying in my country: "Courage is good, but endurance is better.'"

And am I fated to endure, I all but said, seeing that such courage as I once possessed has drained from me. I have become a coward, afraid of my own memories, afraid of Rome's memories also. It seems to me that the most we have done in our mastery of the world is to make a desert and call it peace, and that the only free thing left in this Empire of ours is the wind that now blows chill from the north. I put my hand on the boy's shoulder and did not feel him resist.

'You must return to your sleep,' I said. 'It was wrong in me to have deprived you of it.'

Three cranes rose from the marshes and flew over us, their wings beating slowly. Then they shifted direction and flew into the wind, towards the sea.

You Romans,' the boy said, with a mischievous smile, 'would see an omen there, but they are only birds.'

Can there be a more trying ordeal than to be confined in a city under the government of your enemy while the forces of your ally or leader are campaigning some hundreds of miles away?

That was our position. Vespasian himself had not yet left the East, but the Danube legions had crossed over through the passes of the Pannonian Alps.

They had done so at the urging of Antonius Primus. There had been some who counselled delay. They argued that their forces were inferior in numbers, and advocated holding the mountain passes, but advancing no further till Vespasian, Titus or Mucianus brought up reinforcements. Meanwhile, they said, Vespasian's command of the sea ensured that Italy could be put in a state of siege. But Antonius Primus would have none of this. It was his opinion that delay is dangerous in a civil war. Moreover he despised Vitellius' troops, describing them (I am told) as being 'sunk in sloth, emasculated by the circus, the theatre and the pleasures of the capital'. But he argued that once in camp again, and perhaps strengthened by fresh blood from Gaul and Germany, they would regain their old levels of fitness and become more formidable than they were now. He talked much in this vein and overcame the hesitations of his colleagues.

All this, of course, I learned later in conversation. But you may take it from me, Tacitus, that it is a true account. I suppose you will concoct some stirring speech for Antonius. You will be wise to do so; his own language would be quite unfitted for an elegant History. He was one of the foulest-mouthed brutes I ever encountered. Meanwhile we waited in the city. News was frequent, confused, contradictory, worthy only to be called rumour, never to be trusted. In turbulent times, when no word is to be relied on, men do not stop their ears and choose to believe nothing they are told. On the contrary, they believe anything, the opposite today to what they held incontrovertible truth yesterday.

Since Vitellius had learned of Vespasian's challenge, and had despatched his army to war, Domitian thought it no longer safe to show himself in public. Indeed, he scarcely left his aunt's house, even to visit the barber, and felt himself in danger there, too. He talked often, and nervously, of seeking some more secure hiding-place, either beyond the city or in one of its lowest quarters, taking a room in some noisome and criminal alley which the agents of the State did not dare to penetrate. But the fear of the indignities and dangers to which he might be exposed in such a place restrained him. Some nights he drowned his fear in wine; then, in the morning, shaking – for heavy drinking always disordered his stomach and his nerves – his apprehension redoubled. It seemed terrible to him that the night before he had put himself in a condition which would have made it impossible to attempt to escape his enemies. Titus would have found his fears contemptible; I pitied him. He felt my pity, and resented it.

For my part, I continued to lead as regular a life as was possible in the disordered and fevered city. I judged that if I was in danger no concealment could save me; and that I might be in less danger if I evinced no fear or uncertainty – sure signs of guilt. So I frequented the barber, the library and the baths. I attended dinner-parties and theatres and never missed the races at the Circus. When Vitellius was there, he paid little attention to what was happening in the arena, though he was known to be a fervent supporter of the 'Blues', but remained in the rear of his box, and gave himself up to eating and drinking. Yet, when he did stagger to the front and show himself to the crowd, he was greeted with lusty cheers, which were prompted -it seemed to me – by a genuine enthusiasm. The mob is fickle, but Vitellius then enjoyed a popularity denied the Emperor since Nero was a young man. His one public care was to lavish donations on the people and arrange for free banquets. Someone remarked that Rome was in a bad way since the citizens were now habitually as drunk as the Emperor. It was a clever remark, also true, and I could wish it had been mine. But I have never, Tacitus, claimed credit for the bon mots or epigrams of others.

The mystery of these days was that Flavius Sabinus retained his office now that there was open war between his brother and Vitellius. I could not understand then how he contrived this, and I cannot enlighten you now. Some said that he was playing a double game. Domitian even went so far as to suggest that his uncle was guilty of treachery; but the boy was in his cups at the time.

Since I know that, if I do not offer some explanation, you will badger me for one in your next letter and, with your admirable pertinacity, refuse to believe that I cannot supply one, I shall advance a possible reason. But it is only a guess, based on no information.

Vitellius, I hazard, had never himself sought the Empire. It had been deposited on him by Caecina and Valens, and he had been too weak – too dazzled perhaps – to decline the perilous honour. But he knew himself to be unfitted for the task. He could not believe he could sustain the role. Brought up in the court, having attended on Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius and Nero, he knew – none better – the instability of Empire; he knew himself also to be inferior, one way or another, to all those he had served, often ignobly. There had doubtless been moments during the advance on Rome when he was carried away by the magnificence of his elevation. But even the most vile of remarks attributed to him – that nothing smelled more sweetly in his nostrils than the corpse of a dead rebel – suggest to me a man forcing himself to play a part which he had not rehearsed and was incapable of bringing off. Vitellius was spendthrift, greedy, lecherous, cowardly, dishonest, without principles of morality; but nothing previously had suggested that he took delight in cruelty. (Or so my mother told me.)