Allan Massie - Nero_s Heirs

Domatilla was fond of him, distressed by his evident unhappiness. She felt sorry for him because he lacked Titus' charm and, as she said, seemed in need of her protection himself.

'It's difficult,' she said. 'I seek to protect him while also wanting to enjoy myself, and he would deny me any enjoyment except in his company. It's not easy.'

Domitian also resented the fact that he had as yet no share in the improving fortunes of his family. Vespasian had been made Governor of the province of Judaea, where Jewish extremists had revolted against our Empire. The origins of the revolt are obscure, as indeed are most matters concerning that turbulent and disagreeable people. It began, apparently, with a dispute between Jews and Greeks in the city of Caesarea. The Greeks attacked the Jewish quarter, intending to drive them out of the city; the usual sort of ethnic violence you get when distinct communities live cheek by jowl. The Greeks' initial success stimulated a response, even though the respectable element among the Jews – the better-born and the religious leaders – tried to restrain the fanatics. They failed. Our garrison in Jerusalem was massacred. Then, when Cestius Gallus, Proconsul in Syria, marched against the city, he was alarmed by the strength of the Jewish resistance, lost his nerve, and ordered a retreat which turned into a shameful rout.

It was at this time that Vespasian was put in command, recalled from obscurity. Nero chose him for three reasons. The first was his low birth, which made Nero suppose that no success won by Vespasian could make him a rival, since he had no independent support among the nobility; Nero could not conceive that they would ever submit to one so low-born as Vespasian. Second, as I have mentioned, Nero had always made Vespasian the butt of his impertinent and indeed adolescent wit, and quite liked him for that reason. Finally, the choice was limited. He had ordered the greatest general of our time, Corbulo, to kill himself a few months previously.

Titus was delighted by his father's appointment. He was certain it would be the making of his own career. He wrote to me in a tone of great enthusiasm, then remarked that, while Domitian would be eager to join his father in Judaea, this was not a proposal to be encouraged. 'Domitian disturbs him,' he wrote, 'though I don't know exactly why. Perhaps you have some inkling. You know my little brother better than I do, and I respect your opinion. But do what you can to soothe his feelings. Perhaps you could suggest that my father will rely on him to send reports of how things stand in the city. You will realise this suggestion is ridiculous. Father depends on the information his brother Flavius Sabinus sends him. But if you can pull this particular wool over Domitian's eyes, then you will be doing me a service -which is of course your greatest pleasure, isn't it? The fact is that Domitian is not ready for military life. He may never indeed be suited to command.'

Naturally I did as he asked, but I failed to convince Domitian. He saw that the reassurances I offered were the veriest nonsense, and guessed that I was his brother's mouthpiece.

That's what Titus told you to tell me,' he said. 'He's determined to keep me in the shade. Well, he shan't succeed.'

All the same, despite this petulance, it was in the shade that he remained. He became more moody and more disagreeable, sometimes going for days without speaking. 'I think he's forgotten how to smile,' Domatilla said.

Only my mother seemed to understand him. She said he was like a bird with a broken wing. She felt sorry for anyone who had set his heart on something beyond his reach. When he visited us, he relaxed in my mother's company. It may even be that he felt a disinterested affection for her.

I am weary and shall resume this letter later. But meanwhile the messenger has come to inform me that the boat is about to sail. So I shall send this now, as evidence of my willingness to help you -though I fear you will find it inadequate.

Tacitus will be irritated that I sent him only an extract from Titus' letter. There were sentences too intimate for me to wish to disclose them to his disapproving scrutiny. But why I should wish Tacitus to think better of me than I think of him, especially since we shall never meet again, baffles me. Yet it is so.

He is so suspicious that he may even think I have concocted that letter. But I have always hoarded correspondence and, though some has gone missing, much remains. When I was condemned to exile, I arranged to have several boxes of documents forwarded to me by way of my bankers.

1 do not know how much that is private and not public I can bring myself to reveal to Tacitus.

I have no reason to protect Domitian's memory, and yet I am reluctant to tell him all that I know about the late Emperor: for instance, that he once, at least, sought to bed his sister Domatilla. This happened later, when she was a married woman. I didn't hear of it at the time – I was soldiering in the East. But it was soon after my return that she told me – in her bed, as it happens. Since her confession came post-coitum, after our own act of adultery, when her hair lay on my damp shoulder, and her flesh was pressed against mine, I did not doubt her. I could not then doubt either that she had refused him, though, jealousy working in its crab-like fashion, I was subsequently for months tormented by the suspicion that she had not done so, but had lied to me, even while lying with me. And this suspicion was magnified by the vivid memory of a dream or nightmare I had had in the year of terror which Tacitus has asked me to recall. Was that dream a premonition? The thought tormented me or, rather, I tormented myself by indulging it.

But, at the moment that she told me of her brother's criminal assault – with her soft lips mouthing my ear – I felt pity for Domitian rather than indignation. That he should have been so driven by incestuous lust, and yet denied what I had just enjoyed!

Will Tacitus, or rather would Tacitus, for I shall not tell him, believe that? I don't think so. Human nature is too complicated for the schematic ways of historians.

The truth is that Tacitus will present men and women as if they are capable of being understood. There is no other way of writing history perhaps. It is the historian's impulse to make sense of what happens. But can the sense they create be true to experience? I think not. Does any man really understand even himself? And if that is beyond us, how can one pretend to understand other people whom we know only by observation and intermittent congress?

Of course I did not think like this when I was young. In those days I had few doubts, and was confident of conquering the world, and winning love where I chose. I had been certain that Titus loved me. Now that I had, at the age of seventeen, assumed the toga virilis and had entered on adult life, that love properly fell away, or rather was transformed into, as I thought, the friendship between equals, formed of mutual respect and affection, which Roman noblemen have always valued as the foundation of social and political life. Or so I told myself, Titus being absent in the East.

Moreover, I was at that stage when the developing soul turns its most ardent and compelling desires from the immature passions of boyhood, characteristically addressed to others of one's own sex, to the other and more mysterious opposite. So, as I watched Domatilla push her hair away from her eyes with a rapid, unconscious flickering of her long pale fingers, and saw Titus reflected in that gesture, I sensed that he had been the forerunner, and told myself that Domatilla was the love of my life, that perfect other half, union with whom would bring me that harmonious joining of souls which Plato affirms is the supreme experience and the goal of love.