György Spiró - Captivity

Narcissus read through the completed text.

“You’ve got a nice hand,” he said. “I owe you.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Uri. “If I had not had this to do, I would have been bored stiff. Though when it comes down to it Democritus would have been unlikely to agree that ‘a person who tramples on the rights of another is unhappier than the person whom he tramples on…’”

Narcissus grinned but said nothing; nor did Uri elaborate. Even so the two of them, Claudius’s slave and the Jewish freedman, were able to exchange their opinions of Claudius’s lofty excuse for the rights trampling practiced by his nephew, the emperor.

The evening was drawing in by the time Philo and Claudius surfaced. They set to eating the food that the servants had been continually preparing. Claudius introduced Philo to those who were present, whose number had been boosted by the party which returned from the baths. Philo spoke with unfeigned admiration of Claudius’s latest work, an eight-volume history of Carthage, which, he said, deserved the most careful attention. Claudius behaved modestly, saying that the history of Etruria that he was working on was more important; he was currently planning for it to stretch to fifteen or twenty volumes, nine of which had already been written.

Narcissus slipped into his hands the speech, and Claudius glanced at it.

“Very nice,” he said.

Narcissus pointed out Uri:

“He transcribed it.”

“Nifty!” said Claudius. “Who is he?”

Philo piped up.

“He’s Gaius Theodorus,” he said. “A Roman citizen and my right-hand man. I introduced him this morning.”

“Oh, yes!” said Claudius. “It’s easy when you have this sort of assistance.”

“He was a great help to us in Alexandria,” said Philo emotionally. “Along with us he suffered the Bane from start to finish…”

Uri flushed in anger.

“It must have been terrible,” said Claudius. “I disapprove of people killing one another. Let people be killed by wild animals.”

That evening the alabarch came with Marcus and Tija, as Claudius had sent for them.

By then there were around fifty people eating, drinking, and chatting in the atrium, the nearby rooms, and the garden.

Messalina had finally gotten dressed, and many people paid court to her; she laughed heartily, her massive bosoms heaving. Claudius got plastered and sobered up a second time over.

Messalina was rubbing herself against an ugly, pudgy old woman, who in turn was pressed close to an old man, Appius — all three of them repulsive creatures.

“That is Messalina’s mother,” Narcissus whispered into Uri’s ear, as he looked at the trio aghast. “Not long ago she was wed to Appius Silanus, whose son Lucius is betrothed to Messalina’s daughter Octavia…”

A lanky man passed by, loudly joking with several youngsters and a couple of servants in tow.

“Livius Geminius, a senator,” Narcissus said. “He was given one million sesterces by the emperor for swearing an oath that he had seen Drusilla ascending unto the heavens and conversing with the gods.”

“That’s nothing new,” Uri growled, racking his brain to remember. “Yes, I read that Deified Livia paid the same amount to Numerius Atticus, who had seen Divus Augustus ascend to the heavens…”

“That’s a good memory you have,” said Narcissus in acknowledgment.

After being made to vomit, Claudius was immediately hungry, so while Narcissus applied a poultice of cold water to his head Pallas set before him some scrambled eggs.

At that moment, the alabarch and his sons took their places at the dinner table.

“My dear Alexander!” Claudius cried. “Why don’t you move into the house across the way? It’s standing there empty! You hide away in the Jewish quarter where even a dog is unwilling to look you up! Stay here; Agrippa won’t have anything against it… Go on boys, set to opening up the house!”

The keys to Agrippa’s house were with Narcissus, who around midnight led the alabarch’s party across to the house opposite, with a group of men carrying torches accompanying them. The alabarch decided to accept the offer.

“We have now gotten to the real Rome!” the alabarch put it later, standing in Claudius’s atrium. For him, it was an uncharacteristically direct remark.

Not much later Uri fell asleep on the mosaic floor, heated underneath even in the summer, and only woke up around daybreak. Most of the company had changed, but there were still a lot of people around, with newcomers continually supplied with food and drink. Uri made tracks for the larder that was set in a wall in the garden and got a bite to eat. Narcissus laughed at him.

“Do you ever get any sleep?” Uri asked wanly.

“I’m lucky; I can make do with three or four hours.”

A familiar figure, after rummaging in the larder, departed with a handful of figs.

“Who is this Dexter?” Uri queried.

“A great man,” said Narcissus. “It was he who put Lepidus to the sword.”

Uri grunted.

“Lepidus, too, used to visit here after he became a widower,” Narcissus clarified. “He was very welcome; after all, he was the emperor brother-in-law and, to put it politely, a bosom friend. That is until the emperor sent Lepidus’s friend, Dexter, around to cut him down.”

It was not clear what, precisely, Narcissus thought of all this, morally speaking. Uri considered it best not to comment.

“What sort of person was Antonia?” asked Uri.

A shadow passed across Narcissus’s eyes.

“No woman ever lived who was cleverer than she,” he said with feeling.

That was pretty much what Philo had said.

The alabarch’s group had vanished; perhaps they had gone across to Agrippa’s house. Uri ruminated that it was time he left, but it was not too safe to toddle about in Rome proper at dawn.

“Go ahead and lie down,” Narcissus suggested. “If you have no objection to using a servant’s bed, that is.”

“I’ve slept in stranger places than that,” said Uri.

There was a glint of uncertainty in Narcissus’s eyes, so Uri quickly sketched out his life, after which Narcissus gave a nod of appreciation.

“I would never have thought that of you,” he said. “A Jew with bad eyesight…”

Uri chortled.

“And you? What kind of creature are you?”

Narcissus did not know who his parents had been; he had been brought up in a paedagogium, a school for slave children, where he had been handed in as an infant. He did not even know how old he was, but guessed he was around forty-five. He then related that he had been passed from Antonia to Claudius, who wanted to free him but Narcissus had asked him to wait a while.

“He has manumitted virtually all of us,” he said, “but all of us stayed with him in any case. The others have the liberty cap of freedmen and I haven’t; that’s the only difference.”

A seemingly paralyzed old man was carried across the garden in a litter.

“That’s Barbarus Messala, Messalina’s father,” said Narcissus. “Claudius’s uncle…”

“Wait a minute!” said Uri. “Didn’t you give another name for the husband of Messalina’s mother?”

“I sure did. She got divorced and married old Silanus, but the ex-husband still comes over for a taste of the food.”

“And who pays for all this?”

“The people who chipped in toward the eight million sesterces which allowed Claudius to become an imperial priest… Lots of people… The wealthy kind… Does it matter where they get their fodder, so long as they’ve paid for it? At home or here? They enjoy it: here at least they can chatter and gossip.”

In the atrium servants were tidying up, scrubbing the floor, collecting the remnants of half-eaten meals in large baskets. Those who still wanted to eat and drink were ushered out into the garden and places were laid for them there.