György Spiró - Captivity

One night, upon returning from an orgy, very lightly dressed and in sandals, and being noticed by a group strolling into the garden on Vatican Hill, the emperor had them all — men and women alike — slaughtered, and that same night his murderers searched out the relatives of the dead and murdered them too.

Betilienus Bassus was kept in the stocks for two days and then tortured to death, first in a violin and then on the horse. The violin was a crafty system of ropes, constructed so a person struggling to get free would instead strangle himself, whereas the horse was a variant of impalement on a stake — both awful ways of dying. Betilienus Bassus had been the emperor’s personal quaestor , and there was no way of knowing what had caused Caligula to be angry at him. He forced the man’s father, Betilienus Capito, to be present at his son’s execution. Capito asked to be allowed to shut his eyes, whereupon Caligula ordered him to be slain likewise. Capito tried to save himself by saying that he would uncover a conspiracy and he named some of Caligula’s closest cronies, including Callistus and even Caesonia, the emperor’s wife; nonetheless he was also executed.

One of the alleged conspirators whom Caligula did have liquidated was Julius Canus, a friend with whom he had fallen out. The story went that up to the moment of his execution the condemned was calmly playing chess. He went to his execution saying that he would make his next move from the hereafter.

None of these things was much discussed in the Forum: people had more important matters to talk about: they simply did deals and litigated. Nor were they touched on in Claudius’s house, just as the imprisoned alabarch was not mentioned. Uri learned many things from Philo and, exceptionally, Tija, who nowadays occasionally deigned to converse with him. Tija was interested in the mood on Far Side, and Uri reported detachedly, without any display of emotion, on the wretchedness faced by the newcomers.

Uri showed up in Claudius’s house as little as possible, more particularly only at times when Philo requested him; he had no wish to see Kainis.

Visitors made their appearances at Claudius’s house much as before, though Uri sensed there had been some subtle changes, though perhaps that was only because he knew full well that something was up. Claudius had lost weight and looked pale. He personally attributed it to the fact that the continual Circus attendances meant that he was not getting adequate sleep. It was true that he would keep nodding off in the rows given over to senators in the Circus, and on those occasions he would be pelted with fruit and pebbles by his infantile aristocratic neighbors or the even more infantile plebes in the upper rows.

Agrippa also made appearances with his servants at Claudius’s place, with Stentorian-voiced, ruddy-faced Sabinus, the elder brother of Titus, greeting the king like an old friend, roaring in Greek:

“Damn that province! You’ll only rot there! Come back to Rome! This is your home!”

Agrippa chuckled.

Uri noticed that Agrippa was not on speaking terms with Claudius. They had been boyhood friends because Antonia had been on good terms with Agrippa’s mother, Berenice, who was Salome’s daughter and thus a niece of Herod the Great. Since Herod had his son, Berenice’s husband, Aristobulus, strangled to death, she wanted at all costs to live in Rome. Claudius and Agrippa had grown up together; they had shared the same teachers, yet nevertheless they no longer engaged in conversation with each other in public.

Claudius had no need to address Agrippa: all necessary communications were seen to by their servants. Uri was certain that Tija had passed on Isidoros’s message to the king, and he in turn to Claudius. He wondered with which members of the Senate Claudius had discussed it. Innumerable people swilled and guzzled at Claudius’s house, with gangs of them arriving from contests or baths and then disappearing in gangs bound somewhere else. If Caligula were to make an escape to Alexandria, that would mean civil war; Rome would lose its most important province, famine would break out, and sooner or later Hispania, Gaul, Moesia, and Pannonia would also secede, to say nothing of ever-unreliable Germania.

Did the senators still wish to have a vast Roman world empire?

Every two or three weeks Caligula announced that this time he really was setting sail for Alexandria, yet he stayed in Rome, just as Isidoros had said.

An increasingly tubby Messalina wearied the company by relating each day that she was sacrificing to another god that at long last she might bear a son, and she was given plenty of good advice on which gods she should sacrifice to.

Writings by Cordus were circulated and hotly debated, because Cordus, in his own cautious manner, had propounded the advantages of a Republican form of government instead of an autocracy. Seneca, the pale, constantly coughing praetor, had on one occasion even brought along Marcia, Cordus’s daughter; she and her husband, Metilius, were greeted with great respect. It was out of love for his daughter, it was said, that Cordus had opted not to open a vein to kill himself but rather starved himself to death.

“You’re avoiding me,” Kainis challenged Uri.

Uri looked at her and felt an enormous pang in his stomach.

“I’m avoiding you,” he said and staggered off.

As the emperor stayed in Rome for the Saturnalia, senators, knights of the equestrian order, and embassies were also unable to depart. Vows now only had to be taken to Augustus, Caligula, and Drusilla, not to Tiberius, Agrippina, and Julia, but even after that holiday nobody could go away because mid-January marked the commencement of the games on the Palatine, in which anyone who was anybody had to take part.

It was nighttime when torchbearers came to order Uri from his place in bed next to Hagar. Philo had made no demands on his services for two whole days, on both of which Uri had rushed to and fro from early morning till late at night; he had a feeling that people were looking to cut him out of the trade in balsam, and at the time he had no other source of income. The unfamiliar torchbearers claimed that King Agrippa had summoned him, and they ordered him to put on his best set of clothes. Uri dressed hastily, with Hagar moaning, Sarah snoring, and Marcellus sleeping; Theo propped himself on one elbow on the floor, where he had been moved once his younger brother was born. Uri placed a finger on his lips to make a silent plea to keep quiet; Theo had nodded mutely and kept staring with interest as he watched the light of the torches recede.

Fortunatus was waiting outside Honoratus’s house.

“We’re going to the games,” he said.

Fortunatus, the thickset, bucktoothed, snub-nosed middle-aged man with receding red hair who attended to Agrippa’s affairs in Rome, seemed depressed.

They sat in a litter, with four servants carrying them, and were whisked over the Jewish bridge.

“What’s this all about?” Uri asked.

He got no response from Fortunatus.

Uri had the feeling that he had already been through something similar before. He tried to recollect when that had been. It had been in Jerusalem, he finally realized, when he was taken to dine with Pilate, but that time there had been no one sitting opposite him in the litter.

The Palatine palace comprised several buildings of various sizes and shapes on the hillside, the structures interconnected by passages and colonnades and each given its own name. The travelers were set down at the back, where slaves were already unloading a shipment of fresh food. Fortunatus knew the way; he had clearly accompanied Agrippa there many times before, and with a torch in one hand he hastened ahead down the winding corridors, with Uri after him. At some places sentries asked for the password, which Fortunatus gave as “Jupiter,” at which they were allowed to go farther.