György Spiró - Captivity

Since returning to Rome Uri had not bothered to read a single issue of the Acta Diurna . But even so he was well informed about everything he needed to know. In Rome one had to know Rome; the world only mattered from a commercial perspective, and Uri sensed no loss at hearing nothing said about Egypt or Judaea. It crossed his mind to purchase an inn in the neighborhood of the Forum, and in fact he was in a position to do that. He would be concerned primarily with providing a place for his business partners to snooze; he was thinking of a daytime dosshouse of the sort that had not yet been invented, but he rejected the idea as it was not something he could run on his own, and he could not rely on help from the womenfolk.

So, the Forum became home to him, and otherwise his home was with his son Theo, whom he would take out for walks and instruct as they chatted.

By the time he was six Theo had a better knowledge of arithmetic and geometry than Uri had ever possessed, and there were times when he posed questions that Uri was not only unable to answer but did not even fully understand. When that was the case Theo would impatiently lay hands on a twig and would sketch out in one of the puddles of mud — which never completely dried in Far Side even in the summer — what he was talking about, as if he were a pocket Archimedes. Please don’t let him be killed by some numbskull mercenary… He was growing into a strong, well-developed boy, who could jump superbly, turn somersaults, and run fast and over long distances, plus he was fair-haired and blue-eyed like a Teutonic god. Uri was constantly offering an earnest prayer, entreating the Creator that Theo’s eyes should not fail in his adolescent years.

“With this boy you have compensated me for everything, Lord!” he would murmur softly in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and there he was even permitted to shed a tear or two.

Uri lived as if he had been castrated, and he even began to look the part outwardly: he put on weight, his legs hurt; he ate more and more, and he drank more and more, especially beer, which enabled him to burp loudly and relieve the continual biting, burning pain in his chest. In the market one could purchase metal mirrors, and Uri would sometimes pick one up as if he were thinking of buying it (he never did, neither for himself nor for Hagar, even though she asked him for one) and would take a look at himself. He had turned into a balding, broadly jowled, double-chinned, clean-shaven, slit-eyed figure, with a lower jawline that was barely visible and an upper one badly sunken due to the loss of his teeth. Ugly enough, in fact, to be elected emperor.

Still, there were plenty of businessmen in the Forum who were even uglier customers, and more generally: such was this era of peace that nearly everyone was overweight.

There was no war. Claudius traveled to make war in the far-off country of Britannia as there was no chance of a quarrel closer to hand. Vitellius stood in for him in Rome; he did not make any laws and did not make decisions, and he would still always prostrate himself before Claudius seat, just as he had done previously before Caligula’s seat. Supposedly Claudius won some sort of victory in Britannia, at which point he changed his son’s name from Germanicus to Britannicus. He was praised in the Forum; it was peace in their time. Big celebrations were held in both theaters, with ten chariot races every day, and in the intermissions bears and other wild beasts were slain — a great many of them, three hundred bears alone — and athletes competed.

One of Claudius’s daughters, Claudia Octavia, was betrothed to Lucius Junius Silanus, the other, Claudia Antonia, was married to Gnaeus Pompeius, but Claudius did not let the event be celebrated with any particular fuss as the Senate was in session that day and he was present in the chamber. Both sons-in-law quickly became prefects. He restored to Pompeius the cognomen “Magnus,” of which Caligula had stripped him.

Claudius began to dress in the Greek fashion, wearing a cloak and high boots, and at the Gymnasium’s competitions he dressed in a purple coat and wore a golden crown. Uri was displeased upon hearing news like that. The emperor was praised because he did not ask others for contributions toward the competitions but paid for them himself. He passed one especially upright law forbidding anyone who had a dependent from naming the emperor as his heir, and he handed back fortunes that Tiberius and Caligula had taken away.

He then did something stupid, banning taverns in which unduly large crowds assembled, and also forbade them to sell roast meat or hot water (which was the name for mulled wine). People grumbled and Uri fumed inwardly: never mind the meat but one did not forbid Romans their favorite drink of hot water. There was no way of enforcing that anyway!

Claudius returned the various statues that Caligula had collected from other towns, but the people were not happy even about that: if the gods had so decided once that the statues should be brought to Rome, then they should stay there!

Next Julia, the emperor’s niece and a granddaughter of Tiberius, was banished, supposedly because Messalina was jealous of her beauty and feared she might be replaced as Claudius’s wife, and hoarse Seneca was also banished, still unable to die but still delivering speeches that were far too clever for his own good.

The emperor put on ever more gladiatorial contests, with relatively few wild beasts being sacrificed but with many human victims — people who, it turned out, had allegedly been squealers to Tiberius or Caligula. The statue of Augustus that had stood in the Circus Maximus was taken away so that it did not have to survey the ceaseless bloodshed. Though Rome’s population was amused, Uri began to think that maybe it was time to get away.

Then the emperor settled accounts with Gaius Appius Silanus, the man who had wed Messalina’s mother. Claudius had held him in high esteem, but then suddenly he had him put to death. It was whispered that it was Messalina, who supposedly had wanted to sleep with him but found him unwilling, who did away with him. It was also whispered that Narcissus had persuaded the emperor, claiming that both he and Messalina had dreamed that Appius had raised a hand against him, so alarming Claudius that he had Appius summarily executed.

That was quite certainly untrue, Uri knew: Narcissus loathed Messalina and Messalina loathed him; he would hardly have cooperated with her. And yet they really did have Appius Silanus murdered, along with his son. Claudius’s son-in-law did not raise a murmur of protest.

He’ll make an emperor yet, will Claudius, thought Uri, and it again crossed his mind that he should get out of Rome, but he stayed because that was where all his ties were.

Before long senator Annius Vinicianus and Furius Camillus Scribonianus, the prefect of Dalmatia, were said to have conspired together. Vinicianus, of course, was among those who had been put forward as candidates for the imperial office by the other factions following the death of Caligula. The matter never reached a court of law because Vinicianus took his own life beforehand. Many were tortured, in spite of the fact that Claudius, at the very beginning of his reign, had sworn not to torture any free citizen. The victims were generally taken to the Gemonian Stairs; those who were executed elsewhere only had their heads taken there out of propriety. The individuals who had bribed Messalina and Narcissus got off scot-free — Uri could only imagine how much they must have paid.

The emperor returned to the road commissioners the fines that Caligula and Corbulo had taken from them on the pretext that they had not been maintaining the highways, and he had Corbulo executed. He also attempted to claw back from the former supporters of Caligula the gifts of which they had been beneficiaries: any who did not speak Latin had their citizenship rights revoked, though some paid for it, with the money shared out among Messalina and her freedmen, who were bribed. In the beginning, the franchise was costly, but after a while the price went down. People grumbled, probably because they saw their own free status coming under threat: “The next thing you know a person will become a citizen for just handing over some broken glassware!”