Empire
Authors: Steven Saylor
EMPIRE
ALSO BY STEVEN SAYLOR
Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome
A Twist at the End: A Novel of O. Henry
Have You Seen Dawn?
ROMA SUB ROSA®
CONSISTING OF
Roman Blood
The House of Vestals
A Gladiator Dies Only Once
Arms of Nemesis
Catalina’s Riddle
The Venus Throw
A Murder on the Appian Way
Rubicon
Last Seen in Massilia
A Mist of Prophecies
The Judgment of Caesar
The Triumph of Caesar
THE NOVEL OF IMPERIAL ROME
STEVEN SAYLOR
St. Martin’s Press
New York
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
EMPIRE
. Copyright © 2010 by Steven Saylor. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saylor, Steven, 1956–
Empire : the novel of imperial Rome / Steven Saylor. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-38101-1
1. Rome—History—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.A96E47 2010
813'.54—dc22 | 2010021663 |
First Edition: September 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TO THE SHADE
OF MICHAEL GRANT
History is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of anything except myths.
—GUSTAVE LE BON,
THE CROWD
The Lightning Reader (
A.D.
14–19)
The names of the Roman months were Januarius, Februarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Julius (to honor Julius Caesar), Augustus (to honor Caesar Augustus), September, October, November, and December.
The first day of each month was called the Kalends. The Ides fell on the fifteenth day of Martius, Maius, Julius, and October, and on the thirteenth day of the other months. The Nones fell nine days before the Ides. The Romans reckoned dates by counting backward, inclusively, from the Kalends, Ides, or Nones. Thus, for example, the date we would call June 9 was called by the Romans the fifth day before the Ides of Junius.
LUCIUS
The Lightning Reader
Lucius woke with a start.
He had been dreaming. In his dream there was no earth, only a dark, empty sky, and beyond the sky, unimaginably vast, the crystalline firmament in which the stars shone brightly. No clouds obscured the stars, and yet there was lightning in the dream, lightning without thunder, random flashes of blinding light that illuminated great flocks of birds that suddenly filled the dark sky. There were vultures and eagles, ravens and crows, every sort of bird imaginable, soaring and flapping their wings, yet making no more sound than the silent lightning. The dream had filled him with a sense of urgency and confusion.
Awake now, Lucius heard a faint rumble of thunder in the distance.
He heard other sounds from elsewhere in the house. The slaves were up and beginning to stir, stoking the kitchen fire and opening shutters.
Lucius jumped from his bed. His room, with a small balcony looking west, was on the upper floor of the house. Below him was the slope of the Aventine Hill. The nearer houses, along the crest of the hill, were large and well made, like his family’s house. Farther down the hill, humbler houses and tenements and artisans’ workshops were crowded close together, and farther yet was a flat expanse with large granaries and warehouses close to the Tiber. At the river the city ended. On the far side of the Tiber, woods and meadows were divided into the private
estates of the rich, which extended to the far horizon of hills and mountains.
How his mother hated this view! Born into a wealthy branch of the Cornelius family, she had grown up in a house on the other, more fashionable side of the Aventine Hill, with a view of the vast Circus Maximus below, the Capitoline Hill crowned by temples off to one side, and, directly opposite, the opulent Palatine Hill, where the emperor lived. “Why, from our rooftop, when I was a girl,” she would say, “I could see the smoke from sacrifices on the Capitoline, watch the chariot races below, and even catch a glimpse of the emperor himself, strolling on one of his terraces across the way.” (“All at the same time, Camilla?” Lucius’s father would say, gently mocking her.) But this was the view Lucius had grown up with. For twenty-four years this had been the Roma seen from his room, a jumble of the rich and poor—mostly the poor—where slaves labored endlessly in vast storehouses to accommodate all the goods and grain that arrived day after day, carried up the river from the great world beyond, the world that belonged to Roma.
The month of Maius had been overcast and rainy so far, and this day promised to be no different. By the dim light of dawn beneath an overcast sky, Lucius saw the towering cypress trees along the Tiber sway this way and that. The blustering winds were warm and carried the smell of rain. In the far distance, black storm clouds roiled on the horizon, bristling with lighting.
“Perfect weather for an augury!” whispered Lucius.