Empire (33 page)

The jeering of the crowd continued until Nero himself gestured for silence. The crier continued.

“But what punishment, you may ask, could possibly fit so terrible a crime? For offenses so hideous, so foul, so wicked, what retribution can possibly be adequate? That is what we are here to see.

“Senators and people of Roma, this is a holy day. We call on the gods to pay witness to what happens in this place. What we do, we do in honor of the gods, and in gratitude for the favor they have shown us.”

The crier stepped back. Lucan stepped forward. From the folds of his trabea he produced a beautiful ivory lituus. While the young poet took the auspices, Titus felt a twinge of envy, wishing he had been chosen for the honor. But as high as Titus had risen in the emperor’s favor, he knew he could not compete with Lucan, with whom Nero felt a special intimacy because they were so close in age and shared such a deep love of poetry.

The auspices were favorable. The emperor pulled a white mantle over his head to assume his role as Pontifex Maximus, stepped forward, and raised his hand. Every head in the circus was bowed as Nero uttered the invocation to Jupiter, Best and Greatest of the Gods.

The spectacle commenced.

At gladiator games and other public events, the punishment of criminals was often part of the program, but usually only a very small part, worked into the proceedings by making the condemned fight against gladiators or act as bait for wild animals. On this occasion, the punishment of criminals,
because there were so many of them, and because their crime was so great, would make up the entire program. The stagers, with Nero guiding them, had faced great challenges both logistical and artistic. How could so many criminals of all ages be made to suffer and die in ways that were not only sure and efficient but also meaningful and satisfying to those who were watching?

From a cell beneath the newly erected stands a large number of men, women, and children were driven to the racetrack. They were dressed in rags. Most looked confused and frightened, but some had the same serene, glassy-eyed stare as Titus had seen on the faces of the Christians watching the fire. They seemed oblivious of what was about to happen, or perhaps they even looked forward to it.

“So many!” muttered Chrysanthe, leaning forward.

“Oh, this is only a small portion of the arsonists,” said Nero. “There are many more to come. The punishments will go on for quite some time.”

“How could we have had so many of them among us?” wondered Lucan. “What drew these terrible people to Roma in the first place, and how did they seduce decent Romans to join their ranks?”

“All things hideous and shameful from every part of the world eventually find their way to Roma, and inevitably attract a following,” said Petronius. “As a flame attracts insects, as a whirlpool attracts flotsam, so Roma attracts the vermin and filth of the world.”

“Yet, a flame is beautiful,” said Nero, “once the charred insects are brushed aside. And a whirlpool is beautiful, once the flotsam is flushed away. Just so, Roma will be beautiful again, once it has been purified of these vile criminals.” He gazed raptly at the arena below.

Next to him, Poppaea also sat forward in eager anticipation. While it might be true that she had played hostess to Jewish scholars and wise men, she detested the Christians, as Jewish heretics if nothing else.

Lucan looked sidelong at Titus. “My uncle tells me that you had a brother who called himself a Christian.”

Titus stiffened. It was inevitable that the subject would come up, and he was prepared for it. “I have no brother,” he said stiffly. Self-consciously, he touched the fascinum that nestled amid the folds of his toga.

From storage rooms under the stands, an army of stagehands produced a multitude of crosses and laid them on the sand. The Christians were
made to circle the racetrack, driven with scourges, then were seized and thrown on the crosses. While they screamed in terror, their hand and feet were nailed in place. Then the crosses were set upright into holes that had been dug ahead of time

Suddenly the circus was filled with a forest of crucifixes. The crowd jeered at the Christians. Spectators with strong arms and good aim competed to pelt them with stones and other objects. Some in the stands had brought eggs especially for this purpose.

“These crucifixions are in imitation of the dead god they profess to worship, who likewise ended up on a cross,” explained Nero in a hushed voice. “While this batch hangs from the crosses, they will witness what happens to their accomplices.”

More Christians were driven into the arena. Their arms were bound and they were wrapped in bloody animal skins, but their heads were uncovered so that their faces could be seen and their screams heard. At the two far ends of the circus, packs of vicious dogs were released. The animals sniffed the air. Within moments, they began racing toward the Christians.

The dogs had a long way to go. The Christians staggered first one way, then the other, trapped between the packs bounding toward them from both sides. The crowd went wild. People jumped to their feet with excitement, anticipating the moment the hounds would reach their prey. Nero smiled. This was exactly the reaction he had hoped for.

The dogs attacked without hesitation and tore their victims to pieces. The barking and screaming and the sight of so much blood and gore excited the crowd to an even higher pitch. Some of the Christians provided considerable sport as they squealed and whimpered for mercy and darted this way and that, trying to elude the dogs. Those among the Christians who died with a degree of dignity, muttering prayers or even singing songs, ignited the fury of the crowd. Such behavior made a mockery of justice; how dare such criminals continue to taunt their victims even as they were punished?

More Christians were driven onto the racetrack. More hounds were released. Each death was as bloody as the last, but the crowd began to grow restless, bored by the repetition. Nero had anticipated this. At his signal, a new phase of the spectacle began. To revive the spectators’ interest, various familiar stories were reenacted, using the Christians as props.

For the story of Icarus, boys with wings attached to their arms were driven to the top of a portable tower and made to jump off. One after another they plummeted to earth and lay twitching on the sand. Those who survived were carried to the top of the tower and thrown off again.

To illustrate the story of Laocoön and his sons, tanks filled with deadly eels were wheeled onto the sand and groups of fathers and sons were thrown into the water, where they died screaming and thrashing.

For Titus, the most striking of the tableaux was the tale of Pasiphae, perhaps because Seneca had just related it. A naked Christian girl was first paraded around the track while the crowd jeered and shouted obscenities, then she was forced inside a wooden effigy of a heifer. By some trickery, the animal trainers induced a white bull to mount the effigy. The device was constructed to amplify the girl’s cries rather than muffle them; her bloodcurdling screams could be heard from one end of the circus to the other. The crowd was transfixed. Eventually her screams stopped.

When the bull was finished, the trainers led it away. A few moments later, from a concealed compartment in the bottom of the effigy, a naked boy wearing a calf’s head jumped out and performed a lively dance.

“The minotaur!” people cried. “She’s given birth to the minotaur!”

The crowd went wild with applause and cheering. Nero beamed with pride.

Such tableaux, one after another, took place all up and down the length of the circus.

Eventually, for a climax, men with torches appeared, and all the Christians who lay lifeless or near to death on the sand and all the wooden props were set afire, though the crucifixes were left untouched. The sight of the flames was alarming, as was the stench of the smoke. Some in the audience, reliving the trauma of the conflagration, wept with grief. Others laughed uncontrollably. There were gasps and shrieks from the crowd, but also cheering and applause. The Christians were convicted arsonists, and the legally prescribed punishment for arson was death by fire.

As the scattered flames died down and night began to fall, sturdy poles twice the height of a man were erected in the spaces between the crucifixes. The poles had been soaked in pitch, as was evident from their strong smell. Obviously, another spectacle involving fire was about to be presented. The crowd reacted with cries of mingled dread and fascination. To
the top of each pitch-soaked pole a kind of iron basket was affixed, large enough to hold a human body.

Thus far, Titus had watched the spectacle with grim detachment. The auspices had been unequivocally favorable for this event—Titus had watched closely as Lucan performed the augury—and that was a clear indication that the gods were pleased. Watching the gruesome punishments of the arsonists gave Titus no pleasure, but it was his somber duty as a citizen and as a friend of the emperor to witness the event.

Titus felt the need to empty his bladder. The moment seemed opportune, as there appeared to be an interlude before the next event, so he rose and excused himself. Looking over his shoulder, Nero told him where to find the nearest latrina and then giggled, as if at some secret joke. Titus left the imperial box, glad that the spectacle had put the emperor in such a buoyant mood.

The latrina was in a small building some distance from the stands. A few other men were inside, talking about the spectacle as they went about their business. They were in general agreement that, while some of the punishments had been too repetitious, others had been quite remarkable. There was an enthusiastic consensus that the rape of Pasiphae had been by far the most impressive of the tableaux.

“Not something you see every day!” quipped one man.

“Unless you’re a god, like Neptune, and can make such things happen with a wave of your trident.”

“Or unless you’re Nero!”

Titus headed back to the stands. The sky had grown darker. The stars were coming out. Torches had been placed here and there to light the grounds. As he neared the stands, a pair of Praetorians abruptly blocked his way.

“What’s that?” said one of them. The man was big and brutish but had perfect teeth, which glinted in the torchlight. He pointed at the fascinum at Titus’s breast. “Isn’t that a cross, like some of those Christians wear?”

“What I wear around my neck is none of your business,” said Titus curtly. He tried to step past the two men, but they barred his way.

“You’ll come with us,” said the Praetorian with perfect teeth.

“I most certainly will not. Can you not see that I wear a senator’s toga? I’m returning to the imperial box.”

“Sure you are! A Christian, in the emperor’s box!”

Each of them grabbed an arm and together they led him, despite his efforts to resist, to a small room under the newly built wooden stands. A third Praetorian, apparently their superior, sat at a table piled high with scrolls.

“Problem?” he asked.

“An escaped Christian, sir,” said the Praetorian with perfect teeth.

“This is ridiculous!” snapped Titus.

“What’s your name, Christian?” said the officer

“My name is Pinarius. Senator Titus Pinarius.”

The officer consulted a list. “Ah, yes, we do indeed have a Pinarius among those scheduled to be punished in the circus today. A male citizen, age forty-seven. This must be him.”

Titus clenched his jaw. All day he had avoided thinking about his brother, telling himself he had no brother. “That would be Kaeso Pinarius, not Titus—”

“
Now
I recognize you!” said the officer. “You were one of the first arsonists we arrested. You certainly look different now! How did you manage to clean yourself up like that, and escape from the cell? And where in Hades did you get that toga? I’ll bet you murdered a senator to get your hands on that!”

“This is absurd,” said Titus. “I am a senator, an augur, and a friend of the emperor.”

The Praetorians laughed.

Titus felt a sinking sensation. The situation was getting out of hand. He told himself to remain calm.

“Let me explain something,” he said, speaking though gritted teeth. “I have a brother . . . a twin brother . . . who is a Christian—”

The Praetorians only laughed harder.

“An identical twin?” shouted the Praetorian with perfect teeth. “That’s rich!”

“With your imagination, you should be writing comedies for the stage, not setting fires,” said the officer, who abruptly ceased laughing and looked grim. “Such a preposterous story only confirms what I suspected. What do you fellows think? How do we treat a lying, murdering Christian?”

The Praetorians roughly shoved Titus back and forth between them,
yanked at his toga until they pulled it off him, then ripped his undertunic until it hung in tatters and he was left wearing nothing but his loincloth. When one of them reached for the fascinum Titus tried to fight back, but he felt like a child flailing at giants. The Praetorian with perfect teeth struck him hard across the face, jarring his teeth and leaving him dazed and unsteady and with the taste of blood in his mouth.

They grabbed him by the arms, pulled him out of the little room, and began taking him somewhere else. In the open space behind the stands, they passed two men in senatorial togas. Titus tried to raise his arms, but the Praetorians restrained him.

“Help me!” he shouted.

The senators glanced at him. One of them muttered, “Filthy arsonist!”

The Praetorians struck Titus across the face to silence him and shoved him to a gate. The gate opened and Titus was forced into a dimly lit enclosure. Above him he could hear the murmur of the crowd. All around him echoed the creaking of the wooden stands as people moved about overhead. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that the cell was quite large and full of people, most of them in rags or wearing little more than he was. They were filthy and unkempt and stank of urine and sweat. He passed among them, staring at their faces. Some were trembling with fear and muttering prayers with their eyes tightly shut. Others were oddly calm, speaking to their companions in low, reassuring voices.