Empire (49 page)

“Of course not,” said Martial. “This is the section for important people—magistrates, visiting dignitaries, Vestal virgins, and friends of the emperor, such as yours truly. Only the best for my companions! And look, just as I promised, there’s a splendid buffet laid out for us right here in the vestibule, and free wine. What a privileged existence is the life of the poet!”

They mingled in the vestibule for a while, eating and drinking, until a horn sounded and a crier came through the room, calling for all to find their seats. The men in togas and the women in elegant stolas began to drift to a marble stairway that led up to bright daylight. Lucius and his friends followed the crowd.

Epaphroditus had described the scale of the amphitheater and the way it was laid out; Epictetus had compared it to the circular valley, now vanished, at the summit of Vesuvius. But no amount of mere description could have prepared Lucius for what he beheld from the top of the steps. For a moment his mind could not take it in; as the sound of fifty thousand people created a single dull roar, so the sight of so many people in one place registered as a kind of blur, an undifferentiated mass of humanity in which no individuals could be perceived. But, little by little, as he stood on the landing, he began to regain his bearings, and his mind began to perceive what was near and what was far.

Lucius had never experienced anything like that first moment inside the Flavian Amphitheater. That instant alone, so disorienting that it was almost frightening, yet so unique and thrilling, was worth the excursion. Dio and Epictetus were fools, he thought, to deprive themselves of such an experience, which was surely to be had in no other place on earth.

He realized that he was standing not in full sunlight but in brightly filtered shade, and looked up to see awnings like sails that extended from the uppermost parapet all around the building. As he peered upward, squinting, he saw that men were working the complicated rigging, adjusting the angle of the awnings to block the sunlight.

Martial pulled at his toga. “Stop gawking like a bumpkin. You’re holding up the crowd. Come along.”

They found their seats. The great bowl of the amphitheater encircled them. Below, jugglers, tumblers, and acrobats of both sexes, wearing scanty but brightly colored costumes, were already in the arena. Some were so close that Lucius could see their faces. Others were small in the distance. The scale of the place confounded him. Somewhere nearby, a water organ was playing a lively tune.

“Have we missed the beginning of the show?”

“Oh, this isn’t the show,” said Martial. “This is just a trifle to keep the crowd amused while they file into their seats. Numa’s balls, look how high they’ve strung that tightrope! Can you imagine walking across that thing with another fellow on your shoulders? It always gives me the shivers when they perform without a net.”

“Why are the seats in front of us empty?”

“Because the Vestals haven’t yet arrived. They’re often the last to show up at any public event, even after the emperor. Ah, but here he comes now.”

Titus and his retinue began to file into the imperial box. The emperor was forty but looked younger, thanks to his genial expression and a full head of hair not yet touched by gray. He had married early and been widowed, then remarried and almost as quickly divorced his second wife, whose family was too closely associated with the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero. He had not remarried since. For female consorts he was flanked on one side by his grown daughter, Julia, and on the other by his younger sister, Flavia Domitilla. Several of his favorite eunuchs also attended him, beautiful and exquisitely dressed creatures who at a glance seemed neither female nor male; they exemplified what Dio called the Persian ideal of beauty.

The last members of the imperial family to enter the box were the emperor’s younger brother, Domitian, with his wife and their seven-year-old son. At twenty-eight, Domitian looked almost as old as Titus, thanks to his dour expression and the fact that he had lost much of his hair; gone was the glorious chestnut mane that had made him so conspicuous amid the Flavian entourage during the last days of Vitellius. While Titus smiled and waved enthusiastically to the crowd, Domitian hung back, looking glum. The brothers were known to have a stormy relationship. After Vespasian died, Domitian had publicly complained that their father’s will
specified that the brothers should rule jointly, but that the document had been deliberately altered; the implication was that Titus himself had tampered with it. Some people believed Domitian, but most did not. For one thing, Vespasian had always favored his elder son; for another, he had expressed the opinion that one of the reasons why Caligula and Nero had come to a bad end was the fact that they rose to power at too young an age. Domitian was twelve years younger than Titus and clearly lacked his brother’s experience.

No one was quite sure of the proper etiquette in the new amphitheater. As the emperor continued to wave, many in the crowd rose to their feet and waved back. Some cheered and applauded. Others remained seated. Epaphroditus was among those who stood and clapped his hands. “Now there you see the head of an emperor,” he said to his companions. They looked at him quizzically. “Have I never told you the story of Agrippina and the physiognomist?”

“I think I should have remembered that,” said Martial. “It sounds quite naughty.”

“It’s not that kind of story. Long ago, when Nero was a boy and his mother was desperate to make him Claudius’s heir, Agrippina called on an Egyptian physiognomist to examine the head of Claudius’s son, Britannicus. Do you know, Lucius, I think it was your father who suggested the examination.”

Lucius shrugged. “I’ve never heard the story.”

“Perhaps because it had a rather embarrassing outcome. The Egyptian was unable to draw any conclusions from Britannicus’s head, but since Britannicus’s constant companion happened to be present, the man took a look at his head, as well. That boy was none other than Vespasian’s son Titus. The physiognomist declared he had never seen a head more fit to rule over other men. People forgot about that incident for a long time, but as you can see, the Egyptian turned out to be right.”

“Where was Domitian when this examination took place?” said Lucius.

“Oh, he was a baby. He’d only just been born.”

“What could be easier to read than a baby’s head, since it has no hair?” said Martial. “Although Domitian probably had more hair then than he does now!”

There was a stirring in the crowd around them. The Vestal virgins had
arrived and were taking their seats in the front row. No one had been sure whether to stand for the emperor, but everyone did so for the Vestals. They walked with such grace and poise that their linen mantles seemed to float atop their heads.

As the six women passed by, Lucius looked at their faces. He had seen the Vestals at public events but had never been this close to them before. The badge of their office was the vitta, a red-and-white band worn across their foreheads. Their closely shorn hair was hidden by a distinctive headdress called a suffibulum, and their linen gowns obscured the shapes of their bodies, so that all one could really see of them were their unadorned faces. They were of various ages, some old and wrinkled but some no more than girls. Vestals began their mandatory thirty years of service between the ages of six and ten, and most remained Vestals until they died. It seemed to Lucius they kept their eyes straight ahead and deliberately avoided making eye contact—until one of them turned her head as she passed and looked straight at him.

The Vestal was beautiful. The fact that every feature except her face was hidden only accentuated her beauty. Two green eyes flashed beneath delicate eyebrows of dark blond. Her full lips favored him with a faint smile. Lucius felt a quiver run down his spine, like a trickle of warm water.

“Her name is Cornelia Cossa,” whispered Epaphroditus in his ear.

“How old is she?”

“Let me think. She was only six when she was inducted into the sisterhood in the eighth year of Nero’s reign; that would make her twenty-four.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Everyone says so.”

The acrobats and jugglers dispersed. The official ceremonies commenced with a series of religious rites. An augury was taken, and the auspices were declared highly favorable. The priests of Mars paraded around the arena, chanting and burning incense. An altar was erected in the center of the arena. The priests sacrificed a sheep to the war god and dedicated the amphitheater in his honor. The blood of the sacrificed animal was sprinkled in all directions onto the sand of the arena.

A proclamation by the emperor was read aloud, in which he paid homage to his father, whose military success, architectural genius, and love of
the city had given birth to the amphitheater; the structure in which they had all gathered was the Divine Vespasian’s posthumous gift to the people of Roma. Jewish warriors—filthy, naked, and shackled with chains—were driven at sword point around the arena by armed legionaries as a reminder of the great victory that had brought peace to the eastern provinces of the empire and secured the treasure that had paid for the amphitheater, the new baths, and many other improvements all over the city. Vespasian had joined the gods, but his legacy in stone, the Flavian Amphitheater, would endure for all time.

The proclamation went on for some time. Lucius’s mind began to wander. He noticed that Martial had pulled out a stylus and a wax tablet and was busy scribbling. He assumed that his friend was taking down the words of the proclamation, but the notes he was able to read had nothing to do with what they were hearing. Martial saw him scanning his notes.

“Random impressions,” he whispered. “You never know what might become a poem. Look at all these people. How many races and nationalities do you think are represented here today?’

Lucius looked around them. “I have no idea.”

“Nor do I, but it seems to me the whole world is here, in microcosm. Look at those black-skinned Ethiopians over there. And that group over there—what sort of people have blond hair and wear it twisted into knots like that?”

“Sicambri, I think they’re called. A Germanic tribe that lives at the mouth of the Rhine River.”

“And before we took our seats, in the vestibule I saw men in Arabian headdresses, and Sabaeans from the Red Sea, who wear black from head to foot. And I smelled Cilicians.”

“Smelled them?”

“The women and boys and even the grown men of Cilicia wear a very distinctive perfume, made from a flower that grows only on the highest peaks of the Taurus Mountains. You’d know that, Pinarius, if you’d ever had a Cilician boy—”

He was interrupted by a shushing noise. One of the Vestals had turned around in her seat and was glaring at them. She was old and wrinkled, with a severe expression that intimidated even Martial. The Vestal sitting
next to her also turned and looked up at them. It was Cornelia Cossa. Her calm smile and radiant beauty was in such contrast to her fellow priestess that Lucius laughed out loud, then regretted doing so at once, fearing he had offended her. But if anything, Cornelia’s smile widened a bit, and there was a twinkle in her eye as she returned her attention to the crier who was reading the proclamation.

“Did you see that?” whispered Martial. “She looked right at you.”

Lucius shrugged. “What of it?”

“She looked at you the way a woman looks at a man.”

“Martial, you are incorrigible! Go back to sniffing your Cilician boys.”

At last the various proclamations and invocations were finished. The Flavian Amphitheater was officially opened. The spectacles began.

The first event was the scourging of the informers. Titus had promised to round up the worst offenders—liars and scoundrels who made a living off the public purse by accusing innocent men of conspiring against the emperor or defrauding the state. Such creatures had been a blight on every reign since that of Augustus. No matter how sensible and confident an emperor might be at the beginning of his reign, with each year that passed, he and his ministers invariably grew more susceptible to baseless rumors and more fearful of imaginary enemies. The hardheaded Vespasian had been no more immune to poisonous slander than had his predecessors. By the end of his reign, many a man had suffered punishment based on groundless suspicion and many an unscrupulous informer had grown rich. Titus intended to make a clean break with the past.

The crowd murmured in anticipation as a large number of men were driven at spear point into the arena. Most wore togas and looked like respectable businessmen and property owners. They were stripped first of their togas, then of their tunics, so that they wore nothing but loincloths, like slaves, though one seldom saw slaves as fat as most of these men. In groups of ten, the men were secured by the neck with two-pronged pitchforks and forced to stand in place while they were beaten with whips and rods. The beatings were severe: bits of flesh and showers of blood were scattered across the sand. Even when the men collapsed to their knees, they were forced by the pitchforks to hold their heads up.

“Do you see who’s delivering the punishment?” said Martial. “Titus
chose a corps of officers made up entirely of nomadic Gaetulians from North Africa.”

“Why the Gaetulians?” said Lucius.

“For one thing, they’re outsiders with no connection to the victims or to anyone else in the city. More importantly, they’re famous for their cruelty.”

It certainly seemed to Lucius that the Gaetulians enjoyed their work. So did the audience. Many of the victims, more used to handing out such treatment to slaves than to receiving it, reacted with a great deal of screaming and blubbering. The more undignified the victim’s behavior, the more boisterous was the crowd’s reaction. Rather than tiring as the punishments proceeded, the Gaetulians were urged on by the cheering of the spectators and grew increasingly violent. The later victims were more severely beaten than the first ones; to even the punishment, and to the delight of the crowd, the first victims were scourged again.

Many of the informers lost consciousness or could not stand after being scourged and had to be dragged from the arena. A few of them died from the punishment. (“Not from scourging, but from shame!” whispered Martial, taking notes.) Those who survived would be sent into exile to live out their days on remote islands or, in the worst cases, would be sold into slavery at public auction.