Empire (52 page)

“Some men are simply squeamish,” said Titus charitably. “Cicero had no stomach for gladiator shows. Nor did Seneca.”

“But they attended them, nonetheless,” said Domitian. “These games are as much a solemn duty as they are a celebration, brother. Those who don’t attend—indeed, who make a show of their absence—disparage the memory of our father.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, little brother. But you make an excellent point. Gladiator games began as a way to honor the dead. Our ancestors forced prisoners to fight to the death at the funeral games to mark the passing of great men. We’ve come a long way from those early days, as the building of this amphitheater demonstrates—what would Romulus with his thatched hut make of this place? Nonetheless, the gladiator games today hearken back to the very first such games, because they honor the passing of a great man, our father. Every drop of blood spilled today will be shed in his honor.”

“And every drop of wine poured today should be drunk in his honor,” said Martial. The words were risky, breaking the somber mood created by the emperor, but the risk paid off. Titus smiled at Martial’s turn of phrase and raised his cup.

“Let us drink, then, to the Divine Vespasian,” said Titus.

Wine was poured for the guests. As Lucius raised his cup, he was suddenly conscious of the extraordinary nature of the moment. He stood in the imperial box, close enough to touch all three children of the Divine Vespasian, sharing wine with Caesar himself—and all because of his friendship with a poet!

Lucius and his friends returned to their seats.

The games resumed with a series of matches between men and beasts, culminating in the appearance of the famed Carpophorus, who was in
excellent form, uncannily nimble for a man so heavily muscled and apparently able to read an animal’s thoughts as he anticipated his opponent’s every movement.

Lulled by the afternoon heat and too much wine, Lucius dozed during Carpophorus’s long performance, waking intermittently to witness the bestiarius armed with a dagger to fight a bear, armed with a club to fight a lion, and taking on not one but two bison with his bare hands. Each time he killed a beast, Carpophorus slung the carcass over his brawny shoulders and paraded around the arena to show it off. Waking and dozing and seeing nothing but Carpophorus in combat, over and over again, Lucius seemed trapped in an endlessly repeating dream of slaughter.

At last Lucius was roused by a thunderous ovation as the multitude rose to its feet to acclaim the bestiarius after his final match.

Lucius stood with the rest. He blinked, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. “How many animals did the fellow kill?” he asked Martial.

“What! Weren’t you counting along with everyone else?”

“I dozed.”

“You and the emperor both, I imagine. Carpophorus took on a total of twenty animals, one after another. That must be a record. And he suffered hardly a scratch. The man’s invincible. If they want to find an even match for him, they shall have to bring in a hydra, or maybe one of those fire-breathing bulls that Jason encountered in the land of Colchis.”

The gladiator matches followed. Lucius was glad that Epictetus and Dio had not come; the contests were bloodier than any he could recall, and seemed endless, stretching on for hour after hour. Long before the final match between two of the most famous gladiators, Priscus and Verus, Lucius thought that even the most ardent lover of the games must be sated. But as Priscus and Verus engaged, Lucius looked at the imperial box and saw Domitian standing at the parapet, clutching the railing with white knuckles, watching the contest with rapt attention and responding with his whole body, jerking, scowling, grunting, clenching his teeth, and exclaiming under his breath. His little boy stood beside him, mimicking everything his father did. Meanwhile, the emperor remained seated, watching the match without emotion, occasionally casting a sardonic glance at his agitated brother and nephew.

Priscus was a gladiator of the Thracian type, wearing a broad-brimmed
helmet with a grille that covered his face and a griffin ornament; greaves covered his legs up to the thighs, and he carried a small round shield and curved sword. Verus was a Murmillo, the traditional opponent of a Thracian, so called for the
mormylos,
a fish, that decorated his helmet; his right leg was padded with a thick gaiter and he was armed like a Roman legionary with a short sword and a tall, oblong shield.

The two fighters were so evenly matched that neither seemed able to draw blood from the other, but the gracefulness of their movements was so striking and the violence of their sudden clashes so thrilling that theirs was by far the most exciting contest of the day. Even Titus stopped chatting with his sister and daughter and sat forward in his chair, while his brother became increasingly animated. There was no doubt which gladiator Domitian favored; he kept shouting the name of Verus, and when a senator seated nearby began to yell encouragement to the Thracian, Domitian hurled a cup at the man and told him to shut up.

Titus rolled his eyes at the sudden outburst but made light of it. “Perhaps the Murmillo should add a wine cup to his weaponry. My brother draws more blood than does Verus today.”

The senator, who was using a fold of his toga to stanch the bleeding from a cut on his forehead, flashed a crooked smile to acknowledge the emperor’s wit.

The match had many high points and suspenseful moments, eliciting gasps and shrieks and even some outbursts of weeping from the exhausted, sun-dazed spectators. A last Titus put an end to it. He rose to his feet and gave a signal to the master of the games to stop the contest. Priscus and Verus removed their helmets. Faces covered with sweat, chests heaving, they gazed up at the emperor, awaiting his judgment.

In one hand, Titus held a wooden sword, the traditional gift to a gladiator who had earned his freedom. After such a closely fought match, with no clear victor, to which gladiator would he grant the sword?

The partisans of the two gladiators began to chant their names—“Priscus! Priscus!” and, “Verus, Verus!” The two groups were so evenly dispersed throughout the stands that the names merged into a jumbled shout of two syllables.

The emperor disappeared from the imperial box. The crowd grew confused and the chanting trailed off, until a gate beneath the imperial
box opened and Titus strode into the arena. His appearance on the blood-strewn sand thrilled the crowd, which gave a deafening roar as Titus approached the two waiting gladiators, holding the wooden sword before him.

Titus reached the gladiators. His back was to Lucius, who found himself wishing he could see the emperor’s expression. The crowd began to chant the names of their favorites again.

Titus stepped forward. The crowd fell silent. Titus paused. Instead of awarding the wooden sword, he raised his left arm to show that he was carrying a second sword. Stepping forward, he presented the wooden swords to both gladiators at once. Verus and Priscus were both declared victors; both were rewarded with freedom. Such a thing had never been done before.

As the grinning gladiators lifted their wooden swords high in the air, the spectators rose to their feet in the last and most thunderous ovation of the day. At first they shouted the names of the gladiators, but gradually the mingled roar resolved into a single word repeated over and over: “Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”

Lucius scanned the vast bowl of the amphitheater. He had never seen so many people in one place, or so vast an outpouring of emotion. At the very center of it all was the emperor.

Titus was still a young man. With luck, he might reign for many years, until Lucius himself was old. He had certainly made an auspicious beginning. All the disasters and trials of the last year—the destruction of Pompeii, the plague in Roma, the fire that had devastated the city—were eclipsed by the stunning success of the inaugural games. Titus had not merely distracted the citizens, he had inspired them with a sense of unity and restored confidence. More feasting and plays and spectacles would follow in the days ahead, at venues all over the city, but it was hard to imagine anything that could match the splendor of the opening day of the Flavian Amphitheater.

The two gladiators made their exit. The emperor gave a final salute to the people and left the arena. The imperial box was empty. The arena was deserted. There were no more acrobats, no more contests, no more spectacles to behold.

As he gazed at the thousands of spectators around him, it occurred to
Lucius that the crowd itself was the true spectacle. Seated in a circle, with everyone visible to everyone else, the spectators had spent as much time watching one another as they had watching the games. The sound of the gathering, whether a murmur or a roar, was intoxicating; the acoustics of the place could capture a whisper or a laugh from across the way or amplify the roar of the crowd to superhuman volume. Already the great amphitheater had taken on a life of it own: from that day forward, this would be the gathering place for all Roma, rich and poor, great and small, the living embodiment of the spirit of the city and the will of its people. The world outside the amphitheater might pose dangers beyond human control—plague, earthquake, fire, flood, all the perils of war—but within the protective shell of the amphitheater existed a cosmos in miniature where the people of Roma were like gods, gazing down at the little world of the arena where mortals and beasts lived and died at their whim.

Perhaps Epictetus and Dio should have come, Lucius thought; how else could they understand the collective grandeur experienced by the spectators? And who but his philosopher friends could help Lucius make sense of the curious feeling of detachment that cast a cold shadow over his enjoyment of that moment, that drained the experience of its glamour and made it seem hollow and empty? Amid the blur of so many faces and the dull, throbbing roar of so many voices, Lucius suddenly felt more alone than he had ever felt before in his life.

But he was not alone. Amid the vast crowd, two eyes looked back at him. Surrounded by her fellow Vestals, close enough to touch if had dared to do so, Cornelia was smiling at him. She said nothing, nor did she need to. Lucius knew he would see her again.

Lucius made ready to set out from his house on the Palatine, dressed not in his toga but in a worn, brown tunic borrowed from one of his household slaves. No Roman wife, married to a man of property, would have allowed her husband to leave the house looking so drab and nondescript; but at thirty-seven, Lucius still had no wife, nor had he any intention of acquiring
one. He came and went as he pleased, unconstrained by concerns of family or by most of the societal obligation that applied to men of his age and wealth.

As he stepped out the front door, his heart began to race. How absurd, he thought, that a man his age should feel such adolescent excitement at the prospect of a sexual tryst, and with a woman who had been his lover for more than three years. Yet the thrill he felt at seeing her never diminished; it grew stronger. Was it the danger that excited him? Or was it because they were able to meet so seldom, which made each occasion special?

He looked up at the cloudless sky. He would have preferred the anonymity of a hooded cloak, but on a hot summer day such a garment might attract more attention than it deflected. He took a few steps down the narrow street, then looked back at his house. How absurdly big the place was, for a single man to dwell in. A huge staff of slaves was required just to keep the place running. Sometimes he felt that the slaves were the true inhabitants and he was simply an occupant.

How he preferred the tiny house on the Esquiline that was his destination, the place he had purchased for the sole purpose of meeting his lover.

He made his way down the slope of the Palatine and across the heart of the city, passing the Arch of Titus and the Flavian Amphitheater, glancing up at the towering Colossus of Sol. He passed through the crowded Subura, hardly conscious of the noise and the odors. He ascended the steep, winding path up a spur of the Esquiline Hill and paused for breath at the little reservoir called the Lake of Orpheus, so named because the splashing fountain was decorated by a charming statue of Orpheus with his lyre surrounded by listening beasts. The house of Epaphroditus was nearby, but Lucius turned in a different direction.

At last he arrived at his destination. The house was small and unassuming, with nothing to distinguish it. The door was made of unpainted wood without even a knocker for ornament. He pulled a key from his tunic and let himself in. There was no doorkeeper to admit him; there were no slaves at all in the house. That in itself made the house a special place. Where did a man ever go in Roma where he could be truly alone, without even slaves present?

She was waiting for him in the tiny garden at the center of the house, reclining on a couch. She must have only just arrived, for she was still dressed in the hooded cloak she had worn to cross the city. Unlike Lucius, she could not possibly go out in public without hiding her face, even on a day as hot as this.

He sat beside her without saying a word. He pulled back the hood. The sight of her short blond hair excited him. It gave her a curiously boyish look and made her different from other women. Only the other Vestals and their female servants ever saw her like this, without her headdress; the sight of her cropped hair, like the sight of her naked body, was his alone, a privilege both sacred and profane that was enjoyed by no other man on earth. He ran his fingers through her hair, intoxicated by a sense of possession.