Now, as travel-weary Seneca stood in the portico of his Alban villa, one of his accompanying freedmen rapped on the door, and presently, there was a stirring inside. The doors were thrown back, and the doorman, with boat-shaped oil lamp in hand, looked with surprise and then panic upon the face of his master. “I find nothing ready for my arrival,” Seneca would soon lament in a letter to a friend, “apart from myself.”
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Seneca kept a baker and a cook on the permanent staff at the villa, as he did at all his properties. So now he called for bread and olive oil, for he was hungry after his journey. The doorman bustled away, calling to rouse the baker from his slumbers. Seneca sagged onto a couch in the dining room and waited. Soon the doorman returned, with the news that the baker was out of bread. Seneca strove not to let his irritation show.
“The farm manager will have some, or the steward, or a tenant,” said Seneca, who was even prepared to eat stale bread.
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Again the doorman hurried away to awaken the farm manager, to alert the steward of the house, and to run to the homes of nearby tenants. Seneca’s exhaustion now drove him to his bed. There, as he awaited his loaf of bread, he called in one of the secretaries and dictated a letter to his friend Lucilius, a native of Pompeii and the procurator of Sicily. By the time that Seneca was well into the letter, he had second thoughts about eating bad bread. “I shall wait then,” he said, “and not eat until I either start getting good bread again or cease to be fussy about bad bread.” And so he surrendered to his exhaustion and dropped off to sleep, without bread of any kind to satisfy his hunger.
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As the summer approached, Seneca would stay at various country villas. His vineyards at Mentana were considered among the best in Italy and begged regular attendance. Another of his favorite estates was at Nomentum, twelve miles northeast of Rome, which also boasted fine vines. The air there he considered favorable to his health, and once, when he came down with a fever at Rome, he had hurried to Nomentum, certain that the change of address would aid his recovery. His elder brother Gallio, Seneca wrote to a friend, had done something similar while proconsul of Achaia, sailing to an Aegean island in the belief that a change of air would be more beneficial to overcoming a fever than would any physician’s prescription.
As the summer drew nearer, too, Seneca was taken aside by Cleonicus, the most trusted of his freedmen. Cleonicus had a confession to make. He had been approached by agents of Tigellinus—on Nero’s command, he said. Through threat or bribe, those agents had cajoled Cleonicus to poison his master. Cleonicus had procured poison and had even prepared a deadly draught to administer to Seneca. But Cleonicus’ conscience had got the better of him, and he had come forward to tell his master all.
This proximity to a violent death shook Seneca. He reasoned that while Cleonicus had proven loyal, another member of his staff might give in to bribe or threats and be prepared take his master’s life. From this time forward, Seneca would not worry about bread or any other foodstuff produced or even handled by his servants. He would only eat wild fruit that he himself gathered, and he would only drink pure stream water that he collected personally. His life, Seneca was convinced, depended on such extreme precautions.
V
THE FLAME
M
arch 1, the Kalends of March, was an important day on the Roman calendar. In times past, the Roman year had commenced on March 1. On that day, in a predawn ceremony presided over by the Pontifex Maximus, the vestal virgins renewed the Eternal Flame that burned year-round in the temple dedicated to Vesta, goddess of hearth and home. The March 1 date was too fixed in the routine of Rome for it to be altered. So now, Nero came to the small, circular Temple of Vesta in the Forum, for the Eternal Flame’s renewal ceremony of AD 64.
The vestals, the priestesses who served Vesta, made up the most exclusive and most revered of Rome’s religious orders. There were just six members of this, Rome’s only all-female order. Priestesses joined the order between the age of eight and ten; Roman females were launched into adult life early, being legally eligible to become engaged at the age of twelve and to marry at thirteen. Most entrants would stay in the order all their lives. Down through the centuries, a number of vestals would be executed for breaking their vow of chastity—traditionally, buried alive. Many emperors overlooked the affairs of vestals, although within two decades, the emperor Domitian would crack down on unchaste members of the order. A small number of vestals left the order after many years’ service, with some marrying, although that was traditionally considered unlucky for all involved.
It brought a Roman family great honor for a daughter to be chosen as a vestal. She was expected to observe chastity and lead a very regimented life, dressed in white headdresses and white robes. She lived in the expansive House of the Vestals on the Forum, beside the Temple of Vesta, although if she fell ill, she was expected to immediately move to the house of a relative until she recovered, so that she did not infect fellow vestals. The vestals’ official carriage, a two-wheeled, enclosed
carpentum
, was the only vehicle, apart from builders’ carts, permitted to traverse the streets of Rome in daylight. Preceded by a lictor, the carriage of the vestals had total right-of-way.
It was a capital crime should anyone harm a vestal, and the best seats were reserved for vestals in all theaters and amphitheaters; their front-row white marble seats can still be seen at the Colosseum to this day. On their rare public appearances, the women were heavily veiled. There was a legend that should a condemned Roman citizen see a vestal when on his way to his execution, he must be set free at once. The vestals were also entrusted with the safekeeping of important documents. Julius Caesar was one of numerous leading Romans who left his will with the vestals. Some of the vestals’ most important duties occurred in June, leading up to and during the Vestalia, the Festival of Vesta. Critically, too, it was the responsibility of the vestals to ensure that the Eternal Flame was never extinguished. While the flame burned, it was believed, Rome would prosper. Should a vestal allow the flame to go out, she could be executed.
Now, in the predawn darkness, with the emperor watching and attendants holding torches high, the six women conducted the secret renewal ceremony, paying homage to Vesta and beseeching her blessing for the year ahead. Led by the chief vestal, the older priestesses guided their newest and youngest colleague. Just eighteen months before this, the vestal Laelia had died. She had been replaced by the prepubescent Cornelia, a member of the Cossi family. This child novice would rise to become chief vestal, only to be buried alive during the reign of Domitian for being unchaste, one of four vestals executed by Domitian. Now, the novice Cornelia, the elderly Domitia, the beautiful Rubria, and the three other vestals conducted the ceremonial that went back hundreds of years, under the watchful, and some say lecherous, eye of Nero—according to historian Suetonius, Nero once raped the vestal Rubria.
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With the ceremony completed and with Vesta’s fire burning brightly in the center of the goddess’s temple, Nero departed for his other early-morning duties before returning to his Palatium. March was a busy month on Rome’s official calendar. As the name of the month reflects, it was devoted to Mars. And it was indeed a martial month, with various religious activities culminating late in March in the blessing of the implements of war—weapons, standards, and even military trumpets—prior to the year’s military campaigning season. In Roman provinces bordering foreign states, the legions would similarly be preparing for campaigning. In western Britain, the legions would soon be countering the raids of the fierce Silure tribe. On the Rhine, there would be punitive Roman raids east against German tribes. In Syria, Corbulo would be consolidating his successes against the Parthians.
And as the legions went forth in spring, so Rome’s latest crop of provincial officials would leave the capital to take up their appointments for the coming year. The proconsuls, the provincial governors appointed by the Senate, would set off for their one-year tenures, taking along gaggles of staff. Each governor was accompanied by a quaestor, the most junior of Rome’s magistrates. Chosen by the emperor and rubber-stamped by a vote of the Senate, the quaestor was his governor’s chief financial officer and was responsible for military recruiting in his province. A quaestor, on his return to Rome, could automatically take a seat in the Senate.
One such quaestor preparing to depart Rome this spring of AD 64 was Gnaeus Julius Agricola. In his twenties and a provincial (being a native of Massilia), Agricola had married Domitia Decidiana, a member of a leading Roman family. The couple had a sickly young son, and Julia was pregnant with their second child, but Agricola would have to leave mother and child in Rome while he served his year on the staff of Salvius Titianus, new proconsul of Asia. Agricola’s chief would be taking his wife and elder children with him to Asia, as was the practice and the privilege of a provincial governor, but a humble quaestor had no such right. Still, Agricola and his wife “lived in rare accord, maintained by mutual affection and unselfishness,” and both would bear the separation of the next year with good grace.
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As an officer cadet, Agricola had served on the staff of the governor of Britain, Suetonius Paulinus, during Boudicca’s revolt and had lived through the bloody do-or-die AD 60 battle in which 10,000 Roman troops headed by the 14th Gemina Martia Victrix Legion had overcome 230,000 rampaging rebel Britons. The battle that destroyed Boudicca had made that legion the most feared unit in the Roman world. It would be some years before Agricola made his name, but when he did, it would be as a general, and back in Britain.
In a lottery-style process, candidates for provincial appointments put their names in an urn. Agricola’s was one of a certain number drawn out to match the number of vacancies. Another draw was made to match names with vacant posts. This was how Agricola won his Asian appointment. Over the next year, he discovered that his proconsul Titianus was “an abject slave to greed.” The proconsul’s self-serving policy, to Agricola’s mind, was one of “You wink at my offenses, and I’ll wink at yours.”
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While Agricola was serving in Asia, his son would die, but during the same period, his wife Domitia would give birth to a healthy daughter. That daughter would one day marry the historian Tacitus.
As men such as Agricola and his superior Titianus were preparing that spring to leave Rome no later than July for appointments abroad, as the law required, others were returning after completing their yearly appointments. One such returnee to Rome that spring of AD 64 was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, better known to us as Vespasian, the future emperor. Fifty-four-year-old Vespasian, who had made a name for himself as commander of the 2nd Augusta Legion during the AD 43 invasion of Britain, returned to the capital after a torrid year-long posting as proconsul of the province of Africa, in North Africa. Vespasian was a no-nonsense soldier at heart, gruff, with no airs or graces. His soldierly style of government had been so unpopular in Africa that on one occasion, the locals had pelted him with turnips.
Along with Asia, Africa was the most sought-after of all the proconsular appointments, being the best paid, as it earned the appointee 400,000 sesterces for his year of service. A legionary in the ranks of Rome’s legions, meanwhile, earned 900 sesterces a year. As it happened, Vespasian had great need of those 400,000 sesterces. He had invested in mule farms. A mule farm with a contract to supply the military was a license to mint gold, but somehow, the farm managers had got it wrong. The farms had gone broke, and so had Vespasian. To escape his financial bind, Vespasian had been forced to sell his valuables and to mortgage his family home at Rome to his elder brother Flavius Sabinus, who was in his second term as Rome’s city prefect, a combined city manager and chief of police. Vespasian’s household silver had been among the first assets to go. His sons would remember the embarrassment of growing up without silver on the table and eating from wooden plates just like slaves.
Now Vespasian was back in that family home, which was on Pomegranate Street on the Quirinal Hill, in Rome’s Regio VI, or Sixth Precinct. His brother Sabinus also had a house on the Quirinal. This was not one of Rome’s best addresses. The private mansions clinging to the lower slopes of the Palatine and Capitoline hills claimed that distinction. The Aventine Hill, too, had become fashionable with Rome’s elite in recent years after long being considered an ordinary address. But while the Quirinal was not fashionable, neither was it a dowdy address. It sat above the city, away from the industrial districts. One of the city’s larger water reservoirs, the Fundanus Basin, called a lake by many Romans, sat at the foot of the Quirinal. The basin acted as a barrier between the Quirinal and the less salubrious valley suburbs such as the Subura, where Julius Caesar had a home before he came to power and which had a name for crime and unsavory characters.
Vespasian’s eldest son, twenty-four-year-old Titus, was currently in Britain, serving as commander of an auxiliary cavalry
ala
, or wing, attached to his father’s old legion, the 2nd Augusta. Vespasian’s younger son, thirteen-year-old Domitian, was waiting at home for his father. Domitian would soon be studying rhetoric and declamation at a school conducted by one of Rome’s leading teachers. Vespasian, a widower since his wife Flavia Domitilla died when he was in his twenties, would soon pay a visit to his longtime mistress, Caenis. A wealthy woman in her own right and a former slave, Caenis had in her youth been the most trusted servant of Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony and mother of the emperor Claudius and his brother Germanicus. It had been Caenis who had carried a note from Antonia to her brother-in-law Tiberius to warn him of Sejanus’ plot to topple him from his throne. When Vespasian became emperor, he would treat Caenis as his “wife in all but name,” despite her lowly freedwoman status.
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