“I’d prefer to live for the future,” said Kaeso with a faraway look, fingering the fascinum at his throat.
“And I’d prefer to live in the present!” Titus laughed. “But speaking of the future, how soon might we have the honour of meeting the emperor? We should like to thank him in person, not just for allowing us to return, but for restoring the honour of our father’s name. With our full rights as citizens and patricians restored, someday we might even be able to gain admission to the college of augurs.”
“How that would please the shade of your father!” said Claudius. “Of course I’d be proud to oversee your studies, and to sponsor one or b-b-both of you for admission.”
Kaeso made a face. “It’s Titus who dreams of becoming an augur, not I.”
“I brought father’s old trabea and lituus with me, from Alexandria,” said Titus. “But what about meeting the emperor?”
Claudius averted his eyes. “Yes, well, if the emperor should summon you for an audience, of course you must go. But in the great press of affairs – Caligula is so generous to so many of his subjects – it’s entirely p-possible he will forget all about this particular instance of generosity, and if that should happen, well, perhaps it’s best if you don’t remind him. Indeed, it might be b-b-best if you do nothing at all to call attention to yourselves.”
Titus furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, cousin Claudius?”
“How can I explain? Exile is a curse, but it can also b-be a blessing. Despite his sorrow at being sent so far from the city he loved, your father was fortunate to miss the terror visited on this city by Sejanus, and all the casual cruelties of Tiberius. Then, when my nephew succeeded Tiberius, it seemed that a new era was dawning, a time of hope and fresh confidence. I was eager for your father to return. So was he. P-p-perhaps we were too eager. P-p-perhaps we should have been less optimistic, and waited a little longer.” He shook his head. “It was Caligula’s father, my brother Germanicus, who should have become emperor. Everyone says so. My brother’s military skills were first-rate. His temperament was ideal. Germanicus was loved by the legions, by the people, even by the Senate. But not so loved by the gods, who saw fit to take him from us – the gods, or else Sejanus, or Livia, or Tiberius. What does it matter? They’re all dead now. All dead.”
Kaeso put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “What are you trying to tell us, Claudius?”
“Unlike his father, my nephew was always a bit… unsound.” Claudius twitched. He wiped away a bit of drool. “I suppose that sounds judgemental, even absurd, coming from the likes of me, but it’s true. As a b-b-boy, little Gaius was troubled with the falling sickness.”
“So was the Divine Julius,” said Titus.
“Perhaps, but I suspect Caligula’s case was rather more severe than that of Julius Caesar. All through his youth he was struck by spells that rendered him b-b-barely able to walk, or to stand, or even to hold up his head. He would be dazed afterwards, unable to collect his thoughts, but he always recovered. As he grew to manhood, he seemed to outgrow the affliction, and that gave us hope. We certainly never had cause to worry about his… sanity.”
“And now?” said Kaeso.
Claudius hesitated, but once again he could not resist the need to unburden himself. “The change occurred suddenly – overnight, in fact. It was caused by a love p-p-potion given to him by that horrible wife of his, Caesonia. She’s much older; she was already a mother of three when they began carrying on. If you ask me, it’s unnatural for a young man to take an older partner; it should be the other way around, don’t you think? As it is with m-m-myself and Messalina.”
“Quite,” agreed Titus. “But you were telling us about the emperor.”
“Yes. Well, apparently Caligula’s lovemaking was a disappointment to Caesonia – a harlot of such vast experience – so Caesonia decided to remedy the situation by giving the boy an aphrodisiac. The gossips say she fed him the substance the Greeks call hippomanes – a fleshy mass sometimes found on the forehead of a newborn foal.”
Kaeso wrinkled his nose. “It sounds disgusting.”
“Does it work?” asked Titus.
“One m-mixes it with wine and herbs to make it palatable,” said Claudius. “It’s a well-known aphrodisiac – various scholars mention it – but in all my research I can find no other case where it drove a man m-mmad. I suspect Caesonia adulterated it with some other ingredient.”
“She deliberately poisoned him?” said Titus.
“No. Whatever ingredient she added was probably harmless by itself, but when mixed with the hippomanes created a combination that was toxic. That at least is my theory. I have a suspicion that Caesonia may have duplicated the very love p-p-potion that drove Lucretius mad.”
The twins looked at him blankly.
“The p-p-poet Lucretius,” he explained, “who lived in the days of the Divine Julius. They say Lucretius’s madness came and went. In his lucid moments he was able to write his great work, On the Nature of Things, but eventually he was driven to suicide.”
“Are you afraid Caligula may kill himself?” said Kaeso.
Claudius shivered, hugged himself, and whinnied like a horse. The twins feared he was having a fit, but he was only laughing. “Oh, no, Kaeso, that is not what I’m afraid of! Caligula’s behaviour makes even the worst excesses of Tiberius seem trivial. The stories I could tell you – but look, here’s Messalina, and your lovely wives.”
The women rejoined their husbands. In all of Roma, it was unlikely that one could find three more beautiful women standing side by side. The twins had chosen wives who might have passed for siblings themselves; Artemisia and Chrysanthe both had buxom figures and wore their thick black hair in long plaits, after the Egyptian fashion. Messalina was the youngest of the three, but she affected a matronly look, with her black hair pulled back from her face and pinned in an elaborate coiffure, and a voluminous stola that covered her from head to foot and concealed her arms as well. At a distance, the loose stola concealed her condition; seen closer, her swollen breasts and protruding belly made it obvious that she was pregnant.
“What have you lovely females been talking about all this time?” said Titus, glancing at Messalina’s breasts even as he took Chrysanthe’s hand.
“This and that,” his wife said. “Hairstyles, mostly. Artemisia and I look terribly provincial. Messalina promises to send the slave who dresses her hair, to give us instruction on the latest Roman styles.”
“Don’t complicate your b-b-beauty too much,” said Claudius. “You’re lovely as you are.” He kissed Messalina on the forehead and gently, dotingly touched her just above the navel.
Kaeso scowled and furrowed his brow. Titus pulled him aside and whispered in his ear, “What’s wrong with you, brother? You’ve been in a foul mood all day.”
“That girl is young enough to be his granddaughter!”
“That’s not our business. Try not to show your disapproval so openly.”
“Back in Alexandria-”
“We’re in Roma now. Things are different here.” Titus sighed. Back in Alexandria, his brother had taken up with some strange people and acquired some very intolerant ideas. It was their father’s fault, for having given his sons too much freedom when they were young. Both Titus and Kaeso had received traditional instruction at the academy near the Temple of Serapis, and had pursued the usual curriculum of philosophy, rhetoric, and athletics. But when the school day was done, Kaeso had spent his free time in the Jewish Quarter, drawn there by a fascination with mysticism, and the so-called scholars in the Jewish Quarter had filled his head with all sorts of bizarre ideas that were neither Greek nor Roman. Their father, too busy with business, had never sought to divert Kaeso from these dubious influences. That role would have suited a grandfather, thought Titus, an older, wiser man with patience and time to spare, but Fate had robbed them of their grandfather. They had grown up knowing no grandparents at all, a most unRoman circumstance for young patricians.
But they were in Roma now, at last, and they could ask for no better friend and guide than their cousin Claudius.
“Shall we press on to the Palatine?” said Claudius. “We can see the Hut of Romulus, the Temple of Apollo-”
Messalina rolled her eyes. “Husband, you can’t expect them to see all of Roma in a single day!”
“But what am I thinking? You must be weary, my d-d-dear. It was brave of you to come out at all.”
“I could hardly miss this opportunity to welcome your dear cousins.” Messalina looked from face to face. Her eyes lingered first on Kaeso, then on Titus.
“But you mustn’t overexert yourself. I’ll fetch the l-l-litter and send you straight home.”
The litter arrived, borne by a team of brawny slaves. Two of them lifted Messalina into the cushioned box. Claudius kissed her farewell, then closed the richly embroidered curtains so that she could travel home in privacy. As the litter was departing, Messalina parted the curtains with her forefinger and looked out. Her gaze fell on Titus, who gazed back at her.
Claudius and the women were discussing the rest of the day’s itinerary and did not see, but Kaeso saw and heard everything – the penetrating look that darted back and forth between his brother and Messalina, the way she narrowed her eyes and parted her lips, and the grunt from Titus, followed by a sigh.
The curtain closed. The litter receded from sight. Titus turned to face Kaeso, who scowled and shook his head.
Titus raised an eyebrow and flashed a crooked smile. “We are in Roma now, brother.”
AD 41
Kaeso shook the three ivory dice in his hand and tossed them onto the table. The engraved pips that landed uppermost were two fours and a one.
“Rabbits for you, brother. Too bad!” Titus scooped up the dice and threw them. The pips were all different: a one, a six, and a three. “A Venus Throw for me. I win! Today, I shall wear the fascinum.”
“No one will see it under your toga, anyway.”
“But it will be there, nonetheless, lying close to my heart on the occasion of our audience with the emperor. We’ve waited a long time for this day, Kaeso.”
Three months had passed since their arrival in Roma. They had settled into a house on the Aventine not far from the one in which they had been born. It was not a particularly elegant house, and it was too far down the hill to offer much of a view, but it was large enough for the four of them and their slaves, with room to accommodate new additions to the family.
While the twins put on their best togas, their wives dressed in their finest stolas and put finishing touches to their newly styled hair. It had not taken them long to adopt Roman fashions, though Artemisia remained the more conservative of the two, in deference to Kaeso’s distaste for ostentation. Secretly, she envied Chrysanthe’s more daring coiffure, which towered atop her head like a Subura tenement.
Carried in a pair of exquisitely crafted litters hired especially for the occasion, the two couples set out for the emperor’s house on the Palatine. The Januarius day was mild, with pale yellow sunshine peeking through thin, high clouds. As they passed the ancient Ara Maxima, the Great Altar of Hercules, Titus insisted that they stop and get out. At Claudius’s behest, he had at last started reading Livius’s history; an early chapter recounted the dedication of the Ara Maxima. It seemed fitting to Titus that on this of all days they should have a look at it.
The altar was made of massive stone blocks, roughly hewn, that looked very ancient. A bronze statue of Hercules stood nearby, a magnificent figure bearing a club and dressed only in a headdress made from a lion’s skin. At their approach, a priest offered his services. For a few coins, the priest spilled some wine and burned some incense on the altar while Titus said a prayer that their audience with the emperor would go well.
Titus explained to Artemisia and Chrysanthe why the altar had special significance to the Pinarii. “Long before there was a city on the Tiber, and only shepherds and a few traders lived among the Seven Hills, Hercules paid a visit, passing through with a herd of oxen. A monster called Cacus was living in a cave on the Palatine, just over there, terrorizing the local inhabitants. Cacus made the mistake of trying to steal one of the stranger’s oxen – he didn’t know who he was dealing with! – and after a terrific struggle, Hercules killed the monster Cacus on this very spot. The Pinarii were living here even then, for Livius tells us that it was a Pinarius who established this place of worship – the very first altar to a god in the whole region of the Seven Hills.”
Kaeso, who had remained silent since they had stepped from the litters, finally spoke. “Hercules was not a god, brother.”
Titus looked sidelong at his brother. “Strictly speaking, while he lived he was a demigod, since Jupiter sired him on a mortal woman. But after he died, he joined the gods in Olympus.”
Kaeso snorted softly. “If you believe such nonsense.”
“Kaeso!” Titus ground his teeth. This was not the first time his brother had expressed such atheistic sentiments, but to do so in a public place, where someone might overhear, and in this of all places, with its ancient, sacred ties to their own family, was beyond decency. Titus asked Artemisia and Chrysanthe to return to the litters, then spoke to Kaeso through clenched teeth.
“You should learn when to speak, brother, and when to keep your thoughts to yourself.”
“Why? If Jupiter overhears me, will he strike me down with a thunderbolt?”
“He might do just that! Am I mistaken, brother, or has this impious attitude of yours grown worse since we arrived in Roma? I had hoped that coming here, leaving the influence of those Jewish mystics in Alexandria behind, would bring you closer to the gods. I know that was father’s hope as well.”
“Don’t bring father into this.”
“Why not? When a man honours his father, he honours the gods, and vice versa. You seem disinclined to do either. The Alexandrians have a long tradition of allowing all manner of outlandish and even dangerous ideas to be taught, and we’ve seen the result: one has the feeling the gods abandoned that city long ago. But we are in Roma now, the heart of the world, the centre of the world’s religion. This is the home of our emperor, who is also the Pontifex Maximus, the highest of all priests. The gods make Roma their home when they choose to be on earth. Why? Because no other city offers them so many splendid temples to reside in, or provides so many altars where the pious may sacrifice in their honour. And in return, Roma above all other cities has been divinely blessed. Here in Roma, you must learn to keep unholy thoughts to yourself and to pay proper respect to the gods. It’s not I who demand this, but the gods.”
“No, it’s you, Titus. Your gods demand nothing, because they don’t exist.”
“Blasphemy, Kaeso! Even your Jewish mystics in Alexandria believe in the gods, even if they favour one above all others. Didn’t their god Jehovah say to them, ‘You shall have no other gods before me? You see, Kaeso, I do know something about these ideas you picked up in Alexandria, though I can’t imagine what sort of god demands his worshippers to spurn his fellow gods.”
Kaeso shook his head. “You know nothing about it, Titus. I’ve tried to explain to you-”
“I know that when a man denies the gods, he’s asking to be punished by them.”
Kaeso sighed. “I suppose we shall meet one of your so-called gods today.”
“What do you mean?”
“They say Caligula believes himself to be a god. Or a goddess, on the days he dresses up as Venus. Shall we fall to our knees and worship him?”
Kaeso’s tone was sarcastic, but Titus gave him a serious answer: “In fact, before we enter his presence, we may be required to make some acknowledgement of the emperor’s divine origins. It won’t kill you to murmur a prayer and burn a bit of incense. Shall we rejoin our wives and get on with it?”