Suetonius smarted.
"The entire Court knows how Caesar doesn't share his wife's bed, he far prefers the company of virile males," Balbilla continued unabated. "Perhaps the twelve year age difference when the Augusta was married to Hadrian impeded their marital relationship? We note, however, how a thirty year differential between the emperor and his eromenos doesn't induce similar consequences.
Yet this doesn't mean, Suetonius Tranquillus that menials therefore have license to be familiar with the Augusta. The empress wasn't then, and isn't now, in urgent need of a mercy fuck."
Gulping, Clarus interrupted this unexpected, escalating exchange. It was getting out of hand.
"Be that as it may, Julia Balbilla, we're here to explore other matters today. The death of Antinous, in fact.
We wish to take your legal statement of what you might know about the boy's death. We've reason to believe the lad engaged in sexual activities through the day he died, though we don't know where or with whom," Clarus explained. "We're trying to clarify the picture of how his death occurred and who might know something about it."
"Well, I can assure you, gentlemen, I have never been a recipient of the young man's attentions. Half the Court aspired to his charms, but I was not one of them," Balbilla teased. "Why don't you ask Caesar himself? Surely he knows what his young friend gets up to in his free time? Besides, hadn't he been preparing for it for weeks?"
Julia Balbilla's four auditors were smitten silent for several moments. Clarus dared revive the dialog.
"Madam, both the Princeps and likewise the Augusta are forbidden to us for interview. You know, above our station, and all that," Clarus explained. "So instead, we wish to take a deposition from you on these matters. We're obliged to report with our summary to Caesar before dawn tomorrow under pain of penalty."
"Why dawn tomorrow? Why specifically that date, the third day of The Isia? Is it to do with the summons everyone has received about tomorrow's dawn ceremony?" Balbilla queried.
"We do not know, m'lady. This was Caesar's instruction. I am sure he will have his motives," Suetonius reassured. "Shall we begin? Please state your names and titles, and then we'll follow questioning from there."
The lady smirked calmly at Suetonius in the standard-issue patrician dismissive mode.
"Who and what I am you know better than I do myself, Tranquillus," she announced. "Your books prove it so. Proclaim my pedigree to your satisfaction, and I'll respond to your questions if they suit my temper."
"Oh," Suetonius responded, somewhat fazed. "Scribe, record me now. This is an interview with Julia Balbilla Philopappus, the daughter of Antiochus Epiphanes, Prince of Commagene, and grand-daughter of Antiochus IV, King of Commagene. This was the same Antiochus who was once friend to Caesars Gaius Caligula and Claudius. On her mother's side she is a grand-daughter to Tiberius Claudius Balbillus 'The Wise' of Rome, advisor to Caesar Nero on matters astrological and spiritual.
From recall, m'lady was born at Rome in the third year of Caesar Trajan. At twenty-nine years of age she travels as a gentlewoman-companion under the protection of the empress, Julia Vibia Sabina Augusta. Mistress Balbilla is renowned among her peers as a poet and a master of classical languages, as well as a consultant on mystical issues."
"Consultant on mystical issues?" Clarus asked querulously. "Please explain to us this role, m'lady."
Balbilla sighed impatiently.
"By Isis, gentlemen, you already know more about my heritage than I understand myself, and you both know it! Tranquillus, you report in your scandalous diatribe The Lives of the Caesars details of my family's history which have sorely injured my reputation," the frank-and-forthright lady expounded censoriously. "You know precisely what I mean in this!"
"M'lady — ," the biographer stammered in escalating agitation. Balbilla was persistent in her withering regard of her present company.
"Don't be so obdurate, Suetonius Tranquillus. Your account of my grandfather's service to Caesar Nero in your scandal-sheets has implied many things about my heritage which people find distasteful."
"Such as, m'lady?" Suetonius uttered timorously.
"You will recall, Tranquillus, how you accused my grandfather, the astrologer Balbillus at Nero's Court, of colluding with that foolish emperor in some of his more cruel crimes?" she rebuked. "Your book on Nero's reign-of-terror reports how Balbillus acted cravenly in telling that erratic ruler how, when the omen of a comet appeared in the night sky over Rome, its warning of the death of great rulers such as Caesar could be diverted by the substituted death of lesser distinguished men.
Nero, you report, fearful for his own life because of my grandfather's prediction, viciously turned upon all the eminent men of the time. Nero invented the Piso and the Vinicius Conspiracies to justify killing all so-called conspirators, their wives, and even their children and slaves. But it was really done to confiscate their properties and wealth into his own profligate coffers.
Your book suggests my ancestor Balbillus was party to this grievous mischief. We of the line of Balbillus now carry this slander forever."
"But, my lady, these things are true. Your ancestor is recorded acting in this way. It's in the archives stored at the Palatine," the biographer pleaded. "He did indeed advise Nero in this manner, and the human cost to those brave critics of Nero's larceny was harrowing. Much blood flowed."
"Yet my grandfather too was a victim of Nero's malevolence, Tranquillus!"
Suetonius sparked up at this exchange. One feature became prominent.
"You remind me, my lady, how your ancestor advised Caesar that a substituted death could defer his mortality?" he reiterated.
"Yes, Tranquillus," she responded, irritated. "My pedigree is now burdened with this defamation for evermore."
"— of how a substituted death could defer or deflect Nero's own fatality?" Suetonius repeated.
Balbilla nodded querulously at this repetition.
Suetonius, Clarus, Surisca, and Strabon looked towards each other. There was something of pertinence in Julia Balbilla's words, they each realized.
Suetonius shifted his line of questioning.
"Tell me, Julia Balbilla of Commagene, with whom have you discussed in recent times either my book on the Life of Nero or, more likely, the actions of your ancestor Balbillus in recommending the strategy of a substituted victim?" the biographer prodded. All eyes turned to the Commagene.
"Of a substituted victim? Oh, I recall it passed through a dinner-party conversation at the old Antirrhodos Palace of Cleopatra's at Alexandria some weeks ago.
I was telling the guests how I had visited The Soma with Hadrian and Antinous a few days earlier. We were a small party including the Governor and the priestess Anna Perenna, to view the ancient sarcophagus of Alexander the Great on display at The Soma. Caesar had ordered its lid to be removed so we could have a better inspection of the embalmed body within.
I suppose, considering Alexander Divus had been lying in his tomb for four hundred years, he was in fairly good shape. His flesh has darkened with age to a waxy dark gray, and he didn't look quite human to me. In fact I wondered if it was the real Alexander at all, these Egyptians can be so tricky in these things, can't they?
Governor Titianus told us how a century ago the accursed Caesar Caligula had stolen Alexander's breastplate and cloak from the sarcophagus because of their presumed magical properties. In the previous generation Caesar Augustus had accidentally knocked a piece off Alexander's nose, proving how even a Divus, the godlike, are corruptible like the rest of us.