“I’m sorry Julia is not here today,” Tertulla said. “Is she unwell?”
Pompeius leaned across Crassus. “On the contrary. She is feeling poorly, but only because…”
“Oh!” Tertulla said, taking the consul’s hand across her husband’s lap. “Joyful news!”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Pompeius said. “Julia told me this morning. I am destroyed that she cannot be here to share this moment. This is going to be the best day of all.”
The arranged marriage of Caesar’s daughter to Pompeius, his fourth and second-to-last, had been born of political need, but despite their difference in age, there was true affection between them which only grew over time. His love for Julia would make Pompeius a laughingstock, but the old general cared not a fig for their jokes and jealousies. Destiny, however, would be unkind, and their union would end tragically. In only three months, violence would erupt at the elections for the aedile magistrates. Several people would be killed. Pompeius would intervene unsuccessfully, and in his attempt to separate the parties, would be spattered by blood. His servants would bring him a fresh toga, returning the stained garment to his home. There, Julia would chance to see it. She would become so upset at the sight of it, thinking her husband had been wounded or worse, that she would faint. Landing badly on the hard floor, a few days later she would lose the child. Livia’s and Julia’s pregnancies must have begun only weeks apart, and we would weep to hear of her sorrow. The following year, she would recover well enough to try again, but she was such a frail creature. She would die in childbirth, and her daughter, seeking the arms of her mother, would follow her to the underworld only a few days later.
I tell you this, not in order to inundate you with yet more tragedy, with which these scrolls already drip, but to make you understand that as this marriage began with politics, so it ended. Julia was one of only two tenuous threads holding the alliance between Pompeius, Caesar and dominus together. With Crassus on his way to Syria, the once-tight ball of power that bound these three would be well on its way to unraveling.
•••
Pompeius was a child with a new toy. Unlike most children, myself included, he at least was willing to share. A dozen horn blowers took the stage and sounded a fanfare, while behind them, workers folded the segmented purple curtain and pulled it aside. “You must excuse me,” Pompeius said, getting to his feet, his smile plumping his cheeks to the size of ruddy apricots. “The people want to hear from me.”
Tertulla leaned over to her husband and as the crowd quieted I caught her saying, “Doesn’t he have that the wrong way around?”
I will not bore you with Pompeius’ opening speech. It was just another litany of his accomplishments, which the crowd acknowledged politely but with only modest enthusiasm. I have always held that lists of one’s triumphs sound considerably more grand and are more likely to be cheered when they are spewed from someone else’s mouth. Even if true, when self-touted, achievements are by some arcane mystery less likely to be believed. Humility is the best braggart.
Other than the grain contracts, Pompeius’ victories had grown stale with age. This encouraged my master, who became even more convinced the time was right to bring a new province home to the Roman masses, thereby undercutting Caesar’s lesser contributions in Gaul. If the rumors of Parthian riches were true, Gaul would seem a paltry conquest by comparison.
The morning was filled with music and gymnastic competitions. When the great tragedian Clodius Aesopus took the stage, the raucous applause multiplied with such amplitude in the acoustically perfect bowl of the amphitheater that I was obliged to hold my hands to my ears. After several soliloquies, the aged actor spied his old friend, Cicero, and called upon him to ascend the stage. While this galled both consuls, there was little to be done about it without appearing ungenerous-they were forced to endure an unscheduled performance by the orator. Cicero, like Aesopus, never missed an opportunity to perform, but he was gracious and blessedly brief, congratulating both Pompeius and Crassus (which visibly annoyed the former) before taking his seat once again.
A small group of players took the stage and spent a moment tuning their instruments. The crowd grew quiet. Then, from the opposite end of the stage, a woman of roughly forty years emerged from between the giant columns so quietly and unobtrusively that the audience, their attention drawn to the greater activity and noise of the musicians, did not notice her entrance. When at last a knot of those in the lower tiers saw her and recognized her, their enthusiasm swept up the curved rows until the entire amphitheater was on its feet. Galeria Copiola, the most famous of all the interlude dancers of the Roman theater had been coaxed out of her six-year retirement by Pompeius. She had given up her art at the height of her abilities, having found that wealth, of which she had accumulated much, was preferable to fame, of which she had had enough. “Better to leave,” she is reputed to have said, “to the cry of tears than the outrage of offended jeers.” A lesson learned by far too few of the politicians who witnessed her final performance that day.
The interlude dancer provided entertainment while actors and stage hands prepared for the next act in the play, which was always a comedy, since dance and pantomime, especially of Copiola’s sprightly energy, did not lend themselves to tragedy. This performer and her talent were so beloved that when she was on the bill, she packed the old wooden theaters regardless of the play being performed. While her performance this day was as memorable as the leaps and twirls of her teens, forgive me while I allow the lady Galeria to lapse back into her early retirement so that I may rush ahead to describe the day’s finale.
Within moments after her final number, an army of stage hands began to appear between the tall columns at the back of the stage. Each pair of men carried a segment of iron fence, six feet wide by ten feet tall. Three vertical bars were topped by gold-painted spikes and weighted at the base with heavy iron plates. The workers quickly created a barrier about the entire circumference of the orchestra and stage, each segment linked to its neighbor by heavy bolts through each crosspiece. When it was done, Pompeius walked through an open section directly before us, crossed the semi-circle of the orchestra and climbed the stage. He stood inside the enclosure, dwarfed by a fifteen-foot tall statue of Venus draped in fine, green wool, the color of the goddess. The marble likeness smiled down upon him, peering over the bars that separated them.
Someone high up amongst the plebeians shouted, “Magnus, the great hunter, has captured himself!”
From the opposite side of the theater, someone else called, “At least the goddess knows on which side of the iron to stand!”
Pompeius, normally one for whom the dimmest star was more discernible than his own inchoate sense of humor, smiled and soldiered on. “On this the final day of dedication of my theater, what goddess better exemplifies the Roman spirit than Venus Victrix, embodiment of both beauty and victory. Today, I place upon the largest altar ever built in her honor a sacrifice of such proportions it will dwarf any offering that has come before.
“The creature loxodonta africanus pharaoensis is no stranger to Romans. Our ancestors knew them, fought them, captured them, defeated them. King Pyrrhus brought them to our shores to wage war against us. Your forbears have seen them but two or three times, always on display, docile, chained, paraded about like pets on their leashes.” The crowd began to stir, and I, too, had the sinking premonition that there are times when the best seats in the house are those furthest from the stage.