On a side buffet stand interesting treats. There are flagons, conical sieves, little bowls of appetisers, spice grinders and goblets. Musca soars gently in that direction, criss-crossing with anticipation above the wine equipment before landing on the cold, curved rim of a silver water ewer. Head down again, she tiptoes, then sips. Buzzing happily to another container she tastes wine. After each visit she leaves behind traces of all the disgusting places she has been that day. She slicks saliva onto her front legs, considering whether to lay eggs on the food remains.
Illness has carried off the human’s father and brother. Illness will take his young son soon. He lost his own mother before he could remember her, his sister not long after. He lives in the utmost luxury, yet disease threatens continually. No one will ever explain to him that Musca and the millions like her are the biggest enemy he has. Nobody knows.
Two major bereavements in less than two years have affected him more deeply than he will ever acknowledge. He has honoured his father and brother: announced them as gods, planned monuments in their name. This does not compensate his loss. Vespasian and Titus were men of great physical and mental energy, characters who filled a house with their presence. However much he fretted against those warm-hearted heavyweights, with them both gone, his isolation weighs oppressively. His female relatives eye him up too coolly; even his wife is too conscious of her own status as Corbulo’s daughter. Distrust and disinterest sour the atmosphere around family dinner couches; there will be no comfort there. His surviving male relatives, his cousins, all have to be seen as rivals. Enough said. If they push him, he will deal with them.
He sits, as he has done now for many hours, sluggish and barely moving, in chronic depression. He stares emptily. He neither thinks, nor works, nor even enjoys the solitude he has demanded. He has realised a dismal truth. He is the Emperor. He is trapped in his role forever, not freed from impositions but doomed to spend his every hour according to the expectations of others. He must live as emperor until he dies, yet the joy he had expected eludes him. A worm of despondency gnaws; this despair will never leave him.
He will be a good emperor. Work diligently. Take a meticulous interest in all aspects of administering the Empire. Honour the gods. Rebuild, replenish coffers, tackle moral degeneration, crush revolt, initiate festivals, encourage artistic and athletic achievement, leave Rome flourishing and ready for a Golden Age. His name will reverberate through history. His fame will be perpetual.
Knowing these things is not enough.
Voices are audible beyond the massive double doors. Dimly they reach Musca, who does not react. But the human listens intently, knowing they will be talking of him. There is no other subject in his villa at Alba, only the Emperor.
The men outside, like all at the court, are waiting to see how he will behave; most are already anxious. The precedents are bad. Generally, emperors of stature came to the post when they were mature and experienced. Titus, at a mere forty, was unusual. He defied doubters, in only two years establishing himself as much-admired. Who could say whether, given time, he would have degenerated? Yet that no longer matters. His good reputation will last.
Everyone is remembering the two very young emperors: Gaius, who was known as Caligula, and Nero. Both were bywords for extravagance, cruelty and madness. Domitian is thirty. People call him the new Nero, pretending it reflects his cultural interests, yet hinting at the worse traits that brought the Senate to declare Nero an enemy of the state. Nero, too, was believed to have poisoned his brother. Will Domitian follow Gaius and Nero into tyranny, or will he develop more benignly?
Is his character already formed, his destiny predetermined? Will he have any choice?
He owns everything he could ever want. He can do anything.
He is human. Megalomania beckons alluringly.
One voice outside the room is too quiet to distinguish but the speaker’s companion is Vibius Crispus: bland, confident, self-interested, supposedly witty. Crispus trims his barque to any current. First he flourished as an informer for Nero; his own brother was accused of extortion as a provincial governor but Crispus managed to reduce the sentence. Without breaking stroke, when most Neronian informers went down, Crispus reconfigured himself to become a close associate of Vespasian and Titus. Now he manages to hold on at court as Domitian creates his own circle of advisers: Caesar’s friends, some of whom actually like their Caesar. Men who either enjoy risk, or cannot think up an excuse to avoid his notice.
These souls attempt their duties, their role as advisors, yet the new Emperor thwarts them and causes perturbation. He takes long solitary walks; fails to confide; gloomily spends hours all alone in closed rooms, doing nothing. No one thinks that he may be suffering mentally after the loss of his father and brother. Even he fails to recognise it as bereavement.
The ‘villa’ at Alba is an enormous complex, peopled by an entourage that runs into hundreds. He ought to lead them; show himself; thrill them with his presence and personality. People judge as peculiar his sitting alone for many hours, killing flies with his pen. In stuffy, traditional, upper-class Rome, it amounts to a breach of etiquette, one they will not forgive.
‘Is anybody with him?’
The reply is sarcastic: ‘No, not even a fly!’
Wrong, Crispus.
Musca is here, about to have fun. She begins her plan to annoy the man at the table. She zooms at high speed from one side of him to the other, as if winding invisible wool-skeins through the room, buzzing loudly as she goes. She dive-bombs him. She taunts him, rushing past his ear, so close he feels air shimmer with her wings. He gives no sign of noticing. He stares ahead, slowly twirling his pen between his fingers, apparently unaware of the housefly trying to torment him.
Musca will not be appearing in this story again.
PART 2
You think he is going mad?
7
Tiberius Decius Gracilis was posted to Rome for Domitian’s new Praetorian unit. The incoming emperor felt the need to show his importance by raising the number protecting him from nine to ten cohorts. It brought almost a thousand extra Guards onto the complement, including ten centurions. Gracilis had been a centurion for a number of years, rising to primipilus, ‘first-spear’, or chief centurion in a legion. It was a venerated post, dedicated to ensuring continuity and discipline. These officers did much more than nurture continuity, so the character of any legion owed much to the individual strengths and prejudices of its primipilus. Wielding such power could make a man seriously corrupt, though by the time anyone reached first-spear in a Roman legion, he had learned how to get away with almost anything. Oddly, some of these heroes were surprisingly straight.
It went without saying that where centurions were traditionally reckoned to be bastards, chief centurions were the bloodiest bastards of all, a role they much enjoyed.
It was a one-year post. Afterwards, the holder was entitled to take his retirement, leaving with an enhanced discharge grant and an impressive detail for the mason to chip onto his memorial stone. Yet most wanted to stay as long as possible in their army life, which offered so much simple joy and prestige. They applied to be chief centurions of further legions, taking along increasingly colourful reputations and the elaborate investment portfolios they had put together from their rewards as the army’s super-bastards.
Gracilis arrived at the Praetorian Camp with his decorations in a casket he had designed himself; first-spears adored fancy equipment. Special luggage enhanced their status, if greater status were needed. His box had neat, removable cloth-lined trays for his nine gold phalerae, the heavy round breastplate badges that soldiers who cared about such things jealously collected, and cedarwood inserts to hold his other awards: all his little spears and torcs and honorary bracelets, together with diplomas listing citations. When Gracilis stowed the box in his newly allocated officer’s suite, he gave it a casual kick into position as if the baubles meant little to him. However, he then instructed his servant that nobody else was to touch that casket or he would personally remove their balls with his dagger, barbecue those stinking items with rosemary, and eat them.