Flavia Domitilla, who was herself pregnant again and lumbering uncomfortably, had lent Lara and Lucilla to her cousin the Empress, to ease well-reported marital problems. Nothing had been mentioned openly — nothing ever was — but they understood it was their task to support Domitia Longina as she tried to prevent her marriage unravelling. She was a woman who looked too determined to be beaten by a quarrel. She had a strong hooked nose any general would be proud of, full cheeks and an incipient double chin; yet she was pampered enough to believe in her own looks, and of course still young.
Within the suite where they were styling Domitia, cushion-plumpers and tray-bearers came and went as if their minor errands were all important. The surroundings were sumptuous, wearying to the eye, a clutter of overstuffed upholstery, drapes and often startling statues. A rash of ornate daybeds and side-tables filled the cavernous room, among towering stone candelabra whose last night’s smoke still lingered.
The day began as routine. When Domitian burst in, everyone froze. Always prone to blushing, he had coloured up. His wife tensed, though she hid it. The two sisters saw a marital fight coming. Some attendants scattered. Lara and Lucilla followed protocol, abruptly standing still with lowered eyes. Domitian was prowling between them and the double doors he had flung open; they could not make a discreet withdrawal.
Domitia had had ten years of practice with her husband. The trick was to let him be the centre of attention.
I know you had an affair.
You are winding yourself up needlessly.
Stop lying to me…
There had certainly been a shift in this famous marriage. Domitian had returned from Europe suffering agonies of jealousy. It seemed to blow up from nowhere, though Lucilla suspected Domitia Longina had unwittingly contributed. She had misplayed her position when left behind in Rome. In the anticlimax after his campaign and triumph, the new Germanicus was now all too ready to ponder uncomfortably on what might have happened in his absence. Domitian never liked feeling left out, even though he preferred solitude. Now he had a new game: brooding over these fears that his wife had been unfaithful.
If the ‘visit to Gaul’ had been merely ceremonial, Domitia Longina might have gone abroad with him. Although he took courtiers, she did not escort her husband. She was Corbulo’s daughter. She could have stomached a few weeks of pecking at unusual titbits among men with moustaches and trousers. But Roman commanders did not take high-born wives into battle, which had always been the expedition’s real purpose. So she was left in Rome.
Problems had begun when their son died. They had lost their young boy and were not coping well. Domitia was both grieving and resenting any pressure for her to immediately produce another heir. Breeding called for conjugal relations. There were doubts whether that was happening.
The couple guarded their privacy. People were not even sure how many children they had produced; if they ever had a daughter too, as some believed, her little life must have been even shorter than the boy’s. His existence was recorded; he was pictured on coins; now he was shown among the stars, dead and deified.
Neither of his parents could open up and talk about it. In a festering atmosphere of secrecy, Domitian’s response to loss was as strangulated as always. They gave each other no consolation. Domitia froze; Domitian consorted with his eunuchs. Domitia tolerated that, since at least he had not taken a senatorial mistress who would usurp her position. There had been strife, though not a rift, but when he left for the north it must have been a relief to both of them. For Domitia, his absence brought unprecedented freedom.
If you worked it out, as Lucilla thoughtfully did, Corbulo’s daughter had never before been allowed any independence. Second child of a strong father, she was married very young, to Aelius Lamia; she was still an inexperienced bride when Domitian invited her to Alba and persuaded her to divorce her husband. Domitian was eighteen, Domitia even younger. Adolescents. Immature and thrilled. Lucilla imagined them marvelling that after both being children of disgraced fathers under Nero, they now had a glorious reprieve. Domitian was a star in a brand new ruling dynasty and, during the first heady days of their love affair, he was even his father’s representative in Rome.
They faced a wobble when Vespasian pressed Domitian to marry his brother’s daughter, but Domitian held out for his soulmate. The link to Corbulo’s family had attractions so they were allowed their wish. Domitia moved from one marriage directly into another, but Vespasian insisted they lived with him; it was to enable Domitian’s initiation into government, but it meant that for ten years they never had a home of their own.
Now she was Domitia Augusta, first lady of the Empire; her image was on the currency; she had the same privileges as the Vestal Virgins. So what did she do when, for almost a year, she was left to her own devices with no head of household? Domitia Longina spent long hours flopping on couches, bored. She chatted to friends. She visited her sister. She spent money. She spent more money — though not too much because the Flavians were infamously frugal. In private she dwelt on her loss as a mother, which was not only tragic but diminished her influence as Domitian’s Empress. Then, she ordered up her curtained litter and went to the theatre.
Of course she admired Paris. Paris was brilliant.
The Roman establishment had a mixed reaction to pantomime. It was a form of dramatic performance that came from the east, particularly Syria, although Paris — this particular Paris, for he used a traditional stage name — was Egyptian. Exotic, risque cultures raised hackles in grumpy Roman conservatives. Rome’s founding fathers, lean men ploughing cold furrows in between fighting fierce enemies, would find this theatrical genre distasteful, while the danger that posturing matinee idols would seduce noblewomen caused horror. Mimes came into frequent contact with such ladies, who threw themselves at performers.
Pantomime presentations, retelling Greek myths, had spectacular stage effects and lavish costumes, so productions were expensive. It was a callisthenic art. It featured rhythmic dance. Sometimes there was an orchestra or merely a sinuous flute, but always percussion. One man, mysteriously masked and with a well-honed body, would perform all the parts in a story while a soloist or chorus sang the lyrics. It was said that a good pantomime talked with his hands. Husbands knew what they thought that meant. They knew where the bastard’s hands were likely to be put when offstage.
Pantomime artistes made extravagant claims on their tombstones that they had led chaste lives. This was to refute satirists, who told the public that pantomimes corrupted morals, the morals of women in particular, although everyone thought the dancing bastards were not picky. They, or at least the theatrical masks they wore, had long hair, which always offends traditionalists. The greatest performer of his day, Mnester, had been put to death for an affair with that byword for voracious sexuality, the Empress Messalina. The Senate had banned mime performances in private homes, and forbade the aristocratic young from joining in dancers’ processions. Rivalry between their fans occasionally led to riots. Sometimes pantomime artistes were exiled — not often enough, said the prudish.
Nevertheless, these cult performers flourished. With huge incomes and celebrity acclaim, plus close contact with the upper classes, they easily became arrogant. Their influence at court was wildly over-estimated; Paris was reputed to control army postings and other rewards, though that hardly squared with the Emperor’s own determination to supervise all appointments himself.
Always caught between his liking for the arts and his self-imposed role as moral arbiter, Domitian enjoyed the pantomime and had seriously admired Paris. That was until he convinced himself that Paris had slept with his wife.