‘It’s a waste of time trying?’
‘There is no cure.’
‘He will never get better?’
‘The condition is chronic. He may perhaps get worse.’
‘That could be unfortunate! So what do you advise?’
‘It is important to resist his crazy ideas. Stand firm. Do not undermine the poor fellow, but tell him firmly you assume he has his reasons for thinking that way, but you cannot agree with him. This condition is very hard on friends and family, because of the unremitting need to deal with someone who denies he is afflicted and resents help. Such patients are wearing to live with and, as you probably appreciate, to be constantly under suspicion while innocent may exasperate his associates until they do turn against him. Those who love him will feel rejected.’
‘Those who love him may be rejected.’
‘Exactly.’
‘This is bleak.’
‘Not entirely. Such patients can have great creative talent — and can be capable of immense kindness to others — but even those who admire him may not dare to reassure him, in case the slightest phrase is misinterpreted.’
Themison paused. The Praetorians were too despondent to react.
‘Well, at least from your friend’s point of view, although he suffers terribly — and believe me, his delusions do make him truly miserable — even so, his affliction is not fatal… Though we must all die,’ said the doctor lugubriously.
‘That’s what you think!’ snapped Decius Gracilis dryly. ‘He’s almost a god. Half the buggers sitting up among the constellations nowadays are his dead relatives.’
This plain speaking went too far for Themison. With the patient’s identity brought into the open so dangerously, he broke down under the pressure.
He jumped from his chair and fell on his knees. ‘Is this a test? Has some patient complained? Is a rival playing tricks on me? Pharoun of Naxos? What can I have done to displease the Emperor? Are you going to send troops to arrest me?’ He sounded quite delusional.
They would achieve nothing more from the interview. The Praetorians went to the panicking doctor, lifted him considerately from his cracking knees like a sack of hay, and replaced him in his consulting chair. Vinius fetched his lunch tray and laid it in the doctor’s lap, then wiped Themison’s brow with his linen napkin and waved a fly away. After these gentle courtesies, the two soldiers left.
Outside in the street, Gracilis and Vinius breathed deeply as if they had been stifled in the consulting room; heads back, they gazed for a moment at the mild autumnal sky.
‘Well, we tried our best. There’s nothing we can do for him. “We all carry the seeds of it within us” — how good to know!’
‘And what hope is there for anyone, when even the doctor is paranoid?’
PART 3
All roads lead to…
12
Life went on.
For nearly two years the Emperor was absorbed in running Rome. To demonstrate stability, he reorganised the Mint and upgraded the currency’s metal content to the high quality it had contained in the reign of Augustus. This standard was hard to maintain. But Domitian boosted the Treasury by confiscating property; it was said he relied on trumped-up charges laid by informers. At the start of his reign he had expressed abhorrence for informers; now he was less fastidious. On the other hand, his management of the courts was scrupulous; he purged juries of undesirables and, when he was involved personally, gave high-quality judgements.
The most visible result of his rule was the city revamp. Almost all the buildings destroyed in the fire were reconstructed within a few years. The Campus Martius was completely redeveloped, with even the gnomon on the Horologium straightened up to tell the time correctly; the Pantheon and Saepta were restored, with an enhanced Temple of Isis to celebrate Domitian’s dramatic escape in the Year of the Four Emperors. How much his youthful experience affected him was displayed in his new treatment of the caretaker’s hut where he had been hidden overnight; the original shrine he constructed during his father’s reign, with its altar picturing his exploits, was replaced by a large Temple of Jupiter the Guardian.
The main temple to Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol was lavishly restored. Using its original footprint, the massive Etruscan base, Domitian created a dramatic new building with a hexastyle Corinthian portico in white Pentelic marble, which had never been used in Rome before. The doors were plated with gold and the bronze roof-tiles gilded. The new chief cult statue of gold and ivory rivalled the masterpiece of Phidias, the statue of Zeus at Olympia.
Carpers might accuse Domitian of ignoring his father and brother, yet he willingly completed the Temple of the Deified Vespasian in the Forum, plus a Flavian Tribunal on the Capitol where discharged soldiers were listed under the aegis of all three Flavian emperors; he commissioned the Arch of Titus, a superb and enduring monument that celebrated his brother’s Judaean victory. Close by, Domitian created new underground systems in the Flavian Amphitheatre, where gladiators and animals were assembled before fights, and crowned the building with a fourth storey, decorated with bronze shields just below its cornice and supporting famous canvas coverings that were operated by sailors from the Misenum Fleet, to shade the audience. He installed the curious Sweating Fountain and built four training schools for gladiators, one directly linked to the amphitheatre. In Vespasian’s forum, he completed the Temple of Peace, adding his own Forum Transitorium, which ingeniously utilised a narrow space to provide a linking walkway, at the heart of which was a Temple of Minerva, Domitian’s favourite deity.
His works included every kind of amenity and monument: warehouses, gates, arches, baths. He renovated the public libraries, and spared no efforts to stock them, sending scribes to Alexandria to copy all existing literature. To persuade the gods to ward off future conflagrations, in every region of Rome he paid for the substantial altars that had been promised since Nero’s Great Fire, yet never before provided.
There were many more projects in planning, not least a dramatic new palace on the Palatine Hill. Although credit for much of this massive building programme would be claimed by his successors, Nerva and Trajan, it was Domitian who instigated many buildings that would become the famous face of imperial Rome.
This great statement Flavian city did have an unsettling effect on people who felt unsafe with the unfamiliar. Altering the time-honoured centre of an ancient urban scene is not immediately popular. But generations would soon grow up who had only known the new. For them, Rome was now more magnificent and impressive than it had been before, both a source of pride for its own citizens and a magnet to awe-struck visitors.
In Plum Street, by contrast, the Insula of the Muses looked much the same. Agents for the Crettici kept the building secure and watertight, though they tended to leave shutters and doors with a sun-bleached, shabby look. The porticos were swept most days by a group of slaves who worked slowly and liked leaning on their besoms, but who did deter vagrants. Many tenants supplied balcony troughs or flowerpots on steps; some even put out lamps in the evening, though these were regularly stolen by burglars or mischief-making revellers.
The ailing tassel business finally went under, which made Lucilla assess her own plans. She would have liked to rent the vacant shop, starting a local beauty parlour, but so far her ambitions were grander than her cashbox allowed. After a sad discussion with Melissus, she saw the new lease given to a couple of pumice-and-sponge sellers. Like the soft-furniture people before them, they had silly taste and little business sense, so Lucilla was biding her time.