Some deaths certainly occurred; the governor of Asia, Civica Cerialis, was abruptly executed for unknown reasons, and without trial, possibly because Domitian believed he had encouraged the false Nero. The governor of Britain, too, Sallustius Lucullus, was put to death, ostensibly when he ‘invented a new lance and named it after himself’; that seemed absurd but Domitian may have been convinced Lucullus also supported the Saturninus revolt.
In Rome, the vengeful Emperor then played a macabre joke on the upper classes. Members of the Senate and the equestrian order received personal invitations to dine with him; he was holding a special banquet to honour those who died in Dacia. Everyone was so insecure, the mere offer of dinner with their emperor filled them with anxiety. Unless a man was on his deathbed with physicians’ notes to prove it, the invitation could not be refused. All were terrified of Domitian. The more they quaked, the more he enjoyed his power over them.
Flavia Lucilla had joined the background team for this carefully managed occasion. Arrangements were on a theatrical scale. A master of ceremonies had sounded her out on the subject of dyes and skin paints, with which they conducted experiments. She was primed to attend with the necessary equipment, but sworn to secrecy.
One afternoon shortly after her divorce, she was collected in a litter. With her baskets of materials, she was taken down the Vicus Longus, through the new imperial forums, across the ancient Forum of the Romans, and up the steep covered entrance to the top of the Palatine, where she had her first real experience of Domitian’s fabulous new palace. Work was still incomplete but already she could see that this was a building of staggering style and innovation. Crowning the Palatine Hill even more majestically than its predecessor, the new palace was designed to give the impression its halls were those of gods.
After the steep climb up from the Forum, the entrance had been positioned close to the ancient Temple of Apollo and House of Augustus. An octagonal vestibule, which had curvilinear anterooms, gave a preliminary hint of magnificence and led to the first inner court. A portico of fluted columns in Numidian yellow marble surrounded a huge pool; it contained a large island over which water continually splashed via complex fountains and channels. Every surface was veneered in expensive marble.
To the left was a staggering audience chamber, roofed with ninety-foot beams of Lebanon cedar; the vast space featured fabulous purple columns and niches which contained massive statues of demigods, hewn from metallic green stone brought from the far Egyptian desert. A monumental outside porch where the heavy columns were grey-green Carystian provided the daily setting for Domitian’s formal appearance to be saluted by his people.
To the right of the entrance, Nero’s dining hall, once beautiful in itself, had been superseded by a stupendous banqueting suite that would seat thousands at great public feasts. A hundred feet high and lined with three orders of columns, the main hall boasted enormous picture windows which gave views to fountain courts where intricate oval water features stood among yet more multicoloured marble pavements.
Beyond these first formal public rooms lay areas where most people would never penetrate: astonishing second and third courts, exquisite suites, deliberately confusing corridor links, sudden changes of scale or form or level, sunken gardens, bath houses, and a private interior which formed a palace within a palace for the Emperor and his family.
Marble was the principal material — cut, carved, polished, veneered, mosaicked — but Rabirius had been allowed to spend endlessly on gold too. Everywhere glimmered and shone until the interplay of light with the musical counterpoint of water from the fountains dazzled and entranced the senses.
Amidst so much glimmering beauty, Domitian’s guests tonight were to have a very different dining experience. None of the glorious banqueting halls for which the palace would become famous were used for the Dacian dinner. A large room had been repainted entirely in darkest black: floor, ceiling, all four walls, plus cornices, architraves, door furniture and dados. On the bare black floor stood bare black couches.
Wives were not invited; each man had to endure the night alone. On arrival, all were separated from their attendants too. No friendly slaves from home would be removing their shoes and handing them napkins tonight. In the hall, they found a formal funeral banquet like those families held for their deceased relations outside necropolis mausoleums. By the dim light of cemetery lamps, each diner found beside his couch a grim black slab that looked like a tombstone. It bore his name.
As guests nervously settled, a stream of beautiful naked boys slipped into the dark room, all painted head-to-toe in black. These creatures performed a ghostly dance, winding around the couches like shadows, ebony against pitch, so only occasional movements and the whites of their eyes showed. The undulating shades finished their performance by stationing themselves one to each diner.
All the solemn sacrifices associated with funerals were made. Black serving dishes were set on low ebony tables. Each spectral pageboy served his diner with strange dark food. Cinnamon and myrrh, the spices thrown on cremation biers, stuffily perfumed the room.
There was no music. No nervous chatter broke the silence. Presiding, more gloomy than Pluto enthroned in his Underworld caverns, only Domitian talked. The sardonic host chose topics all relating to death and slaughter. Throughout the nightmare dinner, his guests expected to have their throats cut.
Finally their ordeal concluded. When they rose to leave, no one could forget that Domitian’s family had previously executed opponents when a meal ended. False smiles were a Flavian signature. Tottering back to the great vestibule, the disorientated guests then found that all their personal attendants had vanished. Slaves they had never seen before escorted them home in carriages and litters. At every step of the journey they expected to be dragged out and murdered.
They fell into their houses. As they shuddered in recovery, new terror arrived. Loud banging announced messengers, sent after them from the Emperor. Every tormented man now imagined the worst.
Exactly as Domitian intended…
That tense evening had been observed by Vinius Clodianus. Because this dinner was for the fallen in Dacia, as a survivor Vinius had been ordered to be there, to represent the lost army.
He was not required to smother himself in black war paint. Thank you, gods! The night was an ordeal for him. It gave him no solace for his dead comrades; it granted no release from his survivor’s guilt. He would endure it as a soldier, but his mood was doleful.
He was dressed up in a hybrid parade uniform, with special dispensation for one night only to be armed within the walls of Rome. Over the standard off-white tunic, which soldiers bloused up short ‘for ease of movement’ (or to show off their legs), he wore a muscled breastplate and military belt, with his most decorative dagger. The belt was composed of metal plates, ornamented with silver and black niello, and heavy with its apron of metal-tanged leather strips. He carried the long oval Praetorian shield, covering his left side from shoulder to knee, exquisitely decorated with a motif of moon and stars behind the Guards’ scorpion emblem. He had neatly tied his neckerchief; his cloak hung smartly. Most spectacularly, he had been loaned a gilded cavalry helmet, not crested like the usual parade helmet, but crowned by an eagle’s head. Its full-face metal mask, with shadowed eye, nose and mouth holes, looked remote and mysterious, although the only effect for the soldier inside was to make breathing difficult.