Vespasian was cultured. He always knew exactly what entertainment was available in Rome, because he liked Caenis to go. In his own house he had been observed to pause in the atrium for ten minutes at a time if he could hear someone singing, though that was because the person who sang in Vespasian's house was Caenis. He was not smitten with the sound of the lyre; in particular he hated it played badly. So going on an extended foreign tour with Nero was a mistake.
Titus came with them to Greece. By then Titus was twenty-six and he hated the tour with the frustration of a man who had a good ear, and who could himself play well, although unlike the Emperor he would not dream of performing upon a public stage.
Before they went to Africa, Titus had joined the army as a tribune in Germany. Vespasian long cherished a hope that his son would do his military service in Britain, best of all in the Second Augusta, his own legion, or at least the Ninth Hispana, which was commanded by Petilius Cerialis, who had been married to his daughter, Flavia. In the event they were all relieved that Titus started in Germany instead. In Eastern Britain there had been a series of administrative atrocities, which Vespasian described in a short phrase that Caenis chose to interpret as a military term (he probably did learn it in the army, but she guessed it was not a regular expression of command in line of march). Eventually the Queen of the Iceni, outraged by the dispossession of her chief tribesmen from their estates, her own disinheritance as her husband's heir, and the rape of her two teenaged daughters by a Roman finance officer's thugs, swept through the province in a ferocious rebellion. The scale and savagery were appalling. For a time it appeared Britain was completely lost. Three major towns were burned to the ground, thousands of settlers lost their lives, and the Ninth Hispana was ambushed so disastrously that Cerialis and a few rags of cavalry only just escaped alive.
Titus subsequently did lead the German detachments sent to support the decimated British legions during the period of recovery. He became popular in Britain. He and his father exchanged an interesting series of letters on the subject of Empire and provincial government.
By the time they all went to Greece, Titus had done a further stint as a quaestor and formally entered the Senate. He had been married twice, widowed once and once divorced; he had a baby daughter, Julia. He had been practicing as a barrister, though more to make himself a name in Rome than because he was particularly eloquent. His brother, Domitian, was approaching sixteen; during their Greek trip he was left behind at school.
By this time Vespasian himself had become an elder-statesman figure, respected for his military past though still disparaged for his unashamed country background. His brother, Sabinus, was regarded in Rome as the more substantial figure. Sabinus had been Governor of Moesia for seven years (though Moesia was not exactly the best-known province in the Empire) and had been Prefect of the City, a very significant post in Rome, to which he was now appointed for the second time. His wife had died. It was a source of regret to Caenis.
She and Vespasian still lived quietly. These were dark days, reminiscent of the brief dreadful reign of Caligula—but lasting much longer. Nero had begun well as a ruler, under the influence of Seneca and Burrus, though now he had murdered both. Seeking greater extravagance, he had first attempted to strangle, then divorced, then executed his blameless young wife, Octavia. He married his fabulously beautiful mistress, Poppaea, then kicked her to death, probably by accident, while she was pregnant.
"Sort of little mistake anyone could make!" Vespasian groaned. "Whoops! Careless bloody monster! Lass, was there ever a family so extravagant with other people's lives?"
There was worse to come. When Octavia's elder sister, Claudia Antonia, refused to take Poppaea's place as his wife, Nero accused her of rebellion and executed her too. In this way Caenis lost all those to whom she owed a duty as relations of her patroness, Antonia. The Flavians were now in every sense her family.
There was a terrible fire in Rome. Nero was blamed, though few dared breathe the accusation openly. Vespasian and Caenis had been away in the country; they returned to find that after six whole days and nights of conflagration the ancient heart of the city, including many sacred monuments, had been completely swept away, while much elsewhere was seriously damaged. The first outbreak had raged from near the Circus Maximus around the Palatine and Caelian Hills; then a second conflagration began north of the Capitol. Shops, mansions, blocks of modest apartments, and temples were destroyed, and part of the Palace too. Nothing remained there except rubble and ash. The fire had halted at the foot of the Esquiline. Vespasian's mansion on the Quirinal was safe; so too the house that Caenis owned outside the Nomentana Gate.
"That place of yours could be a good investment with so many people homeless!" chortled Vespasian, apparently teasing.
Caenis only smiled. She never discussed with anybody what she would do—or not do—with her house. Vespasian might have asked her to sell it, but even when he himself was reduced to investing in contracts for the supply of Sabine mules in order to fund his public career, he never imposed on her.
Now she wondered if he was gazing at her with particular amusement, though it was hard to tell, for his face often lit sweetly when he stopped what he was doing to look up at her. It had become a habit; she thought nothing of it anymore, merely accepted this as fortune's unexpected gift.
Depressed by the devastation in Rome, they went back to the country. So they missed, and were glad to miss, Nero's retaliation against the Christians whom he chose to blame for starting the fire. Sabinus, who was still City Prefect, saw it: the wholesale massacres in Nero's Circus on the Vatican Plain, the men and women torn apart by wild beasts, the human torches burning all night in the Palace Gardens. He heard the screams; he smelled the pitch and seared human flesh. He possessed the Flavian capacity for intense private feeling. He said little, but was deeply affected.
Nero's rebuilding of Rome typified the contradictions of his reign. The city itself was newly planned, with its monuments restored, while new building regulations specified ways in which private householders must guard against fire. The measures were sensible. The new street plans were elegant (though everyone hated them). Much of the cost was subsidized by the Emperor.
At the same time, this was Nero's opportunity to build the massive new palace complex that he called his Golden House. It enclosed whole farms, vineyards, and a monstrous lake—all in the center of Rome. In fact, the heart of the city was completely taken over by his new residence. The grounds contained a colonnade a third of a mile long. The interior contained a revolving dining room, and other suites, both private and public, of breathtaking magnificence. The decor included some of the most exquisite painted frescoes ever accomplished, with delicate trails of flowers, fauns, cherubs, swags, and latticework, created with meticulous artistry in the freshest colors, and even executed on corridors so tall that it was impossible to pick out the fine detail with the naked eye. There were marble vestibules, ceilings of fretted ivory, lavish use of gold leaf, and incredible encrustations of jewels. Outside the opulent entrance the Forum was dominated by the Colossus, a gilded statue of the Emperor wearing a sunray crown, which was one hundred and twenty feet high.
The total cost of the Palace would be enormous; even more bitterly resented was the fact that to create this phenomenon Nero dispossessed many other landowners, who had already lost their property in the Fire; their anger contributed much to his downfall. When he had created his flagrant affront to the austere Roman tradition, he crowed that at last he could begin to live.