Aunt Laelia’s unexpected suicide was another unavoidable obstacle to my journey. I did my best to keep it secret, but nonetheless it gave rise to more gossip about me than ever. I still cannot understand why Laelia took her own life, if it was not just her confused state of mind. I presume my father’s dismissal as a senator and his execution were such a blow to her reason, that out of some kind of misguided sense of honor she felt duty bound to commit suicide. Perhaps in her distorted state of mind, she considered that I should have done the same out of respect for the Emperor and the Senate, and wished to set me a good Roman example.
She persuaded her equally confused servant woman to open her veins, and when her aged blood refused to flow even in a hot bath, she finally suffocated herself with fumes from the charcoal brazier she always had in her room, for like all old people she always felt the cold. She ordered the servant woman to block all the cracks in the doors and windows carefully from the outside. She was still rational enough to do this.
I did not miss her until the following day when the servant came and asked me whether she should not now air the room. I could not bring myself to reproach this simple, toothless old woman who kept saying that she had been forced to obey her mistress’s orders. I was much too shaken by this new disgrace which had befallen my reputation and my name.
Naturally I had Aunt Laelia’s body cremated with full family honors and I made a memorial speech to her at a private funeral feast, although it was difficult to do so, for I was very angry. It was also difficult to find anything to say about Aunt Laelia’s life and her good points. I did not invite Claudia to the memorial celebrations as she had only just risen from the childbed, but I wrote to her and told her about this sad event and explained why I had still to remain in the city.
To tell the truth, I had a great deal to endure at that time. The courageous conduct of the Christians in the circus and their inhuman punishment, which had provoked loathing in our pampered youth, already influenced by Greek culture, had created secret sympathy for the Christians in the most unexpected quarters, in which Nero’s accusations were not believed. I lost many friends who I had thought faithful to me.
As evidence of their distortions and ill-will, I shall relate how it was said that I had denounced my stepbrother Jucundus as a Christian because I was afraid I should have to share my inheritance from my father with him. My father, who had already disowned me because of my bad reputation, was said to have intentionally arranged for his fortune to be taken by the State, just so that I should not have a share in it. What would they have thought up if they had known that Jucundus was my own son? I was talked about in society in this false and hostile way, so I can only guess what was said about me among the Christians. Naturally-I avoided them as much as I could so that I should not be suspected of favoring them.
The general feeling was such that I could not show myself in the streets without sufficient escort. Even Nero thought it as well to let it he known that although he had shown clearly enough that he could be stern if necessary, he was now considering abolishing capital punishment throughout the country. After that no one, even in the provinces, could be sentenced to death, even for the worst crimes. Instead the condemned were sent to forced labor to rebuild Rome, mostly Nero’s new palace, which he had now begun to call the Golden Palace, and the Great Circus.
This statement was not made from mildness and love of mankind. Nero was beginning to run very seriously short of money and needed free labor for the hardest work. The Senate confirmed the order, although during the discussion many of the fathers gave stern warnings against the consequences of abolishing the death sentence and considered that both crime and other godlessness would increase.
The general atmosphere of irritability and discontent did not result solely from the punishment of the Christians, for this had been but a pretext for many people who required an outlet for their hatred of the ruling power. Only now did the taxes necessary for the rebuilding of Rome and Nero’s own building plans begin to make themselves fully felt at all levels of society. The price of grain had of course been raised after the first emergency measures and even the slaves were made to feel the gradual decreases in the distributions of bread, garlic and oil.
Naturally a whole Empire could afford the building of a Golden Palace, especially since Nero sensibly spread the work over several years, although he hurried the building on as much as possible. He said that at first he would be content with a reasonable banqueting hall and a few bedrooms, and the necessary arcade for representations. But Nero had no head for figures, and in the way of artists, would not listen patiently to informed people’s explanations. He took money wherever he could extract it, without thinking of the consequences.
In return, he appeared as a singer and an actor at several theater performances and invited the ordinary people to them. In his vanity, he thought that his splendid voice and the pleasure of seeing him on the stage in different roles would make people forget their own not inconsiderable material sacrifices, which would become as nothing beside this great art. In this he was profoundly mistaken.
Many unmusical people of standing began to regard these eternal performances as an insufferable nuisance which was difficult to escape, for Nero, at the slightest sign, would perform encores long into the night.
Pleading several reasons, and of course with you in mind, I managed to persuade Claudia to stay in the healthy air of Caere for nearly three months. I did not read her bitter letters too carefully and simply replied that I would bring her and you to Rome as soon as my duties permitted it and I thought it favorable from the point of view of her security.
Actually, after the circus show the Christians were persecuted little, if at all, as long as they behaved themselves. But generally speaking they were understandably frightened by the apparently chance mass punishment and they kept silent and hidden away.
When they assembled in their secret meeting places underground, they soon began quarreling bitterly among themselves again and asked each other why the denouncements had been so numerous and why Paul’s followers had denounced Cephas’ followers and vice versa. Inevitably, they divided up into closed secret societies. The weakest among them were seized with despair, no longer knowing which was the best way to follow Christ. They avoided the fanatics and retired into their own loneliness.
In the end, Claudia returned to Rome of her own accord, accompanied by her own Christian servants and all the refugees to whom I had offered sanctuary on my farms in exchange for a little work from them. I hurried to meet her with a cry of joy, but at first she would not even show you to me, but ordered the nurse to take you into the house away from my evil eyes.
She told her companions to surround the house so that I should not get away. I must admit that, after consulting the household gods and my guardian spirit, I too momentarily feared for my life when I remembered that your mother is a daughter of Claudius and has inherited her father’s ruthless and capricious nature.
But after looking about the house, Claudia became comparatively reasonable and said that she wished to have a serious talk with me. I assured her that nothing would please me more, as long as all the vessels and souvenir daggers were first removed from the room.
Naturally Claudia accused me of being a murderer, a simple assassin with blood on my hands, and maintained that my adoptive brother’s blood cried to heaven, accusing me before God. Through my lust to kill, I had brought the wrath of Jesus of Nazareth down on my head.