“Don’t even talk about wills,” I cried, to keep her off the subject. “You are many years younger than Claudia and a woman in the best years of her life. In fact we are contemporaries, but Claudia is over forty, since she is about five years older than I am. I shall not even consider making a will for many years yet.”
Claudia did not like my remark, but Antonia stretched her slim body and gave me a veiled look with her arrogant eyes.
“I think I’m quite well preserved for my age,” she said, “although your Claudia is beginning to look a little worn, if one can put it that way. Sometimes I miss the company of a lively man. I am lonely after my marriages, which both ended in murder, for people are afraid of Nero and avoid me. If only they knew.”
I saw that she was burning to talk abut something. Claudia also became inquisitive. Only old Rubria smiled her wise old Vestal smile. We did not have to encourage Antonia much for her to tell us with feigned modesty that with great tenacity Nero had several times asked her to be his consort.
“Naturally I could not agree to that,” said Antonia. “I told him straight out that my half brother Britannicus and my half sister Octavia stood out all too clearly in my mind. Out of sensitivity, I said nothing of his mother, Agrippina, although as niece of my father she was my cousin and so a cousin of yours, my dearest Claudia.”
At the memory of Agrippina’s death I had a sudden attack of coughing and Claudia had to thump me on the back and warn me against emptying my wine goblet with such haste. I was wise enough to remember my father’s unfortunate fate when he had in his confusion in the Senate brought about his own ruin.
Still coughing, I asked Antonia what Nero had given as a reason for his proposal. She fluttered her blue-shadowed eyes and looked down at the floor.
“Nero told me that he had loved me secretly for a long time,” she said. “He said that that was the only reason why he had borne such a grudge against my dead husband Cornelius Sulla, whom he thought was much too unenterprising a husband for me. Perhaps that excuses his behavior toward Sulla, although officially he stated only political reasons for having Sulla murdered in our modest home in Massilia. Between ourselves, I can admit that my husband had in fact secret connections with the commantlers of the legions in Germany.”
When she had in this way shown that she completely trusted us as her relatives, she went on: “I am woman enough to be a little touched by Nero’s open admission. It’s a pity that he’s so untrustworthy and that I hate him so bitterly, for he can be sympathetic when he wants to be. But I kept my head and referred to the age difference between us, although it is no greater than that between you and Claudia. I have been used to regarding Nero as a nasty boy since childhood. And naturally, the memory of Britannicus is an insurmountable obstacle, even if I might forgive him for what he did to Octavia. Octavia was herself responsible in that she seduced Anicetus.”
I did not tell her what a clever actor Nero could be when it was a question of his own advantage. With his position in mind, it would of course have been very valuable with regard to the Senate and the people if he were able to be allied to the Claudians in yet a third way through Antonia.
The thought of this depressed me and in my heart I did not want you ever to be disgraced in public by your father’s descent. By secret means I had acquired the letters, together with other documents, which my father, before I was born, had written but had never sent to Tullia from Jerusalem and Galilee. From them it appeared that my father, seriously confused by his unhappy love, through a forged will and Tullia’s betrayal of him, had descended to believing everything the Jews had told him, even hallucinations. The saddest thing from my point of view was that the letters revealed my mother’s past. She was no more than a simple acrobatic dancer whom my father had freed. No more was known about her descent than that she came from the Greek islands.
So her statue in Myrina in Asia and all the papers my father had acquired in Antioch on her descent were simply dust thrown in people’s eyes to ensure my future. The letters made me wonder whether I was even born in wedlock or whether my father, after my mother’s death, had acquired the evidence by bribing the authorities in Damascus. Thanks to Jucundus, I myself had found how easy it was to arrange such things if one had money and influence.
I had not mentioned my father’s letters and documents to Claudia. Among the papers, which from a financial point of view were very valuable, there were also a number of notes in Aramaic on the life of Jesus of Nazareth, written by a Jewish customs official who had been an acquaintance of my father’s. I felt I could not destroy them, so I hid them away together with the letters in my most secret hiding place where I had certain papers which would not tolerate the light of day.
I tried to overcome my depression and raised my goblet in honor of Antonia because she had so sensitively succeeded in repudiating Nero’s approaches. She finally admitted that she had given him a kiss or two, in a sisterly way, so that he would not be too indignant at her refusal.
Antonia forgot her harassing suggestions about remembering you in her will. We took you on our knees in turn, despite your violent kicks and screams. So you received the names Clement Claudius Antonianus Manilianus, and that was a sufficiently burdensome heritage for an infant. I gave up my idea of calling you Marcus as well, in memory of my father, which I had thought of doing before Antonia came with her suggestion.
When Antonia left for home in her sedan that night she took farewell of me with a sisterly kiss, as we were legally if also secretly related to one another, and asked me to call her sister-in-law in future when we met alone. Warmed by her friendliness, I eagerly returned her kiss. I did so gladly. I was a trifle drunk.
Again she complained of her loneliness and hoped that I, now that we were related, would come and see her sometimes. I did not necessarily have to take Claudia with me since she had so much to do with the boy, and our large house and her years were probably beginning to weigh on her. She was, however, by descent the most noble lady alive in Rome.
But before I can tell you how our friendship developed, I must return to the affairs of Rome.
In his need for money, Nero tired of the complaints from the provinces and the bitter criticism of the purchase tax from businessmen. He decided to rid himself quite illegally of his problems by cutting the Gordian knot. I do not know who suggested the plan to him, as I was not in on the secrets of the temple of Juno Moneta. Anyhow, whoever it was, he far more than the Christians deserved to be thrown to the wild animals as a public enemy.
In all secrecy, Nero borrowed the votive gifts of gold and silver from the gods of Rome; that is, set up Jupiter Capitolinus as mortgager and himself borrowed from Jupiter. Of course he had a legal right to do this, although the gods did not approve. After the fire, he had had all the melted metal, which was not all pure gold and silver but contained some bronze, collected. Now he melted it all together and day and night had new gold and silver pieces struck in the temple of Juno Moneta, coins which contained a fifth less gold and silver than before. The pieces were both lighter and, because of all the copper in them, duller than the previous brilliant coins.
The minting of these coins took place in complete secrecy and under strict guard, with the excuse that the affairs of Juno Moneta were never public, but of course rumors still reached the ears of the bankers. I myself began to prick up my ears when coins began to be in short supply and everyone began pressing with money orders or asking for a month’s grace before paying for larger purchases.
I did not believe the rumor for I regarded myself as Nero’s friend and could not believe that he, an artist and not a businessman, could have been guilty of such a terrible crime as intentional forgery of coins, especially since ordinary people had been crucified when they had made a coin or two for their own use. But I followed everyone else’s example and saved as much coinage as possible. I did not even embark on the customary contracts for corn and oil, although this gave rise to animosity among my customers.