Scipio Lucullo’s country estate, even in these bleak days of early winter, is grand beyond my comprehension. The marble halls, the pools and fountains, the delicate outer pavilions, the animal chambers where lions and zebras and giraffes are kept, the collections of statuary and paintings and objects of art, the baths, everything is on an Imperial scale. But there is no Imperial heritage here. Lucullo’s place was built, someone tells me, only five years ago, out of the profits of his gold mines in Nova Roma, ownership of which he attained by scandalous bribery of court officials during the disastrous final days of the reign of old Caesar Laureolus. His own guests, though they don’t disdain his immense hospitality, regard his estate as tawdry and vulgar, I discover.
“I’d be happy to live in such tawdriness,” I tell Lucilla. “Is that a terribly provincial thing to say?”
But she only laughs. “Wait until you see Tibur,” she says.
And indeed I discover the difference between mere showiness and true magnificence when we move along to the famous Imperial villa just as the Saturnalia week is about to begin.
This is, of course, the place that the great Hadrianus built for his country pleasures seventeen centuries ago. In his own time it was, no doubt, a wonder of the world, with its porticos and fountains and reflecting pools, its baths both great and small, its libraries both Greek and Roman, its nymphaeum and triclinium, its temples to all the gods under whose spell Hadrianus fell as he traveled the length and breadth of the Roman world.
But that was seventeen centuries ago; and seventeen centuries of Emperors have added to this place, so that the original villa of Hadrianus, for all its splendor, is only a mere part of the whole, and the totality must surely be the greatest palace in the world, a residence worthy of Jupiter or Apollo. “You can ride all day and not see the whole thing,” Lucilla says to me. “They don’t keep it all open at once, of course. We’ll be staying in the oldest wing, what they still call Hadrianus’s Villa. But all around us you’ll see the parts that Trajan VII added, and Flavius Romulus, and the Khitai Pavilions that Lucius Agrippa built for the little yellow-skinned concubine that he brought back from Asia Ultima. And if there’s time—oh, but there won’t be time, will there—?”
“Why not?” I ask.
She evades my glance. It is my first clue to what is to come.
All day long the great ones of Roma arrive at the Imperial villa for Flavius Rufus’s Saturnalia festival. By now I don’t need to have their names whispered to me. I recognize Atticus the shipping tycoon, and Count Nero Romulus, and Marco Tullio Garofalo, who is the president of the Bank of the Imperium, and Diodorus the gladiator, and the Consul Bassanius, and pudgy, petulant Prince Camillus, and dozens more. Carriages are lined up along the highway, waiting to disgorge their glittering passengers.
One who does not arrive is Gaius Junius Scaevola. It’s unthinkable that he hasn’t been invited; I conclude therefore that my guess about his being named Consul once more for the coming year is correct, and that he has remained in Roma to prepare for taking office. I ask Lucilla if that’s indeed why her uncle isn’t here, and she says, simply, “The holiday season is always a busy time for him. He wasn’t able to get away.”
He is going to be Consul once again! I’m sure of it.
But I’m wrong. The day after our arrival I glance at the morning newspaper, and there are the names of the Consuls for the coming year. His Imperial Majesty has been pleased to designate Publius Lucius Gallienus and Gaius Acacius Aufidius as Consuls of the Realm. They will be sworn into office at noon on the first of Januarius, weather permitting, on the steps of the Capitol building.
Not Scaevola, then. It must be important business of some other kind, then, that keeps him from leaving Roma in the closing days of the year.
And who are these Consuls, Gallienus and Aufidius? For both, it will be their first term in that highest of governmental offices next to that of the Emperor.
“Boyhood friends of Maxentius,” someone tells me, with a dismissive sniff. “Schoolmates of his.”
And someone else says, “Not only don’t we have a real Emperor any more, we aren’t even going to have Consuls now. Just a bunch of lazy children pretending to run the government.”
That seems very close to treasonous, to me—especially considering that this very villa is an Imperial palace, and we are all here as guests of the Emperor’s brother. But these patricians, I have been noticing, are extraordinarily free in their criticisms of the royal family, even while accepting their hospitality.
Which is abundant. There is feasting and theatricals every night, and during the day we are free to avail ourselves of the extensive facilities of the villa, the heated pools, the baths, the libraries, the gambling pavilions, the riding paths. I float dreamily through it all as though I have stumbled into a fairy-tale world, which is indeed precisely what it is.
At the party the third night I finally find the courage to make a mild approach to Severina Floriana. Lucilla has said that she would like to spend the next day resting, since some of the biggest events of the week still lie ahead; and so I invite Severina Floriana to go riding with me after breakfast tomorrow. Once the two of us are alone, off in some remote corner of the property, perhaps I will dare to suggest some more intimate kind of encounter. Perhaps. What I am attempting to arrange, after all, is a dalliance with the Emperor’s sister. Which is such an extraordinary idea that I can scarcely believe I am engaged in such a thing.
She looks amused and, I think, tempted by the suggestion.
But then she tells me that she won’t be here tomorrow. Something has come up, she says, something trifling but nevertheless requiring her immediate attention, and she must return briefly to Urbs Roma in the morning.
“You’ll be coming back here, won’t you?” I ask anxiously.
“Oh, yes, of course. I’ll be gone a day or two at most. I’ll be here for the big party the final night, you can be sure of that!” She gives me a quick impish glance, as though to promise me some special delight for that evening, by way of consolation for this refusal now. And reaches out to touch my hand a moment. A spark as though of electricity passes from her to me. It is all that ever will; I have never forgotten it.
Lucilla remains in our suite the next day, leaving me to roam the villa’s grounds alone. I lounge in the baths, I swim, I inspect the galleries of paintings and sculpture, I drift into the gambling pavilion and lose a few solidi at cards to a couple of languid lordlings.
I notice an odd thing that day. I see none of the people I had previously met at the parties of the Palatine Hill set in Roma. Count Nero Romulus, Leontes Atticus, Prince Flavius Rufus, Prince Camillus, Bassanius, Diodorus—not one of them seems to be around. The place is full of strangers today.
And without Lucilla by my side as I make my increasingly uneasy way among these unknowns, I feel even more of an outsider here than I really am: since I wear no badge proclaiming me to be the guest of Junius Scaevola’s niece, I become in her absence merely a barely civilized outlander who has somehow wangled his way into the villa and is trying with only fair success to pretend to be a well-bred Roman. I imagine that they are laughing at me behind my back, mocking my style of dress, imitating my British accent.
Nor is Lucilla much comfort when I return to our rooms. She is distant, abstracted, moody. She asks me only the most perfunctory questions about how I have spent my day, and then sinks back into lethargy and brooding.