The Blood of Caesar Page 7

  I am enjoying some quiet moments here. Your cousin, Rubellius Plautus, stopped by to visit me yesterday. As you’ll recall, he and his family spend most of their time at their villa near here. His son is such a bright little boy. Rubellius himself is a handsome man. I told him if he weren’t already married, he would make a good match for me.

  “Nero had a cousin?” Tacitus turned my hand so he could see the letter for himself.

  “And the cousin had a son. That’s what Domitian is so worried about. She calls him a little boy. If Agrippina died twenty-five years ago, the son would be ... about thirty by now.”

  “He could certainly lay a claim to the principate. Domitian’s right about that.”

  “What happened to him, I wonder? And to Rubellius?”

  “Rubellius must be dead,” Tacitus said with his customary eagerness to leap to a conclusion. “Otherwise someone would have put him forward when Nero died. Galba and the other generals who fought for power then could hardly have had a claim as strong as someone of Caesar’s blood.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Let’s see if Agrippina tells us any more about the son.”

  If—may the gods forbid—your union with Octavia should prove childless, perhaps you could adopt Rubellius’ son, as Claudius adopted you. With the boy’s ancestry, he could prove a strong support for your position, as you did for Claudius.

  “Do you see the threat there?”

  Tacitus looked at me blankly.

  “Remember Britannicus, Claudius’ son?”

  Awareness spread over Tacitus’ face. “That’s right. When Agrippina married her uncle Claudius, she already had a son from a previous marriage.”

  “And Claudius adopted that son and renamed him Nero. Then Agrippina pushed Britannicus out of the nest. The stepson became the heir.”

  “So you think she was threatening to shift her support to Rubellius and his son?”

  I read the lines again. “It sounds that way to me. If she put Nero into power, perhaps she thought she could maneuver another of Augustus’ descendants into the same position.”

  “Slow down,” Tacitus said. “This is becoming complicated. She says Rubellius was Nero’s cousin. But that word can mean anyone who’s related to you in any degree.”

  “That’s true. And the relationship could be through Nero’s father. Who was his father?”

  Tacitus rubbed his chin for a moment. “Before he was adopted his name was Domitius. I forget the full name, but I know the family name was Domitius.”

  “That’s no help. The Domitii are almost as numerous as you Cornelii.”

  “True. My own mother-in-law comes from a branch of the Domitii. No imperial connections, though, thank the gods.”

  “It seems we’ll need some expert help to sort this out. Rubellius and his son must have had some connection to Caesar’s family. Otherwise Agrippina couldn’t have contemplated putting him in Nero’s place.”

  “Do you think that’s what she had in mind?”

  “Listen to this next bit.” I resumed reading the letter.

  The senate is less likely to think of opposing you—or any ruler—when they know a successor is being groomed. Rubellius could even be a regent if—may the gods forbid—something should happen to you. He is widely admired in his own right, in spite of his preference for philosophy over real life. He brought along his mentor, Musonius Rufus, a tiresome Stoic, if that isn’t redundant. The man presented me with a copy of a treatise he’s written on why women should study philosophy. Even with all the leisure time you’ve given me now, I won’t get around to that.

  “How could she find Musonius ‘tiresome’?” Tacitus asked. “From everything I’ve heard—from you as well as from others—he’s a remarkable man.”

  “You know how much I’ve come to admire him in the short time I’ve known him. But when this was written, he would have been young. That incident of walking onto the battlefield between the two armies didn’t happen until the civil wars after Nero’s death. That was when his reputation began to grow.”

  “Pity he’s out of town at the moment.”

  “I’ll talk to him as soon as possible and see what he remembers about this incident.”

  “Does Agrippina say any more?”

  “Just a closing line.”

  I do hope to return to Rome in the spring.

  Given at Antium, on the fourth day before the kalends of January, by my own hand.

  “She wrote it herself?” Tacitus said.

  “That would account for the poor handwriting.” Though anyone of Agrippina’s class, or mine, could read and write, we rarely pick up a pen ourselves.

  “You’re hardly one to criticize anyone else’s handwriting,” Tacitus said. “I’ve heard your scribes ask you to dictate to them, rather than write something out and ask them to copy it.”

  I ignored the jibe. “I wonder if she had no scribe, or if she just didn’t trust anyone to take this down.” I put the letter back in its pouch. “Do you, from your historical reading, know anything about Rubellius Plautus?”

  “I can’t recall that I’ve ever run across the name. You have one of the largest libraries in Rome, and your uncle wrote a history that covered Nero’s reign. If you want to know something about Rubellius, there could be no better place to start.”

  “You’re right. And I want Dymas and Glaucon to examine this letter, to see if they can assure me of its authenticity.”

  “Let me know what they tell you. I have to finish working on my speech. Mucius’ case will be tried in a couple of days. I just hope the rain lets up so we can hold court outdoors.”

  I nodded. Any skilled orator dislikes speaking inside. The heavy curtains which partition a basilica muffle sound and prevent the movement of air. The courtroom begins to feel like the over-heated caldarium of a public bath. One’s best speech becomes limp and soggy. “I’ll be there to cheer you on. And I’ll bring some of my clients with me.”

  “I would appreciate the support. Julius Agricola offered to have some of his veterans there, but I’m not sure it would help Mucius’ case to be identified with Agricola’s supporters, especially ex-soldiers. A couple of dozen of your clients, though, could make a very favorable impression.”

  “You shall have them.”

  “Could I also presume on your friendship and ask you to bring along that scribe of yours who knows Tironian notation? I’d like to have a record of my opponent’s speech and I hate to pay the going rate to hire a scribe.”

  “He’ll be there, pen in hand.”

  We walked to the door. Moschus brought Tacitus’ hat and cloak. The rain was heavier now than when he arrived. His slaves got on their rain gear.

  “Shall I have my litter-bearers take you home?” I offered.

  “That’s generous of you, but no. I like to experience Rome in the rain. It washes away the crowds and the smell. I can almost imagine what it must have been like to live here in the early days of the republic, when Rome was just a small town and a successful general like Agricola didn’t have to fear the jealousy of a princeps.”

  I closed the door behind Tacitus and started back across the atrium. The floor under the impluvium was now thoroughly wet, so I had to watch my step on the slick marble. I returned to the tablinum and savored another bite of Domitian’s bread as I mulled over Agrippina’s letter and the fate of Rubellius Plautus and his son. Could they somehow be linked to Agrippina’s unedited memoirs? Was Domitian giving me a hint? Or leading me on some fool’s errand?

  In either case, why?

  * * * *

  With another bite of cheese and one more swallow of wine I left the tablinum and turned into the passageway leading to my library. My uncle bought property next to this house, at an exorbitant price—as if there is any other kind in Rome—to add a wing for his voluminous library. He acquired books as avidly as he read them. He kept his scribe, Dymas, busy taking notes on passages that were read to him as well as things he observed himself.

  Among the
numerous works he composed was the history Tacitus had mentioned, in thirty-one volumes, beginning in Caligula’s time and coming up to Vespasian’s reign. If my uncle had known anything about Rubellius Plautus, that was where I would find it.

  “Gaius!” My mother’s voice and the patter of feet sounded behind me at the same time. “Gaius!”

  I stopped and waited for her to catch up with me. At least I could assure her I had eaten something.

  “Is it true?” she asked breathlessly. Her most trusted slave, an older woman named Niobe, a heavy-set midwife, shadowed her. “Was the princeps here in our house?”

  “Where did you hear such a thing?” I knew the answer to my question, but I wanted to avoid a lie or a direct admission.

  “It’s all the slaves are talking about.”

  And, of course, there was only one slave who could have started the story on its merry rounds—my garrulous doorkeeper. His first owner had castrated him, years ago. He should have cut out his tongue instead.

  “Moschus should pay attention to his duties and not spread gossip like some old crone at the village well.” I glared at Niobe.

  “But the seal,” my mother insisted. “He saw the princeps’ seal.”

  “Just because a messenger bears the seal of the princeps, Mother, doesn’t mean he’s the man himself. Surely you know—”

  “Aristides saw him too, dear, as he was leaving. It’s his job to know people.”

  Like a fire spreading out of control, this story had already grown too large for me to extinguish it, short of killing every slave I owned, the way the vigiles sometimes knock down buildings ahead of a fire. The best I could hope for was to contain it before it got out of my house. It would do Domitian no good to don a disguise and slog through the rain to enlist my help if my slaves immediately blabbed the secret all over Rome. What might the princeps do when he learned I couldn’t keep the news of his visit to myself?

  The only hope for dousing a large fire in Rome is rain. And the rain might help me now. In this weather there was no reason for any of my slaves to leave the house.

  “Mother, no one else must know about this.”

  Her face turned pale. “What’s wrong? Has someone informed on us?”

  “No. That’s absurd. Why would you even ask that?” But her question knotted my stomach. Did she know something I didn’t? Did someone have reason to inform on us?

  She glanced nervously at Niobe. “It’s nothing, dear, just ... Well, what was the princeps doing here?”

  “He wanted to ask me about something we discussed at dinner last night. But my conversation with him cannot be spoken of outside these walls. None of the slaves is to leave the house today. And if I hear any more talk about this, I’ll send every one of them to work in the fields on one of my estates.” For the soft, well-fed slaves of an urban household, that was the ultimate threat. I shook my finger at Niobe. “Make that clear to them.”

  The two women turned and scurried off. Niobe held my mother’s arm in a way that seemed much too familiar for a slave. A stranger would have taken them for sisters.

  Before turning back toward the library I stood still and closed my eyes to dispel the wave of anxiety my mother had caused me. I couldn’t deal with my scribes unless I was calm myself. I tried to focus my thoughts again on Agrippina’s letter. Determining whether it was genuine was the first hurdle I faced.

  V

  AS SOON AS I STEPPED into the library I was soothed by the sounds of pens scratching against papyrus and pumice stones smoothing new rolls. Slaves are sometimes surprised when their owner appears in their work space, but not my scribes. They know I love books and find a library a comforting place. If the world were ever turned upside down and I were to find myself a slave, I pray—to gods in whom I do not believe—that I would be put to work as a scribe. Spending my life among books would be a large measure of consolation for falling into servitude.

  Against one wall of the library tables were set up for the scribes who are recopying the 160 unpublished scrolls, with writing on the front and back in a very small hand, which my uncle left me. They’re copying them in a more legible script and putting the material in some kind of order, instead of the haphazard way it was recorded. In the new scrolls passages will be arranged by broad subjects: plants, animals, laws, noteworthy people, oddities of nature, and so on, in the manner of his Natural History.

  These scrolls epitomize my uncle more accurately, I feel, than his published works. He collected information the way some men collect Corinthian bronzes, fascinated by each individual piece but never seeing any kind of unity among them. Whatever order there is in his published works was imposed on it by his scribes, especially Dymas, who worked with him for almost thirty years. Most of the snippets in these unpublished scrolls never found their way into works like his Natural History because they contradicted the standard opinions of our day.

  The scrolls also epitomize my uncle’s dislike of waste, whether of materials or time. A few months before he died, he and I attended a dinner party. When the slave who was reading mispronounced a word, the host made him stop and go back over the entire line. My uncle asked, “Could you understand what he said?” When the man admitted he could, my uncle replied, “Then why make him go back? You’ve cost us at least ten lines.” The small handwriting and the use of the backs of these scrolls allowed my uncle’s scribes to pack in as much as would normally be written on two and a half scrolls.

  Three scribes were busy copying the scrolls, and I stopped to look over their shoulders. It is tedious work, I admit. A scribe reads through one of the original scrolls, copying passages onto whatever new scroll they belong on. It requires a lot of shifting back and forth to the new scrolls, but I believe it will make my uncle’s work more useful to me. At present I have to browse through scroll after scroll, often getting frustrated by the minute handwriting, or rely on Dymas’ memory about what is recorded where.

  “How many have you finished?” I asked one of the scribes.

  “Fifty, my lord.” He pointed to the book box where the original scrolls were placed after the copying was done. “The work would go more quickly if we could read the writing more easily. We can hardly finish a page without putting it under the glass. Look at this bit.”

  I picked up the scroll and peered at the passage he had pointed to. My eyes, though sensitive to light, are keen, but I could not be sure what the tiny letters said. I stepped over to the table where the reading glass, a ball filled with water, was mounted in a frame with four legs. Anything placed under it appears to be larger.

  “Dymas,” I said, “why did you ever write this small?”

  “I was merely doing as your uncle requested, my lord,” Dymas said from the table where he was working. “He said he wanted to save space and discourage casual readers who might get their hands on the scrolls.”

  Dymas is sixty now, stoop-shouldered and bald except for a fringe of gray hair. His eyes are starting to fail him. He squints badly and must rely on the glass to enlarge anything he reads. Everything he writes in his own hand is done in large letters. But, even if his vision is growing dim, his memory, a kind of inner vision, is amazing. Like the blind prophet Teiresias in the myths, as he loses one type of sight, the other seems to grow stronger.

  I expected to see his son, Glaucon, by Dymas’ side. Glaucon serves as my chief scribe. At thirty-five he is gradually assuming the responsibilities his father has carried for many years. His fingers are as permanently ink-stained as the old man’s. Although I took Glaucon to Syria with me, he and I have an uneasy relationship. The day after my uncle’s funeral he asked me to manumit him and his father. He said my uncle promised to do that in his will. There was no such clause in my uncle’s will, and the man’s audacity offended me. His ill-timed request upset my mother so badly she wanted me to sell both father and son. I wouldn’t do that, but I resolved not to consider manumitting them any time soon.

  Glaucon was nowhere to be seen, though. Dymas has told me
that he fears his son does not have the soul of a scribe. He writes well, but he has no curiosity about the documents, no love of deciphering a poorly written passage in a scroll he’s copying, no ability to deduce what an earlier scribe might have intended. To my surprise, he had volunteered to go to Syria with me, and I had taken him in hopes of inspiring him by entrusting him with greater responsibility. That hope proved vain. He did his job and nothing more.

  Dymas was huddled over a scroll with another scribe, Peleus, Niobe’s son, a red-haired fellow who is three years older than I am and shorter by that many fingers. Dymas tells me that, unlike Glaucon, he has a wonderful gift for words and an encyclopedic memory. He has even mastered the complicated system of Tironian note-taking. A shy young man who stuttered as a boy, he overcame the problem, like Demosthenes, but it occasionally gets the better of him if he is nervous.

  “Isn’t Glaucon here?” I asked.

  “My son has gone out on an errand, my lord.”

  So much for my order that no slaves leave the house today. “What sort of errand on a morning like this?”

  “He heard of a shipment of scrolls arriving today, my lord. He wanted to purchase as many of them as he could. Recopying your uncle’s notebooks has depleted our supply. At our present rate, I estimate we will need over 300 scrolls to complete the task. Is there something I could help you with?”

  I opened Domitian’s pouch and extracted the letter. Laying it on the table face down, I said, “Please tell me all you can about the age of this papyrus.”

  Peleus started to turn the letter over, but I pressed it down on the table. I wished the remaining fragment of Agrippina’s seal—if it was Agrippina’s—weren’t so prominently displayed.

  “The content isn’t important,” I said, trying to appear nonchalant. “I’m merely interested in the age of the papyrus.”

  Dymas felt the papyrus, raising it off the table slightly and sniffing at it, then rubbing it between his fingers. I wondered if he could feel the writing on the other side. The ink was thick, as though inexpertly mixed. The letters were raised enough that someone might identify them by feel. He ran his hand slowly over the seal, then examined it under the water-filled globe.