You ask me, my dear Cornelius Tacitus, for my first memories of Domitian. Your request is impossible to satisfy, for this reason: that I cannot recall any period of my life from which Domitian was absent.
As you know, his father, the now-glorious-in-memory Emperor Vespasian, was a man of no particular birth or early renown. He was born, when the Divine Augustus was still Princeps, at Reiti in the Sabine Hills, and was brought up by his grandmother who had a small farm at Cosa. I think his father was a tax-collector employed in Asia, but I may be mistaken here. Of course, when Domitian, or indeed his brother Titus, still lived, it would have been unwise to expatiate on Vespasian's humble origins, though the man himself never troubled to hide them. Now, since you are writing a truthful history, it is as well to be clear on the matter: the family was of no significance.
I can say this because as you know it was not so in my case. Or rather, as you think you know. My own birth was as distinguished as could be. My mother belonged to the Claudian gens, and so was connected by cousinship with the imperial family itself. My father could boast numerous consuls among his Aemilian ancestors. I belonged by birth to the highest aristocracy of Rome. It seems amusing to me now, in my present circumstances.
But now, since nothing matters to me any more, I can confess to you what pride has throughout my life compelled me to conceal: that M. Aemilius Scaurus, himself son of that Scaurus who held a consulship under Tiberius, was my father only in law and not in actuality. A peevish effeminate man, whose lust for wealth and office far surpassed his ability, he acquiesced with a contemptible complacency in the seduction of his wife, my noble mother, by Narcissus. Do I need to remind you that he was the freedman who swayed the judgement of the feeble Emperor Claudius, was said, indeed, to have controlled him; he also commanded the detachment of the Praetorian Guard which arrested and put to death the Emperor's third wife Messalina, notorious (as you will recall) for her flagrant immorality.
I have no doubt, my friend, that you, with your stern, if antique, ideas of Republican virtue, both deplore and despise Narcissus and all that he represented. I shall take no issue with you there; beyond remarking that he was evidently a man of some capacity. Now that, in exile, I care nothing for lineage, I can say what I would once have been ashamed to utter: that I find more satisfaction in being in reality the son of the capable, though ruthless and corrupt, Narcissus than of the feeble Scaurus whose name I bear and of whose ancestors I used to boast.
Of course I didn't for years know my true paternity. My mother – a woman of strong character – burst out with it in one of our many quarrels. I have no doubt that she spoke the truth, if only because Narcissus was long dead by then, and rumours of her association with him could have brought her nothing but disgrace. Her admission gave me a weapon, which subsequently I did not scruple to use against her. She was stern, harsh-judging woman. Yet I adored her in youth when her beauty seemed to me to rival that of Venus herself.
You will understand the relevance of my confession to your inquiry, for you must know that it was by the patronage of Narcissus that Vespasian rose from obscurity, obtaining first the command of a legion, then sharing the glory of the conquest of Britain, where he subdued the whole Island of Wight, subsequently being rewarded with triumphal decorations and a consulship. Without Narcissus, Vespasian would, in his middle forties, have been a retired officer of no consequence, subsisting on half-pay, and farming on a contemptibly small scale. It is indeed not by merit alone that men rise in our degenerate world!
One consequence of my father's patronage was that Vespasian's elder son Titus was brought up in court circles where he became the companion and closest friend of Tiberius Claudius, later known as Britannicus, the son of the Emperor and the dissolute Messalina. Britannicus and Titus were some five or six years older than I was myself, and I was six months older than Domitian. I may say that, though Domitian was designated my playmate, he was as a very small boy, shy, surly, and disinclined for any company, even mine. Titus and Britannicus, in contrast, were dazzling and alluring. Soon however both were to be cast into the shade by Nero, when he succeeded his (murdered?) stepfather as Emperor.
Posterity will, rightly, recall Nero as a monster of depravity, and as an Emperor who disgraced the purple he wore. History will judge him severely. You, my dear Tacitus, will make sure of that. I can't blame you. I don't even wish to blame you. After all, I suffered at the beast's hands myself. Not only did he have my natural father Narcissus put to death, but once when I was a boy of eleven he seized me in the gymnasium, and crying, The wolf is ready to ravish you', attempted precisely that.
Before Narcissus was dislodged, he had had Vespasian appointed Governor of Africa, where, though no great success, and once pelted with pumpkins by riotous provincials, he was at least at a safe distance from Nero. Actually, Nero had no dislike of him, since he neither feared nor envied him. He saw him as a butt. Vespasian's wooden countenance inspired him to all sorts of childish and malicious jests. So Vespasian was more fortunate than those who provoked Nero's jealousy.
Yet Nero had charm. I hope you will make that clear. Even Petronius, whom he called his Arbiter of Elegance, and who despised him as only a clever and unhappy man can despise a boisterous clown, testified to that. Petronius was a friend of my mother. When I was fourteen he sought to make me his catamite, but I would not have it. I directed him to Domitian instead. He shuddered and said, That scrofulous boy? You can't be serious.' 'Well,' I said, 'I assure you he would be willing, as I am not.' He laughed. I admired Petronius but he smelled of rotten apples. It was some sort of disease, I suppose. He used to read his novel, The Satyricon, to me. I think he hoped that its obscenity would excite me to grant him his desire. But I was then in a virtuous mood. A boy of fourteen can be very priggish.
This is not what you want to hear. You want to know about Domitian's boyhood.
But I'm a little drunk, as I usually am by evening. I'll close this letter, and continue tomorrow. Ill My father divorced my mother as soon as Narcissus was disgraced. He hadn't dared do so before. Then he withdrew to sulk on his estates in the hills beyond Velletri, to write lame verses (his Tristia) in feeble imitation of Ovid. I never saw him again.
My beautiful mother, whose own parents were dead and whose elder brother for some years refused to receive her or even provide for her, as was his duty, now found herself poor and almost friendless. She carried me off to a third-floor apartment in an insula, in the fourteenth region of the city on the other bank of the Tiber. It was all she could afford and was a miserable place, damp and cold in winter and, on account of the low ceilings and the fact that it looked onto an airless inner courtyard, intolerably hot in the summer which we could not escape, as people of our class were accustomed to, by retreating to the hills or the seaside. Our neighbours were the lowest sort of people, some of whom on winter nights used the common staircase to relieve themselves rather than venture forth to the icy public latrines. My own chamber was a mere cupboard, without ventilation, and on sleepless nights I lay there planning my future and the revenge I would take on the world for the misfortune which had so early engulfed me.
My mother bore her far greater ill-fortune stoically. She spent long days polishing her jewellery and her memories. In time, to pay for my education, she sold her jewels, piece by piece. She lived, I see now, only for me, and denied herself luxuries, even on occasion necessities, in order that I might make a show in the world. At the time I understood nothing of her self-denial, and resented the demands she made on me, and her refusal to allow me to play with the ragged and often criminal boys of our wretched quarter.
So we had few friends. That is how I came to pass so much of my childhood with Domitian. His circumstances resembled mine. He was boarded with an aunt – a sister of his father – in the Street of the Pomegranates in the sixth region, a neighbourhood little more salubrious or respectable than ours. You may think the distance between our homes makes our companionship surprising, since half the city lay between us. But the explanation is simple. His aunt revered my mother, who had been kind to her (she frequently said) in her days of prosperity. This aunt had buck teeth, stammered, and was nervous of strangers. So she would lead the young Domitian all the way over to Trastevere to pay her respects to my mother. For her part, my mother found the aunt useful. She had few domestic skills herself (how should she have had?), was reluctant to leave our apartment, despised our neighbours, or at least kept her distance from them, which incidentally increased the respect they held her in. Two lonely women, resenting the world, fearing it in the aunt's case, despising it in my mother's, they formed an alliance of convenience.
The child, they say, is father of the man. True, I suppose, though I have known those, myself among them indeed, who react so fiercely against the constraints of their childhood that, in retrospect, it is hard to believe that the adult man grew out of the child.
I could say more on this matter. But you do not wish my autobiography and, indeed, in bitter exile I have no taste to write it.
Domitian then: as a child, he was silent, brooding, resentful. You know how in his time as Emperor he was said to amuse himself by stabbing flies with his pen, so that the joke went round that 'No one was with the Princeps, not even a fly.' The jest was not without substance; he was the kind of little boy who delights in pulling the wings off insects, legs off spiders, and so on. Once, I recall, he brought a live frog to our apartment and proceeded to dismember it. When I begged him to refrain from torturing the beast, and at least to kill it before he anatomised the wretched creature, he muttered, without lifting his shaggy head – you remember how he could never look one in the eye – that he learned more by dissecting what was still alive. He had, he said, a keen interest in the nervous system. I think he was ten at the time. His shaggy head was then sometimes infested with lice, for his aunt was short-sighted, and indifferent to such matters in any case. He went bald early, as you know; more cause for resentment.
In those days he didn't care for me. I put that wrongly. He disliked me. The reason was simple: my excellence rebuked his incapacity. I learned easily what he struggled to retain. For some years we attended the same schoolmaster, a Greek grammaticus, by name Democritos. He was a rough brutal man, fond of the rod. I believe his chief pleasure lay in chastising his unfortunate pupils. Domitian, being slow and of little account socially, was a choice victim. I have often seen his legs run with blood. Furthermore, the terror he displayed when condemned to a beating merely incited our master's ardour. The more Domitian howled for mercy, the harder the strokes fell. Once, at least, the wretched boy pissed himself in his abject fear. This naturally made him an object of mockery to his fellows. You will not be surprised to learn that after he became Emperor he had his agents seek out the now aged Democritos, drag him from the dingy apartment where he lingered, and bring the wretch before his former pupil who, spurning him with his toe, ordered him to be whipped to death. 'For,' he said, 'this man is so fond of the rod that it is only fitting that the rod should be the last thing he experiences in life.'
Curiously, it was this brutal wretch who first awoke in Domitian a warm feeling for myself. One day, when Democritos had been more than usually cruel to him, exceeding even his habitual measure of strokes, and had commanded two of our fellow-pupils to hold the boy up so that he might strike him again, something in me revolted against his barbarity. Perhaps – who knows? – I had long reproached myself for the timidity which I had displayed in tolerating the beast. Be that as it may, I now rose from my desk, ran towards him and, seizing the rod (then at the top of the backstroke) from his hand, turned it on our master, belabouring him about the neck and shoulders. 'See how you relish your own medicine,' I cried. Take that, you brute, and this, and learn to respect free-born Romans, you base Greek slave.' It was a moment of the purest exhilaration I have ever known. It could not last, of course. The brute was stronger than I and, swinging round, felled me with one blow of his fist. Then, calling on his assistant and one of our fellow-pupils to help him, he regained his rod and, when he saw I was held fast over the block, thrashed me with all his infuriated strength. He thrashed me, indeed, till I fainted, and when I recovered my senses it was to find myself alone with Domitian who was sponging my face and muttering his perplexed gratitude for my intervention. We agreed to inform my mother and his aunt of what had happened, and from that day we did not return to the torments of Democritos. From that day also, for two years or more, Domitian gave every sign of being devoted to me. I mention this because you have often observed that nothing is more common than a man's resentment of his benefactor. It wasn't like this in our case. I may say, modestly, that Domitian regarded me as his hero.
The harmony of our relationship was however to be broken. Titus returned to Rome from Africa, where he had been serving as his father's legate. He called, from courtesy, to see my mother.
'My father,' he said, 'sends you – has asked me to convey to you -the assurance of his high regard. He is fully sensible of the debt he owes you for his advancement. He has asked me to say that he is anxious to do whatever is in his power to – oh…' He broke off, and, with a sudden smile that seemed to light up our mean apartment, extended his hands in a vaguely helpless gesture and, abandoning his tone of formality, resumed: 'I'm no good at this kind of thing, my lady, though I have been trained in rhetoric. So let me put it in my own words, however loose and lacking in proper formality they may be. He's distressed to have learned of the condition in which you are obliged to live and now I see it for myself, well, I'm horrified, that a lady like you, of your birth, one who has been so kind to us, to me as a child, should be living like this. I remember that when poor Britannicus, my dearest friend, was so cruelly murdered – I can call it murder here, I suppose, though it would be as much as my life is worth to speak the word in other quarters – I remember then that when I wept, you dried my tears and comforted me, and that in the terrible days after, when I became like a little boy again, it was with your help and thanks to your sympathy and wise words that I was able to recover and resume my life. So, to see you confined in this miserable apartment makes me sad. More than that, it disgusts me. So, if there's anything I can do, anything my father can do – not that he can do much because, in my opinion, he clings to office, to his own position and perhaps even to his life by bare fingernails and fortune -well, just let me know. I really am devoted to you and your interest.'
He spoke beautifully, if a little incoherently, but that, it seemed, was evidence of his sincerity. The words tumbled forth, unbidden, straight from the heart, I couldn't doubt. My mother, of course, received them with gracious reserve, as her due. Whatever our circumstances, she was a great lady, a Claudian, while Vespasian and his family were parvenus – parvenus moreover who had not actually succeeded in arriving. But she was charmed by Titus nevertheless. Who wasn't in those days?
I have only to close my eyes to see him clearly: tall, long-legged, blond, his hair worn rather long and waved, his skin translucent, despite the African sun, nose short and straight, eyes cornflower blue, lips a little loose, the upper very slightly overhanging the lower, as if stung by a bee. And I can hear him, too: a beautiful voice, rather light, almost girlish in its upper notes, but saved from effeminacy by a few residual long Sabine vowels, caught from his father, or perhaps a childhood nurse. Then, just as his voice was rescued from the suspicion of affectation by this underlying strength, so too his manner, which might have seemed that of the self-consciously elegant dandy, was saved by a certain clumsiness – his feet were too large and he was inclined to knock things over with sudden movement.
I have given myself away, haven't I? Yes, while I listened to him and then poured him wine with a hand that I could not prevent from shaking, I fell headlong in love, as only a fourteen-year-old boy can fall in love, with an intensity in which hero-worship quite superseded any physical desire. I simply wanted to be with him, all the time from then on, to be noticed by him, cherished by him, and permitted to serve him.
I was not disappointed. Titus, though naturally I was ignorant of this, already deserved the reputation that clung to him in later years, of a great coureur – I use the Greek because we have no Latin term that so exactly fits – of both boys and women. And, if I may say so, I was in those days worth running after, and accustomed to being eyed and ogled and propositioned at the baths: I was athletic and slim; my face was framed by tumbling black curls, my skin was creamy, my eyes the darkest of browns and large, my nose straight, and my lips – as Titus was to say – were 'made for the madness of kisses'. In short, though I say it myself, in the knowledge that this passage will arouse your stern moralist's disapproval, I was what the pederasts who thronged the baths used to call in my day 'a peach'. I never allowed their admiration to go beyond flirtation, in which like so many pretty boys I excelled, taking a lively delight in fanning an ardour which I had no intention of satisfying. But it was different with Titus, though at first I took care not to allow him to gain the easy victory that I anticipated with relish.
I dwell on this, because that visit of Titus to my mother would determine the course of my life. It would lead me to action in Judaea, to military renown, to joy and heartache, and I think now that it also aroused Domitian's jealousy – though there were to be other, perhaps more substantial, reasons for that.
But now, when Titus smiled on me and said, 'I've been out of the city for so long, I'm almost a stranger. Will you be my guide, kid?' what could I do but say yes, blushing with delight and hoping that neither my mother nor Titus himself fully comprehended why the colour should flood into my cheeks?
First love… no, it is too painful to dwell on now and, besides, my old friend, it is not what you want to hear. You are interested, are you not, in political history. It was Titus, however, who aroused my interest in that, too. For him dalliance, flirtation, love-making were mere pastimes. Politics was his consuming interest, and it was not long before he began my political education, not without some disparaging remarks about his little brother Domitian, who would, he said, never amount to anything, and was not therefore worth the trouble of trying to enlighten, even on the dangers that threatened their family.
'I have to admit,' he said, 'that my father's position is precarious. He clings to office only because he has not distinguished himself in any way, and so is not seen as a threat by the buffoon on the Palatine' -this being his normal fashion of referring to the Emperor.
Nero, he told me, hated soldiers. He was not only jealous of any who had ever achieved military renown; he both feared and detested them. 'It can't last,' Titus said. 'Rome is its army first and foremost, and it is impossible that the Empire should be governed by a man that the legions have learned to despise.' He smiled and ran his hand through my curls to fondle my cheek, then let his fingers dance along the line of my lips. You won't talk of this, will you, now? It would be as much as my life is worth. In speaking to you in this manner I am indeed putting my life in your hands. But then where could it better be?' I nibbled his finger like a pet dog. One day that summer Titus sought permission from my mother, to whom he was unfailingly courteous, that I might accompany him for a few days to a villa near Laurentum which belonged to his uncle Flavius Sabinus, who then held the post of Prefect of the City. My mother, who knew and approved of the passionate friendship between me and Titus, naturally consented, though she declined the suggestion that she, too, should accompany us.
'No,' she said, 'such a visit would recall happier days to me, and disturb the accommodation with misfortune which I have made.' My revered mother, for all her virtues, was inclined to take pleasure in her misery.
'Don't you think you should invite Domitian, too?' I said. 'He'll be awfully put out if you don't.'
'Not he. My little brother has already accepted an invitation from his admirer, Claudius Pollio, to join him for a few days hunting in the Alban Hills. It seems that my brother would rather kill wild animals than enjoy the beauties of the seaside and the pleasure it can offer.'
The villa was indeed beautiful. I need not describe it, for you know it well, my dear Tacitus, since it was later bought by our friend Pliny and you have often been a guest there yourself.
So you will recall – though with less immediate pleasure than I do – that portico beyond the garden, that looks out on to the sea which lies below it, separated by a sandy beach and a rocky hillside covered with juniper and thyme. On the terrace before the portico we lay one afternoon after bathing in an air fragrant with the scent of violets. We had lunched on prawns, caught that morning, cheese, olives and the first peaches of the season, and had drunk a flask of Falernian. Titus was in his most affectionate mood, and then we slept a little.
When we woke the sun had moved round and a cool breeze blew from the sea.
'I didn't bring you here only for pleasure,' Titus said, 'but because there is nowhere I know where I think more clearly than in this charming place, and I wish to share my thoughts with you. You are only a boy, but you will soon be a man and will enter on the world which I myself am only beginning to understand.
'I have said to you before that Nero's rule cannot last, any more than Caligula's did. One year? Two? Five? No more than that, surely. He is despised by the soldiers and the aristocracy alike. He spends his time in pursuits which, while they might be thought tolerable if indulged in by a private citizen, are quite ridiculous in an Emperor: acting, singing, taking part in chariot-races. You can't wonder that I think him a buffoon.
'But he is a bloody-minded buffoon. He is a coward, and all cowards are dangerous. You, kid, belong by birth to the highest rank of the old aristocracy, as I don't. There is scarcely a single man of your birth who does not view Nero with contempt. They know how to get rid of Emperors. How many of those who have ruled the state have died natural deaths?' 'Augustus himself,' I replied. Tiberius perhaps.'
'Exactly. Pompey was murdered. Julius Caesar also, Gaius Caligula, and in my opinion Claudius. And none of them was as despised as Nero. So he can't last.'
I looked out to sea. It was calm, deep blue, untroubled. If I had been alone I might have fancied I could hear the Sirens sing. I nibbled a stem of grass. Titus ruffled my hair.
'Last week,' he said, 'I was made party to a conspiracy. At least I think I was. Hints were dropped. There were many "if onlys" and "do you thinks". I turned away. Why did I do that, kid?'
'Do you want an answer?' I said. 'Or is the question addressed to yourself? And why are you telling me this? Isn't it dangerous? Dangerous, I mean, to speak of these things.'
'Nero murdered my friend, Britannicus,' he said. 'Nero has no children, brothers or nephews. Do you realise what that means? It means that when he is… disposed of, as he will be, somehow, the Empire will be a prize to be won. The secret of Empire will be revealed: that Emperors can be made elsewhere than in Rome. Emperors will be made by the legions. That is why I turned away from an aristocratic conspiracy. It's the wrong way to go about things, if we seek stability. Don't look like that. None of this is over your head.' I watched a lizard skim up the wall of the terrace.
'My mother's father,' I said, 'was cousin to the Emperor Tiberius. She always says he would have liked to restore the Republic'
'If I crushed that lizard with a rock,' Titus said, 'could you restore it to life?'
'I shouldn't think so, except by magic, if such magic is to be found…'
'Even Tiberius discovered that the Republic was as dead as that lizard would be then.' 'If the Emperor is to be made elsewhere than in Rome,' I said, 'then whoever commands the best legions will wear the purple. How many legions has your father, Titus?' Very few. At present.'
'So there's not much chance of him becoming Emperor, and then you succeeding him,' I said. 'Rather a pity. You'd make a wonderful Emperor.' 'I'm glad you think so, too.'
'Well, naturally. And if you were Emperor, or even heir to the Empire, then I could hope to restore the fortunes of my family, couldn't I?' 'It would be my first concern,' Titus said. 'I think we should sleep on that.' 'Sleep?' You may dismiss this conversation, Tacitus, as a sort of verbal love-making, to excite us both. As indeed it did, very pleasingly. I can understand why you should do so. I was only a boy, and Titus was scarcely a grown man, though older, as he reminded me, than Octavian Caesar was when he embarked on the great adventure that in time made him Augustus and Master of the World. But you would be mistaken. Oh, I admit that Titus was showing off, to impress me. But there was more to it than that. He had sniffed the wind, and I am certain now that during this visit to Rome, when he had talked at length with his uncle, the Prefect of the City, and been admitted to at least the fringes of a company of disaffected nobles, he had caught a glimpse of his future. He had seen – what I could not then have credited – that his father Vespasian, however lowly his birth and comparatively humble his present position, could not be excluded from the struggle for Empire which he foresaw. Vespasian was, after all, a general whom the soldiers trusted; and there were few such left. And before Titus left Rome, to return to his father, he had done two things: he had taken soundings and estimated the strength and purpose of the opposition to Nero; and he had commissioned me to send him reports of what I learned of happenings in the city. When I protested that I was still a boy and therefore unlikely to learn of great events anything more than was the gossip of the market-place, he smiled and said, 'I think better of you than that.' He even taught me a simple cipher in which to write to him. So you see he was serious.