I have gone ahead of myself, in recounting to Tacitus, the events in the East as I understood and remember them.
Meanwhile we still waited Vitellius' arrival. I again besought my mother to retire from the city; she again refused.
It was a balmy spring and glorious early summer. Roses tumbled over the palace walls and the scent of thyme, myrtle and oregano on the slopes of the Palatine carried memories of happy days in some rural retreat. One afternoon Domatilla walked with me in the gardens of Lucullus. We spoke of poetry, reciting favourite lines of verse. I would have made love to her, but she was unwilling. It was not the time, she said: 'Later, later.' I tried her with Horace: 'Pluck the day'. She smiled and turned her face away.
Flavius Sabinus was active, also anxious. He busied himself winning support for his brother Vespasian, then stood aghast at the dangers he ran. I thought his efforts vain. Things would take their course, no matter what he did. The Empire would not be decided here in the city, but somewhere to the north, perhaps even again in the vicinity of Cremona, where Otho's nerve had crumbled. So we waited.
Domitian's nerves were bad. He had contracted a skin rash, which itched intolerably. The side of his face and his forearms were scraped raw. He complained, tediously, of his father's neglect. Nothing could persuade him that his life was not in danger. Vitellius knows nothing yet of your father's preparations,' I said. 'How can you be so sure?' 'If he had heard he would be already in Rome, and himself occupied in drawing up plans for the war. But we hear of nothing but the nightly parties he gives, the theatre productions he demands, and his drinking bouts. In some men this last report might suggest an uneasy spirit, but, with Vitellius, it is merely habit, I am told.'
But nothing could stay Domitian's alarm. He scratched himself till the blood stood out on his arm, frowned, turned away, and threw himself face down on a couch.
Actually some of the stories which reached us from Vitellius' camp were so bizarre that even I could not credit them. I say, 'even f, for already in my youth I was persuaded that no extravagance was too absurd to be indulged in. You must remember that I was reared with an intimate knowledge of how things were done in the imperial household, fed with stories of the absurdities of Claudius, and the near-madness of Nero.
Vitellius was said, for instance, to be so greedy that he had been seen, while a sacrifice was in progress, snatching lumps of meat sizzling from the altar, and devouring them, to the disgust and consternation of the priests.
Do I believe that story? All I can say is that if it's not true, it's been invented to fit his character.
Though I had persuaded myself that my philosophy was equal to the strains of that period of waiting, I nevertheless found myself distressed by an inability to sleep. This is an affliction which has been my companion ever since. I have seen more dawns rise ghastly to my cold sobriety than even the most debauched reveller has been amazed by. Even now, as I write this, the first cocks are summoning the awakening day.
At the time of which I write, I would go to bed early, in an effort to catch sleep unawares. I would close my eyes and sense it steal upon me. But then a tremor disturbed its advance. Perhaps it was an erotic fancy; perhaps a cold start of fear: sometimes the thought of what was to be done; sometimes sharp regret for some past action. My eyes would open, against my will. I would turn to lie on my belly, and surrender to erotic images – Domatilla's soft lips, Titus' leg lying weighty across mine, the flash of a girl seen in the street, that prostitute who used to ply for custom in a lane near the Pantheon, and who would stand, as it were indifferent, with one leg drawn up behind her so that her foot rested on the wall of the building against which she leaned, a girl so confident of her beauty and her allure that, alone among prostitutes I had ever known, she never solicited custom, but was certain of being addressed.
Such fancies would leave me shaking, the sweat standing out on my brow, and, knowing sleep had deserted me, I would rise, put on my clothes and sally out into the streets, perhaps in search of that girl though I knew she did not practise her trade after dark.
The streets were lonely and dangerous, for Flavius Sabinus, as Prefect of the City – a role he discharged with the utmost conscientiousness, even though he knew that he was keeping Rome secure for his advancing enemy – had imposed a curfew; and soldiers of the Guard paraded the streets to enforce it, arresting any whom they found loitering.
Yet their efforts were random and they were easily avoided. A great city has ever its night-hawks – criminals, debauchees, waifs, lunatics, poets (I daresay) and unhappy wretches such as myself to whom sleep denies her gentle comforts. So I wandered the streets and knew many strange encounters: quick couplings against the slimy walls of noisome alleys, rambling conversation by the braziers along the river bank where broken men and women congregated. Sometimes I found myself in sinister cellars, drinking-dens, the lowest sort of brothels, gambling-houses.
I remember one night falling in with a young man of noble birth, as evinced by his negligent dress and manner of speaking. He was only, I judged, a little drunk, but his conversation was wayward. He insisted that I accompany him to a place that he knew, where, he said, we could gamble and drink and lie with women. 'Or boys or what you will. There are Africans there,' he said, 'and my fancy is for dark flesh.' The place was mean and sordid, lit by tallow candles, and managed by a toothless crone, who laughed to see us. I heard malice in that laugh, but by the light, such as it was, I saw something in my companion which appealed to me. It may have been the soft disappointed line of his mouth or the long lashes that flickered over his deep-set eyes. I do not remember, though I remember these features. They made a gull of him there, throwing loaded dice to win the gold which, if he had not lost it, they would have stolen. I felt a savage joy as I watched his humiliation and saw him grow incoherent on the sour wine of the house. The debonair manner which had attracted me because I knew it to be assumed as a mask for the despair which consumed him, disintegrated. He wept, and then implored the woman to furnish him with a black girl, as she had done before. 'You have no gold,' she said, and the ruffians who had fleeced him, took hold of him and hurled him out into the black night. I found him in the gutter, helped him up, and then, when he shook me off with assurances that he was all right, watched him stagger out of my life.
Why does that memory stay with me? Not because I behaved badly, for I have done worse in my time. Because of the gallantry with which he accepted his humiliation? Perhaps – 'and dying he remembers his sweet Argos'. Wasn't that the condition of Rome?