Nero – The Last Caesar chapter 49

JANUARY, A.D.66

The crowd roared as a four-horse chariot pulled clear of its rivals and raced up to the finishing line in the tightly-packed Circus. The victorious charioteer saluted to the cheering crowd and Nero waved back heartily from the imperial box.

‘Ah; how I wish I had but half his talent,’ Nero sighed, brushing the ever-lengthening blonde locks back from his face.

Petronius, leaning back on a couch and picking lazily at sweetmeats, glanced across at him.

‘You are either modest or stupid! You could ride rings around that damned fool.’

The bright blue eyes of the emperor clouded visibly with disappointment.

‘Not you as well, Petronius? I thought that I could at least rely upon my friends to be honest with me. If I am useless at something, then please have the decency to tell me. I find all this false flattery very depressing.’

Nero sank onto his couch once more and casually brushed the locks from his eyes. The enthusiasm he usually showed at the races was strangely lacking.

Petronius finished the last of the sweetmeats and clicked his fingers for more.

‘There is very little false flattery directed at you,’ he remarked between mouthfuls, ‘you put enough effort into your pursuits - why shouldn’t you be accomplished?’

‘I fell from the chariot less than halfway round this morning and was still awarded the race,’ Nero protested. But he lacked the spirit to be angry.

Until that astonishing morning, he had believed that all of his cherished prizes had been won on merit. Now, they were rendered invalid.

The slave offered him the dish of sweetmeats and he shook his head.

‘No thank you, Helios, you may leave them with my guest. Thank you.’

Petronius glanced across at him with concern, the emperor’s unhappy frame of mind once so out of character that it would have been remarkable. Yet, since his recovery from his collapse at the funeral, the events of the past year had finally taken their toll.

‘You cannot pretend that a few false awards are all that distress you, my friend,’ Petronius said lightly. ‘You are still blaming yourself over Poppaea. It was not a good pregnancy from the outset. You know yourself how ill she was throughout. One almighty row was not enough to kill her - she would still have died had you spent all your moments whispering sweet-nothings in her ear.’

‘But instead we fought... and I kicked her...’

‘But you didn’t kill her, Nero. Don’t punish yourself with this needless guilt. It comes too soon on top of everything else.’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘The Fire, the plot, her death - all of these things require time from which to recover. And instead you continue to work yourself to the point of exhaustion!’

‘I do no more than my duty.’

‘The rebuilding of the city is not your duty! You have architects and builders for such things. But no, you have to take control yourself, as always. Throwing open the Palace grounds to the destitute! Feeding them, clothing them, housing them! You have defiled your name and title in the eyes of the senate. They even whisper that you were responsible for the fire in the first place, so eager were you to cleanse your conscience! Such is their hatred. Why didn’t you remain in the country, like the rest of us, and leave the mob to clean up their own mess?’

‘They are my people - I’m responsible for them,’ Nero said in irritation, flicking at his hair crossly. ‘How I wish to the gods that I wasn’t.’

‘Huh! Few people would agree with you there, my friend. Even the senate concedes that without you at our helm we might suffer under another despot, like your bloody predecessors.’

‘Why, then, did Senecio and his friends conspire against me?’

Petronius waved a hand in the air at the triviality of the question.

‘You were not quick enough to accept their sycophantic praises and hand out equally false promotions, so they decided to take their own honours. Their greed casts no reflection on your leadership.’

Nero rested his head in his hands.

‘I have been emperor since I was sixteen,’ he said unhappily, ‘and all it has brought me is heartache. I have worked myself to exhaustion, as you say. And for what thanks? I have laboured under some idealistic sense of duty, endeavouring to work for my people and to help them. But what people? The senate blocks my every move to help the commons; and the Patricians need no help. Every reform has had to be fought for, tooth and nail. As for our own class, they are never satisfied. They have everything, yet I cannot do enough for them. Well, no more. No more.’ His last words were spoken with such vehemence that Petronius began to take notice.

‘What are you planning to do?’ he enquired sarcastically, ‘Incite a revolution?!’

Nero’s eyes twinkled as he raised his head. ‘If the commons were literate, we could incite them to revolt tomorrow.’

‘Do you still live in the past?’ Petronius asked. ‘The commons are literate. They may not have their own tutors, but one cannot walk along the street without hearing a schoolmaster and his noisy class of brats sheltered somewhere under a shop’s awning.’

Nero shook his head. ‘You miss my point. They can read and write. But they cannot afford to buy books any more than they can afford the time to sit and read them.’

Petronius grunted. ‘You have an understanding of their problems with which the rest of us do not trouble ourselves. And how would you propose to incite this revolution of yours, anyway?’

‘With books and art. Your smutty stories of decrepit old men still bedding young beauties are only popular because they give hope. We read a book and become part of it. We look at a painting and become totally absorbed. Art, in all its forms, takes our dreams into new dimensions. If you can inspire hope in the heart of a seventy-year-old, then you can give hope of a different sort to others. Write, Petronius! Tell them how it should be. Let them see the dream and urge them to take it.’

‘A beautiful sentiment,’ Petronius sneered, ‘but what dream? Slaughter and destruction?’

‘For us, perhaps. But don’t you think we deserve it? Look at the list of the dead conspirators. Great men, who had everything, but wanted more. Greed drives our hearts, while need drives the instincts of the poor. The ruling classes are so distant from the commons that they have no understanding of the needs of those they are supposed to be ruling. Look at us, here in the luxury of this box. Is it not absurd to entrust to me the fate of so many people? Just as we entrusted my father Claudius and my uncle Caligula?’

Petronius laughed. ‘With the utmost respect, my dear Nero, I am quite content for my fate to remain in your hands. I hardly think I could maintain such comfort and luxury with a commoner at the head of state!’

‘Luxury, no - but comfort, by all means. Every citizen on equal status, working together for the common good. Every business, every occupation, every property state-owned. No one getting rich on the backs of others.’

‘Dangerous words,’ Petronius said stiffly, ‘and familiar actions, too. When you bought up every consignment of corn during the famine and sold it at a subsidised price, you gained no thanks from the merchants, did you? And by your decree, all lawyers must be paid a fixed fee, so that rich and poor alike can avail of the services of the very best of them. Yet more noses out of joint! And the only thing you have incited thus far is anger - among your own class! Isn’t one plot against your life enough?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. And so I bow to cowardice. But you are against me, Petronius? You, who wrote:

‘ "What uses are laws where money is king?

Where poverty’s helpless and can’t win a thing?" ‘

‘Even cynics who sneer are rarely averse

To selling their scruples to fill up their purse.

There’s no justice at law - it’s the bidding that counts;

And the job of the judge is to fix the amounts.’ Petronius completed the poem for him. ‘Mere words, Nero, to sell a book.’ He fidgeted crossly on his couch. ‘I’m your Arbiter of Taste - I enjoy fine things. To give all men equality one must lessen the great divide. While your commoners gain in wealth and comfort, we must in turn lose a little of ours. The very idea is totally abhorrent! In fact, Nero, with such thoughts in your mind you will only invite another plot against your life - perhaps this time successful.’ Petronius rose and adjusted his toga with ill-concealed irritation. ‘With your permission, my Lord, I shall take my leave,’ he announced curtly, and left without waiting for a reply.

As he stepped outside, he brushed past Epaphroditus and paused to exchange a few words.

‘How is he?’ the secretary enquired, ‘still in low spirits?’

‘Epaphroditus, your master is a dangerous man. I have survived the bloody reigns of Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius. But Nero, with his good heart and good intentions, is the greatest menace of them all! He’ll bring us all down, mark my words, for he has what the rest of his family lacked - a conscience.’

Petronius glanced back at the door to the box with a heavy pang of regret. With reluctant decisiveness he said, ‘Well, it will be his downfall, but it won’t be mine. I wash my hands of him - and his dangerous games. You will see no more of me at the Palace. I take my leave.’

Epaphroditus stared at his departing back in bemusement, then passed by the Guards, into the box.

‘Whatever is the matter with Petronius?!" he asked Nero lightly.

‘I fear we have fallen out. A disagreement over politics.’

‘So! Your spirit has returned! What, then, are your plans?’

Nero stretched out on the couch and sifted through a bowl of fruit.

‘To retire from public life, my dear friend. As emperor, I am unwanted. The senate would fare better without my unwelcome interference.’

‘Fare better for whom?! You’re needed; you can’t give in now.’

‘I’m a coward, Epaphroditus. I have no taste for bloodshed of any kind - least of all my own. My interference in matters of state is dangerous and will henceforth cease. Let me now devote time to my own pleasures. Cancel all my appointments; as of tomorrow I shall be dining at noon - until midnight and beyond! Why the disapproving scowl, Epaphroditus? Is it not time that I had a little fun?’

‘Are your appointments to be cancelled? Or merely postponed?’

‘Cancelled. I am washing my hands of affairs of state. And, as my secretary, you are now free of the burdens of office, too. So wipe that disagreeable scowl from your face and join the party!’