Tiberius Page 23

  He was a freedman called Philip, in Julia's household, and he had married, with his mistress's blessing, a free-born Greek girl from the island of Capri, where Augustus had had a villa. He told me of his wife's uncle, an unmarried man against whom, nevertheless, no accusation of vice had ever been brought. He was revered in the family for his wisdom and calm philosophy, though my informant was for long ignorant of any justification for the high regard in which the old man was held.

  "Indeed it seemed strange to me," he said, "for Xenophon, as he was called, seemed in human relations the most cantankerous of fellows. He rarely spoke at family gatherings, and when he did it was generally to express his disapproval of the younger generation. I can't now recall what incident encouraged him to take an interest in me. Perhaps there was no incident. Perhaps he merely detected in me some communion of feeling. I can't say. At any rate it so happened that I developed the habit of sitting with the old man in the afternoons which he spent on a terrace under a vine-wreathed arbour while the rest of the household took its siesta. We would drink the yellow wine from the family's own vineyard, sharp acidulous stuff, nevertheless with a piquant and memorable flavour to which I had become happily accustomed. Forgive me these details, which I offer you because they bring back to me so vividly the memory of these afternoons when I was aware of an utter stillness, as of death; yet simultaneously of the sound of the waves below and of lizards scurrying over the ancient wall that surrounded the terrace. Xenophon would eat sea-urchins, which he put whole into his mouth and chewed noisily with much spitting. He was generally silent and would spend hours on end gazing out to sea. I noticed at last that his eyes were fixed on some rocks which thrust themselves out of the water a little further from land than a man could swim with comfort.

  '"Is there something about these rocks ?' I asked one afternoon, when his gaze had been more than usually fixed.

  "'Do these fools in there ever speculate before you on the reasons why I have never married?' he replied. "I hesitated.

  "'You're a sensible fellow,' he said. 'Doesn't it disgust you to copulate with human beings?'

  "I adored my wife, and if she had not disliked sex in the afternoon would happily have been in her bed.

  "'But then, why should you? You're like the rest. You don't know anything better.'

  "And he popped another sea-urchin into his mouth, and spat vigorously.

  '"You do then?' I said.

  "He paid no attention to the impudence in my tone, but smiled. I have never seen such a smile. It had such an assurance of bliss.

  "'When I was a young man - oh younger than you,' he said, 'I learned better. I was vouchsafed an experience which I can only call miraculous, and which altered my whole life. You ask me why I gaze at these rocks. It is for the same reason that I keep a rowing-boat tied up in the cove below. I was betrothed then to a cousin. One afternoon as I sat in this same place the air was filled with music such as I had never heard. It was a music both melancholy and uncanny, yet with an undercurrent of joy, like the movement of deep water. I left the terrace and made for my boat and steered towards the sound. And so I came to these rocks where the music seemed close, yet no louder than it had been at a distance. Like one in a trance, I mounted the rock to the girl who reclined there making the music though she had no instrument and her lips were still. It seemed to me that she was the music. She took me in her arms and the music hummed around us, and I knew delight beyond the limits of imagination. I became one with her, achieving an ethereal perfection of unity compared to which any human coupling is an obscene shadowy representation of reality. I say girl, but of course she was no human thing, but a spirit, a nymph, the plenitude of what may be desired. We made love while the sun sank in the west, and through the darkness and till it rose in a pink-dappled sky behind the mountains of Campania. And the music never left us. Then she closed my eyes with a kiss, and murmured to me that she was of my life forever, and that we would come together again. And I woke, with the sun beating on the rock, and no sound but the sea, and found myself alone. These sea-urchins have the taste of her, for she belonged to the sea, and returned to it, and will one day call me thence. So do you wonder, young man, that I look on your couplings with the same scorn you might feel for cocks mounting fowls in the yard?'" Philip paused.

  "It was a Siren he had met and loved. There is no other conclusion possible."

  "You believed him?" I asked.

  "For a long time I didn't. But I have never forgotten his words."

  "What song did the Siren sing him?" "A song that is beyond imitation. Evidently." "For a long time you didn't believe him?" "That is right."

  "And then? What is the end of the story?"

  "Oh, it has no end. Don't you know that, Emperor? No story ever has an end. All narratives are circular. They couldn't be otherwise. But I can tell you another stage in the journey. One day old Xenophon was sitting on the terrace as usual, while the other members of the family slept in the afternoon. There had been a week of scirocco, but the skies had cleared and the air was gentle. They left him with his flask of wine and a basket of sea-urchins. Nobody ever saw him again. When they woke, he had vanished."

  "And his boat? That had vanished too?"

  "Of course. There was consternation. It was assumed that for some reason nobody could fathom he had descended the cliff, embarked in his little boat, and sailed into . . . what? The void, perhaps?"

  "But you don't believe that?"

  Philip smiled. "I wasn't there at the time. I have never spoken to anyone except you, Emperor, about these matters. This is the first time I have repeated Xenophon's story . . ."

  "So there are Sirens . . . the calm under the winds . . ."

  "It may have been a delusion, Emperor. He was a very old man, and perhaps not right in his wits."

  7

  Some three weeks after this conversation I occupied the imperial box at the Games. I had gone reluctantly, as usual. I believe no man of taste and sensibility can take pleasure in gladiatorial contests. Moreover, thirty years' experience of warfare has schooled me to view this contrived carnage with disgust. I have seen too much courage and suffering and terror to take any pleasure in their compulsory exhibition by wretches condemned to fight for the amusement of the mob. It is even more disgusting to see educated men of good birth - and even women — salivating gleefully at these shows. Few things fortified my respect for Sejanus more than the contempt he felt for those who delighted in these contests.

  Duty, however, compelled me on occasions to attend. And on this day almost the whole family was present, from the unfortunate slobbering Claudius, my poor brother Drusus' younger son, whose wayward wits and physical disabilities might excuse the morbid pleasure he took in the battles in the arena, to Agrippina and her brood. As usual Agrippina maintained a quasi-regal air of superiority; she scarcely deigned to acknowledge the cheers with which she was greeted; yet by the merest twitch of her lips and inclination of her head conveyed the sense of her immeasurable pride. Instead of offending the populace, her hauteur encouraged their enthusiasm. It was strange. I have always known that the mob resented what they took to be my own awareness of my superiority; yet their adoration of Agrippina swelled in proportion to the distance she set between herself and them.

  That afternoon the third contest was between a swarthy Anatolian mountaineer, armed with net and spear, and a flaxen-haired German boy with short sword and shield. If the German had been schooled by the gladiator-master, terror or desperation had deprived him of all memory of his training. He launched a succession of wild attacks on his opponent who evaded them with ease, in return offering only light jabs with his spear at the discomfited boy, whose arms were soon pink with his own blood. After each of his clumsy assaults had been avoided he paused for a moment, his chest heaving and his legs, which still retained the soft fleshiness of youth in contrast to the Anatolian's sinewy hardness, quivering. Then he pushed back a lock of hair which had fallen over his left eye, and charged again. This w
ent on for some minutes, and it was obvious that the two were reprehensibly ill-matched. The Anatolian was playing with his opponent, following the instructions given to gladiators by their cynical trainers "to let the crowd see them sweat". Then one of the boy's wild swings caught the Anatolian on the shoulder. He was hit only with the flat of the sword, and not cut, but the power of the blow sent him hurtling to the sand. His spear and his net flew from his grasp. He crouched on all fours gazing at the boy, who, perhaps horrified by his achievement, perhaps merely surprised, stood still, incapable of action. The Anatolian shook his head from side to side. The crowd howled for his death. The boy did not move. Then he lowered his sword and pushed its point into the sand, and his opponent scrabbled like a crab, but keeping his gaze fixed on the boy, towards his spear and net. He retrieved them and got to his feet. Still the boy did not move. And now the Anatolian, as if stirred by the disgrace of his fall, began to tease him. He whisked his net about the boy, making him jump and look foolish. With deft swirls of the net he pursued the German round the ring. Once the boy's nerve cracked and he turned his back on his opponent and tried to flee. But there was no refuge from the swirling net. Its mesh swung in the air before him, and he turned again. The crowd shrieked. The boy rubbed his forearm across his brow to wipe away the sweat, and left a streak of blood there. He looked up. It seemed to me he was looking straight at me, imploring mercy, but I doubt if he saw anything but a mist of fear and danger. Summoning up what was left of his courage, he hurled himself on his opponent, with a wild cry and upraised sword. There was no one there. The Anatolian skipped aside, and thrusting out his foot, sent the boy tumbling to the sand. In a trice he was enveloped in the net, and the spear pressed against his throat. The contest was over.

  Next to me Gaius Caligula jumped out of his seat, screaming, "Kill him, kill him . . ."

  The crowd roared approval.

  I looked along the row. Agrippina remained impassive, as if what was happening in the arena had no meaning for her. Nero's lips trembled; he shared the boy's terror and yet could not prevent himself from responding to the cruelty of the spectacle. Claudius jabbed Drusus in the ribs and showered excited spittle on him as he jabbered his enthusiasm, stuttering, I suppose, even worse than usual. Drusus himself assumed the air of a triumphant general; so might his father have looked on that dreadful day when he permitted the repentant mutineers to expiate their own crimes by the judicial murder of those who had led them into rebellion.

  And I looked down on the bloody sand, and saw the boy's limbs relax as if he consented to death, while his eyes were still dilated with the terror of realisation. I knew that look. I had seen it often in battle. I had seen men and boys make that same astonished discovery, in an instant of revelation, that everything they thought of as being essentially themselves, everything they knew through their senses - what they knew best of all, their own body - could be snuffed out, as if life was no more than a dream now turned nightmare. His lips moved, his tongue touched his lower lip and I turned my thumb up, to save his life.

  I saved not only him, but myself, and my own reason. I had acted without calculation. I left the arena amidst a storm of boos and catcalls, as the mob howled their disappointed blood-lust. I was trembling. I took a glass of wine to calm myself.

  "The crowd will hate you for this," Sejanus said.

  "They hate me already. Let them hate, provided they fear."

  I quoted the line lightly. It was inaccurate, for I had no wish to be feared, only obeyed. Even that is not accurate, as an expression of my sentiments. I would rather there had been no need even for such obedience, and I would have preferred that people obeyed the dictates of reason and virtue rather than of any man. I might, more appropriately, have quoted Horace: odi profanum vulgus et arceo - I loathe and shun the profane rabble . . . The words sounded in my mind, but I kept them to myself. Yet in that instant my resolution, slowly formed in the dim recesses of my determination, was complete: it was possible to shun them forever. Still, even now, I did not acquaint Sejanus with my purpose. Instead I sent him back to the circus to offer some anodynic and hypocritical explanation of my departure.

  "And my excuses. Don't forget to offer my excuses to our masters, the people."

  "Of course."

  "The public wishes to be fooled," I said, "therefore let it be fooled."

  "I don't understand."

  "No matter. Nothing is any matter."

  "Are you sure you are all right?"

  "Yes," I said, "I have seen deliverance." And with these words I dismissed him.

  Then I sent one of my freedmen to the gladiators' school to purchase the defeated German, and bring him to me.

  He entered, puffy-eyed, in a short tunic of grey wool, with sandals on his feet. He threw himself prostrate before me. I told him, in his own language, to get up.

  "You are a free-born German," I said, "and perhaps of good birth. I know it is not the custom of your people to abase themselves in this manner."

  "I have been torn from the customs of my people, and compelled to practise other manners."

  "Of what tribe are you?"

  "Of a branch of the Cherusci."

  "The Cherusci? But they have not been at war with us. How does it come about that you are a prisoner and a slave?"

  He explained that he was the son of a chief and had been sent, according to the German fashion, to complete his education with another tribe and, finding them engaged in frontier warfare with the legions, had been captured in a skirmish.

  "And so, by a series of accidents, I arrived where I found myself today. Why did you save my life?"

  He guessed - I could tell from the nature of his glance - one answer, which was not the whole answer, and to have embarked on a full analysis of my reason for acting would have led me into areas I neither understood, nor wished to understand, myself. So I merely smiled and said, "I thought you were too young to die."

  "Too young, or . . ."

  "Too young to die in that manner at any rate . . ." "I am grateful."

  "Once long ago," I said, "a German boy, who looked rather like you, saved my life in battle. Perhaps that was why. Perhaps it is to that boy who has been dead many years that you should be grateful. I don't know. I felt this afternoon that there had been too much blood. I have had more than my fill of it. Have your wounds been dressed?"

  "Those that can be have been. What will you do with me now?"

  I could not answer. Instead I passed him a cup of wine. He looked startled, then drank it back in one go, in the German manner, of which, I remembered, I had cured the young Segestes and his father.

  "For the moment," I said, "you had better remain in my household."

  I spoke without reflection. The boy blushed.

  "Of course," I said, "I daresay you would rather I returned you to your own people, but it might not serve. I have seen how your people treat returned slaves. They regard them as having been degraded by their experience. No, you will do better to remain with me."

  Naturally, when the word went round that I had taken the boy whom I had rescued from the arena into my own household, the worst construction was put on my actions. The boy was said to be my catamite, and insulting graffiti appeared throughout the city declaring that I had been moved by lust, not humanity. Agrippina was reported by Sejanus' agents as expressing her revulsion and contempt for my "debauched senility". "Will the Roman people be content to be governed by an old man who cheats them of satisfaction in order to gratify his immoral impulses?" she was even heard to enquire.

  Alone, in the starry watches, on the camp-bed which I had retained since my soldiering days, I knew the truth of these accusations. Who can disentangle the network of emotions which prompt action? My mind, searching in vain for sleep - for I had long been a victim of the most desolate insomnia - played with images, simultaneously painful and pleasant, of the boy Sigmund's limbs stretched out on the bloody sand, of his trembling lips and of the blond hair that flopped over his left eye.
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  I could not deny to myself what I felt, nor the delight which I took in having the boy about my person. But I was impressed also by his manly character, by his reserve and dignity. The embraces of an old man with foul breath and a scrawny chicken neck could not fail to disgust him. I would not compel him to debase himself. He had a sense of decency which I could have believed vanished from the world. It pleased me to have him in my household, to engage him in conversation, instruct him in virtue and knowledge of the world, to be able to rely on him for little services which he performed with punctilious respect.

  For a few brief months I approached happiness. It was disturbed only by my miserable consciousness of Livia's decline into a species of madness often associated with extreme age, and by my consciousness of Agrippina's malice and unremitting hostility. Scarcely a week passed without Sejanus bringing me evidence of her zeal in poisoning men's minds against me, even of encouraging plots against my life. Mindful of her popularity, and of the respect due her as Julia's daughter and Germanicus' widow, I declined to permit him to act against her, hoping always that she would in time desist from her malignant folly. I did not realise that it was in her blood, that she was possessed of the same impulse to self-destruction that had maddened Julia herself.