Empress of the Seven Hills (64 page)

I have taken some liberties with small historical details, compressing events, places, and timelines in order to serve the story. The Dacian Wars and the Cyprus rebellion have been moved up a bit in time to suit Vix’s convenience, and Hadrian’s year in Athens as magistrate moved back. Annia Galeria Faustina was in reality Sabina’s half-niece instead of her half-sister (their family tree is a Rubik’s cube of connections and counterconnections that desperately needed simplification) and although the date of Faustina’s betrothal to Titus is not known, it probably happened a few years earlier than I made it happen here, as did Sabina’s own marriage. It’s not known whether Titus ever served as tribune in a legion, though it was a traditional starting point for many young politicians, and he was notoriously averse to the military for the rest of his life. To suit Titus’s career I have also fudged a few building dates on projects such as Trajan’s Column and his massive public baths, which both still stand today as splendid ruins in the middle of Rome. Vix’s legion, the Tenth Fidelis, is fictional, but its exploits are based on those of real legions that took part in the Dacian and Parthian wars. Hadrian was present at the siege of Sarmizegetusa, though as the legate of a different legion, and the Dacian and Parthian wars unfolded much as I have described them.

Conversely, many of the book’s more outlandish details are entirely true. The idea of secret astrological prophecies sounds ridiculous, but historians record that Hadrian recieved such a prophecy at a young age foretelling his rise to the purple (of course, many other emperors supposedly did too). Trajan’s various near-death experiences are also fact—he narrowly missed dying at Hatra when an enemy archer spotted him without his helmet, and he also escaped being crushed to death by the devastating earthquake in Antioch. Mention is made, during that earthquake, of a woman trapped in the rubble who managed to keep both herself and her newborn baby alive on her own breast milk until they could be rescued.

A modern audience might find it surprising that two of Rome’s most famous and effective emperors were openly homosexual, or at least bisexual with a strong preference for men. Ancient Romans held a very relaxed view of sexual preferences: Bisexuality was the norm rather than the exception among upper-class Roman men. Both Trajan and Hadrian made political marriages, but their relationships with their wives are assumed to have remained platonic since both men openly preferred male lovers. Neither emperor was ever reviled as less of a man or a soldier.

Trajan’s easy nature and rampant popularity are well documented, but Hadrian is a much more elusive figure. He appears to have been a very difficult man to understand: The
Historia Augusta
chronicle wrote of him in frustration: “He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.” Thanks to historians like Gibbon, he is now considered one of Rome’s Five Good Emperors (a term originally coined by Machiavelli), and certainly Hadrian was well-spoken and well-read, with a gift for organization, a formidable intellect, myriad artistic interests, a famous love of animals, and a powerful ability to charm. But despite his gifts he was one of the most unpopular emperors Rome ever had—at least during his lifetime. That unpopularity kicked off at the
beginning of his reign when he first relinquished Trajan’s hard-won new provinces and then went on to purge a number of his political enemies in a series of murders. Hadrian denied all involvement in the bloodbath, but Rome remained convinced he masterminded the executions, and his reputation never recovered. The most famous fictional portrait of Hadrian is Marguerite Yourcenar’s
Memoirs of Hadrian
, which takes a positive slant on most of his actions and portrays him as thoughtful and saintly—but I had fun exploring another possible side of his character: the man seen by his fellow Romans as a brilliant schemer smart enough to hide his innate cruelty behind an affable mask. Vix, Sabina, and Titus are all in for plenty of adventures now that their mortal enemy has become Emperor of Rome.

Special thanks to my friend Helen Shankman, who not only answered many of my questions on early Judaism, but put me in touch with Professor Steven Fine, who took time from New York’s Yeshiva University to answer the questions Helen could not. Thanks as well to Ben Kane for recommending me to
RomanArmy.com
, a wonderful online forum full of helpful experts on Rome’s complex military system. I was lucky enough to make the acquaintance there of Nathan Ross, Paul Elliott, Max Conzemius, and Quinton Johansen, who were kind enough to answer my questions about Vix’s legionary career and tactfully point out my mistakes.

And a final fervent thank-you to Anthony Everitt, whose splendid biography
Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome
has been my bible and security blanket during the entire writing process of
Empress of the Seven Hills
.

IMPERIAL FAMILY

*
Marcus Ulpius TRAJAN, Emperor of Rome

*
Empress Pompeia PLOTINA, his wife

*
Publius Aelius HADRIAN, his ward

*
Domitia Longina, called MARCELLA, widow of Emperor Domitian and former Empress of Rome

ROMAN SENATORS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Senator MARCUS Vibius Augustus Norbanus

CALPURNIA, his third wife

*
Vibia SABINA, his daughter from his second wife

*
Annia Galeria FAUSTINA, his daughter by Calpurnia

Linus and his three brothers, Marcus and Calpurnia’s sons

Gaia, a slave girl in the Norbanus house

Quintus, steward of the Norbanus house

*
TITUS Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus, patrician

Ennia, his housekeeper

*
Celsus, a consul

*
Palma, a consul

*
Gaius Avidius Nigrinus, a governor of Dacia

ROMAN SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Vercingetorix, called VIX, bodyguard, legionary, and former gladiator

*
SIMON ben Cosiba, legionary

MIRAH, his niece

Dinah and Chaya, her daughters

Boil, legionary

Julius, legionary

Philip, legionary

*
Lusius Quietus, Berber cavalry commander

ROMAN CITIZENS AND SUBJECTS

DEMETRA, a bakehouse cook in Moguntiacum

*
ANTINOUS, her son

*
Decebalus, King of Dacia, rebel against Rome

Bassus, under-secretary to Empress Plotina

*
Phaedimus, Imperial freedman

*
denotes real historical figure

Rome, September
A. D.
81

I opened my wrist with one firm stroke of the knife, watching with interest as the blood leaped out of the vein. My wrists were latticed with knife scars, but I still found the sight of my own blood fascinating. There was always the element of danger: After so many years, would I finally get careless and cut too deep? Would this be the day I watched my young life stream away into the blue pottery bowl with the nice frieze of nymphs on the side? The thought much brightened a life of minimum excitement.

But this time it was not to be. The first leap of blood slowed to a trickle, and I settled back against the mosaic pillar in the atrium, blue bowl in my lap. Soon a pleasant haze would descend over my eyes and the world would take on an agreeably distant hue. I needed that haze today. I would be accompanying my new mistress to the Colosseum, to see the gladiatorial games for the accession of the new Emperor. And from what I’d heard about the games…

“Thea!”

My mistress’s voice. I muttered something rude in a combination of Greek, Hebrew, and gutter Latin, none of which she understood.

The blue bowl held a shallow cup of my blood. I wrapped my wrist in a strip of linen, tying off the knot with my teeth, then emptied the bowl into the atrium fountain. I took care not to drip on my brown wool tunic. My mistress’s eagle eyes would spot a bloodstain in half a second, and I would not care to explain to her exactly why, once or twice a month, I took a blue bowl with a nice frieze of nymphs on the side
and filled it with my own blood. However, fairly speaking, there was very little that I would care to tell my mistress at all. She hadn’t owned me long, but I already knew
that
.

“Thea!”

I turned too quickly and had to lean against the pillars of the atrium. Maybe I’d overdone it. Drain too much blood, and nausea set in. Surely not good on a day when I would have to watch thousands of animals and men get slaughtered.

“Thea, quit dawdling.” My mistress poked her pretty head out the bedroom door, her annoyed features agreeably hazy to my eyes. “Father’s waiting, and you still have to dress me.”

I drifted obediently after her, my feet seeming to float several inches above the floor. A tasteless floor with a mosaic scene of gladiators fighting it out with tridents, blood splashing copiously in square red tiles. Tasteless but appropriate: My mistress’s father, Quintus Pollio, was one of several organizers of the Imperial gladiatorial games.

“The blue gown, Thea. With the pearl pins at the shoulders.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Lady Lepida Pollia. I had been purchased for her several months ago when she turned fourteen: a maid of her own age to do her hair and carry her fan now that she was so nearly a woman. As a gift I didn’t rank as high as the pearl necklace and the silver bangles and the half-dozen silk gowns she’d also received from her doting father, but she certainly liked having her own personal shadow.

“Cut yourself at dinner again, Thea?” She caught sight of my bandaged wrist at once. “You really are a fumble-fingers. Just don’t drop my jewel box, or I’ll be very cross. Now, I want the gold bands in my hair, in the Greek style. I’ll be a Greek for the day… just like you, Thea.”

She knew I was no Greek, despite the name bestowed on me by the Athenian merchant who was my first owner. “Yes, my lady,” I murmured in my purest Greek. A frown flickered between her fine black brows. I was better educated than my mistress, and it annoyed her no end. I tried to remind her at least once a week.

“Don’t go giving yourself airs, Thea. You’re just another little Jew slave. Remember that.”

“Yes, my lady.” Meekly I coiled and pinned her curls. She was already chattering on.

“… Father says that Belleraphon will fight this afternoon. Really, I know he’s our best gladiator, but that flat face! He may dress like a dandy, but all the perfume in the world won’t turn him into an Apollo. Of course he is wonderfully graceful, even when he’s sticking someone right through the throat—ouch! You pricked me!”

“Sorry, my lady.”

“You certainly look green. There’s no reason to get sick over the games, you know. Gladiators and slaves and prisoners—they’d all die anyway. At least this way we get some fun out of it.”

“Maybe it’s my Jewish blood,” I suggested. “We don’t usually find death amusing.”

“Maybe that’s it.” Lepida examined her varnished nails. “At least the games are bound to be thrilling today. What with the Emperor getting sick and dying in the middle of the season, we haven’t had a good show for months.”

“Inconsiderate of him,” I agreed.

“At least the new Emperor is supposed to love the games. Emperor Domitian. Titus Flavius Domitianus… I wonder what he’ll be like? Father went to no end of trouble arranging the best bouts for him. Pearl earrings, Thea.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And the musk perfume. There.” Lepida surveyed herself in the polished steel mirror. She was very young—fourteen, same as me—and too young, really, for the rich silk gown, the pearls, the rouge. But she had no mother and Quintus Pollio, so shrewd in dealing with slave merchants and
lanistae
, was clay in the hands of his only child. Besides, there was no doubt that she cut a dash. Her beauty was not in the peacock-blue eyes or even the yard of silky black hair that was her pride and joy. It was in her Olympian poise. On the basis of that poise, Lady
Lepida Pollia aimed to catch a distinguished husband, a patrician who would raise the family Pollii at last into the highest ranks of Roman society.

She beckoned me closer, peacock fan languidly stirring her sculpted curls. In the mirror behind her I was a dark-brown shadow: lanky where she was luscious, sunburned where she was white-skinned, drab where she was brilliant. Very flattering, at least for her.

“Most effective,” she announced, mirroring my thoughts. “But you really do need a new dress, Thea. You look like a tall dead tree. Come along, Father’s waiting.”

Father was indeed waiting. But his impatience softened as Lepida dimpled at him and pirouetted girlishly. “Yes, you look very pretty. Be sure to smile at Aemilius Graccus today; that’s a very important family, and he’s got an eye for pretty girls.”

I could have told him that it wasn’t pretty
girls
Aemilius Graccus had an eye for, but he didn’t ask me. Maybe he should have. Slaves heard everything.

Most Romans had to get up at daybreak to get a good seat in the Colosseum. But the Pollio seats were reserved, so we tripped out just fashionably late enough to nod at all the great families. Lepida sparkled at Aemilius Graccus, at a party of patrician officers lounging on the street corner, at anyone with a purple-bordered toga and an old name. Her father importantly exchanged gossip with any patrician who favored him with an obligatory smile.

“… I heard Emperor Domitian’s planning a campaign in Germania next season! Wants to pick up where his brother left off, eh? No doubting Emperor Titus cut those barbarians down to size, we’ll see if Domitian can do any better…”

“Quintus Pollio,” I overheard a patrician voice drawl. “Really, his perfume alone—!”