Master and God (56 page)

Domitian was now nearly gone. His eyelids drooped, probably no longer seeing anything. Impossible to say whether he knew this man standing above him, or realised what his final assailant was about to do.

Without a word, Clodianus drew his sword. He knelt beside the Emperor and thrust it in hard. The flesh closed and gripped his blade, but he twisted it out with the savage pull that legionaries used when despatching an enemy: a second wrench that made the original blow certain.

He did not need to look. Domitian was now dead.

Clodianus pulled off his red tunic, hauling it past his belt and sword scabbard. He wiped the blood from his sword, cleaning it thoroughly, sheathed it and tossed the wet garment away. Underneath he wore another tunic, like a civilian. As he walked past Parthenius, he met the chamberlain’s eyes and nodded. Mutual respect passed between them. They would not meet again.

In the enormous public spaces, no one seemed aware anything had happened. He walked, with his hand casually on his sword pommel, back through the palace, past the oblivious Guards on duty, out into the shock of brilliant September sunshine.

With a steady pace, Gaius Vinius – never again to be Clodianus – retraced his route down from the Palatine, back across the Forum and along the Vicus Longus. The same dogs were asleep in almost unchanged positions and the same baby was fretfully crying. This time he had the sun behind him. He could feel it, warm and cheering on his back, as he returned to the Sixth Region where for years he and the woman of his heart had rented an apartment, the apartment they were now leaving.

He reached Plum Street, found his waiting girl, picked up her hand luggage, shouldered his own, whistled the dog, and walked them briskly to the station house of the First Cohort of vigiles. Scorpus had kept the cart safe for him: a builder’s cart bought from his brother and already laden, an unassuming dray with a comfortable ox, nothing to make anyone look twice. Builders’ carts had a special licence to be on the streets during the normal ban on wheeled vehicles. Leaving now, they would avoid the incoming surge of evening traffic.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

Gaius was withdrawn now, in shock. Lucilla accepted his silence. He would talk in due course; he would tell her everything. She draped a cloak around him, taking the reins herself. She pointed out how this was hardly an unusual sight on the Empire’s roads – a lazy scoundrel husband simply staring at the scenery, while his poor pregnant wife did all the hard work . . . Somewhere deep, a response glimmered; Gaius dropped one hand onto her lap.
Just drive, darling.

They would turn out onto the high road, close to the Saepta Julia, as if they were heading past the Horologium and Mausoleum of Augustus, en route for northern Italy. Instead, they would turn off left, drive across the Field of Mars and reach the Tiber. Crossing Nero’s Bridge, they would change direction one more time, to follow the river down to the coast at Ostia, where their ship was waiting.

Behind them in countless local neighbourhoods, citizens were still enjoying lunch and their rest period, unmoved by events on the Palatine. There at the heart of the city, important men had frantic work to do, but nothing of this would become public until tomorrow. Today, Rome, the eternal, the Golden City, lay bathed in sunlight peacefully. There were no alarms. It was a quiet afternoon on the Via Flaminia.

Writing about this period is tricky since, apart from a few fixed events, it is notoriously difficult to plot dates with certainty; I made the best sense of it I could. Novelists have to choose. When in doubt about what happened, whether something happened, why, or when, I have generally taken my lead from the magisterial Professor Brian W. Jones.

Domitian’s assassination passed off quietly. His body was consigned to a public undertaker, but famously retrieved by his childhood nurse, Phyllis, a freedwoman of the Flavians. She had him cremated at her villa outside Rome, then took the ashes to the Temple of the Flavian Gens and mingled them secretly with those of Julia.

Next morning the Senate convened and proclaimed Nerva, ushering in the Era of the Five Good Emperors. Domitian was
damnatio memoriae
: obliterated from history. Senators rushed out into the Forum to oversee removal of his images, including the enormous equestrian statue. Roman historians and many who followed them would denounce Domitian and belittle his achievements, although these are being reassessed, particularly his work on the Roman frontiers in Europe and aspects of his building programme in Rome, projects like Trajan’s Markets, which we now think Domitian began.

Nerva’s reign was short. Its most dramatic event involved the Praetorian Guards: under their new Prefect, the reappointed Casperius Aelianus, they furiously demanded that Domitian’s killers be punished. The Guards actually took Nerva prisoner in the palace, holding him hostage until he was forced to capitulate and produce two of the leading conspirators. Stephanus had been killed at the scene. The ex-Praetorian Prefect Petronius Secundus was executed. As a freedman who had betrayed his master, Parthenius was killed in an excruciating fashion; his testicles were cut off and stuffed in his mouth, then he was strangled, very slowly. We do not know the fates of Entellus, Sigerius, Maximus or the anonymous gladiator, but since nothing is mentioned, perhaps they survived.

In the two historical accounts of the murder (by Suetonius and Dio Cassio), only Suetonius names the cornicularius Clodianus. What happened to him is not disclosed. I have given him names and a history. I have also assumed that a Praetorian chief-of-staff would have had the opportunity and skills to disappear. So Clodianus, if he really existed, took all that was his, including his family if he had one, and slipped safely away. His bravery is without question.

Of the imperial women, Domitia Longina’s supposed involvement in, or awareness of, the plot is ambiguous, though in later life she continued to call herself ‘wife of Domitian’. No one knows if Flavia Domitilla ever returned from Pandateria or if she died there; no one knows the fates of her children. Flavians are afterwards absent from recorded public life.

Despite what happened to Parthenius, his son Tiberius Claudius Burrus became owner of the lovely villa that some of us like to think had once belonged to Horace, and to the courageous Claudia Epicharis. I owe great thanks to Professors Bernard Frischer and Jane Crawford, for alerting me to this and for the great treat of our day at Alba and Licenza.

Finally, let me just say that anyone looking at the hairstyles worn by ladies of the Flavian court, or at Domitian’s surviving statues, will see that they had at least one extremely inventive (and quite possibly satirical) hairdresser. I have given her names and a history too.

Lindsey Davis

London, June 2011

‘The Girl I Kissed at Clusium’

The legionary song in
The Eagle of the Ninth
by Rosemary Sutcliff

‘The Boy I Kissed at Colonia Agrippinensis’

Invented by Gaius Vinius