The Nero Prediction (37 page)

 His anger left the astrologer as suddenly as air leaves a punctured bladder. His head nodded, the slow bobbing of a boat on the Nile. "Of course, it had to drive you mad first."

It didn't seem like madness to me. The comet, drifting tail first into the pre-dawn sky, was our glorious banner as we went south for the annual spring visit to Baiae. Every morning it rose earlier and shone more brightly and grew in length until, in the early days of March, the glorious plume which was now sixty times the diameter of the Full Moon, rose continually for two hours.

I was intoxicated, yes, but I wasn't blind. I was well aware that by unchaining Nero from the cave of melancholy where he'd languished since the death of Poppaea, by breathing with him once again the heady perfume of high places, I was fanning the embers of resentment in men with blue blood and narrow minds. I was also aware that it was my duty to defend him against their malice. 

At first I succeeded. There was the night in Baiae, the anniversary of Agrippina's death, when the comet shone brightest. Nero's enemies understood this to mean that he was about to be avenged for killing his mother. Instead it was the sign of their own destruction, I helped Tigellinus see to that.

Twenty-one days later it disappeared shortly after touching Nero's Saturn, his ruling star. An astrologer named Pammenes assured his clients that this meant that Nero was finished. He and his clients went the way of the comet. A month later Rome celebrated her greatest diplomatic triumph in a hundred years: the day in May when Tiridates, prince of Persia, Rome’s oldest enemy, fell to his knees before Nero and received the crown of Armenia from him.

I laughed in Balbillus's face. "Madness," I crowed, "at last the whole empire's at peace. Do you call this madness?"

The astrologer pinched his chin but his eyes were difficult to read. "We'll see." 

That night, at a magnificent banquet where I got quite drunk, for the second time Nero declared musical war on Greece. At his side was his new bride, the much married Statilia, wealthy, brilliant, highly educated and so indulgent she didn’t seem to mind at all when Phaon, a clever Greek freedmen, gave Nero one of his slave boys. His name was Sporus – “sperm” which he’d been receiving a lot of from Phaon. The boy bore an astonishing resemblance to Poppaea right down to his beautiful amber hair. His voice had not yet broken and Phaon, courtesy of his surgeon, had made sure it stayed that way. Nero rewarded Phaon with a magnificent villa near the Praetorian camp and, because he was funny and licentious, he soon became part of the inner circle.

Nero reclined with his new wife Statilia on his left, the reincarnation of his dead and deified wife Poppaea Sabina on his right (the boy fitted perfectly into Poppaea’s clothes) and his new vassal, a prince of Persia, opposite him. “Isn’t it astonishing,” Nero cried, “a comet took my ancestor Julius Caesar to Heaven, and a comet has brought my dead wife back to me from Hades!”

“Yes,” piped Sporus whom Nero had just “married” with all the solemnities. “I am Queen of the Dead!”

“And I bring the dead to life, ask Epaphroditus!” Nero joked. Statilia, her clever eyes dancing over my face, laughed as hard as anyone because she’d heard how Nero had resurrected Rachel.

These were strange, heady times. Nero paraded Sporus, dressed and coiffured as Poppaea, everywhere, the boy’s uncanny resemblance to the late empress bringing gasps of amazement and applause. Statilia laughed about it, as far as she was concerned this was just another of Nero’s provocative entertainments. She encouraged his outrageous behavior, his loss of restraint. This time I knew he'd take us to Greece, whether it was fated or not.

In August we, the musical legions, set sail. Daily the size of our escort grew. Pleasure boats of the rich, cargo vessels crowded with musicians, thousands of fishing boats manned by men who would tell their grandchildren that they'd welcomed Nero to Greece.

Music floated as thick as fog on the water but Nero brooded, by choice a solitary figure at the prow of his gigantic ship, eyes fixed on mount Parnassus, home of the Muses and solemn guardian of Delphi, the sanctuary of the oracle of Apollo.

"Perhaps I won't even be allowed to consult her."

I did my best not to smile. "Why Caesar?"

Nero's voice sank to a whisper. "Because of mother."

"They'll be honored to admit you, I've already had assurances of that."

"I can't make up my mind what to ask. You see it has to be a question worthy of Nero. I have it. Something majestic in its simplicity: 'What is my fate?'"

For the first time in months I felt the prick of anxiety. It was a question that had already cost too many lives. 

It was not yet light when we set out for the temple. Blotting out half the stars were the twin peaks of the Phaidriades, precipitous cliffs a thousand feet high which tower over the sacred buildings huddled together at their feet. From somewhere above us came a scream, the cry of an eagle. It reminded me of the Delphian penalty for sacrilege: being hurled from the top of one of these cliffs. In spite of my skepticism, I felt a nip of superstitious dread.

Torches lit the gilded statue of Apollo. The chief prophet (all the priests were called prophets) purified us with a sprinkle of holy water. Behind a heavy door, down some steps, was the oracular chamber itself. 

Before me was a scene that had remained unchanged since the days of gods and heroes. It was in this same dark, sooty chamber, illuminated by nothing more than a single flickering torch, that Agamemnon had heard that he was destined to lead the Greeks against Troy. Here too his son Orestes had come to hear the mournful news that he had to avenge his father's death by murdering his mother. Red-haired Menelaus inquired here about children, Paris asked where he was destined to find a wife. Now I was here as well, the companion of a man who was as great a hero in his way as any of these, perhaps even greater.

A hag draped in snakeskin sat on a tripod above a fissure that leaked vile smelling fumes. This was the Pythia, named after Python the serpent who had once guarded the Earth Mother Gaea, the monster that Apollo had slain when he'd appropriated the shrine for himself in a past, legendary age. It was the remains of this mighty Python, still rotting at the bottom of the chasm below the Pythia, so the legend went, that gave the sacred vapor both its foul smell and its power to induce prophecy.

I tore my eyes away from the crone to take in the rest of the dim chamber. Next to the tripod on which she sat was a dome-shaped stone covered with carvings of spindles of wool joined together like sausages. This was the Omphalos, simultaneously the gravestone of the Python and the center of the universe. On either side were statues of two crudely carved birds, obviously archaic, which could have been swans or eagles. Against the wall was Apollo's lyre, its strings long since perished away.

I was making notes when the Pythia gave a terrible shriek. The scream died in a series of echoes but her mouth remained open and so did her eyes, her expression a mask of terror.

"Inquirer," intoned the prophet, "the god asks you for your inquiry. Are you ready to give it to him?"

There were beads of sweat on Nero's forehead. The hand that brushed his lips trembled. There were tears in his eyes, perhaps from the vapor.

The prophet didn't seem at all surprised to see the master of the world quaking in his boots. "You may proceed."

 Nero asked the question that weighed on his mind. "What is my fate?"

The Pythia was overcome by violent convulsions. More feral howls, none sounding particularly friendly, then she gurgled like water disappearing down a drain.

"Nero," the prophet interpreted, "your name will be on men's lips a thousand years after Rome falls. Beware the seventy-third year."

"The seventy-third year!" Nero whispered to me as we were escorted out of the temple, "exactly Balbillus's figure. Did you know that? When Balbillus first cast my horoscope for mother, this was even before I was born, he told her I'd live to seventy-three. He’d broken the code of the future. Quite uncanny!"

With Nero's horoscope in front of him anyone familiar with Balbillus's methods would have arrived at the same figure. But how had the most closely-guarded secret in the empire found its way into the mouth of a hag who lived a life of isolation in a Greek mountain shrine?

The unanswered question traveled with me to Nemea, just south of Corinth where in June Nero, wearing the mask of Poppaea, played Persephone, dragged down to Hades by Pluto and then won back to earth for the six months of spring and summer. It froze my heart at the Olympic games in early August when Nero’s speeding chariot, his horses whipped way ahead of the pursuing pack, flipped over at the final turn and he was nearly run over. It was the first thing that sprung to mind seventeen days later in Actium, just across the Adriatic from Italy, when I opened a letter from Helius, the Secretary of Protocol who'd been left in Rome to keep and eye on the Senate. The letter said that the city buzzed with rumors that Nero's downfall had been foreseen in the stars and that it was therefore imperative for the morale of his supporters for the emperor to come home immediately.

Nero dismissed the appeal with the back of his hand. "Tell him to write again when I'm in my seventy third year."

But the letter worried me and so did the oracle of Delphi which was why I persuaded Nero to consult her a second time.

Once again we stood in front of the hag writhing on her tripod above the fissure which spewed foul smoke.

This time Nero had no trouble finding his voice: "Lord Apollo, when last I consulted this oracle, your prophet understood you to mean that I have seventy-three years to live. Since then rumors have begun to circulate that the stars warn of immediate danger. Which is true?"

A strange chirping sound reminiscent of a cricket issued from the back of the Pythia's throat.

The chief prophet translated for us. "Nero, both are true. Beware the seventy-third year for there will be blood in the stars when the Moon shines on the fishes."

Nero massaged the roll of fat under his chin as he contemplated the prediction after dinner. "'Blood in the stars when the Moon shines on the fishes.' What could that possibly mean? Wait, don't tell me! The fishes are Pisces, something dreadful is going to happen when the Moon is in Pisces. That's it, isn't it?"

Balbillus seemed to be collecting his thoughts. "It's true, Augustus, that Pisces is an ominous sign because it's the final sign of the Zodiac where we must look for indications of the end of things. It's also true that the Moon in Pisces is particularly unlucky for you because when she's placed there she's in an unfortunate square with your ascendant."

"But she passes through Pisces every month!" I scoffed.

Balbillus gave me a pitying look. "Indeed she does, Epaphroditus. I am pleased you at least know that.” He turned his attention back to Nero. “The Pythia is being vague, Caesar, but that's always been her specialty. I will ponder this further, to see what she was getting at.”

The Moon in the Fishes went with me to my siesta.

Helius had written that an astrologer in Rome had predicted that Nero was about to fall. Now the oracle at Delphi had confirmed the prediction that Nero was in immediate danger. What was the explanation? Either the oracle had recovered her ancient ability to rend the curtain of time or someone had passed on the anonymous astrologer's prediction to the chief prophet of Delphi, not just as a vague rumor, but with the important detail that disaster would strike when the Moon was in Pisces and therefore in a hostile square with Nero's ascendant.

Square his ascendant.

I leapt off the couch as if I'd been stung by a scorpion. Whoever had made that prediction needed to know Nero's birth time. Without that crucial piece of information it would have been impossible to establish where Nero's ascendant was. The specter of the self-fulfilling prophecy rose up through the floor and fear fell on my neck like an old friend.

There was something more than met the eye to this the priest of a run-down rustic shrine. He was the conduit of forbidden information given to him so that he could sow seeds of self-doubt in Nero's mind. Someone must have paid him handsomely for that service, someone I had to find.

Nero frowned at me. "Treachery from the oracle of Delphi? Impossible!"

"Dominus, this isn't the ancient oracle who was the inspiration of Greece in its golden age. As you know, none of your imperial predecessors even bothered to consult her. The fact that her prophets are notorious for taking bribes from petty municipalities wrangling over insignificant disputes does them no credit, but it doesn't concern me. What does concern me very much is that the head of this shrine has dared to take advantage of your patronage with the evil intention of disturbing your peace of mind."

Nero sighed. "I suppose we'd better find out why."

The chief prophet rolled off his bed as we broke into his room. The boy who shared it with him squeaked like a mouse. Under the mattress was a bag of gold as big as a fist. Roman coins.

Of course the villain claimed that it was his life savings. Of course Nero wouldn't allow us to torture him. The boy, at least, volunteered the information that he knew every inch of this particular mattress and that this was the first time that he'd noticed the lump in its middle.

With Nero's permission the prophet was taken by Praetorians, hand-picked by Tigellinus, to the top of the eastern cliff of the Phaidriades, the one called Hyampeia, down which the Delphians threw the impious in ancient times. The idea was to frighten the truth out of him.

Meanwhile I went with Nero to the temple of Apollo. His reluctance to break down the door delayed us, but within the hour we were in the oracular chamber for the last time.

When she'd caught wind of trouble the Pythia had fled there, hoping that fear of sacrilege would prevent Nero from following. She was perched on her tripod, looking like an untidy, leathery bird with convulsions as she writhed and twitched away in her smelly smoke.

Nero approached her so closely that the smoke at times enmeshed his face with hers. When he finally spoke his voice was strong and clear, the voice of command. "You will not prophesy because all you can see is your own doom. That's the truth, isn't it?"