“Who but Seneca would bring such material to the stage?” said Petronius. It was impossible to tell whether his tone was respectful or sardonic. “Has the emperor read it yet?”
“The emperor is always my first reader, and invariably the most astute. I’m happy to say that Caesar seemed quite fascinated by the tragedy of Pasiphae. Ah, here he is now!”
They rose to their feet as Nero entered the box with Poppaea beside him. People in the crowd saw him enter, and a thrill ran up and down the stands. But the response was mixed. Just as earlier Titus had heard shouts of “Hail Caesar!” in the streets, so many in the crowd now shouted accolades, but there was a low grumbling as well, and scattered hisses.
Nero escorted Poppaea to her seat, then stepped forward and raised his hands. With his fair hair and purple-and-gold robes, he was visible and instantly recognizable to everyone in the circus. The crowd fell silent. For a moment, it appeared that Nero might address the crowd. Indeed, Nero had wanted to deliver the opening speech, but Seneca had persuaded him not to do so: there were simply too many problems that might arise when an emperor directly addressed such a large and unpredictable gathering.
Instead, Nero gestured to a public crier, who stepped forward. With his powerful, trained voice, the man was able to make himself heard from end to end of the circus. While he spoke, Titus could see that Nero moved his lips along with the crier, like a proud author in the theatre mouthing lines spoken by an actor.
“Senators and people of Roma, you are here today at Caesar’s invitation. Welcome! But if you have come expecting a mere entertainment, you may be surprised at what you are about to witness. Today you will not see charioteers race. You will not see gladiators fight to the death. You will not see wild animals hunted. You will not see captives of war made to reenact a famous battle for your amusement. You will not see actors perform a comedy or a drama. What you will see is an act of justice, carried out under the open sky so that all the gods and the people of Roma may witness the proceedings.
“The criminals you will see punished today are guilty of arson and murder. They have conspired against the Roman state. They have plotted the destruction of the Roman people. Even those not directly guilty of setting fires must be punished. Their notorious hatred of the gods, of mankind, and of life itself makes them a menace to us all.
“Because of the fire, many of you are still without proper homes. Because of the fire, many of you lost your most cherished possessions. Because of the fire, many of you lost loved ones, whose cries of anguish still ring in your ears. Our city – the most beloved by the gods of all cities on earth – has been devastated. The gods themselves weep at the destruction of Roma and the suffering of the Roman people.
“Thanks to the vigilance of your emperor, the arsonists who perpetrated this misery have been apprehended. They call themselves Christians. The name comes from Christus, the founder of their sect, a criminal who suffered the extreme penalty at the hands of Pontius Pilatus, one of our procurators in Judaea during the reign of Tiberius. Thanks to Pilatus, the insidious superstition propagated by this Christus was checked – but only for a short while, because it quickly broke out again, not only in Judaea, the first source of this evil, but in many places across the empire, even here in Roma. Lurking among us, the followers of Christus have plotted our destruction.
“Thanks to Caesar’s vigilance, the Christians were apprehended. Under interrogation, they revealed their accomplices and confessed their crime. More than confessed it, they proclaimed it, without remorse. The Christians are proud of what they did. They are gratified by your suffering!”
The crowd erupted in boos and jeers.
Initially, Titus had been dubious when the mass arrest of Christians began; they struck him as an ineffectual group of lay-abouts. But when he remembered the jubilant reactions of the Christians watching the flames, it was not hard to imagine that some of them had deliberately started the fire. Such a crime was almost unthinkable, but the fanaticism of all the Jewish sects was well known, and the unyielding atheism of the Christians and their loathing of all things Roman was particularly virulent. That their abhorrence of the gods had led them to such a monstrous crime was shocking, but perhaps not surprising.
The jeering of the crowd continued until Nero himself gestured for silence. The crier continued.
“But what punishment, you may ask, could possibly fit so terrible a crime? For offenses so hideous, so foul, so wicked, what retribution can possibly be adequate? That is what we are here to see.
“Senators and people of Roma, this is a holy day. We call on the gods to pay witness to what happens in this place. What we do, we do in honour of the gods, and in gratitude for the favour they have shown us.”
The crier stepped back. Lucan stepped forward. From the folds of his trabea he produced a beautiful ivory lituus. While the young poet took the auspices, Titus felt a twinge of envy, wishing he had been chosen for the honour. But as high as Titus had risen in the emperor’s favour, he knew he could not compete with Lucan, with whom Nero felt a special intimacy because they were so close in age and shared such a deep love of poetry.
The auspices were favourable. The emperor pulled a white mantle over his head to assume his role as Pontifex Maximus, stepped forward, and raised his hand. Every head in the circus was bowed as Nero uttered the invocation to Jupiter, Best and Greatest of the Gods.
The spectacle commenced.
At gladiator games and other public events, the punishment of criminals was often part of the programme, but usually only a very small part, worked into the proceedings by making the condemned fight against gladiators or act as bait for wild animals. On this occasion, the punishment of criminals, because there were so many of them, and because their crime was so great, would make up the entire programme. The stagers, with Nero guiding them, had faced great challenges both logistical and artistic. How could so many criminals of all ages be made to suffer and die in ways that were not only sure and efficient but also meaningful and satisfying to those who were watching?
From a cell beneath the newly erected stands a large number of men, women, and children were driven to the racetrack. They were dressed in rags. Most looked confused and frightened, but some had the same serene, glassy-eyed stare as Titus had seen on the faces of the Christians watching the fire. They seemed oblivious of what was about to happen, or perhaps they even looked forward to it.
“So many!” muttered Chrysanthe, leaning forward.
“Oh, this is only a small portion of the arsonists,” said Nero. “There are many more to come. The punishments will go on for quite some time.”
“How could we have had so many of them among us?” wondered Lucan. “What drew these terrible people to Roma in the first place, and how did they seduce decent Romans to join their ranks?”
“All things hideous and shameful from every part of the world eventually find their way to Roma, and inevitably attract a following,” said Petronius. “As a flame attracts insects, as a whirlpool attracts flotsam, so Roma attracts the vermin and filth of the world.”
“Yet, a flame is beautiful,” said Nero, “once the charred insects are brushed aside. And a whirlpool is beautiful, once the flotsam is flushed away. Just so, Roma will be beautiful again, once it has been purified of these vile criminals.” He gazed raptly at the arena below.
Next to him, Poppaea also sat forward in eager anticipation. While it might be true that she had played hostess to Jewish scholars and wise men, she detested the Christians, as Jewish heretics if nothing else.