I could not understand the reason for this. She showed no interest in me whatsoever; on the contrary, she was cool and hard, withdrawn into herself, silent but conscious of her position as daughter of the City Prefect. During the meal I was more and more tormented with the feeling that it was all a dream, and though we drank nothing but water, I felt slightly intoxicated.
“Why aren’t you eating anything yourself?” I asked finally.
“I have prepared the food,” she said mockingly. “I’m not your cupbearer. And I’ve no cause to share my bread and salt with you, Minutus Manilianus. I know you.”
“How can you know me when I don’t know you?” I protested.
Flavia Sabina stretched out her slim forefinger without ceremony and felt my left eye.
“Oh well, then I didn’t do your eye any harm after all,” she said. “Had I been more experienced, I’d have put my thumb in it. I hope you got a black eye from my fist, anyhow.”
“Did you fight as children then?” asked Titus, who had been listening in amazement.
“No, I lived in Antioch when I was a child,” I answered absently.
Hut suddenly a memory glimmered which made me burn with shame. Sabina looked straight at me, enjoying my confusion.
“Aha, so you remember then,” she cried. “You were drunk and quite mad, together with a crowd of slaves and rogues. It was in the middle of the night and you were fooling about in the streets. We found out who you were and Father didn’t want to bring you to court for reasons you yourself. know only too well.”
I remembered only too well. Some time in the autumn, on one of Nero’s night escapades, I had tried to catch a girl coming toward me, but had received such a blow in my eye from her little fist that I had fallen over backwards. My eye had been black-and-blue for a week. Her companion had attacked us and Otho had received burns in the face from a lighted torch. I was so drunk at the time that I had not been able to remember much afterwards.
“I didn’t hurt you,” I said, trying to excuse myself. “I only clung to you when we collided in the dark. If I’d known who you were, naturally I’d have at once hurried to apologize to you the next day.”
“You’re lying,” she said. “And don’t try clinging to me again. It might be worse for you next time.”
“I’d* never dare,” I said, trying to make light of it all. “From now on I’ll take to my heels whenever I see you. You treated me roughly.”
Yet I did not take to my heels, but in fact accompanied Sabina back to the Prefect’s house. Her greenish eyes were full of laughter and her bare arm was as smooth as marble. A week later, my father and his following of two hundred clients and slaves were taken to Flavius Sabinus’ house to present my proposal.
Tullia and Aunt Laelia had other ideas in mind, but this betrothal was by no means a bad one. The Flavius family was poor, but my father’s fortune balanced this.
At Sabina’s request, we were married according to the longer form, although I had no intention of entering a College of any kind. But Sabina said she wanted to be married for life and did not want a divorce, and naturally I did as she wished. We had not been married all that long before I noticed that I let her have her own way in many more ways than that.
But our wedding feast was a fine one. At my father’s expense and in the name of the City Prefect, all the people were invited to a free meal, not only the Senate and the knights. Nero came to the feast himself and appeared in the wedding procession as well as singing an indecent wedding hymn he himself had composed to the music of a flute.
Finally he politely turned his torch upside down and left without fuss.
I took the scarlet veil from Sabina’s head and lifted the yellow mantle from her shoulders. But when I wanted to untie the two hard knots in her linen girdle, she sat down, her green eyes flashing, and cried, “I am a Sabine woman. Take me as the Sabine women were taken.”
But I did not even have a horse, nor was I good at the kind of plundering she wished for. I did not even understand what she wanted, for in my love for Claudia, I had become used to tenderness and mutual concessions.
Sabina was disappointed, but she closed her eyes and clenched her fists and let me do what I wanted and what the red veil obliged me to do. Finally she flung her strong arms around my neck, gave me a swift kiss and turned her back on me to go to sleep. I persuaded myself that we were both as happy as two wedding-tired people can be and fell asleep with a sigh of contentment.
Not until much later did I discover what Sabina had hoped for in physical love. The scars on my face had made her think I was quite different from what I am. Our first meeting in the street at night had made her dream that I could do to her what she wanted, but in that she was mistaken.
I bear her no grudge. She became even more disappointed in me than I in her. How and why she became what she did, I cannot explain. Venus is a capricious and often cruel goddess. Juno is more trustworthy from a family point of view, but in other matters of marriage, dull in the long run.
Book VII
As we spent the hottest part of the summer on the coast at Caere, my wife Flavia Sabina found an outlet for her need for activity in building us a new modern summer dwelling, instead of the old rush-roofed fisherman’s hut. At the same time she observed me and my weaknesses, without my knowledge, and without mention of my future plans, for she noticed that the mere mention of office depressed me. After our return to the city, she consulted her father, with the result that the City Prefect, Flavius Sabinus, sent for me.
“The wooden amphitheater is just being completed and Nero himself is to be present at the opening ceremony,” he told me. “I am having trouble with the valuable wild animals which keep arriving from all corners of the world. The old menagerie in the via Flaminia is much too small, and Nero is making special demands. He wants trained animals which can perform acts which have never before been seen, and senators and knights are to give demonstrations of their hunting skills in the arena. So the animals which care to be hunted mustn’t be too wild. On the other hand, the animals which are to fight each other must be exciting enough to watch. What we need is a reliable superintendent who will be responsible for the animals and who will also arrange all that part of the program. Nero is willing to nominate you for the post, as you have some experience with wild animals, and it is a worthy office in the service of the State.”
I suppose I had only myself to blame for this, as I had happened to boast that as a boy I had once captured a lion alive, and among the brigands in Cilicia I had once saved the lives of my companions when a brigand chieftain amused himself by chasing us into a bear’s cave. But to care for hundreds of wild animals and arrange performances in the amphitheater was such a responsibility that I did not consider I had the right qualifications to fill the post.
When I said this to my father-in-law, he replied caustically, “You’ll receive whatever money you need from the Imperial treasury. The most experienced animal trainers from every country will be competing to enter the service of Rome. Nothing more is asked of you than good judgment and good taste in choosing the programs. Sabina will help you. She has been running around the menagerie since she was a child and loves taming animals.”
This was news to me. Cursing my fate, I returned home and complained bitterly to Sabina.
“I’’d rather take the post of Quaestor to please you than be an animal trainer,” I said.
Sabina looked at me, as if summing me up, then put her head on one side.
“No, you’d never be a consul, you poor thing,” she said. “So why shouldn’t you have an exciting and interesting life as superintendent of the menagerie? There’s never been anyone in that post with the rank of knight before.”