“Seneca has betrayed my confidence,” she cried. “The cursed slippery-tongued hypocrite! I was the one who brought him back from exile. I was the one to appoint him as Nero’s tutor. He has no one but me to thank for his success. You know there is trouble in Armenia now. When Nero was to receive an envoy from there, I went into the room to sit in my rightful place by his side. Seneca sent Nero to me to lead me out again, with a filial piety, of course. But it was a public insult. Women should not interfere in State affairs, but there is one woman who made Nero into an Emperor.”
I could only imagine what the Armenian envoy would have thought if he had seen a woman appearing in public at the Emperor’s side, and I thought Nero had shown better judgment in this matter than Agrippina. But of course I could not say so. I looked at her in terror, in the way one gazes at a wounded lioness, and I realized that I had arrived just in time to witness a decisive stage in the power struggle over who should rule Rome, Agrippina or Nero’s advisers. This I could not even have imagined, for I knew how completely Nero had been dependent on his mother before.
In my confusion I tried to tell her of my own adventures, but Agrip-pina had not the patience to listen. Not until I mentioned Silanus’ heart attack did she pay any attention.
“It was the best thing that could have happened,” she said. “Otherwise one day we’d have been forced to prosecute him for treason. That family have shown themselves to be snakes in the grass.”
Just then a servant hurried in and reported that Nero had begun his meal, late as usual. Agrippina gave me a push.
“Run, stupid,” she said. “Go to him now. Don’t let anyone stop you.”
I was so much under her influence that I did in fact half run and told the servants who tried to stop me that I had been invited to the Emperor’s evening meal. Nero was entertaining in the smaller dining hall, which held only about fifty guests. It was already so full that there were not enough couches, even though there were three people to each one, and several guests had to be content with stools. Nero was animated and carelessly dressed, but his pleasant youthful face radiated happiness. At first he stared at me, but then he embraced and kissed me, ordering a chair for me to be placed beside his own place of honor.
“The muses have been kindly disposed toward me,” he cried, and then he leaned forward and whispered in my ear: “Minutus, Minutus, have you ever experienced what it is to love with the whole of one’s soul? Love and be loved. What more can a human being wish for?”
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He ate greedily and swiftly as he gave instructions to Terpnus, who was dressed in his full-length musician’s cloak, and who I did not even know was the most famous cittern player of our time until I was told about him. I was still so ignorant then. During the meal, Terpnus composed an accompaniment to the love poems Nero had written during the afternoon and then sang them to the guests as they sat in breathless silence.
I lis voice was well trained and so powerful that it seemed to penetrate right through one, and after his song, sung to the cittern, we all applauded vigorously. I do not know how artistic Nero’s poems were, or to what extent they were derivative of other poets’ works, but with Terpnus’ performance they made a deep impression, and I am not particularly musical either. With feigned shyness, Nero thanked everyone for the applause, took the instrument from Terpnus and plucked at it longingly, but did not dare try singing, although many asked him to.
“One day I shall sing,” Nero said simply, “when Terpnus has had time to train and strengthen my voice with the necessary exercises. I know my voice has certain possibilities, and if I ever do sing, I want to compete with only the best voices. That’s my sole ambition.”
He asked Terpnus to sing again and again, never tiring of listening, and glaring at those who had had enough of the music and were beginning to talk quietly together over their goblets.
I myself finally found it difficult to suppress my yawns. I looked at my fellow guests and could see that Nero did not choose his friends with any exaggerated reference to their descent or rank, but followed his own personal tastes.
The noblest of the guests was Marcus Otho, who, like my father, was descended from the Etruscan kings and to whose father the Senate had erected a statue in Palatine. But he had such a reputation for recklessness and extravagance that I remembered hearing that his father had often beaten him long after he had received the mantoga. Claudius Senecio was also among the guests although his father had been nothing but one of Emperor Gaius’ freedmen. Both were handsome young men who could behave well when they felt like it. Another of the guests was Seneca’s wealthy relative, Annaeus Serenus, to whom Nero whispered in the moments when Terpnus was silent, soothing his voice with an egg drink.
When Nero was listening to the music, he fell into a reverie, like a marble Endymion with his handsome features and his reddish hair. Finally he sent away most of his guests, retaining only about ten, and I also stayed as he did not ask me to leave. In his youthful love of life, he had not yet had enough and suggested we dress up and go out a back way into the city to enjoy ourselves.
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