Book VII
Agrippina
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.”
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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.”
I told her my interests lay more in a bookish direction.
“What’s a reputation earned in a lecture room worth,” she said scornfully, “where fifty or a hundred people clap their hands in gratitude when you at last stop reading? You’re an unenterprising idler. You’ve no ambition at all.”
Sabina was so angry that I did not dare annoy her even more, although the reputation to be gained from stinking wild animals did not appeal to me. We went at once to the menagerie, and during our brief tour, I could see that matters were even worse than the City Prefect had described.
The animals were starving after their long journeys and they had no suitable food. A valuable tiger lay dying, and no one had any real idea what the rhinos, which had been brought from Africa at great expense, normally ate, for they had trampled their experienced keeper to death. The drinking water was foul, and the elephants would not eat. The cages were much too cramped and dirty. The giraffes were practically dying of fright because they had been placed next to the lions’ cages.
The bellowing and roaring from the harassed animals made my head spin and the stench was overpowering. None of the foremen and slaves in the menagerie wished to be responsible for anything. “Not my job,” was the usual reply when I attempted to ask anyone anything. They even protested that hungry and frightened animals fought better in the arena, as long as one could keep them more or less alive until the day of the performance.
Sabina was most interested in two enormous hairy apes, larger than men, which had been brought to Rome from some unknown part of Africa. They took no notice of the meat offered to them and would not even drink.
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