Sabina was happy with the animal trainers, although, in spite of their much respected professional skill, they were mostly ignorant people who could talk of nothing else but their animals. Sabina was also good at supervising the unloading of the wild animals from the ships and was better than I was at haggling over the price. First and foremost, she maintained ruthless discipline among the employees in the menagerie.

I soon noticed that I had much less to do as long as I arranged for Sabina to have enough money for the menagerie, for the grant from the Imperial treasury did not go far toward maintenance and provisions. That was why I had been given to understand that the post of superintendent was an honorary office which presupposed one used one’s own means.

Thanks to my Gallic freedman, money poured in from his soap factory. One of my Egyptian freedmen manufactured expensive salves for women, and Hierex sent me handsome gifts from Corinth. But my freedmen liked to put their profits into new business enterprises. The soap maker expanded his business to all the big cities in the Empire and Hierex was speculating in sites in Corinth. My father remarked mildly that the menagerie was not a very profitable business.

To help mitigate the housing shortage, I had several seven-story blocks of dwellings built on a burned-out site which I had acquired cheaply thanks to my father-in-law. I also earned a little by equipping and sending out expeditions to Thessalia, Armenia and Africa, and selling the surplus animals to games in the provincial cities. Naturally we kept the best animals for ourselves.

My largest income came from the ships, in which I had the right to buy shares, which sailed to India from the Red Sea, officially to be able to transport rare animals from India. The goods were brought to Rome via Alexandria, and manufactured products from Gaul and wines from Campania were taken to India in exchange.

Through an agreement with the Arabian princes, Rome was allowed a base on the southern point of the Red Sea with the right to maintain a garrison there. This was already necessary because the demand for luxury goods rose as the prosperity of the nation increased, and the Parthians would not allow Rome’s caravans through their country without taking an intermediary share in the profits on the goods.

Alexandria gained from the new order, but large trading centers such as Antioch and Jerusalem suffered from the falling prices of Indian goods. So the great merchant princes in Syria, via their agents, “began to spread the idea in Rome that war with Parthia would sooner or later be inevitable, to open a direct overland trade route to India.

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When the situation in Armenia had calmed down, Rome had made connections with the Hyrcanians, who controlled the salty Caspian Sea north of Parthia. In this way, a trade route to China was established, circumventing the Parthians and bringing both silk and porcelain to Rome across the Black Sea. It must be said that my grasp of the whole situation was not particularly clear, and this was also true with other noblemen in Rome. It was said that it took two whole years to bring goods on camels from China to the Black Sea coast. Most reasonable people did not believe that any country could possibly be that far away and said that this was an invention of the caravan merchants to justify their extortionate prices.

In her more sullen moments, Sabina used to urge me to go to India myself to fetch tigers, or to China for the legendary dragons, or to travel up the Nile to darkest Nubia for rhinos. Bitter as I was, I sometimes felt like setting out on a long journey, but then my reason would return to me and I would realize that there were experienced men more suited to the task and the rigors of the journeys than I.

So every year on the anniversary of my mother’s death, I used to free one of the menagerie’s slaves and equip him for a journey. One of my travel-hungry Greek freedmen I sent to Hyrcania to try to get to China. He had the advantage of being able to write, and I had hoped that he would be able to give a useful account of his journey which I could then have made into a book. But I never heard from him again.

After my marriage and the death of Britannicus, I had to some extent begun to avoid Nero. When I think about it now, I see that my marriage to Sabina was in some ways an escape from the closed circle around Nero, which perhaps accounts for my sudden and foolish attraction to her.

When I again had more time to myself, I began to arrange modest receptions for Roman authors at my house. Annaeus Lucanus, the son of one of Seneca’s cousins, was pleased when I unrestrainedly praised his poetic talents. Petronius, who was a few years older than I, liked the little book I had written about the brigands in Cilicia for its deliberate use of the simple language of the people.

Petronius himself was a refined man and had as his ambition, after fulfilling his political duties, to develop life into a fine art. He was a trying friend to have inasmuch as he liked to sleep in the daytime and stay awake at night, on the grounds that the noise of the traffic in Rome at night prevented him from sleeping.

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