“Agrippina,” I said finally, in despair. “None other than Agrippina was responsible for your fate. In the foolishness of my youth, I tried to put in a word for you with her. She deceived me.”
“I’m not complaining,” said Claudia sharply. “Everything that happened to me was according to the will of God, to humble my proud body. Do you think I’d still be alive if Christ had not strengthened my heart?”
If the Christians’ superstition had helped her withstand the insults of slavery, I could say nothing. So I cautiously began to tell her about myself. To regain her confidence, I told her of my meeting with Paul and Cephas in Corinth and how my freedman Lausius Hierex had become an influential Christian. Claudia listened with her head resting on her hand, her dark eyes clearing as she became more animated.
“Here in Puteoli,” she said, “we have several brothers among the seamen who have become converted after hearing how Jesus of Nazareth walked on the water. Otherwise I should never have got out of the closed house in Misenum.”
“A seaman’s life is full of danger,” I said. “Puteoli and Naples are said to be the dumping grounds for the East in many respects. So it’s not surprising that the new faith has spread here with the Jews.”
Claudia looked searchingly at me.
“And you, Minutus,” she said. “Do you believe in anything?” I thought carefully and then shook my head.
“No, Claudia,” I said. “I no longer believe in anything. I am hardened.”
“In that case,” said Claudia decisively, pressing her hard palms together, “I must help you on to the right way. I’m sure it is meant that you have been led to find me and buy my freedom from slavery. After Misenum, slavery was the greatest gift God could send me.”
“I was not led by anyone,” I said irritably. “I began to look for you of my own free will as soon as I heard from Agrippina’s own mouth how she had deceived me.”
Claudia gave me a pitying look.
“Minutus,” she said, “you have no will of your own and you have never had one or everything would be different. I don’t want to leave the Christian assembly in Puteoli, but I realize I must go with you to Rome and persuade you day and night until you humble yourself and become a subject of the secret kingdom of Christ. And don’t look so dismayed. In him lies the only true peace and joy in this soon-to-vanish world.”
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I thought Claudia’s hard life had disturbed her mind and did not dare argue with her. We traveled home together to Antium on a merchant ship loaded with wild animals, and from there went on to Ostia. Then I took her secredy to my house on Aventine, where she was given a servant’s position and Aunt Laelia took a liking to her. Aunt Laelia had returned to her childhood in her mind and was happiest when playing with dolls.
But not a single day went by without Claudia nagging at me about Jesus, of Nazareth. I fled from my house to the menagerie, but there Sabina made my life intolerable with her malice. She had become increasingly confident after a relative of hers had become one of the leading men in the State treasury and she was no longer so dependent on my money as before. In practice, it was she who supervised the menagerie, ordered everything and arranged the performances in the amphitheater. She even appeared publicly to demonstrate her skill as a lion-tamer.
I think that Nero’s life began to become almost as intolerable as mine at this time. When he had banished his mother to Antium and openly taken Lollia Poppaea as his lover to Palatine, he had leaped from the frying pan into the fire. People did not like his brusque treatment of Octavia. Poppaea nagged and wept, demanding that he should legally separate from Octavia and frightening him with Agrippina’s secret intrigues, possibly with some justification. In any case, Nero was forced to banish Antonia’s husband, Faustus Sulla, to Massilia. Antonia naturally went with her husband and five years elapsed before I saw her again.
Seneca was definitely opposed to an Imperial divorce, and old Burrus said publicly that if Nero separated from Octavia, then he must also relinquish his. marriage portion or the Emperorship. And Lollia Poppaea had no particular desire to move to Rhodes and live there as the wife of a free artist.
Agrippina perhaps caused her own fate by her lust for power and her jealousy. Behind her she had a fortune she had inherited from her second husband and from Claudius, and in spite of Pallas’ banishment, her influence was still very great. Admittedly, she had no real friends left. But more than a political conspiracy, Nero feared that she would publish the memoirs she was writing herself in Antium, since she did not dare dictate them to even the most trustworthy slave. The knowledge of these memoirs she rashly allowed to spread all over Rome, so that many people who were in one way or another involved in her crimes sincerely wished her dead.
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