Tigellinus’ hard face lit up and he raised his arm in greeting.
“Now you are a true ruler, Nero,” he said. “Trustworthy Praetorians are already on their way to Massilia. I have sent a whole maniple to Asia with the possibility of armed resistance in mind. I could not endure the thought of those who envy you using this opportunity to overthrow you and injure the fatherland.”
Instead of being angry at his high-handedness, Nero let out a sigh of relief and praised him as a true friend. Then he absentmindedly asked how long it took a courier to get to Pandataria.
Only a few days later, Poppaea Sabina asked me secretively, “Would you like to see the best wedding present I’ve had from Nero?”
She led me to her room, lifted a brown-flecked cloth from a willow basket and showed me Octavia’s bloodless head. Screwing up her delightful nose, she said, “Ugh, it’s beginning to smell and collect flies. My physician has ordered me to throw it away, but looking at this wedding present now and again convinces me more than anything else that I really am the Imperial consort.
“Just think,” she went on. “When the Praetorians came to put her in a hot bath so that her veins could be opened painlessly, like a little girl who has broken her doll, she cried, ‘I haven’t done anything.’ She was, after all, twenty years old. But she must have been backward in some way. Who knows with whom Messalina conceived her? Perhaps simply the deranged Claudius.”
Nero demantled that the Senate should decide on thank-offerings in the temples of the Capitoline for the averting of the danger to the State. Twelve days later, Faustus Sulla’s prematurely gray head arrived from Massilia and the Senate voluntarily decided to continue with the thank-of-ferings.
In the city a stubborn rumor spread that Plautius had started a rebellion in Asia. Civil war and a defeat in the East were considered so likely that the price of gold and silver began to rise and a number of people hurriedly sold both land and city apartments cheaply. I took the opportunity to make some very profitable deals.
When Plautius’ head eventually arrived from Asia after some delay caused by storms, public relief was so great that not only the Senate but also individual citizens made thank-offerings. Nero made the most of the situation and reinstated Rufus in his former office as Inspector for the grain trade and
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at the same time promoted him to Procurator for the State Grain Stores. Tigellinus weeded out the Praetorians and pensioned several off early to the veteran colony in Puteoli. For my part, I was at least five million sesterces richer after these events.
Seneca took part in the festive processions and thank-offerings, but many people noticed that his legs were unsteady and his hands trembled violently. He was already over sixty-five and had become considerably fatter, his face swollen and his cheekbones blue. Nero kept out of his way as much as possible and avoided being left alone with him so as not to have to listen to his reproaches.
But one day Seneca applied for an official audience. For safety’s sake, Nero gathered his friends around him, hoping that in spite of everything, Seneca would not accuse him in public. But Seneca made an elegant speech in his honor, praising him for his foresight and the determination with which he had preserved the fatherland from the dangers which had threatened it, dangers which Seneca’s own aging eyes had not been able to discern. After this meeting, Seneca ceased to receive anyone who wished to meet him, dismissed his guard of honor and moved out into the country to his beautiful estate on the road to Praeneste. He put forward his poor health as a reason and explained that he was occupied with a philosophical treatise into the pleasures of denial. It was said that he held to a strict diet and avoided people, so that he did not have much pleasure from his great wealth.
I was given the surprising honor of being appointed Praetor Extraordinary in the middle of a term of office. For this appointment I presumably had Poppaea’s friendship to thank, as well as Tigellinus’ opinion that I was a weak-willed man. Troubled by the atmosphere the political murders had created and the tension over Poppaea’s pregnancy, Nero felt the need to show himself as a good ruler by clearing up all the foreign lawsuits which had accumulated to an inexcusable extent at the Praetorium.
I think that Nero’s self-confidence was strengthened by an unexpected omen. During a sudden thunderstorm, a flash of lightning knocked a gold goblet out of his hand. I do not think the lightning in fact struck the actual goblet, but probably struck so near him that the goblet fell out of his hand. The event was hushed up, but it was soon generally known in the city and was interpreted, of course, as an ill omen.
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