proud, I would beg an audience with the bitch for Minutus’ sake. But I’m very much afraid she would not receive me. She knows only too well that I was the best friend of Emperor Gaius’ mother in her youth. In fact I was one of the few Roman women who helped Agrippina and young Julia give the remains of their poor brother a reasonably respectable burial after the girls had returned from their exile. Poor Gaius was murdered in such a brutal way, and then the Jews financed Claudius so that he could be Emperor. Agrippina managed to find a rich husband but Julia was banished from Rome again because Messalina thought she hung around her Uncle Claudius too much. Many men have been banished because of those two lively girls. I remember a certain Tigellinus, who may have been uneducated but who had the finest figure of all the young men in Rome. He didn’t mind about his exile much, but started a fishery business and is now supposed to be breeding racehorses. Then there was a Spanish philosopher, Seneca, who had published many books and had a certain relationship with Julia although he had tuberculosis. He has been pining away in exile in Corsica for several years. Messalina considered it unsuitable that a niece of Claudius’ should be unchaste, even if it was a secret. Anyhow, only Agrippina is alive now.”
When she stopped to draw breath, my father took the opportunity to say tactfully that it would be best if for the moment Aunt Laelia did not attempt to do anything to help me. My father wanted to see to the matter himself without interference from women. He had had enough of female interference, he said in bitter tones, so that it had choked him ever since the days of his youth.
Aunt Laelia was about to reply, but gave me a look and decided to keep quiet. At last we could start eating the olives, the cheese and the vegetable soup. My father saw to it that we did not finish the food but left some of it, even of the small lump of cheese, for otherwise obviously neither of the household’s aged slaves would get anything to eat. I did not realize this myself, for at home in Antioch I had always received the best bits and there was always more than enough left over for the rest of the household and the poor who always gathered around my father.
The following day, my father appointed an architect to arrange for the repairs to the family property and a couple of gardeners to put the unkempt garden to rights. A hundred-year-old sycamore tree grew there, planted by a Manilius who had later been murdered in the open street by Marius’ men. A couple of ancient trees also grew near the house and my father was careful to see that they had not suffered any damage. The little sunken house he also left as outwardly unchanged as possible.
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“You’ll be seeing a great deal of marble and other luxuries in Rome,” he explained to me, “but when you grow up you will realize that what I am doing now is the greatest luxury of all. Not even the richest upstart can acquire such ancient trees around his house, and the building’s old-fashioned appearance is worth more than all the columns and decorations.”
Fie turned back to his past in his thoughts and his face clouded.
“Once in Damascus,” he went on, “I was going to build myself a simple house and plant trees all around it, to live a peaceful life there with your mother, Myrina. But after her death, I sank into such complete despair that nothing meant anything to me for many years. Perhaps I would have killed myself if my duty to you had not forced me to continue living. And once a fisherman on the shores of Galilee promised me something which still makes me curious, although I remember it only as a dream.”
My father would not tell me more about this promise, but just repeated that he would have to be content with these ancient trees, for he himself had not been granted the joy of planting any and watching their growth.
While the building workers and the architect were about the house and my father was in the city from morning to night arranging his affairs, Barbus and I walked insatiably around Rome, looking at the people and the sights. Emperor Claudius was having all the old temples and memorials repaired for the centenary festivities and the priests and wise men were collecting all the myths and tales which belonged to them and adapting them to the demands of the present. The Imperial buildings on Palatine, the temple on the Capitoline, and the baths and theaters in Rome did not captivate me in themselves, for I had grown up in Antioch where there were just as magnificent and even larger public buildings. In fact Rome, with its crooked alleys and steep hillsides, was a cramped city to one who was used to the straight streets of spacious Antioch.
There was one building, however, which entranced me with its vastness and its associations. That was the enormous mausoleum of the god Augustus. It was circular in shape, for the most sacred temples in Rome were circular in memory of the days when Rome’s first inhabitants lived in round huts. The simple grandeur of the mausoleum seemed to me worthy of a god and the greatest ruler of all time. I never tired of reading the memorial inscription which listed Augustus’ greatest feats. Barbus was not so enthusiastic about it. He said that during his time as a legionary he had
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