PART ONE
MINUTUS
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Claudius (25).
Because the Jews at Rome caused disturbances at the instigation of Christus [Claudius] banished them.
Aurelius Victor, De Caesoribv-s (5).
Although he held power for the same number of years as his stepfather, and for much of that time as a very young man, yet for the first fiveyears he was so great, particularly in his development of the city, that Trajan used often to assert, and rightly, that none of the emperors came anywhere near matching those five years of Nero.
BOOK I
Antioch
I was seven years old when the veteran Barbus saved my life. I remember well how I tricked my old nurse Sophronia into letting me go down to the banks of the river Orontes. The rapid swirling current attracted me and I leaned over the jetty to look at the bubbling water. Then Barbus approached me and asked in a friendly way: “Do you want to learn to swim, boy?”
I replied that I did. He looked around, and grasping me by the back of my neck and the crotch, he flung me far out into the river. Then he let out a wild cry, calling on Hercules and the Roman Jupiter the Conqueror, and flinging his ragged cloak down on the jetty, he plunged into the water after me.
People flocked to his cry. They all saw and unanimously testified to how Barbus, at the risk of his own life, saved me from drowning, carried me ashore, and rolled me on the ground to make me spew up the water I had swallowed. When Sophronia arrived, crying and tearing her hair, Barbus lifted me in his strong arms and carried me all the way home, although I struggled to get away from his filthy clothes and the smell of wine on his breath.
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