“The old tart!” he shouted. “Well, well, she lowered herself to go with you, did she? But you weren’t the only one. Believe it or not, she tried with me once when I happened to caress her a bit. I was drunk of course, but I remember her sharp nose and thin lips as she hung around my neck and tried to kiss me. After that she spread an absurd story that I had proposed to her. Piso’s necklace says enough of her depravity. She prob- ably slept with slaves too, if there was nothing better within reach. So you were good enough too.”
I could not help clenching my fists, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.
“Statilia Messalina is very pleased with Piso’s necklace,” said Nero. “She even has her nipples painted the same color as those blood rubies.”
Nero was so delighted with his own ingenuity that I felt the worst danger was over. He grew cheerful and relieved, but it was peculiar to his sense of humor that he wished to punish me for my secrets in some way that would make me look foolish all over the city. He thought for a moment.
“Naturally,” he then said, “I should like to meet your wife and see for myself that she is a Jewess. And I should also like to question the witnesses who were present when your son received his name. They are Jews too, I suppose. I’ll make inquiries at the Julius Caesar synagogue to see how faithful you have been there. Meanwhile you can do me the service of having yourself circumcised, just to simplify matters. Your wife will be pleased about that. I think it’s just and reasonable that you should be punished on the part of the body with which you have violated my half sister. Be thankful that I’m in a good mood and am letting you off lightly.” I was appalled and degraded myself by begging him not to insult me so terribly. But I myself had put my head into the noose. Nero was all the more delighted when he saw my horror, and put his hand consolingly on my shoulder.
“It’ll be a good thing to have someone who is circumcised in the Senate, looking after the interests of the Jews, for then they won’t have to have others going behind my back any longer. Go now and see that it is done. Then bring your wife here with the witnesses, and come yourself if you can walk. I want to see that you’ve obeyed my order myself.”
I had to go home and tell Claudia and the two witnesses, who were waiting in fear and trembling for my return, that we were to meet in the reception room of the Golden Palace in a short while. Then I went to the Praetorian camp to talk to a field surgeon who verbosely informed me that he could do the little operation without the slightest difficulty. During his service in Africa, he had performed it on many legionaries and centurions who had wearied of the eternal inflammations caused by sand. He still had the tube that was needed.
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For the sake of my reputation I did not wish to be treated by the Jews. In this I made a big mistake, for they would have been incomparably more skillful. I courageously endured the field surgeon’s dirty tube and blunt knife, but the wound healed badly and soon festered, so that for a long time I lost all desire even to look at a woman.
I have never really been myself again since then, although some women have seemed very inquisitive about my scarred organ. I am only human, but I think their pleasure was greater than mine. This has had the advantage of helping me to live a reasonably virtuous life.
I am not ashamed to talk about this, for everyone knows about Nero’s cruel joke at my expense and I have a nickname because of it, which I shall not mention for decency’s sake.
But your mother had no idea what to expect of Nero, however much I had tried to prepare her for her part. When I returned from the Praetorian camp, limping and deathly white, Claudia did not even ask what was wrong with me, but simply thought I feared Nero’s wrath. Both the Jewish Christians were also very frightened, of course, however much I tried to encourage them and remind them of the gifts I had promised them.
Nero needed only to take one look at Claudia.
“A Jewish hag,” he shouted at once. “I can see that from her eyebrows and her thick lips, not to mention her nose. She’s got gray hair too. The Jews go gray young because of some Egyptian curse, I’ve heard say. It’s amazing that she could have had a child at that age. But they breed, the Jews.”
Claudia trembled with rage, but remained silent for your sake. Then both the Jews swore on sacred oaths of the temple in Jerusalem that they knew Claudia’s origins and that she was a Jewess, born of Jewish parents but of an especially respected Jewish family whose ancestors had come to Rome as slaves in the time of Pompey. Antonia had honored my son’s naming with her presence and allowed him to be called Antonianus in memory of her grandmother.
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