“Your Greek ancestors are very noble, boy,” he said, looking at me benignly with his bloodshot eyes. “Our culture is of Greece but the art of building cities is of Rome. You are pure and handsome like one of my gold coins on which I have had a Latin text imprinted on one side and a Greek on the other. How can such a beautiful and upright boy be called Minutus? That is exaggerated modesty.”
My father hurriedly explained that he had postponed my day of manhood until my name could be placed in the rolls of knights in the temple of Castor and Pollux at the same time. It would be the greatest honor if Emperor Claudius would himself give me a suitable second name. “I have property in Caere,” he said. “My family goes back to the days when Syracuse destroyed the sea power of Caere. But those are things you know more about than I, Clarissimus.”
“I thought your face was known to me in some way,” cried Claudius in delight. ‘Tour face and eyes I recognize from the murals in the old Etruscan tombs I studied in my youth, although even then they were being destroyed by damp and neglect. If you are called Mezentius, then your son should be named Lausus. Do you know who Lausus was, boy?”
I told him Lausus was a son of King Mezentius who fought together with Turnus against Aeneas.
“That’s what it says in your history of the Etruscans,” I said inno-cently. “Otherwise I shouldn’t have known it.”
“Have you really read my little book, despite your youth?” asked Claudius, and then he began to hiccough with emotion. Narcissus patted him gently on the back and ordered the slaves to fetch him more wine. Claudius invited us also to take wine, but warned me in a fatherly way not to drink wine undiluted until I was as old as he was. Narcissus took the opportunity to ask Claudius for his signature to confirm my father’s knighthood. He signed willingly although I think he had forgotten what the matter was about.
“Is it really your will that my son shall bear the name of Lausus?” asked my father. “If so, it is the greatest honor I can think of that Emperor Claudius himself wishes to stand as godfather to him,”
Claudius drank his wine, his head trembling.
“Narcissus,” he said firmly. “Write that down too. You, Mezentius, just send a message to me when the boy is to have his hair cut and I’ll come as your guest if important matters of State do not hinder me at the time.”
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He rose decisively and nearly stumbled before the slaves had time to come forward and support him. With a loud belch, he remarked, “My many learned works of research have made me absentminded, and I remember old things better than new things. So it would be best to note down at once everything I have promised and forbidden. Now I had better take my siesta and must vomit properly. Otherwise I shall have stomachache from that tough goatmeat.”
When he had left the room, supported by his two slaves, Narcissus turned to my father.
“Let your boy receive the man-toga at the first suitable moment,” he advised, “and then let me know. It is possible that the Emperor will remember his promise to stand as godfather. At least I shall remind him about the name and his promise. Then he’ll pretend he has remembered, even if he has not.”
Aunt Laelia had to go to great trouble to find even a few nobles who could be considered related to the Manilianus family. One of the guests was an old former consul who kindly held my hand while I sacrificed the pig. But most of them were women, contemporaries of Aunt Laelia, who were largely tempted to the house in the hope of a free meal. They gabbled like a flock of geese when the barber cut my hair short and shaved the scanty down from my chin. It was an effort to keep calm while they dressed me in the toga and stroked my limbs and patted my cheeks. They could hardly contain their curiosity when, because of the promise I had made, I took the barber up to my room and had him also shave off all the body hairs which showed my manhood. These I put together with the down from my chin into a silver box, the lid of which was decorated with a moon and a lion. The barber chatted and joked while going about his business, but also told me that it was not at all unusual that noble youths receiving the man-toga offered the hair from their private parts to Venus to win her favor.
Emperor Claudius did not come to our family feast, but he had Narcissus send me the gold ring of knighthood and permission to have it written in the rolls that he personally had given me the name Lausus. Our guests went with my father and me to the temple of Castor and Pollux. My father paid the necessary dues into the archive, and then I had to put the gold ring on my thumb. My ceremonial toga with its narrow red border was ready. The ceremony was not particularly formal. From the archive we went to the meeting room of the Noble Order of Knights, where we paid for permission to choose our horses at the stables on Mars field.
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