“I have another explanation,” he whispered in an almost trembling voice. “Perhaps Valeria Messalina really was a virgin when she was married at fifteen to that fifty-year-old depraved drunkard Claudius, whom even his own family despised. It was Claudius who debauched Messalina, giving her myrrh to drink so that she became a nymphomaniac. Now Claudius is finished and it’s not impossible that he deliberately closes his eyes. In any case he certainly demands of Messalina that she constantly sends new slave-girls to his bed, the younger the better. What he does to them is another matter. All this Messalina herself has in tears confessed to a person whom I do not wish to name but whom I believe absolutely.”
“We are friends, Lucius,” I said, “but you are of very noble birth and son of a senator, so you’re not competent to speak on the subject. I know that the Senate brought in the republic when Emperor Gaius was murdered. Then the Praetorians accidentally found his uncle, Claudius, hiding behind a curtain when they plundered Palatine and proclaimed him Emperor because he was the only one who held that right by birth. It’s such an old story that no one even laughs at it anymore. But I’m not surprised that Claudius relies more on his freedmen and his children’s mother than on the Senate.”
“Would you choose a mentally deranged tyrant before freedom?” asked Lucius bitterly.
“A republic under the Senate and the Consuls doesn’t mean democratic freedom, but is rule by aristocracy,” I said. “Plundering of the provinces and new civil wars, that much do I understand from the history I have read. Be content with reforming Rome from within with Greek culture and don’t talk nonsense.”
Lucius was forced to laugh.
“It’s strange that one has absorbed the ideals of republicanism with one’s mother’s milk,” he said. “It makes me hotheaded. But perhaps the republic is nothing but a relic of the past. I’m going back to my books. Then I can do no harm to anyone, not even to myself.”
“And Rome can remain full of carrion flies,” I conceded. “Neither you nor I can get rid of them.”
The most surprising honor which came my way as I lay tormented by my inactivity and my gloomy thoughts was a visit from the leader of the noble boys, the ten-year-old Lucius Domitius. He came with his mother, Agrippina, quite unpretentiously and without prior notice. They left their sedan and following outside the house and only came in for a brief moment to commiserate with me over my accident. Bar-bus, who during my illness was acting as doorkeeper to the household, was of course drunk and asleep. Domitius jokingly gave him a light punch on the forehead and shouted out an order, at which Barbus, dazed with sleep, sprang to attention, raised his hand in salute and barked, “Ave, Caesar imperator.”
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Agrippina asked him why he greeted the boy as an Emperor. Barbus said that he had dreamt that a centurion had hit him on the head with his stave. When he had opened his eyes he had seen in front of him, in the midday sun, a huge celestial Juno and an Emperor in glittering armor inspecting their troops. Not until they had spoken to him had his sight cleared and he had recognized Domitius and guessed that Agrippina was his mother by her goddesslike beauty and stature.
“And I wasn’t far wrong,” he said flatteringly. “You are sister to Emperor Gaius and Emperor Claudius is your uncle. On the god Julius Caesar’s side you are descended from Venus and on Marcus Antonius’ side from Hercules. So it’s not all that strange that I greeted your son with the highest possible token of honor.”
Aunt Laelia was completely confused by such a grand visitation and ran around with her wig askew, straightening out my bedclothes and chat-tering reproachfully that Agrippina should have informed us beforehand of her arrival so that the household could have been prepared.
“You know very well, dear Laelia,” said Agrippina sadly, “that it’s safest for me to avoid official visits since the death of my sister. But my son had to come and see his hero Minutus Lausus. So we looked in to wish him a quick recovery.”
This lively, attractive and, despite his red hair, handsome boy hurried shyly up to give me a kiss and then drew back in admiration as he looked at my face.
“Oh, Minutus,” he cried. “You have indeed earned the name Magnus more than any other. If only you knew how I admired your amazing courage. None of the spectators had the slightest idea that you’d broken your leg when you remained in the saddle right to the end.”
Domitius took a scroll from his mother and handed it to me. Agrippina turned to Aunt Laelia apologetically.
“It’s a book on balance of mind,” she explained, “which my friend Seneca has written in Corsica. It’s a good book for a youngster who is suffering from the consequences of his own foolhardiness. If he at the same time should wonder why such a noble-minded man must spend his life buried alive in exile, then it is because of the present situation in Rome and not because of me.”
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