Rome's Sacred Flame

PROLOGUE

ROME, NOVEMBER AD 63

THE CHILD DID live no more than a hundred days; now she was being immortalised in the heavens. Born in January to great rejoicing throughout the Empire, Claudia Augusta, the daughter of the Emperor Nero and his Empress, Poppaea Sabina, had succumbed to a childhood ailment soon aft er the spring equinox. Divine honours for the late infant had been voted by the Senate to help ease the pain of the mourning father who was as immoderate in his grief at his daughter's death as he had been in his joy at her birth. And it was with tears streaming down his pale-fleshed cheeks and catching in the golden beard growing beneath his chin that Nero, resplendent in a gold-edged purple toga, took a taper and plunged it into the flame brought from the Temple of Vesta by her six priestesses.

With folds of their togas draped over their heads, in deference to the latest deity to join Rome's Pantheon, the assembled senior senators - all former praetors or consuls - watched, with an air of suitable solemnity, as the Emperor touched the burning taper to the kindling piled upon the altar. The fire caught; wisps of smoke spiralled to the roof of the new temple, next to that of Apollo, on the Palatine Hill. Constructed by slaves working day and night in the seven months since the child's death, and with no expense spared, Nero had personally overseen every lavish detail of the building, devoting most of his time to the project whilst completely neglecting the business of Rome.

In the front row of the congregation Titus Flavius Sabinus struggled to suppress a fast-rising urge to laugh at the ludicrousness of the ceremony unfolding before him. He had witnessed deifications before and had always found it rather unsettling to think that with a form of words and a fire kindled from Rome's Sacred Flame, housed in the Temple of Vesta, a dead human being could be resurrected as a god. That was not how gods were made, Sabinus knew: they were born of rock in a cave, as was his Lord Mithras. The idea that a babe who had done little more than suck on its wet-nurse's teats could be a divine inspiration and required worship was beyond belief and, as the sacrificial ram, bedecked in ribbons, was led forward to the altar to the sonorous imprecations of the two priests of the new cult, Sabinus almost lost the battle with his mirth. 'The next thing, I suppose, is we'll have a public holiday in the Divine Claudia Augusta's honour,' he whispered under the prayers to his neighbours, Lucius Caesennius Paetus, his son-in-law, and his uncle, Gaius Vespasius Pollo, a magnificently portly man in his seventies with many chins and bellies.

'Hmm? What, dear boy?' Gaius said, his expression a mask of religious awe.

Sabinus repeated his assertion.

'In which case I'll be seated in the most prominent position at the games, having made a more than generous sacrifice to the divine babe, so that the Emperor can witness my piety. Perhaps he'll be less inclined to invite me to open my veins, having, firstly, made a will in his favour, the next time he has urgent need of funds; and, judging by the quality of the marble and the amount of gold in this temple, that time will come very soon.' He flicked a carefully tonged dyed-black ringlet of hair away from a kohled, porcine eye and, with exaggerated reverence, watched one priest stun the ram with a mallet an instant before the second slit its throat in a spray of blood that cascaded down into a bronze basin. Disoriented from the blow, the juddering beast slowly gave its life for the sake of an infant goddess who would have had no concept of what sort of creature it was.

More prayers were intoned as two acolytes rolled the carcass over; with slow precision, the knife was drawn up the belly, skin and ribs pulled back and heart and liver exposed. The Emperor looked on, kneeling, his arms outstretched, tears welling, a picture of grief in the classic mode as depicted by many a famous actor.

Between them, the priests removed both heart and liver; the former was set sizzling on the growing flames whilst the latter was placed on the altar next to the fire. All watching held their collective breath. Proceeding slowly, so as to build the tension, the priests wiped the blood from their hands and forearms before patting the liver dry and then returning the cloths to the acolytes.

Now was the moment all had been waiting for; now the time had come to examine the liver. Nero shuddered, his body wracked with sobs as he looked to the sky, grey and brooding, through a window high in the back wall of the temple; he lifted his right arm and slowly clenched his fingers as if trying to grab a hidden thing from out of the air.

Veneration grew on the countenances of the two priests as they turned the liver over, examining it minutely.

Nero began to whimper with tension.

Having scrutinised both sides twice, the priests looked to one another, nodded and then turned to the Emperor.

'Divine Claudia Augusta has been accepted by the gods above and now sits in their midst,' the elder of the two announced, his voice weighted with reverence.

With a gasp, Nero fainted - his arms carefully ensuring that he did no damage to his face as it hit the marble floor. The assembled senators broke into cheers of rapture and called on the new goddess to hold her hands over them.

'We should be very grateful to the gods for accepting their latest little colleague,' Gaius observed without a trace of irony whilst wholeheartedly joining in with the applause. 'Perhaps now Nero will have his mind free to concentrate on the business of government.'

Sabinus slipped the fold of his toga from his head as the religious part of the ceremony was now concluded. 'I hope so. He hasn't heard one appeal or taken a petition since construction of this temple began; I've at least a hundred convicted or accused citizens from all over the Empire, awaiting their chance to appeal to the Emperor, scattered around the city. It shouldn't be the business of the prefect of Rome to be acting as a gaoler to common criminals, even if they are citizens.'

Paetus frowned as he too uncovered his head. 'Prisoners have always been the prefect's responsibility.'

'Yes, with the help of one of the praetors, but never so many at once; normally no more than two or three at any one time if the Emperor hears the appeals on a regular basis. I've had that odious little Paulus of Tarsus causing no end of trouble, writing his filth in letters to all sorts of people; my agents intercept and destroy most of them but some slip through. When I challenge him about it he says that until Caesar has passed his judgement upon him he has the right to write to anyone he likes even if it's seditious and attacking the very laws that he's hiding behind - our laws. But with Nero back I'll soon have the runt off my hands, and, well ...' Sabinus glanced with regret at his son-in-law. 'It also means you'll have to face him.'

'I was hoping he hadn't noticed that I was back from Armenia,' Paetus confided, scowling; his boyish face had been weather-beaten from campaigning in the East, making his pronounced front teeth seem even whiter.

More thoughts on the subject were cut off as Nero raised both arms, asking for silence that was soon apparent. The emotion of the occasion was too much for him and for a while he stood there breathing deeply and giving his best expressions of relief. 'My friends,' he said at last, gathering himself. 'What a thing we have witnessed here in this place: I, the son of a god and the great-grandson of a god, have now become the father of a goddess. I, your Emperor, have divine seed.' He turned to his freedman, Epaphroditus, and held out a hand. 'My cythia.' From behind the altar the freedman produced the seven-stringed lyre that the Emperor had been studying for five years now. 'In honour of the day and in praise of my divine daughter sprung from my loins I have composed a paean of thanksgiving.' He plucked a chord and attempted to sing a note of similar pitch without noticeable success; his voice, husky and weak, struggled to fill the chamber.

Sabinus grimaced and braced himself. Gaius looked around anxiously for a seat; there were none.

With two more chords that had no business being played in conjunction, Nero launched into a dirge of disharmony, erratic scanning and stretched rhyme.

On he went, verse after verse, as the senators stood, listening with the intense looks of those who consider themselves to be in the presence of genius and are unable to believe the good fortune that had brought them to that place.

But in this they were all experienced: for the past couple of years, Nero had been shamefully performing to small audiences of senators in private, as if he were a slave or a freedman rather than the Emperor of Rome. Since the death of his mother, Agrippina, murdered on his orders, and the sidelining of his tutor, Seneca, who had attempted to keep the young Princeps on a dignified and sober path, Nero had come to realise that there was nothing that he could not do. He had murdered his mother because she annoyed him, his brother because he was a threat to him and, most recently, his wife, Claudia Octavia, so that Poppaea Sabina could take her place - Poppaea's wedding...