Nero

32

It came as no surprise to anyone when, a short time later, Tigellinus's co-Commander of Praetorians was relieved of his post. The excuse, that he'd been friendly with Agrippina, was farcical: Lucius's mother had been dead long before the appointment was made. There was no replacement.

Lucius was quite open about Rufus’s dismissal, to me at least: 'Why should I bother to invent anything decent, Titus?' he said. 'Nobody'd believe the doddering old fool was capable of any real wickedness. If he had been I might not have had to sack him. And anyway, darling, those bum-suckers in the Senate wouldn't dare say boo whatever reason I gave them.'

Both observations were true enough; what was chilling was that Lucius was able to make them. His third comment — almost thrown away — was even more ominous: 'Now Tiggy can really begin to enjoy himself.'

Tiggy did so, with two political assassinations. His first victim was Faustus Sulla, the aristocratic husband of Octavia's sister Claudia, exiled four years before. The murderers walked into Sulla's house in Marseilles, stabbed him and, in line with their instructions, brought the head back to Rome. ('Tiggy thought we'd be as well to kill him,' Lucius told me later. 'And it was a mercy, really. He was going terribly grey, poor dear.')

The second was Rubellius Plautus. Plautus was another relative who had been exiled following the appearance of a comet. Comets, notoriously, announce the deaths of rulers, and Lucius had sensibly suggested that his distant cousin make himself even more distant by withdrawing to his Asian estates before anyone got any bright ideas. His head, too, had been brought back, pickled this time in vinegar. ('Hasn't he got a long nose, Titus?' — pulling the head from its jar by the hair and showing me it — 'Tiggy saidhe was dangerous, but I'm not so sure. Not with a nose like that. Still, best to be safe than sorry, eh?' I had thrown up all over my best mantle. Lucius only laughed.)

What could I do? What could anyone do? After the incident of the pickle-jar I went home and wept. Yes, I was sorry for Sulla and Plautus, and I was sorry for Rome; but I was even more sorry for Lucius, because I honestly believed and still believe that to him the killings were no more than stage deaths and the heads only papier-mâché props. If anyone was to blame for them and for the others that followed it was Tigellinus, who had shown the poor lad what marvellous, innocent fun it was to kill, and our upright band of venerable senators, who not only expelled the murdered men from their ranks but voted us a day of national thanksgiving into the bargain.

Do I sound bitter? Do you detect an unaccustomed seriousness here, my dear reader, that conflicts with Petronius's story so far? I am, and you do. I can't help myself.

Draw a line across the page here, Dion. No, don't ask why, boy. Just do it, please.