Empire

PART I
LUCIUS
The Lightning Reader
AD 14

Lucius woke with a start.

He had been dreaming. In his dream there was no earth, only a dark, empty sky, and beyond the sky, unimaginably vast, the crystalline firmament in which the stars shone brightly. No clouds obscured the stars, and yet there was lightning in the dream, lightning without thunder, random flashes of blinding light that illuminated great flocks of birds that suddenly filled the dark sky. There were vultures and eagles, ravens and crows, every sort of bird imaginable, soaring and flapping their wings, yet making no more sound than the silent lightning. The dream had filled him with a sense of urgency and confusion.

Awake now, Lucius heard a faint rumble of thunder in the distance.

He heard other sounds from elsewhere in the house. The slaves were up and beginning to stir, stoking the kitchen fire and opening shutters.

Lucius jumped from his bed. His room, with a small balcony looking west, was on the upper floor of the house. Below him was the slope of the Aventine Hill. The nearer houses, along the crest of the hill, were large and well made, like his family’s house. Farther down the hill, humbler houses and tenements and artisans’ workshops were crowded close together, and farther yet was a flat expanse with large granaries and warehouses close to the Tiber. At the river the city ended. On the far side of the Tiber, woods and meadows were divided into the private estates of the rich, which extended to the far horizon of hills and mountains.

How his mother hated this view! Born into a wealthy branch of the Cornelius family, she had grown up in a house on the other, more fashionable side of the Aventine Hill, with a view of the vast Circus Maximus below, the Capitoline Hill crowned by temples off to one side, and, directly opposite, the opulent Palatine Hill, where the emperor lived. “Why, from our rooftop, when I was a girl,” she would say, “I could see the smoke from sacrifices on the Capitoline, watch the chariot races below, and even catch a glimpse of the emperor himself, strolling on one of his terraces across the way.” (“All at the same time, Camilla?” Lucius’s father would say, gently mocking her.) But this was the view Lucius had grown up with. For twenty-four years this had been the Roma seen from his room, a jumble of the rich and poor – mostly the poor – where slaves laboured endlessly in vast storehouses to accommodate all the goods and grain that arrived day after day, carried up the river from the great world beyond, the world that belonged to Roma.

The month of Maius had been overcast and rainy so far, and this day promised to be no different. By the dim light of dawn beneath an overcast sky, Lucius saw the towering cypress trees along the Tiber sway this way and that. The blustering winds were warm and carried the smell of rain. In the far distance, black storm clouds roiled on the horizon, bristling with lighting.

“Perfect weather for an augury!” whispered Lucius.

His room was sparsely furnished with a narrow bed and a single backless chair, a small pigeonhole bookcase filled with scrolls left over from his childhood education, a mirror on a stand made of burnished copper, and a few trunks to accommodate his clothing. He opened the most ornate of the trunks and carefully removed the special garment it contained.

Ordinarily, he would have waited for a slave to help him dress – arranging the folds correctly was a complicated task – but Lucius could not wait. The garment was not simply a toga, such as the one he had put on when he became a man at the age of seventeen. It was a trabea, the special garment worn only by augurs, the members of the ancient priesthood trained to divine the will of the gods. It was not white but saffron with broad purple stripes. Except for the fitting, when the tailor had made it for him, this was the first time Lucius had even touched the trabea. The never-worn wool was soft and thick and had a fresh smell of murex dye.

He put on the garment and did his best to pull the hanging folds into a proper arrangement. He glanced at himself in the copper mirror, then reached into the trunk again. He picked up a slender ivory wand that ended in a little spiral. The lituus was a family heirloom and a familiar friend; Lucius had spent countless hours practising with it in preparation for this day. But now he looked at the lituus with fresh eyes, studying the intricate carvings that decorated every part of its surface with images of ravens, crows, owls, eagles, vultures and chickens, as well as foxes, wolves, horses and dogs – all the various creatures from whose actions a trained augur could interpret the will of the gods.

He left his room and descended the stairs, crossed the garden surrounded by a peristyle at the centre of the house, and stepped into the dining room, where his mother and father reclined together on a couch while a slave served their breakfast.

His mother was wearing a simple stola, with her long hair not yet combed and pinned for the day. She leaped up from her couch. “Lucius! What are you doing dressed in your trabea already? You can’t eat breakfast wearing that! What if you get food on it? The ceremony is hours away. We’ll be going to the baths first. The barber must shave you and your father-”

Lucius laughed. “Mother, I did it on a whim. Of course I won’t wear it to breakfast. But what do you think?”

Camilla sighed. “You look splendid, Lucius. Absolutely splendid! As handsome as ever your father was in his trabea. Don’t you think so, dear?”

Lucius’s father, who strove always to maintain the restraint proper to a man of his standing – a patrician, a senator, and a cousin of the emperor – merely nodded. “Handsome our boy certainly is. But looking pretty is not the point when a man puts on his trabea. A priest must carry his garment as he carries his lituus, with dignity and authority, as befits the intermediary of the gods.”

Lucius drew back his shoulders, raised his chin, and held forth his lituus. “What do you think, father? Do I look properly dignified?”

The elder Lucius Pinarius looked at his son and raised an eyebrow. To him, young Lucius often still looked like a boy, and never more so than at this moment, dressed up in priestly finery but with the folds of his trabea tucked and draped haphazardly, like a child in grown-up costume. Twenty-four was very young for a man to be inducted into the college of augurs. The elder Pinarius had been in his forties before the honour came to him. With his black hair mussed from sleeping, his broad smile, and his smoothly handsome features, young Lucius hardly fitted the standard image of the wrinkled, grey-haired augur. Still, the young man came from a long line of augurs, and he had shown great aptitude in his studies.

“You look very fine, my son. Now, go change into a nice tunic. We shall have a bite to eat, then be off to the baths for a wash and a shave, then hurry back home to get ready for the ceremony. Hopefully, the storm will hold off and we won’t be drenched with rain.”

Having a slave arrange the trabea certainly made a difference, Lucius had to admit, as he studied himself in the copper mirror later that day. The sight of himself freshly groomed and properly outfitted in his trabea filled him with confidence. Of course, he was not an augur quite yet. Preceding the induction ceremony there would be a final examination in which Lucius would be called upon to demonstrate his skills. Lucius frowned. He was a little nervous about the examination.

This time, when he descended from his room, his mother almost swooned at the sight of him. His father, now dressed in his own trabea and carrying his own lituus, gave him a warm smile of approval.

“Shall we be off, father?”

“Not quite yet. You have a visitor.”

Across the garden, a young man and a girl were seated on a bench beneath the peristyle.

“Acilia!” Lucius began to run to her, then slowed his pace. A trabea was not made for running, and it would not do to catch the soft wool on a thorn as he passed the rose bushes.

Acilia’s older brother rose to his feet, nodded curtly, and discreetly withdrew. Looking over his shoulder, Lucius saw that his parents had also disappeared, to allow him a moment of privacy with his betrothed.

Lucius took her hands in his. “Acilia, you look beautiful today.” It was true. Her honey-coloured hair was worn long and straight, as befitted an unmarried girl. Her eyes were bright blue. Her cheeks were as smooth as rose petals. Her petite body was largely hidden by her modest, long-sleeved tunica, but during the year that they had been betrothed she had definitely begun to acquire the contours of a woman’s body. She was ten years younger than Lucius.

“Look at you, Lucius – so handsome in your trabea!”

“That’s what my mother said.” As they strolled across the garden, he suddenly felt self-conscious about their surroundings. Lucius was acutely aware that the house of Acilia’s father was far grander than that of the Pinarii, more lavishly furnished, tended by more household slaves, and located on the more fashionable side of the Aventine Hill, near the Temple of Diana. The Acilii were plebeians, descended from a family far less ancient than the patrician Pinarii, but the Acilii had a great deal of money, while the fortunes of the Pinarii had dwindled in recent years. Lucius’s late grandfather had owned a fine mansion on the Palatine, but his debts had forced the family to move to their current accommodations. To be sure, the vestibule of their house contained the wax masks of many venerable ancestors, but that was not the sort of thing to impress a girl. Had Acilia noticed how overgrown and untended the garden was? Lucius remembered the perfectly trimmed hedges and topiaries, the marble walkways and expensive pieces of bronze statuary in the garden at Acilia’s house. The roof of the peristyle behind Acilia was missing more than a few tiles, and the wall was unsightly with peeling plaster and water stains. The slave who was supposed to tend the garden was already overworked with other duties, and there was no money to repair the roof or the wall.

Lack of money: that was the reason they were not yet married. Acilia’s father, after the initial excitement of betrothing his daughter to the patrician son of a senator and a cousin of the emperor, had since found one excuse after another to postpone setting a date for the ceremony. Obviously, having discovered more about the Pinarii’s finances, Titus Acilius had grown dubious about Lucius’s prospects in the world. From the moment Lucius first saw her, at a meeting arranged by their fathers, Lucius had liked Acilia; since then he had fallen hopelessly in love with her, and she seemed to feel the same. But that counted for nothing unless her father could be swayed to approve the union.

Acilia said nothing about the state of the garden or the unsightly wall. She gazed admiringly at the lituus he carried.

“Such ornate carvings! What is it made of?”

“Ivory.”

“From the tusk of an elephant?”

“So they say.”

“It’s very beautiful.”

“It’s been in the family a long time. You can tell the ivory is very old, because of the colour. Many generations of Pinarii have been augurs, taking auspices at state ceremonies, on battlefields, at temple dedications. And at private events, as well, like… weddings.”

Acilia seemed duly impressed. “And only men from the ancient patrician families can become augurs?”

“That’s right.” And I can give you a patrician son, he thought. Yet even as he basked in her admiration, he heard a scurrying noise and looked up to see a rat running along the roof of the peristyle behind her. With a flick of its long tail, the rat dislodged a loose tile. Hearing Lucius gasp, Acilia look around just in time to see the tile fall and shatter on a paving stone. She jumped and uttered a little cry. Had she seen the rat?

To distract her, he seized her shoulder, spun her around to face him, and kissed her. It was only a quick kiss, but still she looked astonished.

“Lucius, what if my brother should see?”

“See what? This?”

He kissed her again, not as quickly.

She drew back, blushing but looking pleased. Directly in front of her was the amulet on the necklace that Lucius was wearing. It had slipped from inside his trabea and lay nestled amid the saffron-and-purple folds.

“Is that part of your augur’s outfit?” she said.

“No. It’s a family heirloom. My grandfather gave it to me when I ten years old. I wear it only on special occasions.”

“May I touch it?”

“Of course.”

She reached up to touch the little lump of gold, which was vaguely cruciform in shape.

“I remember the day my grandfather gave it to me. He showed me the proper way to wear a toga, and then took me all around the city, just the two of us. He showed me the exact spot where his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, was murdered. He showed me the Great Altar of Hercules, the most ancient shrine in the city, which was erected by the Pinarius family in the days before Roma even existed. He showed me the fig tree on the Palatine where Romulus and Remus and their friend Pinarius climbed among the branches. And finally he showed me the Temple of Venus that Caesar built, and that was the first time I saw the fantastic golden statue of Cleopatra inside. My grandfather knew Cleopatra very well, and he knew Marcus Antonius, too. Someday… someday I want to have a son, and take him to see all those things, and tell him about his ancestors.”

Acilia still held the amulet. As he spoke, she had drawn closer to him, until her body pressed gently against his. She gazed at the amulet, then looked up into his eyes.

“But what sort of amulet is this? I can’t make out the shape.”

Lucius shook his head. “It’s funny, my grandfather made such a fuss about giving it to me, but even he wasn’t sure what it’s supposed to represent or where it came from. He only knew that it had been in the family for many generations. The original shape must have worn away over so many lifetimes.”

“There’s nothing like that in our family,” said Acilia, clearly impressed. She was so close that Lucius felt an urge to put his arms around her and hold her tightly against him, no matter that her brother might appear at any moment. But the sky above them suddenly opened and pelted the garden with rain. The raindrops were warm, and Lucius would have been happy to stand there, holding her, both of them getting soaking wet, but Acilia dropped the amulet, seized his hand, and with a shriek of laughter pulled him through the peristyle and into the house.

They found Lucius’s father and Acilia’s brother sitting next to each other in a pair of matching ebony chairs with inlays of lapis and abalone. It was no accident that his father had guided their guest to the best two pieces of furniture in the house.

Marcus Acilius was only a few years older than his sister and had the same golden hair and bright blue eyes. “But it’s been five years since the disaster that took place in the Teutoberg Forest,” he was saying, “and still nothing has been done to settle the score with the Germanic tribes. They’re laughing at us. It’s a scandal!”

“So, the rain has driven you inside.” Lucius’s father looked up at the couple and smiled warmly at Acilia. He wanted the marriage to take place as badly as Lucius did. “Marcus and I have been talking about the situation in the north.” He turned his attention back to Acilia’s brother.

“You’re a young man, Marcus. Five years seems to you a very long time. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s no more than the blink of an eye. This city was not built in a day, nor was the empire conquered in a lifetime. To be sure, for a long time, Roma seemed unstoppable. Ever outwards our legions pushed the limits of the empire, and all obstacles fell before us. To the north, my father’s great-uncle Julius Caesar conquered Gaul and set the stage for our cousin Augustus to push beyond the Rhine and conquer the Germans. The wild tribes were pacified. Their leaders were won over with the privileges of Roman citizenship. Cities were built, temples were dedicated to the gods, taxes were collected, and Germania became a province like any other.

“And then came Arminius, or Hermann as the Germans call him, a German who was trained to fight by Romans, who was given all the benefits of Roman hospitality, and who repaid us by the most despicable treachery. On the pretext of stamping out a small uprising, he lured three Roman legions into the Teutoberg Forest – then staged an ambush. Not a single Roman escaped. Arminius’s men weren’t satisfied with simple slaughter. They desecrated the corpses, chopping them into pieces, hanging their limbs from trees and mounting their heads on stakes. A thoroughly disgusting business, to be sure – but not the end of Roma’s interests in Germania. The massacre in the Teutoberg Forest took place because of the ambitions of one man, Arminius, who wants to turn the province we have built into his personal kingdom. The man is nothing more than a thief. I hear he dares to call himself ‘Augustus of the North,’ if you can believe such effrontery!

“But never fear, young Marcus. Our efforts so far to punish Arminius and bring the situation under control have been thwarted, but not for much longer. As a senator I can assure you that the emperor’s attention to this matter is unwavering. Not a day passes that he does not take some action to correct it. And what Augustus sets out to do, Augustus does.”

“But the emperor is seventy-five years old,” said Marcus.

“True, but there are younger, more vigorous members of his family with military expertise. His stepson Tiberius is a very fit commander; it was Tiberius’s late brother, Drusus Germanicus, who conquered the province in the first place. And there’s Germanicus’s son, who’s eager to earn the name his father handed down to him by his own victories. Never fear, Marcus. It will take time and effort and no small amount of bloodshed, but the province of Germania will be pacified. Ah, but listen to me, rambling on about warfare and politics in the presence of one with such tender sensibilities.” He smiled again at Acilia.

“Is it true, about the Germans cutting off the soldiers’ heads and putting them on stakes?” she whispered, looking pale.

“You’ve upset her, father,” said Lucius, taking advantage of Acilia’s distress to put his arm around her. Her brother did not object.

“No more talk of such unpleasant subjects, then,” said the elder Pinarius.

“No more talk at all, if you’re to be on time for the ceremony,” said Lucius’s mother, entering the room. “The rain has let up. The two of you must be off, and quickly. But you needn’t leave yet, Acilia. I have some spinning to do; nothing is more relaxing than spinning wool. You can help me, if you’d like, and we can have a nice visit.” Camilla accompanied Lucius and his father to the vestibule. “Don’t be nervous, son. I know you’ll perform splendidly. Or is it the presence of Acilia that makes you tremble?” She laughed. “Now off with you!”

“You don’t think I laid it on too thickly, do you,” said Lucius’s father, “reminding young Marcus about our kinship to both the Divine Julius and the emperor?”

They had descended the slope of the Aventine and were walking through the crowded riverfront district, heading for the Stairs of Cacus, which would take them up to the summit of the Palatine.

“I think the Acilii are quite aware of our family connections,” said Lucius ruefully. “But I’m not sure that it helps to keep bringing it up. For all that my grandfather was an heir of the Divine Julius, and we’re cousins of the great Augustus, what do we have to show for it?”

His father sighed. “What, indeed? Except for the fact that we’re still alive.”

“What do you mean by that?”

They began to ascend the Stairs of Cacus. As recently as the days of Julius Caesar it had been nothing more than a steep, winding footpath, as it had been since the time of Romulus. Augustus had made it into a stone stairway decorated with flowers and terraces. Lucius’s father looked ahead of them and behind, checking that no one was close enough to overhear.

“Have you never noticed, son, how many members of the emperor’s family have been sent into exile, and how those dearest to him have a way of dying?”

Lucius frowned. “I know he banished his daughter Julia.”

“Her morals disappointed him.”

“And his grandson Agrippa.”

“Who was also deemed insufficiently upright.”

“And I know that his other grandsons, Lucius and Gaius, the ones he intended to make his heirs, both suffered untimely deaths.”

“So they did. Being too close to the emperor is not necessary beneficial, either to one’s happiness or to one’s health.”

“Are you saying -”

“I am saying that the emperor is like a flame. Those around him are like men eager to warm themselves. But no one envies the man who draws so close that he sets himself afire.”

Lucius shook his head. “Might things have gone differently, if my grandfather had received more favour from the gods?”

The elder Pinarius sighed. “Like his cousin Augustus, your grandfather was named in the will of Julius Caesar – but little good it did him, since he chose to side with Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra in the civil war. After those two lost everything at the battle of Actium, your grandfather saw sense and went over to Augustus, who graciously forgave him – and forever afterwards showed him not one iota of generosity. Perhaps the victor thought it was enough to spare his errant cousin’s life and allow him to keep what remained of his fortune, most of which your grandfather eventually lost anyway, despite all his business concerns in Egypt. Since then, your cousin Augustus has mostly ignored us. We are tolerated but granted little in the way of either favour or disfavour – which is not necessarily a bad thing. Oh yes, to have his favour could be grand. But to suffer his disfavour… or the disfavour of those who scheme and plot around him… can be fatal.”

“You say he grants us few favours, yet he put me in the lists to become an augur.”

“That he did. And you have no idea how many favours I had to call in to make that happen. Be grateful for this opportunity, my son.”

“I am, father,” said Lucius, humbly and sincerely.

At the top of the Stairs of Cacus they were afforded a view of the river; even on an overcast, blustery day, the wharves were bustling and the choppy water was crowded with ships. Above the river loomed the Capitoline Hill with its white temples glistening after the recent shower. A solitary sunbeam broke though the ragged clouds overhead and shone brightly on the gilded statue of Hercules.

In Lucius’s short lifetime, he had seen the city of Roma acquire an ever-greater air of prosperity and opulence. Countless shops were filled with goods from all over the world. Ancient temples and monuments had been refurbished, and new, even grander temples had been built. State buildings made of brick had been faced with slabs of travertine and marble. The emperor had once said, “I found Roma built of sun-dried bricks; I will leave her cloaked in marble.” Augustus had made good on the promise.

Lucius had never lived anywhere but in Roma and had never travelled farther than Pompeii. But it seemed to him there could be no other place as exciting and beautiful as Roma. He felt proud that he was about to become truly part of the city, to be given a role to play, to act as a mediator between the gods and the city they had favored more than any other on earth.

Amid the grand houses on the Palatine Hill was an open square planted with grass and surrounded by a low stone wall, known as the Auguratorium. On this very spot, almost eight hundred years before, Romulus performed the augury that established the site of the city. Romulus saw twelve vultures; over on the Aventine Hill, his twin brother Remus spotted only six vultures. Thus the gods made known their preference that the new city should be founded on the Palatine, not the Aventine. In time, the city grew to contain the Aventine and all the Seven Hills along the Tiber, but this was the spot where it began. According to family legend, a Pinarius had been present with Romulus on that sacred occasion, and so the induction of a new Pinarius into the college of augurs was always an event that resounded with significance.

As Lucius and his father emerged from a narrow street and approached the Auguratorium, a sea of saffron and purple enveloped them; every man in the crowd was wearing a trabea and clutching a lituus. A tall young man abruptly appeared before them, holding his arms open to give Lucius an embrace.

“L-L-Lucius!” he said. “I thought you’d never get here. The idea of going through the examination all by myself was making me break into a c-cold sweat.”

“Surely you jest, cousin Claudius,” said Lucius. “Your skills at augury are far greater than mine, and you know it.”

“Seeking signs from the gods is one thing. D-doing it in front of an audience is another matter!”

“You’ll both do very well, I’m sure,” said Lucius’s father, beaming proudly at the two of them. Lucius and Claudius were to be the only inductees into the college on this day. Claudius was the grandson of Livia, the emperor’s wife, and thus the stepgrandson of Augustus – but was not the emperor’s grandson officially by either blood or law, since Augustus had never adopted Claudius’s late father, Drusus Germanicus. Nonetheless, Claudius was a blood relative to Augustus. He was the grandson of Marcus Antonius and Octavia, Augustus’s sister, and thus the emperor’s great-nephew, and also a distant cousin to Lucius.

Claudius and Lucius had been born the same year. In recent months the cousins had been studying the science of augury together. They had become close friends, though to Lucius’s father it seemed that their differences were greater than their similarities. Lucius was strikingly handsome, well built, and graceful – that was a plain fact, and not the prejudice of a doting father – while Claudius, though tall and not bad-looking, had a cowed manner, often spoke with a stammer, and suffered from nervous facial tics and jerks of the head. The stammer and the jerking were more pronounced at some times than at others. Some people assumed that the young man was mentally incompetent. In fact, despite his youth, Claudius was an antiquarian scholar more deeply versed in the minutiae of Roma’s history than anyone the elder Pinarius had ever met. Of the friendship between his son and Claudius he entirely approved; the danger he had just warned Lucius about – of drawing too near the emperor and his inner circle – seemed hardly to apply to Claudius, whom the emperor, embarrassed by the young man’s defects, kept at a distance.

A gong was struck. The augurs stopped their milling and assembled along the four sides of the Auguratorium in order of their age and rank. In the centre of the square, the magister of the college called on Lucius and Claudius to stand beside him, then asked, “Who nominates these new members?”

Lucius’s father stepped forward and placed his hand on Lucius’s shoulder. “I, Lucius Pinarius, an augur, nominate my son, Lucius Pinarius.”

Another figure emerged from the crowd, an old man who seemed quite careless of his appearance. His grey hair needed barbering and his threadbare trabea had seen better days. But when he placed his hand on Claudius’s shoulder and spoke, his voice carried an undeniable ring of authority. “I, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus, an augur, nominate my nephew, Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus.”

The magister nodded. “Then I shall begin the examination.” A rumble of distant thunder caused him to glance skyward. “Divination is the means by which humankind may determine the will of the gods. The gods make their will known by signs, which we call auspices. Those who know the way may determine whether these auspices are favourable or unfavourable. By augury, the site of Roma was decided. As Ennius began one of his poems, ‘After by augury august Roma had been founded…’

“As the empire of Roma has grown, we have encountered other peoples with other means of divination. The Etruscans studied the entrails of sacrificial animals; the Babylonians observed the stars; the Greeks listened to blind prophets; the Jews received instruction from a burning bush. But these ways are not Roman ways; these are inferior means of divination, as is made evident by the inferior fortunes of their adherents. The Roman way of divination, handed down to us from our most ancient ancestors, is augury, which was and is and always shall be the best and truest means of divining the will of the gods.”

“Hear, hear!” shouted Augustus, prompting others in the crowd to do the same.

“There are five categories of augury,” the magister continued, “five means by which the auspices may be obtained. The most powerful auspices are delivered by thunder and lightning, which come directly from Jupiter. Auspices may also be obtained by the observation of certain birds: the raven, the crow, the owl, the eagle and the vulture. From this second, avian form of augury derives the third form, which our ancestors originally devised for use on military campaigns, where an auspice might be required at any moment to make a critical decision; this third type of augury is performed by releasing a hen from its cage, scattering grain before it, and observing the way the creature pecks or does not peck at the food. Auspices may also taken from four-footed animals, and this is the fourth form. If a fox, wolf, horse, dog, or any other quadruped should cross a person’s path or appear in some unusual setting, only an augur may interpret the meaning; but it is important to remember that this fourth form of augury is never employed on behalf of the state, only as private divination. The fifth class of augury pertains to all signs which do not fall into the other four categories, and may include all manner of unusual events – the birth of a two-headed animal, a strange object that falls from the sky, flames that appear and disappear, leaving no trace. The fifth form of augury may also be derived from common accidents – a sneeze, a stumble, a misspoken name or word.”

Claudius suddenly jerked his head from side to side. Lucius barely glimpsed the movement from the corner of his eye, but it must have been quite obvious to the crowd before them. Was this spasm such an accident as the magister had just mentioned, a sign from the gods? Lucius thought not; everyone knew that Claudius had been prone to such twitches from childhood. Sometimes a twitch was merely a twitch. Still, there were uneasy murmurs from the crowd.

The magister pretended to take no notice. “Lucius Pinarius, what form of augury will you demonstrate for us today, to determine whether the gods favour your admission into the college?”

Given that the day was stormy, the answer was obvious. “The first form,” said Lucius.

The others stepped back, leaving Lucius alone in the centre of the Auguratorium. He slowly turned about in a circle, surveying the sky. The storm clouds were concentrated most thickly to the south-west. He raised his lituus and pointed in that direction. The augurs gathered behind him. With his lituus he drew an invisible square upon the sky. From left to right the square included everything from the top of the Temple of Diana on the Aventine to the top of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline; from bottom to top it included everything from the horizon to the zenith. Having delineated a segment of sky, Lucius lowered his lituus and proceeded to watch and wait.

Lucius was patient at first, keeping his eyes open, trying not to blink; then he began to grow a bit nervous. The gods, including Jupiter, did not always send signs. What if no lightning appeared? The absence of a sign, in such a circumstance, would be taken as an unfavourable auspice. Behind him Lucius thought he heard the sound of murmurs and shuffling feet, as if the augurs were growing as restless as he was. How long was long enough to await a sign? Only the most senior augur present, in this case the emperor, could determine that. They might stand there for hours, until night fell, awaiting the appearance of a lightning bolt – or Augustus might decide to end the examination the next moment.

Lucius’s heart pounded in his chest. The wait was maddening! If no sign appeared, what would become of him? What would his father say? He realized that he was clutching his lituus with white knuckles. He took a deep breath and relaxed his grip. He slipped the fingers of his other hand inside his trabea and touched the gold amulet he wore around his neck.

He saw a flash. An instant later, he heard the gasps of the others behind him, and then, a few heartbeats later, he heard the thunder. The distant flash was to the left, just above the Temple of Diana but still within the delineated area. Lightning to the left was favourable, and the more to the left, the more favourable. The auspice was good! Jupiter was clearly pleased. And then, as if to quell any doubt about his approval, several blinding flashes of jagged lightning appeared in the same spot, one after another, followed by rolling peals of thunder. To Lucius, it sounded as if the god were laughing with delight.

“The auspice is favourable!” shouted the magister. “Is there any augur present who disagrees?”

Lucius turned around and sought his father’s face amid the crowd. His father was smiling, as were those around him.

Augustus, too, seemed to smile, though Lucius found it hard to read the old man’s expression. His eyes looked weary, not joyful, and the baring of his yellow teeth resembled a grimace more than a grin. “I think we are all agreed that the auspice is favourable, are we not?” said the emperor.

There were nods and utterances of agreement from the crowd.

The magister placed his hands on Lucius’s shoulder. “Congratulations, Lucius Pinarius. On this day, you have become an augur. May you always use your skills and the power of your priestly office wisely, for the benefit of Roma and with the greatest respect for the gods.”

The magister turned to Claudius. “And now you, Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus. What form of augury will you demonstrate for us today, to determine whether the gods favor your admission into the college?”

Claudius stepped forward. “I choose to watch for…” He came to a complete stop, as he sometimes did when speaking; his stutter was making it difficult for him to say the next word. At last, pressing his lips tightly together, he blurted out, “B-B-birds!”

There were murmurs from the crowd, most of whom, including Lucius, were surprised by the decision. On such a day, with so much lightning about, surely all the birds were in their nests, hiding from the wind and the rain.

Nonetheless, Claudius seemed sure of himself. After carefully scanning the sky, he faced north-east, directly opposite the direction Lucius had chosen. He used his lituus to delineate a segment of sky above the Forum and the Esquiline Hill beyond.

Just as he was finishing the delineation, Claudius dropped his lituus. Lucius groaned, as did several others. Claudius’s clumsiness was one thing, but to drop his lituus was surely a bad omen.

If Augustus was embarrassed, he did not show it. “Pick up that lituus,” he said, “and let’s get to the business at hand, young man, quick as boiled asparagus!”

The tension in the crowd was relieved with laughter. The emperor was known for such homespun metaphors, which from any other speaker would have sounded oafish.

Augustus cleared his throat and spoke. “Back when I first took the auspices, I also chose to watch for birds. I spotted twelve vultures – yes, twelve! The very number Romulus saw when he founded the city. Let us see how Jupiter’s feathered emissaries will augur for my nephew today.” The old man flashed a smile, or a grimace, Lucius could not tell which.

While they watched and waited for a sign, Lucius considered the daunting complexities of avian augury. To take the auspice, one had to consider not only the types of birds that appeared but how many, and whether they flew in a single direction or doubled back, and whether they called or were silent. Every sound and motion of each bird had a different meaning, according to different circumstances and the time of the year when it was observed. An avian augury was far more likely than a lightning augury to yield an auspice susceptible to differing interpretations – if indeed on such a day any bird would appear.

They waited. Lucius began to grow uneasy, feeling almost as anxious for Claudius as he had felt for himself. It had seemed unthinkable that Lucius might disappoint and embarrass his father. How much greater must be the pressure felt by Claudius with the emperor looming behind him?

Just when Lucius could stand the suspense no longer, Claudius raised his lituus and pointed. “Th-th-there!” he cried. “Two vultures above the Esquiline Gate, flying this way!”

To be sure, two flitting specks had appeared, but they were so distant that Lucius, who had excellent eyesight, was not sure what sort of birds they might be. Apparently Claudius’s eyes were even keener than his, for as the birds drew nearer there was general agreement among the squinting augurs that the birds were indeed vultures. The birds wheeled back towards the Esquiline Gate and began to circle above it.

Two more vultures appeared from the same spot, and then two more, and then another, until seven vultures were circling about the Esquiline Gate. Beyond the gate, outside the walls, was the necropolis, the city of the dead, where slaves were buried and the carcasses of executed criminals were left to the birds. It was not surprising that vultures had appeared in that region, but it was surely fortuitous that so many had appeared at once, during Claudius’s augury, and on such an inclement day. The pattern of their flight, first towards the Auguratorium and then away, was a favourable auspice as well.

Augustus declared the augury completed. The magister was impressed.

“Seven vultures! To be sure, considerably fewer than the record set by Romulus – and matched by our emperor – but one more than Remus saw! Does anyone here doubt that the auspice is favorable? No? Very well, then, I declare that on this day, Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus has shown himself to be a true augur, accepted by his colleagues and, more importantly, by Jupiter himself. May you always use your skills and the power of your priestly office wisely, young man, for the benefit of Roma and with the greatest respect for the gods.”

The ceremony was concluded. Lucius and Claudius received the congratulations of their fellow augurs, and then the members began to head to the imperial residence. The banquet following the induction of new augurs was usually held in a private home, but on this occasion Augustus was playing host. He had certainly made a point of reminding everyone of his kinship to Claudius. The fact that Lucius Pinarius was a cousin had not even been mentioned.

During the short walk, which took them past some of the finest houses in the city, Lucius walked beside Claudius and told him how impressed he was by the vulture sightings. “That was very bold of you. I would never have dared to choose an avian augury. I did the safe thing and went with lightning. The smart thing as well, or so I thought, since lightning auguries are usually more highly respected. But you outshone me today, Claudius!”

Claudius pursed his lips, nodded, and hummed thoughtfully. His head twitched to one side. “Yes, well, I suppose I did, even though, as you say, lightning augury is the most highly esteemed of all forms. Why do you suppose that is?” With the examination behind them, his stutter had momentarily abated.

“As the magister taught us, lightning and thunder come directly from Jupiter,” said Lucius.

“Ah, but birds are the messengers of Jupiter, so why should avian augury not be as prized? No, I think lightning augury is more impressive because a flash of lightning cannot possibly be fabricated by mortal men, while anyone might arrange to release certain birds from a certain area at a certain time.”

Lucius frowned. “Are you saying those vultures were deliberately released?”

“Oh, not for Romulus, surely, and certainly not for Great-Uncle. But for me – who knows?” Claudius shrugged. “Thanks to my obvious shortcomings, Great-Uncle can foresee no higher station in life for me than to be an augur. I twitch too much to find glory as a warrior. You saw me drop my lituus today; imagine me dropping a sword on the battlefield! I st-stutter too much to make impressive sp-sp-speeches in the Senate.” He flashed a sardonic smile; was he stuttering on purpose? “Since this is as far as I shall go, Great-Uncle is determined that everyone should acknowledge my competence at augury, if at nothing else. Three vultures would have sufficed, don’t you think? Great-Uncle always overdoes these things! When the two vacancies opened in the college, why do you suppose he chose to allow you to enlist, Lucius?”

“I know my father did everything he could to promote me and to win the emperor’s favour. He was surprised he succeeded, considering my youth-”

“Ha! Great-Uncle approved of your admission to the college for only one reason: he wanted to make me an augur, and so be done with me, and he wanted another candidate my age to enter alongside me, so that I shouldn’t stand out so much. You weren’t made an augur despite your age, Lucius, but because of it! But the important thing, cousin Lucius, is that our examinations are over, and now we are augurs. Augurs for life! But what is that you’re wearing?”

Claudius referred to the amulet on Lucius’s necklace. It had slipped outside his trabea and the gold shone brightly against the purple wool.

“It’s a family talisman.”

“Where did it come from? What does it symbolize?”

“I don’t really know,” Lucius confessed, with some chagrin. Claudius was such a scholar and so steeped in his own family’s history that he was never at a loss to explain even the most arcane bits of ancestral lore.

Claudius came to a halt, reached for the amulet, and studied it closely. Lucius had seen such a spark in his friend’s eyes before, during their studies together – the excitement of the devoted antiquarian in the presence of an intriguing puzzle. “I think, Lucius – yes, I th-th-think I may have s-some idea of what this is. I’ll have to do a bit of research…”

“Come along, my fellow augurs,” said Lucius’s father, catching up with them. “We’re almost there.” Like Lucius, he had never been inside the imperial residence, and he was flushed with excitement.

They entered a courtyard first, no grander than that of any house of moderate wealth, except for the trophies on prominent display in the center of the yard. On a wooden stand was displayed the emperor’s personal armour, including his sword, ax, helmet, and shield.

“See how they gleam,” whispered Lucius, “as if they’ve just been freshly burnished!”

“Yes, I believe there is a slave who performs that duty daily,” said Claudius.

As the augurs filled the courtyard, waiting for the massive bronze entry doors to open, Lucius looked up at the giant laurel crown carved into the marble lintel above the doors.

“The laurel crown is traditionally awarded to a soldier who saves a comrade’s life in battle,” noted Claudius, following his gaze. “Can you guess why the Senate voted to award that stupendous image of a laurel crown to my uncle?”

“I suspect you can tell me.”

“It was awarded to him in honour of his victory over Cleopatra and my grandfather Marcus Antonius – whom I never knew, of course, since he died by his own sword twenty years before I was b-b-born. By winning that war, you see, Augustus saved us all from being enslaved by the Egyptian queen, the entire citizenry of Roma and all the generations to come – and thus he deserved a laurel crown of suitable splendor.”

The booming noise of a thrown bolt resounded from within the house, and then the great bronze doors began to slowly open inwards.

Flanking the doorway, Lucius noticed, were two flourishing laurel trees. As lightning flashed over their heads and a peal of thunder shook the courtyard, he saw several of the augurs break sprigs from the trees and slip them into their trabeas. It was a well-known fact that the laurel tree was lightning-proof, of all trees the only one never struck. Would carrying a sprig of laurel protect a man from lightning? Many people thought so.

Rather than being opulent or ostentatious, the interior of the imperial house was decorated with great simplicity. The columns were of travertine, not marble. The floors were paved with black-and-white tiles in simple geometric patterns, not decorated with colourful mosaics. The walls were painted in solid colors, not with the amazingly realistic landscapes Lucius had occasionally seen in the houses of his wealthier acquaintances, such as the Acilii. The several dining rooms that opened onto the central garden were spacious enough to accommodate a great many guests, but the dining couches themselves were as humble as those in Lucius’s house.

The meal was simple, as well. When asparagus was served as the first course, dipped in boiling water for just a moment so that it was cooked but still crisp, Claudius, reclining next to Lucius, snapped a stalk in two and quipped, “‘Quick as boiled asparagus’ – just the way Great-Uncle likes it!”

Lucius had never seen his friend in such high spirits. “I’m a little surprised at how simply the imperial residence is furnished,” he said. “Even the house of Acilia’s father is more opulent. Are the private quarters equally austere?”

“More so! Great-Uncle sleeps on a bed of straw and will have only backless chairs in the house. ‘A Roman’s spine should be sufficiently stiff to hold him upright,’ he says. He believes in setting an example by practising old-fashioned virtues of decorum and restraint. He expects his family to do the same. When Julilla, his granddaughter, built a mansion for herself on too grand a scale, Great-Uncle had the whole thing d-dd-demolished. I can’t remember, was that before or after he banished poor Julilla to that island for committing adultery? And then, when she b-b-bore her lover’s child, Great-Uncle ordered that the baby be abandoned on a mountainside to die.” Claudius bit a stalk of asparagus, chewed loudly, and swallowed. “He’s banished Julilla’s mother as well, his own daughter, likewise for scandalous conduct. And his only surviving grandson, Agrippa – he, too, failed to meet Great-Uncle’s standards and so ended up on an island somewhere. So you see, these Spartan surroundings are not a pretense. They are a genuine reflection of my uncle’s temperament.”

In each of the dining areas a couch was set aside for the host, who moved across the garden from room to room, allowing all the guests the honour of his presence. To Lucius, it seemed that the emperor was more an observer than a participant in the festivities, saying little and eating nothing. The old man appeared restless and distracted, giving a start whenever there was a peal of thunder. Light rain occasionally swept across the garden, and gusts of wind fanned the braziers that were lit as darkness fell. Hardly an hour after sundown, with several courses yet to be served, Augustus strode to the center of the garden, where all the guests could see him, bade his fellow augurs good night, and excused himself.

With the host gone, the atmosphere became noticeably more relaxed. A few guests dared to drink their wine without water, but no one got drunk. After a final course of carrots in a thick garum sauce, the guests begins to disperse, paying their respects to the new inductees before departing. Lucius’s father was the last to leave.

“You’re not coming with me, son?”

“Claudius has invited me to take a stroll to the Temple of Apollo.”

“In this weather?”

“The temple is only a few steps away. And it’s not raining now.”

“The sky could open at any moment.”

“If the storm grows worse, Lucius c-c-can spend the night here in my quarters,” offered Claudius.

“I suppose I can hardly object,” said the elder Pinarius, looking at once pleased and anxious that his son should become a welcome guest in the house of Augustus.

The Temple of Apollo was surrounded by an ornate colonnade directly adjoining the imperial residence, perched on the crest of the Palatine Hill, directly above the Circus Maximus. Of all Augustus’s new constructions, the Temple of Apollo was the most magnificent. Lit by flickering braziers from the surrounding colonnade, with a light mist descending, the temple appeared even more spectacular by night. The glistening walls were made of solid blocks of white Luna marble, and the gilded chariot of the sun atop the roof seemed to be made of flame. Dominating the square in front of the entrance, a marble statue of Apollo loomed above an altar flanked by four bronze oxen. In the flickering light, the oxen seemed almost to be alive. When Lucius said so to Claudius, his friend explained that they were hundreds of years old, the creations of the great Myron, famed for his much-copied statue of the Discus Thrower.

At the top of the steps, past the towering columns, they came to two massive doors, each decorated with reliefs in ivory. By flashes of lightning, Lucius gazed at a fabulously detailed panel, a riot of figures in violent motion – young men and women running this way and that in a great panic, some pierced by arrows, and in the sky above them, each wielding a bow, the divine siblings Apollo and Artemis.

“The slaying of the Niobids of Thebes,” Claudius explained. “When their mother Niobe boasted of having more offspring than Leto, the goddess’s children took offense and slew them, every one. Apollo shot the sons; Artemis shot the daughters. Niobe committed hubris – overweening mortal pride – and her children paid the price for it. The d-d-descendants of powerful mortals often seem to pay a price, simply for existing.” Claudius looked thoughtful, then turned and pointed with his lituus to the rectangle of sky framed by the nearest columns. “The lightning seems to be drawing closer. Look at that thunderbolt! Have you ever seen one like that? The magister says that every possible manifestation of lightning has been catalogued and categorized over the years, but that implies that lightning repeats itself, as letters and words in a language repeat; but I sometimes wonder if every thunderbolt is not unique to itself. Of course, if that were so, there could be no meaning in lightning at all, or none that men could make sense of.”

A great blackness, darker than all the rest of the sky and filled with flashes of lightning, was sweeping toward them from the south-west. It was over the Tiber now, its fury reflected on the water’s turbulent face.

Lucius felt steeped in privilege, to be standing with his friend, a member of the imperial household, on the threshold of the emperor’s greatest temple; but at the same time he felt a slight thrill of fear, for the approaching storm promised to be violent, and the horrific images of the slaughtered Niobids disturbed him. He was here to pay homage to Apollo, but Apollo could be a vengeful god.

Claudius did not appear to share his anxiety. “Did you know, years ago, this very spot was the site of the imperial residence? Then one day it was blasted by lightning and burned to the ground. Augustus declared that the g-g-gods had marked this as a sacred site, suitable only for a temple, and got the Senate to dedicate the funds to build not just the temple but the new imperial residence next to it. The temple is magnificent, as you can see, and everyone thought Great-Uncle would build himself an equally magnificent palace, but instead he made the new house exactly like the old one, only a little bigger and with annexes to accommodate his growing staff.” Claudius chuckled.

“Was Augustus in the house when it was struck by lightning?”

“Yes, he was. And that wasn’t Great-Uncle’s first encounter with lightning. He was very nearly k-k-killed by a thunderbolt during a night march in the Cantabarian campaign, after my grandfather Antonius was vanquished; a flash of lightning grazed Great-Uncle’s litter and struck dead the slave who was carrying a torch before him. After that narrow escape, he dedicated a shrine to Jupiter the Thunderer – there, if you squint you can see it over on the Capitoline, looking very impressive when the lightning illuminates it. Ever since, Great-Uncle’s had a morbid fear of lightning. How he hates a thunderstorm! I’m sure that’s why he left the b-banquet early, to take shelter under ground. The man fears nothing and no one here on earth, but he thinks that d-d-death from the sky might still claim him, as it did King Romulus. That’s why he was wearing that amulet tonight. He always wears it in stormy weather.”

“An amulet?”

“Did you not notice, Lucius? He was wearing an amulet made of sealskin, for protection, the way others carry a sprig of laurel.”

“Sealskin?”

“Just as the laurel is never struck by lightning, neither is the sea calf. It’s a scientific fact, confirmed by all reliable authorities. I myself prefer laurel.” He produced a sprig from inside his trabea.

“I suppose I should have taken a sprig,” said Lucius. The lightning and thunder were coming closer. The storm was almost upon them.

“Stay close to me; perhaps my sprig will protect you. There’s an interesting story about those laurel trees at the entrance to the imperial house. Not long after Livia was first betrothed to Augustus, she was riding in a carriage on a country road and a perfectly white hen dropped from the sky into her lap – with a sprig of laurel in its beak! Livia bred the hen to use its offspring in auguries, and planted the laurel, from which a sacred grove sprang up on the imperial estate along the Tiber, as well as the two specimens that flank the doorway of the imperial house. Augustus wore wreaths from those laurel trees in his triumphal pro cessions. Ah, but I digress…”

“You sometimes do.” Lucius smiled, then gave a start at a loud boom of thunder. He heard the hissing of the rain as it swept towards them over the Aventine.

“Well, you did ask about the sealskin amulet. And speaking of amulets, I’ve been th-th-thinking about the one you wear. I believe I may have an idea of what it is-”

He was interrupted by a flash of blinding light, followed at once by a tremendous thundercrack. Lightning had struck the Palatine, somewhere very close to them.

“Do you think it struck the imperial house?” said Lucius. They ran to the end of the porch and peered towards the residence. There was no sign of fire. Then a sudden downpour obscured everything beyond the temple steps. Wind blew rain onto the porch; the pediment gave no protection. Claudius opened one of the tall doors. They slipped inside the temple and closed the door behind them.

The air smelled of incense. A giant statue of Apollo dominated the sanctuary, lit by flickering lamps mounted on the walls. On this stormy night, it seemed to Lucius that the place had an eerie magic. The air itself carried a charge of excitement. Gazing up at the god, Lucius felt hackles rise on the back of his neck. With an uncanny certainty he knew that something very important was going to happen that night.

He looked behind him. Claudius was sitting on a marble bench against one wall, already nodding, his jaw hanging open and a bit of drool suspended from his lower lip. Truly, anyone who saw him at that moment would have assumed he was an idiot. Poor Claudius!

The uncanny sensation subsided. Lucius sat beside Claudius, listening to him softly snore, and waited for the raging storm to subside.

When the massive door began to swing inwards, he gave a start. Had he been dozing, and for how long? A man entered the temple, dressed in the tunic of an imperial servant and carrying a torch.

“Claudius? Are you here, Claudius?”

Claudius woke. He clutched Lucius’s arm and wiped a bit of drool from his chin. “What? Who’s there?”

“Euphranor.” It was one of the emperor’s most trusted freedmen. His hair was black but his beard was almost entirely white. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” He approached and handed Claudius a wax tablet of the sort that could be written on, rubbed flat, and written over.

By the light of the torch Claudius peered at the tablet. In a crabbed, elderly hand was written the quaint phrase “Come, quick as asparagus,” with the word asparagus marked through and the word lightning scrawled above.

“A message written in Great-Uncle’s own hand!” declared Claudius, obviously surprised. “The man has an army of scribes to take his dictation at any moment of the day or night. Why in his own hand? What can he want so urgently? And why ‘quick as lightning ’?”

Lucius suddenly felt out of place. “I suppose I should go home now-”

“While the storm still rages? No, no! You’ll come with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Great-Uncle didn’t say for you not to come. Follow me, cousin – quick as asparagus! Euphranor, lead the way.”

Pelted by rain, they followed Euphranor back to the house, past the dining rooms and the garden, where rain descended in a torrent, and then through a series of doors and a maze of hallways. At last they came to a narrow doorway that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down.

“I’ll stay here,” said Euphranor. “You’ll find him at the bottom of the steps.”

Claudius descended the long, steep, winding flight of stairs with Lucius following. At last they arrived in a lamp-lit, subterranean room. Lucius saw at once that the ceiling and the walls were decorated with mosaics; the thousands of tiny tiles glinted and shimmered. Among the dazzling images he recognized King Romulus with his long beard and iron crown. Another image could only be the infant twins, Romulus and his brother Remus, adrift on the Tiber in a basket. Another image showed Romulus being carried up to the heavens on a ray of light sent by Jupiter. There were many more images, all illustrating stories from the life of the Founder.

“What is he doing here?”

Lucius turned to see Augustus, standing closer than Lucius had ever seen the man before. What terrible teeth the emperor had, all yellow and decayed, and how short he was, wearing slippers instead of the thick-soled shoes that usually made him taller. Lucius told himself he should be at least a little awed, but the presence of the emperor was underwhelming. In his younger days, the fair-haired Octavius was said to have been the best-looking boy in Roma, so pretty that his uncle Julius Caesar took him for a lover (so went the whispered rumour), and in later days, the boy Octavius who became the man Augustus had commanded sufficient authority to bend whole nations to his will. But at that moment Lucius saw only a little old man with rotten teeth, unkempt straw-coloured hair, tufts of hair in his nostrils, and bushy eyebrows that met above his nose.

Eye to eye with the ruler of the world, Lucius was buoyed by a curious sense of confidence, remembering the premonition he had experienced in the Temple of Apollo that something very important was about to happen.

“Shall I send him away, Great-Uncle?” said Claudius.

Augustus stared at Lucius, so long and hard that Lucius’s confidence began to waver. The old man finally spoke.

“No. Young Lucius Pinarius may stay. He is an augur now, is he not? And his ancestors were among the very first augurs in Roma. A Pinarius accompanied Romulus when he took the auspices, and before that the Pinarii were keepers of the people’s first shrine, the Great Altar of Hercules. The state assumed that duty over 300 years ago; perhaps I should return the Great Altar to the hereditary keeping of the Pinarii. Reviving ancient traditions is pleasing to the gods. And he is a blood relation, for what ever that’s worth. Perhaps, Lucius Pinarius, the gods themselves delivered you here to me tonight.”

Lucius averted his eyes, humbled by the emperor’s scrutiny. He stared at the mosaics above them.

“Images from the life of Romulus, as you no doubt perceive,” explained Augustus. “The chamber in which we stand is the Lupercale, the sacred cave where the foundling twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. I myself discovered the cave when the foundations for this house were being laid, and under my directions it’s been decorated as a sacred shrine.”

“The mosaics are exquisite,” said Lucius.

“Yes. There you see the twins suckled by the she-wolf, and there, the rescue of Remus by his brother, the slaying of King Amulius and the taking of his iron crown. There, the sighting of the vultures, and Romulus plowing a furrow to mark the city boundaries. There, the first triumphal procession, and the king’s ascent to the heavens during a thunderstorm.”

Lucius nodded. He recalled something Claudius had told him, that the emperor had considered taking the name Romulus as a title, rather than Augustus, but ultimately rejected the name as unlucky; Romulus murdered his brother, after all, and though legend said that Romulus was taken alive by the gods to Olympus, some historians believed he was murdered by conspiring senators.

“Of course, one cannot take the legends too literally,” Claudius noted, pointing to the image of the suckling she-wolf. “My tutor Titus Livius says that our ancestors used the same word, lupa, to mean either a she-wolf or a whore. Livius suggests that the twins may have been raised not by a wild beast but by a common prostitute.”

“Don’t be impious, nephew!” snapped Augustus, and seemed about to say more when a crack of thunder shook the room. The emperor frantically reached for the sealskin amulet he wore on a chain around his neck. “Even here, so deep under ground, the earth shakes!” he whispered. “Is it possible the house has been struck by lightning two times in one night?” His rheumy eyes flashed with something Lucius could only interpret as fear.

“Why did you s-s-summon us, Great-Uncle?” asked Claudius quietly.

“I’ll show you now – though to do so, we’ll have to leave the safety of the Lupercale.” Augustus frowned, then braced himself and led the way up the stairs, taking them slowly. Euphranor was waiting for them at the top of the steps. At Augustus’s order, the freedman brought each of them a torch to carry.

“When you see the omen, Claudius, you’ll understand why no one else must know of this. No one!” Augustus turned to Lucius. “Do you understand as well, young man? Any omen that regards my person is a state secret and must never be divulged. There’s no telling how it might be used by those who wish me harm. To divulge such a secret is a crime punishable by death.”

He led them to a courtyard. The neatly trimmed hedges and paving stones glistened. The rain had relented; only a light mist descended on them. The courtyard was dominated by a bronze statue of the emperor himself, painted in lifelike colors. Did he ever look like that? wondered Lucius, for the statue of the serenely self-assured, handsome young warrior scarcely resembled the shaken old man standing beside him.

As they stepped closer to the statue, Lucius’s torch illuminated something on the ground, on the far side of the pedestal. It was the dead body of a young man, dressed in the charred remains of what once had been the tunic of an imperial slave.

“Look there!” cried Augustus. “Wisps of smoke still rise from the corpse. He burns from the inside, like a coal in a brazier.”

Claudius pursed his lips. “This slave – he was k-k-killed by the first lightning bolt, the one that struck while Lucius and I were in the Temple of Apollo?”

“Yes. Lightning struck the statue. The slave must have been standing too close. See the damage to the statue – the places where the paint has been scorched, the way the ivory inlays for the whites of the eyes have turned black!” Augustus sucked in his breath. “By Hercules, the statue has been struck again, by that second lightning bolt, the one we felt down in the Lupercale! It’s incredible…”

“Impossible!” protested Claudius. “All authorities agree, lightning n-n-never strikes the same spot twice. Such a thing is unheard of.”

“And yet, it’s true. The bronze plaque on the pedestal wasn’t damaged before, I swear to Jupiter it wasn’t – but now, see how the letter C is missing, blasted into nothing.” Augustus swallowed hard. His face was ashen.

Looking closer, Lucius saw that the damage was just as the emperor had described. On the bronze plaque with an embossed inscription, the first letter of CAESAR had been melted away, leaving almost no trace.

“What does it mean, Claudius?” asked Augustus. “Such freaks of nature are always signs from the gods. Useless as you are for most things, skulking in that library of yours, you do know everything there is to know about omens.”

Claudius touched his fingertips to the scorched bronze plaque, then quickly drew them back. “Too hot to touch!” he gasped, then stared at the plaque and whispered, “Aesar. ”

“What’s that you say?”

Claudius shrugged. “I was simply reading the word that remains, without the letter C. ”

“But aesar is not a word.”

“I think it might be, in Etruscan. I’m not sure.”

“Then find out!”

“T-t-time, Great-Uncle. It will take time to properly interpret such an omen. Do you not agree, Lucius? We must know to the minute the time of the two lightning strikes. We must know the name of the dead slave. Even the name of the sculptor who made this statue might be significant. I must retire to my library to look through the literature, to c-c-consult my Etruscan dictionaries, to study previous omens derived from lightning.”

“How long will this take?”

Claudius furrowed his brow, then brightened. “Lucius will help me. As you yourself noted, Great-Uncle, it’s no accident that Lucius was with me when you sent that summons. Together, I promise you, Lucius and I will determine the meaning of this omen.”

“Do it quickly!”

“Qu-quick as asparagus, Great-Uncle!” Claudius smiled crookedly and wiped a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth.

“Perhaps our fortunes are about to improve, Lucius,” said Claudius. “We’ve just been given a very important task by the emperor himself. That makes us important men. We’d better get started.”

They were in Claudius’s library. The room was brightly lit by many lamps. Lucius had never seen so many scrolls and scraps of parchment in one place, all neatly, even obsessively, filed and sorted. There were histories, maps, calendars, and genealogies. There were detailed lists of every magistrate who had ever served the Roman state. There were numerous dictionaries, not just of Latin but of Greek, Egyptian, Parthian, the Punic tongue that had died with Carthage, the virtually defunct Etruscan language, and even languages Lucius had never heard of. There were sketches of historic sites Claudius has visited, together with his personal notes and copies of inscriptions taken from statues and other monuments.

Searching among the documents, Claudius found a scroll of heavy parchment, unrolled it on a small table, and placed weights to hold down the corners. A large circle drawn on the parchment was divided into quarters by a vertical line and a horizontal line and surrounded by notations. Though he knew little about astrology, Lucius recognized it as a horoscope.

“And not just any horoscope, but that of the emperor himself,” said Claudius. “This is an exact copy of the very horoscope that was cast for the young Octavius by the astrologer Theogenes of Apollonia. Surely you know the story? No? Ah, well, then…” Claudius cleared his throat.

“This was back in the days when the Divine Julius was still on earth, though very near the end of his life. He decided to send his nephew to be educated at Apollonia, on the west coast of Greece. For a companion, Octavius took along his dear friend Marcus Agrippa. The boys decided to have their horoscopes cast by the famous Theogenes. Agrippa went first, telling the astrologer the exact time and place of his birth. Theogenes disappeared into his study while the boys waited. The horoscope that resulted was so f-f-favourable – Theogenes swore he had never seen one to match it – that Octavius decided not to have his done after all, for fear that it would pale beside that of his friend. But Agrippa pressed him – teased him mercilessly, I should imagine – until Octavius relented and gave the astrologer the information he needed. Again the boys waited. When Theogenes finally emerged from his study, he fell to his knees before Octavius in awe, and declared that Octavius would become the master of the world. They say – though I have never been able to verify this for certain – that the horoscope was delivered to Octavius at the very moment that his uncle was murdered back in Roma.

“Ever since that day, the emperor has been so sure of his d-d-destiny that he’s made no secret of the hour of his birth. He even puts his sign, Capricornus, on his c-coinage. If anything merits classification as a state secret, you’d think it’s the emperor’s horoscope! Yet here it is, for you and me to study, just as Theogenes cast it. And since we have access to the information, we might as well use it.”

“But, Claudius, I know nothing about astrology.”

“Then you shall leave this room knowing more than when you entered.”

“But the magister says that augury is sufficient for all divinations.”

“I suspect the magister is a bit envious of the increasing popularity of astrology. I myself see no conflict between the principles of augury and the study of astral science. Any thoughtful person must perceive that heavenly bodies exert an influence on objects both animate and inanimate.

Certain effects of the sun and moon are obvious: they cause vegetation to grow, determine when animals sleep and rut, and control the tides. Likewise, the stars control storms and floods, which can be observed to come and go according to the rise and fall of certain constellations. This influence is invisible, as is the influence of a magnet. Considering the all-pervasive nature of this invisible influence, it would be irrational to presume that it does not exert an effect on human beings.

“It was the Babylonians who first charted the movements of the stars and created a vocabulary to describe their influence on humankind. After Alexander the Great conquered Persia, the study of astrology spread to Greece and Egypt. It was the Babylonian priest Berossus who moved to Cos, founded the first astrological school in Greece, and translated The Eye of Bel into Greek. It was Bolus of Egypt who wrote Sympathies and Antipathies, which remains the standard textbook. I’ve almost worn my copy out.”

Lucius stared at the horoscope, puzzling over the mathematical calculations and the notations about houses, signs, and planets. “Do you really think the solution to the lightning omen lies in the emperor’s horoscope?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it has some role to play in our research. But I think we should begin by consulting my Etruscan dictionaries, to see if I’m right about this word aesar…”

All night the storm continued, rattling the shutters, pelting the roof with rain, and shaking the ground with thunder, while Lucius and Claudius pored over various texts. From time to time, slaves brought them food and drink and replenished the lamps when the oil ran low. Lucius was not aware that dawn had broken until he heard a cock crow. Claudius opened the shutters. The storm had passed. The sky was clear. But the pale morning sunshine could not dispel the grim mood in the room. They had succeeded in interpreting the omen.

“Perhaps we could tell him that the omen defeated us, that we discovered nothing,” said Lucius.

Claudius shook his head. “He won’t accept that. He’d be able to tell at once that we were hiding something.”

“Then perhaps he’ll simply dismiss our interpretation. Why should he believe the two youngest augurs in Roma?”

“Because our interpretation is correct, as he will see for himself. Great-Uncle has a deep and abiding faith in omens. The outcome of every one of his b-b-battles was foretold by an omen which he himself divined – the eagle that drove away two ravens at Bononia, which foretold his eventual triumph over his fellow triumvirs; the shade of Caesar that appeared before Philippi; the driver and ass he met on the road before the battle of Actium, one named Eutychus and the other Nicon – Greek for ‘prosper’ and victory.’”

“And now, this omen.”

“Which we have no choice but to d-d-deliver.”

Euphranor accompanied them up several flights of steps to the high, many-windowed chamber where the emperor awaited them. This was the room, as Claudius informed Lucius in a whisper, that Augustus called his Little Syracuse, because the great Syracusan inventor Archimedes had had such a room in his house, isolated from the rest of the building.

Augustus’s secluded retreat was cluttered with mementos. There were architect’s models of various of his buildings, including a miniature Temple of Apollo in ivory. There were war trophies, including a captured ship’s beak from the battle of Actium, where the naval skills of Agrippa had soundly defeated Antonius and Cleopatra. There were exotic Egyptian treasures brought back from Alexandria, where Antonius and Cleopatra had escaped capture only by committing suicide. Draped upon a statue of the Divine Julius was a red cape, a bit faded and moth-eaten, that had been worn by the great man himself at his last great battle, at Munda in Spain.

There were also more personal mementos, including toy ships and catapults that had belonged to the emperor’s deceased grandsons. When Lucius and Claudius entered, Augustus was fiddling with a pair of baby shoes.

“Such tiny feet he has, little Gaius! These just arrived from the German frontier, Claudius, with a note from your brother. Your little nephew has just outgrown these, so Germanicus sends them to me as a keepsake. Charming, aren’t they? I suppose Germanicus and Agrippina think they can induce me to name their two-year-old as my heir. Well, your older brother isn’t a bad sort, and Agrippina is the only one of my grandchildren who turned out to be not completely useless. Little Gaius is my great-grandchild, and they say the boy is healthy, so perhaps there is some hope for the future, after all…”

His voice trailed away. He stared at the tiny shoes for a long time before he finally put them down among the cast-off toys.

The emperor appeared to have suffered as sleepless a night as had the two younger men, and he looked much worse for it. He had changed from his trabea into a tunic so drab and worn that Lucius would not have been surprised to see a slave wearing it. The emperor’s voice was hoarse and there was a rattle in his throat.

“So? What have you discovered?”

Claudius stepped forward, but when he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out. For a moment he was as stiff and silent as a statue, then suddenly he began to twitch and stammer, jerking this way and that and making incoherent noises. Lucius gripped his shoulder to steady him, but the twitching only grew worse. He had never seen Claudius so severely afflicted by his infirmities.

Augustus grunted and rolled his eyes. “Jupiter help me! You, then. Yes, you, Lucius Pinarius! Speak!”

Lucius’s heart pounded and he felt something thick pressing inside his throat. For a moment he feared that he was about to have a fit, like Claudius. Then he managed to take a breath and the words tumbled out.

“We believe – that is, Claudius and I – that our examination of the literature and our study of certain precedents – precedents pertaining specifically to lightning and to – to statues – and the Etruscan language – which we found in the literature-”

“By Hercules, you’re as useless as my nephew! Say what you have to say.”

Lucius felt light-headed and dazed from lack of sleep, but he pressed on. “For example, in the days of Tarquin, the last king, one of his statues was struck by lightning, which did damage only to the inscription, which was written in both Latin and Etruscan; well, you can see how the precedent applies here. In that instance, the numeral X was defaced in four places, as were the Etruscan words tinia, meaning days, and huznatre, meaning a group of young men. No one could interpret the omen, but its meaning became clear when, forty days later, a company of forty young warriors literally ran Tarquin and his sons from the city, ending the monarchy and establishing the Republic. It became clear then that the four Xs defaced by lightning meant forty, and referred to both the days remaining in Tarquin’s reign and the number of warriors who would drive him out. And there is a further example-”

“Enough of this antiquarian drivel! You try my patience, Lucius Pinarius. Deliver the omen clearly, at once.”

Lucius took a deep breath. “As Claudius thought, aesar is an old Etruscan word. It means a deity or divine spirit. And of course C – the letter that was melted away by the lightning – is also the symbol for one hundred. The presence of the dead slave was an indication of mortality, a small death foreshadowing a great one. When these facts are assembled, and the relevant precedents considered – the details of which you would have me omit – then we must conclude that the omen of the two lightning strikes indicates this: that in one hundred days, the person portrayed by the statue will leave the world of mortals and join the gods.”

The colour abruptly drained from the emperor’s face, like wine from a cup. His expression became so strange and his voice so thin that Lucius almost believed the shadow before him was the lemur of a man already dead. “What are you saying, young man? Are you telling me that I have only one hundred days to live?”

“N-n-ninety-nine, actually,” said Claudius, suddenly able to speak, but keeping his head down and his eyes averted. “The omen occurred yesterday, so we m-m-must subtract…” He abruptly looked up, as if surprised to hear his own voice, and fell silent.

Augustus was quiet for a long moment. “Will it be an easy death?”

“The omen gives no indication regarding the manner of death,” said Lucius.

Augustus nodded slowly. “I’ve always envied those who died easily. The Greeks have a word for it: euthanasia, ‘good death.’ That is all I hope for: euthanasia. I accept that I cannot control the time and place; that will be chosen by others. But I wish to go as quietly and as painlessly as possible, with my dignity intact.” He turned away from them, drew himself upright, and composed himself. “You understand that you must repeat this to no one. Now go. You are both dismissed.”

As he was leaving the room, Lucius looked back to see the emperor pick up the baby shoes of his great-grandson and stare at them, ashen-faced and with tears in his eyes.

Euphranor was nowhere to be seen. They found their own way down the steps.

“It’s almost as if he was expecting it,” said Lucius. He felt utterly drained.

“Perhaps he was expecting it. P-p-perhaps it was what he wanted to hear.”

“What do you mean, Claudius? Do you think your great-uncle is contemplating suicide? Or that he fears being murdered? What did Augustus mean, about not being able to control the time and place of his death? ‘That will be chosen by others,’ he said. What others? The gods?”

Claudius shrugged. “He’s an old m-m-man, Lucius. You and I can’t begin to imagine all the terrible things he’s seen, all the terrible things he’s done. Life has brought him a great deal of disappointment, especially in the last few years. So many d-deaths in the family, so much strife.” He drew a sharp breath. “Speaking of which…”

Coming towards them down the hallway, imposing despite her advanced age and the unassuming nature of her dress, was Claudius’s grandmother. The wife of Augustus did nothing to colour her hair or mask her wrinkles, and wore a stola simple enough to please even her luxury-hating husband, yet Livia projected an undeniable aura of privilege and power. Walking beside her, in an equally simple tunic, was her son, Claudius’s uncle, Tiberius, a robustly built man of middle age with a dour expression. By all accounts, Augustus intended to make Tiberius his heir, despite the fact that his stepson was not a blood relation.

Claudius and Lucius stepped to one side, but, instead of passing by, Livia and her son came to a stop before them. Claudius swallowed hard, then began to introduce Lucius, but he stuttered so badly that Livia cut him short with a wave of her hand.

“Never mind, grandson, I know who this is: young Lucius Pinarius.” She looked them up and down and raised an eyebrow. “Curious, that the two of you should still be wearing your trabeas from yesterday. Off to take the auspices, at this early hour? Or did you never go to bed? Yes, from the look of you, I think you’ve been up all night. But doing what? I wonder. Not celebrating, or else you’d smell of wine.”

She stared at Lucius, who was at a loss for an answer. The emperor had explicitly ordered them to speak of the omen to no one.

Livia seemed amused by his discomfort. “Can’t you see that I’m teasing you, young man? Nothing that happens in this house is a secret to me. I’m perfectly aware that lightning struck my husband’s statue last night, not once, but twice. While I’m amazed that he would entrust the interpretation of such an omen to the likes of you two, I’d be curious to know what you came up with. No answer? Ah, well, I shall simply ask him myself.”

Lucius glanced at Claudius. It was obvious that he lived in fear of his grandmother. Tiberius apparently did not frighten him as much, for Claudius dared to reach out and tap the sprig of laurel pinned to the man’s tunic.

“From last n-n-night, uncle? The storm is over and you need the laurel’s protection no longer. But I should think an atheist like yourself had no f-f-fear of lightning.” Claudius turned to Lucius. “Uncle Tiberius has no faith in the gods, and thus no belief in d-divination. If there are no gods, there is no point in trying to discern their will. Uncle Tiberius spurns augury. He puts his faith entirely in astrology.”

Tiberius looked at Claudius glumly. “That is correct, nephew. The stars decide when a man is born and when he dies, and the stars determine the course of his life. The logic is undeniable. Some mechanism unimaginably huge must control the movements of the stars, which in turn control our tiny lives. We mortals are many times removed from whatever primal force animates the cosmos.”

“Then the stars control humanity rather as the m-m-mechanism of a ballista controls the trajectory of its missile,” suggested Claudius, “or the cogs and gears of a water wheel control the m-m-movements of a leaf caught in the channel? Is that all we are, Uncle Tiberius, missiles hurtling through space, or leaves on a torrent?”

“Not bad metaphors, Claudius, especially for someone who believes lightning is an omen.” Tiberius sniggered and shook his head. “Only a fool or a child could believe that lightning is a weapon thrown down by some malicious giant in the clouds. Lightning is a natural phenomenon which occurs according to very precise, if very complicated, rules, just like the movement of the stars. I believe in science, Claudius, not superstition.”

Livia sighed, bored by the turn of the conversation. She took her son’s arm and indicated her desire to move on.

Claudius watched until they disappeared around a corner, gnashing his teeth. “There goes the next emperor.”

“Is it certain he’ll succeed Augustus?”

“There’s always a chance the old man will ch-ch-change his mind about Agrippa. He’s Augustus’s only surviving grandson, after all. And only two years older than you and me – young enough to enjoy a long reign. Agrippa’s banishment was Livia’s doing, I suspect: people who stand in her way have a habit of either dying or disappearing. Uncle Tiberius is the last man standing, so Tiberius is the heir apparent. It’s probably for the best. The bleeding wound of the German frontier is the biggest problem facing the empire right now, and Tiberius is a c-competent general, even if he is an atheist. I fear, Lucius, that our aptitude for divination will not serve us as well under the next emperor as it has under our present one.”

“Served us well? I don’t see how I’ve been well served by any of this!” Lucius snapped, suddenly feeling completely undone by lack of sleep and the strain of meeting the emperor’s demands. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “What if our prediction becomes known, and the emperor doesn’t die in a hundred days? I shall look like a fool!”

“N-n-ninety-nine days, actually-”

“And if he does die-”

“Then you shall look like a young fellow wise beyond his years.”

“Or will people hold us responsible for his death? What’s that old Etruscan saying? ‘Men blame the soothsayer’.”

“Oh, no, Lucius, if the emperor dies, it’s not you and me whom people will suspect.” Claudius glanced towards the spot where they had last seen Livia and Tiberius. “You might do well to take up a new study, Lucius. How much astrology do you think you can learn in n-ninety-nine days?”

“Perhaps, father, we should go to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine and pray,” said Lucius.

By his careful reckoning, exactly 105 days had passed since lightning had struck the emperor’s statue. The date on which he and Claudius had predicted that Augustus would be taken by the gods had come and gone, but the accuracy of the prophecy was still uncertain. Augustus was away from Roma, and since news could arrive no faster than the pace of a quick horse, there was no way to know whether something had happened to Augustus or not.

But the latest news, which Lucius and his father went seeking in the Forum each day, was unsettling. Intending to journey to Beneventum, accompanying Tiberius partway on a mission to begin new military operations in Illyria, Augustus had fallen ill. He was said to be recuperating at his retreat on the island of Capri, suffering from a minor irregularity of the bowels. Again, today, Lucius and his father had come to the Forum, anxious for further news of the emperor’s condition.

“Prayer is to be commended,” said Lucius’s father. “But why the Temple of Apollo?”

“Because that was where this all began, the night of the storm.” Lucius recalled the uncanny premonition he had experienced just before Euphranor had come to summon Claudius.

“Ah, but what would we pray for?” His father lowered his voice and looked around. They were not far from the Temple of Vesta, on a busy stretch of the Sacred Way. Several Vestals were leaving the round temple with their attendants, and a group of senators in togas was nearby; some of them nodded and hailed the elder Pinarius before passing on. Father and son retreated to a more secluded spot on the far side of the Temple of Castor.

“As I was saying, son, for what would you have us pray? Surely not for the emperor’s death; that would be treason. Yet, if we pray that the emperor should not die in accordance with the omen, then are we not praying to thwart the will of the gods?”

Not for the first time, Lucius regretted confiding in his father. If anything, the elder Pinarius was more nervous than Lucius about the omen and its outcome. And had he not put his father in danger by telling him about the omen, against the emperor’s explicit orders? Yet, Lucius could hardly have borne the strain of waiting alone.

“Then let us pray for neither of those things, father. Let us pray for the well-being of the Roman state,” suggested Lucius.

“Ah, you remind me of your late grandfather!” said the elder Pinarius with a dry laugh. “The old man was a master at finding the middle path. You’re right, of course. We shall go to the Senate House and make an offering there.”

They crossed the Forum, walking past the massive buildings Augustus had erected to house the imperial bureaucracy. They passed the ancient speaker’s platform called the Rostra, decorated by captured-ships’ beaks, where the great orators of the Republic had harangued the voters of Roma. The Rostra was little used these days.

The Senate House was relatively new, having been begun by Julius Caesar just before his assassination and completed by Augustus. The exterior was quite austere compared to the elaborately coloured and decorated temples nearby. “I was present when the emperor dedicated this building,” recalled the elder Pinarius, “still a boy, not yet wearing my manly toga. I practically grew up here, watching debates with your grandfather, taking notes and carrying messages for him long before I became a senator myself.”

They ascended the steps and entered. In contrast to the exterior, the chamber was exquisitely finished. Gilded railings and plush red draperies divided the various spaces within the vast room. Polished marble adorned the walls and floors. Windows set high in the walls filled the lofty space with light. The Senate was not meeting on this day, but there were plenty of members about, idly conversing or tending to business with their secretaries. Under the autocratic rule of Augustus, the Senate still performed numerous bureaucratic functions. The continuing survival of the ancient institution helped to maintain the official fiction that Roma was still a republic, and the emperor was merely the first among equals, not the master of his fellow citizens but the devoted servant of all.

Lucius and his father approached the Altar of Victory. The altar itself was made of green marble adorned with elaborate carvings of laurel leaves. Looming beyond and above the altar was a towering statue of the goddess Victory, surrounded by a sampling of the spoils of war taken by Augustus. These displays were changed from time to time. On this day the spoils on exhibit included the iron prow of an Egyptian warship taken at Actium, fashioned in the shape of a crocodile’s head. There was also a selection of Queen Cleopatra’s royal jewellery, including a carnelian necklace, and one of the queen’s tall atef crowns made of ivory with inlays of gold and lapis.

The elder Pinarius began the ritual performed by every senator upon entering the chamber. He burned a bit of incense on the altar, poured a libation of wine, and recited a prayer. “Goddess, grant victory to Roma and defeat to her enemies. Watch over the empire which you delivered to Augustus. Protect Roma from all those who would cause her harm, whether from without or from within.”

They stepped back from the altar. Lucius’s father shook his head as he repeated in a whisper the final words of the prayer. “‘Enemies from without… or from within.’ That last part was meant to apply to people like Marcus Antonius – and your grandfather. What a mess the old man made of his inheritance! He, too, was a great-nephew of the Divine Julius, no less than Augustus. He, too, was named an heir, though he was given a smaller share. He, too, might have risen to greatness. But how he loved that scoundrel Antonius! To please Antonius, he made an enemy of his own cousin. Augustus never quite trusted your grandfather’s late conversion to the winning side. The emperor spared him but excluded him from playing any role in the new regime. The Pinarii was set to one side, neither persecuted nor rewarded – the forgotten heirs of Julius Caesar.” The wistful tone of his voice suddenly turned bitter. “And through all our financial difficulties, Augustus has never so much as tossed a sesterce our way!”

He left unspoken the hope that he and Lucius had already discussed, privately and in whispers, that perhaps things would soon change. If the emperor should die, Tiberius would almost certainly take his place, and Tiberius had no reason to treat the Pinarii like outcasts. Perhaps the family falling-out between Augustus and Lucius’s grandfather could finally be forgotten. If Lucius could please the new emperor, there was no reason why he should not move forward in life. Towards that end, following Claudius’s advice and with an aim towards pleasing the future emperor, Lucius had begun to study the Babylonian science of astrology. And though Claudius carried little weight with Tiberius, he was nonetheless a member of the imperial family, and perhaps his growing friendship with Lucius might yet bring some benefit to the Pinarii.

Even as Lucius’s thoughts turned to Claudius, his friend appeared at the entrance to the Senate House. Claudius looked this way and that, appearing flustered and confused, then spotted Lucius and hurried to him.

“I thought I s-s-saw you earlier in the Forum. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Lucius raised his eyebrows. “Is there news?”

Claudius shook his head. “Nothing to report. But I do have something else to tell you. Something quite interesting. Perhaps it will at least take your mind off the m-m-matter that is preoccupying us all.” He looked around the chamber, at the clusters of senators in hushed conversation and the secretaries scurrying to and fro, and cringed. “I can’t stand the atmosphere in this place, all the stuffy formality and self-importance! Come, let’s find a more comfortable spot to talk. I know where we can go.”

He led them across the Forum, through the valley between the Capitoline and the Palatine, all the way to the waterfront. Their destination was a tavern on the docks. As they stepped inside and their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Lucius wrinkled his nose at the smell, a combination of spilled wine, unwashed humanity, and the effluvia of the Cloaca Maxima, which emptied into the Tiber nearby. The handful of patrons were the types who habituated taverns in the middle of the day – actors, sailors, prostitutes, and gamblers.

Claudius heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods for a place where I can feel at ease! No one staring at me, no one c-c-carping at me, expressing their disapproval and disappointment. Here I can be myself.”

“Are you sure it’s proper for someone from the imperial household to be seen in such an establishment?” Lucius’s father looked askance at the clientele. He hung back for a moment, then sat on a bench beside his son, across from Claudius.

“Why not? Quite a few of Great-Uncle’s freedmen patronize this tavern. Why, it was Euphranor who first showed me this place. There’s no one more trusted by the emperor. I’ve seen the m-m-man on this very bench, so drunk on cheap wine he couldn’t stand up.”

“You said you had something to tell us,” said Lucius’s father. He looked up at the buxom serving girl who had brought cups and a pitcher of wine. “Just a splash of wine, no more; fill the rest of the cup with water.” Lucius gave the same order as his father, but Claudius drank his wine neat. He drained a whole cup, then ordered another before he spoke.

“It’s about that amulet, that family heirloom of yours. I see you’re wearing it today, Lucius.”

Lucius touched the lump of gold at his breast.

“I have been c-c-consulting with my old tutor, Titus Livius,” said Claudius, his speech slightly slurred. “Of course you’ve read his history of the city, from its earliest beginnings. No? Neither of you? Not even the parts about your own family? Most people at least have a slave search through the scrolls to find the mentions of their ancestors.” Claudius shook his head. “Well, my conversations with Livius have confirmed my initial belief that this talisman can be identified as a fascinum. In other words, long ago, before the details were worn away, it would have depicted a magical phallus, probably a winged phallus, considering the shape. If you squint and use a bit of imagination, you can visualize the amulet as it originally appeared.” Without asking, he reached out and took hold of the talisman, pulling the necklace towards him and Lucius along with it. “Yes, look – here is the shaft, and here the t-testes, and here the two little wings!”

Claudius released the amulet. Lucius took it between his fingers and gazed down at it, feeling profoundly disappointed. A fascinum? Such trinkets were exceedingly common, worn for protection by women in childbirth and put around the necks of infants to protect them from the harmful gaze of the envious, the so-called evil eye. Even slaves wore them.

“So that’s all it is?” Lucius said. “Nothing but a common fascinum?”

Claudius wagged his finger. “Ah, hardly c-c-common! No, this fascinum is special, very special. Indeed, if my conjectures are correct, it could be the oldest such amulet in existence. These days, a fascinum is thought of as a mere trinket, a good-luck charm. One sees them made of cheap metal, hanging from the necks of slaves. Hardly anyone remembers the god Fascinus, from whom such amulets take their name, but the winged phallus appears in some of the most ancient stories told by our ancestors. Such a manifestation appeared in the hearthfire to the mother of King Servius Tullius, and even earlier, another such manifestation appeared to one of the kings of Alba, Tarketios, and demanded to have intercourse with his daughter. No god who takes such a form was ever described by the Greeks, or indeed by any of the peoples that Roma has conquered. We may conclude that the god Fascinus appeared exclusively to our ancestors, and must have played some role in the origins of Roma.

“Furthermore, not every fascinum is a mere trinket. One of the holiest objects of the state religion is the sacred fascinum in the keeping of the Vestal virgins. I’ve seen the thing myself. It’s larger than life and very heavy, made of solid g-g-gold. For centuries, the Virgo Maxima has placed it in a hidden spot under the ceremonial chariot driven by generals during their triumphal pro cessions, to ward off the evil eye. You could count on one hand the people who know the origin of this c-c-custom – Titus Livius, the Virgo Maxima, myself

… and probably no one else, since you Pinarii seem to have neglected to pass the story down through the generations.”

“Are you saying a Pinarius was involved in the origin of this custom?” said Lucius’s father. He had been distracted earlier by the gambling with dice and certain lewd behaviour that was going on in the shadows elsewhere in the tavern, but now Claudius had his full attention.

“I am saying exactly that. The c-c-custom of placing a fascinum beneath the triumphal chariot originated with a Vestal who had a special devotion to Fascinus, and her name was… Pinaria! Oh yes, without a doubt, she came from the Pinarius family. This Pinaria served under the Virgo Maxima Foslia in the days when the Gauls captured the city, some 400 years ago. Back in those days, amulets like your fascinum were not at all common; indeed, I can find only one reference to a fascinum that dates as far back as the time of Pinaria. Now listen closely, because this is where the story gets tricky – especially when you’ve had as much wine to drink as I have!

“Thanks to the exhaustive history of Roma written by Fabius Pictor, who paid special attention to the contributions of his own family, the Fabii – I don’t suppose you’ve read that, either? – I have discovered a reference to a g-g-gold fascinum worn by a certain Kaeso Fabius Dorso. This Kaeso was the adopted son of the famous warrior Gaius Fabius Dorso, who was trapped atop the Capitoline Hill when the Gauls occupied the city, along with… the Vestal Pinaria! They were trapped on the Capitoline for about nine months. Almost immediately after their liberation, Gaius Fabius Dorso adopted an infant he named Kaeso, whose parentage is unknown. Given these circumstances, it is not hard to imagine that this Kaeso was the love child of the Vestal Pinaria and Gaius Fabius Dorso, and that the gold fascinum he was known to wear was a gift from his mother, the same woman who originated the custom of placing a fascinum under the triumphal chariot.” Claudius leaned back against the wall, looking pleased with himself, and waved to the serving girl to bring more wine.

The elder Pinarius frowned. “In the first place, the notion of a Vestal secretly, and criminally, bearing a child is distasteful to any respectable person-”

“But hardly unknown,” said Claudius. “I assure you, the history of the Vestals is full of such indiscretions, some made public and punished, but many others covered up. Thus the old joke: show me a Vestal who’s a virgin, and I’ll show you an ugly Vestal.”

Lucius’s father did not laugh. “Even so, if one accepts that this Kaeso Fabius Dorso was the love child of the Vestal Pinaria, and that she gave him a gold fascinum, what does that have to do with amulet handed down by my father and worn by Lucius?”

Claudius gazed at him in drunken disbelief. “You Pinarii! What sort of p-p-patricians are you, not to know every root, branch, and twig of your family tree? You are Kaeso Fabius Dorso’s direct descendants! Are you not aware of the Fabia who was your many-times great-grandmother from the era of Scipio Africanus? Oh yes, I am certain of the lineage: I have the genealogical proof in my library. And so we may conjecture that the fascinum you wear, Lucius – an ancient object which has been handed down through many g-g-generations – is the very fascinum that was worn by your ancestor Kaeso Fabius Dorso, which I conjecture came from the Vestal Pinaria. From whom did Pinaria inherit it? Who knows? It may go back much, much further in time. That little lump of g-gold is almost certainly the oldest specimen of a fascinum that I have ever encountered. We might even conjecture that it is the fascinum, the original prototype that predates even the fascinum of the Vestal virgins. Perhaps it was created by the god Fascinus himself, or by his first worshippers, the Pinarii, who also founded and tended the Great Altar of Hercules long before the city of Roma was founded.”

Claudius opened his eyes wide, overwhelmed by his own erudition. Talking made him thirsty. He swallowed the wine in his cup and ordered more. “The Pinarius family is very ancient, even more ancient than my own. My ancestor, the Sabine warlord Appius Claudius, arrived relatively late in Roma, in the first years of the Republic. But you Pinarii were here before the Republic, before the kings, even before there was a city, in the days when d-d-demigods like Hercules roamed the earth. And that ‘little trinket’ that hangs from your neck, dear Lucius, is a direct link back to those days.”

Lucius looked down at the fascinum, duly impressed but still a bit dubious. “But, Claudius, we’re not even sure that this is a fascinum.”

“Lucius, Lucius! I have an instinct for such things, and my instinct is n-never wrong.”

“Is that what history amounts to?” asked Lucius. “Looking through old lists and scraps of parchment, making genealogies, connecting odd facts, and then leaping to conclusions based on guesses or instinct or wishful thinking?”

“Exactly! You put your finger on the very essence of history!” said Claudius with a drunken laugh. Lucius had never seen him so inebriated, or so relaxed. It occurred to him that Claudius had stuttered very little since they had arrived at the tavern.

“To be sure, Lucius, history, unlike divination, is an inexact science. That is because history deals with the past, which is gone forever and which neither gods nor men can alter or revisit. But divination deals with the present and the future, and the will of the gods, which has yet to be revealed. Divining is an exact science, provided the diviner has sufficient knowledge and skill.”

Claudius glanced at the entrance and gave a start. He sat upright and his eyes grew wide. “Like a messenger in a p-p-play, arriving at the appropriate moment!”

The newcomer was Euphranor. Entering the dark room from the bright outdoors, he did not see them until Claudius called and waved to him.

“Looking for m-m-me, Euphranor?”

“Actually, no. I just arrived in the city and I need a drink.”

“Then j-j-join us.” Claudius made room on the bench and patted the spot beside him.

Euphranor sat with a wince. “Saddle-sore,” he explained. “I’d prefer to stand, but I’m too exhausted.” His cloak and tunic were covered with dust.

“What n-news, Euphranor?”

“For the love of Venus, man, let me have a drink first!” Euphranor called for the serving girl and downed two cups in rapid succession. He stared blearily at Lucius and his father and seemed reluctant to speak.

“Go on, Euphranor,” said Claudius. “You can speak freely. Surely you remember Lucius Pinarius. The other fellow is his father.”

Euphranor closed his eyes for a long moment, then spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “I’m the first to arrive with the news, so not a man in Roma knows this yet. The emperor is dead.”

“Numa’s balls!” whispered Claudius. “Now we all need another drink!” He waved to the serving girl. “When, Euphranor?”

“Five days ago.”

Claudius and Lucius exchanged glances. Augustus had died exactly one hundred days after the lightning strike.

“Where?”

“In the town of Nola.”

“That’s just east of Mount Vesuvius. Why has it taken so long for the n-n-news to reach Roma?”

“The delay was by order of Tiberius.”

“But why?”

Euphranor grunted. “I can only tell you the sequence of events. Augustus died. Tiberius gave strict orders that no one was to make the news public until he allowed it. Some days later, a messenger arrived with news that young Agrippa is dead-”

“The emperor’s grandson?” said Lucius’s father.

“Killed by the soldiers guarding him on the island where he was in exile. After that message arrived, Tiberius told me to ride to Roma as fast as I could and deliver the news to the imperial staff.”

“I see,” whispered Claudius. “Uncle Tiberius held off making Augustus’s death public until Agrippa was disposed of, that’s what you m-m-mean. Poor Agrippa!”

“I’ve only told you the sequence of events. I won’t speculate on the whys or wherefores,” said Euphranor, with the blank expression so often assumed by imperial servants. “When he received the message about Agrippa’s death, Tiberius immediately and publicly disavowed any responsibility.”

Claudius nodded. “It’s possible that Augustus left instructions that Agrippa be killed upon his death. Or that Livia forged such instructions. Technically, Uncle Tiberius may be innocent of Agrippa’s m-mmurder.”

“But, Claudius, what will become of you?” said Lucius.

“Me? Harmless, stuttering, half-witted Claudius? I shall be left to my b-books and my lituus, I imagine.”

The serving girl came to pour more wine. Lucius’s father waved aside her offer of water and took his cup full-strength. Lucius did likewise.

“How did the emperor die?” said Claudius.

Euphranor suddenly seemed to fade, done in by exhaustion and wine. His shoulders slumped and his face went slack. “We’d left Capri and were on our way back to Roma. The emperor had been unwell – weakness, a pain in his stomach, loose bowels – but he seemed to have gotten better. But on the road he took a turn for the worse. We made a detour to the family house at Nola. The emperor took to bed in the very room where his father died. He was lucid almost until the end. He seemed resigned to his death. He even seemed a bit… amused. He assembled his family and travelling companions, including Livia and Tiberius and myself, and he quoted a line from some play, like an actor seeking approval. ‘If I have played my role in this farce with convincing ease, then applaud me, please. Applaud! Applaud!’ And we did. That seemed to please him. But at the very end he became restless and frightened. He saw things no one else could see. He cried out a word in Etruscan, ‘Huznatre! ’ And then, ‘They’re carrying me off! Forty young men are carrying me off!’ And then it was over.”

Claudius and Lucius exchanged knowing looks.

“A dying man’s delusion,” said Lucius’s father.

“Not a delusion but a prophecy,” said Euphranor. “Tiberius has arranged for forty Praetorians to form an honour guard that will carry the emperor’s body back into the city.”