Master and God

16

Certain moments would never be the same again. A garden at dusk in late summer would always remind Lucilla of her tryst with Vinius, and now mid-mornings when street-life was going on outside the shutters would sometimes catch her out too, making her weep. That was the time when Paulina had come to tell her what had happened. Instead of her usual cheery appearance, carrying little Titus, with the two girls scampering ahead and squealing for their aunt, Paulina was alone and solemn. She and Lucilla sat down together with hot beakers of flavoured borage tea, and then Paulina broke the news.

Reports of the tragic rout at Tapae had reached Rome. Felix and Fortunatus had gone to the Praetorian Camp, pleading for word of their younger brother. They learned that when Decebalus chased the remnants of Fuscus’ troops back through the mountains, so few soldiers scrambled back to the Danube that the cormorants on the riverbank scarcely bothered to lift off at their coming. None of the Praetorian contingent made it back. Their battle standard had been captured, which told its own story.

The Guards at the Camp had been sympathetic, until the brothers’ persistence became a menace; then the Guards’ own dismay at the loss of colleagues made them rougher. They shouted at Felix and Fortunatus to give up. There was no point repeatedly beseeching answers. Gaps in the Praetorian cohorts were to be filled immediately; any Guard who had stayed in Moesia with Fuscus was presumed missing in action. Fuscus, the Prefect, was definitely dead. A great many good men had died with him. Decius Gracilis and his century had been wiped out. The beneficarius was lost with his centurion. Felix and Fortunatus must stop causing trouble and accept it. Gaius Vinius was dead.

Dead. He was dead.

‘We all thought,’ said Paulina, with delicacy, ‘Gaius had a soft spot for you, Lucilla.’ Silence. ‘He never said anything?’

‘No.’

Paulina was not easily deflected. ‘Did you know that he divorced his wife? Just before he went away… She was very surprised. We all were.’

‘I am too,’ replied Lucilla honestly.

Not half as surprised as when the Praetorians supplied Felix and Fortunatus with their brother’s will. Gaius had made them his heirs and executors, not unexpectedly. He left them everything, with one surprising exception. A bequest ‘to Flavia Lucilla, well-deserving of me’ gave her all the contents of his rooms at Plum Street. ‘Well-deserving’ was a phrase used on tombstones for a spouse or lover, though presumably he intended simply to deter legal quibbles. Felix and Fortunatus added Gaius to their father’s memorial tablet near the Camp, but Lucilla was not invited to appear on it.

Everyone found it convenient to make out that Lucilla’s odd inheritance was just a few sticks of furniture and old keepsakes.

The furniture was better than her own, and Lucilla would take care of it for his sake. The keepsakes turned up when she unlocked the great chest in his bedroom. She made sure she was alone when she explored it.

Inside were his birth certificate and proof of Roman citizenship; army papers; two phalerae, which were his medals for army service in Britain and for saving a priest’s life in the vigiles. A flat gilded box that she remembered him bringing contained the gold oak wreath he won in action when he was a young soldier. She visualised him carrying that box into the apartment, clamped under one arm as if nothing special; he never said what it was.

Some items were everyday: a draughtsboard with two sets of glass counters, a toy ceramic chariot Gaius must have had in his childhood, favourite belts and a scabbard, the bronze multiple tool she remembered him buying, with its ingenious fold-up spoon, fork, cutting blade, toothpick, spatula and spike.

There was an amulet on a very short string, such as an infant might wear; his daughter’s? Lucilla lifted out personal treasures carefully, guessing what each possession might have meant.

Wrapped in a piece of soft cloth was a small collection of jewellery. She did ask his brothers about that; they were vague, but Paulina consulted an aunt who said the simple rings, silver bangle, gold chains and various earrings had belonged to Clodia, his mother. His father had called him after his mother, Lucilla learned. The formal documents and citations gave his full title. Gaius Vinius Clodianus: that had been his name.

What Lucilla never told the others was that the chest he left her contained a large amount of money.

The soldier’s savings took the form of aurei — each worth twenty-five denarii or a hundred sesterces — those big gold coins that people rarely used but hoarded. Perhaps it was true that when Domitian took the throne he had awarded soldiers a bonus of twenty thousand sesterces, the huge sum first given by the Emperor Claudius. Lucilla never actually counted, but the quantity took her breath away. Knowing this gift was intentional, yet hardly daring to touch it, she thought very carefully about how to use the cash. In the end when their rent fell due she paid Vinius’ regular share out of his money. That way, she could keep the apartment as he must have intended. Years were to pass while Lucilla continued to pay rent as if for Gaius.

She used his second room as her evening refuge, altering it to suit her, but kept his bedroom just as he had left it. She even left an old cloak of his on a door peg, but she brought out the toy chariot and placed it on the stool beside the bed. Nobody else went in there. She cleaned, tidied, occasionally lay on his neat bed, thinking. She never felt able to wear most of the jewellery, apart from one set of earrings with pearl drops which she chose and wore in the Praetorian’s memory.

In the months after the news came, she discovered unexpected things about him. First, in the apartment itself, she noticed a wall niche in the corridor. It must always have existed. Before he left, Vinius had placed there two small bronze statues, the ‘Lares and Penates’ who traditionally guarded the fortunes of a Roman home: he had left Lucilla with her own household gods. His gods too, perhaps. Had he taken them when he divorced Verania? The bronze had no patina; the little statues looked new.

Lying on the ledge where flowers and offerings could be placed, he had left his front door key — One for you; one for me. No duplicates. Agreed?

People continually talked about him. Paulina reminisced about his youth. ‘He was so good-looking before that happened with his eye. Lovely hair, and such long eyelashes — oh he was gorgeous! Very quiet as a lad, but he seemed happy. You want to talk to his aunties about him…’

The old man who owned the main house called Lucilla one day. Cretticus senior, his face seamed, rather staring eyes; he spent his time in a long daybed in the peristyle garden, apparently snoozing, in a nonagenarian’s dream-state. He was all there if you spoke to him though. ‘Sound fellow, your Praetorian.’

‘Not mine!’

‘Decent manners. Wonderful patience. Knew a thing or too; he took a lot of interest in the world. He always had time for an old codger. I shall miss our talks… Let me know if you need anything, Flavia Lucilla. So long as I am still here.’

Did he ask you to look out for me?

He would have done, if he had thought of it. ‘That man was a hero, girl. Did you know he won the civic crown for saving a life in battle?’

‘I found it. It is a little crumpled, but very beautiful.’

‘Keep it safe for him.’

You speak as if he is coming back.

‘He knew I had a weakness for hazelnut slices. He would often bring me one from the fine bakery on Ten Taverns Street. So thoughtful.’

Whenever Lucilla passed the bakery now, she bought pastries for Cretticus and chatted to him. When the pumice-seller gave up, the old man told Melissus to give her a good price on the lease for the spare shop, which he knew she wanted. ‘Trust a pretty woman to wind a helpless old-timer around her sneaky little finger!’ complained the agent. But he too was growing older and lazier, so he went along with it. Thus Lucilla was able to open a neighbourhood manicure and hair business as she had always wanted. Two lively girls worked for her; they tended customers on the street or indoors, and lived in an upstairs mezzanine. One was her slave Glyke, now returned without the baker’s boy though with suspicious bruises and unfeasibly good intentions.

After Alba, Lucilla had wondered if Vinius might have left her a farewell note at Plum Street, but there was nothing. Only his bequest now silently gave her comfort as she grieved; perhaps in some friendly way he had wanted that for her.

She never regretted running away from him. She believed he was not for her. She felt he had always made that clear. She could never have resolved the conflict she perceived between how much she wanted him and its impossibility. So at Alba, when he left her alone briefly, she bolted from their pavilion, rushed to the residential quarters, gathered her things and fled down the hill to the Via Appia. She hitched a lift on a cart, right then in the clear air of dawn, before most people were stirring. She went not towards Rome, but down south to the Bay of Naples, where she stayed at another imperial villa until she could be certain Vinius had left Rome.

Afterwards, sometimes she dared to remember being in his arms. How, after only clumsy couplings with others, she and this man had straightway come together as a perfect fit. How they moved together, in effortless synchronicity and with such deep pleasure. How when their exercise left them exhausted, she cried a little, so Vinius wiped her eye with his index finger, murmuring kindly, ‘No tears!’ before they both fell into profound sleep.

How her troubled mind had drowned in peace, her body melting against his…

He was dead. No point speculating. Cherish the past for what it was, an ideal, a signal that human happiness might be a possibility. Raise your standards. Make a decent life, Lucilla. Life is all there is. If it’s only once, it must be good… He had been right. If perfection only happened once, that was better than never. Now nothing for her would ever again entail complete despair. So thank you, Gaius Vinius Clodianus, son of Marcus, thank you for your good deed, a deed that brightened somebody’s dark world.

Onwards then. Life had to be gone through. In the year of the news of the Battle of Tapae, sad as she was, Flavia Lucilla picked herself up. Determined to improve herself, she stopped dallying with awkward lovers and ignored the fast set. She attached herself to a more cultured circle, keen to educate her mind. She dressed smartly but with taste. She was chaste, or at least careful, even though nobody knew it. She listened, learned to judge, tolerated many fools, made a few good friends, and eventually she suggested to a man she knew that they should be married.

He was a teacher. What could be better than that?

How she came to this marriage eventually was through mutual friends. By that time, Lucilla knew a lot of people. Many were at Alba, to which she returned whenever the imperial ladies went. There in particular she now explored society with better discrimination. At one point, as a tribute to Vinius, she tried to appreciate music; this was not a success, partly because it made her miserable on his behalf but also because she tended to drift off into her own thoughts.

For a brief period she dallied among the building project teams. Hearing one of the great Rabirius’ drawing assistants one day discussing business with a site supervisor, she had been struck by the power of professional men, relaxed in their expertise. It had an almost erotic effect, although subsequently when an architect tried to take up with her, Lucilla found him deceitful and indecisive, which soon cured her.

Eventually she alighted instead on the verge of Domitian’s literary circle.

Joining a writers’ group is a mistake even for professional writers — especially for them, if they have any self-respect. Lucilla was too inexperienced, so far, to take that attitude.

The girl would learn.

Although life on the frontiers was tricky, back in Rome it was a time of civic certainty. Domitian had returned from his initial success in Moesia to hold a Dacian Triumph (spurious, in the light of the coming defeat at Tapae) and to appoint himself Censor. Unlike his predecessors in that role, he held the post alone and was to be censor for life. This would involve him enforcing much moral legislation, particularly the Augustan divorce laws. He enjoyed regulating conduct. The main point was that the censor reviewed the lists and supervised the political orders; this gave Domitian full control of the Senate.

In case anybody ever missed his significance, he took to appearing at all public occasions, including Senate meetings, in full triumphal uniform. That meant parading with a laurel wreath on his best toupee, a gold and ivory sceptre, and elaborate white robes that signified the honorand was representing Jupiter. The one-day ceremonial regalia for a general had been extended to permanently suggest divinity.

Domitian felt himself to be under Jupiter’s personal protection, but his foremost devotion was to the goddess Minerva. Minerva was sometimes equated with the Greek Athene, though she had very ancient roots in Etruscan Italy. Helmeted and depicted carrying a tall spear, she was a goddess of war and warriors, but her patronage extended to significant peacetime activities: wisdom in general, medicine, commerce, crafts, music and poetry. At Domitian’s court this was particularly good news for poets, who cluttered up audience rooms, all hoping a well-disposed attendant would place an elegy in the Emperor’s bedroom, or a well-timed public recital would have them reading aloud just as he dropped by. Domitian had apparently stopped writing himself, but loved the tyranny of patronage.

Lucilla first engaged with this circle originally through Claudia, a pleasant woman married to the poet Statius; she had a daughter by a previous marriage to a different poet, a young girl who was extremely musical and whom Claudia closely chaperoned. Lucilla met mother and daughter at a recital, then heard a reading by Statius who had a famously good voice. He, like his father before him, had been a prizewinner in the literary category at the Naples Games, which were now defunct after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Coming to Alba, he hoped to become known for his magnum opus, an epic in twelve books called the Thebaid. He was still polishing this piece of work, though he regularly read excerpts. It told the story of the Seven Against Thebes, a Greek power struggle which involved episodes of extreme violence; that was not to Lucilla’s taste, especially in the period after Vinius died. However, the writer was a man much-liked, and with good reason, she thought; she learned simply to wonder quietly at the subjects authors choose.

An overheard discussion of the Thebaid one day made her realise her education’s deficiencies. Statius was not present, which was as well because he was so sensitive about reception of his work it was painful to watch. The discussion was about whether his poem, which might reflect on Domitian’s court, was either slathered with the grossest flattery or instead was deeply subversive and critical of the Emperor’s authoritarianism and the violence which underlay society. The concept that words could be so ambiguous was new to Lucilla. She was also straining to define phrases like ‘dactylic hexameters’, and to grasp whether she ought to regard these as thudding poetic metre or storytelling elegance.

Feeling disadvantaged, Lucilla might have gone off to some other clique, had she not come across the epigrams of Martial. His first book was recently published. These poems were easy: they were short, rude, witty and unpretentious — so readable that Lucilla could now see no reason to bother with any verse that was long-winded, overwrought and obscure. She began to discriminate between what she liked and what was fashionable. Such naive honesty would, of course, bar her from the intelligentsia.

Lucilla battled with epic. The success of Virgil’s Aeneid, with its undisguised grovelling to the Emperor Augustus, had encouraged writers of long heroic poems. Professionals like Statius blatantly hoped to win handouts whereas the upper classes, the amateurs, dreamed of retirement from public life, devoting themselves to ten-year labours over cherished epic manuscripts. Hence the Thebaid of Statius was now only one in a plethora of grandiose efforts: Valerius Flaccus, in his Argonautica, had begun the modern trend when he used Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece as a metaphor for the youthful Vespasian’s involvement in the invasion of Britain. It was Statius’ friend, the teacher Nemurus, who advised Lucilla against reading this; he told her the central hypothesis — that in capturing Britannia, Vespasian had opened up the seas in the same way as Jason — was so flimsy, the bluff old emperor himself must have guffawed. ‘All you get are tedious displays of erudition, exaggerated imagery, monotonous style and wilful dullness.’

This was when Lucilla first decided Nemurus was worth cultivating.

Epicry was like a plague. Rutilius Gallicus, the newly appointed Prefect of the City, was thought to be penning a little something. A career administrator from Northern Italy, he was such a plodder, nobody would even ask him about it. Silius Italicus, a lawyer with a suspect past (he had worked as an informer for Nero), kept his head down these days too, devoting himself to his Punica, which in a mammoth seventeen books related the conflict between Scipio and Hannibal. From what had leaked into public circulation (given a good shove off the slipway by the author, said Nemurus), his models were the historian Livy, Virgil naturally, and Lucan’s Pharsalia, written under Nero, which had retold the rivalry of Caesar and Pompey. Lucilla was disappointed to hear this was not glittering heroics. Caesar came across as unpleasant, Pompey as ineffectual. ‘However,’ (Nemurus again) ‘Pompey goes to his treacherous death with stoic poise.’

Lucilla, usually so diffident, lost her temper. ‘That’s insulting to our soldiers. I knew a Guard who was killed in Dacia. Nobody will ever even learn what happened to him, but he too was ambushed and I don’t imagine he went down with “stoic poise”. I see him covered in blood, fighting to exhaustion; I hear him saying “bloody well annoyed to be landed in this shit by idiots”… Why can’t poetry be real?’

The satirist Juvenal, happening to be present, fetched out a note tablet and scribbled words that he would work up later, excoriating Domitian and his advisory council by portraying them in a mock-debate about how to cook a monstrous turbot, when they ought to be applying themselves to Dacia.

Lucilla never cared for Juvenal, not socially. His targets were indiscriminate; he had even insulted Statius, saying he prostituted his art by pandering to the popular taste, so desperate that he had once sold ballet scripts to Paris. Juvenal could be extremely funny, but like Martial he was always depicting his life as a desperate struggle to obtain money from disinterested patrons, rushing about in the hope someone would invite him to dinner, or attaching himself to the gullible rich in order to screw legacies out of them. Martial was warmer, and at least said he never used real people in his epigrams. Juvenal did, and had a bad habit of brutal exaggeration. Once he knew who she worked for, he was always asking Lucilla about the Emperor’s relationship with Julia, trying to get her to say Julia had experienced a whole series of abortions, all supposedly forced on her as a result of sex with her imperial uncle. Telling Juvenal it was untrue never deterred him.

Lucilla had a distaste for men who chose not to work yet bewailed their poverty. So her preference was for the professional poets and other learned men who made up an income giving lessons. That said, even career teachers hung around hoping for imperial appointments, but as the Emperor and Empress continued to have no children, this was futile.

Good poets had opportunities. In the year of the Fuscus disaster at Tapae, Domitian’s chief project at home had been reinstituting the Capitoline Games, in honour of Jupiter, for which he built a new Odeum and Stadium, deemed two of the most beautiful buildings in Rome. Held from then on every four years, these games were modelled on the ancient Olympics and attracted international competitors, though Domitian extended the repertoire to include not only athletics but literature and music. Two years later, after Tettius Julianus won the second Battle at Tapae and reversed Roman fortunes in Dacia, the Emperor would hold the Secular Games in Rome, which were by tradition only held once in anyone’s lifetime. He then founded the Alban Games, held annually at his summer court in honour of his patron goddess Minerva. He liked to attend the Games in Greek dress, wearing a gold crown.

These years seemed to pass drably for Lucilla as her ache for Gaius Vinius slowly dulled. Finally, in the lull after the Alban Games, when those in her particular circle were upbeat and optimistic for their future because they were winning prizes, she decided to improve herself and first went to Nemurus to ask him to give her lessons. Although he felt instructing a female, a hairdresser, was demeaning for a man of his intellect, lack of a regular salary forced him to look receptive. Lucilla persisted; he agreed. He had been poor and had a one-time pauper’s terror of being poor again.

They got off on the wrong foot. Nemurus mistakenly assumed she was illiterate. He began showing her the alphabet on placards. Lucilla explained gravely that, even if most were not trained to the standards of a Greek secretary, slaves in upper-class homes, as her mother had been, were required to be basically literate and numerate. Lachne had sent Lucilla herself to a morning infant school.

‘So what are you asking?’

‘I want to learn to read a poem and understand it.’

Under encouragement from their mutual acquaintance, Statius, Nemurus caved in. The lessons had been Statius’ idea, in fact, because his own father was a teacher.

Lucilla’s critical education began and seemed successful. Nemurus could be an unsympathetic taskmaster, but she bore it. Reproof made her concentrate harder. For one thing, she was paying with her own money, and had no intention of wasting it, so strictness worked. She was determined to siphon off everything Nemurus had to give her intellectually. She fell upon reading and only needed to be given guidance.

For a time Nemurus was proud of her, or at least proud of his own achievement. They were on good terms — so good that Statius and his wife Claudia suggested that since both were single, they should get married. Though initially startled, Lucilla indicated that she would entertain the idea. Nemurus withdrew into himself, repeatedly begging advice from his male friends. But eventually he announced, as if the whole thing had been his idea, that this was what he wanted.

A teacher? Dear gods, that stinks!

Who are you with your unsolicited opinions?

The name’s Vinius. Gaius Vinius.

Go away; you’re a dead man.

At least I don’t have to see you being shafted by an inkblot — who, I see, wears socks…

Nemurus did wear socks, though Lucilla thought she could put up with it.

Romans did occasionally wear socks. Nemurus adopted the fashion preferred by Egyptian pharaohs; his had separately knitted big toes, to enable toe-post sandals. When venturing into cold climates, anyone could stuff their boots with woollen or fur linings — most soldiers who had gone to Moesia would be doing that, while at the ends of the earth, for instance in Britain, the men would demand underpants. But on the Bay of Naples or in Rome, Lucilla knew in her heart, socks were inelegant and mildly eccentric.

The socks would come to signify everything wrong about Nemurus. But at first, she told herself they were a positive sign of character.

This was the only visible disadvantage Nemurus exhibited. In his twenties, he was educated and well spoken, slightly old-fashioned in social matters maybe, but in a scenario full of dissipated eunuchs and slobbering fat cats, Lucilla found that reassuring. He had manners. He was extremely precise about eating in public; shepherding women through doorways; deferring to men with superior intellects.

A lot of those, presumably!

Oh get lost, Vinius.

Apart from the fact that since she had no father, Lucilla could not be collected from her paternal home by her bridegroom, they had a full wedding. It took place in Rome, which allowed many women at whose marriages she and Lara had assisted to flock excitedly to hers. Suddenly she was the centre of attention as a bride should be, and realising how many good women cared about her.

It was extremely odd, after preparing so many other brides, to have her own hair formally divided with a sword and arranged in seven locks, to have attendants putting her under a saffron veil. She knew, but had forgotten, that at a formal wedding the old-fashioned rubric — and Nemurus, naturally, went for the traditional version — included the vows ego Gaius, tu Gaia: ‘I am Gaius, you are Gaia…’

Lucilla was nearly sick. Twittering women whisked her to one side and gave her water, telling everyone she was overcome by nerves.

The marriage was a mistake. Still, teachers are generally civilised people and, as mistakes go, it was by no means fatal. They had never been to bed beforehand, or Lucilla might not have gone through with the wedding. She was also surprised to learn that her new husband was a year younger than she was; he always seemed quite a lot older.

Lucilla realised on their wedding night that what she had construed as a promise of passion was only her husband’s urgency to achieve his own release. He must have slept with women, but not many, she decided. For Lucilla, their love life was to be disappointing. He would never improve. He was a three-minute jiggler. He slipped into her and out again, like an uncertain minnow, then occasionally turned her over and repeated the procedure, his idea of sophisticated sex.

Nemurus had seen on the walls of taverns and bath houses pictures of women wearing nothing but a bustband, providing bedroom entertainment to well-endowed fellows, sometimes in intriguing threesomes, and with bug-eyed servants watching. That looked like a lot of fun, but he loathed himself for hankering after it. He did not believe such behaviour belonged in a harmonious marriage. He wanted a wife he could respect who would not try to alter his already settled habits. If he sought Lucilla in bed after their first few nights, it was merely for comfort, like a child falling asleep sucking a piece of old cloth. He had no interest in her feelings or her needs.

He believed he treated her in an exemplary fashion. There was no point complaining; it would only lead to a quarrel. He was clever and extremely widely read, but it had given him no aptitude for real life.

It worked for a year; they even stayed together longer.

Soon Lucilla learned to hide her intellectual development. As her husband watched her bounding progress, he was no longer proud but jealous, resenting her loss of reliance on him for teaching. Still, his world was full of books. She could devour those, especially when he was not at home with her, which happened increasingly. He spent much of his time with male friends. This soon involved dicing and drinking, though in keeping with his character, he was restrained and wary, which at least saved him losing too much money. Lucilla heard herself say, ‘Well, if it keeps him happy…’ As she said it, she knew everything was all up with her.

Lucilla was following the traditional wives’ habit of slipping the leash, though hardly in the traditional way. While Nemurus thought she was following his prescriptive curriculum, which involved intense study of many, many books of the historian Livy, Lucilla had discovered the erotic love poems of Catullus. These she read all the more joyously because she knew Nemurus would be annoyed.

When she finally defied him and openly refused to read any more Livy, Nemurus let her try Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Lucilla had become a tricky student. ‘That Apollo — what a hunk! Now I’d really like to do his hair!’

‘Be serious.’

‘I am, dear.’ They called one another ‘dear’, instead of risking the intimacy of names. ‘For instance, I know that when a lecher, man or demigod, chases after a girl intending to rape her, she does not get conveniently turned into a tree. She will be raped.’

‘Is that your critical appreciation of Ovid?’

‘I think it’s my appreciation of all poets.’

And people who teach poetry.

You cannot mean that, dear.

‘Anyway,’ snarled Lucilla. ‘Who wants to be a laurel bush?’

Julia died.

She had been ill for a short time, but the situation had been covered up at court, with the usual whispers, hastily closed doors, hurrying feet, and sudden unexplained visits, sometimes at night, from medical practitioners. Even so, her death came unexpectedly. She was twenty-five, little older than Lucilla. Those who had attended her, especially her women, wept and were stricken. Though Lucilla knew Julia only tangentially, she was bonded in her colleagues’ heartbreak.

Domitian was away at the time, either in Germany or Pannonia; there were dark fears how he was going to take this.

Juvenal came nagging, ‘Was it an abortion that went wrong?’

Lucilla was furious.

After Julia’s funeral she withdrew into herself. When Lucilla and Nemurus were in Rome rather than at Alba, officially they lived with his parents. His mother inevitably thought Lucilla too common; she believed Nemurus had an exceptional talent, an opinion he encouraged. The good thing about coming from slave stock was that you had an endless facility for silent insubordination. Lachne had taught Lucilla how to put up with anything and to appear meek, while being insidiously mutinous. But it was no way to live.

Now, citing the needs of her business, Lucilla returned most days to Plum Street, which had always been her refuge. Her husband never came. He liked the fact she had her own money; it saved her making demands on his. He generally enjoyed her connection with the imperial family, which he saw as potentially a useful connection for him. Otherwise, he took absolutely no interest in her work.

The couple remained married, because it was convenient. But increasingly they were leading separate lives.

Nemurus did not accept his fate meekly. As soon as he sensed Lucilla’s growing independence, he had recourse to the Roman husband’s most hackneyed weapon: he accused her of intending to commit adultery. Like many a Roman wife, Lucilla played the wounded innocent. While she dramatically bemoaned her husband’s injustice, she never confessed the truth: that her entire marriage felt to her, and had always felt, like a betrayal of her feelings for the lost Gaius Vinius.