Nero's Heirs Read Free

those days he didn't care for me. I put that wrongly. He disliked me. The reason was simple: my excellence rebuked his incapacity. I learned easily what he struggled to retain. For some years we attended the same schoolmaster, a Greek grammaticus, by name Democritos. He was a rough brutal man, fond of the rod. I believe his chief pleasure lay in chastising his unfortunate pupils. Domitian, being slow and of little account socially, was a choice victim. I have often seen his legs run with blood. Furthermore, the terror he displayed when condemned to a beating merely incited our master's ardour. The more Domitian howled for mercy, the harder the strokes fell. Once, at least, the wretched boy pissed himself in his abject fear. This naturally made him an object of mockery to his fellows. You will not be surprised to learn that after he became Emperor he had his agents seek out the now aged Democritos, drag him from the dingy apartment where he lingered, and bring the wretch before his former pupil who, spurning him with his toe, ordered him to be whipped to death. 'For,' he said, 'this man is so fond of the rod that it is only fitting that the rod should be the last thing he experiences in life.'
    Curiously, it was this brutal wretch who first awoke in Domitian a warm feeling for myself. One day, when Democritos had been more than usually cruel to him, exceeding even his habitual measure of strokes, and had commanded two of our fellow-pupils to hold the boy up so that he might strike him again, something in me revolted against his barbarity. Perhaps - who knows? - I had long reproached myself for the timidity which I had displayed in tolerating the beast. Be that as it may, I now rose from my desk, ran towards him and, seizing the rod (then at the top of the backstroke) from his hand, turned it on our master, belabouring him about the neck and shoulders. 'See how you relish your own medicine,' I cried. Take that, you brute, and this, and learn to respect free-born Romans, you base Greek slave.' It was a moment of the purest exhilaration I have ever known. It could not last, of course. The brute was stronger than I and, swinging round, felled me with one blow of his fist. Then, calling on his assistant and one of our fellow-pupils to help him, he regained his rod and, when he saw I was held fast over the block, thrashed me with all his infuriated strength. He thrashed me, indeed, till I fainted, and when I recovered my senses it was to find myself alone with Domitian who was sponging my face and muttering his perplexed gratitude for my intervention. We agreed to inform my mother and his aunt of what had happened, and from that day we did not return to the torments of Democritos. From that day also, for two years or more, Domitian gave every sign of being devoted to me. I mention this because you have often observed that nothing is more common than a man's resentment of his benefactor. It wasn't like this in our case. I may say, modestly, that Domitian regarded me as his hero.
    The harmony of our relationship was however to be broken. Titus returned to Rome from Africa, where he had been serving as his father's legate. He called, from courtesy, to see my mother.
    'My father,' he said, 'sends you - has asked me to convey to you -the assurance of his high regard. He is fully sensible of the debt he owes you for his advancement. He has asked me to say that he is anxious to do whatever is in his power to - oh . . .' He broke off, and, with a sudden smile that seemed to light up our mean apartment, extended his hands in a vaguely helpless gesture and, abandoning his tone of formality, resumed: 'I'm no good at this kind of thing, my lady, though I have been trained in rhetoric. So let me put it in my own words, however loose and lacking in proper formality they may be. He's distressed to have learned of the condition in which you are obliged to live and now I see it for myself, well, I'm horrified, that a lady like you, of your birth, one