THE NERO CONSPIRACY THEORY

But did Emperor Nero really die? Did he really commit suicide by stabbing himself in the throat? Were those really his ashes in the grand porphyry sarcophagus in the tomb of the Domitians on the Hill of Gardens, just outside the city walls?

Several months had passed since the events of early June 68, and almost everyone in the capital was asking himself such questions. And—incredibly—many answered them in the negative. For whatever reasons, many inhabitants of Rome did not want to believe in Nero’s death and burial and said: our lord lives, bides his time, and will return soon!

The rumor went about that Nero, with the help of a few of his most trusted freedmen, had staged his suicide, cremated a substitute corpse, and escaped, and that he did this only to mislead the assassins sent to kill him. Of course, he had had to act that way—he had no choice—because all had abandoned him: some out of fear, others from stupidity. But he escaped and is currently hiding someplace, perhaps in Italy, perhaps overseas. And he is awaiting the opportune moment to return. And then he will return and reassume the reigns of power. And soon! It is clear that neither Rome nor the provinces will endure the abomination of senile Galba’s rule. As someone rightly said about that fellow: “he might be fit to rule, except last time he looked, he ruled already.”

Others yet refused to believe the story of Nero’s suicide on other grounds, saying:

“Nero was a coward. There is no way he would have killed himself. And since no one boasts about having killed him and no one demands the bounty on his head, perhaps Nero is not dead after all?”

Finally, the suspicious asked who had witnessed the cremation of Nero’s body and the placement of his ashes in the tomb of the Domitians (the Domitians’ tomb was the emperor’s family tomb). And--(how very suspicious)—the witnesses had been three women: they were his nurses, Ecloge and Alexandra; and Acte, a concubine he had rejected many years ago but who still loved him dearly. The three spared no effort and expense to make the funeral as dignified as possible, and contributed to it over two hundred thousand sesterces of their own money. Acte probably gave the most, as she was an extremely wealthy woman thanks to Nero’s favor: she had extensive estates, magnificent villas, and swarms of servants.

The three women cremated a body and collected its ashes in a snow-white cloak shot with gold thread—the very cloak Nero had worn at the New Year’s celebrations six months before his tragic end. But whose body was it? Was it really Nero’s? Only they knew—and they knew because Nero had trusted them. Could it be that they spent all that money on the funeral in order to give the false impression that the body of the lord of the Empire was being buried while the lord himself was hiding somewhere else?

Sporus had also stood by the burning pyre. Once upon a time, Nero had decided to make a girl of him. He ordered him castrated and then married him, formally and ceremonially, as his wife (in Greece, of course, as Rome would not have stood for such kinky stuff). The boy-girl had also been present at the scene of the suicide. All this made excellent material for mockery:

“What trustworthy witnesses to the cremation and burial! Three freedmen—a concubine and two wet nurses—and a eunuch! How can anyone believe such witnesses? The whole thing is a farce, though, admittedly, very entertaining. As befits a great artist.”

Such and similar talk was heard among the people who had suddenly been deprived of the very sweetness, the very meaning of life: blood games, chariot races, song and dance performances. And also of the joy of gossiping about palace intrigues, crimes, and orgies—there were no such topics with Galba, the octogenarian killjoy.

Oh, those wonderful times of their beloved Nero—they were missed sorely. Wreaths and fresh flowers were often found on the white altar slab before the porphyry sarcophagus in the Domitian tomb. Often, the flowers were laid by people who claimed that the sarcophagus was empty or contained a stranger’s remains. They still wanted to give an expression to their feelings of attachment to the memory of their beloved emperor.

In the Forum itself, right next to the main Rostrum, images of Nero were secretly placed at night. His edicts also appeared there—edicts in which the still-alive Emperor announced in a threatening tone: “I will reappear soon to take revenge on all those who have betrayed me and my people!”

And it was as if Fate itself had wanted to encourage such hopes: Galba, the man who had overthrown Nero, reigned for barely half a year. On January 15, 69 AD, soldiers of the imperial guard—the Praetorians—murdered him in the Forum. They did this as part of a coup staged by one of Galba’s earliest supporters, Otho. Except, this Otho had once been one of Nero’s closest friends. In 58 AD, Nero took his beautiful wife, Sabina Poppea, and sent him to honorary exile in Lusitania as governor of a province covering more or less the territory of today’s Portugal and western Spain. From that distant land on the Atlantic, Otho returned to Rome with the new emperor, Galba. He had helped him come to power, but only in passing, only to start an intrigue against him at the earliest opportunity. He bribed the Praetorian guard to kill Galba and elevate him instead.

During the same month of January 69 AD, a month stained by treachery and the blood of Galba, frightening news reached the capital: the armies on the Rhine had rebelled. In the first days of 69 AD, they acclaimed one Aulus Vitellius—governor of Lower Germania—as emperor. And so the Empire, deprived of the bliss of Nero’s rule, was threatened with divine punishment: the worst of all wars, a civil war. Those who claimed that the moment of return was at hand were right: were Nero alive, all he needed to do was to show himself, and all would flock to him for safety.

On the Island of Kythnos

And now, as if responding to these calls, in February 69 (bundles of spring flowers—humble violets—were being placed on the altar in the Domitian tomb at that time), the news broke that Nero had revealed himself in the East, somewhere in Greece or Asia Minor. Yes, that Nero, our Nero, the true Nero: the same face and posture, the same hairstyle, quite long and loose at the back, and even his eyes were similar: grey and attentive, if somewhat nearsighted. Of course, he played the kithara and sang beautifully. That he revealed himself in the Greek East was fully understandable. After all, he had always declared that he loved the Greeks most of all.

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OF BATHS AND BISHOPS

There was a community of nuns in Hippo Regius. Saint Augustine watched over their affairs through their superior, his sister. Now, it so happened that a certain scandalous quarrel among the congregation of the pious matrons broke out for reasons common and frequent in every age: animosities of personal nature. The dispute was submitted to the bishop for adjudication. He issued his decision in 423 in a long letter to the congregation—a kind of detailed instruction on the rules of religious life.

This document was to play an enormous role in the following centuries as the basis for the rules of various monastic orders. But here we are only interested in a short fragment of it, with a very prosaic content.

"You should wash your clothes by yourselves or let your servants wash them, but only at the discretion of your mother superior so that the excessive desire for a clean dress does not stain your soul with inner filth. And let the washing of the body and the use of the baths not be continuous! Ablutions should occur at the usual intervals, that is, once a month. If, however, a sickness should force a sister to wash her body, let her wash on the doctor’s orders without grumbling. And if she still does not want to, let her do what she must do for the health of the body at the order of the mother superior."

This principle, worded so sharply and stated so clearly, had important implications for the personal hygiene of various groups and communities and, later, of the whole society. Its influence was all the more significant as the statements of another man of great holiness and immeasurable learning strongly supported it. He also lived in the times of Saint Augustine and was famous as one of the most distinguished Latin writers of his time.

Saint Jerome, a native of the border regions between Dalmatia and Pannonia, was older than the bishop of Hippo Regius by over a dozen years. The two men, although exchanging letters, did not really like each other—as is often the case with prominent representatives of the same generation and the same ideological orientation.

After much travel, Jerome settled in Palestine, in Bethlehem. There he presided over a community of monks, welcomed pious pilgrims, and studied and wrote. Among the vast oeuvre of Saint Jerome, one work stands out as most important for the subsequent history of the Church and the entire European civilization: his revision and final edition of the Latin translation of the Bible, the so-called Vulgate.

(Augustine was to criticize sharply some of the wording of that edition). And with all this work, the learned hermit still found time to conduct extensive correspondence. In it, he gave encouragement and advice on various matters related to religious life. And, in a letter to a matron named Leta, who had asked for instructions on how to raise her daughter, he wrote:

"I am not a friend of bathing in an adult girl at all. She ought to feel ashamed of her body and hate the sight of her own nakedness. For if she mortifies her body with wakefulness and fasting; if she wishes to extinguish the fire of lust and the heat of intellectual ferment with the frost of restraint; if she seeks to disfigure her natural beauty by deliberate cultivation of dirt, why should she, acting as if for opposite reasons, kindle the sleeping flames with the heat of the bathhouse?"

FROM Aleksander Krawczuk "The Last Olympiad, Twilight of Antiquity"

Three Short Notes in the Style of AK (Herod)

Jerusalem seen from Mount of Olives, the way Pompey first saw it in 63 BC. Taken from The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, a travelogue of 19th-century Palestine and the magnum opus of Scottish painter David Roberts. It contains 250 lithographs by Louis Haghe of Roberts's watercolor sketches.

It was first published by subscription between 1842 and 1849. It was the nineteenth century's most expensive, most successful, and most durable publication.

From your translator

THREE SHORT NOTES IN THE STYLE OF THE AUTHOR

1. When I set out to translate the two Krawczuk books about the love of Emperor Titus and Queen Berenice (Titus and Berenice, 2023, Rome and Jerusalem, upcoming), I was unsure whether to translate the first volume of the trilogy as well—the book you are holding in your hand now. While the story of the First Jewish War is relatively little known, Herod the Great has had perhaps two score biographies in English. Why publish another?

But rereading Herod, King of the Jews with that question in mind, I realized that Krawczuk brings something unique to the well-known biography. First of all, he brings his highly readable style, of course, which is a joy in itself and which I hope I manage to convey here well enough to motivate you to learn Polish and read him in the original.

Secondly, better than any author I have read, he couches the history of Herod within the parallel history of Rome, laying bare for the modern reader how the two histories intertwine, the limits within which Herod had to work, and the surprising significance of little Palestine in the larger Roman imperial politics.

But, above all, Krawczuk allows the reader to sense something that a British or an American reader may not readily intuit: how small nations see their own fate and survival in the shadow of great empires. The fact that the good professor wrote this book under Russian occupation, at an ancient institution of learning of a recalcitrant client nation of the Russian Empire, gives his observations vital relevance: in many ways, Poles are Eastern Europe's Jews.

2. While working on the text, I became aware of another dimension of the story. When editing, I read my text aloud to my Japanese friends—who are cultured and cosmopolitan but not necessarily very familiar with minor aspects of the history of the Roman Empire. But as I read my text to them, they suddenly burst out with a surprise of recognition. When, in one of the early chapters, the name of Judah Maccabee came up, they exclaimed: “Do you mean the guy from the Handel oratorio?” “Well, yes,” I said. “The very same.” Soon enough, we came across Mithridates of Pontus. “Mitridate Re di Ponto! Mozart!” my audience exclaimed. Just two lines lower came: “Vivaldi’s Farnace!” This went on for some time until my friends finally reconciled themselves to the fact that they were reading a story somehow fundamental to the consciousness of Western Civilization. By the time Aeneus made an appearance in the chapter on Herod saving Troy, my friends said nothing. One got up and put on the Purcell.

3. The back cover of this book features a reproduction of a fragment of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Massacre of the Innocents. The Bruegel family firm produced many versions of this painting (possibly as many as 14), but only this one, owned by the British Royal Collection, is thought to be by Pieter Senior himself. One of its previous owners, Rudolph II, the Magician Emperor and a connoisseur of panting, had it overpainted to hide the images of dead and dying children. Contemporary reality delivered enough of that.

Tom Pinch

Ardennes National Park

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