CHAPTER III

The Lady Antonia scrutinised my brother and me for a few moments; I felt her startling green eyes boring into mine and had I not reminded myself that I was the son of the king of the Cherusci, I would have bowed my head to her. My sexual feeling for women had not yet developed but I felt my pulse quicken at her beauty: pale skin, full lips stained an intimate shade of pink, high cheekbones and a mass of auburn hair intricately braided and piled high upon her head secured with bejewelled pins and partially covered by a long turquoise garment that fell around her shoulders, wound around her body and draped over one arm; beneath that she wore an ankle-length, pleated dress of deepest red that swayed gently from side to side as she moved forward. I was smitten. I had never seen such beauty and elegance; I felt my nostrils flare as I inhaled her scent that made me desire something that I could not comprehend – it was not until a few years later that I realised what power the sense of smell had over both men and women.

Antonia smiled beneficently and with a trace of humour, and I realised that I must have been letting my feelings play on my face; I immediately blanked my expression and stared at her defiantly.

‘What are your names?’ she asked, sitting on a couch and placing her hands in her lap.

‘I’m Erminatz and this is my—’

‘Let the boy answer for himself.’ She looked at Chlodochar whose gaze fell to the floor.

‘Chlodochar,’ he whispered.

‘Speak up, child.’

‘Chlodochar!’ It was almost a shout.

‘Chlotgelar? No, no, that won’t do, no one will ever remember it.’

My brother raised his eyes and looked at her with apprehension. ‘The soldiers called me Flavus because of my blond hair.’

‘How very sensible of them; Flavus it is then.’ She turned back to me. ‘Arminetz is far too vulgar, Arminus … no, Arminius, yes, that will do, you will be Arminius in Rome.’

‘Yes, Antonia.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘You will always address me as domina.’

I nodded, dumb, aware of the power that those eyes had revealed and not wishing to incur her displeasure again.

‘Good. My husband writes that he wishes you both to be educated here in this house and that shall be so; we shall smooth out the barbarian wrinkles and make you presentable. But be warned, if you don’t apply yourselves to your studies or if you are unruly or disobedient, you will be punished and your status as guests will be reduced to hostages and you will find your freedom greatly curtailed and will be little better off than slaves. Do you understand me?’

To be honest I’m paraphrasing that speech as I had only understood the gist of what she had said but her tone and the words that I had understood were enough for me to nod again. ‘I will explain it to Chlodochar.’

Antonia’s eyes flashed again. ‘To whom, Arminius?’

‘Flavus, domina.’

‘Good, you’re learning.’ Her eyes then moved behind me. ‘I know you’re in there, so come out!’

I turned to see the curtains, which screened off an alcove, part and a boy, not much older than Flavus, stepped from behind them. He walked up to Antonia, with a confidence beyond his years, grinning as he did, and placed a kiss on her proffered cheek.

‘These two boys will be sharing your lessons,’ Antonia informed him, affectionately ruffling his hair.

He looked at us and scowled with a humorous twinkle. ‘They don’t look very clean, Mother.’

And that was how I met one of Rome’s greatest generals, Drusus and Antonia’s eldest son, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who would later be known as Germanicus.

Roman education is a series of hard-won lessons, each more difficult than the last and, having never had a formal lesson in my life, the first came as a shock to me. I had seen writing before – I knew, for example, that the runes engraved on my blade said ‘Erminatz’ – but I never thought that I would have to learn to decipher it; we had slaves who would do that menial job. But, nevertheless, at the beginning of my first lesson I was presented with a list of signs that I was told by my litterator were letters and I had to learn to recognise each one and what sound it represented in a language that I barely knew. As if that were not bad enough, I was sitting alongside two boys, three years my junior, one of whom, Germanicus – I will refer to him as such, although he had not gained the name as yet – had almost mastered this seemingly magical art. He would laugh at my halting renditions of alphabetical sounds and my humiliation at this would make my efforts even more stuttering and unsure so that eventually the litterator would have no option but to apply the rod, and my humiliation would be compounded by being beaten in front of my juniors and also by Flavus’ easy aptitude at what I found so elusive.

However, progress was made; the beatings died down and sitting on the hard wooden benches for hours at a time became bearable. As we improved we were rewarded with more masculine activities such as wrestling and sword handling; but as I was that much bigger than Flavus and Germanicus they were always paired together and I would be facing whomever was teaching us. The result was that I would never win at anything and Flavus and Germanicus became staunch friends. I began to feel very alone and that feeling grew as Germanicus asked his mother for Flavus to move out of the room that he shared with me and into his; which she acceded to and Flavus did with pleasure.

And so passed my first couple of months in Drusus’ house; but I will not linger any longer on them because something happened in late September that changed much.

We were sitting in the peristylium, the courtyard garden at the rear of the house, trying to get to grips with arithmetic, when a messenger, still covered with the filth of the road, was ushered through and into a room at the far end of the garden that was Antonia’s private domain. I thought nothing of it as the black lacquered door was opened to admit him. However, a very short time passed before Antonia appeared; she walked, strangely erect as if she was forcing herself not to collapse, over to our little group beneath a fully laden apple tree.

She looked at Germanicus, her eyes blank of emotion, and without preamble said: ‘Your father has died from injuries inflicted falling from his horse in Germania. You are now head of this household and will be expected to perform those duties at his funeral when his body arrives in Rome next month. Do not let the family down.’ With that she turned and walked as fast as she could, without losing her dignity, into the house. With hindsight I realise that it was to be alone with her profound grief as soon as possible; to have given way to it – or even have her eyes water – in public would have been unacceptable to her.

Flavus and I both looked at Germanicus; his face remained neutral. He placed his stylus and wax tablet on the stone bench beside him, stood and said to the litterator: ‘You will, of course, excuse me.’ He followed his mother, with the same poise, into the house and I had my first lesson in Roman reserve and self-control.

How Germanicus could keep his feelings about the death of his father so locked away at that young age amazed me; it was close to inhuman in my eyes. Flavus told me that, throughout the time that it took Drusus’ funeral cortège to reach Rome, he never once heard him cry at night. During the days he carried on with his lessons as if nothing was the matter and the only difference that I detected was that he did not laugh at me when I made one of my many mistakes; in fact he did not laugh at all.

And then the day came when Drusus’ body entered Rome.

In the few months that I had spent in the city I had not been allowed out of the house, but, on the day of Drusus’ funeral, Flavus and I were expected to join the family in their grief as guests of the household and so we were woken well before dawn. The house was full of sombre activity, quiet and ordered, as the slaves prepared for the return of their master. Flavus and I were fed quickly and then placed by the house steward in the far corner of the atrium with orders to follow the family at a respectful distance.

As the sun crested the eastern horizon, the doors were opened to admit Drusus’ clients, more than two hundred of them – although I found out later that these were only the most prestigious of the few thousand citizens who counted Drusus as their patron. Wearing dark grey togas – called, I soon found out, the toga pulla – they walked with almost theatrical solemnity into the atrium and took up position around the edge of the room. Then Germanicus appeared, leading his mother and sister, and I almost gasped in astonishment: Antonia was holding a baby. I had never heard of a third sibling, no one had ever mentioned it. My curiosity was short-lived; as we followed the family out into the cool morning, to wait for the cortège’s arrival on the steps of the house, a sound floated up from the city below, a sound that I had never heard before: the sound of tens of thousands of voices raised in communal grief. Gradually it grew, coming nearer and nearer until eventually the head of the procession came into view and Drusus’ body could be seen on a bier carried on the shoulders of six men. I looked over to Germanicus and Antonia; neither showed the slightest emotion as their dead father and husband was brought home for the last time.

The stench of decomposition preceded the bier but everyone affected not to notice; I had the presence of mind to push Flavus’ hand back down when he attempted to hold his nose.

Antonia gave Germanicus a tap on the shoulder as the procession arrived before the house and halted; he moved forward, bowed his head then turned and preceded the bier up the steps. I had to suppress a smile at the ludicrousness of the sight: the two bearers at the front were so mismatched in size that the bier rocked dangerously with each step. The man on the left was tall, even by our standards, with broad shoulders and a powerful chest; his understandably gloomy features and age – early thirties – suggested that he was Drusus’ brother. His partner on the right, however, was in his mid-fifties and far shorter and thinner; almost to the point that he could be described as spindly. As all the men were in grey mourning togas I had no way of judging the rank of the insignificant-looking man, but I sympathised with his fellow bearers as they struggled to keep the body on the bier.

Behind them came a woman, slightly younger than the spindly man; full cheeks, a prominent straight nose and large eyes that never for a moment left Drusus’ corpse. She held herself erect but walked as if in a trance and I guessed that she must be Drusus’ mother; but the identity of the younger woman following her, shepherding five children aged between twelve and three, shrouded by an air of sorrow, I could not begin to fathom.

The rest of the procession remained outside and Antonia led the family in with Flavus and me being the last people to pass over the threshold. I was not aware of it at the time but as the doors closed I was in the presence of the entire imperial family of Rome; I was at the very centre of Roman power.

The name of the deceased had been called many times by the mourners and the prayers had gone on for an age before a coin for the ferryman was finally placed in Drusus’ mouth and we left the house to make our way to the Campus Martius, to the north of the city walls, where the funeral pyre had been built. Crowds of people followed us and lined the route, putting on theatrical shows of grief: women tore at their hair and clothes, wailing shrilly, whilst men were unafraid to cry openly. I soon realised that grief in Rome was a public commodity and not something to be indulged in privacy and I understood Germanicus’ seeming lack of emotion over the death of his father. As we progressed, he allowed tears to flow freely, as did Antonia and all the other followers and bearers of the bier. An actor led us, wearing Drusus’ death mask and dressed as him in full military uniform, followed by others with the death masks of his forebears; professional mourners whipped up the crowd with heated displays of almost self-flagellatory grief. The atmosphere grew darker and darker as we neared the pyre and the height of the buildings along the route seemed to encase the wails and howling, trapping them so they reverberated around, unable to rise to the heavens.

Such was the infectiousness of the mourning that by the time we reached our destination my mood was black, as if I had lost my own father, and tears were trickling down my cheeks for a man whom I hardly knew and who had defeated my people and taken me hostage. The bier was positioned atop the square pyre of regularly placed logs that looked like a building and the family mounted a large rostrum next to it; my brother and I remained at the foot of the steps. The professional mourners raised their volume to beyond what I thought possible and the wearers of the masks stood still in poses of grief whilst the tens of thousands that looked on howled as if it were their own deaths that they lamented.

As the noise grew to a pitch that left my ears ringing, the spindly man stepped forward and, with a single gesture, silenced the huge crowd in an instant. And then he started to speak and I realised, with a shock, who he was.

‘Today we mourn a son of Rome; a man as dear to me as my adoptive sons, Gaius Julius Caesar and Lucius Julius Caesar, the natural sons of my daughter, Julia.’

The spindly man was the most powerful man in the world: Augustus, the Emperor of the Romans. He pointed to the two eldest boys of the family of five.

‘I pray that when the time comes for their sons to speak their funeral orations that they will have achieved as much honour in Rome’s name as Drusus, a man that I considered to be no less my heir than those two boys.’

It seemed amazing to me that a man so lacking in physical presence, a man who would not stand out in a crowd, a man easily overlooked, could rise to the pinnacle of this martial race; and, as Augustus carried on his eulogy for the next hour, I examined him, curious to find a clue to his power. Although short and slim, he was perfectly proportioned so that if you saw him on his own you would have no idea of his size and would naturally assume him far taller than he really was; he was evidently aware of his stunted stature as I noticed his shoes had thick soles and heels, adding at least two thumb breadths to his height. At home a man would have been mocked for such vanity. His complexion was pale, his hair untidy, sandy curls and his nose Roman, crowned by eyebrows that met at its bridge. I saw nothing in him that could make me believe that he could master men, until his eyes turned in the direction in which I was standing and for a moment they met mine; and then I understood: they were bright and clear and so blue as to be almost grey. They were the eyes of a man of tremendous will, they shone with such intensity that it was almost impossible to endure their gaze for more than a few moments. With eyes like those a man could command others to do whatever he wished.

Augustus gestured to Antonia and to Drusus’ mother and brother to step forward; he presented them to his audience who remained spellbound. ‘I ask you, fellow citizens, to share the grief of Antonia, his wife, and their three children; share the grief of a mother, Livia Drusilla, my wife; and share the grief of a brother, Tiberius Claudius Nero.’ All three held out their hands, beseeching the people of Rome to join in their grief, which they did without reserve.

Augustus allowed the lamentations to go on for a good while before once again gesturing for silence, which was immediate. He looked over to a group of some five hundred men standing on the steps of a building on the other side of the pyre – I later found out that this was Pompey’s Theatre. ‘Conscript Fathers of the Senate, help to assuage our grief, honour Drusus in death in the way that I should have begged you to honour him in life. The fault is mine for not petitioning you to award him the title that he deserves; I take the blame, Conscript Fathers, and I feel the guilt of inaction. For his victories in Germania Magna and the peace treaties that he forged there, the proof of which stands before me.’ He looked directly at Flavus and me and then pointed at us. ‘The sons of Germanic chieftains are here in Rome, not only as hostages to the good behaviour of their fathers but also to make Romans out of them. Drusus has forged for us a new province, securing our borders far to the east; I implore you, Conscript Fathers, honour him and his descendants with the name that he has surely earned: confer on him posthumously the name Germanicus, and let his eldest son be known as such in memory of his father.’

Such was the emotion in his voice and such was the fervour of his request that the Senate, almost as one, shouted: ‘Germanicus!’ The cry was taken up by the people of Rome and, as the chant grew, Augustus walked across to the pyre and took a flaming torch from a slave and thrust it into the oil-soaked wood. The flames leapt high, licking at the bier, sending dark smoke and a shimmering heat-haze skywards. Next to the pyre, men with togas pulled over their heads, covering their hair, sacrificed an ox, ram and boar, removing their hearts to throw into the fire. As the heat intensified, crackling the wood and sizzling the dead flesh, so did the chant, until it must have been audible to every god, both Roman and Germanic.

The Senate and the people of Rome did not stop honouring their beloved son until the fire began to die down and the body was nothing but charred bones; only then did they start to disperse and begin an official period of mourning that would close with the funeral games nine days later.

We returned to the Palatine and life carried on as normal with two exceptions: we were now occasionally allowed out under supervision to join the other boys doing gymnastics, wrestling and training in arms and on horses on the Campus Martius. The second thing was far less enjoyable: although I have referred to Germanicus by that name throughout my story so far to avoid confusion, it was only now that we had to call him that rather than Nero. So every time I spoke his name I was reminded of the defeat of my tribe and, although he did nothing to wrong me, I began to hate him just because of his name.

Rome became my life over the next few years and, although I was never comfortable with being taught in the Roman way, I began to excel in the physical training and managed to achieve adequacy in the schoolroom. My thighs, chest and shoulders developed and I could read and write Latin and Greek as well as speak both languages with little trace of an accent. By the time I was past puberty I was, to all appearances, no different from the boys with whom I trained on the Campus Martius: in short, I was becoming a Roman. My hair was cut regularly, my wispy beard was shaved every day and I had not donned a pair of breeks for five years. I understood the workings of government, the rigidly hierarchical social system and knew the command structure and drills of the legions. But, despite all this, I still kept hidden in my heart a deep love of the Cherusci and a fierce hatred for the people who had forced me to abandon their ways.

This was not true for Flavus; his friendship with Germanicus had grown to the point that the two were inseparable and his love of all things Roman had come to dominate his life to the extent that, even when we were alone, he refused to speak our mother tongue with me. His memory of our homeland grew dim and he began to be contemptuous of the Cherusci’s ‘rustic’ way of life, as he put it, and berated me for not seeing the magnificence that surrounded me or understanding the power that it represented. He became truly Romanised: worshipping their gods, enjoying their spectacles in the arenas or the Circus Maximus and taking pleasure in their food.

We argued much in those days, often coming to blows; being older and larger, I would always give him a severe beating – for which I was usually punished – and this drove him further away from me and closer to Germanicus, whom he considered to be more of a brother than me, his blood.

With no one with whom to share memories of a lost childhood I felt more and more isolated and my bitterness burnt away inside me. This manifested itself in bouts of extreme violence and I became feared on the wrestling sand; my temper would flare if I began to lose, and my respect for the rules and etiquette of the sport would evaporate in an instant and I would have to be hauled off my bloodied opponent by the wrestling-master and given a thrashing.

After one such incident a youth, about my age, pushed through the crowd jeering at me as I received some harsh strokes of the rod.

‘Leave him!’ he ordered my flagellator. ‘I’ll give him a lesson in Roman behaviour on the sand.’

The wrestling-master let me go; I stood up and looked at my challenger. He seemed familiar but I could not place him; I certainly had not seen him training on the Campus Martius before – but then I was only allowed down every so often, so it was quite possible that our paths had never crossed. He was not strongly built for a youth of fourteen or so and slightly shorter than me. Large blue eyes, a full-lipped mouth and light brown hair, he looked more like a pleasure-boy, the sort that I had seen roaming some of the less-salubrious streets of Rome that I would occasionally explore when I managed to slip the attentions of my chaperone.

He stepped forward onto the sand, rolling his shoulders and fixing me with a determined glare. He was, like me, naked. Sand from a previous bout stuck in patches on his oiled skin and there was bruising up his arms and on his chest as if he had been recently bested.

I strode forward, the welts of my beating smarted but I did not let that show; I looked at him with the confidence of someone who makes judgements based solely upon what the eye can see. ‘I look forward to my lesson with relish.’

‘That’s good because I can assure you that you won’t look back on it with the same feeling.’

‘I’m sure I’ll savour it more.’

‘Arrogant barbarians need to be put in their place.’ He crouched facing me and I copied his stance, circling around him, changing direction, as he slapped my shoulders and upper arms trying to get a firm grip on oiled skin.

I responded in kind and also slammed my forearms left and right, blocking his attempts to grapple me. Moving my feet with irregular steps was a trick that I had learnt; it made it harder for your opponent to predict the direction of your next move, yet it did not seem to confuse this youth at all. Round we went, left then right, slapping at each other with open palms, landing stinging blows that could not quite be converted into a firm hold. A smack around the side of my head made my ears ring and earned my opponent a cheer from the growing crowd. I forced my right arm up, crunching his away before he could convert the blow into a grip around the back of my neck, then countered with a feint to my left and followed with a sharp move forward with my right foot in an attempt to hook around the back of his knee. He read it easily and, as my leg flashed forward, he jumped back and reached down with his left hand, grabbing my calf; he jerked it up as his right hand went for my foot, twisting it towards him with a sudden, brutal motion that forced my body to roll with it rather than have the tendons in my ankle stretched beyond endurance. In an instant I spun in the air as he tightened his hold on my foot; as I rolled over he powered forward, forcing my leg to bend so that my heel almost rammed into my buttock, sending me crashing down, face first, in an explosion of sand accompanied by the jeers and laughter of the spectators. Rough grit scraped the skin from my chin, the tip of my nose and forehead and clung to my watering eyes. I rolled onto my back, blinking incessantly, my vision blurred with sand, and I felt my temper rise as my humiliation grew.

I rubbed my eyes clear and could see the youth standing over me, sneering and beckoning me to stand up; the crowd clapped their hands in slow time and my temper broke.

Pushing back with my hands, I propelled my aching body forward and leapt at him with a high-pitched cry of rage and, with no thought for the rules, went at him with my fists clenched. I felt my knuckles crunch into his chin and then crack onto the side of his head. He made no reply but just stood, leering at me. I lashed out with a flurry of wild punches, roaring incoherently, and then something happened that changed my outlook on life for ever: with lightning-swift motion, the youth caught both my fists in the palms of his hands, clamping them firm and then slowly forcing them down.

‘What’s the point in cheating just a little bit?’ he hissed between clenched teeth, twisting my wrists outwards. ‘You either play by the rules or break them to such an extent that your opponent is completely taken unawares and everyone fears you for daring to go so far.’

The pressure mounted and I collapsed to my knees, grimacing with pain. Suddenly he released my left fist and pushed the right one out; grabbing my elbow with his free hand he crunched my arm down onto his rising knee. A white flash of pain seared through my head as I heard my forearm snap like dead wood and I must have screamed, although I have no memory of it.

‘That’s how to cheat; anything less is pitiful and demeans both you and your opponent.’

I fell to the ground, clutching my shattered limb, tears of pain streaming down my agonised face and coagulating the sand stuck to it into a sticky mud.

After a few moments writhing in agony I became aware that there was absolute silence surrounding me; I opened my eyes to see the crowd looking in open-mouthed astonishment at my vanquisher.

He stepped forward and hauled me up. ‘It’s a clean break; it’ll set well. I’ll have my father’s physician come to your house to set it.’ He put an arm around my shoulder and guided me through the crowd of spectators; they parted for us without a word. My chaperone, an elderly slave from the household, slipped my tunic over my head, collected my sandals and loincloth and then followed us back to the Palatine.

The youth dropped me at Antonia’s house with a promise that the physician would attend to me imminently.

He arrived sooner than I expected and, as he examined my broken arm, I asked him the name of the youth.

He looked at me in astonishment as if everyone should know the boy’s name. ‘He’s my master’s youngest adopted son.’

And then, of course, I knew why his face had been so familiar: I had seen him before at Drusus’ funeral; he was Lucius Julius Caesar.

Lucius called on me the next day and to my great astonishment and confusion seemed very amicably disposed towards me.

‘How does it feel?’ he asked, coming into my room unannounced.

I looked at him in surprise. ‘It throbs,’ I blurted.

‘I suppose it will for a few days.’ He sat on a stool in the corner of the room, leant back against the wall and put his feet on the low table next to my bed. For a while he surveyed me in silence.

At first I did not know what to make of it and then it started to annoy me. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘That’s a stupid question.’

I grunted, vaguely acknowledging the truth of that observation, and then held his gaze. ‘Why did you purposely break my arm and then come and see if I was all right?’

‘That’s a better one.’ He smiled, not at me but to himself.

‘Well?’

‘I suppose I was bored.’

‘Bored?’

‘Yes, bored; you know: my mind insufficiently occupied because of the repetitiveness of life.’

‘I know what bored means!’

‘Then why did you ask?’

‘I didn’t ask what it meant, I asked … I asked … well, why?’ ‘I wanted to see how you’d take it.’

‘Badly.’

‘No, remarkably well; at least I thought so. And I wanted to see whether you’d learn from it.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘Oh, I’ve learnt from it and it was a very painful lesson.’

‘All the best ones are.’

‘That’s not true.’

Lucius thought for a moment. ‘No, I suppose that was rubbish; I had a very enjoyable, pain-free lesson only last night.’

I managed a half-smile.

‘So?’

‘So, what?’

‘So, what did you learn?’

‘I learnt that next time I wrestle with you I’m going to wrench your balls off and then break both your arms and say that anything less is pitiful and would demean both of us.’

‘Ha!’ He clapped his hands. ‘I knew you’d understand; you’ll be perfect.’

‘Perfect for what?’

‘Perfect for me now that my brother seems to spend most of his life playing at politics. A sixteen-year-old sitting in the Senate! What bollocks.’

‘But he’s Augustus’ heir.’

‘So am I; but he’s welcome to it. I want to have some fun before I’m forced to grow up and behave like a gout-ridden ex-consul. I can’t get too friendly with the boys of my class because I’m not stupid; they’ll use that friendship for their own gain in the future or the friendship will cloud my judgement. So I have to look elsewhere for companionship.’

‘And a barbarian suits you just fine?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Because I’ll never play a part in your empire’s politics?’

‘Precisely.’

‘And therefore I’ll have nothing to gain from our friendship.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So you’ll feel that I’m a genuine friend and not a sycophant?’

‘True; but more to the point, my adopted father will think that and won’t object to you being my companion.’

‘Why should he care?’

‘Because, obviously, you’ll have to move into the palace; how else can we be educated together?’

‘And do I have any say in this?’

‘Of course.’

‘And what if I say no?’

‘Oh, I don’t think you’d do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’d be missing out on a lot of fun. I’m the Emperor’s adopted son; I can do almost anything I want.’

And so I moved into Augustus’ house and became the friend of the joint heir to the imperial purple.

Tiburtius rolled up the scroll.

Thumelicatz smiled, without warmth, at the Romans. ‘I find it a very pleasing irony that the person who showed my father that life must be lived to the extreme and the man who dares to go furthest will always win, was at one point destined to become your emperor.’

The younger brother waved a dismissive hand. ‘Lucius would never have become emperor; his elder brother Gaius was being groomed for that.’

‘Nevertheless, he was Augustus’ co-heir whilst he lived and had he not died two years before his brother who knows how history would have changed.’

Thusnelda pointed a finger at the Romans. ‘One thing is for sure and that’s Lucius was a great influence on my husband. He accepted no boundaries either in pleasure, violence, vengeance or daring. Erminatz told me many stories of their escapades: street fights, sexual excesses, arson, sacrilege, just about anything. Nothing was sacred, nothing was off-limits and nobody was too exalted to escape their schemes.’

‘Except for the Emperor and his wife, Livia,’ Thumelicatz interjected.

‘Yes, except those two. Lucius was very clever; in front of them he behaved impeccably, always the perfect-mannered youth of great promise. Anytime one of his exploits was brought to Augustus’ attention Lucius would always deny it with wide-eyed outrage, insisting that he couldn’t possibly have been responsible for whatever he had been accused of as he had been learning Virgil, or whatever, by heart with Erminatz; and then to prove it he would recite hundreds of lines perfectly and beautifully and Augustus would believe him. Livia, however, wouldn’t; she hated Lucius and his brother as she saw them as obstacles to her only surviving son, Tiberius, becoming emperor. At this time Tiberius had left Rome and retired to Rhodos; people said it was because he couldn’t stand the lewd behaviour of his wife, Julia, Augustus’ daughter and the mother of Lucius and Gaius. Livia knew that the removal of Julia and her sons would leave the way clear for Tiberius to return and become Augustus’ heir; so that’s what she plotted to do. Augustus would not believe anything bad about his family – which is why Lucius would always get away with his antics – but Livia gently dripped poison into his ears until eventually he had Julia exiled to a barren island and her marriage to Tiberius annulled. And once that happened the lives of the two boys were in great danger.’

Thumelicatz held the palm of one hand towards her. ‘Mother, you are leaping ahead; first we listen to the one example that Erminatz gives of his and Lucius’ behaviour and we’ll see how Lucius’ way of solving problems deeply influenced my father when he came to deciding how to defeat Varus. Aius, read on.’