CHAPTER 13

I didn’t sleep well that night. Gruesome images were seared into my mind —the slice of the neck, the sword in the Gaul’s back, the crowd lustily craving more. The executions at noon still bothered me the most. Men hanging on crosses or being torn apart by beasts while the crowd chatted and waited for the main event. I had been on a cross, even if only for a few hours, and it was impossible to see others hanging there without feeling some of their pain.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Flavia either. I kept playing the scenes over and over. She and the other Vestals parading into the imperial box, her beauty radiating in the sun. Her impervious expression throughout the day’s events. The surprising thumbs-down after the first gladiator fight. The way she had made eye contact with Mansuetus.

Rethinking the day’s events, I decided that she had turned her thumb down in the early gladiator fights so that her vote might be taken more seriously if she had to urge Sejanus to extend mercy to Mansuetus. From the way she leaned forward in her seat while Mansuetus fought, and from the look of near panic on her face when he was wounded, I thought that she might have leaped over the concrete wall of the imperial box, if necessary, to keep him from dying.

I woke the next morning exhausted. I shaved, put on my linen tunic and woolen toga, and combed my wavy hair. I was going to spend the day with Seneca, and as always, appearances mattered.

Before heading out, I grabbed a morning snack of bread, dates, honey, milk, and a few olives. I carried my parchment and writing utensils through the narrow streets to Seneca’s house on the Capitoline Hill. As usual, his spacious front hall was crowded with morning callers anxious for the man’s patronage. His slaves had swept and polished the marble floor, and his head slave grandly announced my presence. Because of the urgency of my mission, I was placed ahead of Seneca’s other “clients.”

Those who had been waiting longer stared ruefully as Seneca came out and greeted me warmly, escorting me back to his office. We talked about the games and the disquieting conclusion of the last contest, which had seemed to unsettle the crowd. Seneca saw it as fate smiling on us and said we should send the letter to Tiberius right away.

For the next two hours, Seneca composed his letter while I acted as secretary and transcribed it. He gave me a crooked smile when we started and told me I might have to hold my nose for the first part. “Nobody writes the great Tiberius without a certain amount of flattery,” he explained. “He will probably skip it, but it needs to be there just the same.”

As I transcribed the letter, I marveled at Seneca’s command of the language and doubted that Tiberius would skip even a word. Knowing the emperor, it was more likely he would have it carved into the marble of his palace.

Eventually Seneca let the great emperor know that he had a concern and began to describe what he had witnessed.

The games, Most Excellent Tiberius, have become pure butchery. Men constantly cry for more bloodshed. “Kill him! Flog him! Burn him alive!” The bloodlust corrupts, and the valor of the gladiators is lost on the crowd. “Why is he such a coward? Why won’t he die more willingly? Why won’t he rush to the steel?”

Boys in the street no longer dream of being senators or generals but only of being gladiators. Those who before took the greatest pride in serving in the legions now want only to die in the arena.

Was Rome built by bloodlust or by something nobler? A culture is known by its heroes, O great Tiberius, and how it treats them. What does it say about the impulses of the spectators when they call for the blood of the very men they seem to worship? And what does it say about our country when our slaves have become our greatest heroes, based on their ability to gut another man with the sword?

It was, I thought as I dutifully recorded the words, a subtle and clever appeal to the emperor’s paranoia. If the crowds idolized the gladiators but still wanted to see them dead, what did that say about their intentions toward the emperor? And why should we feed this impulse?

Our heroes should not be the strongest slaves we’ve conquered. Our heroes should be the brave generals who make our empire safe. Our greatest hero should be our greatest citizen, the Princeps, the Son of the Divine Augustus. I beg you, for Rome and her posterity, to evaluate the frequency of the games and decide if they are worthy of the patronage of such an excellent ruler.

The audacity of the letter impressed me. When Seneca finished, I stared at him in near disbelief. Was he really going to send it?

That wry smile appeared on his lips for the second time that morning. “You don’t think I’d be so foolish as to send such a letter without first testing the waters, do you?” he asked.

“It does seem rather bold.”

“Bold times call for bold action,” Seneca said. Then he tilted his head back with a knowing chuckle. “But they also call for well-placed sources who can first engage the emperor about his opinion of the games and hand him the letter only if the wind seems to be blowing in the proper direction.”

I marveled not so much at the shrewdness of Seneca but at the revelation that he had a well-placed source on Capri. I was beyond fortunate to have him as a benefactor.

“In the meantime,” he said, “make a second copy of that letter so I can present it to Flavia.”

I did as I was told and watched as Seneca sealed each letter with his signet ring. I was hoping I would have a chance to deliver the letter to Flavia myself, but Seneca handpicked a different courier. He did, however, have one more surprise for me before he sent me on my way.

“You have two days to pack,” Seneca announced. “You’ll be receiving your commission as assessore in the province of Judea from our good friend Sejanus two days hence.”