CHAPTER 45

The gods struck back with a vengeance, just as Flavia prayed they would. Less than a month later, the emperor fell sick. Rome’s best physicians were called to the palace. Sacrifices were offered to the gods day and night. The freedmen of Rome surrounded the Palatine Hill each night waiting for news, observing a solemn candlelight vigil.

The entire palace seemed to be under quarantine. There were no details given on Caligula’s condition. Some believed the emperor was already dead. Flavia followed the intrigue closely as senators schemed and Macro decided to take matters into his own hands.

Gemellus, the other grandson of Tiberius Caesar, was the logical choice to follow Caligula. Macro let the senators know he would support the accession of Gemellus.

A day later, news leaked from the Palatine Hill and fluttered around the temple of Vesta. On his sickbed, Caligula had named his favorite sister, Drusilla, to inherit the imperial property and throne. When the people heard this, they rallied to the side of their fallen emperor. Whatever Caligula wanted, the people wanted as well.

Flavia watched from a distance as the senators tried to read the winds. Would the emperor recover? Did they dare cross Macro and the Praetorian Guards? Which way should they jump?

Flavia had already made up her mind. Every night she prayed to Tellus, god of earth, and Apollo, god of both disease and healing, that Caligula might die. Perhaps Gemellus was not fit to be emperor, but anybody was better than Caligula and his arrogant sister Drusilla.

But it was not to be. One night Flavia heard Adrianna burst through the door and announce that Caligula had recovered.

“He came out to the balcony and spoke to the people!” she shouted. “He threw coins into the crowd and watched them scramble for the money. The emperor is back!”

Caligula wasted no time putting things in order. He dispatched a military tribune to the island of Capri and forced Gemellus to commit suicide. He appointed Macro as prefect of Egypt and sent him away.

In the days after the sickness, when Flavia was with the emperor at public ceremonies, she detected a look of madness in his eyes. His actions became even more impulsive and obsessive.

He fell in love with a woman named Livia Orestilla. But there was a small problem. She was already engaged to a senator named Gaius Calpurnius Piso. This didn’t stop Caligula. He abducted her from her own wedding ceremony and forced her to marry him that same day. A few months later, he obtained a divorce.

When his sister Drusilla died unexpectedly, Caligula retreated to the country and let his beard and hair grow in grief. He required the Senate to pass a resolution making Drusilla a goddess so that she could join the ranks of Julius Caesar and Augustus.

After a month of mourning, Caligula shaved, returned to Rome, and scheduled a speech in the Senate. In a thirty-minute diatribe, he criticized the senators for the way they had treated Tiberius after his death.

The great Senate hall fell silent as the emperor dressed them down. He pulled out documents from the maiestas trials —documents he had supposedly destroyed —and quoted statements the senators had made. He reminded them of their votes to condemn their colleagues for saying anything against Tiberius and then contrasted those votes with their votes to condemn Tiberius after he died. He told the senators that no emperor could trust them and that the treason trials would be resumed immediately. He walked out of the stunned hall, and the consul in charge declared a recess.

The next day, the Senate reconvened and passed resolutions bestowing lavish praise on Caligula as a sincere and pious ruler. They voted to offer annual sacrifices on the anniversary of his speech. They did exactly what Caligula had accused them of doing —flattered a man they would rather see dead.

But the emperor was not done humiliating the Senate. He held a grand banquet at his house and invited all of the high-ranking senators. When they had finished dining, Caligula said that he had an honored guest he wanted them to meet. He had his stable hand bring in his favorite racehorse, and he toasted the horse with golden goblets. He told the senators that he planned to appoint the horse as one of the two consuls in charge of the Senate and asked if there were any objections.

The hall was silent. “Are there any objections?” Caligula asked a second time.

None of the senators said a word.

Caligula laughed.

A few months later, he ended the preferred seating at the theater and at the games so the aristocrats would have to fight with everyone else for the open seats. He invited senators to lavish banquets so he could humiliate them. Instead of the traditional kiss on both cheeks, he offered them his foot and made them bow down to kiss it.

He declared himself a god and constructed a temple in his own honor. Real and imagined conspiracies against Caligula were harshly punished. The maiestas trials took on new life as the senators turned on each other with a viciousness not seen since the last days of Tiberius Caesar.

In all of this, Flavia kept a low profile, biding her time and staying out of the emperor’s way. It was not hard. There were plenty of things to distract Caligula. But there were certain events that brought them in unavoidably close contact —public ceremonies, festival sacrifices, and the games, where they both sat in the imperial box.

Moreover, Caligula was still Pontifex Maximus, head of the House of Vestal, and he was entitled to select the new Vestal Virgins. Just the thought of him doing so knotted and twisted Flavia’s stomach with contempt.