CHAPTER 51

I was still at my desk working when the sun came up. I had spent the entire night with the oil lamps burning, scratching my argument onto papyrus and then throwing the scrolls away. As I always did when I lacked inspiration, I had turned to Cicero. I read some of his most famous speeches and arguments but came up empty. By morning, I had concluded that it was a lost cause.

Lucian would testify that he had caught the lovers in the very act. Adrianna would testify that Flavia had been missing from the House of Vestal all night the evening of June 9. And Crispinus had probably bribed gladiators who shared barracks with Mansuetus to testify that he had been missing that night too.

In truth, he probably had been. He was probably waiting all night by the Tiber for a woman who was in the bedchambers of the emperor.

I stared out the window. Flavia was prepared to die nobly, testifying that she had broken her vows with the emperor, not Mansuetus. Thinking of her willingness to sacrifice her life for another, I remembered the Nazarene. Even while being crucified, he had reached out to others.

Which triggered another thought. The woman I met at the foot of the cross. The description of the rabbi defending the woman caught in the very act of adultery. She had no chance at acquittal, but Jesus had turned the tables. He had put her accusers on trial. He had found a way to signal that a trial would be more embarrassing for them than it was for her. They had dropped their stones and walked away.

My mind started racing. Could the same strategy work here? Caligula wouldn’t be embarrassed by an accusation that he had slept with a Vestal Virgin. In a perverse way, he was probably proud of it. Besides, he was the judge, and he could simply reject Flavia’s testimony out of hand.

But there was one thing he would be embarrassed about. One thing he was determined to keep hidden. Something diametrically at odds with his claim to be a god. If I threatened to air it in the most public way . . .

I wrote quickly now, with time running short. The trial would begin at noon, and suddenly there was a lot to get done. I wouldn’t stoop down and write in the sand, but if the gods were willing, my defense would be just as effective.

For starters, I decided to pack the judgment hall with supporters of Mansuetus. I sent a servant to his gladiator school with a letter for his lanista, imploring the man to help rally supporters for the trial. I stopped at the Basilica Julia, where the praetors were holding court. I passed the word among my lawyer friends.

You won’t want to miss this one. Maybe I’ll ask for a battle to the death between Mansuetus and Lucian to see who is telling the truth. Perhaps I’ll suggest that Flavia carry water in a sieve. Maybe it was a different Vestal who was caught with Mansuetus.

I stopped at the market and hinted at the same things. I seeded every rumor I could think of, fueling a fire of speculation about the trial that had already been blazing throughout Rome.

An hour before the trial I returned to my home exhausted. Even without my meager efforts, the judgment hall in the Imperial Palace probably would have been packed. But I was hopeful that the crowd would spill out through the great bronze doors onto the portico and down the street. I was hoping the crowd would rival the throngs that had waited breathlessly outside the Senate for Caligula’s first speech. The emperor might be a madman, but he wanted to be a popular one. Today, he would have his chance.

The quickest route from my house to the Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill did not go through the Forum, so I took a detour. It was a perfect autumn day. The air was cool enough to be refreshing but not biting. The leaves had turned from a glossy green to tinges of brown and yellow. Pedestrians didn’t kick up dust like they did in the summer, and a breeze from the northwest shook a few leaves loose and gave flocks of birds a pleasant ride.

I took my time walking the length of the Forum, greeting people I knew with a big smile, telling them they didn’t want to miss the grand trial that would start in about thirty minutes. I urged them to bring their friends. When I left the area, I had at least fifty people in tow.

Word spread quickly, and I also had human nature working in my favor. The Romans loved a good show! By the time I started climbing the hill to reach the Imperial Palace, there were hundreds of people behind me.

I could have saved my energy. When I turned a corner halfway up the cobblestone path, I caught my first glimpse of the crowd already waiting. I could barely see the huge portico that formed the entrance to Caligula’s palace. There were thousands of people spread out in front of me. They were all pushing and cramming as close as possible to the entrance of the great judgment hall. I could sense the excitement in the crisp autumn air. I tried to squeeze my way through, announcing that I was the advocate for Mansuetus and Flavia, but it was slow going.

About halfway to the steps, two gigantic men blocked my way. When they learned that I was the advocate for Mansuetus, they grasped my forearm and thumped me on the back. They introduced themselves as gladiators from Mansuetus’s school and decided they would serve as my personal escort. They cleared a path through the rest of the spectators, shouting at people to move aside, pushing them out of the way if they didn’t part quickly enough. Common citizens slapped my shoulders and wished me luck. Some reached out to touch the gladiators, and I marveled at the popularity these men had.

The judgment hall itself was crammed with spectators, though the Praetorian Guard had wisely limited the number they let inside. As an advocate, I had never tried a case before the judgment seat of Caesar.

The hall itself was at least five times as big as the Stone Pavement Courtyard back in Jerusalem. Marble, gold, exquisitely carved statues, and massive pillars created an imposing setting. It was at least four hundred feet from the entrance of the judgment hall to the dais where the judgment seat was located. There would be no fewer than ten assessores standing behind Caligula, ready to provide advice. Larger-than-life statues of the great Roman emperors lined the front of the hall. A wraparound balcony was filled with trumpeters who would announce the entrance of the great Caesar. The dais that held Caligula’s seat was thirty feet tall. Everything about the place was designed to make the accused seem small and the emperor seem powerful.

It was doing a pretty good job on me.

A large semicircle of empty floor space in front of the judgment seat had been cleared by the Praetorian Guards, who stood watch, lining the perimeter of that space, using their large rectangular shields to keep the crowd at bay. I was allowed past the line of guards and took a seat facing the great platform where Caligula would sit. Caepio Crispinus, with his smooth gray hair and handsome smile, was already in place on the other side. I noticed that even Crispinus appeared to be nervous, fingering through the papyrus rolls he had brought, fretfully glancing behind him at his witnesses.

I went over and greeted him. “I brought a few of my friends,” I said.

Crispinus smiled. “One of my friends will be coming too. When he does, he’ll sit up there on the dais.”

At noon, there was a commotion outside as a group of men forced their way through the crowd at the huge open doors of the judgment hall. Mansuetus was surrounded by at least twenty fully armed members of the Praetorian Guard. His ankles and wrists were shackled. He shuffled slowly to the front of the hall.

Behind him, with a soldier on each side, came Flavia. She was chained in the same manner, but at least they had given her a clean white robe, though her jagged haircut, sore-infested skin, and large almond eyes made her look crazed.

As the two of them took their places at the front, the crowd on the perimeter began to clap. The applause rippled out the doors, down the portico, and across the great lawns surrounding the palace, where it erupted into a sustained roar. When the initial noise began to subside, a chant of “Man-sue-tus!” took its place and echoed back inside, resounding off the stone walls of the hall.

The big man, dressed only in a tunic, lifted his head and smiled.

The guards made the two prisoners stand in the middle of the floor at the foot of the great dais on which Caligula would sit. A row of soldiers stood at attention behind them. This was where Flavia and Mansuetus would remain throughout the trial —where everyone could stare at their backs and try to gauge their reactions.

Flavia looked over her shoulder and caught my eye. She nodded a thank-you, and I nodded back. She was standing just a few feet away from her lover, and I could tell she desperately wanted to reach out and touch him.

Mansuetus did not look good. His right foot and ankle were swollen and discolored. It didn’t take a doctor to know that he might be facing amputation even if he were somehow acquitted.

But there was no time to worry about that now. The trumpets blared, filling the hall with sharp notes that made my ears ring. The shrill sound of the flutes followed. A lictor cried out, and the giant gold-plated doors behind the gilded judgment seat opened.

In walked Caligula, dressed in a purple robe, a laurel wreath on his head. He moved to the front of the platform and surveyed the packed hall.

He had several assessores standing right behind him. My mind flashed back to the trial of the Nazarene. So this was what it felt like to be on the other side. I feared my knees would buckle.

“Let the charges be read and the proceedings begin!” Caligula said.

A lictor read the charges, and the emperor took his seat. Unlike the prefects in the provinces, the mighty Caesar did not stand during trials.

He nodded to Crispinus.

“I’ll hear from the prosecution first.”