CHAPTER 88

In the ensuing weeks, Theophilus kept up with developments in Rome by sending one of his servants into the city each day to transcribe relevant portions of the Acta Diurna —the official daily news sheets posted by the emperor’s clerks in the Forum. The Acta contained the latest information about military campaigns, trials, scandals, and Caesar’s various exploits. Each report was, of course, personally approved by Nero himself.

Even after editing, the reports made it clear that Nero was becoming increasingly narcissistic and unpredictable.

The emperor had apparently decided that his artistic talents should be shared with a wider audience than just the citizens of Rome. Greece, the cradle of the arts, was calling.

Nero’s premier event took place on the stage of a packed theater in Naples, where the audience, spurred on by the wildly cheering Augustiani, lavished praise and a standing ovation on the emperor.

According to the Acta reports, an earthquake rocked Naples later that evening, and the theater collapsed. If the earthquake had occurred a few hours earlier, thousands would have died. It was, in the eyes of Nero, a sign of blessing from the gods.

A few months after Caesar returned to Rome, the Acta announced his plans to again travel abroad. This time he would visit Alexandria. The trip was scheduled to take place during the first week in June. Nero issued a public proclamation, assuring Roman citizens that things would remain “unchanged and prosperous” while he was away. He would not stay long, and when he returned, there would be a great celebration. He was the father of Rome, and the city would always be first in his heart.

But two days later, Nero canceled the Alexandria trip. The reason had a familiar ring and made Theophilus more suspicious than ever. It was almost as if Nero, like a trained actor improvising from a script, had taken Paul’s Damascus Road experience and made it his own.

According to the Acta, Nero had been making the rounds of the temples to sacrifice to the gods before he left for Alexandria. It was the start of the Vestalia celebration, and the festival would begin with a simple ceremony at the temple of Vesta, which Nero would grace with his presence.

But when he entered the temple, the hem of his robe caught on something, and he couldn’t move. He was immediately seized with trembling and a sense of imminent danger. Without warning, everything went dark.

Blinded, the emperor was carried in a litter back to his palace. His sight was miraculously restored later that night when someone laid hands on him, the same way that Ananias had laid hands on Paul. For Nero, the experience constituted a kind of spiritual awakening, and his plans abruptly changed. The day after his sight was restored, he issued a decree, carried word for word in the Acta and copied by the servants of Theophilus:

I have seen the sad countenances of our citizens. I have heard their secret complaints at the prospect of my undertaking such a long journey, when they cannot bear even my briefest excursions, accustomed as they are to being cheered in their misfortunes by the sight of the emperor. Therefore, as in private relationships, the closest ties are the strongest, so the people of Rome have the most powerful claims and must be obeyed in their wish to retain me.

The Acta praised the emperor for his decision to remain in Rome. The omen from the temple of Vesta could not be ignored. Misfortune lurked on the horizon, and Rome needed him. The emperor would be there for his people.

Theophilus read the breathless account and scoffed at Nero’s newfound benevolence toward his people. The emperor was making plans. For some unknown reason, he had concocted a spiritual excuse to remain in the capital city.

Nero’s pledge to remain in Rome notwithstanding, the emperor and his huge entourage of bodyguards, servants, and magistrates left the stifling city on July 14 and headed to Antium, a coastal city thirty-five miles away. Nero had an elaborate palace there that sprawled along the coast for eight hundred yards, cooled by the westerly winds that skimmed across the surface of the Mediterranean.

Theophilus was one of the few aristocrats who did not make the trip to Rome to watch Caesar leave. Those who did told Theophilus it was quite a procession, at one time stretching all the way from the Via Sacra to the Esquiline Hill.

According to reports, Nero did not plan on staying in Antium long. He would be back in time for the final festivities of the scheduled games honoring Julius Caesar and his patron deity, Venus. Those games would climax with three days of chariot races in the Circus Maximus, and Nero, who never missed a race, would be there.

But first he was scheduled to take the stage at his own personal theater in Antium, dressed in the unbelted tunic of a citharede, to perform a ballad in front of many of Rome’s most prominent citizens. The Acta even mentioned the title of the ballad —“The Sack of Ilium” —a melancholy song about the destruction of Troy by the Greeks during the Trojan War made possible by the shrewd deployment of the Trojan horse.

It was a complex and technical piece, one that would call upon the full range of Nero’s acting and vocal abilities. But there seemed to be little doubt, at least among those who wrote for the Acta, that Rome’s greatest performer would pull it off brilliantly.