Most of this book’s main events—Galba’s death, Piso’s murder at the Temple of Vesta, Otho’s speech and suicide after the battle of Bedriacum, Vitellius’s love of food and of the Blues, the riots in Rome, Domitian’s elopement with a married woman—are true to history, and so are many of the characters in Daughters of Rome. Domitia, daughter of the famous historical general Gnaeus Corbulo and renamed here as Marcella, will go on after her scandalous elopement to a grim two decades as Domitian’s wife; he eventually came to hate her, but never relinquished his hold on Marcella/Domitia. Her sister Cornelia, Corbulo’s elder daughter (also called Domitia, and renamed by me for clarity), is only a shadowy figure in history and disappears into domestic anonymity. Her marriage to Piso Licinianus is my own invention, though the historical Piso did exist and was murdered by Praetorians, who took his head to show the new Emperor and later sold it back to Piso’s family. Centurion Densus of the Praetorian Guard also existed, though history records that he died the night of Galba’s assassination in a fruitless attempt to save Piso’s life. It seemed an unfair end for a brave and loyal soldier, so I let him survive in Daughters of Rome to attain a happier ending.
Lollia is a fictional character, but her husbands were real to history—Titus Flavius as Vespasian’s splendid soldier son, Senator Vinius as Galba’s right-hand man, Salvius Titianus as Emperor Otho’s inoffensive brother, and Fabius Valens as Vitellius’s ruthless kingmaker were all real men and had the fates described here. Valens’s counterpart Caecina Alienus is a historical figure as well; he did turn traitor after being appointed commander of Vitellius’s armies when a temporary illness laid Fabius Valens low. He was rewarded for his treachery but was eventually executed some years later for trying to betray yet another emperor. Lollia’s daughter Flavia Domitilla was also a real figure, though historically she was Titus’s niece rather than his daughter. Both Flavia and Titus’s daughter Julia grew up to endure tragedy and adventure under the reign of their uncle Domitian.
Diana is also a fictional character, but Llyn ap Caradoc was possibly real. His father, Caradoc, or Caratacus, was a formidable warrior in Britain whose rebellion against Rome is well documented. He was eventually captured along with his family (some accounts mention daughters; some mention a son possibly named Linus or Llyen or Llyn), and they were all taken to Rome and pardoned. They disappear from history at that point, but I always wondered what happened to Caratacus and his family. His son, if he had one, would have been a vigorous young warrior forced to live most of his life among enemies he hated. The historical Caratacus never escaped captivity—history would have recorded that—but Daughters of Rome allowed me to hope that at least his son might have one day returned home.
The Roman chariot races that take up so much of Diana and Llyn’s time are depicted as accurately as possible. Successful charioteers attained celebrity status in ancient Rome, and many young patrician men drove in the great circuses—though never any women, to my knowledge. The rivalry between the four racing factions was vicious: think Red Sox/Yankees.
The Year of Four Emperors proved cataclysmic to the Roman people. There had been coups before, but always with at least a pretense of legality. The year 69 was the first time the Empire went up for grabs to any usurper with an army, profoundly shocking a nation that had existed many centuries as a Republic. A period of relative stability would follow with Vespasian and his heirs, but Rome would never be quite so secure again from ambitious usurpers. A new era had dawned.
Characters
THE FAMILY CORNELII
Gaius Cornelius, paterfamilias
Tullia, his wife
Senator Marcus Norbanus, cousin to the Cornelii, Tullia’s first husband
*Paulinus, son of Tullia and Marcus
*Cornelia Prima, Gaius’s eldest sister
*Piso Licinianus, her husband
*Cornelia Secunda, called Marcella, Gaius’s second sister
*Lucius Aelius Lamia, her husband
Cornelia Tertia, called Lollia, a first cousin
Lollia’s grandfather, freedman and wealthy trader
*Titus Flavius, Lollia’s first husband, eldest son of Vespasian
*Flavia Domitilla, their daughter
*Senator Flaccus Vinius, Lollia’s third husband, consul and advisor to Emperor Galba
*Salvius Otho, Lollia’s fourth husband, brother to Emperor Otho
*Fabius Valens, Lollia’s fifth husband, general and advisor to Emperor Vitellius
Thrax, a slave
Cornelia Quarta, called Diana, a first cousin
Paris, her father
*Llyn ap Caradoc, horse trainer and former rebel
Xerxes, faction director for the Reds
Bassus, faction director for the Blues
Derricus, star charioteer for the Blues
Siculus, charioteer for the Reds
The Anemoi (Boreas, Notus, Eurus, Zephyrus), chariot horses for the Reds
EMPERORS
*Servius Sulpicius Galba
*Senator Vinius, consul and adviser, Lollia’s third husband
*Centurion Drusus Sempronius Densus, a centurion in his Praetorian Guard
*Marcus Salvius Otho
*Salvius, Otho’s brother, Lollia’s fourth husband
*Proculus, his Praetorian Prefect
*Aulus Vitellius
*Fabius Valens, his adviser, Lollia’s fifth husband
*Caecina Alienus, his adviser
*Lucius Vitellius, his brother
*Titus Flavius Vespasian
*Titus, his eldest son, Lollia’s first husband
*Julia Flavia, his daughter by his second wife
*Domitian, his youngest son
Nessus, Domitian’s astrologer
Turn the page for an excerpt from
Mistress of Rome
Available in paperback from Berkley Books
THEA
ROME, SEPTEMBER, A.D. 81
I opened my wrist with one firm stroke of the knife, watching with interest as the blood leaped out of the vein. My wrists were latticed with knife scars, but I still found the sight of my own blood fascinating. There was always the element of danger: After so many years, would I finally get careless and cut too deep? Would this be the day I watched my young life stream away into the blue pottery bowl with the nice frieze of nymphs on the side? The thought much brightened a life of minimum excitement.
But this time it was not to be. The first leap of blood slowed to a trickle, and I settled back against the mosaic pillar in the atrium, blue bowl in my lap. Soon a pleasant haze would descend over my eyes and the world would take on an agreeably distant hue. I needed that haze today. I would be accompanying my new mistress to the Colosseum, to see the gladiatorial games for the accession of the new Emperor. And from what I’d heard about the games . . .
“Thea!”
My mistress’s voice. I muttered something rude in a combination of Greek, Hebrew, and gutter Latin, none of which she understood.
The blue bowl held a shallow cup of my blood. I wrapped my wrist in a strip of linen, tying off the knot with my teeth, then emptied the bowl into the atrium fountain. I took care not to drip on my brown wool tunic. My mistress’s eagle eyes would spot a bloodstain in half a second, and I would not care to explain to her exactly why, once or twice a month, I took a blue bowl with a nice frieze of nymphs on the side and filled it with my own blood. However, fairly speaking, there was very little that I would care to tell my mistress at all. She hadn’t owned me long, but I already knew that.
“Thea!”
I turned too quickly, and had to lean against the pillars of the atrium. Maybe I’d overdone it. Drain too much blood, and nausea set in. Surely not good on a day when I would have to watch thousands of animals and men get slaughtered.
“Thea, quit dawdling.” My mistress poked her pretty head out the bedroom door, her annoyed features agreeably hazy to my eyes. “Father’s waiting, and you still have to dress me.”
I drifted o
bediently after her, my feet seeming to float several inches above the floor. A tasteless floor with a mosaic scene of gladiators fighting it out with tridents, blood splashing copiously in square red tiles. Tasteless but appropriate: My mistress’s father, Quintus Pollio, was one of several organizers of the Imperial gladiatorial games.
“The blue gown, Thea. With the pearl pins at the shoulders.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Lady Lepida Pollia. I had been purchased for her several months ago when she turned fourteen: a maid of her own age to do her hair and carry her fan now that she was so nearly a woman. As a gift I didn’t rank as high as the pearl necklace and the silver bangles and the half-dozen silk gowns she’d also received from her doting father, but she certainly liked having her own personal shadow.
“Cut yourself at dinner again, Thea?” She caught sight of my bandaged wrist at once. “You really are a fumble-fingers. Just don’t drop my jewel box, or I’ll be very cross. Now, I want the gold bands in my hair, in the Greek style. I’ll be a Greek for the day . . . just like you, Thea.”
She knew I was no Greek, despite the name bestowed on me by the Athenian merchant who was my first owner. “Yes, my lady,” I murmured in my purest Greek. A frown flickered between her fine black brows. I was better educated than my mistress, and it annoyed her no end. I tried to remind her at least once a week.
“Don’t go giving yourself airs, Thea. You’re just another little Jew slave. Remember that.”
“Yes, my lady.” Meekly I coiled and pinned her curls. She was already chattering on.
“. . . Father says that Belleraphon will fight this afternoon. Really, I know he’s our best gladiator, but that flat face! He may dress like a dandy, but all the perfume in the world won’t turn him into an Apollo. Of course he is wonderfully graceful, even when he’s sticking someone right through the throat—ouch! You pricked me!”
“Sorry, my lady.”
“You certainly look green. There’s no reason to get sick over the games, you know. Gladiators and slaves and prisoners—they’d all die anyway. At least this way we get some fun out of it.”
“Maybe it’s my Jewish blood,” I suggested. “We don’t usually find death amusing.”
“Maybe that’s it.” Lepida examined her varnished nails. “At least the games are bound to be thrilling today. What with the Emperor getting sick and dying in the middle of the season, we haven’t had a good show for months.”
“Inconsiderate of him,” I agreed.
“At least the new Emperor is supposed to love the games. Emperor Domitian. Titus Flavius Domitianus . . . I wonder what he’ll be like? Father went to no end of trouble arranging the best bouts for him. Pearl earrings, Thea.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And the musk perfume. There.” Lepida surveyed herself in the polished steel mirror. She was very young—fourteen, same as me—and too young, really, for the rich silk gown, the pearls, the rouge. But she had no mother and Quintus Pollio, so shrewd in dealing with slave merchants and lanistae, was clay in the hands of his only child. Besides, there was no doubt that she cut a dash. Her beauty was not in the peacock-blue eyes or even the yard of silky black hair that was her pride and joy. It was in her Olympian poise. On the basis of that poise, Lady Lepida Pollia aimed to catch a distinguished husband, a patrician who would raise the family Pollii at last into the highest ranks of Roman society.
She beckoned me closer, peacock fan languidly stirring her sculpted curls. In the mirror behind her I was a dark-brown shadow: lanky where she was luscious, sunburned where she was white-skinned, drab where she was brilliant. Very flattering, at least for her.
“Most effective,” she announced, mirroring my thoughts. “But you really do need a new dress, Thea. You look like a tall dead tree. Come along, Father’s waiting.”
Father was indeed waiting. But his impatience softened as Lepida dimpled at him and pirouetted girlishly. “Yes, you look very pretty. Be sure to smile at Aemilius Graccus today; that’s a very important family, and he’s got an eye for pretty girls.”
I could have told him that it wasn’t pretty girls Aemilius Graccus had an eye for, but he didn’t ask me. Maybe he should have. Slaves heard everything.
Most Romans had to get up at daybreak to get a good seat in the Colosseum. But the Pollio seats were reserved, so we tripped out just fashionably late enough to nod at all the great families. Lepida sparkled at Aemilius Graccus, at a party of patrician officers lounging on the street corner, at anyone with a purple-bordered toga and an old name. Her father importantly exchanged gossip with any patrician who favored him with an obligatory smile.
“. . . I heard Emperor Domitian’s planning a campaign in Germania next season! Wants to pick up where his brother left off, eh? No doubting Emperor Titus cut those barbarians down to size, we’ll see if Domitian can do any better . . .”
“Quintus Pollio,” I overheard a patrician voice drawl. “Really, his perfume alone—!”
“But he does his job so well. What’s a smile now and then if it keeps him working hard?”
So Quintus Pollio went on bowing and smirking. He would have sold thirty years of his life for the honor of carrying the family name of the Julii, the Gracchi, or the Sulpicii. So would my mistress, for that matter.
I amused myself by peering into the vendors’ stalls that crowded the streets. Souvenirs of dead gladiators, the blood of this or that great fighter preserved in sand, little wooden medallions painted with the face of the famous Belleraphon. These last weren’t selling very well, since not even the artists could give Belleraphon a pretty face. Portraits of a handsome Thracian trident fighter did much better.
“He’s so beautiful!” Out of the corner of my eye I saw a cluster of girls mooning over a medallion. “I sleep with his picture under my pillow every night—”
I smiled. We Jewish girls, we liked our men to be fighters, too—but we liked them real and we liked them long-lived. The kind who take the head off a legionnaire in the morning and come home at night to preside over the Sabbath table. Only Roman girls mooned over crude garish portraits of men they’d never met, men who would probably be dead before the year was out. On the other hand, perhaps a short-lived man was better for daydreaming about. He’d never be old, he’d never lose his looks, and if you tired of him he’d soon be gone.
The crowds grew thicker around the Colosseum. I’d walked often enough in its vast marble shadow as I ran errands for my mistress, but this was my first time inside and I struggled not to gape. So huge, so many marble arches, so many statues staring arrogantly from their plinths, so many seats. Fifty thousand eager spectators could cram inside, so they said. An arena fit for the gods, begun by the late Emperor Vespasian, finished by his son the late Emperor Titus, opened today in celebration for Titus’s younger brother who had just donned the Imperial purple as Emperor Domitian.
So much marble for a charnel house. I’d have preferred a theatre, but then I would rather hear music than watch men die. I imagined singing for a crowd as large as this one, a real audience, instead of the frogs in the conservatorium when I scrubbed the tiles . . .
“Keep that fan moving, Thea.” Lepida settled into her velvet cushions, waving like an Empress at the crowds who had a small cheer for her father. Men and women usually sat separately to watch the games, but Quintus Pollio as organizer of the games could sit with his daughter if he liked. “Faster than that, Thea. It’s going to be gruesomely hot. Really, why won’t it cool down? It’s supposed to be fall.”
Obediently I waved the fan back and forth. The games would last all day, which meant that I had a good six hours of feather-waving in front of me. Oh, my arms were going to ache.
Trumpets blared brassily. Even my heart skipped a beat at that thrilling fanfare. The new Emperor stepped out into the Imperial box, raising his hand to the crowd, and I stretched on my toes for a look at him. Domitian, third Emperor of the Flavian dynasty: tall, ruddy-cheeked, dazzling the eye in his purple cloak and go
lden circlet.
“Father.” Lepida tugged on her father’s sleeve. “Is the Emperor really a man of secret vices? At the bathhouse yesterday, I heard—”
I could have told her that all Emperors were rumored to be men of secret vices. Emperor Tiberius and his little slave boys, Emperor Caligula who slept with his sisters, Emperor Titus and his mistresses—what was the point of having an Emperor if you couldn’t cook up spicy rumors about him?
Domitian’s Empress, now, was less gossipworthy. Tall, statuesque, lovely as she stepped forward beside her Imperial husband to wave at the roaring crowds—but disappointed reports had it that the Empress was an impeccable wife. Still, her green silk stola and emeralds caused a certain buzz of feminine admiration. Green, no doubt, would become the color of the season.
“Father.” Lepida tugged at her father’s arm again. “You know I’m always so admired in green. An emerald necklace like the Empress’s—”
Various other Imperial cousins filed after the Emperor—there was a niece, Emperor Titus’s younger daughter Lady Julia, who had supposedly petitioned to join the Vestal Virgins but had been refused. Otherwise, a dull lot. I was disappointed. My first sight of the Imperial family, and they looked like any other clutch of languid patricians.