Empire - Saylor Steven (книги без сокращений TXT) 📗
Lucius scanned the vast bowl of the amphitheatre. He had never seen so many people in one place, or so vast an outpouring of emotion. At the very centre of it all was the emperor.
Titus was still a young man. With luck, he might reign for many years, until Lucius himself was old. He had certainly made an auspicious beginning. All the disasters and trials of the last year – the destruction of Pompeii, the plague in Roma, the fire that had devastated the city – were eclipsed by the stunning success of the inaugural games. Titus had not merely distracted the citizens, he had inspired them with a sense of unity and restored confidence. More feasting and plays and spectacles would follow in the days ahead, at venues all over the city, but it was hard to imagine anything that could match the splendour of the opening day of the Flavian Amphitheatre.
The two gladiators made their exit. The emperor gave a final salute to the people and left the arena. The imperial box was empty. The arena was deserted. There were no more acrobats, no more contests, no more spectacles to behold.
As he gazed at the thousands of spectators around him, it occurred to Lucius that the crowd itself was the true spectacle. Seated in a circle, with everyone visible to everyone else, the spectators had spent as much time watching one another as they had watching the games. The sound of the gathering, whether a murmur or a roar, was intoxicating; the acoustics of the place could capture a whisper or a laugh from across the way or amplify the roar of the crowd to superhuman volume. Already the great amphitheatre had taken on a life of it own: from that day forward, this would be the gathering place for all Roma, rich and poor, great and small, the living embodiment of the spirit of the city and the will of its people. The world outside the amphitheatre might pose dangers beyond human control – plague, earthquake, fire, flood, all the perils of war – but within the protective shell of the amphitheatre existed a cosmos in miniature where the people of Roma were like gods, gazing down at the little world of the arena where mortals and beasts lived and died at their whim.
Perhaps Epictetus and Dio should have come, Lucius thought; how else could they understand the collective grandeur experienced by the spectators? And who but his philosopher friends could help Lucius make sense of the curious feeling of detachment that cast a cold shadow over his enjoyment of that moment, that drained the experience of its glamour and made it seem hollow and empty? Amid the blur of so many faces and the dull, throbbing roar of so many voices, Lucius suddenly felt more alone than he had ever felt before in his life.
But he was not alone. Amid the vast crowd, two eyes looked back at him. Surrounded by her fellow Vestals, close enough to touch if had dared to do so, Cornelia was smiling at him. She said nothing, nor did she need to. Lucius knew he would see her again.
AD 84
Lucius made ready to set out from his house on the Palatine, dressed not in his toga but in a worn, brown tunic borrowed from one of his household slaves. No Roman wife, married to a man of property, would have allowed her husband to leave the house looking so drab and nondescript; but at thirty-seven, Lucius still had no wife, nor had he any intention of acquiring one. He came and went as he pleased, unconstrained by concerns of family or by most of the societal obligation that applied to men of his age and wealth.
As he stepped out the front door, his heart began to race. How absurd, he thought, that a man his age should feel such adolescent excitement at the prospect of a sexual tryst, and with a woman who had been his lover for more than three years. Yet the thrill he felt at seeing her never diminished; it grew stronger. Was it the danger that excited him? Or was it because they were able to meet so seldom, which made each occasion special?
He looked up at the cloudless sky. He would have preferred the anonymity of a hooded cloak, but on a hot summer day such a garment might attract more attention than it deflected. He took a few steps down the narrow street, then looked back at his house. How absurdly big the place was, for a single man to dwell in. A huge staff of slaves was required just to keep the place running. Sometimes he felt that the slaves were the true inhabitants and he was simply an occupant.
How he preferred the tiny house on the Esquiline that was his destination, the place he had purchased for the sole purpose of meeting his lover.
He made his way down the slope of the Palatine and across the heart of the city, passing the Arch of Titus and the Flavian Amphitheatre, glancing up at the towering Colossus of Sol. He passed through the crowded Subura, hardly conscious of the noise and the odors. He ascended the steep, winding path up a spur of the Esquiline Hill and paused for breath at the little reservoir called the Lake of Orpheus, so named because the splashing fountain was decorated by a charming statue of Orpheus with his lyre surrounded by listening beasts. The house of Epaphroditus was nearby, but Lucius turned in a different direction.
At last he arrived at his destination. The house was small and unassuming, with nothing to distinguish it. The door was made of unpainted wood without even a knocker for ornament. He pulled a key from his tunic and let himself in. There was no doorkeeper to admit him; there were no slaves at all in the house. That in itself made the house a special place. Where did a man ever go in Roma where he could be truly alone, without even slaves present?
She was waiting for him in the tiny garden at the centre of the house, reclining on a couch. She must have only just arrived, for she was still dressed in the hooded cloak she had worn to cross the city. Unlike Lucius, she could not possibly go out in public without hiding her face, even on a day as hot as this.
He sat beside her without saying a word. He pulled back the hood. The sight of her short blonde hair excited him. It gave her a curiously boyish look and made her different from other women. Only the other Vestals and their female servants ever saw her like this, without her headdress; the sight of her cropped hair, like the sight of her naked body, was his alone, a privilege both sacred and profane that was enjoyed by no other man on earth. He ran his fingers through her hair, intoxicated by a sense of possession.
He put his mouth on hers and tasted her sweet breath. He slid his hands inside the cloak and touched warm, sleek flesh. He gasped. Beneath the cloak, she was wearing nothing at all, not even a sleeping gown or a simple tunic. She had crossed the city like this, naked except for slippers and a hooded cloak.
“Madness!” he whispered. He pushed back the cloak and buried his face against her neck. She laughed softly, touching her lips to the inner folds of his ear, nipping gently at the earlobe with her teeth. She opened the cloak and let it fall, so that she was suddenly naked in his arms
He threw off his tunic and made love to her, as quickly and desperately as a boy. It was selfish of him, because he knew she preferred a much slower rhythm. But she indulged him, and seemed to draw pleasure from his trembling, uncontrollable excitement. All his emotions crested at once and poured from him in a flood. He wept, which aroused her; as if to draw more tears from him she dug her fingernails into his back and drew him closer to her, exerting a strength that never failed to surprise him, wrapping her limbs around him as the tendrils of a vine embrace a stone.
He did not have to work to reach the climax: it came upon him unbidden, like a fire that consumes all before it. It consumed her as well, for he felt her shudder against his sweating flesh and clench the part of him inside her. She cried out so long and so loudly that people in the neighbouring houses must have heard. Let them hear, he thought; they would know they heard a woman in ecstasy, but they could not know she was a Vestal.
