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By now it was clear that our pla
We tried clearing our throats diffidently; nobody heard.
Then order somehow imposed itself. Rutilius was taking a last rattle through his scrolls, ready to start first. He had an armful, whereas I had only one, with my dubious opus copied out for me by my womenfolk; Helena and Maia believed bad handwriting would cause awkward pauses if they left me to my own devices with the original note-tablets. It was true that my efforts seemed to acquire a new dignity once they were written out in neat three-inch columns on regular papyrus. (Helena had invested in the papyrus as a gesture of support; Maia had wanted to economise by using the backs of old horse-medicine recipes, the only legacy her husband had left her.) I was twisting the copy, unwittingly tightening the roll on its roller to danger point, while pretending to grin encouragement at Rutilius. Then to our astonishment, the bearded man who was at the centre of the gatecrashers moved to the area in front of the terrace where we were intending to perform.
Now I got a better squint at him: grey hair bushing back from a square forehead, with coarse grey eyebrows too, although those looked as if they had been powdered with beanflour to make them match his silvered hair. He had a limp demeanour with knowing overtones – in personality a nobody, but a nobody who was used to getting in other people's way.
`Did you invite him? I hissed at Rutilius.
`No! I thought you must have done -'
Then without preamble the fellow began speaking. He saluted the young prince with an oozily unctuous welcome. I thought the fellow must be a court flunkey, with pre-arranged orders to thank royalty for attending. Domitian looked unmoved, however, and his attendants were openly muttering among themselves as if they too wondered who the interloper was.
We gathered the man was a regular at literary events in the Auditorium. He was taking over, and it was too late for us to intervene. He assumed everyone knew him – a true mark of mediocrity. For some astounding reason, he had appointed himself the task of formally introducing us. At the intimate event we had pla
A speech by this drag-anchor reeked of disaster from the first word. Since he knew nothing about us, he started with that fine insult, `I admit I have not read their work', then followed up relentlessly, `I hear some people enjoy what they have to say.' Evidently he was not hoping for much. Finally, with the air of a man who was just rushing off to have a good di
Rutilius took it better than I did. As a member of the Senate he expected to be muddled up and misrepresented, whereas an informer wants to be derided for his real misdeeds as if he is a scoundrel who counts. While I froze and itched to reach for a dagger, tetchiness fired up Rutilius for a racing start.
He read first. In fact, he read for hours. He treated us to extracts from a very long military epic; Domitian was supposed to enjoy that type of dreariness. The main problem was the old bummer: lack of worthwhile material. Homer had snaffled all the best mythical heroes and Virgil had then grabbed the home crowd's ancestors. Rutilius therefore invented characters of his own and his fellows fatally lacked push. He was also, as I had always suspected, a far from thrilling poet.
I remember a line that started `Lo, the Hyrcanean pard with bloodied jaws!' This was dangerously close to the lion that ripped up my brother-in-law – and it was awful poetry. At the first hint that a ‘Lo’ loomed, I clamped my molars tight and waited for oblivion. It was a long time coming. A competent ru
It was my turn, and I could sense that I had best not read for long.
By now I had decided to leave out all my love poems. Some had already been weeded out by me at home, due to the fact that my Aglaia sequence had been written before I met Helena Justina and was possibly too personal to recite while she sat and glared at me. One or two more of my sexually specific odes had already ended up being used by her as old fish-bone wrappers. (Accidentally, no doubt.) I now realised it would be considerate to ditch the lot.
That left my satires. Helena reckoned they were good stuff. I had heard her giggling with Maia as they copied them out for me.
As I started to read, friends of Rutilius brought wine to refresh him after his ordeal; they were more decent than I had realised and some of the drink wandered my way. That may have encouraged me to forget which passages I was meaning to censor. Instead, when the audience seemed restless I jumped over what I now saw to be the boring, respectable bits. Fu
They were grateful for something scurrilous. They even called for an encore. By that point I had run out of options unless I went back to Aglaia and revealed myself to have once harboured philosophical feelings for a slightly trashy circus dancer whose act was all suggestive squirms. Rifling to the end of the scroll, all I could find left were a few lines that I knew my sister Maia had once pe
Rutilius was beaming happily; now his ordeal was finished, he had swigged even more wine than I had. This evening had been intended as a refined diversion, a soiree where we would show ourselves to be well-rounded Romans: action men who cherished moments of thoughtful intellect. An ex-consul, one with high hopes, would not thank me for inflicting on his elegant associates a rude ditty by a woman. But those very associates had plied us with a brew of startling power, so I raised my winecup and as Rutilius blearily responded, I read it anyway.
`Ladies and gentlemen, we must depart, but here's just one final epigram entitled 'No-longer-a-maiden's Prayer':
There are those
From whom a rose
Would make me smile;
And others
I treated like brothers
Every once in a while.
An occasional kiss
Hardly came amiss
Or drove anyone wild
But the gods rot
The selfish sot
Who fathered this child!
I could see Maia laughing helplessly. It was the first time since I had told her she was widowed that she had showed pure, spontaneous mirth. Rutilius Gallicus owed her that.
By then the audience were so glad of something short that they roared applause.