Mirrors (16 page)

Subversion of hierarchies by lust: those wild parties, people suspected, people knew, had a lot to do with the slave rebellions breaking out in the south.

Rome did not stand put. A couple of centuries before Christ, the Senate accused the followers of Bacchus of conspiracy and gave two consuls, Marcius and Postumius, the mission to extinguish all trace of bacchanalia throughout the empire.

Blood flowed.

The bacchanalia continued. The rebellions as well.

ANTIOCHUS, KING

His owner used him as a jester at banquets.

The slave Eunus would fall into a trance and blow smoke and fire and prophecies from his mouth, sending the guests into fits of laughter.

At one of these big feasts, after the flames and delight died down, Eunus announced solemnly that he would be king of this island. Sicily will be my kingdom, he said, and he said he was told as much by the goddess Demeter.

The guests laughed so hard they rolled on the floor.

A few days later, the slave was king. Breathing fire from his mouth, he slit his owner’s throat and unleashed a slave revolt that engulfed towns and cities and crowned Eunus king of Sicily.

The island was ablaze. The new monarch ordered all prisoners killed, save those who knew how to make weapons, and he issued coins stamped with his new name, Antiochus, beside the likeness of the goddess Demeter.

The reign of Antiochus lasted four years, until he was betrayed, deposed, jailed, and devoured by fleas.

Half a century later, Spartacus arrived.

SPARTACUS

He was a shepherd in Thrace, a soldier in Rome, a gladiator in Capua.

He was a runaway slave who fled armed with a kitchen knife. At the foot of Mount Vesuvius he formed a legion of free men that gathered strength as it roamed and soon became an army.

One morning, seventy-two years before Christ, Rome trembled. The Romans saw that Spartacus’s men saw them. At dawn, the crests of the hills bristled with lances. From there, the slaves contemplated the temples and palaces of the queen of cities, the one that had the world at her beck and call: within reach, touched by their eyes, was the place that had torn from them their names and their memories, and had turned them into things to be lashed, sold, or given away.

The attack did not occur. It was never known if Spartacus and his troops had really been that close, or if they were specters conjured up by fear. For at the time, the slaves were humiliating the legions on the battlefield.

A guerrilla war kept the empire on edge for two years.

Then the rebels, surrounded in the mountains of Lucania, were at last annihilated by soldiers recruited in Rome under a young officer named Julius Caesar.

When Spartacus saw he was beaten, he leaned against his horse, head to head, his forehead pressed to the forelock of his companion in every battle. He thrust in the long blade and sliced open the horse’s heart.

Crucifixions lined the entire Via Appia from Capua all the way to Rome.

ROME TOUR

Manual labor was for slaves.

Thought not enslaved, day laborers and artisans practiced “vile occupations.” Cicero, who practiced the noble occupation of usury, defined the labor hierarchy:

“The least honorable are all that serve gluttony, like sausage-makers, chicken and fishmongers, cooks . . . ”

The most respectable Romans were warlords, who rarely went into battle, and landowners, who rarely set foot on their land.

To be poor was an unpardonable crime. To dissemble their disgrace, the formerly wealthy went into debt and, if lucky, pursued successful careers in politics, which they undertook in the service of their creditors.

The sale of sexual favors was a reliable source of wealth. So was the sale of political or bureaucratic favors. These activities shared a single name. Pimps and lobbyists were both called
proxenetas
.

JULIUS CAESAR

They called him “the bald whorer,” said he was the husband of every woman and the wife of every man.

Those in the know contend he spent several months in Cleopatra’s bedroom without even peeking out.

He returned to Rome from Alexandria with her, his trophy. Crowning his victorious campaigns in Europe and Africa, he paid homage to his own glory by ordering a multitude of gladiators to fight to the death, and by showing off the giraffes and other rarities Cleopatra had given him.

Rome dressed him in the only purple toga in the entire empire, and wrapped his forehead in a laurel wreath. And Virgil, the official poet, celebrated his divine lineage, descending from Aeneas, Mars, and Venus.

Not long after, from the height of heights, he proclaimed himself dictator for life and announced reforms that threatened the sacrosanct privileges of his own class.

And his people, the patricians, decided that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.

Marked for death, all-powerful Caesar was surrounded by his intimates, and his beloved Brutus, who may have been his son, embraced him first and plunged the first knife into his back.

Other knives riddled him and were raised, red, to the heavens. And there he lay on the stone floor. Not even his slaves dared to touch him.

SALT OF THE EMPIRE

In the year 31 before Christ, Rome went to war against Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, inheritor of Caesar’s fame and Caesar’s dame.

That was when Emperor Augustus bought popularity by handing out salt.

The patricians had already given the lower orders the right to salt, but Augustus increased the ration.

Rome loved salt. There was always salt, either rock salt or sea salt, near the cities the Romans founded.

“Via Salaria” was the name of the first imperial road, built to bring salt from the beach at Ostia, and the word “salary” comes from the payment in salt, which the legionaries received during military campaigns.

CLEOPATRA

Her courtiers bathe her in donkey’s milk and honey.

After anointing her with nectar of jasmine, lily, and honeysuckle, they place her naked body on silk pillows filled with feathers.

On her closed eyelids lie thinly sliced discs of aloe. On her face and neck, plasters made of ox bile, ostrich eggs, and beeswax.

When she awakens from her nap, the moon is high in the sky.

The courtiers impregnate her hands with essence of roses and perfume her feet with elixirs of almonds and orange blossoms. Her nostrils exhale fragrances of lime and cinnamon, while dates from the desert sweeten her hair, shining with walnut oil.

And the time for makeup arrives. Beetle dust colors her cheeks and lips. Antimony dust outlines her eyebrows. Lapis lazuli and malachite paint a veil of blue and green shadows around her eyes.

In her palace at Alexandria, Cleopatra begins her final night.

The last of the pharaohs,
who was not as beautiful as they say,
who was a better queen than they say,
who spoke several languages and understood economics and other
male mysteries,
who astonished Rome,
who challenged Rome,
who shared bed and power with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony,
now dresses in her most outlandish outfit and slowly sits down on
her throne, while the Roman troops advance against her.

Julius Caesar is dead, Mark Anthony is dead.