Mirrors (17 page)

The Egyptian defenses crumble.

Cleopatra orders the straw basket opened.

The rattle resounds.

The serpent slithers.

And the queen of the Nile opens her tunic and offers it her bare breasts, shining with gold dust.

CONTRACEPTIVE METHODS OF PROVEN EFFECTIVENESS

In Rome, many women avoided having children by sneezing immediately after making love, but the professionals preferred shaking their hips at the moment of climax to divert the seed. Pliny the Elder recounted how poor women avoided having children by hanging from their necks before dawn an amulet made of worms extracted from the head of a furry spider, wrapped in elk skin. Upper-class women warded off pregnancy by carrying a small ivory tube containing a slice of the uterus of a lioness or the liver of a cat.

A long time later, in Spain, believers practiced an infallible prayer:

Saint Joseph, you who had without doing make it so that I do without having.

SHOW BUSINESS

Silence. The priests consult the gods. They slice open a white bull, read his entrails. Suddenly the band strikes up and the stadium howls: yes, the gods say yes. They too are burning with desire for the revelry to begin.

The gladiators, who are going to die, raise their weapons to salute the emperor’s box. Mostly they are slaves or criminals sentenced to death, though a few are professionals who trained long for a short career that ends the day the emperor gives the thumbs-down.

Cameos, badges, and clay pots decorated with the faces of the most popular gladiators sell like hotcakes in the stands, while the crowd goes wild making bets and hurling abuse and praise.

The show might last several days. Private entrepreneurs sell the tickets and prices are high, but sometimes politicians put on the killings for free. That’s when the stands fill up with pennants and banners exhorting all to vote for the friend of the people, the only one who keeps his promises.

Arena of sand, sodden with blood. A Christian named Telemaco won sainthood for leaping between two gladiators in the midst of a fight. The crowd made mincemeat of him, pelting him with stones for interrupting the show.

FAMILY PORTRAIT IN ROME

For three centuries, hell was Rome and devils were its emperors. To the delight of the public, they threw Christians to hungry lions in the pits of the Coliseum. Those luncheons were not to be missed.

According to Hollywood’s historians, Nero was worst of all. They say he had the apostle Saint Peter crucified upside down, and that he set fire to Rome in order to lay blame on the Christians. And he kept up the imperial tradition of exterminating his own family.

He gave his Aunt Lepida, who had raised him, a lethal laxative, and with poison mushrooms he bid goodbye to his half-brother Britannicus.

After marrying his half-sister Octavia, he sent her into exile and ordered her strangled. Widowed and free, he openly wooed the incomparable beauty Poppaea, whom he made empress until he tired of her and with one kick sent her on to the other world.

Agrippina was the toughest to kill. Nero owed her because he was the fruit of her womb, and also because she had poisoned her husband, Emperor Claudius, so that he, her little boy, could ascend to the throne. But Agrippina, beloved mother, did not let him rule and at every chance slipped into his bed and feigned sleep. Getting rid of her was no easy task. Happily, you have but one mother. Nero toasted her health with toxic potions, previously tested on slaves and animals, he made the roof over her bed fall in, he knocked holes in the hull of her ship . . . At last he was able to grieve for her.

Afterward he killed Poppaea’s son Rufrius Crispinus, who was vying to become emperor.

And then, sticking a knife in his own throat, he did in the only relative he had left.

THE POET WHO POKED FUN AT ROME

Spain was his place of birth and death, but the poet Martial lived and wrote in Rome.

It was the age of Nero, and in fashion were wigs made of the hair of barbarians, as Germans were called:

That blond hair is all her own.
So she says, and she won’t lie.
Where she bought it knows none but I.

And false eyelashes:

Keep on winking with that eyelid
you pulled from a drawer this morning.

Death improved poets, then as now:

Only the dead do honors gain.
I prefer to carry on
alive and without acclaim.

A doctor’s house call could prove fatal:

Before you came, a fever I had not.
But then you saw me, thanks a lot.

And justice could be unjust:

Who said the adulterer’s nose one should snip?
To betray you he did not use that tip.

LAUGH THERAPY

Galen, hero of doctors everywhere, started out healing the wounds of gladiators and ended up as physician to Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

He believed in experience and distrusted speculation:

“I prefer the long hard road to the short easy path.”

In his years of working with the sick, he came to see that habit is second nature and that health and illness are ways of life. He advised patients who were ill by nature to change their habits.

He discovered or described hundreds of afflictions and cures, and by testing remedies he concluded:

“Laughter is the best medicine.”

JOKES

The Andalusian emperor of Rome, Hadrian, said farewell to his soul when he knew his last morning had arrived:

Little soul,
fragile wanderer,
my body’s guest and companion,
where will you go now?
To what pale, tough, barren places will you go?
You won’t be telling jokes anymore.

THE LOOKING-GLASS WORLD MOCKED THE REAL ONE

Roman women enjoyed one day of absolute power. During the festival of Matronalia, the she’s gave the orders, and the he’s took them.

The Saturnalia, descended from Sacaea of ancient Babylon, lasted a week and were, like the Matronalia, an occasion to let loose. Hierarchies were inverted: the rich served the poor, who invaded their homes, wore their clothes, ate at their tables, and slept in their beds. Saturnalia, homage to the god Saturn, culminated on December 25. That was the day of
Sol Invictus,
Unconquered Sun, which centuries later became Christmas by Catholic decree.

During Europe’s Middle Ages, the Day of Innocent Saints turned power over to children, idiots, and the demented. In England reigned the Lord of Misrule, and fighting for Spain’s throne were the King of Roosters and the King of Pigs, each of them denizens of the insane asylum. A child decked out in miter and crosier played Pope of the Crazies and made people kiss his ring, while another child mounted on a mule pronounced the bishop’s sermons.

Like all fiestas of the looking-glass world, those fleeting spaces of liberty had a beginning and an end. They were brief. When the captain’s around, the sailors pipe down.

FORBIDDEN TO LAUGH