Authors: Humphry Knipe

The Nero Prediction (43 page)

BOOK: The Nero Prediction

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Tears rolled down Nero's cheeks as he squinted at her. His lips twisted in masterful grief. "Dead, and such a great artist!"

I was standing at the window, staying calm by watching the east for the astral messenger. An incandescent bubble popped over the horizon, shy Mercury, never straying far from the Sun. "Dominus, it's time," I called to him.

Nero looked upwards at the stars that had been his undoing, exposing his neck for the final thrust like a condemned gladiator. He pricked at his throat with one of the daggers, winced but drew no blood. "This is not worthy of you Nero," he said in Greek, "not worthy at all. Come, pull yourself together!"

There was the sound of approaching horses. I felt that I was riding too, astride the torrent of destiny. "There's no more time," I said.

He quoted a fragment of Virgil. "Listen! It's the hooves of galloping horses."

"Dominus!"

His knuckles were white with the effort he was making to pierce his skin. His eyes rolled towards me. At last he dropped the mask. "Epaphroditus, help me!”

Outside the window a cock crowed triumphantly. The Sun severed the horizon as I took the dagger from Nero. The artery in his throat throbbed as wildly as a bird's heart when I found it with my finger.

He whispered, "I knew it would be you."

Somewhere nearby a door burst open. There was the jingle of armor, the approach of hobnailed boots, the Praetorians coming right on time for Alexander-of-the-lyre.

My serenity seemed to give Nero strength. He nodded, my permission to proceed, then rolled his eyes to heaven as he listened to unheard music, perhaps his own.

With a quick upward thrust I fulfilled the prediction.

Author’s Note

In the historical record Epaphroditus shows up first in Tacitus'
Annals of Ancient Rome
where he alerts Nero to the great conspiracy of Piso. He is one of the freedmen who accompanies Nero on his final flight. Suetonius, writing in about 120 A.D., mentions that he was Nero's Secretary of Petitions, a position of enormous power. He was the man you had to go through to get the emperor’s ear.

This was the Epaphroditus to whom Josephus dedicated his
Jewish Antiquities
where he refers to him as "conversant with large affairs and varying turns of fortune."

On the Esquiline Hill, not far from where Nero “fiddled” while Rome burnt, a paradise - part palace, part park - was for centuries one of the show pieces of ancient Rome: the Gardens of Epaphroditus. In 1913 a fragment of a marble funereal inscription, originally at least fifteen feet wide, was discovered here. It states that Epaphroditus, freedman of Augustus and attendant to the Caesars, was awarded Spears of Honor (hastis puris) and Golden Crowns (coronis aureis) - high military honors normally far beyond the reach of an ex-slave. Epaphroditus' epitaph.

Was Nero a gifted musician or have his famous last words "Dead! And such a great artist!" quite rightly been ridiculed down the ages? Not a note of his music has survived nor have any of the many histories favorable to him so we must read between the lines of his bad press.

His enemies are keen to point out how prolific a composer Nero was because this inferred that he neglected his imperial duties. In addition to hymns and lays, he set a number of Greek tragedies to music. This is attested, for example, by Philostratus (early third century) who says that during Nero's reign itinerant musicians hired themselves out to sing Nero's compositions. One of these accosted the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana in a Roman inn where, "in a voice far from harsh...he then struck up a prelude, according to his custom, and after performing a short hymn composed by Nero, he added various lays, some out of the story of Orestes, and some from the Antigone, and others from one or another of the tragedies composed by Nero, and he preceded to drawl out the rondos which Nero was in the habit of murdering by his miserable writhings and modulations." (
Life of Apollonius
, iv.39) The anti-Neronian bias is obvious, equally clear is that Nero may have been composing something close to modern opera.

Further evidence of the popularity of Nero’s music among his contemporaries comes from the historian Suetonius who reports in
Vitellius
11 that at a banquet the emperor Vitellius (who outlived Nero by only a year and a half) "called for something from 'the Master's Book' as an encore. When the flutist obliged with one of these compositions, Vitellius jumped up delightedly and led the applause."

What about Nero the performer? In his
Histories
(2.8) Tacitus, who is relentlessly hostile to Nero, reports that one of the many Pseudo-Neros who sprang up after Nero's death was a skillful player of the kithara and singer which, "when added to a facial resemblance, made the imposture all the more plausible." However if Nero had not been a skillful performer it would not have been necessary for his impostor to be one also. Tacitus gives Nero another back-handed compliment when he admits that Nero's performances were warmly applauded but blames this on the audience's lack of patriotism (
Annals
15).

Whether or not it was because of his music, Nero was a hero to millions of people, particularly those in the cultured Greek-speaking east whose opinion he valued most highly. As with King Arthur, Barbarossa and Frederic II, a popular myth grew up that one day he would return to complete his work. The orator and popular philosopher Dio Chrysostomos writes in about 100 AD, "even now everybody wishes he were still alive. And the great majority do believe that he is..." (
Orationes
21.10). The legend of Nero's return was still alive in the fifth century when St Augustine says: "Some suppose that Nero will rise again as Antichrist. Others think that he is not dead ... and that he still lives on as a legendary figure, of the same age at which he died, and will be restored to his Kingdom." (
De Civitate Dei
, 20.19)

What did Nero play when he famously “fiddled” while Rome burnt? It wasn’t a bow instrument like a violin which was invented about seven centuries later. It was a kithara, a louder, larger version of the lyre that could be tuned very accurately. It was said that an expert could make it cry. Kithara is the origin of the word guitar.

Humphry Knipe

[email protected]

For more on Nero and Neronian astrology visit:
www.neroprediction.com
.

Table of Contents

Dramatis Personae (In Order Of Appearance)