The Blood of Caesar, page 21
part #2 of Pliny the Younger Series
We left the Subura and passed the Flavian Amphitheater and the Ludus Magnus behind it, where the gladiators trained. The Baths of Titus sat on a ledge jutting out from the lower part of the Esquiline and overlooking the Amphitheater. Steps led up from the floor of the valley to the level of the baths. Hastily built to be ready for the opening of the Amphitheater, they had quickly acquired a reputation as little more than a gigantic brothel.
But that did not mean the regulars were necessarily from the lowest social ranks. Tunics with both the broad and the narrow stripe could be found in the dressing rooms of this bath. Their wearers did not go there to bathe so much as to gamble and arrange unsavory liaisons. The worst condemnation I had heard of the place was that even Tacitus found himself uncomfortable during the one visit he made there.
It was not altogether ironic that baths bearing Titus’ name had gained such an unsavory reputation. I remembered my uncle expressing his reservations when Titus became princeps. As a young man, Titus lived an extravagant, licentious life—perhaps the result of those years growing up in Nero’s company—but my uncle hoped he had inherited from his father a basic decency which would emerge as he matured. And he had quickly proved a more fit ruler than his brother and successor, Domitian.
Standing in the shadow of the Amphitheater and Titus’ baths, it was hard to imagine when Rome did not look like this. I had never seen it otherwise.
“In one of his poems,” I said, “my friend Martial says ‘only one house stood in the whole city.’ Archidamos, you were in Rome then. What did that house look like?”
Archidamos scratched his nose, a nervous habit of his that annoys me no end. “Well, it wasn’t really one house, my lord, more of a series of buildings, none of them very tall. It stretched from the house where Nero actually lived on the Palatine over here to the Esquiline. Down in this valley there were lakes and patches of woods and lawns. Where we’re standing now was a huge lake. It had small buildings along the sides of it, to make it look even bigger than it was, not that it wasn’t plenty big enough. What made everybody so mad at Nero was how big his house was and where he put it. If he could have torn down the Forum, I think he would have done it.”
“But when Vespasian took over,” I said, “didn’t he immediately begin tearing down the Golden House and building things like the Amphitheater?” I was only seven and living on one of my uncle’s estates when Vespasian became princeps, so I had no real memory of that time.
“Well, my lord, the Golden House wasn’t torn down so much as it was covered over. When they were excavating for Vespasian’s projects, they just dumped the dirt and rocks on Nero’s house. The back half of Titus’ Baths are built on that sort of fill material. The roofs of most of Nero’s buildings collapsed. They filled in his lakes, cut down his trees. Some of Nero’s material was torn out and re-used in other buildings. It was like watching ants eat up a carcass. The whole place disappeared in about a year.”
I turned to Phineas, who was standing on my right. “How many times did your uncle take you into the Golden House?”
“Twice, my lord.”
“Since he did plastering, I assume the walls and roof of the baths were completed when he started to work.”
“Yes, my lord. The work was in its last stage.”
“How did you get into Nero’s house?”
“He took me down the stairs into the furnace room, my lord. One wall of the furnace room was part of Nero’s house. In that wall there was a door that led to another of Nero’s rooms. The roof had been covered over, but it hadn’t collapsed. It was like going into a cave.”
“Where are those stairs?”
“They open off of the caldarium, my lord,” Phineas said. “There’s a set of stairs on each side of the baths.”
“They put them there, my lord,” Archidamos said, “because the furnaces need to be close to the hottest room in the building. And the stairs let people working down below get out, in case of a fire.”
That made sense. “Can we just walk down those stairs?” I asked. On my previous trips to a public bath, I had never noticed any stairs, and it certainly had never occurred to me to contemplate going into the nether reaches of the place. I’d never been in the furnace room of my bath at home. “I don’t want to attract any more attention than necessary.”
“We ought to find the man in charge, my lord, and get his permission.” Archidamos rubbed his thumb against his first two fingers. He was right. Everything, and everyone, in Rome has a price. “If we start down there and somebody stops us, everybody will notice.”
“Right. That will be our plan, then. Archidamos, you will find that man. The rest of us will meet you at the stairs.”
* * * *
There were no games scheduled in the arena today, so I thought the crowd in the baths might be small.
I was wrong.
Since there were no games, everyone who would have been in the Amphitheater seemed to have gone to the baths instead. Scores of people lounged in front of the building, some playing on the game boards which are scratched into the steps of almost every public building in Rome, while others watched and bet on the outcome.
Phineas touched my elbow and pointed to my left. “My lord, look there.”
I looked in that direction and recognized one of the spectators—my slave Aurora. Because of the large crowd, she was not aware of me. She seemed to be engaged in conversation with a man standing next to her. Their heads were close together, and they did not appear to be paying much attention to the game, glancing at it only cursorily. Then the man slipped some money into Aurora’s hand and left. The game wasn’t over, so I wondered if the man was paying off a bet. Aurora waited, as though she was counting to a certain number in her head, then turned in the other direction, toward my house, and vanished into the crowd.
“Did you know that man who was talking to Aurora?” I asked Phineas.
“No, my lord.”
I would have liked to send someone to follow the man she had been talking to, but I had already lost sight of him.
I paid the entry fee for me and my slaves and we elbowed our way into the apodyterium, the dressing room. In a large public bath there are normally two dressing rooms, one for each gender. This bath offered two rooms, but men and women were using both indiscriminately.
Finding a couple of empty niches, we left our garments there with a slave to guard them. Archidamos set off to find the man in charge of the baths. I tied a towel around my waist, as did Phineas, but the other slaves who accompanied me didn’t bother to cover themselves.
We were almost out of the dressing room when I noticed Phineas’ bare feet. “Put your sandals on,” I said.
“Why, my lord?”
“By the time we get to the caldarium the floor will be so hot you won’t be able to walk on it in your bare feet. Surely you know that.”
“This is my first visit to a public bath, my lord.”
I looked at him in disbelief. “You’ve never been in one before?”
“No, my lord, never. We Jews don’t approve of such immodesty.” But he couldn’t turn his eyes away from the two nude young women who brushed past him at that moment.
One of my other slaves chortled. “And they don’t like to show off their chopped off pricks. His is going to be popping out from under that towel pretty soon, though.”
“No more of that,” I said quickly. “The rest of you, be sure he knows what to do and how to act. Remember, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Now, let’s go.”
This bath was laid out like any public bath. From the dressing room we passed into the frigidarium. While I went to one of the large basins of cold water in the center of the room, my slaves gathered around one of the basins along the walls which custom dictated they use. As I washed off a bit I noticed that Phineas stood apart from my other slaves, studying the decorations on the wall intently. Jews have a reputation for keeping to themselves, but I had never thought of Phineas as being different from the other slaves in my household.
I was puzzled when Phineas approached me, bowing and acting more servile than I had ever seen him.
“My lord, may I show you something?”
I followed him to the edge of the room. He ran his hand along a tendril design worked vertically in plaster which divided the huge wall into sections. Painted green, the plaster leaves gave an uncanny impression of life. When I looked closer I could even see the nodes where the leaves joined the stem.
“I watched my uncle do this,” Phineas said with pride.
I could see that he was close to tears, but I did not want to acknowledge his emotion in such a public place. “It’s remarkable work. Did he paint them as well?”
“No, my lord. Someone else did that. But all this plaster work is his.”
“He was clearly an artisan of great skill.”
“Thank you, my lord.” He placed a hand on one of the leaves, looked up, and began mumbling something in what I took to be Hebrew, from all the guttural sounds.
I left Phineas to his admiration of his uncle’s work and his incantations. I had barely gotten back to my place at the cold-water basin when I heard a familiar voice.
“Gaius Pliny, is that really you? What brings you to this sink of degradation?”
I turned to see Martial approaching me.
“Good afternoon, Valerius Martial. So this is where you find your inspiration.” Martial’s epigrams are witty, often salacious, reflecting rather than criticizing the morals of our day. Whether he’ll ever be reckoned among Rome’s great poets, I cannot judge, but for now he is quite popular, and that seems to suffice for him.
Martial looked around him, as though reluctant to admit what his eyes were telling him. “My Muse dwells not on the heights of Mt. Helicon, I’m afraid. She’s more inclined to wallow in the city’s sewers.”
“She has plenty of company.”
“May I buy you a drink, Gaius Pliny?” He edged unsteadily closer to me, his breath reeking of cheap wine. He was still wearing his tunic, so he wasn’t here to bathe but to recite his poetry and cadge a dinner invitation. He occasionally entertains at one of my dinners and I give him money whenever he asks.
I doubted that the wine in this place would be Falernian, but I didn’t want to offend Martial. He frequently lampoons individuals by name. Some regard it as a mark of distinction to be mentioned—even ridiculed—in his verses. That’s an honor I can forgo, so I accepted his offer. The wine merchant had just gotten to us when a hissing, rumbling noise, a sort of murmur of excitement, began behind us. I could make out a rhythmic chant: ‘Spatale, Spatale.’
The noise grew to a swell as a woman walked into the frigidarium. Or perhaps I should say two breasts followed by a woman. I could never have imagined a woman’s breasts could be that large and the rest of her body so slender. How could she stand up straight? It defied all the rules of architecture and engineering. But she did and even kept her shoulders thrown back like a legionary. She was wearing nothing but sandals and a towel draped over one shoulder.
Every man’s head turned, even those men who seemed more interested in other men. Someone shouted, “Martial, your verse!” Other voices picked up the cry.
“Excuse me, Gaius Pliny,” Martial said. “My Muse has arrived and our public calls.”
He set his cup on the edge of the cold-water basin and fell in step beside the woman. Her blonde hair and fair skin stood out all the more against his dark hair and olive complexion. She smiled provocatively at him as she stopped by another of the large basins of cold water. Martial cupped his hands and began ladling water onto her enormous breasts. A raucous male sound filled the room as the woman cupped her breasts and rubbed them together. I could tell I was watching an act she and Martial had played before. An audience formed in a circle around them.
As Martial continued his lustrations he began to recite:
“Dasius the doorman keeps careful count.
No one bathes here for free.
But Spatale the divinely endowed?
He makes her pay for three.”
Spatale turned toward Martial and he spluttered as he rubbed his face between her breasts. The onlookers broke into applause and shouts of approval. Martial grabbed the towel off Spatale’s shoulder, wiped his face, then carefully dried her breasts, playfully pinching both nipples when he finished. Spatale gave a high-pitched squeal. That seemed to be the signal for the spectators to unleash a shower of coins. Spatale scooped up her share and handed them to a couple of young women whom I hadn’t noticed until then. Servants of hers, I assumed. Throwing her towel back over her shoulder, she headed for the next room in the bath. Martial tucked his coins into a bag inside his tunic.
When he returned to my side Martial said, “I can offer you something better now.” In a long swallow he drained the cheap wine he had first bought—which I hadn’t even tasted yet—and signaled to the wine merchant. “Some Setine!”
“Who ... who was that woman?” was all I could say.
“Spatale lives in the rooms below mine. Unlike me, she has lots of regular visitors.”
“So she’s a courtesan.”
“No, she’s a whore. And isn’t that a pity?” He lifted his cup in a toast. “A whore. The same as I am. Only difference is, she makes her living on her back while I have to hustle around places like this, trying to wheedle money out of people.”
“But you have a talent, a keen wit.”
Martial snorted. “And Spatale has big tits. All we do with our ‘talents’ is entertain people for a while. We do things they can’t bring themselves to do but want to see done. I’m a buffoon, Gaius Pliny, just like she is. But I know it.” He hit himself on the chest and looked at me with his intense, dark eyes. I thought I caught a glimpse of his anguish.
“Don’t be discouraged. This kind of humor has an honorable tradition in Rome, all the way back to Fescennine verses and Plautus’ plays. Even Cicero wrote bawdy poems.”
“None of which were performed in a public bath.”
“But what you just did was as funny as anything Plautus wrote.”
Martial waved his hand in disgust. “Spatale and I came up with that routine three days ago. We’ve got a couple of more days before the mob tires of it.” He jingled the coins under his tunic. “We’ll get what we can out of it. Notice, I didn’t say we would milk it for all it’s worth. I wouldn’t subject a man of your refined tastes to such an atrocious joke.”
A change of subject seemed like a good idea. “If you’re so unhappy, you could leave Rome, go live on your farm in Nomentum.”
“Ah, yes, ‘my’ farm.”
But it is yours.”
“No, it’s a reminder of your generosity.” He called the wine merchant over again. “And not even your generosity to me, but to her.”
“What difference does it make how you got it?” I said, a bit offended. This particular farm was a very desirable piece of property. “We’ve all accepted favors from our friends at one time or another. There’s nothing shameful in that.”
He glared at me over his cup and took a long drink.
I was ready to move to the tepidarium and then to the stairs down to the furnace room, but I wasn’t sure how to disentangle myself from this self-pitying drunkard.
A woman, running up to Martial, provided the means of my escape. She was older than my mother and nude. Her wrinkled skin and sagging breasts validated Plato’s arguments in the Republic about why older women should not exercise with men. She pressed a coin into the poet’s hand and pulled him away from the cold-water basin.
“Here he comes,” the woman said excitedly. “You promised me you’d recite it the next time we saw the bastard.”
Stepping away from the basin and signaling to my slaves to follow me, I looked back in the direction where Martial was now trying to focus his attention. The man he seemed to be drawing a bead on was someone I recognized from my appearances before the Centumviral Court, although I did not know his name. His face wore a perpetual sneer and he was too old to have hair that black. I slowed down to see what sort of barb Martial had crafted to pierce his hide.
Martial’s voice rang out over the buzz and chatter of the other bathers:
“Zoilus, you foul the bath
by sticking your butt in it.
We’re all thankful, though,
that you don’t make it any dirtier
by dunking your head!”
Amid the ensuing storm of laughter I passed from the frigidarium into the tepidarium. The warmth felt good. I hadn’t intended to stay in the cold room so long. This warm room contained two sizeable soaking pools, with a bench carved around the edge so people could sit in the water up to their necks. On tables around the pools men and women were getting massages, which were being given by both men and women. I’ve never cared much for massages, because I just don’t like being touched, especially by strangers and on parts of my body where many of these people were being ‘massaged.’
I was questioning my own wisdom in coming into this gigantic brothel when Archidamos found me. He had in tow a short, solid, dark-complected man with a shaved head. The man wore his tunic pulled up above his knees and belted. He had removed the sleeves, revealing a tattoo on his upper right arm which probably concealed a mark from his days as a troublesome slave. I took him to be from North Africa, with some Punic ancestry.
“My lord, this is Cyrenius, the overseer of the bath.”
Cyrenius nodded his head enough to acknowledge my rank but not enough to appear servile. I suppose it is difficult to keep social distinctions in mind when you work in a place where everyone around you is naked.
“I understand you have a request to make, sir,” Cyrenius said.
“Yes. It may seem a bit strange, but I would like to go down into the furnace room. I’m interested in seeing—”
Cyrenius held up a hand to stop me. “No explanations necessary, sir. None wanted, really. People ask to do this every day.”
