The Nero Prediction by Humphry Knipe Read Free Book Online

and murdered her boy Caesarion, Julius Caesar’s only son. Julia, Augustus’s disgraced daughter who died in exile. Steel willed Agrippina the Elder who elected to spend most of her life in distant military camps with her husband Germanicus. Insane, homicidal Caligula. His sister Agrippina, my Agrippina, I recognized her instantly. She was leaning back in a chair with a triumphant smile on her face, pointing with the index finger of her left hand directly at the head of the boy kneeling at her feet. Mars, Venus, Aeneas, Romulus, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Caligula, Agrippina and her son, the next in line. I glanced at the blue robed figure who was staring up at the statue of Mars, pretending not to watch me. I’d seen him several times since we left the Palatine, always keeping his distance. I felt my hair stand on end.
     
    I needed some answers. Euodus, whom Agrippina had quartered with horse trainers for the Greens faction, the imperial favorites, knew at least some of them. I found him sitting on a lower tier that was so close to the Circus Maximus track that you could hear the horses grunt as they charged past, four abreast. Directly opposite, built on the divider, was the temple of the Sun topped with a statue of Sol driving his gilded chariot.
    “Anything to report?” was his greeting.
    “Agrippina’s in mourning, she isn’t seeing anyone.”
    “And Lucius?”
    “I think he’s upset.”
    “Messalina was his first cousin, his father’s sister’s child. Even though she was older, he adored her.”
    The name Messalina reeked of the delicious and the forbidden. I remembered the whip scars on Euodus’s back. “Is it true,” I asked, “the things they say about her?”
    Again the quick green glance. “What things?”
    “The orgies, did she really have those?”
    “Oh yes.”
    “What did she do?”
    “I told you she enjoyed giving pain.”
    “Your back.”
    “Yes. But the orgies. They were religious.”
    This surprised me. “How could they be religious?”
    “It’s a mystery,” he said with that sharp, curious smile of his.
    “You mean a mystery cult?”
    “Yes. The Syrian goddess, Atargatis, fish from the waist down. She’s the sign Virgo. Messalina was born when Virgo was rising. She identified with Atargatis, became Atargatis during the orgies. Mnester the dancer, he was one of her worshippers, told me you could see her eyes change color when she became Atargatis. First she used the whip. Then she gave herself to the men she whipped. The emperor’s wife drenched with sperm from head to foot. Quite a thought.”
    “Is that why you called her a whore?”
    He was smiling, seemed to be relishing the thought, but he said, “That’s enough about her.”
    We watched the horses for a few minutes. Although my curiosity gnawed at me like an itch that can’t be scratched, I changed the subject. “Lucius took me to Augustus’s Forum. Showed me his family tree.”
    “One big happy family, eh?”
    I ignored his sarcasm. “What happened to Agrippina’s husband?”
    “You mean husbands. The first one, Lucius’s father, died of dropsy when Lucius was two. A mad one that. Fancied himself a charioteer just like his father. Whipped up his horses and ran over a boy on purpose on the Appian Way. His family name is Ahenobarbus which means bronze beard – that’s where Lucius gets his red hair from. Someone once said no wonder they had bronze beards because they had faces of iron and hearts of lead.”
    “Hearts of lead? What does that mean.”
    “The opposite of light hearted, I suppose. They take themselves very
    seriously.”
    “Does Lucius?”
    Euodus shrugged. “He’s only ten.” He turned his attention back to the chariots.
    I persisted. “What about Agrippina’s second husband?”
    “Crispus was his name,” Euodus said after a long silence. “Very rich. He was married to Messalina’s mother, Domitia Lepida, but Lepida divorced him when Claudius, became emperor. Crispus wasn’t lonely