The Nero Prediction Read Online Free PDF Page B

heard she was glamorous, frivolous and romantic - a lot like Egypt’s Cleopatra. I'd have exchanged her for Agrippina any day.
    "Why do you hate Messalina so much?" I asked Euodus.
    "You saw my back."
    "She had you whipped?"
    "She whipped me herself. When her arm grew tired she handed the whip to her tormentor."
    "Why? What did you do?"
    "She wanted information about Agrippina and Tigellinus. I wouldn't give it to her."
    "She whipped you herself?"
    "She enjoys giving pain. She enjoys watching pain. Soon we'll see how she likes taking it."
    The Via Flaminia took us through the Field of Agrippa where a temporary, three-tiered wooden amphitheater had been erected. Although it was close to sunset, much later than gladiatorial games usually lasted, the crowd inside jeered, whistled and stamped their feet as if they were watching something highly entertaining.
    “What’s going on?” I asked, “surely they’re not still fighting?”
    “No, tomorrow. This is the feast.”
    “Who for?”
    “For them, the victims, runaway slaves, criminals, trash. The master of the games always gives the victims a feast the night before they’re killed. It’s sort of a going away party.” Euodus squinted at the Sun which was about half an hour from setting. “We’re running a little early so let’s take a quick look. It’ll give you a taste for what’s coming.”
    I followed in his wake as he shouldered his way through the press of bodies until we’d gained a clear view of the arena from the second tier. Below was a macabre spectacle. Perhaps two hundred people, some of them female, prostitutes perhaps, reclined like gentry on couches where they were being served huge helpings of meat and wine by liveried servants. Some ate nothing, sitting there stone-faced with terror or weeping uncontrollably. Others, the focus of the jeers, stuffed their bellies with food and snapped their fingers arrogantly at the wine pourers to get their goblets refilled. They appeared to be having the time of their lives. I saw men make themselves vomit so that they could eat and drink more. Several had already passed out. To the vast amusement of the audience, a few even brawled in pathetic anticipation of what was going to happened the next day, so staggering drunk that almost none of their punches connected. As I watched a burly man with a hairy back dragged a thin young woman from her coach. She struggled feebly as he raped her on the sand where they were both going to die tomorrow. Other men followed his example, contemptuously throwing away the last of their humanity in what seemed to be a desperate attempt to insult their tormentors. It had the opposite effect. The crowd screamed with delight.
    “Well, what do you think?” Euodus asked with his mischievous grin.
    “I was thinking of how they’re going to feel in when they wake up in the morning.”
    “Don’t worry, the animals and the gladiators will find a permanent cure for those headaches. You don’t seem to think it’s funny.”
    “No,” I said. “It’s sickening.”
    “That’s because you’re still much too Greek. You’re going to need some starch in your spine.”
     
    It was already twilight and Venus burnt bright as polished steel in the rosy western sky when we climbed the hill overlooking Augustus's vast, round mausoleum on the Tiber. The tall, gilded gates of Messalina's private park, still called the Gardens of Lucullus after the wealthy Epicurean who had owned them a hundred years ago, stood half open. The grounds themselves seemed to be populated only by statues. As we walked towards the villa at the crown of the terraced hill we could see that a single lamp was burning in a room which appeared to be a library. A young woman, long necked and lithe as an asp, her hair piled high in steps, paced restlessly in front of the lamp. Her cheeks were wet with tears that had done nothing to dampen the passion in her lips and eyes. Messalina. There was a second woman in the room who