Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,20

though how on Earth he did it I can’t imagine.

I remember her to this day as the stupidest woman in Rome. But there’s probably more to it.

Anyway, it had all happened at the Temple.

And then this man, this fake Anubis, went before the highborn virtuous woman and told her in the plainest terms that he had had her! She went screaming to her husband. It was a scandal of extraordinary flair.

It had been years since I had been at the Temple, and I was glad of it.

But what followed from the Emperor was more dreadful than I ever dreamed.

The entire Temple was razed to the very ground. All the worshipers were banished from Rome, and some of them executed. And our Priests and Priestesses were crucified, their bodies hung on the tree, as the old Roman expression goes, to die slowly, and to rot, for all to see.

My Father came into my bedroom. He went to the small shrine of Isis. He took the statue and smashed it on the marble floor. Then he picked up the larger pieces and smashed each of them. He made dust of her.

I nodded.

I expected him to condemn me for my old habits. I was overcome with sadness and shock at what had happened. Other Eastern cults were being persecuted. The Emperor was moving to take away the right of Sanctuary from various Temples throughout the Empire.

“The man doesn’t want to be Emperor of Rome,” said my Father. “He’s been bent by cruelty and losses. He’s stiff, boring and completely in terror for his life! A man who would not be Emperor cannot be Emperor. Not now.”

“Maybe he’ll step down,” I said sadly. “He has adopted the young General Germanicus Julius Caesar. This means Germanicus is to be his heir, does it not?”

“What good did it do to the earlier heirs of Augustus when they were adopted?” my Father asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Use your head,” said my Father. “We cannot continue pretending we are a Republic. We must define the office of this Emperor and the limits of his power! We must outline a form of succession other than murder!”

I tried to calm him.

“Father, let’s leave Rome. Let’s go to our house in Tuscany. It’s always beautiful there, Father.”

“That’s just it, we can’t, Lydia,” he said. “I have to remain here. I have to be loyal to my Emperor. I must do so for all my family. I must stand in the Senate.”

Within months, Tiberius sent off his young and handsome nephew Germanicus Julius Caesar to the East, just to get him away from the adulation of the Roman public. As I said, people spoke their minds.

Germanicus was supposed to be Tiberius’s heir! But Tiberius was too jealous to listen to the crowds screaming praise of Germanicus for his victories in battle. He wanted the man far from Rome.

And so this rather charming and seductive young general went to the East, to Syria; he vanished from the loving eyes of the Roman people, from the core of the Empire where a city crowd could determine the fate of the world.

Sooner or later there would be another campaign in the North, we all figured. Germanicus had hit hard at the German tribes in his last campaign.

My brothers vividly described it to me over the dinner table.

They told how they had gone back to avenge the hideous massacre of General Varus and his troops in the Teutoburg Forest. They could finish the job, if called up again, and my brothers would go. They were exactly the kind of old-fashioned patricians who would go!

Meantime there were rumors that the Delatores, the notorious spies of the Praetorian Guard, pocketed one-third of the estate of those against whom they informed. I found it horrible. My Father shook his head, and said, “That started under Augustus.”

“Yes, Father,” I said, “but then treason was considered a matter of what one did, not what one said.”

“Which is all the more reason to say nothing.” He sat back wearily. “Lydia, sing to me. Get your lyre. Make up one of your comic epics. It’s been a long time.”

“I’m too old for that,” I said, thinking of the silly, bawdy satires on Homer which I used to make up so quickly and freely that everyone marveled. But I jumped at that idea. I remember that night so palpably that I cannot tear myself loose now from the writing of this story, even though I know what pain I must confess and explore.

What