The Boldness of Junius Mauricus
YOU will say that was uncompromising, and bold. So what? It was nothing new for Mauricus. He was no less bold towards the Emperor Nerva himself.
Being at dinner* one evening with Nerva and a few select friends, Veiento* was placed next to the Emperor, and actually reclined upon his bosom.* I need only name the man and it says it all!*
The conversation happened to turn to Catullus Messalinus,* who had a soul as dark as his body; for he was not only cursed with want of sight, but want of humanity. As he was uninfluenced either by fear, shame, or compassion, Domitian all the more frequently used him to fling against every man of worth, precisely as a dart, that flies sightless and senseless to its mark. The company were talking of the bloody counsels and infamous practices of this creature.
“And what,” said the Emperor, “would have been his fate had he lived till now?”
“He would be dining with us,” replied Mauricus.*
* The cena or dinner was the chief meal of the day, and for the wealthier classes a lavish affair beginning in the late afternoon and extending far into the evening. The gustatio began proceedings, eggs perhaps, with shellfish, salad and honeyed wine. The fercula followed, with three to seven courses of flesh, fish and fowl. After that the Roman rubbed his hands in anticipation of the mensae secundae, of patries, sweetmeats, fruits and wine.
* Aulus Didius Gallus Fabricius Veiento, who in AD 62 enjoyed the compliment of being banished from Rome by Nero, and learning that his writings had all been burnt — an action which, Tacitus tells us, led to a spike in their sale price, followed by their complete literary oblivion as soon as the ban was lifted. He was related to Aulus Didius Gallus, suffect consul for AD 39 and governor of Roman Britain. Veiento returned to Rome under Vespasian and continued in favour under Domitian. He was a suffect consul three times.
* Romans in the triclinium (dining room) lay stretched out upon couches to eat, each diner raising himself up on one elbow and using his free arm to lean over and fetch dainty morsels from the common table. Because recumbent diners shared their couches, typically in groups of two or three, one man’s head would be in front of another’s chest, and the man in front was said to recline in the bosom of the man behind. It was a position of great honour if the man behind was the Emperor, or one of even loftier majesty: see John 13:23.
* This was not intended as praise. Veiento had prospered under Domitian, and Pliny had crossed swords with him in the courts too.
* Lucius Valerius Catullus Messalinus, twice a consul (a post for which disability such as blindness would normally be a disqualification), and a man deep in the counsels of Domitian, though almost entirely behind the scenes. He was a delator, an informer, whose job it was to identify and expose anyone thought to be unsympathetic to the State. Evidently, he had died sometime before this dinner conversation took place in 97.
* A remark apparently aimed at Veiento, another of Domitian’s ‘creatures’, and at Nerva’s failure to root out others like him.