Pandora by Anne Rice Page B

not restore theRepublic. It was simply impossible. The Empire had grown to Britannia in the North, beyond Parthia in the East; it covers Northern Africa. If you want to be a good Roman, Antony, then stand up and speak your conscience in the Senate. Tiberius invites this.”
    “Oh, Father, you are much deceived,” said Antony.
    My Father put an end to this argument.
    But he and I did live exactly the life he had described.
    Tiberius was immediately unpopular with the noisy Roman crowds. He was too old, too dry, too humorless, too puritanical and tyrannical at the same time.
    But he had one saving grace. Other than his extensive love and knowledge of philosophy, he had been a very good soldier. And that was the most important characteristic the Emperor had to possess.
    The troops honored him.
    He strengthened the Praetorian Guard around the Palace, hired a man named Sejanus to run things for him. But he didn’t bring legions into Rome, and he spoke a damned good line about personal rights and freedom, that is, if you could stay awake to listen. I thought him a brooder.
    The Senate went mad with impatience when he refused to make decisions. They didn’t want to make the decisions! But all this seemed relatively safe.
    Then a horrible incident occurred which made me positively detest the Emperor wholeheartedly and lose all my faith in the man and his ability to govern.
    This incident involved the Temple of Isis. Someclever evil man, claiming to be the Egyptian god Anubis, had enticed a highborn devotee of Isis to the Temple and gone to bed with her, fooling her completely, 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 hadhappened. 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