Song of the Nile by Stephanie Dray Page A

Egypt, the emperor had insisted Helios be denounced before the Senate as a traitor and enemy of Rome. Since then, his temper had cooled and he’d changed his mind. There were those who said Helios hadn’t run away at all; that Augustus had simply had him disappeared. I desperately needed to believe otherwise, so I took comfort in the idea that the emperor was still laying snares. “You want to capture Helios here ?”
    “You should want it too. I’ve put out that the rebellion in Thebes is only a tax revolt. I’ve kept your twin’s name out of it, so that I may be merciful to him and to Egypt, but I’ve done this only for your sake.” I didn’t believe that it was for my sake. Legions were still bogged down in Spain, Egypt was rising up, and the Republican faction in Rome grew increasingly restless. There might be another civil war if my father’s old partisans knew that the son of Antony and Cleopatra was in rebellion. Those who knew the prophecies that a savior would come to purge Rome by fire might see in Helios the bringer of a Golden Age. Consequently, the emperor gained nothing by acknowledging Helios as his enemy; it was far more advantageous for my twin to simply vanish . “Make no mistake, Selene. If the Prefect of Egypt can’t put down this rebellion in Thebes, I’ll ask you and Juba to raise legions in Mauretania. You’ll help me end this.”
    He thought he could make me fight against my own brother and my own people. I could never let it come to that. Fortunately, I was spared the need to reply when the emperor’s poet rose to recite some verses from the Aeneid —a special piece of propaganda the emperor was keen to have him finish. Virgil had been working on the epic longer than I’d been in Rome, like Penelope at the loom, weaving words by day, and striking them out at night. The Aeneid told the story of Aeneas, the defeated Trojan who abandoned the powerful Carthaginian queen Dido. Ah, yes, dutiful Aeneas, unmoved by the plea of a pleasure-seeking, goddessworshipping foreign queen. It was a scarcely veiled condemnation of my mother and father, and I loathed this poem. But when Virgil finished his recitation and the applause died down, the emperor’s eyes were filled with tears. He liked to affect emotion in a crowd like this, to persuade them that in his chest beat a compassionate heart. He was a showman; if this poem touched something inside him, it was his ambition.
    It was then that Virgil introduced his friend Crinagoras of Mytilene, whom I knew by reputation to be a master epigrammatist. Crinagoras was sleight of build, with soft, almost feminine features, and when he smiled, his warm eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’m pleased to meet you,” I said when he bowed before me. “Your name precedes you, Crinagoras.”
    “As well it should, Your Majesty ,” the little man said with a boastful smile. “Think of the esteem my reputation will bring to your royal court. You should hire me at once before some wiser monarch steals me away.”
    I’d never met such a bombastic self-promoter. “Are you asking for a position?”
    Crinagoras smirked. “There’s no need to ask. You’re already charmed, desperate to have me glorify your reign.”
    I stifled my laugh because I knew better than to let a courtier think he had the upper hand. “And why should we hire a court poet when there’s more serious work to be done in Mauretania?”
    “Majesty, you must have a court poet, or no one will ever know about your serious work,” he replied, and I followed his eyes to Virgil, catching his meaning at once. The emperor was already seeing to it that his rule would be immortalized in a way that suited him. He was shaping history and making certain that he had a voice in it.
    I wanted a voice too but said, “We’ll have to hear your work before we can make a decision of such consequence.”
    “How very fortunate that I’ve already composed a toast in honor of your marriage!” Crinagoras waved