Word spread quickly. A mob gathered to watch, cheering and shouting, “Hail, Imperator!” as if they were witnessing a grotesque parody of a triumphal procession through the Forum.

“Hold up your head!” shouted the officer. “Look at the people when they salute you!” He pressed the point of the Divine Julius’s sword under Vitellius’s chin, forcing him to hold his head high. Criminals were taken to be punished in the same way, with their heads forced back so that they could not hide their faces. The point of the sword repeatedly jabbed the soft flesh. Streams of blood trickled down Vitellius’s throat and ran over his fleshy chest.

The mob pelted him with dung and garbage and hurled insults.

“Look how ugly you are!”

“As fat as a pig!”

“And see how he limps? One of his legs is bent.”

“Arsonist!”

“Pig!”

“You’re a dead man now!”

They arrived at the Capitoline Hill. Vitellius was dragged up the Gemonian Stairs to the Tullianum, the traditional place of execution for the enemies of Roma. While Vitellius blubbered and wept and begged for mercy, a fire was kindled.

“Have you no respect?” he cried out. “I was your emperor!”

In a fit of loyalty, one of Vitellius’s former soldiers broke from the crowd and rushed forward with his sword drawn. He stabbed Vitellius in the belly, meaning to put a quick end to him. The soldier was attacked by the mob and thrown down the stairs.

Vitellius’s wound was bound up to stop the bleeding. Men whose relatives had died in the temple conflagration were invited to heat irons and press them against Vitellius’s body. At first, he thrashed and screamed each time he was burned, but eventually the strength left his body and his screams turned to blubbering squeals, then to moans. Others preferred to prick him with knives, making small cuts so as not to kill him too quickly. The torture went on for a long time.

In the crowd, Lucius saw Domitian. The son of Vespasian was alive, after all. For a long time Domitian stayed back and watched, showing no emotion. Finally, when it seemed that everyone who wished to inflict punishment on Vitellius had been allowed to do so, Domitian stepped forward.

A soldier grabbed Vitellius’s hair and pulled his head back, shaking him until he opened his eyes. Vitellius gazed up at Domitian and opened his mouth, stupefied. The officer who had taken the sword of the Divine Julius handed it to Domitian, who gripped it with both hands. While soldiers held Vitellius in place, Domitian swung the sword.

Vitellius’s head flew through the air and tumbled down the Gemonian Stairs. The crowd cheered.

Clutching the bloody sword, Domitian was lifted onto the crowd’s shoulders. The head of Vitellius was placed on a pike and paraded through the Forum. The body of Vitellius – so burned and bloody that it was hardly recognizable as human – was dragged by a hook through the streets and thrown into the Tiber.

Lucius and his companions made their way to his house on the Palatine, where Hilarion and Lucius’s mother and sisters shed tears of joy at the sight of them.

Lucius tossed and turned all through the long midwinter night, unable to sleep. At the first glimmer of dawn he put on a tunic and left the house. The dim, chilly streets were deserted. He passed the ancient Hut of Romulus and descended the Stairs of Cacus. He stood for a while before the Great Altar of Hercules, thinking of his father and trying to make sense of all that had happened since his father had died.

He walked aimlessly for a while, then he found himself at the river- front. He followed the Tiber downstream, walking past the granaries and warehouses at the foot of the Aventine Hill. He came to the old Servian Wall and walked beside it all the way to the Appian Gate. He set out on the Appian Way, walking away from the city.

The rising sun sent slanting rays of red light across the tombs and shrines that lined the road, casting deep shadows. A short distance up the Appian Way, silhouetted by the rays of the sun, a cross had been erected near the road.

Crucifixion was the means of executing slaves. Amid the chaos of the previous day, who had bothered to carry out a crucifixion?

Lucius stepped closer. A man with a gladiator’s build was nailed to the cross. Lucius saw no movement, heard no sound. It could take days for a man to die on a cross. The gods had blessed this victim with a speedy death.

Lucius looked at the man’s face. Despite the uncertain light and the grimace that contorted the features, Titus recognized Asiaticus, the freedman of Vitellius.

Asiaticus had been a member of the equestrian order, legally immune from crucifixion. Those who had killed him in such a manner deliberately meant to degrade him. Lucius glanced at Asiaticus’s hand. The gold ring had been taken from his finger.

Lucius saw something in the grass nearby. He stepped closer. It was the lifeless body of a child dressed in a shabby tunic and a threadbare cloak. The head was twisted at an unnatural angle: the child’s neck had been broken. Lucius circled the body and looked at the face. It was Vitellius’s son, Germanicus. The boy must have been fleeing the city in disguise, with Asiaticus as his protector.

The sunlight grew stronger. The grey, shapeless world began to take on color and substance, but Lucius still felt surrounded by darkness.

Vitellius had been the most despicable man Lucius had ever met. Asiaticus had been a vile creature, and Lucius certainly had felt no affection for Vitellius’s son. Yet none of these deaths gave him pleasure. His reaction was the opposite. Witnessing the end of Vitellius had filled him with horror. Discovering the dead bodies of Asiaticus and Germanicus made him feel a dull ache of sorrow.

Why did he feel so empty, and so unsatisfied? Sporus had been his friend. Now the death of Sporus was avenged. Was that not what Lucius wanted?

And yet, Sporus herself had not been innocent in the long chain of horrors leading to this moment. If her confession was true, she had been responsible to some degree for the death of Lucius’s father. And Lucius’s father had not been innocent, either. As a senator and an augur, Titus Pinarius had been complicit in the acts that had led so many to clamour for the death of Nero.

The events of the previous day were as appalling as anything Lucius had ever witnessed. Yet, as far as he could see, the chain of crimes and atrocities that had led to this day had no beginning and would have no end.

He realized that he was clutching the fascinum. He held it so that it caught the sunlight. The gold glittered so brightly that it hurt Lucius’s eyes to look at it.

Did the god Fascinus exist? Had he ever existed?

Lucius’s glimmer of doubt was followed by a quiver of superstitious fear. The protection of Fascinus might be the only reason why Lucius was still alive, and not hanging on a cross like Asiaticus.

Lucius was alive, but towards what end? What was the point of living in such a world?

He returned to the road and walked back to the city.

“Your father was a very religious man,” said Epaphroditus. “Indeed, I never knew a man more pious in his respect for his ancestors, or more devout in his belief in the revelation of divine will. Of course, like his own father, Titus became an augur at a very early age, younger than you are now, I imagine. How old are you, Lucius?”

“Thirty-two.” Lucius Pinarius sipped wine from his cup. Epaphroditus always served very fine wine, and the shady garden terrace of his house on the Esquiline Hill had a splendid view of the city. It was a cloudless day in the month of Augustus. The heat was relieved by an occasional breeze from the west.

Having kept his fortune intact throughout the tumult that followed the death of Nero, Epaphroditus had retired from the imperial service, happy to recede into anonymity in the relatively quiet decade of Vespasian’s reign. Lucius, too, had done little these past ten years, at least in the eyes of society; he had not even married and started a family, and while he possessed numerous properties and business interests, he had no proper career. His mother lived with one of his sisters, all three of whom were married and running their own households. Living alone, Lucius avoided politics and public service and pursued simple pleasures like sitting in his friend’s hillside garden, enjoying good wine and taking in the view.