This piece is obviously a satire on history in the the late 1990s. I know, it is nearly twenty years ago, so who remembers? Anyway, I almost didn't transcribe this one, and I am editing it very slightly, to omit the last name of the young lady of Rome who is one of the two main characters. The remainder of the letters I leave to the reader's imagination and they are more than three just in case you think too quickly. I also redact two sentences that were jarring, at least to me.
Marcus Publius Varicus climbed to the top of the Palatine Hill. The sun was casting its dying rays on the drowsy city. Marcus was pensive.
"I could have torched this town. Nero almost got away with the dodge. Oh, well, something else will turn up. It always does."
Still, he could not erase apprehension from his mind. This new accusation of impiety resounded ominously. It had a perilous ring about it.
That ungrateful, vengeful Vestal. She was threatening to hold him up to a devastating accusation before all of Rome.
Aurora F. He would rue the day he ever heard the name. . . .
He would not wait. This one required immediate attention. A comforting thought struck him. It was relatively easy. He would send for his favorite town crier, Demetrius Golgotha, the one whose bald skull always reminded him of a tumescent appendage. Still, the sonofabith was effective. He could abide his disgust with his minion. Usually he avoided personal contact with him. . .The matters were always carried out through another flunky. The voice of this former slave whom he had liberated for State reasons grated on him. He abhorred the high pitch and vulgar dialect of the southern province of Neapolis, where one could not even get a good slave or pizza for that matter. . .
Say what one will. The irritating menial had done well in a half-dozen of his previous scrapes with his more vociferous playthings. They had been wished "into the fields" to coin a phrase, and not the Elysian ones.
Aurora would be accused of allowing the sacred Eternal Flame to go out. He did not consider the fact that there were six other Vestals around in continuous care of the Eternal Flame, perhaps witnesses to her innocence. Details for dissemination of the act and giving it the ring of verity was a matter for his trusted priests.
He was forced to a personal meeting with Demetrius. He had to admire, reluctantly, the labyrinthine turns of his sewer like mind. Demetrius assured him that Aurora would be done in long before the scheduled hearing with the Roman Senate scheduled for the ides of that month introduced into the calendar by his illustrious ancestor, Caesar Augustus.
Marcus Publius Varicus felt a new sense of calm. He recalled the smiling, loving faces of his audience as he orated at the Forum. It was know that he declaimed with the skill of a Cicero. Better, the great Greek Demosthenes. He did not fail his acolytes.
"I never had sex with that virgin, that Vestal, I mean, that woman," he thundered. It was an acclamation to be envied.
He was after all, in the tradition of his forbears, their god, a creator, a founding father.
So said all the street orators. So reported all his faithful followers. He himself was in the audience disguised as a peasant when he heard the bombastic Catatonious declaim, "Delenda est Aurora", "Down with Aurora". The orator continued, "Of what is our great leader guilty? The gods forbid this accusation against a peer, one who is Divine."
Did not the noted communicator Micah Jacksonius write that verity, that the Great Publius cannot be held to the standards of ordinary men.
"Yes, he is active sexually, but this is a gift of the great god Priapus."
Marcus was not concerned about the censure of the Senators. He was well provided with complete papyri on each of them. He had read many a juicy tale one night when he could not sleep and there was no other distraction available. He chuckled to himself, "Surely not Arrius Duplitius, why he brings new meaning to the Latin word, ambidextrous."
He waxed poetic. In these nocturnal musings, "breathes there a man with soul so dead/who has not in his closet hid/ a fleshy skeleton or two/or three or four."
Talk about Nero paying his lyre, or fiddle, he forgot which. Anyway, he knew he was better on the lyre than Nero was, hands down, regardless of how one spells the word.
There were irritations. Take for instance, that former mentor of his from some Asia Minor province, that Greek scribe, Papadopoulous or other, who kept gossiping among the literati of greater Rome about the nine hundred other Papyri, he, Marcus kept hid under his bed for safekeeping.
The Madonna in charge of the vestals was, he knew, more close lipped--literally and figuratively. He was certain that she had chosen the one profession suitable to her unfortunate physical aspects. Leonor Cleftus had a price, but it was worth it. She was heard to declaim, "O Tempore, Oh Mores," which has nothing to do with this narration and is simply a Latin aphorism relating to time, that he, Publius had gone from sixty four percent to sixty eight percent approval in the opinion of Rome's Virgins and that after the denunciation of that pseudo-Virgin.
Still, "judge ye, O gods," he mused. "How I am persecuted. That damned toga was stolen from my wardrobe. A toga is a toga, but this one is reputed to have miraculous manifestations. He cursed the maliciousness of certain Olympian residents, the lesser, peripheral gods. He was not about to name names, for safety's sake. They could be bitchy. It was said that the lost garment had a mysterious imprint, incontrovertibly his image, of erratic conformation. He made a mental note. This would be a job for that great interpreter for the goddess of Justice, blindfolded and holding the scales of truth, the revered patronness of Barrius Shekkius, who would explain her truth.
Truly, wasn't Leonora Cliftus a voice from Olympus when she explained, "Verily, our leader has remained reluctantly silent these many years for good and cogent reasons. He has been a fortress against the calumnies of those decadent right-wing Etruscans. For whom? For you, O people of Rome, and his immediate household, and good old fashioned Roman morality."
Marcus Publius Varicus fell soundly asleep and dreamed a kind of deja vu dream. He saw himself on the dais at the For Romano, his voice ringing sonorously above the silent masses. He was holding his battered robe before the people, pointing to the tears made by his calumniators, all stains against his divine person hood. The cheers were thunderous, thunderous, thunderous. . .
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