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  The summer of 432 saw them besieging the city of Hippo Regius. In the third month of that terrible siege, when starving people killed each other over a rat, one of the great voices of the Church, St Augustine of Hippo, closed his eyes upon the ruins of a world which he had so desired and feared. He died on the twenty-eighth day of August, aged seventy-five. A few weeks later Hippo was taken and burned almost to a shell. But Augustine’s writings and his personal library were by some miracle saved: two hundred and thirty-two books, plus treatises and commentaries, epistles and homilies, and those immortal works the Confessions and The City of God.

  The years passed, the Vandal conquerors made North Africa their own, and the young and hesitant Emperor Valentinian hesitated. Aëtius argued for reconquest by land and sea, vigorously at first, and then furiously. When Galla Placidia concurred with the general and urged her son in the same direction, the weak and paranoid adolescent rebelled against them, called them ‘bossy’, refused point blank to do anything about Africa, and sent Aëtius into exile.

  Not for the last time, Aëtius took refuge at the court of the Visigoths in Tolosa. Valentinian, meanwhile, sued for dishonourable peace with Genseric, the wrathful, debauched king of the Vandals, who had once been a hostage prince in the court of Rome, with his younger brother Beric; the latter had long since died in an ‘accident’.

  Genseric was fierce and blood-thirsty, delighting always in spectacles of the utmost cruelty and depravity. He especially liked to see women forced to couple with animals, in supposed tableaux of ancient myths: a wild bull, representing Zeus, mated with a naked slave-girl, representing Europa, tied down over a cartwheel. Perhaps Genseric believed that, by showing his appreciation for such entertainments, he was demonstrating his affinity with the elevated culture of the classical world. He spoke little, was short in stature, and he struggled to sleep with women in the normal way. When he did so, it was with hatred.

  To the dismay of many, the Vandal kingdom of North Africa under the rule of the monstrous Genseric became an established fact. Rome’s resources shrank still further.

  Indeed, the streets of Rome were filled with more and more threadbare and starving refugees from the Vandal fury in North Africa, and tiny wooden boats bobbed across the Mediterranean from the Numidian or Mauretanian shore to make landfall in Italy. More and more desperate, hungry mouths, and less and less grain to go round. But still the people lived blithely, and did not want to see that the blood-dark cloud now nearly filled the sky.

  12

  THE PRINCESS AND THE SLAVE-GIRL

  The years passed, and Valentinian’s sister, Honoria, grew into young womanhood. No sooner had she reached that turbulent age, not sixteen summers old, than she betrayed her true character, and the name ‘Honoria’ showed itself absurdly unsuitable for this inveterate lover of pleasure. ‘Oh, incongruous name!’ one monkish chronicler has written. ‘For never was there a female so shameless in her carnal appetites as the Princess Honoria!’

  It is not for a humble scribe like myself to have opinions one way or another about the girl’s behaviour, but many other chroniclers have felt differently, describing her as ‘a she-daemon of sensuality’, ‘a succubus who inflamed men’s flesh and scoured their souls’, and even ‘the Great Scarlet Whore whose appearance marked the End of the World’. The more censorious have written that they could not possibly commit to writing the horrifying stories they heard about her lusts and depravities, before going on to do so in extensive and unblushing detail. Whatever the truth about the princess, as a responsible historian I must record what I have heard about her without demur.

  Honoria was born three years after her brother, in 422, the daughter of the gloomy Flavius Constantius and his chaste and upright wife the Princess Galla Placidia, so that in the year 437 she was just 15. She appeared to have only three interests in life: beautifying her body; attracting attention to herself, from both men and women; and sensual pleasure. No greater difference between mother and daughter could be imagined, so that palace wits said that surely Princess Galla must have borne her daughter not by the noble if taciturn Flavius, but rather following a visitation from one of the insatiable and lecherous gods of the pagan pantheon. Perhaps Zeus had visited Galla in the likeness of a shower of gold, as he did Danaë; or a swan, as he did Leda. For the daughter of Galla, like the daughter of Leda, Helen of Troy, would prove irresistible to men, both because of her beauty and because of her evident lustfulness. And she would set off a train of events as calamitous and tragic as that caused by Helen, providing a similar feast of entertainment for the sardonically laughing gods above. For the sorrowful tale of Troy is known to those high gods as the Wrath of Achilles, but humanity remembers it as the Death of Hector.

  If not Father Zeus, perhaps it was the great god Pan, or some ithyphallic satyr in his train, who fathered Honoria upon the chaste and haughty Galla as she slept in her icy composure and self-restraint. Certainly the disparity between mother and daughter was great, and often remarked.

  Beauty alone in a woman is not enough to reduce men to love-struck foolishness. Such a woman must also make it clear, by the fluttering of her eyelashes, and by the glittering steadiness with which she returns a man’s gaze, with the dark kohl-rimmed drowning-pools of her eyes, and by the pretty pouting of her carmine lips, and by the gentle touch of her fingertips upon his arm, and by bending forward to retrieve, shall we say, her napkin from the floor, giving him a heady glimpse of her sweet and fruitlike breasts with their erect and roseate nipples - such a woman conquers men, as I say, both by her beauty and by her explicit sensuality. For which reason, as St Augustine has warned us, ‘women are the greatest snare that the devil has set for men’; and as the Bible itself reminds us, ‘All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.’

  All these tricks and harlotries Princess Honoria understood very well from her earliest years; and no sooner had she begun to show the first outward signs of womanhood, if palace gossip is to be believed, than she was demanding sexual pleasure from her slaves. No Agrippina, no Messalina, was ever so debauched as she. And in the morally dubious palace of Ravenna, with its slaves numbering some twenty thousand, each one bound to do the bidding of master or mistress, there was no scarcity of potential servants for her lust.

  More shocking still was the princess’s indifference to whether her companion in the pleasures of the flesh were male or female; for, like Sappho of Lesbos, whose works are largely lost to posterity, Decency be thanked, she took her pleasures where she found them: her love being not only towards men but, with rather too much generosity, towards all humanity.

  It was said that one person was particularly responsible for the first awakening in Princess Honoria of her desire for pleasure. One day a new slave-girl came into her private chambers from the slave-markets of Alexandria. Her name was Sosostris, which means simply ‘Sister’ in the old Egyptian, and is a typical term of affection for a slave. Other slave-names, signifying even more than mere affection, and reminding the bearer of the name that they existed to pleasure their owners on demand, included Desire, Kiss, Pleasure, Beloved, and even Sexy. Sosostris herself might well have borne any of these alternative names, as it turned out, such was her hot temperament. ‘Sister’ was a more ambiguous term, perhaps; but many was the slave-master who took perverse pleasure in calling his ‘sister’ to his bed at night.

  Sosostris was some eighteen or nineteen years of age, an Egyptian, slim and dark-skinned and very beautiful. Now, you know of the reputation of the Egyptians, both men and women; for in ancient times, before the coming of Christ, the utmost lubricity was common in Egypt, and women went not only bare-legged but even bare-breasted throughout the day. At evening they sat at table with their husbands and their husbands’ friends, boldly conversing as if they were men’s intellectual equals! Their full round breasts were on proud and wanton display, the allure of their dusky nipples even augmented by subtle applications of cosmetics and rouge!

  But I digress.
/>   Regarding Sosostris and Princess Honoria, I heard it from another scribe in the court of Ravenna, who heard it from the Egyptian herself, whom he later took to his own bed, deriving much lewd and revolting pleasure from hearing her recount her youthful adventures in the arms of men and women alike; such are the corruptions of the times. And although it is true that Rumour is never so speedy on her feet, nor so wholly unreliable, as when she hastens to report in the market-place on matters which belong in the bedroom, I feel that there may be some lamentable truth in the scenes that were laid before my shocked imagination by the luridly detailed description of this shameless scribe. They are scenes that I have turned over and over in my mind many times since, in my pure desire to know whether they could be true or not; so that it is now almost as if I witnessed such appalling scenes for myself.

  It was Princess Honoria’s habit to take a bath in the evening as well as the morning, and thereafter to lie sleepily upon her couch and have her slaves anoint and massage her with warm oil perfumed with the petals of roses. Soon it was noticed that this task was reserved exclusively for Sosostris, while the other slaves were dismissed from the royal presence. Furthermore, by day, the looks and glances exchanged by the princess and the slave-girl seemed to betoken more than the merely affectionate relations that might obtain between a mistress and a loyal slave. It was as though their looks communicated some illicit and secretive passion, only augmented by their subtle smiles exchanged in public, as they silently remembered together the pleasures of the night before, and anticipated the pleasures of the night ahead. Sometimes, it was said, cries were heard coming from the Princess Honoria’s private chambers after dark, which sounded very strange to the ears of those who had always assumed that such cries in a woman could only be provoked by the presence and the dutiful attentions of a husband.

  Indeed, if Rumour is to be believed, the worst fears of the palace were well founded. For on her very first night in Honoria’s service Sosostris began to administer those seductive oils to her mistress, murmuring gently that she had great skill in this art. The other slave-girls helped the young princess from her bath, wrapped her in soft cloths, carried her over to her wide, cushioned couch, laid her down on her stomach and carefully dried her.

  Then the Egyptian took her bowl of perfumed unguents, and poured them into the hollow of Honoria’s back, and with her slim and delicate brown hands she began to rub and knead the oils into the princess’s shoulders and neck, her back and flanks. To looks of some surprise from the other slave-girls, she began to run her hands beneath the soft white cloths that covered the princess’s modesty, and also to massage her smooth white buttocks.

  After a few moments, the cloths slipped aside altogether and fell silently to the floor, leaving the princess naked and exposed, but she seemed to mind not a whit. And then, to the great astonishment of the attendant slave-girls, who not being Egyptian would never have dreamed of taking such a liberty with the royal person, Sosostris took up the bowl again and poured a thin golden trickle down between the princess’s thighs, which were still at this point held tightly and chastely together. And the impudent Egyptian, a knowing smile playing upon her lips, actually sat down beside her mistress on the couch, rather than kneeling subserviently beside it, as was the usual custom. She was wearing a long white tunic, loosely belted about the waist with a red sash. Now, to make it easier to sit on the royal couch, albeit uninvited, she shamelessly drew up her dress almost to her knees, baring her long, smooth legs for all the world to see, and exhibiting her fine leather sandals, saucily high-laced in the brazen manner of a common harlot of the Suburra.

  She leaned over her mistress closely so as to press more of her weight upon her hands, but as she did so her own ripe breasts beneath the white linen tunic brushed lightly against the princess’s back with a shocking intimacy, and the princess stirred beneath that touch, making no move to reprimand it. Then the impudent slave began to run her fingertips teasingly up and down the smooth and glistening crevice from the princess’s buttocks down to knees and back again, but teasingly, as if she were engaged not in work at all, but in pure play.

  Then, before the shocked eyes of the other slave-girls, Sosostris actually eased those young white thighs apart. Leaning down, she unloosed her tresses and shook them free, and began to sweep her long black hair up and down between her mistress’s thighs, and up over her buttocks and her back and then down again. Sosostris’s hair was of that magnificent Egyptian hue, blue-black in intensity, long and perfectly straight and reaching almost to her waist. Now she used it not as mere decoration but as an implement of seduction. Under her wicked ministrations, Princess Honoria gave a soft moan and, almost despite herself, it seemed, raised her buttocks a little and arched her slender back. When she settled herself again upon the silken cushions beneath her, it just so happened that her thighs were no longer quite together, but just a little apart, as if with lewd invitation. The Egyptian girl smiled a smile of quiet triumph, and dipped her fingertips into the bowl of perfumed oil again.

  At this point it is said, though I would fain not believe it, Honoria turned her head slightly, and murmured to the rest of the slave-girls that they were dismissed, at which they all retired from the chamber. But, women being slaves to concupiscence as well as to insatiable curiosity and gossip, they did not retire completely, but concealed themselves in a neighbouring antechamber, pretending to close the doors, before opening them again silently and peeking out between the drawn curtains at the Egyptian slave-girl’s treatment of their mistress.

  It seemed Sosostris was no innocent as to this, either, for after a few moments she glanced towards where the other slave-girls were concealed, and looked saucily at them, even though she could barely have seen them there in the shadows. And she arched her eyebrows and smiled at them, as if she knew very well that they were there and watching, and even enjoyed the knowledge that her pleasuring of the princess was being watched.

  Now she ... But here I must break off, for decency’s sake. There is more to tell, much more; but let not such scandalous lewdness stain the pages of my humble chronicle. Other writers of a lower type may write of the loves of Princess Honoria as they choose, and make a grubby penny thereby. Let that not be my fate, O Muse!

  For there is no way to tell all that I know of the Princess Honoria and remain within the bounds of decency. Many a time after that, the secretly watching slave-girls stood long into the night, and heard many more sighs and moans, and witnessed many more outrageous lecheries performed between girl and girl, which would have shamed the most shameless quayside whore of Corinth. Yet how to tell more without offending beyond recall the modesty of my readers?

  How to tell of how those two wanton hussies, one a royal princess and one a mere slave, spent that whole night devising new depravities, and attaining thereby new and hitherto undreamed-of summits of pleasure? How to tell of the night when they half dressed each other again, but only to augment the delight they took in each other’s semi-nakedness, which is always more lewd than pure and unadorned nakedness, as any whore knows? How to describe the slave-girl seating her mistress upon the couch, and lacing the giggling princess into her own high-laced red leather sandals, and clasping a slim gold chain round her slim girlish waist, and applying fresh lipstick to her already swollen and cherry lips, and dark kohl round her eyes, until the hitherto innocent girl, in appearance now as well as in conduct, looked like the most fatal succubus of every chaste man’s dreams? And how the Egyptian slave-girl ...

  But no, horresco referens, I shudder to relate. No more I say, for shame. It would be grievously wrong to detail further acts of such wickedness.

  Now my lamp burns low, and the hills of Italy beyond my window are fallen silent for the night, but for the lonely cry of the lych-owl. There I must break off. At my age it is not good to work so late, as I shall exhaust myself. The silent scriptorium is growing chilly, and yet I feel a strange and over-rapid beating of my heart, as if from great exertion, and a heated p
erturbation within myself. Suffice it to say that Princess Honoria, as I have painted, was most shamelessly given up to pleasures of the flesh, to which she gave her exclusive attention; and that these pleasures were equally derived from, and slavishly bestowed upon, both men and women, with all the indifference that is the true mark of the inveterately promiscuous and enflamed temperament. But it would be wrong to dwell further on the princess’s private and lamentable practices.

  And so to bed; and the Lord keep me from lewd and unchaste thoughts.

  13

  THE DOOM OF ROME

  The following morning: and to return to Honoria.

  After the awakening of her lower nature, and while she still enjoyed the vile attentions of Sosostris to the full, it was only a matter of time before this incorrigible nymphomaniac surrendered more dangerously to the charms of a man. His name was Eugenius, and he was her chamberlain. In the midst of the tedious limitations and formalities of the royal court, the princess yielded to the impulse of her nature and threw herself into his arms, more out of a longing for experience and adventure, perhaps, than from any real love for him. Her guilt and shame were betrayed soon enough by pregnancy, made even more obvious by her slim form.

  Her mother, reserved and correct in all things, was angered and shamed beyond telling. She had the poor girl instantly confined to one of the darkest, dimmest chambers of the Imperial Palace behind a locked door, and put on a starvation diet such as you might impose on the most disgusting criminal the night before his execution. Honoria’s brother, meanwhile, ever vengeful, suspicious, and still without children of his own, plotted an even worse punishment.