We traveled along the ridge of the Capitoline Hill rather than through the throngs in the Forum, then sent the slaves and sedan chairs back while our guards led us through the crowd on foot. Apicius showed the scroll’s seal to the vigiles guarding the coveted spaces at the top of the stairs. They parted ranks and one of the younger guards led us to the top few stairs, where we were told we could wait.
When we arrived there were already hundreds of people lining the sides of the stairs. The top stairs were reserved for senators and their families, and the middle and bottom stairs for wealthy patricians and equestrians. Common plebeians were not allowed on the stairs and gathered at the base and filled the streets of the Forum below. Vendors sold fruit and sips from wine flasks to the milling crowd. The noise filled my ears: the sounds of barking dogs waiting for the body to be thrown, men debating how Tiberius found out about Sejanus’s treason, and children yelling as they played tag up and down and across the stairs.
At dusk, a roar broke out from the crowd as the Praetorian Guard—who had been Sejanus’s own men up until the day before—led the prisoner up the stairs to the temple of Concord, where the trial would be held. People screamed epithets at him, but the most common cry was “Traitor! Traitor!”
When Sejanus neared the top of the stairs he spied Apicius. He jerked his chains in our direction. “You are calling me a traitor?” he screamed to the crowd. They weren’t listening but he kept shouting. “Marcus Gavius Apicius is a traitor! And a murderer! He murdered a friend of Tiberius! You should be trying him and not me! I have proof! I have proof that Apicius is a murderer!”
Sejanus yanked at his shackles and with his bound hands pointed toward Apicius, who stood stock-still. Waves of fear radiated from Apicius. He gripped my arm and I could feel him trembling.
One of the guards kicked Sejanus in the back of the knees and he went down, banging his chin against the marble stairs. Another guard hauled him up and pulled him up the last few stairs. He was still screaming Apicius’s name when they rounded the corner of the temple.
Apicius still held my arm and his grip had tightened. No one seemed to have paid any attention to Sejanus’s words. Even Apicata did not seem to have registered the import of what her ex-husband had been saying. The crowd likely thought that Sejanus’s screams were only the desperate cries of a man about to die and therefore carried no import. At least, that’s what I hoped.
With Sejanus gone the crowd quieted. We sat down on the marble and waited, something Apicius would normally never have done, but, of course, it was an extenuating circumstance. All along the stairs patricians sat like commoners, waiting for the spectacle of Sejanus’s death to begin. Apicius said little. The pallor of his skin told me everything.
Before long, dusk descended and lamps were lit all along the stairway. Hundreds of torches and lanterns bobbed up and down the streets of the Forum like sparks in the night.
I heard the clatter of swords slapping the thighs of the Praetorian Guard before I saw Macro and his soldiers leading forth the condemned. Sejanus slumped between them, pushed along as though he could barely walk. Then three hundred senators flooded my vision, a wide swath of togas with red stripes filing past to stand with their waiting families on the stairs.
When we could see the top of the stairs again, a mere fifty feet away, Sejanus sat on a rough stool. Two of the largest men I’ve ever seen stood behind the prisoner, flanked by Macro and the Praetorian Guard.
Trio came to stand next to us. “Can you believe it,” he said, leaning in so we could hear, “during his trial he tried to tell the Senate that you murdered a friend of Tiberius.”
Apicius made a strangled sound and his eyes went wide.
Trio laughed. “It was like watching a bad play. He was rambling like a madman, accusing everyone he knew of being a traitor, a murderer, an adulterer. He named all of our friends as someone against Caesar. It made it all that much easier to convict him—his lies helped him rise to power, and we were only too glad to make his lies end him.”
Apicius gave a deep sigh of relief.
Trio smiled. “Yes, it will be good to end this monster, won’t it?”
Senator Pontius Castus came forth to stand at the top of the stairs, a few feet in front of Sejanus. A jolly man with a round belly and speckled beard, Castus had been expected to win the position of consul until the Senate, under great pressure from Tiberius, appointed Sejanus instead. I wondered what ran through his mind as he prepared to read the words on the papyrus he held.
Apicata grasped my hand. She gripped Apicius tightly with her other hand. I looked at Sotas and Tycho, and for a brief moment I knew a solidarity I had never before had. We were equal in one thing, despite all else: our hatred for Sejanus.
Castus began to speak, his voice ringing out like a clap of thunder, hard and sudden.
“Romans! I stand before you today to read the sentence of the prisoner Lucius Aelius Sejanus.”
The crowd went wild. A chant went up. “Kill him! Kill him!”
The senator let the chant continue for a moment. Sejanus lifted his head and surveyed the crowd. Even in the face of death he appeared arrogant.
As the chant began to die down so Castus could read the sentence, Sejanus began to yell at the top of his lungs.
“I would have been your god! I would have saved Rome! You say I was a tyrant? Hear me, Rome, I curse you! The next Caesar Rome will know will show you people what a tyrant really is! I curse you, Rome!”
Most of the crowd missed his words over the noise but I would never forget them. They would come back to me often when Caligula took reign.
Castus motioned to the Praetorians who held Sejanus to his chair. One of them shoved a rag into Sejanus’s mouth to silence him.
Castus shouted out the sentence, likely knowing his words would be lost just as Sejanus’s curse had dissipated in the din of the crowd. “The Senate and people of Rome find Sejanus guilty of treason against Caesar and against all Rome. He is sentenced to death by strangulation and his body to be thrown down the stairs before us.”
The voices grew louder. “Kill him! Kill him!”
Castus continued, “In the days to come all whose blood runs on the same side as Sejanus, be it his children, his slaves, or his loyal friends, they too will meet their death.”
“No!” Apicata howled. Apicius pulled her back before she could rush up the stairs and pummel Castus with her fists.
“Daughter! Take hold of yourself!” He turned her around and shook her by the shoulders. She struggled to get away, screaming about her children. Apicius glanced around at the crowd, some of whom were starting to look in our direction. He slapped her. “Daughter! You will be quiet!”