"Puerum Sporum exsectis testibus etiam in muliebrem naturam transfigurare conatus
cum dote et flammeo per sollemnia nuptiarum celeberrimo officio deductum ad se
pro uxore habuit; exstatque cuiusdam non inscitus iocus pbene agi potuisse cum
rebus humanis, si Domitius pater talem habuisset uxorem. Hunc Sporum,
Augustarum ornamentis excultum lecticaque vectum, et circa conventus mercatusque
Graeciae ac mox Romae circa Sigillaria comitatus est identidem exosculans."
---C. Suetonii Tranquilli, De Vita XII Cesarum, 28
I cannot quite get past Poppaea's death.
Some think I killed her, like I killed my mother.
But no: I loved Poppaea. The sweet breath
in her inspired such tenderness in me.
How can I be content now with another?
They say Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee,
lusted for his stepdaughter, Salome.
She danced naked for him, and his birthday
guests; but, repenting that, she fled away
(abetted in this by the steward's wife).
Apparently, she chose a different life
apart from the perversions her stepfather
enjoyed. But wiley Herod did not bother
to fetch her back, as in bad comedy;
but found a slave whose similarity
to Salome's beauty met each condition
that he expected, with abject submission
to braggart Herod's boasted domination
in his deep dungeon's dread abomination.
This young man, Sporus, very well could be the
living likeness of my deceased Poppaea
(some might think he could be her boyish brother).
Yes, parts of him are still too masculine,
but we can make him rather feminine
just like a groundsman trims and shapes a tree.
We can make him "Poppaean" by castration.
Starward
[jlc]
Author's Notes/Comments:
Refrences and allusions:
(I apologize for the typography of these notes; I have tried twice to get the lines to justify, but am not able to do so.)
line 1: Poppaea died in 65 A.D., supposedly kicked to death, while pregnant, by Nero
line 2: According to Tacitus, in the Annals XIII:46, Nero murdered his mother, Agrippina.
line 4: I ask the reader's indulgence for the pun.
line 6: Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, who executed John the Baptist and presided at the second trial of Jesus Christ
(Mark 6:16, Luke 23:7)
line 7: Salome was Herod's niece and stepdaughter (Mark 6:17)
lines 8-9: Mark 6:21-22 tells of the birthday party, the guests, and Salome's dance. Her nakedness is my fictive speculation.
lines 9-11: Salome's flight is my fictive speculation, based upon a line from Oscar Wilde's eponymous play in which John the Baptist advises Salome to flee to
Galilee and seek Christ (Wilde's play errs radically in calling Salome a Princess of Judea, and in her manner of death).
line 10: Joanna, wife to Herod's steward, Chuza, was a follower of Jesus in Luke 8:3
lines 14-16: This is an original hypothesis to account for the mention of Salome present at the Crucifixion of Christ in Mark 15, and at the empty tomb on Easter
Sunday in Mark 16. Some Biblical scholars have attempted to assert that this particular Salome is the mother of the Aposltes James and John, but
Apostles Saints James and John, but John's Gospel nowhere mentions her at all; and I find it absurd that John would not have known if his own
mother were present at the Cross and the empty tomb.
line 15: The presence of the slave, as a replacement for slavery, is my speculation in order to reconcile the later accounts of Salome's two marriages in Flavius
Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, 5, 4.
lines 17-18: I have borrowed a bit from the perverse lifestyle of bdsm
