The Rise of a Colossus: The Tape Recorder Trilogy - S2E14

(~55 - ~79 CE · Gades & Rome)

The Narrator has a reoccurring dream of a statue that moves and changes its face. While discussing it with a charlatan posing as a soothsayer, he decides on what his next great adventure must be. Though he hates the place, he needs to go to Rome at the peak of her Imperial power. 

Based on the first half of Chapter 14 of Middle by Geoff Micks.

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Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixabay

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixabay 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

In 2015, a man who has been alive since the last ice age bought a tape recorder, and over the course of three days he dictated his life story as fast as he could while waiting for a woman to visit, who he believes will finally be the death of him. Hello again everyone, and welcome back. My name is Jeff Mix, and you are listening to season two, episode fourteen of the Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast. Enjoy. If you want to hear about their history, visit a library. Who were the Romans to me? Strangers from far away who had the power to ruin friends close to me. I was never one of them. I was not privy to the secrets or gossip of the Roman Senate or Imperial Court. I just avoided their wars and paid my taxes, and did my best to keep my head down. Still, I suppose I should mutter a few words about some of them to at least acknowledge that I begrudgingly lived under their rule for hundreds of years. Let me see. I remember Caesar's grand nephew and heir, Augustus, as a good man once he killed all of his rivals and actually settled down to being the ruler of the world. There was peace from one end of the Mediterranean to the other for the first time in generations, and my businesses prospered. I do not think Augustus meant to become an emperor in his lifetime and a god after his death. Not really. Oh, he wanted absolute power, that was clear to anyone with eyes to see, but if Rome had gone back to being a republic after his passing, I expect he would have been fine with that. Of course, he reigned for forty years, so by the time he was finally gone, all anyone remembered about the time before him was the civil wars. Who wanted more of those? No, the Roman Republic was dead. The Roman Empire, and the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, was the new law of the land and of the sea. When it worked, it worked pretty damned well. When it did not work, was it any bloodier than what had gone before? The old aristocratic families who had opposed despots under the Republic were mostly dead or penniless now, and new families had risen up because of imperial connections that demanded allegiance to a status quo centered around one man in charge of everything. I suppose as long as I am getting into this, I should rattle off the highlights of other emperors as I work my way towards my next story. After Augustus' wife Livia may or may not have poisoned her husband of five decades, her son Tiberius, who was only Augustus' stepson, and not a favourite one at that, finally got his chance to take the throne. I heard rumors that Tiberius was a bit of a queer old bird by the time he had absolute power, but the most extravagant stories of that scandal mongering imperial biographer Suitonius have always struck me as ridiculous hyperbole drummed up by the emperor's enemies after his death. Speaking of excesses, Tiberius's great nephew and adopted son Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as Caligula, little army boot for his adventures following his famous father the general around as a boy, was cut down by his own guards before I really heard a word against him. In his lifetime the public thought of him mostly as the son of the brave and noble Germanicus, the best emperor Rome never had. The aristocracy knew he was a madman, but they did not tell us until he was safely dead. Caligula's uncle Claudius, I thought was an okay sort of chap for his time. The story goes that he did not want to be emperor at all, but that the Imperial Guard needed someone for the physician or they would be out of a job. And so they dragged him out from where he was hiding behind a tapestry, draped him in Tyrian purple, and then the Germans among them lifted him up onto a shield and carried him around over their heads, in the same manner that they celebrated the coronation of their own kings in the dark forest beyond the Rhine, and all the while he begged and pleaded with them to put him down and let him go. He governed well enough. He conquered Britain without spending too much money on it. He was made a cuckold a hundred times over by his wife before he had her beheaded, and then he adopted his great nephew Nero, I think in the hopes of driving the Empire back to a Republican style of government through sheer incompetence on the young idiot's part. Claudius always was a bit of a Republican at heart, and with a family like his, who could blame him? Anyway, Nero poisoned Claudius and Claudius' son Britannicus, and then he had his own mother done in, and then one by one he killed or dismissed all of his political and economic advisers. For all that, the common folk loved him. Nero threw great games, abolished taxes on merchant shipping to ensure cheap food was always coming into Rome, something I appreciated very much, and he paid for new temples and theaters across the empire. Nero was even known to sing songs of his own composition in public to the accompaniment of a lyre, which is a finer thing for the ruler of the world to do than many of the foul deeds attributed to men before and after him. It is true there is a popular story that Nero ordered fires set, then played the lyre, fiddled, if you will, while Rome burned. Maybe there is some truth to it. But there were also very popular rumors at the time that a newish cult called Christianity was responsible. I think both are probably lies. Fires happen in big cities, no one needs to start them for nefarious purposes. Christianity does not hold arson as one of its sacred rites. And as for Nero? In his lifetime I heard from many that Nero was out of Rome at the time the fires broke out and rushed back to the capital as soon as he heard. He organized relief efforts for the homeless, and many people were fed and sheltered in his own fire damaged palace. When the neighborhoods on the lower slopes of the Palatine Hill were nothing but cold cinders and ashes, it was Nero who proposed a massive building program to put people back to work. Are those the acts of an unthinking, unfeeling arsonist? No, they're the actions of a selfish, ridiculous hedonist. You see, instead of replacing the hundreds of homes belonging to the senators and knights and wealthy merchants that were gone, Nero proposed one enormous edifice, the Domus Aurea, the Golden House, a gargantuan pleasure palace dedicated to Nero's comforts and delights, sprawling across more than a hundred acres with a private man made lake right in the heart of Rome. I choose the term pleasure palace quite deliberately, dear listeners, for in all of the Domus Aurea's hundreds of halls and galleries and salons and parlours and chambers and lounges, there was not a single bedroom. Nero slept in his old palace the next hill over. No, the golden house was strictly for ruling the world in the most beautiful and luxurious and self indulgent atmosphere imaginable. Oh, Nero knew how to have a good time. Three centuries after his death, tokens with his head on them were still being given out as tickets to public events, such was his enduring reputation as a master of spectacle and frivolity and fun. His golden house cemented that reputation for all time, and there was one major feature of this monument to Nero's id and ego that appeared to me in my dreams over and over again. It is a funny thing. My visions never sent me clear warning that Carthage would fall, but for something as frivolous as Nero's golden house, they were insistent to the point where I could not ignore them. I saw them every night for years, beginning during the reign of Claudius, and they made no sense. In my inner eye I could see the place in downtown Rome where the Wea Appia ended and the Domus Aurea began. Nero would order the construction of an impressive peristyled courtyard, and in the center of that square would tower an enormous bronze statue of Nero, and I do mean enormous. In my dreams I saw it rise up and stand over Rome, a colossus more than a hundred feet high, and what was even more amazing was that in my dreams I saw it transform and move. I took to writing down what I had seen, making notes and drawing sketches of the changing faces, muttering under my breath, what does it mean? What does it mean? By the time Nero was actually in power, I felt comfortable enough to leave those notes littered around my office desk. Eventually one of my friends noticed. Are they rebuilding the Colossus of Rhodes? Balbus Minor asked one day. He was the great grandson of the Balbus I mentioned in my last story, a kindly old barrel of a man. I think they plan to build it in Rome, I confessed. I haven't heard of that. He said it in a tone suggesting anything that happened in Rome would come to his ears out here in Gades. I suppose he had some small claim to that status if any of us did. His family had prospered under the original Caesar, and then under the Caesars who followed. Balbus Jr. might be overseeing the family business here in the provincial hometown, but there were Balbi throughout the Roman Empire now, and especially in Rome. Two of Balbus's cousins were even senators in the largely ceremonial Roman Senate. I cannot tell you more, my friend, I just keep seeing it in my dreams, I confessed. Dreams, eh? Why don't you consult my soothsayer? He is Chaldean, you know. He's very good, Balbus enthused. Well, I have never had much use for soothsayers and fortune tellers and astrologers and augers and the like. Still, Balbus was making the suggestion as one friend to another, and I could not really refuse without offending him. Balbus was a true believer. I gathered up my notes and drawings from my dreams into a small chest, and summoned my house steward to carry the thing for me while Balbus walked me across town. When the heads of the house of Balbus and the House of Canmi walked down a street of Gades in those days, people stopped what they were doing and watched us pass in respectful silence, those who did not call out a blessing upon us and our families. Gades was no Carthage, but the city had prospered under the aegis of our two great houses. I had one of my servants distribute alms to the left hand side of the street as we walked, and Balbus's people took care of the right hand side. When we arrived at the soothsayer's house, a small gang of street urchins had run ahead to warn the Chaldean of our coming. He stood waiting at the door to greet us, and he was dressed in the deep blue black Tyrian robes decorated with silver stars and moons of a true prognosticator of the eastern tradition that were old when Babylon was new. Greetings, good sir. I would seek your advice. I greeted him in old Akkadian, the one time lingua franca of the world centuries ago during my time as a Tamkarum. Akkadian was still spoken in Chaldea, where this man purported to be from. The flash of concealed panic in his eyes told me he did not know enough of the language to carry on a conversation with me in what should have been his native tongue. I judged him accordingly. Uh please, welcome to my home, he enthused in good Phoenician, ushering us in. I took in the decor as he led us through his foyer and into a back office open to the sky, but with a beautiful translucent awning of astrological signs to filter out the worst of the sun's glare. The Chaldean had excellent and expensive taste, but none of his obje dar or furnishings were from Mesopotamia. There were a few Armenian knick knacks that he clearly thought would pass casual inspection, but the bulk of his collection was from no further east than Antioch. Balbus, I compliment you on your choice of soothsayer, I said to my friend, who burbled his pleasure at my feigned approval. Sit, sit. The Chaldean gestured to two generous cushions on the floor. Our servants are to stand? I asked again in Akkadian, repeating myself now in my admittedly rusty Chalde, which was the language the Chaldeans spoke among themselves before adapting Akkadian. I saw that flash of panic again in the fraud's eyes and decided to stop playing with him. I asked my question a third time in Phoenician. Lords, you are here to talk about your dreams, not your servant's dreams. Speak to me of what you see when you sleep. That did impress me. As a performance piece the fellow had named our business before I had, and I could not imagine how he would know that already. Everyone who knew my mission was here with me. Perhaps Balbus made a habit of bringing his friends here whenever they spoke of their dreams to him. I bade my steward set down the chest and wait for us back in the foyer. Balbus's people also were dismissed. Now the great banker sank heavily down onto his pillow, and I joined him with less huffing and puffing on my part. I have a dream, soothsayer. I would have you tell me what it means, I said. The Chaldean said You dream of a great business opportunity, my lord. I do, I asked, for that was not in my mind at all. Yes, I can see it. You dream of a great adventure, a great achievement, and a business venture that will see you well taken care of for the rest of your life. Now that is a pretty generic thing to say to one of the richest men in the city, for I am sure he thought my mind was always on such things. But as he said it, something did snap into place in my mind. The Colossus of Rhodes, I muttered. What? the soothsayer said, squinting in that way that told me he was trying to read my body language and not getting it. What? Balbus also asked. You asked if they were rebuilding the Colossus of Rhodes, I told Balbus. I did? Balbus said. Yes, I said, my excitement rising. Do you know how they got the bronze to make the Colossus of Rhodes? I asked. No, Balbus confessed. No, the Chaldean repeated, a rare confession for him, I am sure. Rhodes was under siege by Demetrius the Besieger, but the Egyptian navy came to their rescue, and the besieger had to abandon all his expensive siege equipment and supplies when he fled. The Egyptians bought the top notch equipment for three hundred talents of gold from the Rhodians, and the Rhodians used that to commission an enormous statue of Helios, the patron god of their city, at the harbour mouth. Three hundred talents of gold. Now what would building the same sort of statue in downtown Rome cost? I asked. A silence stretched, and then the Soothsayer suggested More? More, I said. And do you know what else? No, Balbus and the Soothsayer said it together this time. The Colossus of Rhodes fell down after only fifty four years. No one is going to build a thing in downtown Rome that will fall down within a single lifetime. That means it will be better built in the beginning, and with ongoing upkeep and maintenance contracts? I trailed off, doing some quick mental mathematics. So what? Balbus asked, after the silent stretch too long. So I'm going to Rome, I crowed. The relief of knowing the purpose of my dreams was like a cool breeze blowing through my mind. For years now I had quietly gone about my business affairs, and all the while my inner eye had been casting about for a project that had some whiff of adventure about it. This statue was a part of my future, and I had to go there and make it so. I rose from my cushion and snatched up the box full of notes and drawings. But but my lord, the soothsayer protested, for he saw his client leaving before anything worth charging a fee for had happened. Oh, pay the fraud, Balbus. He was helpful, I said. Fraud? Balbus gasped. A talented fraud can be better than the genuine article who doesn't know what to do with his gift, I said to Balbus. And as for you, I said, turning my attention to the frowning soothsayer, you are either brave or foolhardy, claiming to be a Chaldean in a port as big as Gades. You don't think anyone speaking Akkadian or Chaldee is ever going to come into our harbour? If I speak those tongues and I live here, what are the chances someone from the eastern end of the Mediterranean isn't going to come knocking on your door one day? The color draining from the charlatan's face told me he had not considered this possibility, but I was not done. The world is full of fortune tellers. Whatever premium you can charge for being a Chaldean soothsayer, you would do better to claim the second sight from your own homeland's traditions. I'm guessing by the look of you you are really from the south shore of the Black Sea? That's exotic enough. No one knows what a pontic mystic can do. Be the first, start a fashion, educate your clientele, and build your own brand instead of leveraging a culture that will get you into trouble one day. Now it was the fortune teller's turn to try to splutter and harumph his displeasure, but I held up a commanding hand to silence him. Balbus told me to come, otherwise you and I would have never met. It was destiny, my friend. I know a thing or two about living a lie, and you are not good at it. I have just set you free to live the rest of your life as your true self. With that I left them, gathering up my steward and other servants as I went and hustling back to my city palace as fast as dignity would allow. I did not have one of my own ships in Gadius Harbour that day, so I hired passage on another vessel and left for Rome with the tide. Just as the Sioux Sayer predicted, I was bound for a new business venture, a great achievement, an adventure that would see me provided for many years to come. I was going to help build a statue, a statue that in my dreams moved and changed shape. I did not know quite what that meant, but now that I knew it was my future, I was eager to find out. I spent the voyage meditating deeply on my visions and pouring over my notes and sketches. Upon arrival in Ostia, I made a bee line for the great libraries Julius Caesar and Augustus and Claudius had sponsored. There I researched further while my steward went and did whatever Stuarts do to bring powerful men together without wasting one another's time. When that magic worked, I arrived on the building site of the Domus Aurea wearing a toga. Strictly speaking I was entitled to wear one, as I made a point of buying my Roman citizenship out in the provinces from a Roman governor almost as soon as I assumed each new identity. Still, it was never my preference. A toga is a hot, heavy thing, and you need a servant's help to put it on to get it to drape correctly. You can only walk slowly, with dignity while wearing one, and every gesture of your arms can be seen from the far side of a forum or a basilica. It was a wonderful garment for a politician or a lawyer, and at their heart every educated Roman was a politician and a lawyer, but I was rarely either in my lives, and never as a Roman. With that said, when you want to do business with a Roman, and you have the citizenship, you wear a toga to make your status known. Please don't make me say when in Rome, do as the Romans do. And when you are seeking to work with a non citizen in Rome, it never hurts to show where the two of you stand in relation to one another in the pecking order. I wanted to do both that day, and so I arrived at the onsite offices of Keller at Severus, chief architects and engineers of Nero's Pleasure Palace, weighed down by what felt like a mountain of white wool. I had sent my man ahead to speak with their man, and by the time I arrived my bona fides had been deemed acceptable. I bypassed the waiting room to proceed directly to an office where every flat surface was buried under papyrus, parchment, and wax boards, covered in notes, lists, drawings, diagrams. It was carefully coordinated chaos. A sand table sat in the floor in place of the normal water filled impluvium, and Keller himself stood over it with a stick, adjusting some element of his rough sketch as I entered. In the hierarchy of petitioners I was apparently important enough to see without being made to wait, but not important enough for full and undivided attention. I would have to speak to my steward about that in the future, I remember thinking. The man from Gades, Dominus. A Quintus Caelius Tanmius. He is here to talk to you about the great statue, Keller's man introduced me, using my Roman name. A Quintus Cailius was the governor who sold me my citizenship for a hefty fee, and Canmius was the closest cognomen I could get to Canmi in Latin. Shouldn't Xenodorus be here as well? Keller asked. I will find him, Dominus. Keller's man left, and my steward receded into a corner to become a piece of furniture. Will Severus be joining us as well? I asked. Hm? Oh no, he's off working on another project at the moment. I am in charge here, Keller said. Ah, I knew your firm was handling everything, but I was not sure how the responsibilities were divided between the two chief partners, I said. I was surprised to hear you were taking such a keen interest, my friend. I wouldn't have thought a merchant from beyond the pillars of Hercules had much to do with a palace in downtown Rome. Keller put down his stick and tried to give me his full attention, but I could tell from his tone his mind was still on his sketch. He was a man whose head ruled his heart, and his head was filled with numbers. I knew his kind well. Gades is my home, but my business takes me all over R.C. and many places beyond. Besides, Gadateans have a long and happy history serving Rome. The divine guyus Julius Caesar himself used the famous Gadatean bankers Lucius Cornelius Balbus Sr. and Junior during his time in Spain and Gaul, and the younger of the two was granted a triumph here in Rome for his war against the Garamantes, the only non Roman ever to be granted that honor, I said, leveraging my friend Balbus's great grandfather's fame to the hilt. Ah, I apologize. I am an engineer. Here, not a historian, the Roman said with polite disinterest. Think nothing of it, my dear Keller. As a native son of Gades, of course I am proud of our most famous sons. In fact, my home is in the new suburb the Balbi E built when they expanded the city. Again, I did not mention that it was I who owned the land back when it was just grazing grounds for goats. Is it a prosperous place then, Gades? Keller asked distantly. Well, it's no Rome, of course, but it is the best harbor within a day's sail of the pillars of Hercules, so any ship going into or out of the Atlantic is likely to call there. And of course, Tarshus, which the Greeks call Tartessos, is the hinterland above Gades. Anything coming down the Quatal Kivir River comes through our port before it goes out into the world. Well, very good then. What can I do for you? Keller had decided to come to the point. Three questions was all the small talk he was prepared to muster. I understand you are building an enormous bronze statue. I did not make it a question. I am building an enormous podium upon which an enormous bronze statue will stand, Keller said. Xenodorus will be building the statue himself. Why should that interest you? Wouldn't anyone be interested in a bronze statue more than one hundred feet tall? I asked. Interested, perhaps. Sailing from Gades to take interviews with the people responsible for the project? That is more than just a casual interest. Ah, here's Xenodorus now. A Greek sculptor walked in, his hand still caked in drying clay. Without a word of greeting he walked over to a nearby wash basin and proceeded to make a great splashing mess of himself. Keller's face froze in a clearly familiar mask that did little to hide his disdain and impatience with all of this happening in his holy of holies. Who are you? Xenodorus barked over his shoulder while scrubbing furiously at his forearms with rapidly greying water. I am Quintus Cailius Canmius, of Gades, I introduced myself. I understand you are the artist responsible for the great statue that will be built here. That's right. When I'm done, they'll speak the name Xenodorus in the same breath as Phidius. He turned from the wash basin, waving away the silent servant holding a towel, preferring to dry his fingers in his beard. I'm sure they will, I agreed. I will pause here to say that this is not Xenodorus the famous mathematician, dear listeners, but considering you probably have not heard of him either, let me just say that the crazy artist standing before me was never mentioned in the same sentence as the great sculptor Phidius, except by himself, and by the poor unfortunates such as myself, whoever needed to quote him. And why would you want to see me? Xenodorus barked again. Where do you plan to get the tin for your bronze, my friends? I included Keller in my question, for I am sure Xenodorus had not thought of the issue at all, whereas Keller probably had a list of vendors in one of the piles of documents heaped about us. To prove me right, Keller arched an eyebrow in amused enlightenment, while Xenodorus's brows knit in stormy fury. The market, of course, and why not? You have a nerve coming in here and trying to secure a contract on something that hasn't even been bid on yet, the artist erupted. The engineer, meanwhile, smiled. You could tell at a glance which of the two of them negotiated contracts as part of his daily job. I held out my hands palm forward to calm the angry Xenodorus. I was careful to do so in a way that my toga swished prettily, for I had one, and he did not. I was a businessman of great worth, and a Roman citizen in good standing, and this foreign artist who was neither would listen to my proposal in full. You were building a statue more than a hundred feet tall. The Colossus of Rhodes was about that size, and it was more than two hundred and fifty tons in bronze bolted onto its iron and stone core. Many say it fell over in that earthquake because it needed even more weight in its legs. So how much bronze are you going to use on your statue? One tenth of all that bronze begins as tin. Do you believe there is that much tin to be had in all of Italy today? Even if there is, what will it cost you to buy all the tin in Italy all at once? I asked. And I suppose you're going to sell us tin for less, the artist sneered at me. I gestured with broad sweeps of my arms so neither Xenodorus nor Keller could miss what my toga had to tell them about my station in the world. I'll offer you all the tin you want at today's going rate for the lifetime of the project. The copper too for that matter. My prices will not go up. I'll absorb any impact to my bottom line without passing the paint on to you. You'll have secured all you need at a known price, and you can place the savings towards the rest of your project accordingly. Xanadoris hovered somewhere between indignation and confusion, finally deferring to Keller. Why should we do business with you instead of one of my own clients or patrons? My fellow citizen asked politely. Do you have clients or patrons who can guarantee you a price on an unlimited supply of tin and copper today? I asked, knowing the answer. I haven't checked yet. I've been working on a mechanism for the dome and floor of the Emperor's dining room. He wants them to revolve to follow the motion of the stars of all things. Keller sounded both exasperated and more than little pleased with himself that he had figured out how to fulfill such a ridiculous request. It must have been wonderful to have Nero as a patron. He would pay anything while leaving it to his experts to figure out how to deliver his wants and needs. I know most of the tin wholesalers in the world. We're not a big crowd, and I make it my business to keep in contact with both the eastern and western merchants. No one has mentioned you to me, I said. Well, maybe I should write to them. East and west, see if anyone wants to underbid you, Keller suggested. My friend, you are welcome to do so. In fact, I encourage you to do so. The price will go up, not down once you ask for bids. I'm sure my price will be the best, but go ahead and get some higher numbers too, I said. Xenodorus was bored. Enough of this talk of money, Keller. You know better than most that the Emperor is sparing no expense. Why are we haggling with this Gadatean? Because this Gadatean will promise you a good price now, and when you tell the Emperor's staff what tin costs, you give them the other bids, the higher bids. Nero's people will pay you, and what you do with the difference between my cost and what they paid you is your business, I said reasonably. Xenodorus froze for a moment, then looked over at Keller, who nodded to confirm that what I said could indeed be done. Another moment passed as the artist tried and failed to do some mental mathematics of his own, and then he decided it was a good thing that the numbers were so large that he could not figure them. A toothy grin spread across his bearded face, and he held out his wet arms to embrace me, shouting over my shoulder some wine for my new best friend. And that is how I bribed an architect and an artist to let me be the sole source of tin and copper for the Colossus of Nero, using the emperor's own money. I also secured a lifetime upkeep and maintenance contract for the firm of Balbus at Canmius, sure that my banker friend would not mind me leveraging his name in exchange for a cut of money for which he needed to do exactly nothing. Oh, Keller and Xenodorus and I had a fine time once I had earned my place in their midst. Keller even tore himself away from his office long enough to give me a tour of the Domus Aureus building site. He spoke of the project planning challenges for something so large and ambitious. Xenodorus followed us, barking out all the artistic wonders as we went. Much as I disliked Xenodorus, it is the artistic wonders I remember. Nero loved art in all its forms, and he would accept only the best artists in the world to work on his golden house. The frescoes were mostly painted by a man named Famulus, who could paint freehand on wet plaster, a perfect likeness of anyone willing to pose for him. His use of color and shadow were incredible, and because he rarely needed to plan his work out in detail, he could do whole rooms and hallways at a time. As soon as the roof was up, Famulus set to work. Another painter I was introduced to was Amulius. He was as brilliant as Famulus, but in a totally different way. Every brush stroke of his was carefully considered, and he only painted a couple hours each day. When the light is right. He was also the special kind of wealthy eccentric who would insist on painting in full toga to make clear to anyone passing by that he was a citizen, better than all the foreigners, freemen, and slaves who worked alongside him to glorify the Golden House. In Famulus and Amulius' lifetimes, people used to organize tours of the palace to gaze upon their works with wonder. Nothing survived more than forty years, unfortunately, but it would be rediscovered briefly almost fourteen hundred years later. More on that soon. After all this prattle about securing the contract, let me talk for a minute or two about building the actual statue. It really was a feat worthy of commemorating. Dear listeners, I would ask you to remember that France gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States in the age of the steamship at the dawn of the Age of Electricity. Well the Colossus of Nero was as big as the Statue of Liberty, and it was built right in the middle of downtown Rome without any mechanical tools more powerful than men in a giant hamster wheel working a rope and pulley crane. Now of course colossal statues were not a totally new idea. Almost every temple boasted some effigy of its god or goddess, and some of them were quite large. There were Zeus at Olympia and Tarentum, and an Athena in the Parthenon of Athens, who had stood three quarters as tall hundreds of years before Nero's birth. Still, those were indoors, and more often than not seated, which is a much less challenging feat of engineering. Nero wanted his statue outdoors, and for that there were much fewer precedents. The obvious one is the Colossus of Rhodes, of which I have spoken about several times already. That said, it was not a perfect example to inspire imitation. Young boys who saw it rise two hundred and eighty years before the birth of Christ might well have been old men to see it fall just fifty four years later in an earthquake. The Colossus of Nero could not be another colossus of Rhodes. So what happened to the most famous damaged statue in the world before the Venus de Milo? The Rhodians consulted the Oracle of Delphi, and they decided to let the thing stay exactly where it was, broken off at the knees with its body lying on its side along a spit of land hemming in the harbor. I visited it every time I went to Rhodes over the next eight hundred years. People used to try to get their hands to meet up while hugging the colossal thumb. I could just manage it, but most of my friends could not. It was always a good bar bet if your business took you to Rhodes. Sometime around the dawn of Islam, an Arab trader finally took the statue apart. It took him nine hundred camels to carry away all the bronze plates. Sorry, I drifted there for a moment. I was talking about the colossus of Nero, not of Rhodes. Keller and eventually Xenodorus were glad to have my sketches and notes and the research I had conducted for them. They did not want their statue to fall down. They were building something for the ages. Scratch that. We were building something for the ages. Keller began with an enormous concrete pediment that could bear a tremendous weight of iron and stone and bronze. Then Xenodorus and his crew began to construct a skeleton of iron tie bars. Upon this framework they began to attach bronze plates to make up the skin of the statue, and they filled the core up to waist height with stone and gravel as they went. Each bronze plate was almost two yards to a side, with turned in edges into which rivet holes were made during the casting process. From the feet up to the knees the plates were as thick as my thumb. From the knee to the abdomen they were half that thick, and the upper body and head were half that thick again to prevent the thing from being top heavy. The likeness of Nero was mounted onto an incredibly muscled demigod leaning on a steering oar to show that he decided the course of the whole world. The resemblance was not great. It was tough to make the flabby, sideburned, double chinned Nero look like a god, but the whole effect was quite impressive. You could see that statue from any place in Rome with a view, and to anyone walking down town, it seemed like Nero looked down upon you as you went about your business. Of course, no statue could save Nero from the consequences of his incompetent rule. The man was a fool. If he was not the most powerful man in the world, he might have lived a long, full life as a bon vivant or a playboy, or as the neighborhood curiosity, or at least as the village idiot. But what an emperor says and does has consequences. Without getting into the whole sad tale, he eventually went around asking his servants to kill him before he had to face rougher justice from his approaching enemies. At one point when he could find no one to do the job for him he cried out have I neither friend nor foe? Eventually he did browbeat one of his slaves into doing the deed, and thus ended the reign of the last of what is now called the Julio Claudian dynasty. I was safely back in Gades when all this happened, of course, but I will tell you news of the chaos reached me even there. The next twelve months are remembered as the year of four emperors because of the various generals who scrambled for the vacant position of most powerful man in the world. As you can imagine, there was not a lot of law and order around at that time, least of all for a dead emperor's pleasure palace. I mentioned four emperors? Well, once the first three of them, Galba and Otho and Vitellius, started taking things out of the golden house for safe keeping, it quickly became the done thing for anyone to slip inside under cover of darkness to peel gold leaf off the walls, pry gems out of the ceilings, pull exotic plants out of the gardens, and fancy fish out of the ponds. By the time the final general, Titus Flauius Vespasianus, remembered by most people as Vespasian, came out on top, the palace was basically a gutted ruin. He ordered huge sections of it torn down and repurposed, not the least of which was turning the private lake, after draining it, of course, into the great Flavian amphitheater. In all the general chaos and destruction of the Domus Aurius, the one thing that no one could touch was the colossus of Nero. A statue that big was not something to be casually torn down, you understand. Still, it loomed over everyone, looking down the Wea Appia, dominating everything it saw. As you could imagine, not everyone was happy at having a hundred foot statue of the hated Nero looming so large, and so when Vespasian was firm enough in his finances for such fripperies, he hired the well respected Colossus maintenance firm of Balbus at Canmius to attach some sun rays onto the head. We also thickened up the nose and trimmed the sideburns and earlobes a little to make it look a little less like the famous lyre player. I tell you, it was fun drilling holes in Euro's head on scaffolding way up in the air to insert the bronze rods, and taking sledgehammers to his face. Gong, gong, gong, to bash out the old plates and pound in the new ones to make up a fresh nose. It was very therapeutic. I even charged a few people for the privilege to climb the ladder at sunrise or before sunset, to take a few swings at their former master's face while enjoying a glorious view of Rome in twilight. Anyway, when we were done our adjustments, everyone except dear Xenodorus was prepared to say we had transformed Nero's face into the spitting image of the sun god's soul. Quite why the Roman sun god needed a gargantuan statue was left unasked and unanswered. People let the statue continue on, remarkable but unremarked upon for generations. I believe Xenodorus drank himself to death in a fit of artistic pique at both the desecration of his greatest accomplishment and the general lack of recognition that came from being the artistic mind behind the Nero who became soul. As for Keller and his partner Severus, they moved on to bigger, better engineering and architectural projects under the Flavians, and died happy, slightly boring men.

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And I lived on. And on. And on. Forgive me, dear listeners, this is starting to go on a little bit long. I am parched. Let me hit pause, I will get myself a drink, I will come back, and we will pick up where we left off.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

You've been listening to the Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast, and there is a lot more to come. Here are a few ways you can help support this program. First, if you are enjoying it, tell someone about it. Audio dramas live and die on word of mouth, so please help spread the word. Second, please like it, review it, and subscribe to it wherever you find your podcasts. We want to teach the algorithm that this show is worth people's time. Third, this podcast is based on the novels Beginning, Middle, and End by Jeff Mix, available on Amazon. If you want to read ahead or just have a copy of this story on your shelves, that would be so appreciated. Fourth, I have a link to a typeform survey in the show's notes for each episode. Tell me a little about yourself and feel free to ask me some questions. I will be doing a QA mailbag bonus episode at some point. Finally, while I don't want to break up the episode with ads, I do have a Patreon account with extra content for those of you willing to support this channel with a donation. A link to that is also in the show notes. With that said, thank you so much for your time and attention, and I look forward to you enjoying the next episode soon.