The Nero Prediction by Humphry Knipe Page B

astrologers, Agrippina kept track of exactly what inquiries everyone with a claim to the succession was making. When she discovered that senator Lucius Scribonianus, a descendent of Pompey the Great, had asked an astrologer to compute the date of Claudius’s death, she caused such an uproar that the Senate was instructed to exile not only the senator but all astrologers from Italy. Balbillus, needless to say, was commanded to stay on as well as all the others who served as her informants.
    When the comet appeared, two years after their expulsion, most of the astrologers had drifted back into Rome. Predictions of Claudius’s death were commonplace, because everyone knew that comets presage the death of kings. Agrippina ignored their predictions. Although she did her best to hide it, I could tell by the glint in her black eyes and the rare spots of color on her cheeks that she was excited.
    I can confirm that Agrippina hadn't slept the previous night because I stayed up with her, taking notes, as she read a Greek translation of a Chaldaean tract that reported, with illustrations, previous visits of comets. She canceled her appointments for the next day, instead sat still as death, only her shadowy eyes moving as they wandered over the four charts on the table in front of her: Claudius's, Nero's and Rome's and her own. At sunset she and Balbillus went out onto west-facing balcony that gave an unobstructed view of the horizon. Dizzy from lack of sleep, I went with them to take notes.
    There was an unsettling undertone of excitement in Agrippina’s loud whisper. "What do you think, Balbillus, Gemini or Cancer?"
    The astrologer's slender frame was draped in his official blue Asiatic robe, the one that was embroidered with the signs of the planets. During my six years on the Palatine I saw him often, either with Agrippina or walking down the marbled passages on his way to a consultation with Claudius, always with the same measured pace, one step per second, sixty steps per minute, the march of time. He'd learnt this meditative exercise from a Chaldaean magus, Euodus told me. It shielded him from gusts of emotional turbulence that, like ripples across the surface of a calm pond, disturbed the clarity of mental reflection.
    Balbillus stood still as a pillar as he gazed at the horizon behind which the Sun had already disappeared. His words were as measured as his walk and expressed the same unassailable gravity. "Gemini. The Sun is at seventeen degrees of Gemini. The comet is reported to be so bright and its tail is so long that its head can't be much further than five degrees away from the Sun or it would have been seen earlier. That would place it at twenty-two degrees."
    "An appearance in Gemini, what does that mean?"
    "Because of the twins Romulus and Remus, Gemini is a sign of the Zodiac favorable to Rome. However the sign is of secondary importance. Everything depends on where the tail points."
    "Why?" she asked.
    "Augusta," he said, his voice grave with the wonder of it all, "as you know nothing happens by chance. Therefore the direction in which a comet's tail points must indicate something specific, something significant. If a comet's tail points at an evil star, an evil constellation or an evil planet, it's a harbinger of evil. On the other hand if it points at a benevolent constellation -"
    A voice called out in the thickening night. It was one of Balbillus's assistants, a young man whose eyes were so sharp he could make out the phases of Venus. "I see it dominus!"
    Agrippina's whisper was more like a shout. "Where?"
    "It will appear to us presently," Balbillus said.
    A gust of excitement blew the sleep out of my head. I raced outside. Suddenly there it was, just south of the spot where the Sun had set: a streak of milky light ten times the diameter of the full Moon.
    "I see it," said Balbillus.
    Agrippina already had. "It points south east. What does that mean?"
    "We must wait for the stars to appear."
    Minutes passed