The queen of Baiae, and the embodiment of its exclusive, if faintly sleazy, allure, was the eldest of the three Claudian sisters, Clodia Metelli. Baiae was a place ripe with scandal, dazzling in its aspect but forever shadowed by rumours of corruption: wine-drenched, perfume-soused, a playground for every kind of ambition and perversion, and – perhaps most shockingly of all – for the intrigues of powerful women. Charm and good looks might secure pernicious advantages. Deals might be struck, patronage secured. A handsome social climber who had barely come of age might find himself talking on familiar terms to a consul.
Wherever wine flowed and clothes began to be loosened, traditional proprieties might start to slip too. No wonder that the place drove moralists apoplectic. Baiae was a party town, and the strains of music and laughter were forever drifting through the warm midnight air, borne from villas, or the beach, or yachts out in the bay. Whether at its celebrated sulphur baths or over a dish of the local speciality, purple-shelled oysters, the resort offered precious entrées into high society. It was this that made Baiae such a hot spot for the upwardly mobile. No statesman would ever willingly admit to spending time in a town so notorious, yet every season Rome would empty of the upper classes as they headed south to its temptations. A holiday there was always a source of guilty pleasure.
To the Romans, Baiae was synonymous with luxury and wickedness. Here, out into the glittering blue of the bay, stretched gilded pier after gilded pier, cramping the fish, as the humorists put it. What to great noblemen were the honeyed venoms of retirement might well to others promise opportunity.Ī few short miles down the coast from Lucullus’ villa at Naples stood the fabled beach resort of Baiae. Self-indulgence did not have to be a stigma of defeat.
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