The Capitoline Hill, Roma Mater
"Hmm… Your city seems afflicted with disquiet."
Two men stood in the northern portico of the temple of Jupiter Optimus et Maximus. Each wore expensive robes, padded hoods thrown back now that they were under the shelter of the temple roof. The sun was setting in a huge, swollen orange fireball. It wallowed down through air thick with smoke and ash, banding deeper red as it slid down towards the horizon. It had been a bad day in the city, close and hot, without any kind of wind or breeze. At some unguessable height the winds had shifted, bringing a slow-falling cloud of dust and ash to settle over the city. A light patina of gray marked both men's robes. Here, on the height, looking out over the massed rooftops of Rome, there was not even the hint of a breeze.
Despite this, the temple was empty, abandoned. The sacrificial fires on the altar guttered low in the dim red light. One of the men, the blond, was grinning a wolf's grin, looking out over the city. It seemed desolate, for few lights had been lit against the coming night. The sky was washed blood-red and the marble and concrete temple buildings glowed murky vermilion. This man took a petty joy from it, seeing a vision of destruction spread before him.
"It is not my city," said the other man in a querulous voice. "Not anymore. It is a poor night to be abroad in the streets."
"Nonsense, Gaius, it is the best of nights. Listen, do you hear that sound?"
The older man, a tall fellow with a balding head and a close-cut fringe of white hair, bent his long face, listening. There was a murmur growing in the still air, coming up from the streets below the Capitoline. Hearing it, he tensed, for it sparked dark memories of his youth. Men were shouting in the streets, crying out in rage. Women were shouting too, and some were screaming.
"A riot," said Gaius Julius, tugging the cloak closer around his shoulders. "A poor day, indeed, though it must please you, Alexandros, to see Rome come to this."
The younger man smiled, his face shining with delight. "The city means little to me, Gaius. What you built has surpassed my empire, true, and excelled in many respects. But I do not waste time with the past-the future intrigues me. A night such as this, with wild chaos in the air? That whets my appetite, as it should yours."
The youth put his hand on the older man's shoulder, leaning close.
"In nights such as this, when the common people huddle in their homes, the lights dark, hoping to live to the morning, that is when strong men can steal destiny."
Gaius made a half-smile and put his hand over Alexandros'.
"Perhaps."
The noise from the streets, still unseen below the encircling platform and wall of the Capitoline, suddenly rose. Metal rattled and there was a deeper, hoarser shouting. Gaius' head rose, and he stiffened, recognizing the sound. He made to leave the shelter of the portico, drawing the hood over his head. Then he stopped. He knew what he would see.
"Yes," Alexandros said as he descended the broad marble steps, "let us look upon your beloved Rome."
Gaius peered out one of the embrasures, gripped by a peculiar old fear. In his youth the city had been wracked by violence and intrigue. Armed gangs had roamed the streets, attacking the partisans of other political factions. Some of those gangs had been in his pay. Many had not. In those days, it had been wise to travel among a crowd of guards and servants. Now, with the city gripped by this morbid fear, he and Alexandros traveled alone.
"Ah! The Emperor moves at last." Alexandros had pulled himself up into the next embrasure and was sitting, looking down into the street below with interest.
A great mass of people, their faces pale, white ovals in this darkening red murk, was surging along the avenue. An inchoate noise rose up from them, equal parts anger and fear. Two cohorts of armored legionaries blocked their way, making a wall of shields and iron from side to side. The soldiers had not drawn their swords or hefted javelins to their shoulders, but rather were armed with staves of hickory.
The lead edge of the mob paused as it turned the corner into the street. Some of the men and women in the front stopped or tried to turn around. The pressure of those behind them was relentless and they were pushed aside, crying out as they were crushed against the stone walls or knocked down. Some struggled up, their arms pressing against the bodies of those that continued to flood into the street.
"Foolish." Gaius Julius sneered at the soldiers below, drawing his cloak up. Ash drifting out of the sky settled amongst his thinning hair. "Let these poor fools into the Forum! Are they not citizens? Then give them some bread and cheese and a ration of wine. Let them eat and drink-"
Alexandros laughed, standing up, his arms on the worn teeth of the battlement.
"The Emperor's patience grows short, my friend. His soldiers feel it and they are angry, too."
Gaius Julius turned away, his face dark in the shadow of the hood. Behind him, the crowd had begun to yell and run, charging forward, heedlessly, towards the lines of soldiers. There was a rattling clang as the first rank of men locked shields and braced for the shock of the oncoming mob. The hickory staves were raised up to shoulder height like a thicket of wands. The old Roman strode away, down the walkway behind the battlement. He had seen such things before-he had done such things before-and it gave him no pleasure. Alexandros watched for a moment longer, his face lit by the ruddy light of lanterns hung before the gate. The mob gave forth a deep, growling sound, then there was a crashing sound and the whipping sound of cane on flesh.
Men and women, their faces cut and bloody, began to scream.
Alexandros grinned, his nostrils flaring, and then he jumped down from the wall and followed Gaius, whistling.
– |"Have you thought upon the matter of the Prince?" Alexandros followed the older man easily, though the streets were very dark and narrow. Gaius Julius seemed to have a destination in mind and the young Macedonian did not think it was a brothel or inn. A pity, he thought, some diversion would be fine on this wicked night.
"What do you mean? We have parted his company-cast aside like broken toys. He is about his own business, doubtless reconciling with his noble brother."
Alexandros raised an eyebrow at the bitterness in the Roman's voice. "Do you miss him?"
"I do not," Gaius snapped, turning into a narrow lane barely wide enough for a single man to pass. "I am beloved of this new life, dear Greek, and while he is away from us he may fall to harm. And then where will we be? Dust again. If he were near, then we could take steps to see that he remains whole and alive."
"Well thought," Alexandros allowed, who experienced the same gut-gnawing fear. It only seemed that they were free agents, released from their thrall to the Prince and his will. In truth, they were still his pawns, merely set aside for a time like abandoned toys. "I wonder, though, about some things only half heard in conversation between you and he. You have been with him longest in this mad effort of his… perhaps you can set my mind at ease."
Gaius Julius stopped. They had come to a small, round plaza, half choked with garbage and offal. Streets led off it, showing black mouths in the dim light. People slept on the cobblestones or sat, nursing an amphora of wine. Gaius turned left, entering a lane that rose sharply up the side of a hill. "Your mind never rests, dear Greek. I cannot see how I might allay it."
"You can, perhaps," said Alexandros, easily matching the Roman's pace. "Consider how little we know of the Prince and his intent; he is the scion of the Imperial house, yet he has escaped the burden of rule because he has a talent."
"He is a priest, a healer, a man of respected power and ability," Gaius interjected gruffly.
"Indeed," Alexandros replied. "He discovers that all Rome, all this Empire, is bound by the strictures of an Oath laid down in the time of your adopted son, Augustus. He finds that your dear son, aided by this lamentable Egyptian, Khamun, has enforced his social rules and mores with this Oath, binding the people and the Empire."
The Macedonian paused, waiting for Gaius Julius to respond to the jibe. The Roman kept walking silently. Alexandros shrugged to himself and continued.
"Something happens… a friend, a shipwright, is killed by this hidden power. The Prince, outraged, takes up an effort to break the power of what he calls a curse. At first, he labors alone but finds that he cannot overcome it, he cannot understand it without help. He seeks assistance."
Gaius paused. They had come to the crest of a hill. The lane turned sharply right. Behind and below them, Alexandros could now make out the jumble of sloping roofs that marked the Forum and, rising above them, on the right, the shining wall of the Capitoline and the massive shape of the temple of Jupiter Optimus et Maximus. The Roman turned to Alexandros, only the tip of his long nose showing in the shadow of the hood.
"He finds," growled Gaius Julius, "the little Nabatean spy and wizard, Abdmachus."
"Yes," said Alexandros, his voice rising, "he finds a Persian agent to help him. A man sent into the Empire thirty years before to wait and to watch. He finds a man, perhaps the only man in the city who knows whereof he speaks. Does it not strike you a little strange that these two should come together in this matter?"
"Perhaps," allowed Gaius Julius, one long, thin hand rubbing the side of his chin. "You don't believe it was coincidence? You think that the twice-dead Abdmachus had been looking for a man like the Prince, a Roman sorcerer who stumbled upon the same secret yet lived? That he guided the Prince to him by some unknown means?"
"I think," said Alexandros, flexing his arms, "that Abdmachus was a subtle man. In comparison, I do not think that our dear Prince is subtle at all. Consider… traditionally the Persian magi are accounted great wizards. They are a powerful arm of the state, they stand at the right hand of the king of kings. Now, in battle, they wield powerful magics. More than one barbarian army has fled before them, riven with lightning and ghastly apparitions. But against their great enemy, Rome? They are well nigh powerless. This Oath defeats them, thwarts their skill, turns their sendings back upon them. The armies of Persia must match themselves, man to man, against Rome. Abdmachus himself, apparently a wizard of considerable skill, must move carefully and quietly on his mission lest he be destroyed."
Gaius Julius smiled, for his old mind, long enamored with intrigue and hidden plots, was turning hungrily upon the problem. "You think that Abdmachus had been waiting all that time for a weapon to appear. Some scrap of information, some man, some mechanism, which would allow him to break the power of the Oath. A chink in the armor of Rome… what better opportunity than this callow, inexperienced boy?"
Alexandros grinned, his eyes sparkling in the darkness.
"Ah, at last you begin to wake, old turtle. Yes-I think that Abdmachus influenced the mind of the Prince. I think that he led the Prince to you and then to me, each time promising the boy greater power to fight his enemy. That boy is a great power, he has enormous strength… but skill? Abdmachus was old and wily, a man well versed in the arts."
Gaius Julius began walking again, but now his steps were those of a man in deep thought. "He pressed the boy, then, to follow this insane goal. He was quiet and a dutiful servant… he hoped that the boy would break the power of the Oath, perhaps even dying in the process. Then Rome would be stripped of its great defense, even while locked in a bitter struggle against Persia."
"Yes, but then the Prince turned on him too soon. You had some little to do with that, I think."
Gaius Julius chuckled, a grim, cheerless sound. "I did. That cat Alais and I, we sought to influence the boy ourselves. We thought the Persian a threat to our little diumvirate. So, he was slain and made one of the lifeless. Like us, but less so, it seems. That is odd, too. You and I, we are veritably flush with thought and will and purpose, but he-he seemed far less, only a shadow of what he had been."
"It is odd." Alexandros sighed. "There was a book, in the library we so carefully gathered, that spoke on this subject." The Macedonian scratched the back of his head, brow furrowed as he pillaged his memory. "I have it-The Pert Em Hru-The Bok of Coming Forth by Day. It speaks of the means and methods of anointing, preserving and summoning forth the dead. It was part of that rag bag of scrolls and parchments we stole from the biblios."
He frowned, his face troubled.
" 'The "uneasy dead" do not come forth whole,' " he quoted from memory. " 'They lack the essential spirits and humors that drive the living. They are incomplete, for the ka of the body has already fled. The guides and guardians have passed them through the Golden Fields and into the Twelve Hours…' Then there is a long passage describing the underworld and the judges. I left off reading there, for I had seen those portions of the text before."
Gaius Julius raised an eyebrow. A trace of envy showed in his face. "You read the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians? I remember those scrolls, a muddy mass of pictures and scribbling… how came you by that skill?"
A peculiar look crossed Alexandros' face. "We are an anomaly, then, dear Roman. Our will is strong and we have purpose. By some act of the gods, we have escaped the land of the dead and can sing and see the world with living eyes. But this is a little matter-Abdmachus is now wholly dead, annihilated in the destruction of your house in the hills. Where is the Prince, then? Is he free of the old man's influence? Has he taken this task into his heart? What drives the Prince now?"
"Who can say?" Gaius Julius stopped, one hand on the edge of his cloak. "We might know more if we had taken all of the books rather than a pittance. Ah, we should have, my friend. What a rich collection they were!"
Alexandros nodded in agreement. The robbery of the Imperial library had stricken Alexandros with fear-it was an affront to the very gods!-but once he had begun to catalog and examine the trove, his unease had faded. Many books long thought lost had been among that collection. Coupled with the loot that had been dragged from the wreck of the Bygar Dracul's house in Constantinople, the Prince had amassed a fine collection.
"I grieve as well, my friend. Our lives proclaim that the Prince lived through the destruction of Vesuvius, but the books and tome and parchments? They may all be gone, burned in the ghastly wreck. Still, we have what we have. Our quiet friends will have to bear with us and our loss."
"Indeed."
They had come to the top of the hill, where a street of blank walls pierced by small, narrow doors faced them. Alexandros looked around, marking that the street was swept clean and the plastered walls were free from graffiti. A district of the well-to-do, then.
"Is this our destination?"
Gaius nodded, pacing along the street in the darkness. Pools of light spilled from the doorways, where oil lamps hung. At the fourth one he stopped, his head bent towards the inlaid tile decorating the sides of the door alcove.
"This is the house of Gregorius Auricus, also known as Magnus."
Alexandros frowned, puzzling through the Roman names and this barbarous Latin tongue.
"Gregorius the Great?"
"Yes," laughed Gaius, "he is accounted the richest man in Rome and a good friend of Emperor Galen and his family."
Now Alexandros raised an eyebrow. Given the crimes that they had committed in the service of the Prince, it was quite likely that the Emperor-should he have the two of them in his hand-would see their new lives swiftly ended. That is what I would do, thought the Macedonian. A ruler should never allow other men that have tasted kingship loose in his state.
Gaius' eyes twinkled and he put a finger alongside his nose.
"The Prince mentioned the name to me and said that Gregorius had offered him 'help if there was no one Imperial to turn to.' If I understood the boy correctly, this Gregorius is a patron of the Goths and other barbarian allies of the Empire. He is a fellow with access to gold, to armed men, to ships, to all of the sinews of power."
Alexandros grinned at that, feeling his blood quicken. Though he had grown up amid the vipers of his father's court-enmeshed in his mother's intrigues-he preferred the presence and action of open war.
"That would make him a valuable friend," Alexandros said, smoothing back the tongue of hair that always fell across his forehead. "Have you already arranged a meeting?"
"I have," said Gaius Julius, pinning a golden brooch to his cloak and stepping to the door. "I believe that the man needs some assistance that we may provide, to our mutual benefit."
Alexandros put a hand on Gaius' shoulder, halting the older man.
"To what end?" His voice was serious. "You have not said much of these goals of yours since we have come to the city. For myself, I have watched and waited, bettering my skill in this rough tongue of yours, observing the customs and practices of your people. But you have been quiet and withdrawn, thinking, I judge, of what you will do now."
Gaius nodded, still looking to the door.
"This is so," he said in a low voice. "When I was young, I was plagued by dreams and desires that filled my days and nights. They drove me to wild, frantic efforts. I pursued power, women, men… anything that would make me great. It was a grim time, filled with chaos and civil war. I sought to bring order out of that foment. I found success, but then I was empty. I tried to emulate you, dear Greek, by conquering the world, but I was cut down ere I could undertake that campaign."
"And now?" Alexandros was watching him closely, seeing the twitch of muscles in the older man's neck. "Do you desire the world?"
"No," said Gaius Julius, shaking his head. "That thirst has left me. But I want this life, strange as it is, to continue. I find it impossible to relinquish this sweet draught that is set before me again. To that end, I must protect our young Prince, exalt his state, enrich his domains, stymie his enemies, throw down those that would oppose him."
Laughing softly, Alexandros said, "My thoughts entire, sprung whole from your orator's mouth. You think that this man can help us, help our beloved Prince?"
"Yes."
"And after that? Have you given thought to the future? What will you do when the inevitable comes, as I believe it must, and the Prince sets aside his brother and claims the Purple himself?"
Gaius Julius turned at last and met the Macedonian's eyes directly. "I have not given that thought wings. This now, this moment, is enough. Once, when I was young, I gave great thought to the future. I made plans for the course of my children and my children's children." He sighed. "But then, where were they? I had none… a waste. See how wretched Octavian seized the role? Oh, that cloak he donned, taking my name and power for his own. Cur."
Alexandros shook his head in feigned dismay. "Oh, so true, a crawling whelp that crept up and stole your glory while you slept… and did what you could not, built a new state, this very Empire, from the ashes of your crumbling Republic. One of our dear quiet friends relates the tale of it-this youth Octavian was a fine ruler. He endowed a realm that has maintained to this very day. I bow before him, for he has built well."
"Pfaugh!" Gaius Julius spit on the pavement. "I read that fop Suetonius, too. He kisses the feet of a man dead for centuries! Pitiful. Oh, you are right, my nephew did well with the ashes he gathered, but I still resent him. Leave me some bile for my old age!"
"You have no bile," Alexandros laughed. "You are the very corpse of a man."
"Enough, stripling. Your flesh is cold, too. Let us enter and see what advantage may be gained by clever words and a smiling face, for we have little else to offer."
Alexandros stood back, letting the Roman strike the door with his fist, summoning the watchman. He was a little troubled, for he had read the histories of Suetonius and the Annals very closely, seeking to understand the rise of this Octavian to power. A brief passage was trying to raise itself to his attention… Ah.
Gaius Julius had fathered only daughters on his Roman wives, of which he had plenty. But he had made a son, a single boy, Ptolemy Caesarion, with Royal Egypt. A boy who lived to manhood. Doesn't he remember? Was the boy unsuitable for the Roman people to see as his descendant? A small mystery…
– |"Gaius Julius and companion," intoned a servant as they entered the sitting room.
A robust man with expensive, refined tastes was sitting in a wide-backed chair. A mane of fine white hair swept behind his head, framing an ancient, calm face. A broad table covered with sheets of parchment, inkstands, tally boards, quill knives, alabaster cups and silver platters stood before him. The man looked up, serious eyes flicking over the two of them. The man returned his attention to the matters before him.
"One moment, if you will," he said as he put some papers in order. When he was done, he stood slowly, showing the weight of considerable age. "Welcome to my house, Gaius Julius. I am Gregorius Auricus. Please, sit and take some refreshment."
Alexandros followed the older Roman in taking a chair beside the great desk. He was not pleased to be left out of the conversation, but considered the situation and silently acceded to Gaius' will in this thing. It was not the time to dispute the approach, not when one was at grips with the enemy.
"You are most generous, sir." Gaius sat, his face and motions indicating pleased acceptance. "I hope that we do not disturb your work. We can easily return at another time, if that is convenient."
Gregorius waved a hand, settling back into his chair. "It is no matter. You are a welcome guest and diversion from these other matters."
Alexandros hid a smile, keeping his face composed. It was quite early in the evening, well before the usual hour for social visits. Too, it was past the time when a senator would entertain his established clients and employees. Gaius Julius had managed to finagle an interview between other appointments. The Macedonian wondered what it had cost.
"Your letter said that you were recommended by a common friend, that you could offer me expertise that I had need of in these troubled times." Gregorius indicated a folded letter on the tabletop. "It does not say who recommended you, sir, nor what need of mine you fill."
"Noble sir," said Gaius Julius in a straightforward blunt voice, "I've come about the matter of your private efforts to relieve the suffering of those afflicted by the explosion of Vesuvius. A man well known on the Palatine, indeed, one that might even call it home, said that I should find you and offer you my services."
"Private effort?" Gregorius squinted at the older man, his lips pursed. "There is no private effort under way-though I do spend a great deal of my time aiding and assisting the Imperial government in its own efforts to find housing for the displaced and provide them with food and drink and clothing."
"Your efforts are well known, sir. Your name and your generosity are well spoken of in the city. I do not speak of the efforts made to see to the basic needs of those unfortunates that have been driven to seek shelter in the welcoming arms of Mother Rome. Another need, one more pressing, must be met and I am sure that you are the man to see it done."
Gregorius looked pained and raised his hand sharply. "Please, sir, you are my guest, but my weariness is great. Speak plainly and set aside the devices of the orator."
Gaius Julius restrained a smile and nodded earnestly. "As you say, sir. I will be blunt. Sir, the theaters are closed, the amphitheaters locked up, the circus itself desolate and dark. Can there be any greater calamity than this? How will the people know that the Emperor loves them and shares their loss if he does not go among them, attending the theater, opening the races? How can they set aside their fears if they are not given diversions?"
Alexandros was slightly puzzled by this tack in the conversation, but he saw that their host understood Gaius Julius' intent. The senator sighed and picked up a quill pen from the desktop, testing its point with his thumb in a nervous gesture.
"This troubles me too. I have argued with him, more than once, about this very thing. Princeps Galen is adamant that the resources of the state will not be wasted on 'frivolity' and 'shadow play' when there are roads to be cleared, cities to be dug out of the ash, grain and oil imported in vast quantities at the expense of the state."
"These are necessary things, sir." Gaius Julius' voice dropped a tone. "But what do the people say, sitting in their homes when the sky is dark with portent? The Emperor must not forget that the people of the city must feel his love, they must see he cares, they must hear his voice and behold his face. He cannot hide on the Palatine, buried in the affairs of state, lest the love of the city be lost to him."
"I know," said Gregorius curtly. "I am not the only adviser who has urged him to reopen the theaters and the Flavian and the circus. He refuses."
Gaius Julius nodded to himself, by which Alexandros assumed that he knew this already, having nosed it out of the wine shops and baths of the city.
"Sir, what of these funeral games, these munera, that have been so long rumored? Will he wait, too, before giving the countless dead their due? Will he let the shades and manes throng the countryside, all unshriven and restless?"
"There is some news of this, which I have recently heard." Gregorius grimaced. "Galen issued edicts a month ago saying that there would be a great series of games-with gladiators, wild beasts and all-to commemorate the dead of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Baiae. Yet no date was set, no festival declared in their honor. Each day he is pressed for details or a date, yet he demurs. I fear that he will not appoint an editore to see to this matter, seeking to handle it himself."
"And his attention is ever elsewhere," said Gaius Julius softly. "There are many demands upon the Emperor's time, many threats to the Empire. Someone must ensure the plebe in the street has bread and wine and oil to fill his stomach. In the face of such a catastrophe, some small details might be lost."
"So they have been," said Gregorius, showing great weariness in his face. "Every man in the Imperial service carries a backbreaking load in these times. The relief effort is staggering."
"Not all men are so employed, noble sir." Gaius Julius' voice was firm. "I stand before you, willing to lend hand and thought to the task-but I beg you, sir, that you do not set me to this matter of the public relief. Let me do as the tribunes and aediles and magistrates did in ancient times; let me arrange such performances of the theater, such games and wild animal hunts in the amphitheater, as are deemed needful to restore the spirit of the people."
Gregorius sighed and put the pen away. "The Emperor will never release funds for such a thing. I have already related he plans a great series of games."
"This is so," said Gaius quickly, before the senator could continue. "But you could spare some coin for some trivial amusements for the citizens, while we wait for the funeral games. You have placed your fortune in the service of the people before-you hired ships to carry corn and wheat and wine into the city when civil war wracked the state and the people were starving. Rome needs you, sir."
The senator seemed suddenly to come awake. Alexandros, watching the two men, thought their host saw his guest for the first time in that moment.
"No senator can undertake to sponsor games, festivals, theater performances or triumphs without the express permission of the Emperor himself. No senator," Gregorius said in a sharp tone, "has ever been allowed to do such a thing since the reign of Divine Augustus himself."
"Indeed," said Gaius Julius, "the noble Agrippa undertook a lavish and prolonged series of games in the time of his aedileship. If memory serves, and if Cassius Dio speaks truly, Agrippa 'rained upon the heads of the people tokens that were good for money in one case, in another clothes, or yet again something else.' But Agrippa was the close confidante of Augustus, and surely undertook such things with the full knowledge and support of the Emperor. Sir, the people lament and are fearful. This is such a small thing, perhaps it could be done."
Gregorius shook his head, though his face showed disputed thoughts. He did not speak.
"Sir," said Gaius Julius after a moment, "I have some experience in these matters. I have recently returned from the East, from Persia, and am no longer in Imperial service. Let me lend my arm, my hand, my eye to resolve this. Let me set in motion an effort to restore the normal pattern of life for the Roman people. Perhaps the Emperor will let one of the theaters, not even the Marcellan or the Pompeian, reopen on selected days for the performance of… of classical tragedies, or the Aeneid, so that the people-who are tormented by omens on all sides, by the unnatural nature of the sky, by these stenches and fumes-may see that life continues, and the flow of the city may resume its accustomed course."
The senator was thoughtful now and considered the words carefully. Alexandros hid a smile. He knew something of Gaius Julius' experience in these matters, knowing by all accounts the elderly Roman was a master of stagecraft and planning. Alexandros had arranged some spectacles himself, in his breathing life, and he guessed his friend and companion had already prepared all that would transpire. All it needed was coin and some veneer of Imperial permission.
"Just one theater would not tax my coffers overmuch…" Gregorius began. No pantomimes or farces, of course, but instead reliable, older works, reminding the people of the ancient heroes and the traditions of the city."
"Even so," said Gaius Julius, his voice painfully earnest. "Nothing filled with spectacle or trickery, no mechanical elephants, no forests rising from the floor of the theater, no brawling gladiators. But it will be enough, sir, to guide the thoughts of the people away from all this death and destruction. Let them think of life again, and look to the future. Let them think kindly of the Emperor, and of you, whose generosity and concern for the people is so well known."
Gregorius rose, pacing to the window. He drew aside a heavy drape, revealing a window looking down off the hill, across the sprawling mass of tenements and the bulk of the Forum. There, framed in the window, lit by hundreds of distant torches and lamps, was the Palatine. The Imperial palaces gleamed watery red in the night. Ash was still falling, tainting the air.
"I meet with the Emperor in the morning," the senator said. "I will offer him this gesture and I will use, with your permission, your words. It may move him. I know he feels the wounds of the people deeply. Some gesture to them, to reassure the citizens, may warm his heart to this endeavor."
Unseen by the man, Gaius Julius turned to Alexandros for an instant, his face split by a huge grin, his eyes sparkling with triumph. Then he schooled his face to concern and faint hope as the senator turned around again.
"Which theater do you suggest? The Balbus, perhaps? It is small and the entrances could be easily controlled by the urban cohorts."
Gaius Julius rose, taking a wax tablet and stylus out of his robe, and joined the senator at the large table. "My very thought, sir. We would not want a riot! That would be a poor omen indeed."
– |Dawn was near, shading the dark sky with a muted violet glow, when they left the house of Gregorius Aricus. A chill had settled in the air and the smell of the river seemed sharp. Alexandros, inured to the cold, walked briskly, his hood thrown back, letting the dew bead on his skin. Gaius Julius walked at his side, radiating satisfaction.
"You are well pleased," the Macedonian said as they crossed the empty plaza at the heart of the Forum. Their lodgings, an apartment secured by Gaius Julius during their previous time in the city, were on the edge of the Aventine Hill. The rooms were small but out of the way, and their comings and goings would not be easily noticed. "This business of the theaters and races seems overly indirect. Of course, you may siphon off large sums of coin to finance other schemes by these means, but-"
Gaius Julius laughed suddenly, pulling back his own hood. They had crossed the expanse of the Forum and were passing by the pillared front of the temple of Castor and Pollux. Within, flames burned on the altars, illuminating the massive statues with a flickering light.
"My dear Greek, there is nothing indirect about the theater and the circus in Rome! Haven't you paid attention to Suetonius? I know you have, for I saw you grimace and exclaim aloud over the doings of my nephew's successors. Did you mark the fate of dour Tiberius?"
Alexandros nodded slowly. Of the emperors following the Divine Augustus, only the "glorious" Germanicus had died in bed. It seemed, from the vantage of history, that only the enormous impetus imparted by the long-lived and wily Augustus had carried the Empire through Tiberius' foul humor, Germanicus' too-short reign, Claudius' fumbling and Nero's profligate insanity to the able Vespasian.
"Yes, he died friendless and alone, murdered upon his return from that island."
"Do you remember why he had lost the affection of the people and the senate? Why he was murdered? Why the reign of Germanicus, 'he of the highest quality of body and mind,' was so welcomed?"
Alexandros pulled up short, vexed, and stared at Gaius Julius.
"Because Tiberius could not stand to attend the theater, the races and the other public amusements? That is madness!"
"Perhaps," said Gaius, putting his arm around the younger man's shoulder. "But this is Rome and here there is a special and intimate relationship between the people and the Emperor. There is a balance, a harmony, in the city between the least citizen and the most exalted. The theater, the circus and the Colosseum are at the heart of it."
Gaius Julius stopped and pointed up at the towering shapes of the Imperial palaces to their left. "There sits the Emperor in his gilded cage, surrounded by ceremony and guards and the weight of dreadful privilege. The common man, the citizen, rarely sees him. He is remote and distant. The senate, which by ancient tradition should represent the tribes and the citizens, is a useless social club. It has been this way for centuries. Even the fiction of voting for tribunes is long discarded. The Emperor's will is absolute, but he is not a tyrant."
They resumed walking, following the covered arcade down into the markets by the river.
"How does he escape becoming an isolated god, as so many of the kings in the east do? Why, my friend, through the theater, through the circuses, through the wild-animal hunts. In these things, the Emperor appears in person, the focus of all attention. Every man and woman and child can see his face, see him laugh or cry or curse if his favorite driver fails in the turn. In the theater, the common people may address the Emperor with their own voices. Do you see what that brings?"
Alexandros nodded, for he had sustained much the same relationship with his hoplites.
"A grievance aired," he mused, "is a grievance halved."
"Just so," grinned Gaius Julius. "You will see, my friend, that the weariness of this Emperor Galen, his distaste for these frivolities, will deliver the heart of Rome to me."
He paused, running a hand over his bald pate.
"I have some talent for swaying the allegiance and favor of the people, I must say."