Caesar Dies - Talbot Mundy
"Scylax," he said, "Cadmus--he who was your master is as dead as that
man we have buried. I am not Sextus, son of Maximus. I fare forth like
a dead man on an unknown road, now being without honor on the lips of
men. Nor have I any claim on you, being now an outlaw, whom the law
would crucify if ill-luck should betray my feet. Nor can I set you
free, since all my household doubtless is already confiscated; ye
belong by law to whomsoever Commodus may have appointed to receive my
goods. Do then at your own risk, of your own will, what seems good to
you."
Being slaves, they knelt. He bade them rise.
"We follow you," said Scylax, Cadmus murmuring assent.
"Then the night bear witness!" Sextus turned toward the row of gibbets,
pointing at them. "That is the risk we take together. If we escape
that, you shall not go unrewarded from the fortune I redeem. Norbanus,
you accept my leadership?"
Norbanus chuckled.
"I insist on it!" he answered. He, too, pointed at the row of gibbets.
"To be frightened will provide us with no armor against destiny! There
was little I had to lose; lo, I have left that for the mice to nibble!
Let us see what destiny can do to bold men! Lead on, Sextus!"
IV. THE GOVERNORS OF ROME AND ANTIOCH
Dawn was sparkling on the mountain peaks; the misty violet of half-
light crept into the passes and the sun already bathed the copper roofs
of Antioch in gleaming gold above a miracle of greenery and marble.
Like a sluggish, muddy stream with camel's heads afloat in it, the
south-bound caravan poured up against the city gate and spread itself to
await inspection by the tax-gatherers, the governor's representatives
and the police. There was a tedious procedure of examination, hindered
by the swarms of gossipers, the merchants' agents, smugglers, and the
men to whom the latest news meant livelihood, who streamed out of the
city gate and mingled with the new-comers from Asia, Bythinia, Pontus,
Pisidia, Galatia and Cappadocia.
The caravan guards piled their spears and breakfasted apart, their duty
done. They had the air of men to whom the constantly repeated marches
to and fro on the selfsame stage of a mountainous road had grown
displeasing and devoid of all romance. Two were wounded. One, with a
dent in the helmet that hung from his arm by the chin-strap, lay leaning
against a rock; refused food, and slowly bled to death, his white face
almost comically disappointed.
A military tribune, followed by a slave with tablets, and by a mounted
trooper for the sake of his official dignity, rode out from the city and
took the report from the guards' decurion, a half-breed Dacian-Italian,
black-bearded and taciturn, who dictated it to the slave in curt,
staccato sentences, grudging the very gesture that he made toward the
wounded men. The tribune glanced at the report, signed it, turned his
horse and rode into the city, disregarding the decurion's salute, his
military cloak a splash of very bright red, seen against the limestone
and above the predominant brown of the camels and coats of their owners.
He cantered his horse when he passed through the gate, and there went up
a clamor of newsy excitement behind him as group after group loosed
tongues in competition of exaggeration.
Being bad, the news spread swiftly. The quadruple lines of columns all
along the Corso, as the four-mile-long main thoroughfare was called,
began to look like pier-piles in a flowing tide of men. Yellow, blue,
red, striped and parti-colored costumes, restless as the flotsam on a
mill-race, swirled into patterns, and broke, and reblended. The long
portico of Caesar's baths resounded to the hollow hum of voices.
Streaming lines of slaves in the midst of the street were delayed by the
crowd, and abused for obstructing it. Gossip went up like the voice of
the sea to the cliffs and startled clouds of spray-white pigeons,
faintly edged with pink against an azure sky; then ceased as suddenly.
The news was known. Whatever Antioch knew, bored it. Nine days'
wonders were departed long ago into the limbo of the days of Xerxes.
Nine hours had come to be the limit of men's interest--nine minutes the
crucial phase of excitement, during which the balance of emotion hovered
between rioting or laughter.
Antioch grew quiet, conscious of the sunny weather and the springtime
lassitude that is a luxury to masters but that slaves must overcome.
The gangs went forth to clear the watercourses in advance of floods,
whips cracking to inspire zeal. Wagon-loads of flowers, lowing milk-
white oxen, white goats--even a white horse, a white ass--oil and wine
in painted cards, whose solid wooden wheels screamed on their axles like
demons in agony-threaded the streets to the temples, lest the gods
forget convenience and send the floods too soon.
The Forum--gilt-edged marble, tinted statuary, a mosaic pavement like a
rich-hued carpet from the looms of Babylon--began to overflow with
leisured men of business. Their slaves did all the worrying. The
money-changers' clerks sat by the bags of coin, with scales and shovel
and the tables of exchange. The chaffering began in corn-shops, where
the lawless agreements for delivery of unsown harvests changed hands ten
times in the hour, and bills on Rome, scrawled over with endorsements,
outsped currency as well as outwitted the revenue men. No tax-farmer's
slave could keep track of the flow of intangible wealth when the bills
for a million sesterces passed to and fro like cards in an Egyptian
game. Men richer than the fabled Croesus carried all their wealth in
leather wallets in the form of mortgages on gangs of slaves,
certificates of ownership of cargoes, promises to pay and contracts for
delivery of merchandise.
Nine-tenths of all the clamor was the voice of slaves, each one of them
an expert in his master's business and often richer than the owners of
the men he dealt with, saving his peculium--the personal savings which
slaves were sometimes encouraged to accumulate--to buy his freedom when
a more than usually profitable deal should put his master in a good
mood.
The hall of the basilica was almost as much a place of fashion as the
baths of Julius Caesar, except that there were some admitted into the
basilica whose presence, later in the day, within the precincts of the
baths would have led to a riot. Whoever had wealth and could afford to
match wits with the sharpest traders in the world might enter the
basilica and lounge amid the statuary. Thither well dressed slaves came
hurrying with contracts and the news of changing prices. There, on
marble benches, spread with colored cushions, at the rear under the
balcony, the richer men of business sat chattering to mask their real
thoughts--Jews, Alexandrians, Athenians--a Roman here and there,
cupidity more frankly written on his face, his eyes a little harder and
less subtle, more abrupt in gesture and less patient with delays.
"That is a tale which is all very well for the slaves to believe, and
for the priests, if they wish, to repeat. As for me, I was born in
Tarsus, where no man in his senses believes anything except a bill of
sale."
"But I tell you, Maternus was scourged, and then crucified at the place
of execution nearest to where he committed his last crime. That is,
where the crossroad leads to Daphne. There is no doubt about that
whatever. He was nearly four days dying, and the sentries stood guard
over him until he ceased to breathe, a little after sunset yesterday
evening. So they say, at all events. A little before midnight, in
Daphne, near one of those booths where the caterers prepare hot meals, a
man strode up to where some slaves were seated around a fire. He burned
a piece of parchment. All nine slaves agree that he was about Maternus'
height and build; that he strode like a man who had been hurt; that he
had mud and grass stains on his knees, and covered his face with a toga.
They also swear he said he was Maternus, and that he was gone before
they could recover their wits. They say his voice was sepulchral. One
of the slaves, who can read, declares that the words on the parchment he
burned were "Maternus Latro," and that it was the identical parchment he
had seen hanging from Maternus' neck on the cross. They tortured that
slave at once, of course, to get the truth out of him, and on the rack
he contradicted himself at least a dozen times, so they whipped him and
let him go, because his owner said he was a valuable cook; but the fact
remains that the story hasn't been disproved.
"And there is absolutely no doubt whatever about this: The caravan from
Asia came in just a little after dawn, having traveled the last stage by
night, as usual, in order to arrive early and get the formalities over
with. They came past the place of execution before sunrise. They had
heard the news of the execution from the north-bound caravan that passed
them in the mountains. They had all been afraid of Maternus because he
had robbed so many wayfarers, so naturally they were interested to see
his dead body. It was gone!"
"What of it? Probably the women took it down for burial. Robbers always
have a troupe of women. Maternus never had to steal one, so they say.
They flocked to him like Bacchanalians."
"No matter. Now listen to this: between the time when they learned of
Maternus' execution and their passing the place of execution that is to
say at the narrowest part of the pass, where it curves and begins to
descend on this side of the mountain--they were attacked by robbers who
made use of Maternus' war-cry. The robbers were beaten off, although
they wounded two men of the guard and got away with half-a-dozen horses
and a slave-girl."
"That means nothing--Pardon me a moment while I see what my man has been
doing. What is it, Stilchio? Are you mad? You have contracted to
deliver fifty bales at yesterday's price? You want to ruin me? Oh.
You are quite sure? Very well: A good man, that--went out and met the
caravan--bought low--sold high, and the price is falling. But as I was
saying, your story is simply a string of coincidences. All the robbers
use Maternus' war-cry, because of the terror his name inspires; they
probably had not heard he had been crucified."
"Well, that was what the caravan folk thought, until they passed the
place of execution and saw no body there."
"The robbers possibly themselves removed it and were seeking to avenge
Maternus."
"Much more likely somebody was bribed to let him escape! We all know
Maternus was scourged, for that was done in Antioch; but they did not
scourge him very badly, for fear he might die on the way to the place of
execution. There is no doubt he was crucified, but he was only tied,
not nailed. It would have been perfectly simple to substitute some
other criminal that first night--somebody who looked a little like him;
they would give the substitute poppy juice to keep him from crying out
to passers-by."
"Substitution has often been done, of course. But it takes a lot of
money and considerable influence to bribe the guard. They are under the
authority of a centurion, who would have to look out for informers. And
besides, you can't persuade me that a man who had been scourged, and
crucified, if only for one day, could walk into Daphne two or three
nights afterward and carry on a conversation. Why should he visit
Daphne? Why should he choose that place, of all places in the world,
and midnight, to destroy the identification parchment? Having destroyed
it, why did he then tell the slaves who he was? It sounds like a tale
out of Egypt to me."
"Well, the priests are saying--"
"Tchutt-tchutt! Priests say anything." "Nevertheless, the priests are
saying that Maternus, after he was captured, managed to convey a message
to his followers commanding them to offer sacrifices to Apollo, who
accordingly intervened in his behalf. And they say he undoubtedly went
to Daphne to return thanks at the temple threshold."
"Hah-Hah! Excellent! Let us go to the baths. You need to sweat the
superstition out of you! Better leave word where we are going, so that
our factors will know where to find us in case any important business
turns up."
In the palace, in the office of the governor, where the lapping of water
and irises could be heard through the opened windows, Pertinax sat
facing the governor of Antioch across a table heaped with parchment
rolls. A dozen secretaries labored in the next room, but the door
between was closed; the only witnesses were leisurely, majestic swans,
seen down a vista of well pruned shrubbery that flanked the narrow lawn.
An awning crimsoned and subdued the sunlight, concealing the lines on
the governor's face and suggesting color on his pale cheeks.
He was a fat man, pouched under the eyes and growing bald--an almost
total contrast to the lean and active, although older Pertinax. His
smile was cynical. His mouth curved downward. He had large, fat hands
and cold, dark calculating eyes.
"I would feel more satisfied," he said, "if I could have Norbanus'
evidence."
"Find him then!" Pertinax answered irritably. "What is the matter with
your police? In Rome, if I propose to find a man he is brought before
me instantly."
"This is not Rome," said the governor, "as you would very soon discover
if you occupied my office. I sent a lictor and a dozen men to Norbanus'
house, but he is missing and has not been seen, although it is known,
and you admit, that he dined with you last night at Daphne. He has no
property worth mentioning. His house is under lien to money-lenders.
He is well known to have been Sextus' friend, and the moment this order
arrived proscribing Sextus I added to it the name of Norbanus in my own
handwriting, on the principle that treason keeps bad company.
"My own well known allegiance to the emperor obliges me to tear out the
very roots of treason at the first suggestion of its presence in our
midst. I have long suspected Sextus, who was a cross-grained,
obstinate, quick-witted, proud young man--a lot too critical. I am
convinced now that he and Norbanus were hatching some kind of plot
between them--possibly against the sacred person of our emperor--a
frightful sacrilege!--the suggestion of it makes me shudder! There is,
of course, no doubt about Sextus; the emperor's own proscription brands
him as a miscreant unfit to live, and he was lucky to have died by
accident instead of being torn apart by tongs. It seems to me
unquestionable that Norbanus shared his guilt and took care to escape
before he could be seized and brought to justice. What is in doubt,
most noble Pertinax, is how you can excuse yourself to our sacred
emperor for having let Sextus escape from your clutches, after you had
seen that letter! How can you excuse yourself for not pouncing the
letter, to be used as evidence against rascally freedmen who forewarned
the miscreant Sextus about the emperor's intentions?--and for not
realizing that Norbanus was undoubtedly in league with him? How can you
explain your having let Norbanus get away is something I confess I am
unable to imagine."
"Conjure your imagination!" Pertinax retorted. "I am to inquire into
the suitability of Antioch or Daphne as the site of the Olympic games
that the emperor proposed to preside over in person. You can imagine, I
suppose, how profitable that would be for Antioch--and you. Am I to
tell the emperor that robbers in the mountains and the laxity of local
government make the selection of Antioch unwise?"
They stared at each other silently across the table, Pertinax erect and
definite, the governor of Antioch indefinite and stroking his chin with
fat, white fingers.
"It would be simplest," said the governor of Antioch at last, "to have
Norbanus executed."
"Some one should always be executed when the emperor signs proscription
lists!" said Pertinax. "Has it ever occurred to you to wonder how many
soldiers in the legions in the distant provinces were certified as dead
before they left Rome?"
The governor of Antioch smiled meanly. He resented the suggestions that
there might be tricks he did not understand.
"I have a prisoner," he said, "who might be Norbanus. He has been
tortured. He refused to identify himself."
"Does he look like him?"
"That would be difficult to say. He broke into a jeweler's and was very
badly beaten by the slaves, who slashed his face, which is heavily
bandaged. He appears to be a Roman and is certainly a thief, but beyond
that--"
"Much depends on who is interested in him," Pertinax suggested. "Usually
a man's relatives--"
But the governor of Antioch's fat hand made a disparaging careless
gesture. "He has no friends. He has been in the carceres (the cells in
which prisoners were kept who had been sentenced to death. Under Roman
law there was practically no imprisonment for crime. Fines, flogging,
banishment were the substitutes for execution.) more than a month. I
was reserving him for execution by the lions at the next public games.
Truth to tell, I had almost forgotten him. I will write out a warrant
for Norbanus' execution and it shall be attended to this morning. And by
the way--regarding the Olympic games--"
"The emperor, I think, would like to see them held in Antioch," said
Pertinax.
The merchants strolling to the baths stood curiously for a while to
watch one of the rapidly increasing sect of Christians, who leaned from
a balcony over the street and exhorted a polyglot crowd of freedmen,
slaves and idlers. He was bearded, brown-skinned from exposure, brown-
robed, scrawny, vehement.
"Peculiar times!" one merchant said. "If you and I should cause a crowd
to gather while we prated about refusal to do homage to the gods--of
whom mind you, the emperor is one, and not the least--"
"But let us listen," said the other.
The man's voice was resonant. He used no tricks of oratory such as
Romans over-valued, and was not too careful in the choice of phrases.
The Greek idiom he used was unadorned--the language of the market-place
and harbor-front. He made his points directly, earnestly, not arguing
but like a guide to far-off countries giving information:
"Slaves--freedmen--masters--all are equal before God, and on the last
day all shall rise up from the dead--"
A loiterer heckled him:
"Hah! The crucified too?--what about Maternus?"
The preacher, throwing up his right hand, snatched at opportunity:
"There were two thieves crucified, one on either hand, as I have told
you. To the one was said: 'This day shalt thou be with me in
paradise'; but to the other nothing. Nevertheless, all shall rise up
from the dead on the last day--you, and your friends, and the wise and
the fools, and the slave and the free--aye, and Maternus also--"
One merchant grinned to the other:
"Yet I think it was on the first night that Maternus rose up! They
stiffen if they stay a whole night on the cross. If he could walk to
Daphne three nights later, he had not been crucified many hours. Come,
let us go to the baths before the crowd gets there. If one is late
those insolent attendants lose one's clothing, and there is no chance
whatever of getting a good soft-handed slave to rub one down. Don't you
hate to be currycombed by a rascal with corns on his fingers?"
V. ROME--THE THERMAE OF TITUS
There were even birds, to fill the air with music. All the known world,
and the far-away mysterious lands of which Alexander's followers had
started legends multiplying centuries ago, had contributed to Rome's
adornment; plunder and trade goods drifted through in spite of
distances. The city had become the vortex of the energy, virility and
vice of east and west--a glory of marble and gilded cornices, of domes
and spires, of costumes, habits, faces, languages--of gorgeousness and
squalor--license, privilege and rigid formalism--extravagance--and of
innumerable gods.
There was nobility and love of virtue, cheek by jowl with beastliness,
nor was it always easy to discover which was which; but the birds sang
blithely in the cages in the portico, where the long seat was on which
philosophers discoursed to any one who cared to listen. The baths that
the Emperor Titus built were the supreme, last touch of all. From
furnaces below-ground, where the whipped slaves sweated in the dark, to
domed roof where the doves changed hue amid the gleam of gold and
colored glass, they typified Rome, as the city herself was of the
essence of the world.
The approach to the Thermae of Titus was blocked by litters, some heavy
enough to be borne by eight matched slaves and large enough for company.
Women oftener than men shared litters with friends; then the troupe of
attendants was doubled; slaves were in droves, flocks, hordes around
the building, making a motley sight of it in their liveries, which were
adaptations of the every-day costumes of almost all the countries of the
known world.
Under the entrance portico, between the double row of marble columns,
sat a throng of fortune-tellers of both sexes, privileged because the
aedile of that year had superstitious leanings, but as likely as not to
be driven away, and even whipped, when the next man should succeed to
office. In and out among the crowd ran tipsters, touts for gambling
dens and sellers of charms; most of them found ready customers among
the slaves, who had nothing to do but wait, and stare, and yawn until
their masters came out from the baths. They were raw, inexperienced
slaves who had not a coin or two to spend.
Within the entrance of the Thermae was a marble court, where better
known philosophers discoursed on topics of the day, each to his own
group of admirers. A Christian, dressed like any other Roman, held one
corner with a crowd around him. There was a tremendous undercurrent of
reaction against the prevalent cynical materialism and the vortex of
fashion was also the cauldron of new aspirations and the battle-ground
of wits.
Beyond the inner entrance were the two disrobing rooms--women to the
left, men to the right where slaves, whose insolence had grown into a
cultivated art, exchanged the folded garments for a bracelet with a
number. Thence, stark-naked, through the bronze doors set in green-
veined marble, bathers passed into the vast frigidarium, whose marble
plunge was surrounded by a mosaic promenade beneath a bronze and marble
balcony.
There men and women mingled indiscriminately, watching the divers,
conversing, matching wits, exchanging gossip, some walking briskly
around the promenade while others lounged on the marble seats that were
interspaced against the wall between the statues.
There was not one gesture of indecency. A man who had stared at a woman
would have been thrown out, execrated and forever more refused
admission. But out in the street, where the litter-bearers and
attendants whiled away the time, there were tales told that spread to
the ends of the earth.
On a bench of black marble, between two statues of the Grecian Muses,
Pertinax sat talking with Bultius Livius, sub-prefect of the palace.
They were both pink-skinned from plunging in the pool, and the white
scars, won in frontier wars, showed all the more distinctly. Boltius
Livius was a clean-shaven, sharp-looking man with a thin-lipped air of
keenness.
"This dependence on Marcia can easily be overdone," he remarked. His
eyes moved restlessly left and right. He lowered his voice. "Nobody
knows how long her hold over Caesar will last. She owns him at present
owns him absolutely--owns Rome. He delights in letting her revoke his
orders; it's a form of self-debauchery; he does things purposely to
have her overrule him. But that has already lasted longer than I
thought it would."
"It will last as long as she and her Christians spy for him and make
life pleasant," said Pertinax.
"Exactly. But that is the difficulty," Livius answered, moving his eyes
again restlessly. There was not much risk of informers in the Thermae,
but a man never knew who his enemies were. "Marcia represents the
Christians, and the idiots won't let well enough alone. By Hercules,
they have it all their own way, thanks to Marcia. They are allowed to
hold their meetings. All the statutes against them are ignored. They
even go unpunished if they don't salute Caesar's image! They are
allowed to preach against slavery. It has got so now that if a man
condemned to death pretends he is a Christian they're even allowed to
rescue him out of the carceres! That's Juno's truth: I know of a dozen
instances. But it's the old story: Put a beggar on a horse and he will
demand your house next. There's no satisfying them. I am told they
propose to abolish the gladiatorial combats! Laugh if you like. I have
it from unquestionable sources. They intend to begin by abolishing the
execution of criminals in the arena. Shades of Nero! They keep after
Marcia day and night to dissuade Caesar from taking part in the
spectacles, on the theory that he helps to make them popular."