Across the Waters of Time- Pliny Remembered

by Ken Parejko

  How lucky I am, to root myself a while here on this corner of Naple’s Bay. Few places in the world are as lovely. I can rest my eyes, when I need, on the Bay’s blue, shimmering waters which sparkle as though alive, full of fish of many kinds and sporting playful dolphins. Rising from it like the heads of giant whales are the isles of Capri, Procida and Ischia and all the many un-named smaller outcroppings, all embraced by the Bay itself with its long strings of sometimes sandy sometimes rock-strewn beaches adorned by villas opulent and simple and the busy cities of Baia and Bacoli. Farther and only on the clearest of days visible Herculaneum, Pompeii, Naples, Puteoli and Stabia can be seen resting peacefully in the arms of Vesuvius. Our Bay is not only beautiful but deeply engraved with history recent and ancient. Here it's said Odysseus and later Aeneas sought the advice of the Cumean Sibyl and explored the Phlegrean Fields, where Orpheus had found his entrance to the underworld. Misenus, one of Odysseus’s rowers, died and was buried on the beach where later grew my town, Misenum, later its harbor and navy. Cicero and Virgil had villas nearby and of course Baia has been popular with emperors going back to Julius Caesar. It was from Baia that Nero’s mother embarked to her death. And Puteoli’s harbor, just two days from Rome by road, is one of the country’s busiest ports.

  My fleet, the Classis Misenensis, is the empire’s largest, with at any given time some fifty ships and nearly ten thousand sailors and support staff. The next largest of our fleets, though much smaller, is anchored at Ravenna, with even smaller stations in Rome’s port of Ostia, in Alexandria, and elsewhere. The navies have long histories in defense of our territories, in deciding our civil wars, and in putting down the pirates who attack the many ships making their way across the Middle Sea. Over the years we've hung hundreds of these pirates like drying fruit from crosses planted on the Bay’s hillsides, yet they seem to sprout like weeds in a flower garden.

  The admiralty I’ve been given to live and work in is set partway up a high promontory on the Cape. It’s grander than I’m used to, more than I want or even feel comfortable in. But Plinia, who’s come to stay with me, and Caecilus who I’ve since adopted make good use of its many fine rooms.

  Around me the Cape is scattered with villas, small farms and the more humble houses of the lower classes. The grandest villa of all is the one Lucius Licinius Lucullus built almost two centuries ago, used by Tiberius and the site of his death. From its steps Caligula, named emperor by the dying Tiberius, stepped out into his sad and monstrous destiny.

  My days have taken on a regular rhythm. I rise before dawn after a few hours sleep and read while I am carried down to the harbor to inspect the fleet and the works which support it. As the sun comes up I greet the workers on their way to begin their day building or repairing our ships, and the sailors who come to trim and head out to sea in the liburnians, triremes, quadriremes and quinquiremes settled either into the harbor of Misenum itself or the Mare Morto, the little lake connected to it. As they pass by on any given morning I might overhear a half dozen different languages. Hearing the guttural clatter of Egyptian takes me back to Judea and my short visit to Alexandria.

  While finishing the thirty-seven volumes of my Natural History the men at the harbor have been a regular source of information for me. If I’d lost track of a source, or when even my prodigious memory had failed me, I’d rise from my writing and hurry, as fast as a middle-aged, overweight and asthmatic admiral can, down to the harbor where I might ask the first workers I encountered:

  “Know anybody here from Tyre?”

  Tyre, Byretus, Alexandria, Heliopolis, Heraklion, Fair Havens, Antioch, the navy is polyglot and diverse as the world. So eventually someone would be pointed out to me, busy perhaps pulling a big timber down the causeway on its way to being set into a new keel or coiling rope for the rigging of one of the ships. I’d stop him in the middle of his work-- one of the benefits of being admiral-- to grill him.“You’re from Tyre? Good, good. You know, I was in Tyre, ten years ago. Lovely city. While I was there someone said Tyrenian storks only nest in cypresses. Is that true?”

  I could see it in their eyes, most of the time, that look of: What is this he's asking, and why, and why me? Then, because sailor’s work is a dangerous business and as admiral I am master of their future, they would try to please me, and set about giving me their best guess at which answer would I wanted hear.

  Holding their response in my mind I’d scurry back to my room and my writing. So it is I’ve earned a new nickname. I’m no longer the Owl, as I was known in Germany, for though I still write on through the night, here I do so in the privacy of my own house. Instead, Lucius has informed me that for these unannounced visits in which I pester my men with silly little questions, they’ve named me after the gnats which swarm and sting them while they work. Only, in the name of realism, I’ve become not just any gnat, but “Tubby the Gnat.”

  They’ve filled me with stories, too, of races of one-legged or one-eyed humans and of strange, grotesque animals that live in the sea, stories I suppose woven of a thin fabric of rumors overheard in a bar or brothel in some distant seaport. My interest in these stories has led them to elaborate far beyond the verifiable truth, and I’ve come to realize, too late, that some very dubious “facts” have come to rest in my Natural History.

  But now that project is behind me, and I'm in my cups. Under my hand and with Vespasian’s blessing the fleet is operating more efficiently than ever, growing, and busily putting piracy down. In my spare time I’ve begun exploring the Campanian countryside, enjoying its flora and fauna as much as its famous sea-foods and wine. Plinia and Caecilius and I have time too to take in concerts and plays in the city’s wonderful theater, with lovely sunsets over the island of Ischia as a backdrop.

  Though born a simple country boy, I know Vespasian well enough to know he's a closet intellectual at heart, preferring Sophocles or a poetry recital to the mortal struggle of gladiators. Part of his job -- and he might be the first emperor to view his position as a job, rather than a natural right -- is to keep the common folk happy. So he builds them their racetracks and amphitheaters and schedules their games and contests. Rome’s colossal arena already rises high out of the ashes of Nero’s reign and should be finished, with luck, in two or three years. Already the greatest celebrations the city has ever seen are being planned for its dedication. While the Colosseum rises slowly toward the heavens, work is also finishing up on a smaller amphitheater in Puteoli. Because he so often vacationed at his villa in nearby Baia Julius Caesar, who enjoyed such contests more than Vespasian, built Puteoli’s first amphitheater. But over the years the cities along the Bay grew and Caesar’s little arena on the hillside was no longer big enough to hold the crowds pressing to get in. Nero planned to build another, down the hill and closer to the Bay, but his death and the civil war that followed prevented that. Now under the prosperity and stability that have come with Vespasian’s rule Puteoli’s new amphitheater is nearly finished. Vespasian and Titus have promised to come down for its dedication. And as usual, where the emperor goes so go a crowd of senators, consuls, governors and foreign dignitaries, to impress and be impressed.

  Though Baia is a pleasure-resort, Puteoli is a cosmopolitan, busy, broad-shouldered kind of city. For many years, until Claudius’ work on the port of Ostia at the Tiber’s mouth, Puteoli was our busiest port. Goods downloaded there are carried by mule-drawn wagons up the highway which nearer the capitol becomes the Appian Way. Nero had a canal dug reaching from Rome down towards Puteoli so that goods, especially the grain of Egypt and Africa, could move more quickly by cargo-boat.

  Stopping at Puteoli’s market to buy bread, a bite of fruit or jar of oil for your kitchen, or new dishes for the dining room, one is likely to bump into handsome African chiefs surrounded by their nubile harems come over with a shipment of ivory, or a raj from India whose train of slaves carries in the elegantly-woven baskets on their heads half a million sesterce’s worth of spices. Grain pours through Puteoli from the fields of
Phoenicia, Egypt and Africa; between the late-summer harvest and the dangerous seas of winter a constant flow of ships make their way into the harbor. In olden times piracy plagued this steady commerce. But for two generations our fleet has patrolled the Bay and its surrounding waters and with piracy a thing of the past the commerce of the empire flows unimpeded toward Rome, Puteoli displaying its explosive growth in the heady ferment of exotic smells, sounds, and people it offers.

  Engineers found construction materials for the new Puteolana amphitheater ready at hand. The core of the building is soft but workable volcanic tufa from the quarries just outside of town. Because that stone doesn’t hold up well to the elements and after all is not particularly pretty, the construction is faced with brickwork in the opus reticulata style, in which bricks are set diagonally in a herringbone pattern.

  The amphitheater is designed to seat twenty thousand, who approach the main entrance along a wide walkway curving slightly uphill between planted palms and exotic flowers. I’ve been over to watch its construction and am especially pleased with the broad, tall arcade which surrounds it, from which five sets of stairs lead into the galleries above. The herringbone pattern of the walls contrast nicely with the arcade’s delicate floor, a mosaic of tiny travertine stones. The gentle curves of the galleries are perforated with the entrances called vomitoria because the exiting crowds pour out of them like vomit from a sick man’s mouth. The seats of the cavea, where the spectators will sit, stretch from the level of the arena itself up to the highest seats in the topmost galleries. Spaced at regular intervals along the topmost walls are a series of marble columns which shine brilliantly in the sun. Atop the columns have been placed busts of the men whose donations helped fund the building. The columns also serve to support a complicated rigging of brightly-colored woven awnings which shade the crowds below. Before performances sailors from our fleet will man the tangle of masts, ropes and riggings which raise and lower the awnings.

  The day had finally come for the amphitheater’s dedication ceremony, scheduled to begin mid-morning. I was to lead the official delegation from Misenum, and shortly after sunrise we joined the crowds headed down the Via Herculano. Plinia and I rode in separate sedan-chairs. Caecilius, now a young man of sixteen, and the ever-present Lucius walked beside us. Caecilius insisted on walking, considering the exercise healthy. But I chided him for wasting his time. “Yes, yes, exercise, I know, but you could be reading, as I am,” I pointed out with a smile, shaking the papyrus roll at him.

  It was a lovely Campanian morning, the light as clear and bright as light could ever be, though already with the promise of a bit too much heat before the day was over. I felt exuberant. At the dedication I’d see old friends come down from Rome, best of all Vespasian and Titus themselves. Weeks before, while describing the amphitheater and the games to be provided in it, I’d recounted to Caecilius and his mother how I’d watched the elephants, lions and other beasts arriving at Puteoli for the venationes, the wild-animal hunts to be staged in the arena. Caecilius was especially interested in seeing the lower basements where the animals were kept, and talked me into providing them a tour of the new structure.

  While most ships arrived at Puteoli’s harbor with the more mundane cargoes of grain, fruit, wine, papyri, and glassware, some bore more exotic freight: elephants, rhinos, tigers, lions, giraffes, or zebras, brought in from Africa and Asia and headed to their deaths in one of our many arenas. From my first days at the admiralty I was astonished at the menagerie of sounds which carried across the few miles of Bay. If the wind was right, I might just be sitting down to my evening meal, or lying in bed drifting to sleep, or perhaps out for a brief walk in the sunset combing the beach for shells, to be suddenly startled by the roar of a lion or the piercing martial trumpeting of a small herd of elephants. But of course sounds carried across the Bay in both directions. Residents all up and down the Bay timed their day to the morning reverie, afternoon musters and evening lights-out sounded by the fleet’s trumpets. While visiting Baia or Puteoli I'd sometimes hear the trumpets of my fleet wafting across the waters. And the elephants, too, must have heard them. One time a moment after the trumpets finished they were echoed with an answering-call from a herd temporarily in Puteoli.

  Watching the animals as they were off-loaded at Puteloi’s busy harbor was an interesting past-time. A few weeks before I’d stopped to see a ship just in from Alexandria with heavy, wide planks stretching from its deck to shore. On board the ship were a half-dozen elephants. To me these gigantic creatures seemed almost capable of thought. The animal’s trainers were struggling to download their charges. I came upon them at the height of their troubles. The trainers shouted in their barbaric tongue, whistled, stamped and swore at the hesitant animals. The poor elephants were terrorized. Boarding the ship in Alexandria had been easy. But now after six days on a deck which rose and fell erratically and beyond their control they saw the sea differently, and for all they knew the water beneath the planks might suddenly rise up and swallow them.

  A well-trained elephant will only disobey its trainer when asked to put its own or trainer's safety in jeopardy. This was one of those times. All of them stood as though welded to the deck, in stubborn pachydermic rebellion. The trainers were at wits’ end. The elephants, clearly in charge, would not budge. One of the trainers frantically begged his favorite animal to cooperate. The elephant stared at him, flapped its ears against the swarming insects, and backed up as though ready to leap from the ship. The men scattered. But the animal had something else in mind. Somehow she'd found room to turn herself around on the crowded deck and slowly, carefully, one step at a time, backed toward the planks. Realizing what she had in mind her trainer came around in front of her and guided her straight back onto the planks.

  Her huge hind foot found the heavy plankings and she paused a moment, as though feeling their strength through her leathery sole. Apparently satisfied she backed one step further, then another. Soon she was entirely off the boat and stood solidly on the stone quay along the harbor. The gathered crowd cheered. Once on the pier she stood swaying, graciously proud of herself. By not directly facing the danger she’d made crossing the planks possible. Well of course the other animals still on the ship wouldn’t let themselves be so easily upstaged, and one by one allowed themselves to be backed down the planks, until all were safely on shore. Now they touched their trunks to one another, as men might do congratulating themselves on a job well-done, then moved off without further ado up the road toward their staging area.

  I’d witnessed that scene several weeks ago. Now while bumping along in my sedan, working away on admiralty paperwork, the roar of one of those same elephants being led up to the amphitheater flew to us from across the Bay. Plinia in her chair was relaxing and watching the scenery pass. I overheard Caecilius excitedly telling Lucius about a wonderful speckled mare he’d ridden yesterday at breakneck speed up and down the beach at Mare Morto.

  The Via Herculano we traveled on was a wide stone causeway built above high-tide all the way up the Bay as it curved toward Bacoli, Baia, Lucrino, then Puteoli and beyond to the city of Herculanem, nestled into the foot of Vesuvius. Behind us at the western end of its course the Via entered a tunnel carved into the hillside, the tunnel which provided one of the most striking entrances into an open-air theater in all the empire. Many times on our way to Misenum’s theater we’d followed that terminus of the street directly into the side of the hill, where we entered dark, torch-lit galleries lined with niches and statues. A few moments’ walk and we would break suddenly out into the light of the theater, its rows of sleeps sloping down toward the Middle Sea and its islands providing a striking backdrop.

  Now as we made our way with the crowd streaming up toward Puteoli we passed villas built along the Bay. Some were small and unpretentious, comfortable vacation homes to relax in for a few days or a week or two. Others sprawled along the hill, grand edifices with swimming pools, nymphaea, and temples to Isis and other gods. Beneath some
were big seawater pools, nestled into sea-caves, to keep fish fresh for dinner. A soft morning breeze caressed us from across the water, from which now and then a quartet or trio of dolphins broke the surface in short graceful leaps, tiny scribbles for an instant rising above the papyrus of the Bay which stretched east to the tiny knob of Nisida and rising behind it Posillipo and farther yet the graceful peak of Vesuvius.

  The epic of our history was carved into the landscape we moved through. From Misenum’s harbor Augustus had sailed with his fleet to defeat Mark Antony at Actium; just ahead was the villa Julius Caesar had built for his ill-fated lover Cleopatra; we'd just passed the very beach on which Agrippina had crawled ashore, and the little villa into which she’d fled and where Anicetus, my predecessor as praefectus Classicus, had hunted her down.

  As I was carried along I scanned a report on the fleet's status. Too many of the ships were decades old, built to outdated standards. I would raise the issue with Vespasian. I had a pretty good idea what his response would be. Eyebrows up he’d turn his face into a thoughtful frown, a moment’s thought, then: “Okay,” he'd say, “but what will it cost?” I’d already thrown figures around in my head. But any number I offered would likely be too much.