by Albert Noyer
“Your slave, you say? Come here, slave.” Euclio handed him a sausage from the folds of his cloak. “Good fortune on your new freedom.” As the dwarf toddled up to grab the link, Euclio bent down and peered at him. “Haven’t I seen you before, slave…er…former slave? Didn’t I catch you loitering around here?”
“Y…y…yes,” he mumbled.
“And didn’t I think you stole my jar?”
“You did? I mean you did, sir.”
“But you hadn’t touched it?” Euclio asked.
The dwarf took an exaggerated posture of defiance and squeaked. “No, I hadn’t.”
“And then you found it by chance somewhere else. On the banks of the Rhine, perhaps.”
The dwarf winked at the audience. “No, but I…found…it by chance.”
“And you thought it might be mine and gave it to your master?”
“I told my master.”
Euclio smiled. “You asked him to return it to me?”
“Oh, no, he…,” the dwarf began, but Lyconides glared at him and coughed a warning. “That is, yes, I asked him to return it to you.”
Euclio turned to Megadorus. “By Thunor’s Beard! How easy life would be if all Germani were this honest. Here, former slave. Another half as for you.”
“Does this mean I have to give back the cabbage?” the dwarf whined.
Lyconides took his uncle aside. “Now’s the time to ask Euclio about my marriage to Phaedria.”
“A worthy idea. Well, Euclio, we’re all happy that you have your gold back. But have you changed your mind about my nephew marrying your daughter?”
“Eh? What? Daughter? By all means, let them marry.”
Lyconides waited for the hoots and applause to subside, then continued. “Thank you, sir. Your generosity is more than I can ever repay.”
“First I must see that my gold is safely put away and…” Euclio stopped. “But what can I do with it? Oh, balls! You take it, Lyconides. Spend it on my daughter.”
Megadorus grasped his sleeve. “My friend, how generous of you.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Euclio protested. “If that gold can do some good, I’d be the happiest man in the world, instead of the most miserable. I’ve not had a moment’s peace with it on my mind. Now I’ll be able to sleep again.”
“There’s a wise man,” Megadorus cooed. “To be able to sleep, and be content in a cesspool like Mogontiacum, is worth more than ten jars of gold. Let’s go in and celebrate the happiness of our two young lovers.”
“Yes, yes, come in,” Euclio urged. “I’ll have my cook prepare a feast of bear meat, barley, and beer.”
“Wait, uncle. Aren’t you forgetting something?” Lyconides winked at the audience.
Megadorus looked puzzled, then turned to the crowd with a helpless gesture. “Ah, yes. We would gladly invite all our friends here, but what would be a barbarian feast for six would be poor fare for sixty. So, let us wish you better eating at home, and ask only your thanks in return.”
The dwarf chuckled and held up the cabbage. “Your thanks in gold, that is.”
He tucked his two bronzes and a slightly larger gold coin into the cabbage’s top leaves, then waddled into the audience and held it out to them. Most turned away, but a few slipped small coins between the leaves.
Getorius watched a moment, and then pulled Arcadia by the hand toward the stairs. “I’m going to ask the old man if he’s ever been in Mogontiacum.”
Euclio began wiping make-up from his face. When he approached him, Getorius was startled to see that the actor’s pale wrinkled complexion was not painted on, and his eyes had a pinkish cast. The man was not only old, but an albino.
After Getorius pressed a gold tremissis into Euclio’s hand, the actor stared at it a moment, then looked up. “Very generous, sir,” he said with a touch of suspicion in his voice. “You wish to hire us?”
“No, I wanted to ask you about Mogontiacum. Have you been there or is this just part of your play?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I was born there. I wondered if you might have known my parents.”
The albino looked surprised, but before he could answer, the dwarf returned, pulling the last coin out of a cabbage leaf. Arcadia noticed that he paused when he looked up at Getorius, as if he somehow recognized her husband.
“A siliqua of Theodosius,” the dwarf squeaked, holding up the silver coin. “At least we eat this week, Albino.”
“Pumilio, this man says he was born in Mogontiacum.”
“Germania?” He studied Getorius. “How…how long ago?”
“About thirty years ago. I wondered if you were there at the time and perhaps knew my parents. Treverius and Blandina Asterius.”
Albino wiped his neck and coughed nervously. “And…and now you live in Olcinium?”
“No, no, at Ravenna. I’m a physician. I was taken there by the garrison surgeon at Mogontiacum, after my parents were killed.”
Albino suddenly began to tremble and sat down unsteadily on the top stair.
“As my husband said, he was an infant when Nicias brought him to Ravenna,” Arcadia explained.
“He told me a little about my father,” Getorius continued, “but there were some murders he and a Judean friend helped solve. I was curious.”
“Murders?” Pumilio whined. “We know nothing about any murders, do we Albino?”
“Easy,” Getorius soothed. “I’m not from a magistrate’s office. Why did you set your play in Germania?”
“We…we get more laughs if we parody barbarians.”
“Why perform on the church steps?” Arcadia asked. “Isn’t there a theater here?”
Albino shook his head. “They’ve all been closed. We perform where we can. We were in Dyrrhachium last week.”
“We’ll move up the coast,” Pumilio explained. “Risinium, Epidaurum, Spalato, and be in Aquileia by fall.”
Getorius returned to his question. “Again, I know it’s unlikely, but were you in Mogontiacum about thirty years ago, at the same time as my parents? Nicias said there was a theater in the city.”
Albino looked away across the square, then replied in a voice so low that Getorius had to lean toward him to hear. “No. No. We were never in Germania. It’s all make-believe. All acting.”
“Too bad. Well, I wish you good fortune for the summer.” Getorius took Arcadia’s hand. “We’re going over to the ‘headless soldier’ to rent a room for the night.”
As Albino watched the couple cross to the inn, he wiped the last smudge of dark paint from around his eyes. It was slippery with a tear. “Pumilio,” he commented hoarsely, “as sure as Clotho spins the thread of life, that was the son of Treverius Asterius.”
“Yet you didn’t tell him we knew his father.”
“A sleeping wolf is not to be feared, Pumilio. Should we poor actors awaken one unnecessarily?” He tossed the towel at the dwarf. “Now give me those coins, you little turd. Tonight we eat at the Golden Stag.”
Vidimir, the proprietor of the Emilianus, was a stocky man with a limp and a scar that ran the length of his right cheek. Getorius identified his accent as Gothic, guessing he might be one of Alaric’s Visigoths who, years earlier, had devastated the area to the north. After the man was wounded, he had probably been left behind, but found his way to the coast and settled in Olcinium.
Because the summer trade routes were not yet fully open, Vidimir had rooms available. He showed Arcadia one she found acceptable. Supper, he told them, would be served at the beginning of the first evening watch.
Getorius used the interim time to change the bandage on Arcadia’s forehead. He was pleased that the gash was healing cleanly. Arcadia told him that the bruise on his own cheek, from Tigris’s blow, was now almost invisible.
The inn’s cook prepared meals on a clay stove set at one end of the dining room. For the evening meal she offered a fish stew simmered in wine and seasoned with bay and pepper, or a second choice of grilled tuna served with a
green sauce of anchovies, mustard and cucumbers. These were accompanied by flat bread, hard sheep’s milk cheese, and a somewhat harsh local red wine.
Getorius tasted his tuna. “Quite good. Even that poor vintage won’t spoil the meal. How’s your stew?”
“Excellent.” She held a spoonful towards him. “Try it.”
“If you taste the tuna.” He skewered a piece on his knife and handed it to her.
“Mmm. Nice tart sauce, too.”
Getorius glanced around at the other diners. “I’d guess these are local merchants who risked mountain snows to be the first to ship Macedonian goods to the west.”
“I noticed the two men at that corner table,” she said. “They look a bit like Aetius’s Huns.”
Getorius looked around, then back at Arcadia. “But smaller and with more delicate features. The robes they’re wearing look like the silk tunics from Constantinople that Galla Placidia owns. I wouldn’t be surprised if the men came from Sina.”
“Exciting! That’s the eastern limit of Roman trade routes. I’d like to hear about their country.”
“I doubt that they speak much Latin, but I wonder if they’re involved in this extra cargo Virilo said he was picking up for Maximin.”
“You think the senator is importing silk?”
“Probably not. Silk cloth goes to Constantinople and its importation is strictly controlled. Maximin’s agents may have discovered some other exotic product.”
Vidimir brought out a last course of honey-sweetened cheese, raisins, and dates. Getorius noticed the two Orientals leave immediately after finishing their meal. He winced at a last swallow of the harsh wine, then wiped his mouth on a napkin.
“It’s still light out, Arcadia. Let’s take a walk along the Via Scodrae and find this temple Virilo mentioned.”
“Fine. I need to unlimber after being cramped up on that galley for four days.”
Vidimir was carrying dishes into the scullery when Getorius went to pay for the meal. “How far along the Scodrae is the Cybelene cult temple?”
The proprietor eyed him suspiciously. “Why would you want to visit that den of eunuchs?”
“Eunuchs? We met someone on the galley named Diotar and—”
“Their archpriest. I know him.”
“He mentioned a cult of Magna Mater.”
“The Great Mother?” Vidimir scoffed. “She’s called Kybele here. You don’t look like part of that gang, yet you say you know Diotar?”
“We don’t actually know him,” Arcadia corrected. “He was travelling on the galley with us.”
Vidimir spat on the tile floor. “He’ll be at the slave market in the morning, looking for calves to geld.”
Does the man’s metaphor mean what I think it does? “Geld?” Getorius asked.
“The slavemaster’s not neutering slaves anymore before they’re sold. The priests might not like their looks and refuse to buy.”
“Where exactly is this temple? We’re going for a walk before bedtime.”
“Stay on this road. Out beyond the Scodra Gate…big stone building on the right.”
Getorius felt a rising outrage as he dropped an extra half-siliqua in the man’s hand. “The porridge indeed thickens,” he muttered to Arcadia as they started along the rising street that led to Olcinium’s north gate. “The name Cybele is cropping up much too often.”
“Virilo’s galley and now this temple. Diotar said Magna Mater is another name for the goddess.”
“And if Diotar is her archpriest, he must have a following we’re not aware of in Ravenna.”
Arcadia shuddered. “The emperor’s steward is a eunuch, but to have a religious cult advocating castration is unthinkable. I wonder if Bishop Chrysologos knows of it?”
“He can’t do much about what goes on in the port area.”
When Getorius and Arcadia reached the Porta Scodrae, the sentries warned them that the gates would be closed at the second evening watch. They had about two hours until then, and less than another hour before full dark.
The road was lined with ancient mausolea and tombstones, many of the latter fallen over. Earthquakes in the past, Getorius thought. Most of the monuments were so badly weathered that the inscriptions could not be read, but fragments of the names LEGIO IV FLAVIA and XIII GEMINA recurred several times. The units had been stationed there before Emperor Aurelian abandoned the area.
The temple was further away than Getorius expected, almost two miles along the road, and situated on a low hill that overlooked a lake. By the time the dark shape of the twin-towered building appeared on the crest, a last reddish tint of sunset was coloring the western horizon.
The star Hesperus shone brightly in a pale greenish firmament, awaiting the rise of his companion moon. A low wall and residential building were visible in the twilight, but they were dominated by the ominous stone bulk of the main temple. An iron entrance gate was set beneath an arch in the wall, with the inscription, AEDES MAGNAE MATRIS, centered on the keystone.
“The Temple of the Great Mother,” Getorius read, giving the gate a slight push. It creaked partway open. “Let’s find out exactly who this goddess is, who wants to be served only by neutered priests.”
Chapter ten
Six rusty hinges creaked in nerve-grating protest as Getorius pushed the gates open far enough to enter the sacred compound. Cybele’s temple stood some seventy paces distant, along a stone walkway. It was different from any he had seen in Ravenna. Unlike the brick basilican churches there, or the surviving marble Roman temples, the sanctuary of the Great Mother was constructed of blocks of dark stone. On each side of the massive front, squat towers were pierced by small double windows and connected by a colonnaded gallery. Beneath this, the entrance portal was sheltered in an arched, deep-set porch reached by a flight of stairs.
Flickering torches on either side of the entry gave bizarre motion to a head of the goddess Cybele sculpted on the arch keystone. She wore a mantle and turreted headdress surrounded by the twelve signs of the Zodiac, symbols of her power over the visible universe. The deity’s Phrygian name, KYBHH, was chiseled in Greek letters underneath.
Arcadia peered at the woman’s image in the dim light. “She looks amiable enough, like her figurehead on the galley. Do you suppose only cult members are allowed in the temple?”
“There’s one way to find out.” Getorius led the way up seven steps and into the porch entranceway. “These wooden doors look like they might have replaced ones of bronze. See the massive size of those hinges?”
When he pulled on an iron ring, one of the twin portals slowly swung forward. Arcadia followed him through the opening. Inside, the nave was chilly, a dim, gloomy space that still retained its winter cold and smelled of stale ceremonial incense. Square stone piers supported the upper walls and defined shallow side aisles, which were curtained with heavy draperies. Three oil lamps hanging from a center ceiling beam gave the space a dingy light. At the far end, another lamp in the apse threw feeble rays on the statue of a seated figure. No one seemed to be in the temple, but the sound of drums, cymbals, and high-pitched reed pipes could be heard through window openings behind the image.
“That statue must be of Magna Mater, or Cybele, or whomever she’s called,” Getorius whispered. “Let’s take a closer look.”
As they approached they could see that the figure was of a woman, shown in frontal pose with her feet resting on a stool. Jars, pitchers, and baskets of offerings—oil, wine, and grain—surrounded the base of the statue. A relief carving on this platform depicted a youth wearing a floppy Phrygian cap and shepherd’s cloak. He lay beneath a pine tree, his right hand clutching his genitals, and his left a shepherd’s crook.
“Who is that supposed to represent?” Getorius bent to examine the sculpted details.
Arcadia looked up at the statue’s head, then cried out in a shocked voice, “Mother of God! Look, Getorius!”
“What is it?” He stood and followed her gaze. Instead of the benign features that w
ere on the face of the sculpture over the entrance, those of this statue were blank; the rough, pitted surface of a dark-brown triangular stone. “Wh…what kind of…of joke is this?” he stammered. “Now I see why Sigeric called Cybele a Stygian goddess—”
“Neither a jest, Surgeon, nor a goddess from the Underworld.” Diotar’s womanish voice echoed from behind one of the pilasters. The priest stepped out of the shadows, silver bracelets on his arms jingling musically as he came forward. He was dressed in a pink robe elaborately decorated with a golden leaf pattern. A serpentine gorget in gold circled his throat. His headdress depicted Cybele flanked by two men in Phrygian caps, like that of the man on the footstool sculpture. Heavily made up as he was with cosmetics, anyone who had not seen Diotar before would have mistaken the eunuch for a woman. “The stone is a gift of the Great Mother from the Cosmos,” he continued. “From heaven itself.”
“Gift of the Cosmos?” Getorius scoffed. “What is that…that grotesque face?”
“Our cult tradition,” Diotar explained, “tells of a sacred stone…an aerolith…that fell from the sky before Cybele went to save Rome from her Carthaginian invaders.”
“A meteorite?” Getorius half-laughed. “This is pure idol worship.”
“Yet, Surgeon,” Diotar taunted, “you Christians also worship a symbolic Christ. Bread, wine, water.”
“But not a black stone.”
“And like your own priests,” he went on, “I offer baptism, but one of blood.” Diotar pointed to the right of the statue. “Over there, stairs lead to a pit covered by a marble slab pierced with holes. Our initiates enter the Cribolium, where they are purified by the blood of a ram sacrificed above them. One of your own mystics, John, had a vision of men washed in the blood of a lamb.”
“It’s not meant literally.”
“Who is the person on the footstool?” Arcadia asked, suppressing her revulsion.
“The foolish, yet deified, Attis. He betrayed Cybele’s love for him by coupling with a wood nymph, then castrated himself in remorse.”
“And so your priests imitate his example? How…how horrible.”