Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  Relieving himself in the latrina again, Lucius happened to overhear the same grumbler, who now seemed mollified. “Well,” the man bellowed, “Not a single dead gladiator and only one dead acrobat, but by Hercules, what a lot of dead lions! Hercules himself, with his mighty club, could never have killed so many!”

  More celebrations had followed, including the staging of serious tragedies followed by ridiculous comedies, one of which, by a certain Marullus, caused a bit of scandal by daring to lampoon the two emperors. The comedy was ostensibly about Rome’s first two kings, the bandit-warrior Romulus who was followed by the pious priest-king Numa—the first depicted as a swaggering dandy and the second as a prim, dour killjoy—but every spectator knew that the two actors were playing Verus and Marcus Aurelius, both of whom were in the audience. If either took offense, neither showed it. Indeed, the verbal wit and the sheer absurdity of the play seemed to release a deep well of laughter from Marcus. Lucius had never seen his boyhood friend laugh so hard.

  Endless feasts and orgies followed, many at Verus’s sumptuous new villa on the Via Clodia just outside the city, where the parties seemed never to stop. And what licentious parties they were, with every imaginable manner of carnal pleasure made available to the guests …

  * * *

  Lucius Pinarius opened his eyes, suddenly awake. For a moment he was disoriented and confused, unsure of his surroundings. A feeling of dread descended on him. This was certainly not his own bed, for he was surrounded by unfamiliar cushions and bedspreads embroidered with shimmering threads of silver and gold in strange, barbaric designs, depicting griffins and dragons and other unearthly creatures—and then Lucius remembered the story that went with the cushions, which had been taken from a Parthian nobleman’s captured estate, along with a great many other exquisite and exotic furnishings, all of which decorated the sprawling new villa that was now home to the emperor Verus …

  His head was pounding. That was because of all the wine he had drunk the night before. But why did he feel such a sense of foreboding?

  Lucius heard the sound of a girl giggling, and a boy chuckling, and remembered who else was in the bed with him—the pretty young actress from Alexandria, and the even prettier young actor, both of whom had proved such congenial companions during last night’s dinner. Lucius had had his eye on the two of them for quite some time, because they were always present at Verus’s dinner parties, the prettiest of all the pretty young things that were invariably in attendance to amuse the emperor’s chosen guests, senators and poets and wealthy merchants and other men of importance like Lucius Pinarius. Last night he had finally made his move on the pair, and they had been most accommodating, laughing at his jokes, making sure his goblet was always brimming with wine, coyly edging closer, one on each side, touching him casually on his arms and legs and then in more intimate ways, and freely allowing him to touch them in return. By twos and threes and fours the various guests and their pleasure companions retreated to more private quarters, and Lucius had been thrilled when the boy and girl each took him by the hand and led him off to a dimly lit room where the bed was strewn with glittering pillows of Parthian design.

  Lucius drew a deep breath. He was at the emperor Verus’s villa on the Via Clodia, in a soft, warm bed, and the boy and girl were with him. Surrounded by such splendid comforts, why did he feel so oppressed, so gloomy, so anxious?

  And then, with a wrenching jolt, cold reality returned him to his senses. Try as one might to forget what was happening in the world by plunging headlong into drinking and debauchery, in the morning the reality was still there, staring one in the face like an unblinking basilisk …

  The plague!

  As soon as the triumph and its festivities were over, the parties had begun. That was also about the time the plague began, or at least when most people began to realize it. The onset of the disease was swift—fever, diarrhea, a burning in the throat. These might be taken for symptoms of some other illness, but when the pustules appeared on the ninth day—if the victim lived that long—there could be no doubt that the plague was to blame.

  Even before the triumph, the imperial physicians had noticed a sudden, sharp rise in the number of deaths all across the city, but the emperors had warned them to be quiet, lest the triumph be spoiled by uncalled-for panic. The people of Rome deserved the undiluted joy of celebrating their victory over the Parthian threat.

  Like most people, Lucius first became aware of the plague as a rumor, a story overheard in the Forum, and then discussed over dinner, and then made terribly real by news of the sudden death of an acquaintance or friend. Then came news of more deaths, across town, across the street, across the room—indeed, the first such death Lucius had witnessed had been that of a serving boy in his family’s dining chamber.

  The boy had suddenly tripped, sending a tray full of precious silver tumbling across the marble floor. Lucius had been furious—it shamed him now to remember that he had cursed at the young slave, then had risen from his dining couch and snatched a long silver spoon from the floor, intending to give the boy a sound thrashing with it. But no sooner had he grabbed the boy’s shoulder and turned him face-upright than he let out a gasp and sprang backward, for the boy’s eyes were rolled up and lips were flecked with foam and he began to convulse.

  That was the first night he attended one of Verus’s parties. He had been invited before, but had never gone, out of loyalty to Marcus, who disapproved of his junior partner’s lavish entertainments. Since that first night, the parties had never stopped. Nor had the dying. Even as the death toll grew, so did the parties grow ever more debauched, the festivities ever more desperate …

  As he had done a thousand times before, Lucius pushed all thoughts of plague from his mind and concentrated on the moment. Stoics like Marcus had long recommended such a practice—to concentrate entirely and exclusively on the present moment, and if that moment contained no physical suffering, then to be content. Why should Lucius not be happy, sharing such a lovely bed with two such lovely mortals? The boy was an actor, or so people said. Lucius had never actually seen him on a stage. The girl was an actor of a sort, too, a street mime from Alexandria. Along with all his other booty, Verus had brought back countless actors, mimes, jugglers, acrobats, flautists, and harpists, and every other sort of entertainer—so many, that some wags claimed Verus had never fought the Parthians at all, but had gone east to wage war against actors, so as to bring every one of them back to Rome in captivity. Marcus had made one of his very rare jokes about it, saying that historians were likely to call Verus’s campaign “The War of Actors.”

  The actors in bed with Lucius seemed to be engaged in some sort of combat, to judge by all the slapping and wrestling and grunting. First she was on top, and then he was. What pretty bottoms they both had! Sadly, the two of them were far more interested in pleasing each other than in pleasing him, as had quickly become evident the previous night. They might at least act as if he mattered, which as actors, if not whores, they should be capable of doing. Lucius would report their unsatisfactory behavior to their master, who should give them a tongue-lashing at least, though the soft-hearted Verus was as likely to take their side as his. Last night Lucius had been content to watch the two go at it, and to pleasure himself, until inebriation and satiation at last delivered him to the arms of Somnus, in whose embrace one could find a few hours of respite from the unrelenting horrors of waking life.

  Did the two of them never grow tired, would they never stop sweating and grunting? Suddenly, Lucius had had quite enough of them. “Out! Out, you two! If you must continue fornicating, then go and do it in the road, like a couple of dogs!”

  As they scampered off, naked and squealing and giggling like children and dodging the pillows he threw after them, Lucius heaved a long sigh. What pretty, pretty bottoms!

  Lucius dressed himself. He had no slave to dress him; the slave who did that had died some days ago, and there were no slaves in the market to replace him. Over a loose-fittin
g gown, suitable for lounging, he managed to throw, wrap, fold, and tuck his toga into a shabby semblance of senatorial respectability.

  On his way out, crossing a small garden open to the sky, he encountered his host, looking as bleary-eyed as himself and barely decent in a blue silk tunic that had slipped off his broad shoulders to settle into something like a loincloth around his hips. Bleary-eyed, yes, but what a handsome fellow! Even the prettiest slave boy or the brawniest gladiator receded from view when Verus entered a room. A beam of sunlight sparkled upon remnants of gold dust that had been sprinkled on Verus’s hair for last night’s banquet, though his golden curls hardly needed adornment. His blond beard was in the new style he had brought back to Rome from the East, very long and full like those seen on Parthian statues. “Barbaric,” some called it, but on Verus the cut was quite flattering.

  Like the style of his beard, Verus’s penchant for high living was another trait he had picked up during his time in Asia and the Parthian borderlands. As a youth he had always been very much in the shadow of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, sharing the latter’s tutors and earning from them almost as much praise for his intellect as had Marcus before him. The young Verus had never been as staid as Marcus, but nor had he been particularly extravagant or self-indulgent. His time in the exotic cities of Asia had heightened his taste for luxury, and his success on the battlefield had given him license to indulge it.

  Marcus did not approve, but said nothing in public to show it. For a while, he even attended some of Verus’s parties, or at least had been present in the house while they went on. He himself ate little and drank less, and participated in no debauchery, but instead tended to correspondence and caught up on his reading while half-naked dancing girls ran past, followed by tipsy senators. When his efforts to lead, or at least moderate, by example fell flat, Marcus stopped coming to the villa, but he never said a word against his younger partner.

  Whatever his bad habits, it was impossible to dislike Verus. What a charmer he was, especially in his current disheveled state, grinning at Lucius and reaching up to run his hands through his tangled curls, causing a nimbus of gold dust to shimmer about his handsome face. There was something completely forthright and open about Verus. Marcus might be scrupulously honest, but there was always something reserved in his manner. His face and mood were often hard to read. Not so Verus, about whom there seemed to be nothing held back, no deceit, no hidden agendas.

  “Are you leaving us, Senator Pinarius?” asked Verus, with a yawn.

  “I’m afraid so, Dominus. Your hospitality has quite worn me out.”

  “You talk like an old man—like Marcus!” Verus laughed and slapped Lucius on the shoulder in a good-natured way.

  “I hardly think so, Dominus. When I consider some of the things I got up to last night…”

  “Was that a shudder, Senator? There’s only one cure for losing one’s nerve, you know, and that’s to blunder headlong into the next battle. Come along with me to the baths in the eastern wing. We’ll have a hot plunge and then a cold plunge and then some cakes with honey to fortify ourselves for a little gathering I’ve planned for the afternoon. There shall be a very talented singer from Pergamum, and a pair of dancers—a brother and sister, twins—I discovered in Antioch. After that, I’ve arranged for some rather brawny gladiators to wrestle a famous Greek athlete, a wiry little fellow who assures me he’ll be able to pin them all, one after another. They shall wrestle in the nude, as the Greeks at Olympia do—if you like that sort of thing?”

  “It’s all very … tempting,” said Lucius, and in fact he was tempted to stay, but not because of the entertainments being offered. In that moment, he very much wished he could be alone with Verus, sculpting him. Some trick of the morning sunlight caused Verus to glow, as if from inside. What marble could capture that glow? Lucius had sculpted Verus more than once, and though the subject himself had been pleased, Lucius had never been satisfied with the result. Would Lucius ever be able to capture the unique quality of the man’s beauty in marble or bronze—the quality he was seeing at this very moment—as his father had captured Hadrian’s divine consort, Antinous?

  Then Lucius blinked, and a thin cloud veiled the sun, and the moment of clarity passed. “Tempting indeed, Dominus. But I really must get back to my family. I don’t mean to be ungrateful—”

  “Senator, say no more. Your children—how lucky you are to have them! Especially … these days. You must cherish them, at every opportunity.”

  “Now who sounds like Marcus?”

  Verus laughed. “Well, Marcus and I did have the same upbringing. I could probably do a pretty good imitation of him, if I wanted to.” He smiled at the thought. “But I’m entirely sincere. Go on, then. Off with you!”

  * * *

  His slaves were in the outer courtyard where he had left them, along with the sedan chair on poles. Lucius stepped in, and the four of them dutifully lifted the contraption onto their shoulders. He braced himself for the unpleasantness to come.

  Almost at once, as they left the immediate vicinity of the villa, signs of the plague appeared. A number of burials were taking place amid the funeral steles that lined the road outside the old, crumbling city walls. A funeral or two was not an odd thing to see on any given day, but on this morning there were more than he could count, some far from the road and others quite near, so that the shrieks and wails of the mourners grated upon his ears.

  Held aloft in his chair, he could see a considerable distance, and far to one side he saw something quite shocking. A group of rough-looking men had apparently broken into what looked like a large family monument, and from its niches were removing one urn after another, and then—unbelievable!—opening the urns and emptying the ashes. For what possible purpose? As soon as the question occurred to him, so did the answer: they were making room for the newly dead, which otherwise had no proper place to be put, so quickly were so many dying. Perhaps all the family members of those in the desecrated monument were already dead, so there would be no one to object—but no, even as he watched, another group of men arrived, carrying clubs and knives, and attacked the desecrators, who used the urns in their hands as missiles. One, made of pottery, struck a nearby stone monument and exploded in a cloud of ash. The scene seemed so unreal as to be almost comic.

  Lucius thought of the “war of actors,” and all the lively young people Verus had brought to Rome. This abomination had also followed Verus from the East—one could call it a war over human remains, as sites for interment became so crowded people began fighting over them. Romans preferred to cremate their dead, but fuel for so many fires had become scarce, along with living humans to cut the trees and tend the flames. Even suitable urns for ashes were scarce, so that the poor were reduced to using their piss-pots! Instead of cremating them, many people were now burying their dead, as the Christians did, not from any belief that the bodies might someday come back to life, as the Christians in their lunacy imagined, but simply to be rid of the corpses and the plague that infested them. Lucius had even heard of grave robbers who dug up the freshly buried, so that new bodies could be put in the same hole. A war of corpses! Such were the horrors to which the plague had reduced the greatest city in the world.

  Once inside the city proper, Lucius should have seen streets filled with people and heard the noises of city life, but all was unnaturally still. Doors and windows were shut. Balconies of upper floors were deserted. A vague sound of weeping rose and fell, muffled behind closed doors.

  Even the temples were quiet, with only a few people coming and going on the marble steps. For a while every temple in Rome had been unusually crowded. Shocked and terrified at the death suddenly all around them, people called on every god they could think of, pleading for an end to the suffering. The gods did not hear, for the dying only accelerated.

  As his litter passed near the buildings that housed the imperial horse guard, he received another shock. First, his nostrils were assaulted by the all-too-familiar stench of d
ead bodies. Then he saw that the paved public square—where the horsemen frequently showed off their steeds and practiced extravagant maneuvers to the delight of onlookers—had been completely dug up. Gone were the paving stones, and in their place was a huge pit, perhaps ten feet deep, where a mass burial was taking place. Lucius called to his litter-bearers to stop, so that he could take in the ghastly spectacle.

  Most of the horsemen were from far away and had no family in Rome to grieve or to bury them, so they were being buried here, all together and all at once. Had every one of them died overnight? The gruesome work was being performed by the lowest of the stable hands—slaves who usually shoveled horse dung, to judge by their filthy tunics. Down an earthen ramp and into the pit they carried one corpse after another, all anonymous within linen shrouds, and laid them close together. Then the slaves shoveled a thick layer of plaster over the bodies. Lucius had heard that some physicians believed plaster could contain the contagion. At least it served to contain the stench.

  The man directing the slaves allowed them a brief respite, while the plaster was allowed to dry for bit. From the nearby piles of linen-wrapped corpses that remained unburied it was evident what would happen next—another layer of bodies would be laid in the pit and covered with plaster, and then another layer, and yet another, until all the bodies were plastered over and the pit could be filled with earth.

  Would the pit then be paved over, as if nothing had happened? Would there be no monument for the dead cavalrymen? The relentless onslaught of the plague had overtaken the ability of the living to memorialize the dead.

  It had not been so at the beginning of the plague, when untimely death was still a novelty. Monuments and memorials proliferated outside the city, of course, but inside the city as well, as every family wealthy enough to do so petitioned the emperors to be allowed to set up a statue in some public place to honor some beloved and much-mourned senator or magistrate or famous philosopher struck down in his prime. Having allowed the privilege to the first few who asked, Marcus had seen no proper way to refuse those who followed, and eventually every empty spot large enough for a pedestal became occupied by a statue. A war of statues, Lucius thought, all vying for attention!