Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  “It seems unthinkable that so much human knowledge can vanish overnight,” said Gaius quietly.

  “I’m surprised you can keep your wits at all, after such a loss,” said Lucius. “The Divine Marcus would be proud of your equanimity.”

  Galen sighed. “Not everyone is so stoic. I was back in town less than an hour when I learned that a good friend of mine, the author of many a learned study of the ancient playwrights, committed suicide. He’d lost his entire life’s work in the fire. He couldn’t bear it! And now, to discover that this is all that’s left of the Temple of Pax—this utter devastation! The place where we’re standing was the center of intellectual debate in Rome, where all the best thinkers came to argue and show off and steal each other’s ideas.”

  “I remember watching you conduct your famous experiment on the vocalization of pigs, on this very spot,” said Lucius.

  Galen managed a sad smile. “It would be hard to overestimate the total loss and the impact the fire will have on so many people in Rome, from this day forward.” He shook his head, then gripped Lucius’s arm. “Do you smell that?”

  “What?”

  “I smell it,” said Gaius, sniffing the air. “It’s very odd.”

  “Not just treasures of gold and silver were kept at the Temple of Pax,” said Galen. “This was also the storehouse for the imperial supply of theriac, and many other precious substances, including a huge store of cinnamon. That must be what we’re smelling now, the charred and sodden remains of all those herbs and distillates and rare concoctions. How strange it smells!”

  “It’s the loss of so much treasure that worries me,” said Lucius. “The Senate meets to discuss the crisis tomorrow. Not just a huge store of wealth has vanished, but also ledgers and property deeds and records of loans, all completely destroyed—a boon to debtors, but utter ruin for lenders. We are almost certain to experience a financial panic.”

  “And yet, our emperor seems oblivious of the situation,” said Gaius, lowering his voice, though no one else was near them. “He insists that he will rebuild ‘Commodiana,’ as he calls the city, on an even grander scale than before.”

  “And the lost libraries? How can they be rebuilt?” asked Galen.

  “I’ve seen the list of structures that have priority,” said Lucius, “and libraries are not among them. The building that Commodus cares about most is the Flavian Amphitheater, of course, and that was unscathed.”

  “Which means,” said Gaius, lowering his voice even more, “that the emperor’s debut as a gladiator at the Roman Games can proceed as planned.”

  * * *

  The month of September had come. Lucius and Gaius stood once again atop the Column of Marcus. But they were not alone: the gigantic statue of Marcus Aurelius had only that morning been hoisted up and placed atop its pedestal, crowning the monument. Below them, winding up the column, every piece of the spiral frieze was now in place. The column was still surrounded by scaffolding, to allow the painters to do their job, painstakingly tinting and coloring every surface of the frieze.

  Commodus had insisted that the column be ready for dedication by the end of the year, and the Pinarii and their workshop had made phenomenal progress over the summer, partly because the emperor had left them alone to work in peace, for Commodus himself had been obsessively training for hours every day, not only as a gladiator but also practicing with hunting weapons, having imported the finest Mauritanian spearmen and Parthian archers to be his instructors.

  Gazing up at the larger-than-life image of Marcus, with his serene countenance, Lucius felt a stab of heartsickness. How he missed his old friend, Verissimus! Even with the ravages of plague and the often desperate war years, the reign of the Divine Marcus now seemed a golden age compared to twelve years of Commodus.

  Despite the hatred he had sown among the senatorial class, Commodus was still quite popular with the common people, who actually seemed to admire his bottomless vanity and his eccentric behavior, however crass and inappropriate it seemed to men like Lucius. Born and raised in the most privileged and elite surroundings, Commodus had nothing whatsoever in common with the lowborn, yet they seemed to see in him themselves made large: he behaved just as they imagined they would behave, if they were rich and powerful and ruled the world.

  Excitement about the Roman Games had been building for months. Commodus promised to present hundreds of creatures from the far ends of the earth, some never before seen in Rome. He himself, in the guise of Hercules, would take aim at these animals and slay them with arrows and spears. Causing even more excitement was the remarkable news that the emperor himself would engage in combat with the best gladiators from all over the empire. One could truly say, without exaggeration, that no such spectacle had ever been seen in Rome, or anywhere else. All of Italy was abuzz. People had traveled to Rome from the most distant provinces, and even from foreign lands. Commodus had already succeeded in one goal: to make himself the chief topic of conversation not just in Rome, but also across a great part of the world.

  Lucius and Gaius descended the column. Lucius took the steps very slowly, feeling stiff in all his joints and slightly lightheaded, and very much a man in his seventies. In the workshop that had been built on the site, slaves helped them to hurriedly put on formal dress. Like his father, Gaius now wore a senator’s toga. In his latest list of new men to replace those executed by the state, Commodus had made Gaius a senator.

  With an entourage of bodyguards and attendants suitable for a pair of senators, they joined the crowd that was heading for the amphitheater. As senators, the Pinarii’s attendance at the Games was mandatory.

  Outside the amphitheater they met with Galen. He had grown to despise Commodus, and had no interest in the emperor’s athletic pursuits, but he could not resist attending the Games so as to have a firsthand look at all the exotic animals to be hunted and slaughtered, while they were still alive and moving. Commodus had agreed to allow him to dissect any of the carcasses that interested him. It was an opportunity not to be missed.

  Before they entered the amphitheater, all three men paused to gaze up at the towering Colossus, the statue that had once depicted Nero, then Sol, and now, thanks to the ingenious designs of the Pinarii, had been transformed into Hercules with the face of Commodus. This Hercules was left-handed, like Commodus, and thus held his club in his left hand. Enormous amounts of gold and silver had been required to gild the statue to the emperor’s satisfaction. The result was so gaudy that Lucius was actually a bit embarrassed by it. What a contrast there was, between this overbearing Hercules and the serene statue of Marcus atop the column. And yet, from the surging crowd all around them, Lucius heard only exclamations of delight and admiration.

  “Have you ever seen anything so glorious?”

  “How huge it is!”

  “Is the emperor really that handsome? Is he really so muscular?”

  “And is his club really that big? It touches the ground!”

  “How extraordinary, how beautiful! It’s a wonder of the world! Only in Commodiana can one behold such marvels!”

  Commodiana was now the official name of the city on every piece of legislation leaving the Senate. The crowd had come to use the word with a more specialized meaning, to refer to a certain state of mind, a way of looking at the world. Galen and the Pinarii still lived in Rome, one might say, but the thrill-seekers who craved the blood and gore of the arena and who gushingly admired what they called the emperor’s style and panache were living in Commodiana.

  Would the same crowd praise the Column of Marcus as effusively, once it was finished and ready to be dedicated? Lucius doubted it. A Stoic emperor atop a ribbon of grim war scenes could hardly compete for attention with mighty Hercules, the colossal emperor.

  “Shall we go in?” said Lucius, with a feeling of dread.

  * * *

  The Roman Games lasted not one day, but several.

  Lucius would later remember those days like a sort of fever dream, so bizarre yet so star
kly real were they. The audience was first treated to a spectacle of comic mimes, tumbling acrobats, and trained animals, and then, with a swelling murmur of excitement, to the arrival of Commodus as he drove one of his absurdly ornate chariots onto the sand of the arena, wearing the scanty outfit and tight leather cap of a racer for the green faction. He rapidly gained speed, and at the end of a full circuit, jumped onto another moving chariot, changing places with its driver as neither team of horses slowed down. This daredevil stunt he performed not once but several times, to the delight of the spectators, each time showing off another vehicle from his collection. Women in the stands pretended to swoon or even to orgasm, and so did a number of men.

  The final vehicle was an outrageously ornate carriage that Commodus drove quite slowly, so that all could feast their gaze upon it. It was not only gilded and set with gemstones, but had a canopy of dozens of polished silver mirrors set at all angles, so that they cast dancing reflections of sunlight all over the amphitheater, dazzling the spectators. Commodus himself could hardly be seen, so blinding was the light of the mirrors, brighter than any star, a rival to the sun itself.

  When the carriage disappeared, a loud murmur filled the amphitheater and did not die down until some minutes later when Commodus and his lover Marcia appeared in the imperial box. The emperor had changed out of his racing gear. He and Marcia were identically dressed as Amazon warriors in loose, belted chitons that left one breast bare.

  “Why an Amazon?” Gaius muttered under his breath.

  “He’s Hercules, don’t you see?” Lucius answered. “Not our Hercules—not the hulking herdsman who killed the monster Cacus and saved the little village by the Tiber. This is Hercules when he was commanded by the Oracle at Delphi to serve Queen Omphale for a year, dressed as a woman. There are temples in the East where Hercules is worshipped in female dress. Commodus presents himself as the lover of Marcia, but also her fellow Amazon, an incarnation of the oracle-bound Hercules.”

  “Though he’s not any sort of warrior at all,” muttered Gaius. “But the crowd—do you see, Papa? They’re laughing and cheering. They love it! Who could have predicted that?”

  “Commodus,” said Lucius.

  With Commodus and Marcia presiding, more acrobats flooded into the arena, performing ever bolder and increasingly dangerous feats, climaxing with a tightrope that was stretched between the very highest tiers of the amphitheater, so that the walkers were high above the audience. No tightrope had ever been strung so high. Nor was there any net to catch the walkers if one should fall. Once again, Commodus was the opposite of his father, undoing with a vengeance one of the most humane of his father’s innovations. The crowd screamed with excitement. They wailed and shrieked when one of the walkers staggered wildly on the rope. Some thought it was intentional, and laughed—until the man lost his balance and plummeted to the sand far below. The sound of impact was sickening. For a moment, shocked silence reigned. Then Commodus began to clap, as if to praise the dead man’s showmanship, and the audience broke into wild applause.

  “Bet you can’t do it again!” shouted a wag in the crowd, which sent a ripple of laughter around the amphitheater. Commodus heard the jest and smiled.

  “If that poor fellow had fallen just a few steps earlier,” noted Lucius, “he would have landed right in the stands. People would have been killed.”

  “Don’t let Commodus hear you say that, Papa, or he’ll insist they work it into the act.”

  Just as Commodus had promised, one by one, hundreds of animals were released into the arena. Just as he had promised, standing with spears, a bow, and a quiver of arrows on a raised platform that projected from the imperial box, Commodus slew every one of them, not once missing the mark. Even the senators were in awe.

  And, just as he had promised, Commodus himself took part in the gladiator contests in the arena. Until that day, the very idea of a Roman emperor setting foot on the sand had been unthinkable. The separation between the lofty personages in the gold and purple imperial box and the dusty arena below, populated by desperate mortals and doomed animals, was so vast as to be unbridgeable, until the moment when, with a blaring fanfare of horns, a series of metal steps suddenly unfolded from the imperial box and descended all the way to the sand of the arena. The retractable steps of Commodus’s carriages had been adapted and expanded for use on a far grander stage.

  Commodus reappeared in the imperial box, now dressed as Hercules in a genuine lion skin complete with the fanged head for a cowl, and, except for plates of armor strapped over his limbs and across his chest, wearing very little else. Attendants rushed to equip him with a sword and shield. A crier announced that the combats would not be to the death, but only until the first blood was drawn.

  Surely the fights would be staged, at least to some degree, or so Lucius had presumed. Commodus would never endanger his dignity, much less his life, by subjecting himself to real danger. Or would he? The combats were very convincing. If Commodus could make himself into the world’s strongest spear-thrower and keenest archer, why not the best gladiator, as well?

  But when Lucius looked more closely, he perceived that certain handicaps were imposed on the gladiators. Their swords were shorter than usual and seemed to be quite dull, their shields were smaller, and their armor very thin.

  Commodus bested one opponent after another. Sometimes the combat ended quickly, with Commodus merely nicking his opponent, though in one instance he sliced a gash across a man’s arm that spurted such a fountain of blood that the gladiator suddenly vomited and then fainted. The crowd was delighted. Other combats lasted longer, and ended only when Commodus forced his opponent to the ground, stepped on his throat, and inflicted a token scratch with the point of his sword.

  Making the proceedings all the more unpleasant for Lucius were the childishly simple, obsequious chants the senators were made to recite, lavishly praising the emperor and his prowess. These ditties were written on thin wooden tablets and distributed to all the senators by Praetorian Guards who then kept close watch, ready to arrest any senator who failed to comply.

  Commodus, Dominus, worthy of all praises!

  Hercules our hero, what a mighty sword he raises!

  If the senators tended to mumble their lines, the common citizens needed no encouragement to take up the chants and repeat them. They seemed genuinely to love Commodus’s performance, some of them vehemently so. They invented vulgar, bloodthirsty chants of their own—in every crowd there was always a clever Clodius with a knack for spinning verses on the spot—urging Commodus to not merely wound or kill his opponents, but to cut them to pieces and chop their heads off.

  Commodus basked in the attention of the multitude. All of Rome was in the amphitheater, and every eye in the amphitheater was fixed upon him.

  The admiration of the crowd flagged only once, when one of the gladiators, a left-hander like Commodus with the appropriate nickname Scaeva, took umbrage at whatever handicaps had been imposed on him, threw down his helmet and sword, and refused to fight. While the gladiator stood with arms crossed, Commodus became furious and ordered that Scaeva be put to death.

  “And not the quick and honorable death-blow deserved by a defeated gladiator!” shouted Commodus. “You shall be crucified, like the lowest criminal, right here in the arena, a slow death, so you can linger and suffer while the games go on in front of you!”

  The crowd began to boo.

  Lucius had never seen or even imagined such a thing—Romans booing an emperor. It was an indication of the degree to which normal conduct had been degraded, largely thanks to Commodus himself, for if the emperor could play gladiator, then why shouldn’t the mob jeer if they wished? Commodus was taken aback, but then turned the incident to his advantage by granting Scaeva an imperial pardon on the spot, to the delight of the crowd. How swiftly their mood could change, thought Lucius. Unlike the mob, his fellow senators had remained stonily silent throughout the episode, as shocked and mortified as he was.

  Scaeva re
sponded by spitting on the ground. Then he picked up his shield and raised his sword in the air, to an uproar of cheering as he made his exit. He was never to be seen again.

  Commodus returned to the imperial box. Then gladiators fought each other, to the death. In his long lifetime, Lucius had never seen so much blood and viscera on the sand. At one point Commodus descended once again to the arena. He inserted his hand into the torn chest of a dead gladiator, and drew out his hand covered with blood. The moment was so appalling and strange that the crowd fell silent. From high above, Lucius could hear the faint sound of awnings flapping in the breeze. He remembered the story Galen told him at their first meeting, about Commodus’s mother bathing in the blood of a gladiator. Even Marcus had believed there was some magical property in doing so.

  Then Commodus smeared the blood on his face. The crowd gasped at the sight. Clearly Commodus had planned the moment, because a chariot appeared in the arena. Commodus took the reins and circled the arena, slowly, raising his bloody hand to the crowd. For a full circuit there was only an awed silence. Then people began to cheer, and Commodus drove faster, then faster still, circling the arena at full speed, so fast that at times his outer wheel rose from the ground, and all the while with only one hand on the reins and the other held aloft. He was not only a spectacular archer and spearman, and a competent gladiator, but showed himself to be a superb charioteer, in complete control of his steeds at every moment.