Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  When they arrived, the messenger handed Gaius off to a courtier, who escorted him past a number of Praetorian Guards and then passed him to another courtier, this one a young eunuch whose brief, gossamer tunic made Gaius feel overdressed. Clearly they had passed from the official chambers into the more private and informal recesses of the villa, for none of the slaves he passed, male or female, seemed to be wearing much of anything. Were they not cold, he wondered, then realized that the floors seemed to be heated, like the floors of a bathing establishment. Marcus Aurelius had been famous for enduring harsh winters in Pannonia, but for Commodus, all must be comfortable and opulent and luxurious.

  Gaius was shown into a small but elegantly furnished room, where he found Commodus attended only by his Master of the Bedchamber, Eclectus, and his lover, Marcia. Eclectus looked a great deal like Commodus, and had many of the same mannerisms. It was like Commodus, Gaius thought, to choose companions who were mirrors of himself. About Marcia, Gaius knew little except that she was strikingly beautiful and rumored, oddly enough, to be a Christian. Gaius would never have guessed. “You can’t tell by looking,” people said of the Christians. You never knew who might turn out to be one.

  There was wine, unmixed with water, despite the morning hour, and some rambling conversation that to Gaius seemed quite pointless but to Eclectus and Marcia must have been quite witty, since they kept laughing. The wine went to Gaius’s head, and without quite knowing how, he found himself alone with Commodus in the emperor’s private bath, a sumptuous room with elaborate mosaics on every floor, wall, and ceiling, dominated by a gilded statue of Hercules on a pedestal in the center of the heated pool. From certain angles the demigod appeared to be walking on water. Commodus seemed to be quite drunk and determined to become more so, holding a brimming cup of wine in his left hand, sitting naked on submerged steps at one corner of the pool with water lapping at his brawny chest.

  Gaius, not invited to enter the pool, sat on a plushly upholstered couch nearby. A female slave, naked except for copious strings of pearls, pressed a large and rather heavy goblet of wine into his hand and then vanished. Gaius at first thought the cup, made all of silver and gold, was in the shape of a horn, then realized it was in fact in the shape of a very lifelike, erect phallus, pointing downward. He looked for a place to set the cup aside, but as the goblet had no base there was no way to put it down without spilling the contents. Nor was there a slave present to take it from him.

  He saw that the cup held by Commodus was quite similar, though not as large. Gaius had heard of these cups, and had dismissed the tale as mere rumor, but here was the proof in his hand. The goblets were said to be modeled exactly on the anatomy of Commodus and a few of his closest confidants. To be offered such a cup was presumably a great honor. To have such a cup modeled on one’s anatomy was an even greater honor.

  The cup made him think of the fascinum. As always, Commodus was wearing it on a chain around his neck. Commodus caught him looking at it, and reached up to touch it.

  “What do you say, Pinarius, shall we make a fair trade, so you can be done with envying my little amulet? You shall never have it back, but I tell you what: you can keep that goblet. One phallus for another, eh? And not just any phallus. That’s my penis you’re holding. Well?” Commodus stared at him, demanding an answer.

  “I … I don’t know what to say, Dominus.”

  “Then never mind! I’ll have that goblet back when you’re done with it. But that’s not why I called you here, Pinarius. There will have to be changes made.”

  “Changes, Dominus?”

  “Changes to the column.”

  “But … you haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Yes, I’ve been preoccupied with other matters and I’ve failed to give it the attention I should have—a mistake on my part, if what I’ve been told is true.”

  “And what is that?”

  “For one thing, I’ve been told that I do not appear in the images representing the Rain Miracle. Is that true?”

  Gaius squirmed on the couch and cleared his throat. “I assure you, Dominus, our sculptors worked from the descriptions of actual witnesses—”

  “Stop that! I summoned you, and not your father, precisely because your old man has a way of talking around a subject until I forget what I wanted to say. My father was good at that, too. By Hercules, what a lot of words he spewed in his long, miserable lifetime. Words, words, millions of words—all amounting to rubbish. I say: talk less, live more! There, I have just dictated my book, To Myself. Short and to the point.” He drank from his cup and then raised it, gesturing that Gaius should do likewise. Gaius put the goblet to his lips but only pretended to take a sip. He suddenly felt quite sober, and very nervous.

  Commodus’s speech was slurred, which was only to be expected since he was drunk. But why did he look so pale? His brow was beaded with sweat. That could be due to the hot bath. But the hand that held the cup was unsteady, sloshing bits of wine into the water. Was the emperor ill?

  “I know why you left me out of the Rain Miracle,” he said. “You did so deliberately! This is the revenge of the Pinarii, because of this!” He pointed to the fascinum nestled between his pectorals. “My guarantor of good fortune! This amulet protected me from the plague, year in and year out. It kept me alive when those closest to me did everything they could to see me dead! You’d like to take it back from me, wouldn’t you? You would rob your emperor of his protection. Admit it!”

  Gaius sat speechless. Commodus drank more wine, and gestured that Gaius should do the same. As Gaius raised the cup to his lips, a horrible thought occurred to him. What if Commodus was not ill, but had been poisoned? Was there poison in the wine?

  “Drink, Pinarius! You ungrateful swine!” shouted Commodus.

  Gaius pressed the cup to his lips but could not bring himself to drink.

  “Drink, I said!” Commodus stood up in the water, and started to step from the pool, but then seemed to lose his balance and fell back, splashing water across the mosaic floor. Perhaps he was only very drunk, after all, thought Gaius. Then he saw a movement from the corner of his eye and gave a start.

  “This is ridiculous!” shouted Marcia, who seemed to appear from nowhere. “The poison would have worked by now if it was going to. Giving him more is not the solution.”

  Eclectus was also in the room. “You’re right. He must have taken an antidote beforehand. Theriac, perhaps.”

  Gaius stared dumbly at the two of them. His hand was clenched tightly around the phallic goblet. He had a sensation he had not experienced since he was a child, when he sometimes fancied that he was invisible and no one could see him as long as he sat very still.

  “Make it happen!” shouted Marcia.

  “Yes, do it! Now!” screamed Eclectus.

  Another person was suddenly in the room, a tall, muscular young man. Gaius had seen him before, in Commodus’s entourage. Narcissus was his name, a powerful athlete, one of Commodus’s wrestling and sparring partners. He looked pale but determined, swallowing hard as he slowly approached the pool, which Commodus was again attempting to exit. Narcissus hesitated for a moment, then made up his mind. He knelt by the pool, grabbed Commodus by the neck, pulled him half out of the water, and then began to strangle him.

  Commodus flailed and struggled, but his resistance was feeble. Still half in the water, he kicked wildly, splashing water all over Gaius, who sat as still as a statue on the couch.

  “Don’t drown him!” cried Marcia.

  “And don’t break his neck!” added Eclectus. “It must appear to be a natural death. It will be much easier that way.”

  To Gaius, sitting motionless, the gruesome act seemed to take a very long time. Weakened though he was, Commodus nonetheless possessed tremendous will. He did not die quickly. The slow strangulation was excruciating to watch.

  Afterward Gaius would wonder if he should have acted. But what could he have done? He was outnumbered and without a weapon, in an unfamiliar place, unable ev
en to put down the goblet in his hand.

  At last, Commodus was dead. His naked body lay limp and crumpled on the tile floor, with bits of steam rising from his wet flesh. Narcissus released his grip. He stood, slipping awkwardly on the wet floor. He was breathing hard and shaking, blinking his eyes, looking as if he might weep.

  Gaius’s hand began to tremble, so violently that wine spilled from the cup. Impulsively, he cast it away, into the pool, where it fell to the bottom. The red wine dispersed like blood in the water.

  “What about this one?” said Eclectus, staring at him. “He saw everything. What shall we do with him?”

  Narcissus drew back his shoulders and looked grimly at Gaius, then stepped toward him. Gaius raised his hands and drew back on the couch.

  “No,” said Marcia. “Don’t hurt him.”

  “But he’ll talk,” said Eclectus. “He and his father owe everything to Commodus.”

  “I know what will buy his silence.” Marcia walked to the corpse and squatted beside it. She took the chain from Commodus’s neck, then rose and brought it to Gaius. She dangled it before him. He stared at it. He had not seen the fascinum so close in many years.

  “This is yours, is it not?”

  Gaius nodded. He reached for it, but she held it back. “You must never wear it in public. Do you understand? All Rome has seen it, worn by Commodus. No one must ever see it again.”

  Again, Gaius nodded.

  “And also … you were never here. Do you understand? You saw nothing, know nothing. And that is because…?”

  “Because … I was never here,” Gaius said hoarsely. “But what do you intend to tell people? Even with no witnesses, you can’t hide a thing like…” He looked at the corpse.

  Eclectus flashed a grim smile. “We’ve been working on the exact wording of the official statement.”

  “Yes,” said Marcia, “how does the final version go?”

  “‘Commodus, your emperor, is dead. The cause was apoplexy. The emperor was responsible for his own death. The blame falls on no one else. Time and again those closest to him urged him to adopt a safer and saner course, yet he paid no attention. You know the way he lived his life. Now he lies dead, choked by his own gluttony. The end he was destined for has met him at last.’ There, Pinarius, what do you think of that? Credible enough? Even if the senators don’t believe it, they’ll want to. He has no supporters left in the Senate, except perhaps for a handful who profited from his excesses—like you, Pinarius.”

  “What about the citizens?” said Gaius. “Many of them still—”

  “The rabble are capable of believing anything. The ones who actually thought Commodus was a god—immortal Hercules returned to earth!—will see how wrong they were. And the ones who thought that an emperor could be a gladiator—well, they can hardly be surprised that such a rogue met an early death.”

  Gaius stared at the fascinum dangled by Marcia, then seized it. Touching it, he felt a sudden awe. There was a rush of physical sensation as well, a tingling all over his body. He put on the necklace. He touched the fascinum where it lay against his chest, unseen beneath his tunic.

  “How Commodus loved that worthless little trinket,” said Marcia. “He told me all about it—how old it is, how he came to have it. How powerful he thought it was! But I wouldn’t put any faith in it, if I were you. It certainly didn’t protect him today.”

  “What do you know, you ignorant bitch?” snapped Gaius, suddenly overcome by conflicting emotions. “You know nothing! Are you a Christian, as people say? A hater of the gods?” He sprang up from the couch, clutching the fascinum, and stared at the corpse. He trembled. He hated Commodus for keeping his birthright from him. He was furious at the cold-blooded murderers. He was angry at himself for having been a virtual slave of Commodus, and equally angry to find himself indebted to the man’s killers.

  “Go now,” said Marcia, her face ashen. “While you still can.”

  Eclectus glared at him. Narcissus fought back tears.

  Gaius stifled his rage and ran from the room.

  He pushed aside the courtiers in the outer rooms and walked past the Praetorian Guards, out of the villa. Heading home, he passed through crowds of laughing, drunken Saturnalia revelers. They could not yet know what had happened, but it seemed to Gaius that all of Rome was celebrating the death of Commodus.

  Commodus was dead! He saw it happen with his own eyes, but still could hardly believe it. Even more amazing, the fascinum was his, at long last! How pleased his father would be. Losing himself in the throng of drunken revelers, Gaius felt giddy, filled with a sublime sense of well-being, an elation far beyond the intoxication induced by wine. Commodus was dead and the fascinum had come back to the Pinarii.

  On this day, the gods had smiled on him, and on Rome. From this day forward, Gaius felt certain, the world could only become better and better.

  II

  THE WOMEN OF EMESA

  (A.D. 194–223)

  A.D. 194

  Gaius and his five-year-old son, Aulus, stood before the funeral monuments of the Pinarii outside the city, amid the multitude of graves along the Appian Way. With them was Galen.

  Two monuments stood side by side. They held the ashes of Gaius’s father and uncle, and had only recently been finished and put in place. The task of designing them had fallen to Gaius. The monument for his father was very elaborate, with a bust of Senator Lucius Pinarius recessed in a deep niche, surrounded by relief carvings depicting many of his sculptural works in miniature, prominent among them his masterpiece, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius—without the downtrodden barbarian later added at the insistence of Commodus. There was a long inscription, as well, praising his long tenure in the Senate and his great service to Rome.

  Like his father and grandfather before him, Lucius had not lived past the age of seventy-one. After the murder of Commodus, Gaius had hurried home and told his father what he had witnessed, and showed him the fascinum. Lucius had been elated, but had ordered Gaius to tell no one else. It would not be prudent to allow the household of the Pinarii to stage a celebration on the day the emperor died. That very night, in the early hours of New Year’s Day, Lucius died in his sleep, with a smile on his lips. It was as if he had waited for that singular event, the restoration of the fascinum, and then had let go of his spirit.

  Lucius’s well-timed departure also spared him from the violence and chaos that followed, including the death of his beloved younger brother.

  The monument for Kaeso was much plainer, with only a bust that showed him in a toga, not in military dress, and a very brief inscription. Considering the circumstances of his death, Gaius had thought it best that his uncle’s monument should draw no attention to itself.

  Gaius burned a bit of incense before each of the monuments and poured an offering of olive oil and wine. After this formality, little Aulus was allowed to sit on the grass, where a caterpillar attracted his attention.

  “What do you think becomes of the dead?” asked Gaius.

  Galen, well into his sixties and having seen so much illness and suffering, had given much thought to the question. “I believe that some singular unity informs all creation, that there exists a kind of world spirit that extends through all space and time, the full reality of which we mortals can only vaguely grasp.”

  “Since my father and his father were devoted followers of Apollonius of Tyana, I was raised to believe in such a universal spirit as well,” said Gaius. “And I believe in an afterlife—at least for some mortals. Great rulers, like Marcus, become divine after death, and live among the gods. Great heroes, like Achilles, or great sages, like Apollonius, also continue to exist after death, but they stay closer to the world of the living. They become demons—spirits lower than gods but worshipped by mortals who call upon such demons to guide and protect them. But is there an afterlife for us ordinary mortals? If so, what might it be like?”

  “On that question, the philosophers differ,” said Galen.

  �
��Indeed they do,” agreed Gaius. “Some, like Marcus, seemed to think the afterlife hardly matters.”

  “Marcus epitomized a particularly Roman virtue, if we may call it that,” said Galen, “the idea that this life and this moment are all that matter. Anything that follows can only be a place of dim shadows to which the wise man gives little thought, knowing that what most matters is his existence here and now, and the duties a man owes to the gods, to his family, and to the state.”

  “Is there no individual soul, then?”

  “I think there must be. But I can’t claim to understand the essence of the soul. The soul is immortal and incorporeal, yet we find it coexisting with the body, and it is possible that it works through the medium of the natural activities of the body. So long as the body retains its sensible temperament, it does not die, and it remains coupled with the soul.”

  “By temperament, you mean…?”

  “The constitution of the body is continually changing from a state of vigorous heat and moisture toward coldness and desiccation, until, by old age, it dries up entirely and loses all heat. When coldness and dryness are all that remain, the soul can no longer perform its particular activities and itself grows weaker, just as the body does. Life is then extinguished through the extinction of the soul.” He shrugged. “To the physician, treating disease, it doesn’t matter whether the soul is mortal or immortal, nor does it matter whether its substance is corporeal or incorporeal, or whether its substance is contained in the cavities of a living creature, or spread throughout its fundamental parts, or inhabits every minute particle of the body. Personally, I believe the soul inhabits the brain, and the brain is therefore the chief instrument of the rational soul.”

  “I suppose I tend toward what you call ‘Roman virtue,’” said Gaius, gazing eye to eye with the bust of his father. “I believe that what truly matters is this life, this existence, this world’s calling to duty, honor, virtue.”