Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  “Life-giving Sun,” the boys sang, “who brings forth the day and hides it away, born each day anew, yet ever the same…”

  Seated stiffly upright next to his father, Caracalla suddenly began to squirm. His movements were so slight at first as to be almost imperceptible, but it was the very thing the two boys had been watching for. Caracalla’s fixed, sullen expression was interrupted by a quivering of his chin, rapid blinking, a sudden grimace.

  “May you never, Apollo,” the boys sang, “as you span the whole world, bringing everywhere light, behold any sight greater than Rome!”

  Aulus strove to keep singing, desperately trying not to laugh. Beside him, Geta began to giggle, and raised a hand to cover his mouth. While they watched, Caracalla, with the eyes of all Rome upon him, sat as stiff as a statue but turned bright red while a large spider crawled out of his toga, down one arm, and across his trembling hand. He swallowed hard and clenched his jaw. Very slowly he turned his head and fixed on the boys a gaze of pure malice.

  Aulus felt a chill go up his spine, and fell silent. But Geta, staring at his furious, red-faced brother, could not stop giggling.

  A.D. 217

  On the first really warm day of spring, Gaius, Aulus, Philostratus, and Galen all agreed to meet at the recently opened facility that everyone was calling the Baths of Caracalla—the nickname by which the emperor was commonly known by everyone from family members to fishmongers. The late Severus might have been first to use it, but the name had quickly spread among soldiers along the Rhine and Danube when the young emperor ruthlessly put down a barbarian uprising, and then through the general population. Admirers and detractors alike called the ruler of the empire Caracalla.

  Gaius had even sculpted the young emperor wearing his namesake garment. He and Aulus paused as they passed the statue, which stood on a pedestal in the vestibule of the new baths. No one could miss it. It was an unusual, even daring work, for Caracalla seemed to be glowering at all who passed. That was the expression the emperor had insisted on. This portrait, and countless others—sculptures, coins, medallions—marked Caracalla’s deliberate break from the aloof images of the philosopher-emperors of earlier generations. His close-cropped haircut was that of a common soldier, and his pugnacious scowl was so realistic that all who saw it felt threatened. He was certainly not a philosopher, nor a wastrel, would-be gladiator, like Commodus, but a true warrior, like his father, a rugged soldier-emperor. Severus had wanted statues that made him look like Hadrian or the Divine Marcus. Caracalla wanted statues that looked like no one but himself.

  Like his father, he had proven to be quite ruthless. Severus, ill and dying while campaigning with his son in Britannia, had decreed that Caracalla and Geta should rule jointly. Perhaps he imagined they would be an ideal pair of rulers with complementary temperaments, like Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus; but this was the wishful thinking of a dying man. “Keep peace between you, shower money on the soldiers, scorn all others,” he had instructed them. But there was no peace in the palace as the two brothers and their factions squared off, despite Domna’s desperate attempts to bring them together. Twice Caracalla tried to have Geta assassinated. The second time, he succeeded. At a meeting to work out their differences, mediated by their mother, Geta in good faith arrived without bodyguards. Caracalla’s centurions slaughtered him on the spot. He died in his mother’s arms.

  Caracalla decreed that the Senate should damn Geta’s memory and that all images of him should be destroyed. In every family portrait of the Severans in every city of the empire, one face was crudely erased. The effect was not to make people forget about Geta, but the opposite: to remember what happened to anyone who crossed Caracalla, even a younger brother.

  Now, walking past the statue of Caracalla, it was Geta that both Gaius and Aulus thought of. “I remember him so clearly,” said Aulus, “even though he’s been dead for six years. I could sculpt him from memory.”

  “Don’t even think such a thing!” whispered his father, for to possess even a coin with Geta’s image could lead to arrest. Given Aulus’s friendship with Geta, it was something of a miracle that the Pinarii had survived his assassination. Gaius credited their survival to two things: first and foremost, the fascinum, which glinted on Aulus’s chest as father and son stripped off their togas in the changing room; and secondly, Domna and her continuing influence, despite everything, over her erratic and bad-tempered son. Gaius and Aulus were part of the empress’s charmed circle of artists and writers, whom she shielded as best she could. In recent years, Gaius had seen little of her. Even now, Domna was off somewhere, accompanying Caracalla on campaign with the title Mother of the Camp, just as she had accompanied and advised Severus.

  As father and son stepped into the cold plunge and then quickly stepped out, a slave attended each of them, drying them with linen cloths. Gaius never visited this place without being impressed. Whatever one thought of Caracalla, the baths that bore his name were enormous and extraordinarily beautiful and ornate, decorated with marble and sculptures everywhere one looked. Whatever else he might achieve, this establishment would be a true and lasting monument to the young emperor.

  Among the decorations in this room was a statue Domna had ordered from the Pinarii some years ago, a serene bust of Apollonius of Tyana that offered a stark contrast to the scowling Caracalla in the vestibule.

  “But look, here’s Galen,” said Aulus, who spotted the gray, stooped figure walking slowly toward them. The physician’s energy and stamina had faded much in recent years, but his wits were still keen. “Are you ready for the cold plunge?” asked Aulus. “It’s so exhilarating!”

  “To a fellow your age, yes. You’re not yet thirty. You young ones perpetually need cooling off! But not so, for an old man like myself. Moist, dry, hot, cold—the four primary characteristics of the living organism. To age is to gradually lose moisture and heat, to become ever drier, ever colder—until at last all heat and moisture leave the body and life ceases. That’s why you see old men like me spending so much time in this place. We crave the moisture to slake our desiccation, and the hot plunge to replenish our dwindling heat. No, thank you—no cold plunge for me!”

  In the room with the hot pool, Philostratus was waiting for them. He was back in Rome for only a short visit before returning east to join the imperial retinue as Caracalla and the Mother of the Camp made war on the Parthians.

  When they were all comfortably settled up to their necks in the swirling, steaming water, Philostratus made an announcement. “It’s finally finished. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana—it’s done!”

  “Congratulations!” said Gaius, slapping his palms against the water with genuine excitement.

  Galen fussily avoided the resulting splashes. “Yes, congratulations,” he said quietly.

  “It’s in Greek, of course, but the first copies are to be transcribed and released here in Rome. I’ll oversee that process myself, making sure it’s done accurately and expeditiously. Then I’ll do the same in Athens, on my way east. Domna wants the book to be widely available in both cities as soon as possible, with Antioch and Alexandria and other cities to follow.”

  Aulus was impressed. “A new book, available everywhere at once, with the empress as publisher. Why, in a very short time, it might become the most widely read book in the whole empire.”

  “Perhaps. That’s the idea. Domna’s idea, I should say.”

  “Oh, I suspect there are works by Galen that will remain more widely read, at least for a while,” said Gaius. “There are so many copies in circulation. What a remarkable pair you are, my learned Greek friends. Two men of different generations, one foremost of all those who seek to understand and alleviate the physical ailments of mortals, the other soon to be foremost of all who bring sacred knowledge by means of the book. Really, it’s quite an honor that Aulus and I should know you both, and call you friends.”

  Philostratus smiled modestly, but Galen looked away. He felt both flattered and piqued that Gaius should
equate him with Philostratus. He had always been a bit jealous of the younger man and the lavish praise, privileges, and advantages Philostratus enjoyed thanks to Domna. Now that the biography of Apollonius of Tyana was finished, was it not time for someone to write the biography of Galen of Pergamum? In many ways Galen considered himself the equal of Apollonius, both as a teacher and as a wonder-worker. He, too, cured the lame and restored the sick to health, and not by supernatural means but by the application of reason and knowledge. No man alive understood the mysteries of the physical world better than Galen. Apollonius supposedly understood and had contact with some force beyond the world of the senses, transcending death, but Galen, too, as a physician and writer, had pondered the mystery of life and death. Apollonius was remembered and revered many decades after his death. Would Galen be remembered even a hundred years hence?

  He was about to say something snappish to Philostratus, then stopped himself. Who wanted to hear the carping of an old man? With all his accomplishments, how could it be that Galen felt jealous of any man? Jealousy and pride were equally vain. How many mortals had envied Severus with all his glory and power, and yet, when Galen last saw the emperor, treating the man’s gout before he set out for Britain, Severus said to him, “I have been everything—and gained nothing.” Everything and nothing: the remark had stopped Galen cold. In the end, did the material world and the realm of the senses amount to nothing, then? In the end, could it be that everything and nothing were the same?

  Galen cleared his throat and was about to say something—something important, he was quite sure, yet even as it formed in his mind and before it reached his lips the idea seemed to evaporate, like the vanishing mist on the water. The others stared at him, awaiting his utterance. They looked expectant, then suddenly alarmed. Was the look on his face so very strange? Curious to the end, Galen wished he could look in a mirror, so as to see what they saw, and thus understand their reaction. Then he felt a stabbing pain, so sharp it crowded out everything else. He clutched his chest and lost consciousness.

  The others pulled him from the pool and tried to revive him. They called for help. Men came running. There were always plenty of physicians at the baths, dispensing advice and lecturing.

  But there was nothing to be done. Galen was dead.

  Philostratus was speechless. Gaius wept. Aulus comforted his father. Slaves arrived with a sheet to cover the body and a stretcher to bear it away. Death at the baths was not entirely uncommon.

  The commotion had hardly subsided when another began. It started with cries from the vestibule and then moved through every room, carried on waves of murmurs and gasps. Even the death of Galen could not have caused such a reaction. It had to be something bigger.

  One of Philostratus’s slaves ran toward them.

  “Dominus…” he began.

  “Say it, man! Quickly!” They were already shaken, and now filled with dread.

  “The emperor—they say he’s dead.”

  “Caracalla? How?”

  “Murdered by a common soldier over some petty slight. They were out riding, when the emperor dismounted, and walked behind some rocks … to relieve himself. While his guard was down, the killer struck.”

  “A disgusting story!” said Philostratus. “Too tawdry to be true.”

  “Too tawdry not to be true,” said Aulus.

  “But there’s more news, Dominus. Bad news. The empress, when she received the news … she was already ill, suffering from a tumor in one breast. She ended her own life.”

  Philostratus closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

  “Poor Domna,” said Aulus. “Her husband gone, then one son … then the other…”

  With Geta murdered and the childless Caracalla assassinated, there was no line of succession. Domna, who might have masterminded a transition, was gone as well.

  “Who will rule us now?” whispered Aulus, reaching up to touch the fascinum.

  * * *

  From the roof of their house Gaius and his son and seven-year-old grandson watched the awesome spectacle of Rome in flames. This time it was the Flavian Amphitheater that was on fire, as well as parts of the palace on the Palatine Hill. It was late August, the day of the Vulcanalia. The heat was sweltering. The sky was full of dark clouds. It was a lightning strike that started the fire, a thunderbolt so powerful it shook the walls of their house.

  From their vantage point, the sight was shocking and bizarre. People thought of the amphitheater as made of solid stone, but there was abundant wood all through the structure. The amphitheater had become a gigantic bowl full of flames, spewing ash and plumes of cinders like a volcano. Standing next to the amphitheater and equally tall, the Colossus of Sol seemed to be watching the disaster with perverse enjoyment as the glow of the flames glittered across his golden, faintly smiling face.

  “Why did we give him that insipid smile?” wondered Gaius aloud.

  “We gave him the expression that Severus—or Domna, rather—desired,” said Aulus.

  “The Colossus originally looked like Nero. Some people will imagine they’re seeing the face of Nero, watching the city burn once again.”

  “The city? But there’s no reason to think the fire will spread,” said Aulus uneasily. “There’s a lot of open space around the structure to act as a firebreak, and plenty of water in all the aqueducts to douse the flames, and trained vigiles to direct the work. And these dark clouds might yet pour rain.”

  “Will the Colossus fall down?” asked a childish voice. Aulus’s son, Titus, was standing between them.

  “Of course it won’t!” said Aulus. “Your grandfather and I rebuilt it to last for ages.” But he shuddered at the thought. If the wooden supports inside the Colossus somehow caught fire, the whole statue might become a sort of oven, heating the metal sufficiently to bring down the entire structure—which might fall against the amphitheater. If that were to happen, the Colossus and the amphitheater might both be completely destroyed, and the heart of Rome turned into an inferno. A fire of such magnitude might quickly spread out of control.

  Aulus touched the fascinum. His father saw, and reached over to do the same, as both whispered a prayer that the Colossus would be spared. Domna, their champion, was dead, and they had no ties to the new emperor. It would be an ill omen indeed if one of the Pinarii’s finest and most visible achievements, the refurbished Colossus, should collapse.

  “No matter what happens, the fire will be seen as a very bad portent,” said Aulus. “It’s the new emperor who’ll be cast in a bad light. The Senate already hates him, if only because he’s not one of them. The first man to be proclaimed emperor who’s not from the ranks of the Senate—a Berber from Mauretania! The people hate him, too, because rumor has it he conspired to have Caracalla killed, after the emperor saw fit to make him Prefect of the Praetorian Guards. The people loved Caracalla, if only because he gave them such wonderful baths! Never mind that he bankrupted the state to pay for those baths, and also to raise the soldier’s pay.”

  “Macrinus should come to Rome, and quickly,” said Gaius. “It’s all very well for an army at one end of the empire to call you emperor. The real test comes when a man appears in person before the Senate and the people of Rome. When he does arrive, we’ll have to be on our guard. New emperors like to clean house.”

  “But Macrinus will need us, Father, if he wants to restore the amphitheater. Think of all those ruined statues!” In the arched niches that encircled the amphitheater stood scores of statues, of heroes, emperors, and gods, now stark silhouettes against the raging flames behind them. As the Pinarii watched, some of the statues fell from their crumbling pedestals, like desperate men jumping from the windows of a burning tenement.

  “I wonder what Macrinus looks like? In his early fifties, they say, with short hair but a very full beard. We shall have to sculpt him, of course. And his little son, this ten-year-old he insists on calling his co-emperor.”

  “A little boy with a very big name—Diadumenianus,�
�� said Aulus.

  “Dia—Dia—“Listening closely to his father, Titus tried to say the name, and failed.

  “So now we’re to be ruled by a man who’s never set foot inside the Senate House, and a boy hardly older than Titus,” said Gaius. “Let’s hope they at least have interesting features, if sculpt them we must.”

  The idea of new imperial commissions gave Gaius a feeling of well-being starkly at odds with the horror of watching the amphitheater burn. There was no disaster so universal that it did not bring good fortune to someone. Was it hubris, to think such a thing? Wealth and success inevitably attracted the Evil Eye of the envious and the spiteful. The only way to stave off such malevolent ill will was the fascinum. Gaius reached toward it again. Aulus must have had similar thoughts, for the fingers of father and son met as they touched the amulet. Young Titus, watching them, somberly reached up to do likewise. All sensed the power of the ancient amulet as it joined the three of them, not just with each other but with all the ancestors in all the ages past.

  A.D. 219

  It was almost two years after the fire that Senator Gaius Pinarius joined his peers in the Senate House for a most unusual and very important event. On the wall behind the Altar of Victory and above her statue, a very unusual portrait was about to be unveiled. It was a painting of their new emperor, a young man very few people in Rome had ever seen.

  Macrinus and his little son with the big name had ruled a little more than a year, without ever arriving in Rome. Unsettled affairs kept them in the East, and things went badly for them when another aspirant to the throne appeared, a fourteen-year-old claiming to be the son of the murdered Antoninus, or Caracalla as he was commonly known. This boy soon had the backing of the Third Legion. Macrinus sent a letter to the Senate in Rome denouncing his rival as “the False Antoninus” and claiming the young man was insane. The consuls and other high-ranking magistrates duly condemned the False Antoninus, and the Senate declared war on him.