Aulus and Philostratus, looking down on the surging crowd from the viewing platform, overheard a lively conversation between several men standing behind them.
“… also like a Jew, he’s circumcised. So I heard.”
“No, he isn’t cut yet, but he’s going to be—and looking forward to it! It’s to happen in the new temple. The priests will catch his blood and offer it to that stone.”
“And then do what to the foreskin? Offer it to the lady stone? Imagine a grown man submitting to such a thing!”
“Takes courage, if you ask me. Christian men do it, to please the Jews in their cult. Isn’t that so, Manlius? Don’t you have a cousin who’s a Christian?”
“To my shame. The idea of a man deliberately mutilating his penis is bad enough. I hear the emperor wants to cut it off—the whole thing! Then have the surgeons carve out a hole in its place.”
“Surely that’s not possible. Not even the great Galen could make a man into a woman! Just because he plays the woman in bed doesn’t mean he wants to be a woman. What man could want that?”
“But he did marry a woman…”
“One of the Vestals. But the senators threw a fit. The marriage is over and the Vestal is still a virgin.”
“I heard he wanted a wife so he could learn from her how to please a man—and the Vestal was useless for that, obviously!”
“Big ones. That’s what he likes. Extremely large phalluses. Everyone says so. You’ve got a big one, Manlius. We’ve all seen you, showing that thing off in the latrina. And we know you have a taste for boys. The new Antoninus really is quite pretty. Maybe you should go to the palace—”
“No! Not if I have to stop eating pork, and cut off my—”
The chatter abruptly ceased as something like an earthquake rocked the viewing platform. There were screams from below, and more shaking, as panic erupted and spread through the crowd. What felt like an earthquake was actually the movement of thousands of bodies, some of them being shoved and crushed against the platform. The crowd was jubilant one moment, terrified the next. Even amid the chaos, some people were still trying to catch the prizes and tokens falling from the tower. Some dropped to their hands and knees, scrambling to pick up a coin or goblet. Some stole from others, for amid the screams there were cries of “Thief!” Some were throwing punches, and others ducking and trying to flee. There was blood on people’s clothing and faces.
Still, prizes rained from the tower. The emperor was oblivious to the chaos down below.
Aulus looked at his father, who was still standing on the temple steps with the other senators. They were safely above the crowd, protected by Praetorian Guards. Aulus had never seen such a look on his father’s face. Gaius looked horrified, furious, and grief-stricken all at once.
Philostratus grabbed his arm. Aulus turned around to see that the viewing platform was empty. Everyone else had scattered, heading away from the crowd. They were the only ones left. The platform was jolted again. It swayed unsteadily, like a ship’s deck in a storm.
They fled for their lives.
* * *
That night, safe and sound again at home, Gaius and Aulus were both ready for bed when a summons arrived from the palace.
“At this ridiculous hour?” said Gaius, standing with his son in the vestibule where the imperial messenger stood waiting.
Aulus drew his father aside. “The hour is late, yes, but I hear the emperor keeps odd hours. This could be the opening we’ve been hoping for, Father—an imperial commission.”
“Very well, son. Go put on your toga, and I’ll put on mine.”
They crossed the city in an imperial litter, surrounded by slaves carrying torches. The streets were quiet, as was the vestibule of the palace, manned only by Praetorian Guards.
They were shown not to any of the usual audience chambers, but to a small room deep within the palace, where they found the young emperor surrounded not by philosophers or palace courtiers, but a coterie of young, handsome, athletic-looking men, some, to judge by their coarse manners, from the very lowest order of society. Strange music played in the background, presumably made by Emesene musicians. Strange perfumes wafted on the air. Even the fabrics and the furniture were foreign. Many of the men spoke neither Latin nor Greek, but some other language.
The young emperor was dressed in loose purple garments made entirely from silk. He wore numerous golden necklaces and bangles. He was indeed a beautiful boy, but it seemed he was not content with his natural beauty, for close up one could see that he wore cosmetics very skillfully applied. His eyes were lined with white lead and his cheeks lightly dusted with a reddish powder.
He seemed perpetually restless, always in motion, even when seated. His every movement, however small, seemed part of a sinuous, swaying dance. His arms were always in graceful motion, as were his hands, and even his fingers seemed to dance. His face, too, was always in motion—batting eyelashes, puckering lips, arching eyebrows. There was something lewd about all these movements, as if each gesture was a deliberately erotic provocation. He frequently made a sound the Pinarii took to be a laugh—a high, trilling ululation ending in a series of low, husky grunts.
“The Pinarii, father and son—how lovely to see you both. You were not already in bed, I take it?” He had a way of emphasizing some words more than others.
“We are always at the call of our Dominus,” said Gaius.
“I’ll remember that. So is this fellow—have you met my husband, Hierocles?” He gestured to the handsome blond youth who sat next to him. Hierocles was dressed as a charioteer of the Green faction, his arms and legs mostly bare. His green tunic fit tightly across his broad chest. The brown leather belt that cinched his narrow waist and the other leather straps of his outfit were not much darker than he was, for his skin was very tan.
“I see you staring at him. And who could blame you? What do you think?” The emperor sat forward abruptly and stared at the Pinarii, his lips pushed forward and his eyebrows arched.
“I … I was thinking how tan he is,” blurted Gaius, for lack of anything more appropriate to say.
“Ah, yes. And do you know—but then, how could you?—that he is that same honey-gold color everywhere, not just on his arms and legs. The sun loves him, you see, as much as I do—it kisses him all over. Everywhere! I would be jealous, if I didn’t have the same privilege. I insist that he spend an hour every day lying nude in the garden outside our bedchamber, so that Elagabalus may gaze down with delight upon such stunning perfection, and caress him all over with warm rays of sunshine.”
The emperor paused and cocked his head, as if inviting a response, but neither of the Pinarii spoke.
“Do you know the story of how we met?” he continued. He clapped his hands, which caused the bangles to clatter and chime. “Oh, it’s quite sweet, the sort of meeting some poet should immortalize in verse. It was in the Circus Maximus. Hierocles was racing a chariot for the Greens and took a terrible tumble, right in front of the imperial box—truly, Elagabalus intended us to meet in that very place and at that very moment. I looked down on the perfect youth lying there in the dust with his green tunic in tatters, his limbs scraped and bloody, his helmet thrown off. Oh, how that golden hair gleamed in the sunlight! It blinded me! For a moment I thought he was dead, and felt heartbroken. Utterly heartbroken! But then—he stirred. He raised himself on those brawny arms and looked up, straight at me. I melted. Melted! I sent attendants to fetch him and take him on a stretcher to the palace, and summoned all the best physicians to tend to his wounds.”
He looked sidelong at Hierocles and sighed. “He still has a most interesting scar across one of his buttocks, which no one is allowed to see but myself, and of course Elagabalus. I forbid Hierocles to race now, for fear some jealous, lesser god might somehow contrive to take him from me, but I insist that he wear his racing uniform, though his tunic now is of green silk, not common linen. It shows off his physique so divinely! His only fault is that he comes from Caria, and the
Carians are notorious for their hot tempers.” He sat forward and lowered his voice. “Sometimes my husband beats me—but only when I’ve been very naughty and truly deserve it. But—enough chit-chat! I fetched you here for a reason.”
“Yes, Dominus?” said Gaius.
“I possess many amulets, which I wear on different occasions, for different purposes. I’m wearing some of them now, as you may have observed.” His dancing fingers played upon his necklaces and the talismans that dangled from them. “I have heard that you Pinarii also possess an amulet, an object of great power. Let me see it!”
Gaius felt the blood drain from his face. This was the last thing he had expected. Was the fascinum to be taken from them again?
Aulus looked at his father. He, too, had gone pale. He slowly removed the chain from his neck and stepped forward, offering the fascinum to the emperor, who reached for it eagerly.
Antoninus emitted a loud, ululating sound, then slapped one hand over his mouth, as if to stop himself from laughing. He held the fascinum dangling on its chain before his narrowed eyes, twisted his face into a sour expression, and made a clucking sound with his tongue.
“No, no, no!” he said, in a tone one might use with a particularly slow child. “This will never do. So very small. I was told it was a phallus. I had imagined—well, something more impressive than this. It’s so tiny, and shapeless, and rather ugly—nothing like a penis at all! I can’t imagine any use for such a thing.”
Gaius was utterly taken aback. He had never heard a negative word about the fascinum, let alone such a crudely dismissive judgment. “It’s very old, Dominus, and much worn by time—”
“Like your own organ, perhaps?” Antoninus laughed, as did Hierocles and several others in the room. “And is your own phallus so bumpy?”
“Bumpy, Dominus?”
“These two protrusions on either side of the shaft—”
“Wings, Dominus. Those were originally wings, but as I say, time has considerably worn—”
“Wings? Now that is the limit! They say we Emesenes have naughty minds, but you’ll never see us putting wings on penises! Whatever would they be good for? I can only imagine they would get in the way.”
“In the way, Dominus?”
“Think, man! What is a penis used for, and how is it used? Now imagine it with wings, and tell me how that would work. What nonsense! No, I have no use for this silly trinket, no use at all. Let it flutter its stumpy little wings and go flying back where it came from.”
He made a show of shuddering and tossed the chain and talisman away from himself. Aulus bolted forward and barely managed to catch it.
“You may go,” said Antoninus. “Go, I said. Go, go, go! Out of my sight!”
The Pinarii made a quick retreat.
A litter had brought them, but no such luxury was offered for their return home. They walked.
As they made their way down the dark streets, Gaius at last managed to speak. “Have you ever seen such a thing? Whatever else he may be, our new emperor is certainly … unique.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Father. The whole encounter was bizarre, but if you mean his flamboyant mannerisms and all that makeup, well, one sees such fellows at the baths, and hanging about on certain street corners—”
“You’re talking about prostitutes!”
“Yes, but not only prostitutes. They say that every army barracks has a few such fellows among them. Sometimes they’re quite popular.”
Gaius considered this. “Yes, come to think of it, Uncle Kaeso had a close friend a bit like that, a big fellow appropriately named Magnus.” He chuckled. “But everyone called him Rosa.”
“Rosa?”
“As in ‘sub rosa.’ Rather a lot of ironic puns there, as Uncle Kaeso pointed out. The other soldiers were never ‘under Rosa’ because he preferred to be on the bottom, and all of this was done quite openly, not at all ‘sub rosa’—in secret. No, you mustn’t laugh, son. Poor Magnus died fighting the Germans. A hero’s death, according to Uncle Kaeso, rescuing a wounded comrade and slaughtering barbarians to his last breath. Uncle Kaeso drank a toast to him every year on the birthday of Mars.”
“So there, Father, you’ve made my point. Even a hero of the battlefield may flirt with men and play Venus. So, too, an emperor.”
“But can this be the same dashing youth who rallied the troops at Antioch and won the day against Macrinus?”
“They say the Roman garrison at Emesa loved him long before the battle. When the rumor spread that he might be the son of Caracalla, they all wanted a closer look at him. His grandmother and mother brought him out for all to see. ‘Little Dionysus,’ the men called him, because he was such a beautiful boy. It didn’t hurt that his grandmother was very generous to the troops with coins and wine. When the showdown with Macrinus came, no one expected Little Dionysus to appear on the battlefield, and when he did, who wouldn’t be impressed by a boy with such nerve? He certainly has a penchant for the theatrical. Perhaps on the battlefield he imagined himself a fierce Amazon, instead of Venus. However he pulled it off, the soldiers have been loyal to him ever since.”
“As long as he pays them, anyway.” Gaius shook his head and looked over his shoulder. The dark street was deserted. “We shouldn’t be talking this way about the emperor.”
“I suppose not,” said Aulus.
Gaius drew a deep breath and gritted his teeth. “As for those comments he made … the things he said about the fascinum—”
“Let us never speak of it.” Aulus shuddered. Then he smiled. “Except perhaps to Philostratus. I can hardly wait to tell him about our visit!”
* * *
It was not until early in the month of June that the Pinarii saw the emperor again.
As before, a messenger arrived, though not at such a late hour, and a litter carried them to the palace. The emperor received them in the conventional setting of an audience room full of courtiers. They were formally announced, and the emperor showed no signs of ever having met them before.
“I am told that here in Rome, there are no sculptors more skilled than the two Pinarii, father and son, and the artisans you employ. Is that so?”
“I should like to think so, Dominus,” said Gaius.
Antoninus looked at them shrewdly, then nodded. “Follow me. The rest of you, stay here. Except for you, scribe. I may need you to take notes.”
The emperor conducted them down a short, dimly lit hallway and then into a smaller room that contained only one thing, a life-size marble statue upon a pedestal. It was the god Antinous, consort of Hadrian.
“We had a statue of him in Emesa, too, which I adored. I understand there are hundreds of statues of him, all over the empire.”
“True, Dominus. Antinous is worshipped everywhere.”
“But the center of his cult is here, just outside Rome, is it not?”
“Yes, Dominus, his foremost priest keeps the shrine at the villa of Hadrian. But many of the god’s most ardent worshippers make a pilgrimage to the city founded by Hadrian called Antinopolis, on the Nile, in Egypt, where Antinous drowned.”
“I see.” The emperor dramatically extended his hand toward the scribe and wriggled his fingers. “Take a note! We must transfer all the most beautiful statues of the cult of Antinous, from all over the world, to the Temple of Elagabalus here in Rome, at once. The god will be delighted to have the company of so many beautiful consorts.”
Gaius gritted his teeth, pained at the idea that the worship of Antinous should be subsumed by the worship of Elagabalus—the beautiful youth made the consort of a rock!
“Tell me,” said the emperor, slowly circling the statue of Antinous and gazing up at it, pausing from time to time to appreciate a particular angle, “did there ever truly exist a mortal youth who possessed such physical perfection? I mean to say, was there really a living model for this statue, and all the other statues that bear his name? Or was this only someone’s idea of a perfect youth?”
“I assure
you, Dominus, there was indeed such a mortal. Antinous truly lived. He sacrificed himself in the Nile for the emperor Hadrian, so great was his love. But before that happened, my grandfather created the first statue of him, modeled from life. And it was my grandfather whom Hadrian ordered to make the first statues after Antinous died. So they are indeed true images. My grandfather was the first keeper of the cult of Antinous at Hadrian’s villa—the Divine Youth, he called him, foreseen in his own dreams. Others now oversee the shrine at the villa, but Antinous is still the object of great devotion in our household, and we—”
“So this statue actually shows him as he was,” said the emperor, still circling the statue, “unspeakably beautiful of face and form. The brow, the lips … the broad shoulder and deep chest … the muscular buttocks and thighs?”
“Yes, Dominus. All true to life.”
“And is the statue also true in the way it depicts his sacred organ of generation? Was Antinous truly endowed with such a tiny phallus? Why, mine is considerably larger than that, and I have hardly any use for it!”
Aulus barely stifled a laugh, but Gaius, appalled, kept a straight face. “I believe the statue to be true to the original, Dominus.”
“How sad for my predecessor, the Divine Hadrian. Face, form, phallus—in Antinous he had to be satisfied with only two counts of perfection out of three. But I do not, as you shall soon see!” He made a trilling laugh and clapped his hands. “So, old man, you yourself have made statues of Antinous, have you not?”
“That is correct, Dominus. I have sculpted many an image of Antinous, always staying true to the tradition established by my grandfather.”
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