“I want to marry her!” Gnaeus blurted out.
Aurelian stared at him for a long moment, then laughed. “If by marry her you mean copulate with her, every man who’s seen her has felt the same itch.” He looked knowingly at some of the surrounding courtiers, who snickered and laughed.
“I’m serious, Dominus.”
“Yes, I see you are. How old are you, Senator Pinarius?”
“Forty-two, Dominus.”
“And a widower, as I recall.” Like all good generals, Aurelian had a memory for the personal details of underlings.
“My wife died from the plague, many years ago. As did my son.”
“A widowed, childless Roman senator wants to marry Zenobia of Palmyra—and then what, beget little Palmyrene upstarts to raise trouble for me when I’m old and gray?”
“I … hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“You should, if you ever want to copulate with the bitch. Do you not know the stipulation she imposed on her husband? Before they married, she told Odenathus she would submit to having intercourse with him for one purpose only, to beget children, and if she was not at the time of the month to do so, she would not allow him in her bedchamber. Poor Odenathus actually went along with her demands. Well, you can hardly call such a man a man—or such a woman a woman!”
The courtiers laughed. Gnaeus felt his face grow hot. “Even so, Dominus…”
Aurelian nodded thoughtfully. “Keeping her here in Rome might actually be preferable to exiling her to some island. Easier to keep an eye on her. I would expect her husband to do just that—keep a close watch. There can be no plotting or scheming, no contact whatsoever with any of her old friends and relations from Palmyra.”
“As you wish, Dominus.”
“And—man to man, Senator—I think you should understand that she comes to you … not untouched.”
“If you mean…?”
“You know exactly what I mean. If she tells you she’s never submitted to any man except to make a baby, well, ask some of my higher-ranking officers about that.”
“Do you mean to say that they…?”
Aurelian grinned. “Only after I took my turn. Several turns, I should say. What do you think happened after I chased her down and caught her in the desert? A chase like that heats a man’s blood. A woman’s, too.” His courtiers smirked. Aurelian shrugged. “What’s the point of conquering a woman in battle if you don’t enjoy the spoils? She’s lucky I didn’t do the same to her brat—he was pretty enough. Afterward, I could have crucified them both.” He sighed. “But when I prayed on the matter, Apollonius told me to be merciful.”
“Apollonius?”
“The sage of Tyana. Oh yes, I remember now, your family has a personal connection to him. And to Philostratus, the man who wrote the biography. He also helped your father write The Millennium.”
“That’s right. But you were saying, about Apollonius…?”
“I saw the old fellow with my own eyes. As clearly as I see you now. And he spoke to me.”
“When was this, Dominus?”
“In Tyana, of course!” Aurelian smiled. He clearly did not mind telling the story. “Before Palmyra, we came to Tyana, which was also loyal to Zenobia. The men were hungry for booty, so I promised them that when we took Tyana we would—my exact words—‘leave not a dog alive!’ The siege commenced, and went well, but then one night, in my tent, Apollonius appeared to me. He told me that I must spare the people of his hometown, and before I could question him—he vanished! I don’t mind admitting that I broke into a cold sweat. Demons can have that effect, even on the bravest mortal. Well, I had to do as he asked, but that meant going back on my promise to the soldiers. Or did it? Do you know how I solved the problem?”
“No, Dominus.”
“I told the men to spare the people of Tyana … not to harm a hair on anyone’s head … but to kill all the dogs!” He laughed. “Do you see? I stayed true to my word—I left no dog alive—but I also did as Apollonius commanded.”
The emperor sat back in his throne, relishing the memory. “Before Tyana, I had another vision, when we were laying siege to Emesa. I looked up and saw a black stone floating in midair. It passed directly in front of the sun, so that it was circled by a fiery halo. I wasn’t the only one who saw the thing. Many of my soldiers saw it, too. And I heard it speak. ‘You will be victorious,’ the stone said, ‘but you must honor me!’ After I took Emesa, the first thing I did was to visit the Temple of Elagabalus. I went into the sanctum—and there I saw the divine form again! It was the baetyl they worship, the stone that fell from the sky long ago, a shard of the Sun’s divine being.
“And right there in the temple, I saw the stone rise up in the air, and again it spoke to me, promising me that I would conquer Palmyra, and saying that when I returned to Rome I must straightaway build a new temple to Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun. ‘Make it the greatest temple Rome has ever seen and dedicate it to me, but make it a home for all the gods, where every god may be worshipped under a single roof. As the sun is singular and indivisible and brings life to all the world, so the sun manifests in itself all things divine.’”
“The False Antoninus wanted to do something like that,” muttered Gnaeus.
“What’s that? Ah yes, him! That poor boy hauled the baetyl all the way from Emesa to Rome, then ended up headless and dragged through the streets with his mother. Well, his heart was in the right place. Ahead of his time, when it came to religion. A generation from now, we shall all worship Sol, in whose light all gods reside. And for daily wisdom, all men shall look to Apollonius, the wisest man who ever lived. Ha! The look on your face, Senator Pinarius! Yes, I have a philosophical side to me, low-born soldier that I am. The campaign to take Palmyra also became a journey of religious awakening. Now, Sol Invictus and the sage of Tyana guide all that I do, inform every decision I make.”
He was quiet for a moment, then grunted. “But we were talking of something much more mundane—the fate of Zenobia. Well … if you want her, you can have her. A senator’s wife—what better way to stash her out of sight? Gallienus did a wise thing, when he decreed that you senators could no longer command legions. Now all generals must rise from the ranks, as I did. And because no man will ever rule this empire without commanding legions first, that means no senator will ever sit on the throne again. So let Zenobia be a senator’s wife and live in a senator’s house, where she can quietly fade into obscurity.”
* * *
So it came about that Gnaeus had been granted his wish. Aurelian stipulated that the nuptials be conducted without fanfare or festivity, which suited Gnaeus. The marriage was known to few. Most Romans had no idea of what had become of Zenobia. If they thought of her at all, they might assume she was strangled at the end of the triumph, which was the traditional fate of a conquered enemy. Zenobia herself was content to seldom leave the house. She had no desire to be recognized and gawked at. Gnaeus alone had the privilege of gazing upon her at leisure, as he was doing at that very moment on the roof terrace of the House of the Beaks, desiring her.
But, as she had done with Odenathus, Zenobia had refused to marry Gnaeus unless he agreed that they would copulate only on occasions when it was likely and desirable to create a child. Since their marriage, they had done so only a handful of times, and he had been disappointed by her lack of enthusiasm. Vain male that he was, Gnaeus had assumed that his lovemaking would seduce her, or that she would at least feign enjoyment out of gratitude for saving her from exile. Her obstinacy only piqued his desire for her. He sometimes entertained a fantasy of forcing her against her will. Then he would remember that she claimed descent from Cleopatra. It was said that Cleopatra wrote a whole book about poisons and how to use them. Zenobia was not a wife to be trifled with.
Rebuffed and frustrated once more, he turned away and without another word left her alone on the terrace, gazing at the moonlit city.
In the house, he encountered his sister. “Have you seen Zenobia?” Pin
aria asked.
Gnaeus pointed toward the roof terrace. Pinaria passed him, and a few moments later, from the terrace, he heard the two of them laughing. Why did Zenobia never laugh that way with him? Was she so frightened of him? Or did she hold him in contempt? If so, she hid her feelings well. She was always respectful to him, and sometimes even seemed to be a bit fond of him. Zenobia neither loved nor loathed him. Her response was steadfastly lukewarm—which maddened him.
He heard the women laugh again, and then engage in animated conversation, though he couldn’t make out the words. What did the two of them find to talk about? Feminine matters, he supposed, not sure what that meant. Curious, he stepped to the doorway, drawing close enough to eavesdrop.
They were talking about religion.
Pinaria made her perennial complaint, frustration with her mother’s unremitting Christianity, which was no longer illegal but was still shameful. Zenobia, too, expressed disdain for the Christians, but fondly recalled a meeting with the prophet Mani, who had once visited Palmyra and healed Zenobia’s desperately ill sister. Gnaeus didn’t know much about Mani, except that he had gained a large following among the Persians.
The wise man whom Zenobia most revered was the philosopher Longinus, who had been a towering figure in the court at Palmyra. Longinus had advised her to resist Aurelian, saying that Rome was the past and Palmyra the future. For that bad counsel he had been beheaded by Aurelian, despite Zenobia’s pleas for clemency. In the House of the Beaks she had set up a shrine to Longinus alongside those of Antinous and Apollonius of Tyana.
“But Longinus is here. He followed you to Rome,” said Pinaria. “I’m almost certain it was his ghost I saw last night. He didn’t speak, but I recognized him from that painting of him, in your shrine.”
Pinaria, like her mother, regularly saw the ghosts of those who had lived in the house—Pompey the Great, Antony and Fulvia, the emperor Tiberius, and the ill-fated Gordians. Their Christian mother had decided that these spirits of once-living Romans were now demons unworthy of paradise, doomed to haunt their earthly abode as punishment for their sins.
For better or worse, Gnaeus had never seen a ghost. Nor had Zenobia. “Not even my husband Odenathus,” he heard her tell Pinaria, “though I would gladly have welcomed his counsel when Aurelian laid siege to Palmyra! If you see Longinus again, tell him to visit me. I miss him so!”
A thought occurred to Gnaeus. Might he win over Zenobia by appealing to her intellect?
* * *
The dinner was a formal affair and very old-fashioned, with couches to recline on and only six diners: Titus Pinarius presiding as paterfamilias, Clodia, Gnaeus, Pinaria, Zenobia, and their guest, the philosopher Porphyry, who had promised to give a recitation.
Porphyry was only forty or so, but, according to everyone Gnaeus asked, he was the most respected intellectual in the city. He was a champion of the late philosopher Plotinus, but in younger days had lived in the East and at that time was equally close to Longinus. When he learned that Zenobia would be present, getting him to come to dinner took some doing. Porphyry was not eager to meet the same fate as Longinus. But in the end he could not pass up a chance to meet the legendary queen.
For her part, Zenobia was magnificently arrayed in the few pieces of jewelry Aurelian had allowed her to keep. Golden serpents with ruby eyes were wrapped around her bare arms. Rings flashed and bracelets made delicate music at her slightest gesture. Her necklace, said to have been worn by Cleopatra, displayed a single, very large, flawless pearl with golden wings to either side, a depiction of the Egyptian sun god, Ra. It reminded Gnaeus of the fascinum, which depicted a phallus with wings. He touched the place on his chest where it would have rested had he not put it aside after the death of his wife and son.
Gnaeus worried that one or the other might be disappointed, but the two of them hit it off at once. Porphyry dared to ask about the last days of Longinus, and praised his memory. Zenobia was curious about Porphyry’s studies under Plotinus, whom she had never met, though she had read all his works. Titus, who was a student of philosophy as well as history, joined in their lively discussion of Neo-Platonism, but the topic went completely over Gnaeus’s head. From the bits he could follow, the conversation reminded him of what Aurelian had said about folding the worship of all gods into worship of a single deity, the sun.
At a pause in the discussion, he shared the emperor’s comments.
“If I understood Aurelian correctly,” said Gnaeus, “whether one calls it Sol Invictus or Elagabalus or Helios or Apollo—or Ra, as the Egyptians do—the sun is always the sun, everywhere, the one and only, the manifest source of all life and enabler of all human activity. It occurs to me, Zenobia, that there is a certain similarity between the image of Ra that you wear tonight, and the image of Fascinus that has been passed down in my family for many centuries. Both are winged, and both are givers of life. It all comes back to the sun—or so Aurelian would have it. Well, such a streamlined religion would certainly simplify things. There are far too many deities and cults and shrines for any one man to keep track of them all.”
“Well then, son,” said Clodia, who until then had stayed aloof from the discussion, “you might as well acknowledge the one true god of the Jews and Christians.”
Porphyry winced. “With all due apologies to my hostess, I felt obliged some while ago to write a treatise opposing the Christians. Let me point out just one example of their contradictory thinking. Christians forbid killing, yes? They glorify meekness, and they boast of their refusal to acknowledge any god but their own. And yet, one sees Christians who seem determined to serve in the army, where they must be bold, not meek, must slaughter the enemies of Rome, and must swear allegiance to both the emperor and to the gods of Rome. They preach one thing, but do the opposite.”
Clodia shrugged. “I’m no philosopher, as my husband and children will be happy to tell you. But there is a long and fabled tradition of Christians serving in the legions, going back at least to the legendary Twelfth Legion, which was composed entirely of Christians. Under Marcus Aurelius, when the Romans were hemmed in by the enemy and dying of thirst, the Christians of the Twelfth prayed to the One True God, who in return deluged the battlefield with rain, drowning the barbarians even as the joyful Romans quenched their thirst by drinking from their shields—shields which thereafter they decorated with thunderbolts to mark their deliverance by the One True God’s thunderstorm. Thus our god’s existence was proved to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who wrote a letter to the Senate praising the Christian soldiers, and proclaiming that from that day forward the Twelfth should be known as the Thundering Legion. And he ordered that upon his column, decorated by the Pinarii, the scene of the legendary Rain Miracle should depict our god above the battlefield, shown as a wise old man with a long beard.”
Titus groaned and wearily shook his head. “Wife, wife, wife! Where should I begin? Your version of history is a tissue of half-truths, false assumptions, and outright nonsense. I personally reviewed every scrap of evidence about the Rain Miracle when I was researching The Millennium, so I know what I’m talking about!
“First of all, while there may have been a few Christians scattered here and there among the legions back in days of the Divine Marcus—the plague of his day made it necessary to lower standards and take just about anyone willing to serve, even criminals and atheists—there was certainly never an entire legion made up of Christians. The idea is simply absurd. If the legions have since then been infiltrated by Christians, I don’t know, but I rather doubt it, given the severe scouring of the ranks done by Decius, who demanded strict observance of proper Roman religion by the troops.
“Second, the Rain Miracle occurred after the Egyptian Harnouphis summoned Mercury, so Mercury was the god who brought the rain. The storm is personified as a long-bearded river god on the Column of Marcus. That is not an image of the god of the Jews.
“Third, the shields of the Twelfth Legion were already decorated with thunderbolts—sy
mbol of Jupiter—and had been so for at least a century, going back to the days of Augustus. They did not acquire their name from the Rain Miracle. And since words and their precise meaning do matter, I must point out that they are called ‘Twelfth Legion Thunderbolt,’ not ‘Thundering Legion,’ as you would have it.”
Clodia was unperturbed. “I have read the true version of history, husband, in the works of the Christian writers Apollinaris and Tertullian.”
Porphyry wrinkled his nose. Clearly he did not think much of these authors.
Titus sighed. “For the proliferation of such nonsense, I feel a bit responsible. I could have forestalled it when I wrote The Millennium, by including all of the pertinent details of the Rain Miracle. But Philip kept demanding that I cut, cut, cut, and the Rain Miracle disappeared from the book.”
“Then he saved you from making an embarrassing mistake, husband. There always was something about Philip I liked. Anyway, the version of events told by Apollinaris and Tertullian is proved by the letter Marcus Aurelius himself wrote to the Senate, praising the Christian soldiers of the Thundering Legion—”
“No, no, no! Not that old nonsense about the letter, yet again! In the archives of the Senate, with my own eyes, wife, I have read the letter in question, and in discussing the battle, Marcus made no mention, none whatsoever, of your fictitious Christian legion, which I must insist be called the Twelfth Legion Thunderbolt. And furthermore—”
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