Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  In the end, Maximian was allowed to choose the manner of his death, and he hanged himself.

  After reading this passage aloud to his father and grandfather, Kaeso put down the book and quipped: “Pity the ‘worthless’ eunuch!”

  “Yes, you’d think they could have used the old pillow trick, instead,” said Zenobius.

  Kaeso laughed. “Like something in a comedy by Plautus!”

  “No, pillows do not bleed,” observed Gnaeus. “It was necessary that Maximian be caught literally red-handed, next to a dead body. Pity the eunuch, yes, but also Fausta, having to chose which one must die, father or husband!”

  “How did they make the eunuch lie still, and not cry out?” asked Kaeso. “Do you think they tied him up and gagged him?”

  “More likely they drugged him, so that he was unconscious,” suggested Gnaeus. “Not a pretty detail, however it was done—arranging for another human being to be stabbed to death in one’s stead.”

  “And yet,” said Zenobius, “this must be the version of events approved by Constantine himself—the official version—since it comes from Lactantius.”

  “How did such a radical Christian ever insinuate himself into the emperor’s household? The charlatan dares to quote Virgil!” Gnaeus shook his head. In his old age, the rapid changes of recent years had left him increasingly baffled. He had become strenuously anti-Christian, and was especially offended by any criticism or mockery of Apollonius of Tyana, as happened in Eusebius’s book.

  Gnaeus found it alarming that his grandson, who was now eighteen and the wearer of the fascinum, did not seem at all anti-Christian. Instead, Kaeso was open to dangerous new ideas, including the notion that Christianity might have some real value, and that Jesus had been a wonder-worker greater than Apollonius.

  Zenobius had largely stayed aloof from arguments between his father and his son. His mandate to please the emperor, whom he would soon see face to face, put him in a delicate position.

  Gnaeus was inveighing, and not for the first time, against the Edict of Milan: “If it is now up to any given individual to decide which gods do or do not exist, does that mean no gods exist, except in the imagination of each individual? Or is it that all gods exist, but any mortal can freely choose which are important or not important? So, if I say Jupiter is king of the gods, and you say Jupiter does not even exist, or at best is a mere demon, surely we cannot both be right. One of us is right and the other wrong. And surely the right opinion should dictate all religious observance and ritual, and the wrong opinion should be discarded, and those who hold that opinion made to see the error of their ways. The result of this edict must inevitably be chaos—and the gods will not be amused!”

  “But Grandfather, for the sake of argument,” said Kaeso, “what if the Christians are right, and there is only one god, their own, and all other so-called gods are mere pretenders? As you say, it cannot be that both sides are right, and, as you say, surely the right opinion should dictate all religious observance. In that case, if the Christians gain the upper hand, would they be justified in persecuting adherents of the old religion, since impiety by one invites divine retribution on all?”

  “‘If the Christians gain the upper hand’?” Gnaeus shuddered. “Kaeso, Kaeso, Kaeso! I know you say such things only to bait me, which is unkind of you. I am a very old man, and you should not exasperate me.” He drew a deep breath. “We—I mean the Pinarii, but also all Romans—are faithful and we should remain faithful, no matter what happens, to that which Christians now disparage as ‘the old religion’ precisely because it is old, because it is received wisdom, ancient wisdom, the wisdom handed down to us by our ancestors, those who created this city and this empire. Indeed, the religion of our ancestors is the most precious inheritance we have.

  “The same principle applies to all fields of knowledge. Consider Galen and his practice of medicine. The list of known cures handed down to him carried authority precisely because that list predated him. Many generations were required to build up such a vast body of knowledge. Should physicians simply throw out the formulary of cures and start anew with each generation? Of course not! Yet that is what Christians would have us do—throw out all the gods and rituals that made Rome great, and have kept us great, century after century, while other cities and empires have come and gone. By reflex, we as Romans reject the novel and the exotic—and what could be more foreign to Roman ways of thinking than this bizarre mandate of the Jews and Christians, to worship one god only?”

  Kaeso nodded slowly, weighing his grandfather’s argument. “But monotheism is not an exotic notion to many people in the eastern parts of the empire. Their religions are also ancient, with rituals and observances going back countless generations. Are those in the East not just as much citizens of Rome as those in the West, and do their notions have no validity?”

  Gnaeus grunted. “We have Caracalla to blame for extending citizenship to every farmer and fishmonger in the empire. At least the Jews keep to themselves—except when staging bloody rebellions. But Christians are another matter. They would make a world in which no god may be worshipped except their own. And then, worshipped only in this way, not that. You see how they squabble among themselves, quite viciously, so that whichever faction is currently most powerful takes retribution on the others, casting them out, persecuting them, even stoning them. The idea that such people might someday rule over the rest of us is appalling!”

  “But don’t you see, Grandfather, that is why Constantine’s edict protects everyone. It allows freedom of worship to each citizen—”

  “For now it does. For now,” said Gaius. “But if things proceed down the path you postulate—if, gods forbid, we should someday be forced to endure a Christian emperor—well, I can’t even imagine such a thing, it’s so patently absurd, like those preposterous situations one encounters in the satires of Lucian, where people travel to the moon or set themselves on fire to prove a point.”

  Zenobius felt obliged to interject. “Actually, Father, I believe Peregrinus really did set himself on fire. Lucian witnessed him do so.”

  “But traveling to the moon, you will agree, is a preposterous idea—yet no more preposterous than this inexplicable drift toward Christianity. Our religion and our gods work. Theirs do not. Otherwise, Jerusalem would be the capital of an empire and Rome would be a backwater, a subject city. We would have been the slaves, and they our masters. Our religion has brought us thus far—it has created the greatest empire in history. Can the Jews and the Christians make any similar claim? Quite the opposite. The Jews’ religion has brought them nothing but misery and bondage. The Christians’ religion has brought them nothing but the scorn of decent people, and made them outcasts, not just from true religion but from common society. They produce no philosophers—quite the opposite. They produce no art or literature except of the poorest and most childish quality. This rubbish by Eusebius, mocking Apollonius, is a case in point.”

  His grandfather had become so emotional that Kaeso refrained from making a rebuttal. Zenobius took advantage of the pause to change the subject.

  “Any day now a messenger will arrive at our door, and I shall be called to deliver an accounting of all the work we’ve accomplished while the emperor was away. Hopefully, Constantine will have more work for us, in conjunction with his Decennalia celebration. Let there be no dissention or arguments in the House of the Beaks. The Pinarii must all pull together!”

  * * *

  The summons arrived the next day.

  While Gnaeus stayed home, Zenobius and Kaeso accompanied the emperor and his eldest son on a tour of the city’s new and reconstructed works. Crispus was near Kaeso in age, and Zenobius had hoped the two of them might hit it off, but Crispus projected a haughty demeanor, much like that of his father. It was abundantly clear that the Pinarii were considered not collaborators but mere servants.

  At one point, Zenobius overheard Crispus ask Kaeso, “Is it true that your grandmother was Zenobia of Palmyra?” Kaeso answe
red with a simple nod of his head, after which Crispus remarked, “That’s the way of the world, isn’t it? Some rise. Some fall.” He laughed then, a harsh laugh identical to that of his father.

  The face of the Colossus was once again that of Sol. The makeover had posed many technical challenges, and Zenobius was proud of the final result, but a part of him remained sentimental about Maxentius and all he had done for the city. Zenobius had even dared to disobey Constantine in a quietly subversive way. Constantine had explicitly demanded that the stone at the base of the Colossus, inscribed with Maxentius’s dedication to young Romulus, was to be destroyed. Instead, Zenobius had preserved the stone and had reused it in the top of the new Arch of Constantine. The stone was placed backward, so that the intact inscription was hidden from sight, and would remain that way for as long as the arch stood.

  That arch, aligned so that its central passageway framed the Colossus of Sol in the distance, was a stupendous achievement, with not just one archway but three, the largest in the center. It was clad on every surface with marble relief sculptures, all brightly painted.

  Zenobius remained uneasy about the juxtaposition of exquisite older pieces of sculpture alongside new reliefs that were clearly inferior. These new panels nonetheless seemed to please Constantine, who had dictated their content, including the destruction of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. That Constantine seemed unable to tell the difference in sculptural quality was a relief to Zenobius, but also a disappointment. He could not help but imagine the scathing critique Maxentius would have given the arch. But Maxentius would have been amused by another bit of subversion Zenobius had wrought on the arch. The tondo depicting Hadrian and Antinous had been duly re-carved so that it now depicted Constantine, happily hunting alongside Hadrian’s young lover, for the face of Antinous was unchanged. Kaeso had laughingly called it “Constantine and Antinous, together again, for the very first time.” This unlikely pairing struck Zenobius, depending on his mood, as comical, tragic, or blasphemous. Art connoisseurs and worshippers of Antinous would be in on the joke. Constantine did not fall into either category.

  There was another problem with the reuse of the old tondi. After being re-carved, Constantine’s head was too small for his body. The body could not be similarly reduced in size without making the emperor smaller than the other figures, which would only create more problems. In some cases these disparities in scale were painfully obvious, at least to Zenobius. Certain tricks employed in painting the images had helped to disguise the incongruity.

  Constantine seemed not to notice the smallness of his head, or to recognize Antinous. The emperor was quite pleased. “I do love to hunt,” he said, gazing up at the tondo. “And that young man with me—that would be Crispus, I suppose? Though it rather flatters you, son.”

  Crispus snorted, and looked bored. He was not an art lover.

  “Which emperors were originally depicted in these scenes?” asked Constantine.

  Zenobius identified the figures, now made into Constantine, which were variously engaged in making war, hunting, or offering sacrifices.

  “And to think,” said Constantine, “now these images depict not Trajan, not Hadrian, not Marcus—but me. I love it!” He threw back his head and laughed.

  “It’s like a palimpsest,” said Kaeso with a smile. It was an observation he had once shared during family dinner at the House of the Beaks, whereupon both Gnaeus and Zenobius had praised his cleverness. That was probably why Kaeso repeated it now, though Zenobius would have advised against doing so. It was always better to let the emperor make his own clever observations.

  “Like a what?” asked Crispus.

  “A palimpsest,” answered Kaeso. “You know, a piece of parchment on which the letters have grown so faded that you write over them, reusing the parchment—though sometimes you can still make out bits and pieces of the original text. Or a schoolboy’s wax tablet, where you rub out the letters and make new ones with your stylus. These sculptures, too, are a kind of palimpsest, don’t you think?”

  Crispus narrowed his eyes suspiciously and made no reply. Zenobius had the impression that the young man did not spend a lot of time around books, notwithstanding the efforts of his famous Latin teacher.

  Zenobius cast a fretful glance at Constantine, worried that he, too, might take offense, but the emperor was thoughtfully rubbing the cleft in his chin. “History itself is a sort of palimpsest,” said Constantine. “One can almost always detect faint traces of the people who once existed and the things they once did in a particular place. But by the very act of living we erase the past and write over it.”

  Kaeso nodded. “And those who come after us, in their turn, will rub the tablet smooth, and write their own story,” he said. Such old-fashioned Stoic logic took the metaphor a step too far. Now it was Constantine who narrowed his eyes. Kaeso turned a bit pale.

  “We must see to it,” said the emperor, “that the story we write is never written over. It must be permanent. Indelible. Impossible to erase.”

  As the party moved on, and left the arch behind, a jarring thought occurred to Zenobius. Did Constantine think of religion as a palimpsest? Did he think the gods of Olympus could somehow be erased, and a Christian god put in their place? Would faded scrolls of Homer and Virgil be written over with the works of Lactantius? Zenobius felt a tremor of guilt at even thinking such impious thoughts, but also a sinking horror, almost a physical sensation, as if a trapdoor had suddenly opened under his feet.

  * * *

  The party next took a tour at the site of the old House of the Laterani. The empress Fausta’s quarters had been finished, quite luxuriously, and she was reportedly very pleased. Finished too were the more austere living quarters and the council chambers of the Christian bishop.

  The basilica where the Christians would worship was still under construction. The bishop met them. He and the emperor discussed what sort of decorations might be appropriate. Zenobius gathered that it was desirable to have paintings and statues of Jesus and the martyrs, but no images of the Christian god. The appearance and attributes, and even the gender of this deity were still unclear to Zenobius, and to the god’s worshippers, too, it seemed.

  Constantine had allowed a very lavish budget for the project. To Zenobius it was still very strange that the emperor was funding and actively engaged in the construction of a Christian temple in the very heart of Rome—but work was work, he told himself, quashing his misgivings. Kaeso, on the other hand, seemed to take each new development in stride, as if everything were perfectly normal. What a generational difference there was between the easygoing Kaeso and his rabidly anti-Christian grandfather, with Zenobius muddling along somewhere in the middle.

  Their last stop was back in the Forum, at the New Basilica, which was finally finished and decorated inside, a riot of polished marble and some truly magnificent mosaics. Though Maxentius had not lived to see it, his vision had at last been fully realized.

  But Maxentius could never have foreseen the object that dominated the space, despite the vastness of the room—the truly gigantic, seven-times-larger-than-life statue of Constantine enthroned in the apse. In the end, after much wrangling and experimentation, Zenobius had decided to make the statue not from bronze but from marble. More precisely, the head and exposed parts of the arms and legs were of marble. The clothed parts of the statue were merely a framework made of bricks, wood, and plaster covered with drapery. Like the Arch of Constantine, the thing was a hodgepodge, a jumble of diverse parts assembled piecemeal, but presented as a singular, fully finished work of art.

  The marble flesh was tinted to look lifelike. One hand held a scepter, and here again Zenobius had added his own secret, subversive flourish, for this giant replica was modeled on the actual scepter of Maxentius, which remained hidden at the nearby Temple of Venus and Roma, safe in the crypt where Zenobius had placed it, to which he and Kaeso alone knew the means of access. As long as the seven-times-larger-than-life scepter was held aloft, to Zenobius it wo
uld represent his private, secret memorial to Maxentius. As the party drew near the statue, a shaft of sunlight from a high window struck the huge glass orb of the scepter. Multicolored lozenges of light were cast across the wall and ceiling.

  Zenobius found the huge statue itself rather grotesque, but Constantine, seeing it for the first time, seemed awed by his own image. He turned to Crispus. “Do you think it looks like your father?” He turned around and stood so that his son could observe his face and that of the statue, which by a trick of distance and perspective appeared to be the same size. Crispus frowned. “It’s a bit frightening, how much it looks like you.”

  “No, no! Not frightening at all,” said a dark-robed figure walking quickly toward them, his soft-soled shoes padding gently on the gleaming marble. “The statue is very wise looking, I think. And very pious, not gazing down at the viewer, but upward—at some divine symbol in the sky, perhaps.”

  What sort of man, Zenobius wondered, could simply walk up and join a conversation with the emperor? The elderly fellow was well dressed in robes of some costly fabric, but he clearly was neither a senator nor a military man. When he exchanged a familiar nod with Crispus, Zenobius remembered seeing the man’s face at a distance in the imperial procession when it entered the city. This was Lactantius, the Christian scholar, Latin tutor to Crispus, and author of Deaths of the Persecutors.

  Constantine took the man’s hand and clasped his shoulder. His face became quite animated, assuming a liveliness Zenobius had not seen before. “Lactantius! Your appearance is propitious. I’ve been wanting to introduce you to Zenobius here, because it was Zenobius, when we first met, who suggested to me that my dream of the chi-rho symbol before the battle at the Milvian Bridge might have been prompted by a memory of seeing it on some document or map, used as shorthand for chrestos.” Constantine turned to Zenobius. “But Lactantius here, hearing the same story from my lips, suggested quite a different explanation, which to me makes much more sense: chi and rho are the first two letters of Christ. So there I was, prompted by my dream, having all my men make that sign on their shields—a symbol of Jesus Christ, though I had no way of knowing that at the time. And yet, by writing the sign of Christ on their shields, my soldiers triumphed!”