Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  The little poem that had been widely posted and much talked about in recent days went:

  Who still longs for this Golden Age of Saturn?

  The memory lingers only on a gem of Nero’s pattern.

  The references offered a tantalizing puzzle. Everyone took the gem to be the agate cameo, which was still on display. By why “of Nero’s pattern”? Nero had never celebrated a triumph—but in common with Constantine, he had killed his wife and child (in Nero’s case a child not yet born). “This Golden Age” no doubt referred to the twenty-year reign of Constantine, while the very notion of a Golden Age hearkened back to Saturn, first king of the gods, who reigned at the dawn of time. But the implied comparison was not flattering: Saturn had devoured his own children.

  “And so the unknown poet, with great economy, manages not only to dismiss our current ‘Golden Age,’ but also to equate the emperor to not one but two tyrants who murdered their own offspring,” said Zenobius.

  “At least he didn’t do like Nero, and murder his mother as well,” quipped Kaeso. “But leaving poetry and getting back to gossip—after considering all the rival versions, what do you think is the true story, Father?”

  “We will never know, my son,” said Zenobius. Just as you will never know about your own father’s involvement, he thought, for true to his word he had told no one, not even Kaeso, about his meeting with Constantine on the fateful day before Fausta’s death.

  * * *

  A few days later there came to the House of the Beaks another summons, this time to the New Basilica, requesting both Zenobius and Kaeso.

  To the great relief of Zenobius, on this occasion their reception was quite formal. The vast hall was filled with courtiers conferring in hushed tones, messengers hurriedly going about their errands, secretaries with dossiers ready to be called on, and scribes recording every official utterance. Wearing purple and gold robes of state and a golden diadem with a double string of pearls—the first emperor to adorn his crown with jewels—Constantine sat on a throne on a high dais in front of the giant statue of himself. He sat so stiffly that at a distance he looked like a miniature version of the statue, perhaps made of painted plaster or wax. But when they drew closer, Zenobius dared to look into the man’s eyes, and the eyes of Constantine stared back at him. The rigid figure on the throne was a living man, after all.

  “I am cutting short my stay in Rome,” said Constantine. “My visit was intended to be longer, and my dear mother urges me to stay, but things here in Rome … have not gone to my liking. Frankly, Senator Pinarius, I do not care for the sullen mood of the citizenry, nor for their incessant and reckless gossip, nor for the ill-advised tenacity with which the vast majority cling to the old religion. More now than ever, I can hardly wait for my new city to be built! Toward that end, I am leaving Rome, and you, Senator Pinarius, will come with me. So will your son. Your talents are required for the construction and decoration of the new city.”

  The emperor fell silent. He nodded to a courtier, who nodded to Zenobius to indicate that he could speak.

  “Dominus, is this posting to be … temporary?”

  “What do you think, Senator? You know the situation at Byzantium. You know how much work remains to be done. It will be a labor of many years. And having built the city, will you not wish to live in it? I suggest that you bring your families with you. Sell or rent out that famous house you live in. Besides that house, what else is keeping you here in this city haunted by demons?”

  Not long ago, Zenobius would have answered, “My father.” Now the dear old man was gone—his sudden death attributable in some degree to Constantine. But there was so much more that bound him to Rome. This was the city of his childhood, the city of his ancestors, the greatest city in all of human history, a living temple filled with shrines and monuments, layered with the innumerable memories of countless generations. Constantine, the footloose warrior of no fixed abode who had traveled the world slaughtering one rival after another, to whom one fortress or palace was much the same as any other—such a man could never understand how deeply Zenobius loved his native city.

  And yet … Zenobius was also the son of the queen of Palmyra, and there had always been a part of him that had felt drawn to the eastern half of the empire. The site of Byzantium was a splendid place, and the new city would be stunningly beautiful, all the more so because he and his son would have a hand in building it.

  As for Rome, the city was already suffering neglect, and was likely to suffer more, especially if Constantine’s sons came to detest it as much as he seemed to. To them, Rome would always be a cursed place, the city where their father murdered their mother.

  Zenobius felt torn, uncertain what to say, but when he looked at Kaeso, he saw that his son appeared not at all dismayed or dubious, but excited and eager. Such was the enthusiasm of youth for new vistas and fresh challenges.

  “In the new city,” said Constantine, “there will be many new opportunities. My new senate will have room for many members, men who have proven their worth to the empire and their loyalty to the emperor. Consider that. There is something else you might consider, very seriously…”

  Zenobius felt his skin prickle and his heart sink, for he knew what was coming next.

  “Consider, I say, becoming Christians, and joining your emperor in the one true religion. The new city will be full of churches, and the most prestigious work will be the building of those churches. I suspect the bishops will chide me if I allow pagans to take a hand in creating their new houses of worship. ‘Let the pagans build the sewers and the cisterns,’ they will say. In that regard as in many others it will improve a man’s prospects, not just in the world to come but in this world as well, if he should become a follower of Christ.”

  Again Zenobius looked at Kaeso. His son seemed unfazed. Kaeso had always been less religious and less traditional than his father and grandfather. He seemed to have a genuine curiosity about Christianity. No apprehension or anxiety shadowed the excitement on his face. Was the prospect of becoming a Christian acceptable to Kaeso?

  Dismissed by the emperor, the Pinarii left the New Basilica. Saying little, they seemed to be of one mind about what to do next. Together they took a long, rambling walk through the Forum, up to the Capitoline Hill, and then all around the city, eventually ascending a stretch of the Aurelian Walls to take in the view.

  “When these walls were built,” said Zenobius, “all that lay inside was Rome, but all that lay outside was also Rome. Rome owned the empire; the empire belonged to Rome. So it was and always would be, men thought. But the day is coming when Rome will no longer be the capital of the empire—you and I, building Constantine’s new city, will help make that happen. Then Rome will be just another city, trapped inside the fortifications that were built to protect it. The city will be a captive of the empire, a prisoner inside its walls. I think that is not the Rome you want your children to live in. The ancestors—all the countless Pinarii since the beginning of the city and before—will forgive us for leaving Rome, I think. They will want their descendants to grow up in the new city, with new traditions, new laws … perhaps even a new religion.”

  “What will I do with this?” asked Kaeso. From within his toga, dangling on a chain of silver, he drew forth the fascinum.

  Zenobius’s eyes grew wide. “You dared to wear it in the emperor’s presence?”

  “It was I who should have been wearing it the day I watched Grandfather die at the Senate House, clutching it to his chest. I’ve worn it every day since.”

  “But what now? The fascinum will have no place in the new city. People will say it conjures black magic and summons wicked demons. Even to possess such a ‘pagan’ object may soon be against the law—and the punishments of Constantine are very harsh.”

  Kaeso fondled the lump of gold between his forefinger and thumb. “Certainly I could never wear it if I … if I should become … a Christian.”

  There: Kaeso had said it aloud. The unspeakable had been sp
oken.

  “When Constantine saw your grandfather wearing it, he himself thought it might be a crucifix, from the shape. Perhaps you could get away with wearing it, if—”

  “No, Father. I would know what it is, even if others did not. I won’t pretend the fascinum is something it isn’t.”

  Zenobius slowly nodded. “The fascinum is yours, son. What you choose to do is up to you. And your descendants, in their generation, will make their own choices. Last night I was reading the meditations of the Divine Marcus, that book in which he recorded his private thoughts. ‘For everything fades away and quickly becomes a myth. All is forgotten. Everything is lost in oblivion.’ So it will be, even with Rome. So it will be with Constantine’s new city, eventually. So with every human life, and with all humanity, with the passage of time. We shall fade away, and there shall be no one to remember us, for those who come after us will have faded away in their turn. It shall be as if none of us ever existed.”

  Kaeso tilted his head. “The Christians don’t think that way. In their scheme of things, everything is planned, everything has a purpose. Nothing is ever forgotten. And no one ever actually dies. No one! Being mortal is not an option. Like it or not, every human will exist forever, some in perpetual joy, others in endless torment.”

  “What kind of torment?”

  “They’ll be thrown into a fire that burns the flesh but doesn’t consume it. Their screaming agony, and the horror of knowing it will never end, will go on forever and ever.”

  “What a horrible religion!” Zenobius shook his head. “I shall never be able to accept it.”

  Kaeso, respecting his father, let him have the last word.

  * * *

  All was packed—all the books and clothes, all the jewelry and mementos and precious keepsakes. Their passage was arranged. Every loose end had been tied up. Except one.

  On the night before they were to leave Rome, while the city slept, Kaeso went alone to the Temple of Venus and Roma. He opened the hidden mechanism that allowed access to the secret chamber where his father had hidden the scepter of Maxentius. From its undisturbed state and the musty smell, he was certain that no one had visited the room since then.

  Kaeso lifted the necklace over his head. He placed the fascinum next to the scepter. The moment seemed to call for a prayer, but he could think of no words to say. He left the chamber. He closed the secret door. He deliberately broke the hidden mechanism. The room was sealed. There was nothing to suggest that it had ever existed. The contents were as safe as any buried treasure could be.

  In the New Rome, he would become a Christian and would have no use for such an amulet. Though he was leaving it behind, Kaeso would make sure that the knowledge of its existence was passed down to the next generation. In his heart he knew that the fascinum still belonged, would always belong, to the Pinarii.

  The family heirloom would become a family legend. Perhaps, under different circumstances, a descendant would reclaim it, and the fascinum would be worn again in a future generation.

  Epilogue

  From the December 2006 issue of the magazine Roman Archaeology Today:

  Italian archaeologists have announced that an excavation under a shrine near the Palatine Hill has unearthed several items in wooden boxes, which they have identified as imperial regalia.

  These are the only known imperial insignia so far recovered, and thus of tremendous importance. (Up to now, such regalia have only been known from representations on coins and in relief sculptures.)

  The items in these boxes, which were wrapped in linen and what appears to be silk, include six complete lances, four javelins, what appears to be a base for standards, and three glass and chalcedony spheres. The most important find was a scepter of a flower holding a blue-green globe, which is believed to have belonged to the emperor himself because of its intricate workmanship.

  But which emperor? Clementina Panella, the archaeologist who made the discovery, dates them to the reign of Maxentius. “These artifacts clearly belonged to the emperor,” says Panella, “especially the scepter, which is very elaborate. It’s not an item you would let someone else have.” Panella notes that the insignia were likely hidden by supporters of Maxentius in an attempt to preserve the emperor’s memory after he was defeated at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge by Constantine the Great.

  Archaeologists hope to restore the items for possible display at the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.

  Reports on the find made no mention of anything resembling a small gold amulet. The fascinum of the Pinarii was not among the items recovered.

  Author’s Note

  For everything fades away and quickly becomes a myth; and soon complete oblivion covers them over.

  —MARCUS AURELIUS

  MEDITATIONS (BIRLEY TRANSLATION)

  The past did not generate fixed memories; instead, memories constructed a past.

  —RAYMOND VAN DAM

  REMEMBERING CONSTANTINE AT THE MILVIAN BRIDGE

  The period from the death of Marcus Aurelius, the model of the philosopher-king, to the triumph of Christianity under Constantine the Great comprises about 150 years. No era is more fretted over by later historians, more fraught with insoluble mysteries, or more pregnant with consequence. Sources are missing, fragmentary, misleading, or blatantly fraudulent. Much of one crucial source, the Historia Augusta, is essentially a novel, and a very bad novel at that.

  Robert Latouche, in The Birth of the Western Economy, approaches with a shudder “the third century, a sinister age, the least known in the whole history of Rome.… After the reign of the Severi, we plunge into a long tunnel, to emerge only at the beginning of the Late Empire under Diocletian, and when we step out again into daylight, unfamiliar country lies all about us.”

  In my long-ago college days, these amnesiac years of the Roman Empire were a scholarly backwater. Since then, especially in the last twenty years or so, like particles drawn to a vacuum, historians have converged on the era and found it not entirely vacuous after all. Two wide-ranging works make sense of the chaos: Pat Southern’s The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine and David S. Potter’s The Roman Empire at Bay. Potter expanded my vocabulary as no author has done since Lawrence Durrell.

  In the final decade of his life, the great Michael Grant wrote a series of more narrowly focused books, including The Antonines, The Severans, The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, and Constantine the Great. His earlier masterwork, The Climax of Rome, is a dazzling foray into the changing thought-world of an empire that produced men as different as Marcus Aurelius and Constantine as its paragons.

  Anthony R. Birley’s biography Marcus Aurelius is especially enlightening when read in conjunction with Marcus’s Meditations. Olivier Hekster’s Commodus: An Emperor at the Crossroads offers an evenhanded view of Marcus’s detested heir.

  The Rain Miracle presents a striking instance where the evolution of a myth can be tracked through time. Péter Kovács examines the incident in Marcus Aurelius’ Rain Miracle and the Marcomannic Wars and in a later paper, “Marcus Aurelius’ Rain Miracle: When and Where?” (freely available at academia.edu). Two other papers of note are “The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: (Re-)Construction of Consensus,” by Ido Israelowich (Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 55, No. 1, April 2008), and “Pagan Versions of the Rain Miracle of A.D. 172,” by Garth Fowden (Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 36, H. 1, 1st Qtr., 1987). The counterfeit letter of Marcus crediting the Rain Miracle to Christians can be found in various places online, or in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

  The plagues that repeatedly devastated the empire during this period have received considerable attention in recent years. Kyle Harper speculates on their profound effects in The Fate of Rome.

  Tracking down the works of Galen in translation and making sense of them is a difficult and tedious task. But reading Maud W. Gleason’s “Shock and Awe: The Performance Dimension of
Galen’s Anatomy Demonstrations” is a delight. It can be found in Galen and the World of Knowledge, edited by Christopher Gill, Tim Whitmarsh, and John Wilkins. The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire, by Susan P. Mattern, is a useful biography. Having read a number of his shorter works on Galen, I look forward to Vivian Nutton’s Galen: A Thinking Doctor in Imperial Rome, which was published after I finished Dominus.

  Anthony R. Birley in Septimius Severus: The African Emperor proposes that the emperor, with his provincial African accent, might have pronounced his name “Sheptimiush Sherverush.” I like to imagine Sean Connery saying that.

  What do we really know about the emperor now called Elagabalus? First, he was never known by that name in his lifetime. Second, virtually every “fact” about him is disputable. In The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact or Fiction?, Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado tackles head-on the epistemological stumbling blocks that most historians sidestep, and strips away the lies, distortions, and false methodologies that surround this particular emperor. It is a difficult, challenging, and superlative work of history.

  Jay Carriker’s thesis The World of Elagabalus (http://hdl.handle.net/10950/370) answers some questions about the emperor Varius while raising others, and boldly asserts that “the religious boundaries that he disregarded reveal a Varian Moment as a critical period in the Easternization of Roman religion, which makes him one of the most significant figures in Roman History.”