by Ben Pastor
“More than once.” When ben Matthias had wounded him in Egypt, the day had been much like this. Aelius recalled silence, then havoc, the thud of the arrow coming in, and blood frothing up his throat like sweet vomit.
Paratus lifted his seamed face, to the sky, away from Aelius. “I have sat on guard in the mountains of Commagene, above the tree line, where the row of stone gods sits up high. I have sat nights by the toppled heads of those giants, on the mound the Great King built for himself. The stars rise at your right if you look at the statues, on your left side if you watch the valley, which was my duty after all. The wind is all that one hears in the night, and there is the great breath of the sky above where one by one the figures take shape above and then decline, until one sees them as a chart fixed in the heavens and yet about to be erased by the day. This is the Hunter, with his dogs rushing alongside him, all as though leaping into the great earth, with the Kinglet that marks the Lion coming after, the Little Goat above, and the bright eye of the Bull already grazing the earth. There are signs above, and signs below. To the reader, they are as clear in the dark as they are during the day hours. To the illiterate of the spirit, they are incomprehensible even as the ticking and whirring of insects is unintelligible and in the end meaningless. What do you say to that?”
Aelius thought of the constellations on the mosaics of Hadrian’s barge, truly a chart fixed in the heavens. Paratus would be useful indeed. With a click of his tongue, he bade the horse start on the way back. “I say that I have kept watch nights also, and heard the wind, and that I, too, can read.”
At his quarters, a letter from Diocletian awaited him, sent from Salonae on 12 July. It had been delivered by a courier shortly after Aelius had left in the morning and received as all correspondence by his head guardsman.
“It has never left my hands, Commander,” the soldier told him. The formula was one agreed upon, and Aelius paid no special attention to it. A slip in the dark sealing wax made it appear as though the imperial signet ring had pressed it twice, but slippage was a fairly common occurrence. Bodyguards will be bodyguards, Aelius told himself, and with a terse nod of the head, walked into his studio to read the text.
It was a reply to the message he had sent on 28 June from Antinoopolis. Diocletian generally encouraged him to continue his research, without forgetting his additional duties to report on prices, and the state of the religious trials. Before the closing formula, it added, “In relation to the investigation you have by my permission undertaken, see to it that you apply yourself with zeal, since it is my will that the welfare of the state be watched over by all. Private and public crimes are an abomination against Roman order, and you are to make use of your authority as Caesar’s envoy to get to the truth. Besides, this veteran you mention, Aviola Paratus, was in our early days one of the best acquisitions to our cause. During the Rebellion, he acquitted himself with distinction despite his infirmity. I recommend him to your attention, as his police experience cannot but be of use to you as you pursue possible enemies—old and new—of the greatest empire on earth.”
Had he known a few hours earlier, his conversation at The Glory of Our Lord Aurelian’s would have ranged well beyond historical details. Aelius was glad of the endorsement, and ready to forgive Tralles for his initial lack of support. In fact, he’d just begun a note to him when the coming of Onofrius—tour guide to the selective—was announced to him.
After Aviola Paratus, the apostate looked insignificant. Down on his heels, he wore a jaw beard, really a continuation of sideburns to circle the face; an unfashionable mustache drooped from under his nose to the sides of his mouth. Judging from his shabby clothes, guiding tourists did not ensure a profit. Because he vaguely resembled a scout who’d led his Armenia unit into what could have been a deadly ambush, Aelius found him distasteful at once. Army scouts, needed in mountainous no-man’s-land, had been a lifeline to Roman units during the Persian campaign; strung out through barren passes, his regiment had been betrayed as it reached the next plateau; only because some of the army horses were not geldings and shied at the scent of female Persian mounts, was the hidden enemy revealed. The scout had been executed on the spot. As for this Onofrius, resembling the traitor in looks and clothing, he was likely not dangerous, merely unlikable.
He showed up carrying notes of introduction from the head priest at the Iseum Campense, and from two perfect unknowns who’d satisfactorily used his services. In the book-filled studio of Aelius’s quarters, Onofrius listened to his prospective employer with hands clasped and head low, meaning perhaps to look pious, or thoughtful, or both. A window was open behind him on a sky of great sailing clouds, and only his outline was discernible. His voice, when he spoke, had just enough of a southern singsong to irk Aelius.
“You have to begin by looking for the obelisks, Commander. Where’s there’s an obelisk, there’s a tomb.”
Aelius stepped out from behind his desk to reach the window sill, and have the advantage of looking at the guide in the full light. “That’s not true,” he commented. “There are obelisks in the middle of racetracks and squares.”
“Ah, but that is in Rome, you see. In Egypt—”
“In Egypt they are also found in front of temples!’
“Well, you will just have to trust me. If we find Antinous’s obelisk, we have found his tomb. Which in his case, owing to his divine state, may also be a temple.”
“Well, that’s consoling news! Rome is full of obelisks.”
“Truth.” Apparently resigned to being scrutinized, Onofrius kept his eyes obstinately on the floor. “But I know what most of them are, and where they come from. I say we begin with Rome’s obelisks, and if we do not find what we want here, look outside the city, especially the imperial villa in Tibur, or Praeneste.”
“I was hoping that, in your profession, you’d know where imperial friends and followers or the Caesars are buried!’
Visible food stains, only faded by washing, might be the reason why Onofrius kept a hand on his chest. The gesture gave him a look of earnest protestation such as Aelius had seen in merchants swearing on the fairness of their prices. He said, with a quick look upward, “I have never heard of a directory of imperial favorites’ tombs. For one, Commander, there would be too many entries—you’d need an encyclopedia. For another, some of them were knocked down when memory of their masters was officially condemned by the Senate—those of Commodus’s infamous Saoterus, for example, or Helagabalus’s fellow debaucher Gordius. I have myself seen His Divinity’s soldiers using pickaxes on the mausoleum of one of Carinus’s darlings, on the way to Portus.”
“So?”
“So, Antinous’s grave, since shrines to him are still open all over, I’d say is still standing, but where, that’s another matter. That’s why I say you must look for the obelisk.”
The man might know his business after all. “I don’t know what I thought before coming to Rome, but now it feels like searching for a needle in a haystack.” Less irritably Aelius left the window sill, to which the Egyptian repaired again.
“Ha! ‘Needle’ meaning obelisk, that’s good. That’s very good. Except that you are looking for a needle in a sewing box. If I may say so, my familiarity with the provenance of most obelisks in Rome, makes the task less daunting.”
“Go ahead, then.”
Onofrius’s left hand, fingers spread for the count, served him as an abacus. “To begin with, you may eliminate the one in the Circus Maximus, brought here from Egypt by Augustus Caesar, as was the one of his monumental sundial. That at the Vatican horse track came from Alexandria in Gaius’s days; Domitian erected a couple of them by Augustus’s Tomb, where they are still.” The left hand closed into a fist. “You see, we’re already down a few. Domitian filled the Iseum Campense with obelisks large and small, which you still see there today. The one they call ‘of the Moon,’ in the Gardens of Sallust, was inscribed in Rome, copying what it reads on the Circus Maximus’s one.”
“What about that on
the Capitol?”
“I’m not sure about that one, though I think it’s very, very old. There’s also the obelisk of Hadrian’s water theater, the naumachia, behind his tomb, but that bears no inscription, so it doesn’t help us any.” Pinching his fingertips again one by one, Onofrius pretended to reckon large numbers. “Little shafts are all over, on private grounds as in public places. Commodus built three fake ones to replace those lost in the great fire during his reign.”
“There’s the middle-sized one I saw in the Varian Gardens.”
“The fallen one? Yes, there’s that one. I never included it in my tour, since it’s overgrown and broken to boot.”
Aelius let out an impatient sigh. “This is all fine and good, but can you read the old Egyptian language?”
“Better than anyone in Rome, Commander.”
By a rounding of shoulders in the halo of daylight, though Aelius couldn’t see his features, Onofrius signified modesty. “When it comes to ancient letters, there was a man whose sandals I wasn’t worth tying, but he’s gone, so I’m your man.”
“Is it Lucinus Soter, you speak of?”
“Yes, the one we called Nebos. What a loss! But then his death is my gain, so what can I say?”
Notes by Aelius Spartianus:
There being no time like the present, right after our initial interview I began the perusal of Rome’s obelisks with the man Onofrius, and can tell already that—after so many false starts and wrong turns—I have stumbled upon a piece of good luck. Nearness and the heat of day brought us to start our rounds here on the Caelian (there are two midget obelisks in the inner court of a palace now state property, near the Special Agent Barracks), and it was only natural we’d then leave the City by the Porta Asinaria and follow the walls. So we headed to the Varian Gardens, straight for the racetrack, which is a goodsized one, a bit longer it seems to me than the Vatican one. It has no spina, or if it did have such a central obelisk, it was a wooden structure that left no trace.
Outside the curved end, there lay the obelisk I’d glimpsed on my way to the kennel when looking for Soter’s watchdog. There’s no accounting why, if it was ever used to mark the middle of the racetrack, it should now lie prostrate without. Perhaps it was brought here toward the end of Helagabalus’s wicked reign, and never erected.
While Onofrius scampered about to see if he could free the shaft of the brambles and nettles covering it, I sat on the stands among the weeds sprung up in between the stone seats, having already invaded the dirt floor where chariots ran and games were played. Here Helagabalus uselessly plotted to murder his cousin Severus Alexander, and here the soldiers came looking for him and his meddlesome mother to cut their throats. Slightly turning my head, I beheld the powerful brick cascade of Aurelian’s wall incorporating the old aqueducts at odd angles, and half of the arena. How it all spoke of things shrinking! It has probably never been so extended, the city of Rome, and yet these buildings dissected and mutilated, filled in and made blind by bricking up windows and arches, already speak another language. I couldn’t guess the antiquity of the monuments and fountains around the racetrack, but the gardens themselves are so overgrown, so unkempt. I doubt it is because Caesar resides elsewhere. The deified Hadrian hardly resided in Rome during his long reign, yet everything points to things running in perfect order in his absence, including the upkeep of offices and public buildings.
Here’s the spiritus loci, I thought, when a small snake came slithering between the chinks of the stones, like a string of green drops of water. I sat and looked at the silence of the bushes and overgrown hedges, the dry fountains, the immobility of puffy clouds beyond the aqueducts. All seemed in balance and motionless, as Paratus said, and as happened to me at other times: perfectly held together for the moment, yet not particularly meaningful.
But the spirit of the place had come to greet me: soon I heard Onofrius call out, making noises like a spitting camel. He claimed to have discerned something interesting on the obelisk, but there were too many creepers bound around it to read further. On principle I carry flint on my person as well as in my saddlebag, so it seemed handy and a good idea to burn off the brambles and clear the stone. Well, I had not considered (and neither did he, who being from a warm climate ought to know better) how dry the day was. The fire started small, in a handful of dry grass, but then it caught on to the rest of the bushes and got quite out of hand. You couldn’t see the flames because of the brightness of the sun, but smoke belched upward worse than on the day they burned the old engineer’s books in Antinoopolis. It was regular arson, I’m afraid. Had it not been for the fire brigade of the II Cohort and the stream nearby providing the patrolmen with water, matters would have gone badly.
It took them some time and much ado to put down the flames by heaping dirt on what patches of vegetation they could not douse with water. The brigade leader was enraged— I couldn’t very well fault him for it—so I had to resort to a counterattack, charging him and his with endangering the City by not keeping such abandoned areas trimmed and safe, as law commands ever since Nero’s days. We had a shouting match, but in the end he gave up on hauling me before a court of law. It’d have been a nuisance most of all, since I am Caesar’s envoy. Still, I didn’t want to miss a moment, now that Onofrius (the scum had taken to his heels as soon as the authorities showed up, and only crawled back after their departure) swore to be on to something. He even forgot himself and thanked Jesus Christ for the discovery.
So, what was it about? After the row with the patrolman and with acrid smoke still hanging over us, I was in no mood to dillydally. Onofrius—and I’ll have him beaten if he’s lying—indicated to me the pictographs on the broken obelisk where he reads the name of Antinous. “What else does it say?” I urged him, and he caught another word here and there, apparently a formula that commemorates the Boy’s life.
Keen as the temptation was to whoop in triumph, I realized the unlikelihood that:
1. The obelisk had been meant for this place;
2. Antinous’s grave was anywhere around it;
3. The inscription did refer to burial rather than mere celebration.
The granite being still hot from the fire, Onofrius could not scrape off the blackened roots and thorns enough to continue his interpretation. We did manage to free from dirt the top portion, half-sunk in silt, which he declared represents Antinous as the Justified Dead, facing a god. Similar scenes are supposed to be carved on the three other sides, but unless and until we set the obelisk right again, I will not know whether this is the first significant breakthrough of my many weeks of travel. Unconvinced that the Egyptian is to be trusted, I have put two of my men after him, with orders to watch him day and night for at least two weeks. Meanwhile, as of this late-hour writing, I also have my Pannonian discreetly keeping an eye on the Varian racetrack.
9 August, Sol Indiges, Wednesday (16 Mesore)
In the morning, Aelius realized it was easier said than done. The commissioner of the II Cohort called in early, and with firm courtesy asked to see his paperwork, imperial presentation letters, in short to identify himself and his reasons for being in the City.
Given the incident of the fire, Aelius kept a conciliatory attitude. After providing the requested documents, he apologized for not informing the Cohort of his research, and let the commissioner know that in the next few days he’d send a crew to unearth the Varian obelisk, and if possible restore it to its upright position.
The commissioner, a wall-eyed bulldog of a man, shook his head. “I fear that will not be possible, Commander.”
“What do you mean?”
“That it will not be possible for you to trespass into the Varian Gardens again.”
Trespassing was in fact what Aelius had done ever since carrying out Diocletian’s assignment, and he was not half done with it. He kept cool, aware of how policemen will turn pigheaded with their betters if a shred of law permits. “As you have read, His Divinity’s safe-conduct allows me to circulate unhampered th
rough crown properties?”
“I read that, but I see nothing about setting fires.”
“No fire would have been necessary had the grounds been kept clear of weeds and refuse.”
“Well, Commander, contravention of one law does not justify second breach.”
The argument was unimpeachable. Aelius stayed on this side of annoyance, choosing an apology as the lesser evil. “It was imprudent on my part, and I regret it. You may rest assured that there will be no more fires set, so I’d appreciate it if you would grant me and a work crew permission to visit the Varian Gardens again.”
“Ah, that’s not up to me, you see.” Giving back the documents with a purposefully slow turn of the wrist, the commissioner pursed his lips as if about to spit. “That kind of permission is strict competence of the city prefect. You’re in luck, because his office is down the road on Mother Earth Street, by Trajan’s Baths. As soon as the city prefect returns from his travels, your application can be processed, and then it’ll be a matter of a week or two before the permit is issued.”
“Is there a vice prefect I may meet?”
“There is, but permits are exclusively granted by the prefect himself. He’s off to Sardinia, but never stays away past the end of the month.”
Aelius seethed. If he was enjoying the episode, the commissioner made instead a good show of self-control. He politely executed an about-face, and saw himself to the door. “Between now and then,” he added looking back, as he stepped out with a toothy smile, “you will be so good as not to use your bodyguard to watch public property overnight. Pannonian cavalrymen, are they? I always had a soft spot for Pannonians, unlike those who think them a bit slow.”
There was nothing to do for the moment. When Onofrius punctually showed up, Aelius had to content himself with being dragged across the City from one obelisk to the next, none nearly as interesting as the one interdicted to him. Worse, the guide’s version of the fatal trip on the Nile was identical to the official one Aelius had heard at Antinous’s temple. Nothing to be learned there. Only Onofrius’s jaded views of the Christian controversy about apostasy made bearable—in these days of official prosecution—the sweaty pilgrimage to Egyptian relics and the occasional Christian site. From Isis of the Sea to Patrician Alley Isis, from the memorial reliefs of priests of her cult to the slim funerary pyramid of Gaius Cestius and its more impressive twin by the Cornelian Way, Onofrius spouted information. Aelius became convinced that Rome was more than a haystack when it came to Egyptian monuments, and its countryside a field of haystacks. Finding Antinous’s burial seemed no easier a proposition than when he’d first set foot in Egypt.