Published in 1993 by
Academy Chicago Publishers
363 West Erie Street
Chicago, IL 60610
Threshold of Fire
Copyright © 1993 Anita Miller
Originally published as Een Nieuwer Testament
Copyright 1964 © Hella S. Haasse
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges that publication of the book was made possible in part by a grant from the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.
Printed and bound in the U.S.A. on acid-free paper.
First Edition.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haasse, Hella S., 1918—
[Nieuwer testament. English]
Threshold of fire: a novel of fifth century Rome / Hella Haasse;
translated by Anita Miller and Nini Blinstrub. — 1 st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-89733-390-X (acid-free paper)
1. Rome — History — Empire, 30 B.C. 476 A.D. — Fiction. I. Title.
PT5838.H45N513 1993
839.3’1364—dc20 93-2465
CIP
Qui fuerat genitor, natus nunc prosilit idem
Succeditque novus: geminae confinia vitae
Exiguo medius discrimine separat ignis.
Claudius Claudianus: Phoenix
CONTENTS
Introduction
I. The Prefect
II. Claudius Claudianus
III. The Prefect
Glossary
INTRODUCTION
In this dynamic novel, Hella Haasse illuminates a crucial, yet relatively obscure period of history — roughly 380 to 414 A.D., when Western civilization was undergoing a cataclysmic transformation from late antiquity to the early middle ages. The world was witnessing the death throes of the great Roman Empire — its unity destroyed by a cold war with Constantinople in the East, its military power evaporating before barbarian armies menacing its borders, and its cultural and religious heritage being stamped out by the Church Triumphant. The latter was an astonishing phenomenon: the total obliteration of a traditional religion, the destruction of a way of life.
Although Christianity was legalized in 312, it was under the Emperor Theodosius (346?-395) that it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Theodosius was baptized in 380, the third year of his reign; he began the process which culminated in the liquidation of paganism and the repression of heretics. Over fourteen years Theodosius issued a series of edicts: mandating faith in the Trinity, forbidding the use of altars and shrines for purposes of divination, shutting down pagan temples and eventually forbidding, on pain of death, sacrifices to man-made images. These policies were continued, more stringently, by Theodosius’s inept son Honorius.
Theodosius had unquestionably helped to hasten the collapse of the Roman Empire by splitting it in two. On his death in 395, he divided it between Honorius and his elder and equally incompetent son Arcadius, who ruled the Eastern half from his capital in Constantinople. Honorius ruled the West, but it is another indication of impending disintegration that the Emperor no longer resided in Rome: it was too far from the threatened frontiers. He lived in Milan, a precedent that had been established by Constantine; but in 402 Gothic armies under Alaric besieged that city and nearly captured Honorius. So he moved the government to Ravenna, which was set in the midst of marshy tracts and water, and thus protected from invasion. Honorius, as we see in Threshold of Fire, rarely made “entry” into Rome.
Theodosius’s sons have been called twilight men ruling in a twilight time. Both relied on regents: Honorius was guided by Flavius Stilicho, a respected Vandal general whose wife, Serena, was Theodosius’s niece and adopted daughter. Arcadius was controlled first by Rufinus, a Gaul of bad reputation, and then by Eutropius, a eunuch who had been a slave. Great hostility developed between East and West. First Rufinus — who was torn to pieces by his own soldiers almost at the feet of Arcadius — and then Eutropius, were bitter enemies of Stilicho.
This is the background against which Threshold of Fire is set.
The action of the novel is circular, beginning and ending in July of 414 A.D. (although flashbacks extend its time span to about thirty-five years). We meet first the Prefect Hadrian, a Christian convert and transplanted Egyptian. We meet also Marcus Anicius Rufus, the only member of his devoutly Christian aristocratic family who has chosen to cling to the ancient Roman beliefs and practices. The Prefect heralds the frightening future; Marcus Anicius belongs to the dying past. Two other central figures in the novel are the Jew Eliezar ben Elijah and the poet Claudius Claudianus.
Eliezar lives according to the tenets of his faith; he is, like Hadrian and Marcus Anicius, a dedicated man and, like them, a tormented one. He has a dark vision of things to come, although he is not for the moment in danger. He is left in peace by the authorities because Jews were assigned a unique place by Theodosius. In 393 their religion was recognized as legal, they were guaranteed right of assembly and their persons and property were officially protected from attack by Christians. But the handwriting was already on the wall: in 388 a synagogue was burned to the ground in Callinicum, a small town on the Persian border, by a fanatical mob led by the local bishop. Theodosius demanded restitution from the bishop on behalf of the Jewish population, but this demand was turned aside by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who prevented Theodosius from pursuing the matter.
Ambrose was a man of rigid principles who considered the fight against heresy to be a holy war, and who would give no quarter to Jews or pagans. His threats against Theodosius were the beginning of the subjection of temporal to spiritual power. The most striking example of this occurred when, on threat of excommunication, Ambrose forced Theodosius to do public penance for the massacre of seven thousand citizens at Thessalonica (now Salonica) in Greece.
It is around the character Claudius Claudianus, known to history as the poet Claudian, that the action flows. Claudian arrived in Italy apparently around 394 and a year or so later became poet to the court of Emperor Honorius. He is generally considered to be the last of the great Latin poets. He wrote panegyrics, invectives and epics, most of them celebrating the accomplishments of his hero and mentor Stilicho. He was a skilful propagandist, but far more than that. He was the master of Latin hexameter poetry under the Late Empire; his influence extended far beyond Italy into the Greek-speaking world. His work was carefully copied out by monks for over a thousand years, and has been invaluable to historians attempting to reconstruct the significant first decade of Honorius’s reign: the tensions and political maneuverings, as well as the battles continually fought against rebels and barbarian chieftains who threatened the decaying sovereignity of Rome.
Claudian was heard from no more after 404. This was not because he had lost favor with Stilicho, since Stilicho, before he was murdered in 408, arranged for an omnibus edition of Claudian’s works. No one knows what happened to Claudian. It has been suggested that he died, or that he retired to Africa where Stilicho’s wife Serena had arranged a marriage for him with a wealthy widow. But it has been suggested also that he got into trouble because of an epigram he wrote attacking the Prefect Hadrian, contrasting Hadrian’s unsleeping rapacity with the indolent honesty of Mallius Theodorus, consul in 399, for whom Claudian wrote a panegyric, and whom he clearly liked and respected.
Claudian glorified Rome: he saw it as it had been and not as it was. And he saw it through non-Christian eyes. Except for a few ambiguous lines, there is no reference to Christianity in Claudian’s poetry. And although he wrote on mythological themes, he did not neces
sarily accept the Roman pantheon. It is a reflection of the Prefect’s fanaticism, and possible ignorance, that looking through the book-rolls in Marcus Anicius’s library, he comments with disapproval on “verses teeming with mythological names”; this was the accepted practice in the poetry of the time, a convention, and not even the bishops complained about it. It should be noted, incidentally, that Marcus Anicius, looking to the past, uses book-rolls at a time when the codex, with its sewn binding, had largely replaced them, thanks to the emphasis placed by Christians upon the Scriptures.
Thus Claudius Claudianus, poet and humanist, stands apart from both the doomed pagan Marcus Anicius, who yearns for a Rome that is lost forever, and the tormented Christian Hadrian, who, like Bishop Ambrose, has spent his life in the Roman civil administration, which was known to breed narrow authoritarianism. Hadrian views the world as Ambrose does, with restricted vision; it is Ambrose and Hadrian who are the wave of the future. Theirs is the state of mind responsible eventually not only for the Inquisition, but for the untold suffering caused by uncompromising political movements in our own century.
Anita Miller
Chicago, Illinois
May, 1993
The novel falls into three parts. The first, “The Prefect”, begins early in the morning on the fifth of July, 414; the second, “Claudius Claudianus”, is set three weeks earlier and the action moves forward to the fourth of July; the third section, called “The Prefect” once again, takes place in the late afternoon and evening of the fifth of July and the morning of the sixth of July.
I.
THE PREFECT
1.
The leather curtain closes behind the soldiers. Uneasily, the prisoners survey the judgment hall and find it changed: hazy early morning light filters through the curved windows cut into the masonry between the columns. All of those who have been brought in are familiar with the Prefect’s tribunal from the period before the Gothic invasion: some of them had appeared here as witnesses, others as accusers — one of them, ten years before, as the accused. At that time there had been a view, through the open gallery, of an inner court and the walls of the former temple of Tellus. Now nothing of the outside world is visible except the light coming through the high window recesses.
The only person in the room who does not look about, but keeps his eyes fixed on the floor at his feet — black and white meandering mosaics — can tell from the change in sounds — until then subdued as usual — that the Prefect has entered. A chair is being moved.
In the foreground of the Prefect’s field of vision (on occasions like this, the praetorians are nothing more to him than part of the furniture: self-evident, scarcely perceived) are six men, three of whom he knows personally; he will soon address them without hesitation by name and surname: he has expected them to be there, since their presence is the result of prolonged, meticulous maneuvering. He allows himself the luxury of ignoring them, of delaying the encounter with their impassive faces and cold eyes. Then — a long look at the other three.
None of them seems like a complete stranger to him. His eyes come to rest on the last man in the row, whose face is averted: a beard, a frayed toga — a strange bird among these patricians. Out of step with the others. But the Prefect has the feeling — for reasons he cannot immediately identify — that this person will play a crucial role in the proceedings. Quickly he searches his memory, scouring various strata of his official activities: a place, a time, an event? At this moment he knows that there is something more here than meets the eye — something that goes much deeper. His satisfaction at the arrest — finally! — of what he considers to be a subversive group, is no longer unclouded. There has been a subtle shift. This affair no longer holds the prospect of a careful savoring of victory, of pleasure at the demonstration of the power of authority. It has become hollow at the core.
He gestures toward his officials.
“Today, on the third day of Nones of July, in the fifth hour after sunset, I, Aulus Fronto, Commander of the third division of the praetorian guard, made, with my men, a raid on the dwelling of Marcus Anicius Rufus on Janiculus Hill. I found Marcus Anicius Rufus and his wife Sempronia in company with a few noblemen who upon request identified themselves to us: Marcellinus Maximus, Flaccus Vescularius, Gaius Agerius Flestus, Quintus Fulcinius Trio. They were being served by three slaves: Phoebus, Milo, Herman. Upon investigation, it developed that the rest of the staff had orders not to show themselves in that part of the villa after the third hour.
“When I entered the tablinum, the situation was as follows: the couches were pushed together so that they formed three sides of a square. Marcus Anicius Rufus, his wife Sempronia and their previously mentioned guests were lying with their backs to tables on which I saw the remains of a meal. In the space which had been formed were two persons, a man and a woman calling themselves Pylades and Urbanilla, mimes by profession, who were engaged — at the request of Marcus Anicius Rufus, according to their statements — in giving a performance of the love dance of the god Dionysus and his bride Ariadne, said performance being forbidden by decree of our august Emperor Honorius in the twelfth year of his reign.
“In the garden I discovered two more members of the artistic troupe: the weightlifter Balcho and Homullus, a dwarf, disguised as Priapus. A pagan altar was standing in readiness. Upon searching the house, I found, in one of the anterooms, some baskets of live cocks; there was also a case containing instruments and objects customarily used for sacrifice and the inspection of entrails. All three slaves had seen the baskets, but alleged that they did not know who put them there. The men who, on my orders, guarded the hilly terrain around the villa seized an individual hiding in the bushes: he calls himself Niliacus and has no fixed domicile.
“He denies having had any contact with Marcus Anicius Rufus and his household. When confronted with him, everyone present stated that they had never seen the man before; Marcus Anicius Rufus, however, said this only after long hesitation. The slave Milo, when we showed him the means of coercion last night in the prison, declared that the person named Niliacus had been in the villa once before, and that was on the day of the triumphant entry of our august Emperor Honorius, three weeks ago around the hour of sunset.
“Letters, books and other documents from the library of Marcus Anicius Rufus were confiscated by me and delivered under seal to the office of the Prefect.”
With the exception of Marcus Anicius Rufus, all the prisoners have been taken back to the holding rooms. The interrogation can begin.
The Prefect does not speak immediately. Nor does he look at the accused, but contemplates his own right hand, spread flat against the arm of his chair. He raises one shoulder slightly; the folds of his mantle fall from his outstretched arm. His right foot, in its red shoe, is thrust far forward, reaching almost to the edge of the platform. Because of these arrests, he was awakened earlier than usual, before sunrise. He had been impatiently awaiting the news that Marcus Anicius Rufus and his friends had been brought to the prefecture for immediate trial, but even this welcome information could not erase the memory of his strange, early morning dream …
He had found himself on a barren, desolate coast. A rocky precipice, without a trace of vegetation, descended perpendicularly to a narrow gravel beach. The sun did not shine, the sea was grey. The enclosed bay was shaped like a half-moon and deserted, despite signs of human presence: the rocks had been fashioned to resemble the façade of a temple; a row of pillars, cut out of the stone, supported a triangular frieze crowded with vague figures — perhaps nothing but rock formations. Wide steps, crumbling in many places, descended to the sea. Between the columns stood disfigured sculpture, the most striking a relief representing a right hand, raised in oath. While he stood there in his dream, he thought he heard someone call his name…
As he dressed, he decided that it must have been his secretary’s voice that he had heard.
“Marcus Anicius Rufus, you are accused of having organized a gathering in your house for t
he secret practice of magic, the intention being the destruction of our august Emperor and the ruination of the Empire. Do you admit these facts?”
“I invited a few friends to dinner and to an artistic performance. I don’t see anything unusual about that — much less incriminating.”
“This performance had the character of a pagan ritual. The dancers were at the point of committing the act of love in public.”
“The company was portraying the myth of Bacchus and Ariadne. I had requested an artistic performance — not erotic scenes, which I would never have tolerated.”
“The dwarf’s attire left nothing to the imagination.
“I didn’t see the dwarf in that costume. The artists got dressed while we were dining. All I knew was that they were going to perform a number from the classical mime-repertoire. At the moment when the centurion and his men burst into my house — a breach of domestic peace against which I wish to register a strong protest — it’s true that the dancers were miming an embrace. But everyone present, and primarily the artists themselves, can testify that there was no question that it was simply a pretence.”
“Actors are not heard as witnesses, you should know that. The Commandant, Aulus Fronto, has the right to enter any place where he suspects trouble. He and his men are unanimous in their declaration that the dancers’ position could be open to only one interpretation.”
“The entry of the praetorian guards caused some confusion. At the moment none of us was looking at the artists. In my opinion the impressions of the commander and his men are based on some sort of optical illusion …”
“But you do admit that you ordered a performance of the love dance of the pagan gods Bacchus and Ariadne? That’s enough …”
“Once more, it should be obvious that I’m relying here on time-honored cultural traditions —”
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