by Sarah Walton
‘Thank you for saving Kiya’s book, Rufius.’
‘Ha! We gave the Archbishop the run around, didn’t we?’
The hermit clears his throat. ‘I will make a copy of The Book of Wisdom in Henite’s native tongue. Coptic is the language of her people. She would like that.’
‘Of course, Dera. You take the book.’
Aeson is pensive… I know when he’s thinking. His rowing has fallen out of time with Dera’s strong strokes. My boy never was able to multitask.
‘Rufius, you know, I felt a little cheated when you sent me off to Apollinos to learn to write. I mean, Apollinos was a brilliant teacher, but…’
‘But you wanted to learn the ropes from an old cinaedus, is that it? Ha!’
‘You must stop calling yourself that now, Rufius.’
‘What, at my age, dear? I’m too old to jig to the beat of a different drum…’ My voice is shrill in the night… like the stars are listening to us. ‘… now I’ve lost my eyebrows, you mean?’ With all this sweating they must be halfway down my face.
Aeson’s laughter echoes up into the night sky. It lifts me; I want to laugh long and hard, until the laughter turns to tears and back to laughter again.
The hermit chuckles. ‘You are blessed with a lightness of spirit, Master Librarian. It is a gift, to see life’s comedy, even on a night like this.’
‘Oh, it’s no joke, dear. A cinaedus without his eyebrows is a very serious matter.’
Σ
Historical Note
Cinaedus comes from kinaidos, the Greek word for an effeminate buggeree. A cinaedus was an adult male who dressed effeminately, wore make up and the Latin insult implied that he was the receptive partner. The Ancient Romans defined their sexuality not on a spectrum with gay at one end and straight at the other, but whether you conquer, or submit. Gender was not the issue. For the Romans, if you were a rich adult man, you were expected to conquer and penetrate. It was a social outrage to deviate from the hard ideal of Roman masculinity, wear make-up and bend over for your pleasure. On the other hand, it was perfectly acceptable for boys to submit to older men as long as the boys had sprouted soft down on their faces and were showing the signs of manhood. Once a youth had grown a full beard, he was expected to take the ‘active’ role. Julius Caesar, for example, was accused of being a cinaedus by his political opponents due to a rumoured interlude with King Nicomedes when he was a young soldier – and too old to play the receptive role. The laws which condemned the cinaedi became harsher under the Christian Emperors. In 390 AD, a law was passed which sentenced cinaedi to death by public burning.
There are several sentences or phrases in the manuscript commonly referred to as Pistis Sophia (called The Book of Wisdom in the novel) that are a mystery even to scholars. The manuscript was bought by the British Museum in 1785 from the heirs of Dr. Askew, and is catalogued as Askew Codex MS.Add.5114 in the British Library. It is possible the book was hidden at some point in fourth century Egypt, when non-canonical texts were condemned as heretical, a copy of an earlier Greek original. The book contains Jesus’ secret teachings to his disciples after his resurrection on the Mount of Olives and the story of Holy Sophia’s, or Faith Wisdom’s fall into matter, and her journey back to the Father.
Alexandria had been under Roman rule for three hundred years by this point. Although it is a Hellenic city, I assume a fair amount of Latin would have entered the language and so refer to gods and temples with both their Greek and Roman names. Certainly there is evidence of both Greek and Roman temples in the city at this time.
Several conflicting accounts of the events leading up to and including the destruction of the Serapeum in 391 A.D. have survived. The two contemporary accounts are from the Christian historian Rufinus’ Ecclesiastical History and the pagan historian Eunapius’ Lives of the Philosophers. Neither of them were eyewitnesses. There are other historians (Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret) who wrote about the destruction of the Serapeum, but were not contemporary to the events. It is probable that the Christian accounts are as hyperbolic in their exaggeration of bloodshed as is Eunapius’ conflicting insistence that the soldiers met with no pagan resistance when they attacked the statues in the Serapeum. My only firm conclusion of the historical sources is that the contemporary accounts are so starkly in opposition that none of them present the actual events and so I have taken the liberty of assuming, rightly or wrongly, that the truth resides somewhere between the two. I’ve cherry-picked elements from Socrates and Sozomen’s later accounts to add some pagan spice.
Please note that any apparent departure from history is to be blamed entirely on Rufius Biblus Catamitus.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful for the guidance of so many historical experts that it would be exhaustive to list them here, but I would especially like to thank Dr David Bagchi, not only for his historical wizardry, but also his literary suggestions; Dr Kelly Olsen, fashionista of the Ancient Roman World; Dr Craig Williams for a fascinating interview; Dr. Jennifer Inglehart for allowing me to not only gatecrash, but present at Durham University’s Romosexuality Conference; Dr Alexander Petrov, Director of the Moscow Library for Foreign Literature who oversaw the most recent translation of the Askew Codex and his kind invitation to deliver a paper for the International Russia and Gnosis Conference, and Dr Nersessian, curator of the Askew Codex for giving me permission to view the manuscript in 2004 – and for his patience and enthusiasm while I picked his brains. It was during those long days in the Oriental Reading Room at the British Library poring over the manuscript that Rufius first spoke to me.
A warm thank you to the novelists who so generously shared their creative process for writing the ancient world – Steven Saylor, Bernadine Evaristo OBE, Allan Massie CBE and José Luis de Juan. I’m grateful for creative feedback from D.D. Johnston, Dr Bethan Jones, Allan Massie and José Luis – as well as tea in Deià in view of Robert Graves’ house.
Amicus means friend in Latin, and I owe so much to all those friends who came on the journey with me, and some I met along the way. Thank you to Martin for believing in Rufius and James for his sharp editorial eye – and to Barbican Press for taking a punt on a novel partly inspired by an obscure Latin insult. Also for Christina and Emilio’s cartography help, Jude’s proofing; Miles and Patricia Walton, Phoebs, Amanda, Angela, Richard, Frode, Fizz, Geoff and Kat’s firm faith. Eternal love to both Davids for letting me bore them for years with Ancient Roman law and the everyday clutter of Roman life. You’re all fabulous, by Bacchus!
A special thank you to cartoonist Mariana de Oliveira for her artistic impression of Rufius, which can be found at: www.sarahwalton.org.