by Rice, Anne
Of course the battle occurred in the day so that I could know nothing of it until I waked with the setting sun. At once, I rushed up the stairs from my underground hiding place and, coming to my house, I found all my regular philosopher guests drunk, and I went out into the streets to learn what I could from the citizenry of what had taken place.
Constantine was completely the victor. He had massacred the troops of Maxentius and the latter had fallen into the Tiber and drowned. But what was most significant to those congregating everywhere was the rumor that before Constantine went into battle he had seen a sign in the sky which had come from Jesus Christ.
Indeed the sign had been made manifest right after noon when Constantine had looked up and beheld just above the declining sun, the sign of the cross with the inscription “Conquer with This.”
My reaction was incredulity. Could a Roman Emperor possibly have seen a Christian vision? I went rushing back to my desk, wrote down all these particulars in my precarious journal of events and waited to see what history would reveal.
As for the company in my banquet room they were now all awake and arguing about the whole matter. None of us believed it. Constantine a Christian? More wine, please.
At once, to everyone’s amazement, but without doubt, Constantine revealed himself to be a Christian man.
Instead of endowing temples to celebrate his great victory, as was the custom, he endowed Christian churches, and sent out word to his governors that they should behave in the same manner as he had done.
Then he presented the Pope of the Christians with a palace on the Coelian Hill. And let me point out that this palace was to remain in the hands of the Popes of Rome for a thousand years. I had once known those who lived in it, and I went myself to see the Vicar of Christ ensconced in it, and speculated as to what all this would mean.
Soon laws were passed which forbade crucifixion as a form of execution, and also forbade the popular gladiatorial games. Sunday became a holiday. And the Emperor extended other benefits to the Christians, and very soon we heard that Christians were petitioning him to take part in their doctrinal disputes!
Indeed, their arguing over matters of doctrine became so serious in African cities that riots broke out in which Christians murdered each other. People wanted the Emperor to intervene.
I think this is a very important thing to understand about Christianity. It was from its very beginnings, it seems, a religion of great quarrels and wars, and it wooed the power of temporal authorities, and made them part of itself in the hope of resolving through sheer force its many arguments.
All this I watched with amazed eyes. Of course my guests argued furiously about it. It seemed some who were dining at my table were Christians and had been all along. Now it was out in the open, yet the wine flowed and the music went on.
Understand, I had no real fear of or inherent distaste for Christianity. As I have said, I witnessed its growth with amazement.
And now—as ten years or more passed during which Constantine shared the Empire uneasily with Lacinius, I saw changes that I did not believe would ever take place. Obviously the old persecutions had been utter failures. Christianity was a marvelous success.
There seemed to me to be a blending of Roman thinking with Christian ideas. Perhaps one should say it was a blending of styles, and ways of looking at the world.
Finally—when Lacinius was gone, Constantine became the sole ruler of the Empire and we saw all of its provinces united once more. He became obviously more concerned with the disunity of the Christians and we heard word in Rome of huge Christian councils in the East. The first took place at Antioch where I had lived with Pandora and which was still a great city, perhaps in many respects more lively and interesting at this point than Rome.
The Arian heresy was the cause of Constantine’s discontent. And the whole thing had to do with something extremely small in the Scriptures which seemed to Constantine to be hardly worth the dispute. Nevertheless certain Bishops were excommunicated from the growing Church, and another more important council was held in Nicaea only two months later, where Constantine presided again.
There the Nicene Creed was adopted, which is recited by Christians even in the present time. The Bishops who signed this Creed effectively again condemned and excommunicated the theorist and Christian writer Arius as a heretic and doomed his writings to be burnt. He himself was to be shut out of his native Alexandria. The judgment was absolute.
But it is worth noting, and I did, that Arius continued his struggle for recognition, even though the council had cast him out.
The other great affair of this council, and a matter which is still rather confusing in Christianity, was the question of the true date of Easter, or the anniversary of the resurrection of Christ. A determination was made as to how this date would be calculated, and it was based upon a Western system. And then the council came to an end.
Now the Bishops who had come to the council were asked to stay and help the Emperor celebrate his twenty years on the throne, and of course they did so, for how could they refuse?
But as soon as word reached Rome of these elaborate festivities, there was much jealousy and discontent. Rome felt ignored in all these goings-on. And so there was considerable relief and happiness when in January of 326, the Emperor headed for our city once again.
Before his arrival, however, terrible deeds became attached to Constantine’s name. For reasons nobody could discover, he stopped along the way to put to death both his son Crispus and his stepson, Licinianus, and his own wife, the Empress Fausta. Historians can speculate forever as to why all this happened. The truth is, nobody knows why Constantine committed these acts. There may have been a plot against him. Perhaps there was not.
Let me say here that it cast a cloud over his arrival among the Romans, and that when he did come, it was no great consolation to the old ruling class, because he dressed very much in the extravagant Eastern style, with silk and damask, and would not be part of the important procession to the Temple of Jupiter, as the people had expected him to do.
Of course the Christians adored him. Rich and poor they flocked to see him in his Eastern robes and jewels. They were overwhelmed with his generosity as he laid the ground for more churches.
And though he had spent almost no time in Rome, he had over the years allowed for the completion of secular buildings begun by Maxentius, and he built a large public bath under his own name.
Then came appalling rumors. Constantine had plans for an entirely new city. Constantine found Rome old and decayed and lacking as a capital. Constantine meant to make a new city for the Empire; he meant to make it in the East, and it would honor his name!
Imagine it, if you can.
Of course the Emperors of the last century had moved all over the provinces of the Empire. They had fought each other, breaking into pairs and tetrarchies, and meeting here and murdering one another there.
But to give up Rome as the capital? To create another great city to be the center of the Empire?
It was unthinkable to me.
I brooded in hatred. I knew despair.
All of my nightly guests shared my misery. The elderly soldiers were broken by the news and one of the old philosophers wept bitterly. Another city to be the capital of the Roman Empire? The younger men were furious, but they could not hide their bitter curiosity, or their grudging guesses as to where this new city might be.
I could not dare weep as I wanted to for my tears would have been full of blood.
I asked the musicians to play old songs, songs I had to teach them for they had never heard them, and there came a strange moment when we sang together—my mortal guests and me—a slow mournful song about Rome’s tarnished glory which we would not forget.
The air was cool on that evening. I went out into the garden and looked down over the side of the hill. I could see lights here and there in the darkness. I could hear laughter and conversation from other houses.
“This is Rome!” I
whispered.
How could Constantine abandon the city which had been the capital of the Empire for a thousand years of struggle, triumph, defeat, glory? Couldn’t someone reason with him? This simply could not come to pass.
But the more I roamed the city, the more I listened to talk both far and wide, the more I roamed outside the walls and into the towns thereabout, I came to see what had motivated the Emperor.
Constantine wanted to begin his Christian Empire in a place of incredible advantage, and could not retreat to the Italian peninsula when so much of the culture of his people lay to the East. Also he had to defend his Eastern borders. The Persian Empire of the East was always a threat. And Rome was not a fit place for a man in supreme power to reside.
Thus Constantine had chosen the distant Greek city of Byzantium to be the site of Constantinople, his new home.
And I should see my home, my sacred city, become now a castoff of a man whom I, as a Roman, could not accept.
There were rumors of the incredible if not miraculous speed with which Constantinople had been mapped out, and with which building was being done.
At once many Romans followed Constantine to the burgeoning new city. At his invitation perhaps, or simply on their own impulse Senators decamped with their families and their wealth to live in this new and shining place, a subject on everyone’s lips.
Soon I heard that Senators from all the cities of the Empire were being drawn to Constantinople, and indeed, as baths and meeting halls and circuses were erected in the new capital, beautiful statues were being looted from cities throughout Greece and Asia to adorn the new architectural works.
Rome, my Rome, what will become of you, I thought.
Of course my evening feasts were not really deeply affected. Those who came to dine with Marius were poor teachers and historians who had no means of moving to Constantinople, or curious and reckless young men who had not made the clever choice as yet.
I had plenty of mortal company as always, and indeed, I had inherited a few very quick-witted Greek philosophers who had been left behind by families who had gone to Constantinople where they would no doubt find more brilliant men to tutor their sons.
But this, the company in my house was a small matter.
In truth, as the years passed, my soul was crushed.
And it struck me as more than ever dreadful that I had no other immortal companion who might understand what I felt. I wondered if Mael or Avicus could possibly comprehend what was going on. I knew they still haunted the same streets as I did. I heard them.
And my need of Pandora became so terrible that I could not envision her or think of her anymore.
But still, I thought desperately, if this man Constantine can preserve the Empire, if Christianity can bind it and prevent it from breaking apart, if its disparate provinces can be united, if Constantine can keep back the barbarians who forever pillage without building or preserving anything, who am I to judge him, I, who am outside of life?
I went back to my scribbling on the nights when my mind was feverish. And on those when I was certain that Mael and Avicus were nowhere in the vicinity I went out into the country to visit the shrine.
My work on the walls of the shrine was continuous. As soon as I finished painting the walls of the entire chapel, I covered over a wall and began painting again. I could not make my nymphs and goddesses to suit my standards. Their figures were not slender enough for me, and the arms not graceful enough. Their hair was not right. And as for the gardens I rendered, there were not enough kinds of flowers for me to include.
Always, there was that sense of familiarity—that I had seen this garden, that I had known it long before I was allowed by Akasha to drink her blood. I had seen the stone benches in it, I had seen the fountains.
I couldn’t shake the sensations of being in it as I painted, so strong was the feeling. I’m not sure it aided me in my work. Perhaps it hurt.
But as I gained skill as a painter, and I did indeed gain skill, other aspects of the work disturbed me.
I was convinced that there was something unnatural in it, something inherently ghastly in the manner with which I drew human figures so nearly perfectly, something unnatural in the way I made the colors so unusually bright, and added so many fierce little details. I was particularly repelled by my penchant for decorative details.
As much as I was driven to do this work, I hated it. I composed whole gardens of lovely mythic creatures only to rub them out. Sometimes I painted so fast that I exhausted myself, and fell down on the floor of the shrine, spending the paralytic sleep of the whole day there, helpless, rather than going to my secret resting place—my coffin—which was hidden not far from my house.
We are monsters, that is what I thought whenever I painted or looked on my own painting, and that’s what I think now. Never mind that I want to go on existing. We are unnatural. We are witnesses with both too much and too little feeling. And as I thought these things, I had before me the mute witnesses, Akasha and Enkil.
What did it matter to them what I did?
Perhaps twice a year I changed their fancy garments, arranging Akasha’s gown with fastidious care. I brought new bracelets for her more often and put these on her cold sluggish arms with slow tender movements so as not to insult her by what I did. I fussed with the gold in the black plaited hair of both Parents. I arranged a handsome necklace around the naked shoulders of the King.
I never spoke to either of them idly. They were too grand for that. I addressed them only in prayer.
I was silent in the shrine as I worked, with my paint pots and brushes. I was silent as I sat there peering in frank disgust at what I’d done.
Then one night, after many years of diligence in the shrine, I stood back and tried to see the whole as never before. My head was swimming. I went to the entrance to take the stance of a man who was new to the place, and forgetting utterly the Divine Pair, I merely looked at the walls.
A truth came clear to me in painful clarity. I had painted Pandora. I had painted her everywhere. Each nymph, each goddess, was Pandora. Why hadn’t I known?
I was amazed and defeated. My eyes are playing tricks on me, I thought. I wiped them, actually wiped them as a mortal might do, to see all the better and looked again. No. It was Pandora, rendered beautifully everywhere that I looked. Dresses changed and style of hair, yes, and other adornments but these creatures were all Pandora, and I had not seen it until now.
Of course the never ending garden looked familiar. Never mind that. Pandora had little or nothing to do with those feelings. Pandora was inescapable and came from some different fount of sensations. Pandora would never leave me. That was the curse.
I concealed all my paints and brushes behind the Divine Parents as I always did—it would have been an insult to the Father and Mother to leave them—and I went back to Rome.
I had before me several hours before dawn in which to suffer, in which to think of Pandora as never before.
The drunken party was winding down a bit as it always did in the small hours, with a few guests asleep in the grass outside, and others singing together in a small group, and no one took notice of me as I went into my library, and sat at my desk.
Through the open doors I looked out at the dark trees and wished that my life were at an end.
It seemed I lacked the courage to go on in the existence which I’d made for myself, and then I turned and decided—simply out of desperation—to look at the paintings on the walls of the room. I had of course approved these paintings and paid to have them refreshed and changed many a time.
But now I took stock of them from my point of view not as Marius the rich man who can have whatever he wishes, but as Marius the monster painter who had rendered Pandora twenty-one times on the four walls of Akasha’s shrine.
I saw suddenly how inferior were these paintings, how rigid and pallid the goddesses and nymphs who peopled this world of my study, and quickly I woke my day slaves and told them that they must have eve
rything covered over with fresh paint the following day. Also an entire supply of the best paints must be purchased and brought to the house. Never mind how the walls were to be redecorated. Leave that to me. Cover up all that was there.
They were used to my eccentricities, and after making certain that they understood me, they went back to their sleep.
I didn’t know what I meant to do, except I felt driven to make pictures, and I felt if I can cling to that, if I can do that, then I can go on.
My misery deepened.
I laid out vellum for an entry in my erstwhile journal and began to describe the experience of discovering my beloved everywhere around me, and how it seemed to contain an element of sorcery when suddenly I heard an unmistakable sound.
Avicus was at my gate. Indeed he was asking me with a strong current of the Mind Gift whether or not he might come over the wall and in to visit me.
He was leery of the mortals in my banquet room and in my garden. But might he come in?
At once I gave my silent answer that he could.
It had been years since I had so much as glimpsed him in the back streets, and I was not entirely surprised to see him dressed as a Roman soldier, and to see that he had taken to carrying a dagger and a sword.
He glanced fretfully at the door to the banquet room, but I gestured that he must pay the guests no attention at all.
His rich curling dark hair was well groomed and clean and he had about him an attitude of prosperity and well-being, except that his clothes were dreadfully stained with blood. It was not human blood. I would have smelled human blood. He soon gave me to know by a simple facial expression that he was in dire distress.
“What is it? What can I do for you?” I asked. I tried to cloak my pure loneliness, my pure need to touch his hand.
You are a creature like me, I wanted to say. We are monsters and we can put our arms around each other. What are they, my guests, but tender things? But I said nothing at all.
It was Avicus who spoke.
“Something dreadful has happened. I don’t know how to correct it, or even if it can be corrected. I beg you to come.”