A Pillar of Iron

by Taylor Caldwell

  Curius struck the table furiously with his hand. “You impugn my word, Caesar! You are accusing me of a lie!”

  Julius was not disturbed. “I am seeking the truth. One here is guilty of the attempt on Cicero’s life. I warn you again that if he dies, apparently in an accident, or is poisoned—a woman’s weapon, is it not, Catilina?—I shall not rest until he is avenged.”

  He spoke as if with calm indifference. They all gazed at him in an ominous and threatening silence. Then Piso said languidly, “What is this whey-faced lawyer to you, Julius?”

  “He is my childhood friend; he is like a brother to me. Who would not avenge his brother?” Julius’ antic face was smooth and without expression.

  Catilina laughed gently. “You, Caesar, would not avenge your brother, if that brother were a threat to you. In truth, you would kill him, yourself, without rage but without conscience.”

  “Did you attack Cicero, Lucius?”

  “I? Have I not seen you almost daily? By the gods, why do we waste even a moment discussing a base-born petty lawyer who is little better than a freedman?”

  “He is not a petty lawyer. Rome rings with his name.”

  “Let him confine himself, then, to his briefs and to the attention of the magistrates. We have matters of more importance to discuss.”

  “Very well,” said Julius, sipping his wine. “But do not forget that he is under my protection.”

  When, later, Julius returned to the table to recover the ring he discovered that it was no longer there. He recalled his slaves who had served the dinner. No, lord, none had observed the guest who had taken it.

  Julius stood for a long time, considering.

  He wrote to Marcus Tullius Cicero who was still in Athens:

  “I am at a loss, dear friend, to understand why you sent me that most curious ring, the design of which I have never seen before. It is most beautiful and exquisitely wrought. I am having it reduced in size for presentation to a lady whom I greatly admire and who is addicted to jewelry of an Egyptian nature. I assume you did not desire its return.

  “I am greatly distressed that you suffered such an attack, which was doubtless the work of thieves. It is very possible that one of the thieves had stolen the ring and was flaunting it. Please accept my expressions of alarm, and my condolence that you were so afflicted. I am happy that your brother, Quintus, survived with you, for is he not a mighty soldier and beloved of the legions?

  “Your harsh letter wounded the heart of one who loves you dearly; your implications astounded me. It is true that you told me of a similar ring on the hand of one who attempted to murder you years ago at Arpinum. But never have I seen it on the hand of any man, and so I do not understand your letter.

  “Who could desire your death, you a lawyer of integrity who has made no enemies and who has inspired the admiration of multitudes of men? Your name invokes reverence, and I am proud to be your friend. Rome is smaller for your absence. I pray to my patron, Jupiter, that your health has been restored and that you will soon return.

  “I have recently visited your beloved mother, who is like a mother to me. She is in excellent health. Your father speaks of you with pride and joy. What a treasure it is to parents to have such a son as you! There is nothing else of importance to convey to you. Democracies are notable for no excitements. It is well, I assume. We have lived through a stormy period and peace is very welcome.

  “Dear friend, these eyes will be the brighter for looking upon your face. I pray for your return. I embrace you and kiss your cheek.”

  Marcus, on receiving the letter, showed it with a wry expression to Quintus. Quintus read it seriously. “I am afraid you have offended Julius,” he said.

  Marcus burst into laughter, which baffled his brother.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The Roman Proconsul was displeased with Marcus. Marcus in turn was displeased, particularly with his brother, Quintus, whose tongue in the taverns had brought the Proconsul here to the lovely house of Atticus, on one wooded hill which looked upon the Acropolis. Quintus stood somewhat sheepishly beside Marcus in the breezy portico of the house while the Proconsul sipped wine and darted looks of displeasure at both brothers.

  “I cannot believe that they were Romans who attacked you, noble Cicero.”

  “I did not see their faces,” said Marcus. “Nevertheless, Quintus who fought them, and heard their voices, says they were Romans.”

  “You were stunned,” said the Proconsul, an irritable little man with a huge hauteur and fussy arrogance.

  “I am a soldier, and accustomed to being stunned yet retaining my wits,” said Quintus, who had learned that the Proconsul had never been a soldier. “This, I confess, is beyond the power of a civilian.”

  Marcus glanced at him admiringly, and smiled.

  “I should prefer, for the sake of peace and tranquillity in diplomatic concerns to believe they were not even Greeks,” said the Proconsul.

  “They were not Greeks. They were Romans,” said Quintus.

  The Proconsul coughed. “The Greeks admire your brother, Captain. But, on the other hand, they do not love Romans. They are already singing—in the taverns with which I believe you, Captain, to be familiar—of the inability of Romans to endure each other and their eagerness to destroy their virtuous and distinguished men. One of the least offensive verses in the newest songs concerns cannibalism and barbarism. You can understand why I am offended.”

  “If you had examined the body of the man I slew you would have discovered he was a Roman,” said Quintus, who had begun to frown.

  “I have told you. When the company I sent from Athens reached the spot the body had disappeared. Who bore it away? We have nothing but your word, noble Captain, which I regret you spread through the noisome taverns of Greece. The merchants saw the men in flight; they did not see their faces nor hear their voices. One was an Egyptian of noble Alexandrian family. They admired you, Captain, who, wounded and injured, pursued the—robbers—and overtook them and slew one and put to rout the other.”

  “It is neither my will nor my desire that the authorities pursue this matter any longer,” said Marcus. The Proconsul fixed his eyes on him reprovingly and said with a weighty intonation, “You forget, noble Cicero, that we are people of Law. If I ignored this attack on you, and thus gave credence to the rumor that your attackers were Romans, the Athenians would be delighted. They have a saying, ‘The wolf protects his own cubs,’ thus implying that Romans can murder each other and rob each other with impunity, in utter lawlessness.”

  “In my experience,” said Marcus, who was weary, “the more a wound is probed the more inflamed it becomes.”

  The Proconsul became fretful. “But if I ignore this then total disregard for law will result. I thought better of you, Cicero, who are a lawyer.”

  The Proconsul paused to sip at the excellent wine again. “I should like to see that famous ring which the noble Quintus Cicero removed from the hand of the—robber.”

  Marcus looked at his brother with anger, and Quintus blushed and moved uneasily. “What ring?” asked Marcus, with apparent amazement. “I know of no ring!”

  “No?” said the Proconsul, with obvious relief. “Why, then, do I hear rumors that the noble Quintus Cicero tore it from the hand of the dead man?”

  “Rumor has no legs, therefore it cannot walk, but it has wings, therefore it can fly,” said Marcus.

  The Proconsul was no fool. He had seen Marcus’ expression of vexation. “There is but one thing which I trust you can explain, noble Cicero. You have affirmed your belief in your brother’s words that the attackers were Roman. Why, then, considering that you were almost killed, are you protecting those who wished you to die? Is it possible,” the Proconsul continued, “that you know their identity or have some suspicion?”

  “I do not know their identity.”

  “But you protect them by your denials. Have you forgotten that as a Roman and as a lawyer it is your duty to uphold the law?”

 
; “It is also my duty as a lawyer not to make wild accusations without proof,” said Marcus. “It is also my intention to face those murderers one day, myself. I will deal with them.”

  “Then it is a private quarrel!” said the Proconsul, who loved vendettas.

  The Proconsul rose. “Then, noble Cicero, you will not object if I give out the rumor that you were attacked by thieves of an alien race who spoke in an alien tongue?”

  “Considering,” said Marcus, “that we Romans in Greece are an alien race and speak with an alien tongue, you will be quite correct.”

  The Proconsul was not certain that this pleased him. He took his leave with much ceremony and expressed his hope that Marcus would enjoy his visit to Greece. He also implied by looks and gestures that he hoped Marcus would leave promptly so as not to be the cause, again, of a deplorable incident. When he had gone Marcus said to his brother with renewed anger, “What a babbler you are, Quintus, especially in your cups!”

  “I regret that I was the cause of your embarrassment,” said Quintus, in a somewhat surly tone. He scratched his thick curls. “Why did you wish to protect those murderers, even if they are Romans?”

  “We do not know who they are.”

  “But you recognized the ring.”

  “True. But I have seen only one man who wore that ring and whose name I know. I doubt that Pompey was one of those who attacked me.”

  “You have always thought me a fool!”

  Marcus was immediately contrite and put his hand on his brother’s arm. “No, Carissime, that is not true. I have always considered you truly an ‘old’ Roman, and I can think of no greater compliment.”

  He went out into the beautiful garden of Atticus’ house and raised his eyes to the distant Acropolis and was again overcome with the same profound wonder and awe which he had at first experienced. The lucent air was so clear, the extraordinary cerulean sky so brilliant and sparkling, that the Acropolis appeared almost at hand, distinct in every detail, confounding the senses, diminishing all men in its aspect of total grandeur and heroic beauty, calling attention to the ephemeral life of man yet emphasizing his importance. For, had not man created this?

  It was strange that man had, centuries ago, reared this splendor in honor of the gods, who had always hated him and had wished to destroy him. Zeus had decreed the extinction of man, in outrage that such a creature of mud should resemble the immortals. But Prometheus, the Titan, immortal himself yet of the Mother Earth, had taken pity on mankind, had brought it eternal fire, had inspired it, and had been chained to rock to expiate his crime of mercy and compassion and love. He had wept in his agony, yet had challenged the gods who would have driven man from the world, and had at one and the same time defied the gods and implored their pity both on himself and the creatures of their loathing wrath. They could no longer destroy man, for he had learned the secret of immortality and knowledge.

  The challenge between the gods and men would never end, until the gods repented their disgust and hatred and man repented his bestial enormities. It was rare that the gods intervened in/the affairs of man in the name of justice and truth and law. It appeared that they intervened only in malice and to protect their own majesty, or to extend their own private quarrels which they had with each other. Ah, sometimes the gods were more malignant than men in their petulances! For men sometimes had mercy.

  The garden in which Marcus stood was radiant in the first rosy rays of sunset. The fountains, in which nymphs or statues of Eros stood, sang musically and plashed their rainbow waters into smooth marble basins where gold and silver fish darted, catching light on their metallic scales. The paths of the garden were of red gravel winding among flowerbeds, and myrtle and fir and cypress trees mingled together in cool clumps. Here was a marble-outdoor portico to protect one from noonday sun and to rest the weary mind. The columns shone against the dark background of the trees, and the floor was paved with snowy marble. The sweetest voices of birds sounded in the golden air and rose against the absolute blue of the sky. Soft and scented breezes mounted from the hills surrounding the Acropolis.

  Marcus looked down upon the crowded city, whose façades glowed with blinding yellow light and whose flat white roofs ran with scarlet and whose colored gardens were like gems set in the dusky shadows of the trees. He saw the hurried teeming of men in the many streets; the men were already leaving their shops and the Agora, and the faint clatter of their voices and laughter could be heard clearly. The heat of the day still lingered in the city and ascended the hills, a hot breath with many fragrances of heated stone and dust and dry spice and a new scent of water, and the arid aroma of palms freshening in the effulgent air. Through the surrounding hills Marcus could glimpse the purple water of the sea, already fuming with silver mist, and the crimson sails that peopled it. And he saw the narrow marble roads rising up through the hills to the Acropolis, filling with pilgrims who sang in far and melodious tones.

  Marcus again raised his eyes to the towering Acropolis, and the mighty Cyclopian abutments, built by men, which sustained it. Crowning the abutments, and circling them, glimmered walls of marble, flashing with the red and gold and violet beams of the sunset. Far below abutments and white walls lay terraced gardens filled with white shrines and little temples and fountains and flowers and green grass and dark trees, until they met the city streets. And there on the hill, under the walls, stood the white and rising circle of the theatre of Dionysus, round rank upon rank of empty stone seats where the immortal plays of Greece were produced daily for the delight of the Athenians. Here Antigone had pleaded that the rights of the individual superseded the rights of the government, and that liberty should never be threatened by the evil laws of prideful men who wished to buttress their rule and advance their ambitions and silence the cry of freedom. Here, in the words of Antigone, had dictatorship by one man been denounced and defied, and here Antigone had died, as all free men must die at the whim of tyrants. But the dictator had perished in infamous exile and the call of Antigone still rang through the modern world which unendingly disputed the scream for power uttered by wicked men. Man and the State. Always must they be enemies, for men had been given freedom by God and the State hated God, and loathed men and everlastingly fought against the rights of men. The liberty of the individual defied the luxury and the privileges of those who deemed themselves greater and wiser than their fellows, and wished to enslave their brothers. The gods hated man, but how much more did man hate man!

  But it was within the glistening walls above that man both adored the gods and challenged them, attempted to appease them and glorified them. The agony of man met the cold silence of the gods, and here in pale sentience the mystery remained to defy the philosophers who had once walked in those lofty colonnades, and to confuse them. The antagonism endured, sculptured in unanswering stone, colored in the friezes of the pediments, struck into marble. The question remained.

  It was not answered by the imperial glory within the white walls, nor by the aspiring columns between which the vehement sky, flaming like intense blue metal, shone with hard incandescence. Temple and Parthenon, the white fire of colonnades, the paved marble, the stupendous majesty of façade and pillar, the grace of crowding statues: none answered the mystery that lay between man and God. The little dark figures of men roamed among all the vast buildings, which were total in their perfection. Men walked the colonnades where Socrates and Plato and Aristotle had meditated, and all the poets and the marvelous playwrights of the grandeur of Greece. They brought offerings and flowers and incense to the crowded temples. They stood, looking up in awe, at the tremendous statue of Phidias’ Athena Parthenos, which faced the east, that figure of pure gold and amber ivory many times the height of the tallest man, helmeted with golden plumes, her left hand resting on her glittering shield which was ornamented with the coiling sacred serpent, her right hand embracing a gilt and marble pedestal on which stood a little winged figure. Her vast and virginal face gazed unmoved at the centuries; her attitude of repos
e was undisturbed by the eons of men who had come and gone. The great calm eyes contemplated the east where always a tomorrow would arise and announce wisdom, austerity, self-denial and justice and purity. The mighty statue flashed against the peacock sky as if it breathed or stirred, guarding the temple behind it and lifting eye and spirit beyond the borders of the world.

  Pylons with their winged charioteers, gleaming column, rounded temples, the Parthenon, the statue of Athena Parthenos, the many other statues and the small sanctuaries, the structures of buildings of learning and music, the white paths, the ascending stairs, the glitter of white roof: All these stood within the walls, and all these denied the truth that man, and not the gods, had created this titanic marvel, this climax of the ages, this crown of glory, this celestial chorus caught in marble. The terrible and monumental beauty affirmed the dream that lay enclosed, like a gem, within the small skull of man. It reflected the splendor of heaven as it had shone in the eyes of a few men, whose hands had re-created that splendor in the chastity of stone, that the vision might endure, that man might remember that not only was he an animal but that he was also clothed with divinity.

  No wonder, thought Marcus, that men from all over the world came to look upon this Acropolis, to climb its stairs, to linger in its gardens and on its flowered terraces, to enter within the walls to bow before Athena Parthenos, to wander along the colonnades of the Parthenon, to halt before shrines and there leave an offering, to retrace the footsteps of the philosophers and the poets whose like would never be known again, no, not through the endless centuries to come! Let the men of the future admire their own science and their own wisdom and their own law and their own philosophies. Let them boast, as they would. Never again would any race of man raise such a marbled glory of absolute perfection and nobility under the sun. Man had reached his apex of loveliness and wisdom on this Acropolis. Henceforth, he must decline and become the smaller.

  The west became one arch of golden light, and the fragrance of the garden rose more intensely about Marcus as he sat on the stone seat and looked at the Acropolis. He was invariably both depressed and exalted at the vision, depressed that man was now so little and exalted that man had once been so great. What was the power of empire compared with this? If men remained stupid then all their bannered and shouting armies were but the senseless march of the jungles, all their laws would be inscribed in dust, and all their boast would be but the echo of beastly voices, and all their cities would be inevitably inhabited by the lizard and the owl, the wild ass and the snake, the silent rubble of fallen pride.