Gods and Legions

by Michael Curtis Ford

  Julian held his arm straight out before him, his fingers curled in a fist, the thumb pointing sideways, neither up nor down, as he stared down at the warriors, silently deliberating. 'What could he possibly be thinking?' I wondered. 'Is there any doubt that they both fought bravely and are both champions?'

  Still he stood motionless, and the crowd became almost frenzied in its impatience for judgment. Objects began flying through the air — baskets and bottles. There was a danger of riot, whichever way Julian decided.

  'Please, Julian,' I implored, though my voice could not have been heard over the crowd. I stood up. 'Please, my lord,' I shouted, 'the Gaul, too, is a champion.'

  But it was as if he did not hear or see me, for he stared straight ahead with his mad gleam, his eyes on those of the victorious Leo, his lips mumbling words which only he himself knew, drowned as they were in the roar of the crowd. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his fist thumb down. With a trace of a smile, Leo plunged the sword deep into the sand beneath Vercingetorix and with a quick, sawing motion of the blade, sliced through his neck. As the head rolled to the side, ragged stump-end facing up, the right foot stopped twitching and the crowd settled into a sustained, less frantic cheer.

  I sank back into my seat, horrified, as Leo, suddenly released from his effort, seemed to totter on his own knees. Letting go the sword, which remained standing upright and swaying slowly back and forth in the sand, the Syrian performed a shaky victory lap around the arena, weakly waving the heavy shield which he dare not remove for fear of bleeding to death. An attendant dressed as Charon, the conveyor of the dead, trotted out to Vercingetorix, removed the sword, and laboriously rolled the huge body over onto its back. He ostentatiously performed a short, stylized little dance of glee over his new customer, and then waved to his assistants to drag the body out of the arena by the feet, leaving a long, bloody trail as a wake. Additional attendants then ran into the ring and began hastily raking over the stained sand in preparation for the next bout.

  The Christian was dead; Rome had prevailed over the barbarian, old over young, East over West. The vast trunk lies headless, without a name, in a pauper's grave on a foreign shore. I found a pretext to return to the palace before the next round of fighting began, and it was only much later that Julian himself followed suit.

  III

  Julian had made every effort to eradicate some of the most egregious examples of waste and excess in the court he had inherited from Constantius. The palace and its dependencies at Constantinople contained literally thousands of cooks, barbers, and cupbearers, and I do not mean thousands in total, Brother, but rather thousands of each. There were as many different wardrobe slaves as there were types of clothing: slaves responsible for the Emperor's palace garments and others for his city clothes, slaves charged with his military field uniforms and others his full-dress-parade uniforms, slaves responsible solely for his lavish theater garments. There were slaves employed only in polishing eating vessels, while others touched only drinking vessels, and amongst these there were subspecialists who focused on gold polishing, silver polishing, and crystal polishing. The slaves who cared for the jewels dared not tread on the authority of the slaves who monitored the pearls, and the bath slaves ceded ground to the masseur slaves, who in turn deferred to the hairdressers and barbers. At meals the usher slaves supervised the dining room attendants, who in turn lorded it over the waiters who carried in the dishes, and the different waiters who carried them back out. The cupbearers were organized into a complex hierarchy depending upon whether they held the flagon or presented the cup, while the most revered, though often most short-lived, slaves of all were the tasters, whose duty was to ensure the harmlessness of the Emperor's food and drink, and who were hoped to fulfill this task with more meticulousness than those employed by Claudius and Britannicus in generations past.

  The numbers of eunuchs with no clear function whatsoever cannot possibly be underestimated, for they swarmed through the salons and corridors like flies in a latrine, though truth be told, there were precious few of the latter because of the vast squadrons of eunuchs employed in the palace toilets to keep them out. The excesses had spread even to the palace guard he inherited, who, though ostensibly soldiers, minced like dandies, to the vast amusement of Julian's rough-hewn Gauls. Rather than the traditional coarse soldier chants, the troops practiced effeminate music-hall songs; instead of sleeping on stone ledges, they demanded feather mattresses. Julian complained that while in the old days a Spartan soldier could be put to death for even daring to appear under a roof while in service, the palace guards in Constantinople drank from jewel-encrusted cups even heavier than their swords, and were more skilled at appraising the purity of a gold coin than at assaying the thickness of an enemy's shield. Rank cowards they were, who, as the comic poet says, considered it superfluous to use art in their thievery, so they plundered openly. Julian longed for the days of the common soldier he had once heard of, who was said to have stolen a Parthian jewel case laden with pearls while sacking a Persian fort, but who threw away the contents, not recognizing their value, preferring instead to keep the box because of his delight at its polished leather covering.

  He dismissed all the palatini, the palace parasites, cutting a deep swath through the court's employment rolls, eliminating thousands of positions overnight, to the fury and desperation of the holders of such sinecures. By a single decree he reduced Constantius' palace to an enormous desert, wiping out entire departments of slaves and dependents, allowing no exceptions for age, length of service, or circumstances, even for faithful and honest retainers of the imperial family.

  The immediate reaction of the people and the noble classes, however, which was one of outrage and even anxiety for the Emperor's sanity, was soon softened by his innate humbleness and simple common sense. The fiscal and judicial reforms for which he was well known in Gaul were immediately analyzed for applicability here, on the larger scale of the Empire's mightiest city, and their implementation was ordered, to the delight of the common people, who had long been overburdened by the taxes levied to sustain Constantius' excesses. So too did Julian immediately win over Constantinople's Senate, by granting it a number of heretofore unprecedented privileges and points of authority. In a gesture of perhaps even greater symbolic value, he reversed the previous Emperor's custom of summoning the senators to his presence and forcing them to stand uncomfortably before him while he listened to their deliberations. Rather, he humbly went to the Senate chambers himself, sitting at a vacant place in the assembly hall to take part in the debates as a mere one among many, and insisted that all those in attendance remain seated while in his presence.

  Despite Julian's extensive reforms of the palace and the fiscal and judiciary systems, however, he somehow neglected to look closely into the workings of the palace kitchens. This was perhaps because, despite the proximity of his tiny pantry office, it was only during rare, mandatory occasions of state that he even sampled the extent of its services. Naturally, he had forbidden the staff from serving him dainty delicacies, such as the peacock tongues and sow's udders that Constantius had so adored; more often than not, he simply sent a steward to bring him a plate of fruit for his repasts, even then sometimes neglecting to eat or indifferent to what he did consume. It was for this reason, perhaps — his very indifference to food — that he allowed the dining facilities and budget to remain untouched and forgotten.

  The far-flung and wasteful talent languishing in the kitchen, however, finally burst into full flower several weeks after the games about which I spoke earlier, when he was persuaded by his chief steward that it would be in keeping with protocol to host a banquet in honor of the newly elected senators who had recently taken office. Julian acquiesced absentmindedly, and pointedly asked me to attend and to be sure the steward arranged for me to dine on a couch beside him so that he would not be required to endure the blather of the puffing politicians. Otherwise, he left all else in the hands of the cooks. A black day that was to be.

/>   The chief cook, a literature buff, apparently, had by unknown contrivances determined that that day was the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of Trimalchio's legendary dinner, and he resolved to replicate it morsel for morsel; a more obscene, puerile meal I have never seen in my life. For days beforehand, a vast army of slaves bustled merrily about the premises, between the massive kitchens and that part of the Imperial Palace known as the Brazen House because of its roof of brass tiles. It is in this magnificent structure that the four battalions of the Imperial Guards are quartered, adjacent to the state prison for men accused of treason and therefore requiring high security. Here too are the various throne rooms and vast colonnaded galleries in which the Emperor is expected to receive foreign dignitaries and heads of state. Most important, however, it is here that the state banqueting halls are located, and the entire focus of the palace's kitchen activity was for days centered on establishing the critical supply line to these halls, severely disrupting the quiet of Julian's pantry office with the shouts and laughter of the pastry cooks, sweetmeat makers, bakers, butchers, wine stewards, water-drawers, furnace-stokers, fish purveyors, and all the rest of the mob that Constantius had somehow found necessary to prepare a meal.

  The evening of the banquet began smoothly enough: The guests had been happily if benignly entertained by a number of choristers and musicians presenting excerpts from ancient classic dramas, and dancers in keeping with Julian's austere tastes — no fire jugglers or nude Syrian girl acrobats for him! Maximus, who attended with his usual stained tunic and unkempt beard, and whose position on the couch was just on the other side of the host from mine, maintained his customary sour grimace and piercing expression. This was despite the fact that out of deference to the evil little man's stature, Julian had taken care in advance to ban the usual troop of comic dwarves and buffoons that Constantius had often favored to lighten the mood of his guests. I stared at Maximus as he smirked and whispered sycophantically into the Emperor's ear, until he caught my glance and deflected it with a scowl. Despite my personal resentment of him, as a physician I still bore some concern for the man, for it seemed that his rash was spreading — the rough, angry-looking patch of pustules I had first noticed upon his arrival in the city had spread from beneath his left ear to down his jawline and was approaching his left cheek.

  When the music and entertainment began to grow tiresome, and appetites had been appropriately whetted by the small tidbits served by the bustling table slaves, Julian looked up and nodded at the watchful usher at the door, who turned into the corridor and clapped his hands sharply. Conversation in the room fell silent in expectation, as a long parade of richly dressed palace eunuchs filed in, bearing silver platters on their shoulders steaming with the incredible results of the past four days' hard work in the kitchens. The head steward's and chef's repressed creativity had taken on full bloom.

  The theme of the meal was the twelve signs of the zodiac, with the arrangement of each of the twelve courses focusing on a specific astrological sign. Julian looked on in dismay at the inventiveness of the representations depicted on the serving platters: for the Ram, headcheese of sheep; for the Twins, matching pairs of stuffed kidneys. The majestic African Lion was represented by a delicate plate of Numidian figs; Pisces by massive platters of poached mullet from Corsica and the finest lamprey from the Straits of Sicily; and Capricorn not by a goat, as one might first expect, but rather by huge shelled lobsters garnished with fresh asparagus, and with their foreclaws mounted on their heads in such a way as to look like a goat. Virgo was rather tastelessly depicted by the paunch of a barren sow that inexplicably lay writhing and heaving on a tray in front of us, until the bearded slave who served it drew a hunting knife and plunged it into the foul-looking organ, whereupon a brace of live thrushes burst out, startling the diners. Sagittarius the Huntress was represented by plates of fresh game garnished by — what else? — bulls' eyes, which were nauseating both in themselves and in contemplation of the poor quality of the pun. Between each course, slaves dispersed among the couches with ewers and poured warm, perfumed water over our hands to remove the odor and detritus of the previous course. The palate-cleanser was Libra, an enormous pair of scales set in the middle of each table bearing sweet muffins on one side and delicate cakes on the other, white as snow and kneaded of the finest flour.

  The dinner was concluded with the dessert: an enormous, dripping Priapus carved of ice, with cored apple slices chilling as they ringed his tumescent organ, and surrounded by peaches, grapes, and flavored ice. The effect, to my mind, was thoroughly disgusting, though received appreciatively by the other diners. Throughout, copious quantities of Falernian wine were consumed, so old the date had been effaced by the dust that time had gathered on the aged jars but which could not have been less than a century. The mix of water gradually became less and less substantial, 'in order,' Julian said, 'to better appreciate the fine vintage,' until against all custom, and particularly his own personal practice, almost the entire party was consuming it neat, with growing gusto.

  Appreciative belches were politely emitted, in keeping with the philosophical doctrine that the highest wisdom is to follow the dictates of nature. Under Constantius this practice had been pushed to its logical extreme, and several of the more uninhibited guests engaged robustly in other emissions of wind, but a disapproving glance from the Emperor quickly put an end to music of this kind. Even Trimalchio had had the decency to leave his couch and exit the triclinium when pressed by urgent need. Even more flatulent than the reaction to the dinner, however, was the conversation of the immediate guests around Julian's table. It began with the most prosaic remarks about the new Emperor's liking of Constantinople's weather and his appreciation of various historical points of interest, and soon touched upon more sensitive topics of Constantius' past policies and the political stances of certain individuals not present at the dinner.

  All this I politely ignored, smiling pleasantly and picking halfheartedly at my headcheese. It was when the topic turned to religion, however, that my interest was piqued, though I remained wary of entering into any serious discussion, for all present had by this time consumed ample quantities of wine and were not above spouting the first ill-considered thoughts that came to mind concerning such-and-such religious practices. Julian, too, became a more animated participant in the discussion, looking to me often for confirmation of his points of theology concerning Christian doctrine and increasingly attempting to draw me into the lively conversation, even baiting me to do so.

  'What was it the Apostle Paul said?' he asked, looking at me, his words slightly slurred.

  'My lord, I am no Scriptures scholar. Even had I memorized all of Paul's writings, would you have me repeat them to you now?'

  He waved me off impatiently. 'Ah, my friend, I won't let you shirk your conversational duties so easily. You know perfectly well what the great man said about salvation — you were raised among bishops as a child, just as I was. "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Was it not that?'

  'Indeed it was. His letter to the Romans, too. Very appropriate.'

  Julian chuckled as he saw I was warming to the topic — but still I remained chary. 'And that statement is, in fact, the very essence of Christianity, is it not?'

  'Of course.'

  'And one who acknowledges its truth and is witnessed to have accomplished those two things might rightly be said to be a proper Galilean, correct?'

  'A proper Christian — yes, my lord.'

  He waited a moment, giving me an opportunity to expand upon my responses, yet all I could feel was the heat of the room, the uncut wine making my head swim, and I knew I had no desire to participate in a farcical discussion in the presence of senators and palace toadies. Julian's eyes narrowed slightly at my clear refusal to play along with his attempts at a debate.

  'Then why,' he said, feigning a look of puzzlement, 'are Christians said to fear and des
pise me, and claim I am not one of them? Here, I shall say it: "Jesus is lord." Now am I saved?'

  I felt all eyes at our table upon me, and noticed that all other conversation in the room had fallen silent. I spoke clearly and evenly. 'I do not know of any Christians who despise you, though they might doubt your commitment to their faith. By merely speaking those words, you have fulfilled only half the requirement. You must also believe in your heart.'

  'Ah — so whether or not I am saved is contingent upon whether or not I believe. If I believe I will receive salvation, then I will receive salvation. Circular logic, is it not? What if I do not, or cannot completely believe — will I be partially saved?'

  'No, my lord,' I said. 'You can no more be partially saved than can a woman be partially pregnant.'

  A few of the diners tittered appreciatively at the weak witticism, but were quickly silenced by Julian's stony face.

  'So in other words, my entire fate is based on whether or not I believe. Not on good works, not on charity, not on love. I need only utter the magic words and believe them, whether I am an illiterate peasant, a king, or a scholar, although, in fact, the more I am the latter, the less likely I am to believe. What kind of a religion are we establishing here, that is based so much on the vagaries of one's heart rather than on one's actions in the world?'

  'My lord, you belittle our faith,' I rejoined, striving to contain my anger at his mocking tone. 'You cast it in overly simplified terms, to which no religion could stand up. This is not the proper venue for a discussion of this kind. If you insist, we shall talk of these things tomorrow, in private, when you are not so-'

  'Calm, calm, Caesarius, I meant no offense,' he interrupted, smiling lightheartedly. 'I call our other guests to witness that I have said nothing vicious or untrue, have I?' Most of the others at the table diverted their gaze or laughed uneasily. 'Here, on my honor, I confess my belief that God raised Christ from the dead, for I truly do believe that, Caesarius, as much as I believe that Athena appeared personally to Odysseus to assist him on his return home, and that Apollo spoke directly to Croesus through the oracle. Is there any disputing now that I am as much a Christian as the Pope himself? I believe those things!'