“We will have to dine with Herod Agrippa of course,” said Martius. “I hope he doesn’t go in for big banquets. I’m not one for meals that last all night. Good wine I can stomach in any quantity.” He took a sip from his cup. “But these minor potentates show off with expensive receptions and interminable meals. A man is ill for days after.”
“I suppose we should have brought along some musicians or singers, as our contribution to the entertainment on these occasions,” Varro mused, “but I really didn’t want to weigh down the expedition with supernumeraries. Can any of your men sing or play the flute or lyre, Marcus?”
“I should hope not,” returned Martius with a chuckle. “I lead legionaries, Julius, not an orchestra.” Then a thought hit him. “You could always prevail on our Prefect of Horse to recite one or two of his poems for the king.”
“Now that, Marcus, is an excellent idea.”
Martius looked at Varro in mock horror. “I was joking, Julius.”
Varro smiled. “I wasn’t. We should ask Crispus to favor us with a recitation of some of his work, so we can judge its worth.”
“Now?” It was more a suggestion than a question.
Varro shrugged. “Why not?”
Martius grinned. “I shall fetch the poetic prefect.” With that, he pulled himself to his feet, set down his cup, then went out into the night.
Outside, it was a pleasantly mild evening. A low hum of conversation lay on the air, rising up from the tents of the camp. Somewhere away to the tribune’s right there was a sudden gale of ribald laughter; Martius’ men were in good spirits. He walked past his own tent, and that of young Venerius, until he came to the tent of Quintus Crispus. As a tribune of the broad stripe, there was no door that Marcus Martius would hesitate to open, no tent he would not walk into without warning. Parting the entry curtains, he stepped inside Crispus’ tent.
In the light of a single lamp, Quintus Crispus stood with tunic pulled up around his chest. Kneeling before him was a young man, naked from head to toe, sucking the prefect’s erect penis. The young man saw Martius first. His eyes widened, and he pulled back. “Don’t stop!” Crispus wailed. Then he saw the young man’s eyes, and turned to follow his terrified gaze. “Martius!” he exclaimed with horror. “I, I can explain.”
“With a poem, no doubt, Crispus!” Martius snarled. He strode forward and grabbed hold of the naked young man’s right ear with his left hand. “Up, you!” he commanded, dragging him, wincing, to his feet.
“Please, Martius, this is Fulvus, one of my Vettonian troopers,” Crispus gushed, pulling his tunic down as he spoke. “He was helping me…”
“So I could see!” Martius sneered, continuing to hold the naked Spaniard’s ear, so that he was forced to stand with his head tilted to one side. The black-haired Fulvus was tall, slim, and aged in his twenties. His tawny skin glistened in the lamp light, and Martius guessed that Crispus had rubbed him with oil at the outset of their tryst. Fulvus’ jutting penis was slowly lowering, like a flag coming down a flagpole. “Outside!” Martius barked. The tribune dragged the soldier to the door then out into the night.
Crispus hurried to follow. “Please, Martius, don’t hurt him!” he wailed. “I beg of you, don’t hurt him!”
Outside, Martius hauled the stark naked trooper toward the questor’s pavilion.
Crispus hastened in their wake. “Martius! Tribune! Please!” he cried.
“Give me a knife!” Martius yelled with unbridled anger. “A knife, someone!”
“Please, Martius!” Crispus continued to plead.
“There has been a crime committed,” Martius called, deliberately elevating his voice so that it would carry. “A crime committed in the camp. Give me a knife!”
As the pair came up, the four legionaries on duty outside Varro’s tent looked at the tribune and the naked cavalryman in astonishment. Nearby, the heads of legionaries poked from the doorways of tents, attracted by the shouting. Seeing what was going on, men began to tumble out into the night and run toward the questor’s tent.
Martius looked at the nearest sentinel. “Your dagger, soldier,” he commanded.
The legionary immediately reached to the sheath belted on his left hip and drew his pugio, the standard legion dagger. He held it out to the tribune, vertically, so that the officer could grasp it by the handle. Martius took the weapon from him. “On your knees!” he snarled to Fulvus, using his hold on the young man’s ear to force him down. And then Martius waited, for an audience.
Julius Varro now emerged from his tent, with his servant Hostilis just a pace behind. “Marcus, what is going on?” the questor demanded. His eyes flashed from Martius to the naked cavalryman to the distressed Crispus.
“The poet was having his penis sucked by one of his acolytes, questor.”
Varro looked at Crispus. “Quintus, you idiot!” he said, more in disappointment than in anger. “Not in my camp.”
“Please, please, forgive me, questor, I did not think…” Crispus began. His voice trailed away. He could not defend the indefensible.
Varro looked around them. Scores of off-duty soldiers had quickly formed in a semi circle around the entrance to the questor’s tent. “What do you propose to do, Marcus?” Varro asked his deputy.
“These men all know military regulations, questor,” Martius returned. “Or they should!” He raised his voice a little more. “In case any of you have forgotten, as this wretch obviously had, I will remind you. It is a capital offense for a Roman soldier to steal in camp. It is a capital offense to give false evidence to a tribune. It is a capital offense to strike an officer. It is a capital offense to be convicted of the same lesser offense three times. And…” he stressed each word that followed. “It is a capital offense, punishable by death, if a Roman soldier, auxiliary or citizen, who, in full manhood, commits a homosexual act!” He looked down at the trooper. “How old are you?”
“I am twenty-eight years of age, tribune,” Fulvus replied with a shaking voice, looking up at Martius with pleading eyes. It was the first time he had spoken. He knew his crime would only be exacerbated if he were to speak without permission.
“Then, you are in your full manhood, are you not?”
“Yes, Tribune.”
“You are an auxiliary soldier, a non citizen, and you were caught in the act of an homosexual offense in this camp?”
“Yes, Tribune.”
“Then, you are condemned by your own words.” With that, Martius brought the dagger up, and, without hesitating, pushed it several inches into the left side of Fulvus’ throat. Fulvus’ eyes bulged with horror. Many of the men watching gasped with surprise.
“No!” Crispus exclaimed.
Martius dragged the blade across the breadth of the Vettonian’s throat, left to right, severing his windpipe. He let go of his ear. With blood spurting from the incision, coating his perfect olive skin, and grasping for his throat, Fulvus toppled onto his side. He lay, quivering on the ground, gurgling grotesquely as he drowned in his own blood.
“So die all perverts!” cried a soldier in the forefront of the crowd, looking directly at Prefect Crispus as he spoke. Crispus, unable to watch Fulvus die, looked away.
Martius handed the execution weapon back to its owner. “Clean it thoroughly before you sheath it, soldier,” he instructed. Then, seeing Crispus turning away, he strode to him. Grasping a handful of his yellow hair he pulled his head around, to observe the cavalryman’s death throes. “This is your punishment, Crispus. Watch your lover die!”
Finally, Fulvus stopped moving. A soldier knelt beside the body. “He is dead,” he pronounced unemotionally. Legionaries considered auxiliaries lesser beings. An auxiliary executed for a capital crime earned no more respect than a dead animal. “What do you want us to do with the body, Tribune? Throw it out the camp gate?”
“No, string him up on a tree beside the highway in the morning,” Martius ordered, “for all the world to see. And put a notice on the corpse: ‘DISGRACEFUL FULVUS, VET
TONIAN AND PENIS SUCKER.’”
The soldier laughed. “Yes, tribune.”
Varro did not say anything. He turned and went back inside his tent. Martius pushed Crispus away with disgust, then followed the questor into his quarters.
“There is only one way for these people to learn what military law and discipline are all about, Julius,” he said, as Varro slumped onto a couch. Martius could see that the questor had not enjoyed the summary execution, as much as he might support its legality.
“I know,” Varro sighed.
Outside, Crispus backed away from the execution site with the eyes of leering, sneering soldiers following him, then turned and hurried back to his own tent. Once inside, he sank to his knees, and began to shake uncontrollably.
VI
THE QUESTOR’S DREAM
The Road to Beirut, Roman Province of Syria.
March, A.D. 71
Two shaggy black goats. Billy Goats. They were old, very old. The little beards jutting from their chins were gray with age. Varro could see the ancient animals standing, looking at him, as if transfixed. From behind him, someone spoke. “Naum,” called the voice. “Naum,” it repeated, over and over again. Varro spun around to see who had spoken, but no one was there. He turned back to the goats, and watched as a shadowy figure walked up to the animals. The figure drew a sword, a Roman gladius, the legionary’s short sword, the kind with a pointed tip. And as Varro watched, in horror, the figure used the sword to gouge out the eyes of the two old goats. With that, Varro awoke, sitting up in his bed with a start.
The questor’s personal slave Hostilis was almost instantly up from his sleeping place on the floor at the foot of the bed and standing at his master’s bedside. The slave held an oil lamp which lit his square face from below and gave him an eerie, black-eyed ghoulish appearance. “You called out, master?” said Hostilis with concern.
“I did?”.
“Were you perhaps dreaming, master?”
Now Varro realized that he was bathed in a cold sweat. An image flashed into his mind, of the two blinded billy goats. The recollection caused him to he shiver, briefly, involuntarily. “Yes, yes, I remember now. It was a dream, Hostilis.”
Another figure appeared in the doorway behind Hostilis. “Is everything in order, my lord?” It was the voice of Callidus. “I heard you emit a cry of considerable volume while I was taking the night air.” Callidus had a problem sleeping; his solution was to walk until he exhausted himself.
“I was dreaming, Callidus,” Varro explained. “There is no need for concern. It was nothing but a dream. Go back to bed.”
“Ah, a dream,” said the freedman, coming to stand beside the questor’s bed. Callidus placed great store in dreams, which in his opinion were much more authoritative then fortune tellers. He had once dreamed that he was wearing a crown, and within a week he’d been given his cap of freedom and manumitted by his master. Another time he had dreamed he had to choose between a plump sow and a bowl of fishes, and days later he had for the first time met the ample Priscilla, who had told him he must give up all his other female companions if he wanted to share her bed; which he had. “The dream may have been sent to guide you, my lord,” he said, looking down at his superior with a mixture of interest and concern.
“Do you think so?” Varro responded. He had never been one to have dreams, prophetic or otherwise. Not dreams that he remembered, anyway. His mother, on the other hand, frequently experienced them and swore by their predictive powers. She even employed a slave whose sole duty was the interpretation of her nocturnal visions.
“Tell me about your dream, my lord,” Callidus urged. “It may be important.”
Sitting in his bed, Varro proceeded to describe all he could remember of the dream. He told himself that he did it to humor his freedman, yet the dream had seemed so shockingly real he felt compelled to revisit it, as if to assure himself that is was the product of imagination, not of memory.
“Two goats?” said Callidus pensively once the questor had finished.
“Do you think there is anything in it, Callidus?” said Varro. “I cannot imagine what it could possibly mean. If it means anything at all.”
Callidus scratched his head. “Well, of course, goats are sacrificial animals, my lord. It would not surprise me if the gods are telling you that they want you to sacrifice another goat, or perhaps two, to guarantee the success of your mission.”
“Perhaps.” Varro nodded slowly, unconvinced. The fact that the dream had lodged in his mind as vividly as if it were a living memory continued to trouble him. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he placed his feet on the woolen rug covering the floor. “Bring Artimedes,” he instructed Hostilis. “He claims some expertise in this area. Perhaps the secretary can shed light on the matter.”
When, a few minutes later, a yawning Artimedes was ushered into the questor’s room by Hostilis, Varro was standing, dampening his face to refresh himself, using a bowl and pitcher of water which were kept on the side table.
Varro’s secretary had been a member of his family’s staff for a number of years. Initially, the little Greek had served as under secretary to Varro’s mother and been one of her favorites. In the few years before Varro had gone off at eighteen to do his mandatory six months service with the legions as an officer cadet, Artimedes had been the youth’s tutor. When Varro’s Syrian appointment had been confirmed, his mother had transferred Artimedes to her son to act as his personal secretary. Varro knew that the secretary frequently wrote home to Rome to keep Varro’s mother confidentially appraised of her boy’s welfare, but he never let on that he was aware of the correspondence. Artimedes, Varro also knew, was a highly superstitious man who shared his mother’s passion for horoscopes, omens, and the divination of dreams.
“Artimedes, can you decipher my dream?” Varro asked.
“Tell me about it, my lord,” said the secretary, his gravity laced with anticipation.
So, settling on the edge his bed, Varro once again recounted his dream, this time for Artimedes’ benefit, with the secretary, Callidus and Hostilis clustered at the bedside bearing studious expressions. “There,” he said when he had finished. “What construction do you put on it, Artimedes?”
Even before the questor had reached the end of his telling, the little bald Greek had begun to pace the room with hands clasped behind his back and mind whirring. “To dream of goats wandering in a field,” Artimedes now began, “signifies fine weather and an excellent yield of crops. But to see them stationary…”
“As they were,” said Callidus. “Were they not, my lord?”
“This denotes,” Artimedes went on, ignoring Callidus’ interjection, “cautious dealings and a steady increase of wealth.”
“Not an unwelcome omen, my lord?” Callidus enthused.
“Yes, but the gouging of the eyes, Artimedes? And the name of Naum?”
Ceasing to pace, the serious secretary glowered at Varro. “All in good time, questor. Have I not taught you the virtue of patience?”
Varro lowered his eyes. His former tutor still had the ability to rebuke him, all these years after the young man had ventured into the world as his own instructor. “Forgive me, Artimedes. Please continue.”
Artimedes resumed his pacing. “If a woman dreams of drinking goats milk, she will marry for money, and will not be disappointed,” he continued.
Varro made no comment. It was as if Artimedes was working through a catalogue of dreams in his head, discounting each possibility, no matter how remote, before moving on to the next. As Varro had come to learn over the years, this was Artimedes’ methodical style; he knew no other way.
“Should a woman dream of riding a billy goat, this denotes that she will shortly be held in disrepute. But, clearly, you are not a woman, my lord. You did not dream of drinking goats milk, nor of riding a billy goat?” When Varro shook his head, the secretary asked, “They were billy goats? Not nanny goats?”
“They were billy goats,” the quest
or confirmed.
“These billy goats did not butt you? To dream that a billy goat butts you signifies that you must prevent your enemies coming into possession of your secrets or plans.”
“Ahah!” Callidus exclaimed, as if this was a significant revelation.
“Neither of the two billy goats butted me,” Varro said, with rising impatience. “What is the meaning of the gouging out of their eyes, Artimedes? And what is the meaning of the word Naum? Do you know?”
“I, er…I must confess, my lord, that I am at a loss to explain either.”
“Ah. Well, at least you are honest, Artimedes, as you always are. Where does that leave me, apart from well married and with fine weather and an abundant crop?”
Artimedes scowled back at his former pupil. “With respect, my lord, if I were you I would treat this dream with the seriousness it deserves. Clearly, we are not sent these messages for nothing. As Cicero wrote, ‘If the gods love men, they will certainly reveal their purposes to them in sleep.’”
Varro attempted to look serious. “Yes, of course.”
“Might I suggest, my lord, that you consult the Acting Governor’s chief secretary? Pythagoras is a far more learned man than myself. I am sure that Pythagoras will be able to reveal the secret of your dream.”
The Inquest Page 6