The Caspian Gates wor-4

by Harry Sidebottom

  Hermianus, the ab Admissionibus, ushered into the garden Zeno and another man. The latter looked the part: staff and wallet, cloak and no tunic. Judging by his beard and hair, roughly chopped short, he was of the Stoic persuasion.

  ‘ Dominus, this is Nicomachus the Stoic.’

  The philosopher bowed and blew a kiss from his fingertips, the more restrained form of adoration.

  Gallienus turned the full light of the imperial gaze on the philosopher. Nicomachus neither flinched nor looked ostentatiously disrespectful; maybe he would do.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ Gallienus asked in Greek.

  ‘Thank you, Kyrios, watered wine.’

  Not one to parade asceticism, thought Gallienus. That was good, and the man appeared clean. Gallienus signed that Zeno and Hermianus could retire. The drink would arrive presently.

  The emperor sat on a stone bench next to a portrait bust of Diogenes. He asked if the philosopher would like to sit.

  ‘No, thank you, Kyrios.’ Nicomachus leant on his staff, one leg crossed, like a figure from an antique vase. As they waited without talking, Gallienus wondered if the philosopher had been searched.

  A slave of the imperial household emerged, served the drinks, and departed.

  ‘Tell me your views on exile,’ said the emperor.

  Nicomachus remained silent for a time while he collected his thoughts. He was very still, and frowned a deep frown of philosophic concentration. A creditable performance so far, judged Gallienus. If the words matched the gestures, this could be enlightening.

  ‘The majority of mankind thinks of exile with nothing but horror and fear. You are torn from your home, family and friends. Everything you love, everything you know is taken away. You are thrust out to wander, dusty-footed in abject poverty, among uncaring or hostile strangers: misery and loneliness leading to an unmarked grave.

  ‘If it was only the ignorant hoi polloi who saw exile as an unmitigated evil, it need not detain us. Only demagogues and fools care what the masses think. But other men, the most revered of men, have expressed similar views. Did not the divine Homer portray the pain of Odysseus: clinging to the shattered raft; sitting alone, weeping by the shore? Ten years of unhappiness, of dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams.

  ‘Think of the lines Euripides wrote on exile. Electra asks her brother, “Where does the wretched exile spend his wretched exile?” He replies, “In no one settled region does he waste away.” He might have bread, “but strengthless, exile’s fare.”

  ‘Yet others have seen it differently. Many philosophers, and those ones the most distinguished, have considered exile as neither bad nor good. It is nothing but an irrelevance. The good man is good no matter where he is, in no matter what circumstances he finds himself. Like wealth or poverty, like sickness or health, it cannot touch the inner man or his moral purpose.

  ‘Then again, some philosophers – highly thought of, if misguided – argue that exile is the inescapable lot of all men; cast out, as they say, from our own dear country, by which they mean from the divine. I will not trouble you, Basileus, with such recondite theories. These philosophers hold that a king must always be a philosopher. They are wrong. The philosopher is one thing, the king is another. It is enough that the ruler listens to philosophers. The basileus ever has weighty practical matters on hand; no time for arcane speculation.’

  Gallienus allowed himself to smile. His fondness for the Platonist Plotinus was well known. Nicomachus had made a neat swipe at the followers of Plato, combined with an elegant, understated appeal for his own imperial favour. Zeno had done well to discover him; the Stoic Nicomachus would go far.

  The philosopher’s face lightened. ‘Finally, we should examine how exile may actually work to a man’s advantage, may be a positive good, if not an absolute blessing. Musonius, himself exiled by Nero, rightly saw that, all too often, men of position are addicted to high living. An exile is in straitened circumstances. He must live more simply. Musonius pointed to Spartiacus the Lacedaemonian. He suffered from a weak chest. In exile, he had to renounce luxury, and he ceased to be ill. Exile cleanses, toughens the body.

  ‘And exile can be morally good, an education in virtue. Condemned by Domitian, Dio Chrysostom wondered if exile was good or bad. He sought the advice of the Delphic Oracle. Apollo told him to carry on doing what he was doing. At first, Dio did not understand that his relegatio had forced him to think about the most important question of all: how should a man live? Clad in humble attire, Dio wandered and, as he tells us, some men mistook him for a philosopher. They came up to him and asked him to tell them about good and evil. To answer, Dio had to think deeply about these profoundest of things, and in doing so he actually became a philosopher.

  ‘Let us end by returning to Odysseus. We have seen his wandering, but what were its effects? He had fought at Troy – he was no weakling – but there he was more known for his cunning than his skill at arms. Ten years of suffering refined and toughened him in body and soul. When the gods granted him to return to Ithaka, he was a different man. Virtually alone, Odysseus had both the physical and moral strength to slaughter the many enemies who had invaded his home.’

  Nicomachus finished. He leant on his staff, imperturbable.

  Gallienus asked the philosopher no questions. There was little point in an emperor attempting Socratic dialogue. On one side, the autocrat whose will was law; on the other, one of his subjects, whose life hung by a thread. Neither free speech nor the truth was likely to be attained. The words of the eunuch philosopher Favorinus still rang true: ‘You give me bad advice, my friends, when you do not allow me to think the man who commands thirty legions to be right about anything he chooses.’ Gallienus would mull it all over by himself.

  The emperor graciously thanked the philosopher. Was there any benefit he could grant?

  ‘Just that you think on my words and, if possible, the further pleasure of your company.’ It was well said; for a philosopher to ask for material benefits undermined his very claim to philosophic status.

  From wherever, out of sight, he had been listening, Hermianus emerged. The philosopher accepted the honour of kissing the imperial seal on the proffered ring. Relinquishing Gallienus’s hand, he blew the kiss of proskynesis. Hermianus escorted him out.

  Alone in the garden, Gallienus sat and thought. Exile might not break a man; it could change him. Odysseus had returned and killed without mercy those who had done him wrong. More recent history furnished examples of men returning in arms to take revenge on those who had exiled them: Dio of Syracuse driving out the tyrant Dionysius; Marius bathing the streets of Rome in blood. Ballista had never shown either the ruthless ambition of the latter, or the driving principles of the former. But he was an excellent general, a fine leader of men. Three times he had defeated the Persians; once, the King of Kings in person. Ballista had killed the tyrant Quietus. He had been hailed emperor: Marcus Clodius Ballista Augustus. Embittered by exile, he would appeal to the disaffected, would make an excellent figurehead for a revolution: once capax imperii, always capax imperii. Rome had always welcomed men of violence who fought her cause and espoused her values. Already Gallienus could hear the insidious sophistries of the courtiers of the new regime: Ballista, the new Aeneas, come from abroad, sword in hand, to sweep away the soft and the decadent from the seven hills, come to return Rome to her antique, martial virtue.

  Exile alone would not contain Ballista. The Romanized barbarian would remain a threat to Gallienus himself. Mutilation might be the solution. No man who was deformed could sit on the throne of the Caesars. Cut off his ears and nose. But Ballista had been a friend. Just the nose then.

  Gallienus shook his head, took a drink. What was he thinking? He remembered the story of an eastern prince in Tacitus. The young man had been raised as a hostage in Rome. Politics had dictated that the time had come for him to be sent back to his native land, to rule as a client king in Parthia. His subjects had not cared for his foreign, western ways. But they had not kil
led him; instead they had cut off his ears and nose. Such, Tacitus had written, was Parthian clementia. Gallienus knew himself an autocrat, but he still appreciated irony.

  Mutilation was not the answer. Such behaviour was the ‘clemency’ of a cruel oriental despot, not the emperor of the Romans, a basileus of the Greeks. Death – that was the answer.

  VII

  The escape from Ephesus was easy. Ballista and the others had walked up to the civic agora, crossed it, and taken the street which led past the East Gymnasium. The crowds at the Magnesian Gate had caused delay but no danger. Outside, the familia had headed south. Even with the women and children, in under half an hour they had reached the villa of Corvus.

  That was how it had gone: completely uneventful. But it was not how Hippothous remembered it. He remembered the slow trudge up the claustrophobic street from the Memmius monument; the uneven, deceitful pavement; the echoing tumult of nearby chaos; the reek of burning. He recalled trying not to look too often over his shoulder; the milling crush at the town gate; beyond the walls, willing the familia to move faster; the ever-present fear; the terrible anxiety that every sound at his back was the coming of the Goths.

  Hippothous knew he was no coward. But a long career in banditry had taught him that running away should be done with all speed. He had no number to the times he had been chased. But never had he moved as slowly. In all those times in Cilicia, Cappadocia, Syria, Egypt, even Aethiopia, if the women and children had slowed him up, he had left them by the path or killed them. Hostages for ransom, his own followers: it made no difference. A life among the latrones did not encourage sentimentality.

  Alongside Hippothous at the rear of the small knot of refugees, Ballista had walked steadily. Hippothous could not help but admire the big barbarian’s self-control. At the villa, Ballista had been all cool capability. The domestic staff were gathered, the animals led out. As the latter were harnessed, Ballista made much of the grey gelding he had stabled at the villa. The old, infirm and very young were helped into the saddle. Ballista insisted Julia ride his horse; he would walk. Two burly male slaves were left to prevent casual looting – they were to take to their heels if the Goths came. The rest of the staff, about a dozen, were added to the column, and they set out again.

  From then, Hippothous’s mind had been more restful. There was no real likelihood of the Goths venturing so far inland, not when there was so much still to pillage in Ephesus. He knew nothing of Goths but a great deal of men plundering.

  Ballista had led them south on the main road. When it turned to the east, inland towards Magnesia ad Maeandrum, they had taken to the hills; the path climbing and leading south-west. They had spent the night in the sacred site of Ortygia, their sleep disturbed by the fervent prayers of the priests and the panicked locals. Zeus, Apollo, Athena, all you Olympians, protect us from the fury of the Scythians. The next day, they had skirted the foothills of Mount Thorax, come to the flat lands and billeted themselves in a decayed village called Maiandros. A final morning’s march, less than ten miles, easy going on a flat road, and they had reached Priene. It was the ides of March.

  Hippothous was hot and irritable, his patience wearing thin. They had not outrun the news of the Goths. They had been told that the north-east gate of Priene would remain closed until the chief magistrate, the stephanephoros Marcus Aurelius Tatianus, came and made a decision. That had been nearly an hour earlier – more than long enough for Hippothous to take the measure of the place.

  The passageway of the gate was narrow. Even if open, a couple of determined men could hold it. It was flanked by towers. The walls were old, the stones pockmarked with age, weeds growing in the cracks and joins. They had seen no work for generations. But it was a tribute to the original builders that the great, close-fitted ashlar slabs still stood. While a nimble individual could probably climb them – say, scale them at night when no one was looking – if defended, they would still pose a formidable obstacle. To Hippothous’s left, the wall dog-legged out, providing further enfilading against any attacker ascending the ramp to the gate. Beyond the dog-leg, the wall curved away, following the foothills above the plain. To the right, they zigzagged wildly up the steep slope. They stopped when they came to the mountain cliff. No need for walls there. An outcrop of Mount Mycale reared up three hundred feet or more: pale-grey rock, too sheer for vegetation. At the top was the acropolis. Corvus had been right: Priene was a hard place to take.

  Although Hippothous had not been in Ionia before, he knew the outline of the story of Priene. Once one of the leading towns of the Ionian Greeks, Priene had been betrayed by the Maeander. The silt brought down by the many-channelled river had created a wide plain, driving back the sea. Left landlocked, Priene and its port of Naulochos over the years had sunk into provincial obscurity. Hippothous hoped that very obscurity, and the distance from the Aegean, would keep it safe now.

  There was a stir at the gate. A voice boomed out from the battlements. ‘I am Marcus Aurelius Tatianus, son of Tatianus, stephanephoros of the polis of Priene. Who are you?’

  ‘Marcus Clodius Ballista and his familia, with the familia of Marcus Aurelius Corvus. My friend Corvus told me to come to you, his guest-friend, to find shelter from the fury of the Scythians.’

  The gates were opened, and Tatianus walked out. Greetings and introductions were given and taken. Hippothous regarded Tatianus – regarded him very carefully. The stephanephoros was a tall man, dressed in a Greek himation and tunic. His walk and movements were those of a eupatrid: slow, considered, exhibiting the self-possession of the elite. When not in motion, he stood still, hands clasped in front of his body, for all the world an image of a statue of Demosthenes.

  But Hippothous saw through it all. This attempt to personify ancient civic virtue was a sham. Tatianus’s eyes were never still. They shifted rapidly, circling about. This was the sure sign of a man who has done some foul act, such as killing a relative or committing a forbidden thing, something proscribed by the gods, such things as had been done by the son of Pelops or by Oedipus, son of Laius. Tatianus would have to be watched. What was physiognomy for if not to guard against the vices of the bad before having to experience them?

  Tatianus bade them leave their animals. His servants would see to them. On foot, he led the way under the vaulted gate. Blank walls and occasional shadowed doorways faced the narrow street, which climbed sharply. At least they were shaded from the early-afternoon sun. In the intervals between buildings, to their right, the acropolis cliff loomed over everything.

  As they walked, Hippothous continued his physiognomic musing. The eyes of Tatianus reminded him of those of the people of Thrace from the regions around Byzantium and Perinthus, the two poleis in which Hippothous had come to manhood. Their eyes also were ever circling about and moving, and their character was notorious – only their innate cowardice usually restrained them from the evil acts they desired.

  When they reached the theatre, the street levelled out but grew narrower still. Tatianus asked if Ballista would care to see the theatre: there was a wonderful view to the south, out over the plain and the sea towards Miletus and the island of Lade. Ballista said he would be delighted, but possibly at a later time; his people were tired and hungry. Of course, of course; Tatianus had already sent men ahead to prepare the house and set out a meal.

  Hippothous thought of Perinthus and Byzantium, two poleis filled with evil men, two poleis he could never visit again. He thought of Aristomachus, the man he had killed in the latter. Remorse was not in his mind. He thought of the news of Gallienus’s massacre of city councillors at Byzantium. It had filled Hippothous’s heart with fierce pleasure.

  Beyond the theatre, the street began to dip down. They came to a deep flight of steps. Hippothous saw why they had had to leave the horses. A few paces further and in the right-hand wall, massive stone slabs framed a doorway.

  ‘Welcome to my house.’ Tatianus addressed Ballista, full of urbanity. Together, they stepped over the doorstep and into th
e cool of the corridor. Hippothous and the others followed. The porter emerged from his cubby-hole, bowed, blew a kiss from his fingertips and, having performed his proskynesis, disappeared again.

  At the end of the corridor, set off to the left, was the bright light of an atrium. As they processed towards it, they passed steps up to a passageway which ran off to the right towards another atrium. Clearly, Tatianus or one of his ancestors had incorporated at least two houses in order to make a home fitting the family dignity.

  In the shade of the peristyle, couches and tables were set out. Slaves appeared with bowls and ewers. As they washed the hands of the more respectable, Tatianus efficiently allocated quarters to the newcomers, his eyes shifting all the time. Ballista politely requested just one room for himself, his wife and their sons. He did not wish to impose any added burden on his host. His two freedmen and his accensus could share a room.

  As the northerner spoke, Hippothous caught a look from Julia. Ballista’s wife seemed about to say something, but she did not. Hippothous knew things were not good between them. Her eyes gave it away. They were black, and that was seldom good. They had a lack of depth, almost an insubstantiality, about them which often pointed to a deep, tightly controlled anger. And they were dry, the sure sign of immorality. The eyes were the gateway to the heart.