Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction

by R. A. Lafferty

  Alaric received letters from his cousin Stairnon, who still considered herself as something of a mother to him. She wrote to him in Greek, possibly to test the knowledge that he had acquired, or was supposed to have acquired, at the Imperial School. These letters, from the portions that are later quoted by the epistolatory Hafras, have a mystic sweep to them. In one of her earliest letters she refers to her “tall sisters” as a part of his mission. Stairnon, as far as is known, had no blood sisters; and Alaric, in all probability, was not yet conscious of having any mission. These sisters were to appear later in the Alaric mythos, sometimes as streaming-haired women in the clouds, sometimes as wraith-like women coming onto the battlefield and swooping up the dead Goths in their arms. They are a prefiguration of the Valkyries; and Stairnon, who employed a passionate mystique in a calculated manner, may have been in the process of inventing a legend. But to complete the invention it would be necessary that she live it through.

  In her letters she reminded Alaric constantly that he would be—that he already was—a king. The kingship of Alaric was also an invention of hers and was the one that she would never give up.

  Alaric's own ambition was to be magister militum, master general, master of troops of the Empire. He considered this the greater thing. In the two halves of the great Empire there should never be more than four magistri at one time, though in practice there were sometimes more who used that title, rightly or wrongly. In practice there was no higher office than master general—except emperor.

  But Stairnon insisted on the kingship—and the kingship alone—with an intensity that shocked Alaric.

  “We are, and shall be, King,” she wrote.

  This one sentence, in rude Gothic, stood out like a beacon in a graceful Greek letter. The “we” that she used was a peculiar form. It was the most intimate word in any language, more personal even than “thou.” It was the Gothic vit, the dual-person form—“we two,” “the two of us—one.” It was a plural or dual form that took singular modifiers and presupposed a relationship so intimate that it could not be expressed in any other language.

  It was to the kingship that Stairnon impelled Alaric. And the idea of kingship and that of the divinely constituted Empire were opposed.

  The cadets of the School, who were to be so instructed that each should be able to administer the Empire if called upon, had become polyglot. This is a requisite for competent men of every time and place. Two forms of Greek were learned—the Grand, and the Demotic; two forms of Latin—the Classical, and the Low or Vulgate. Aramaic had remained the soldiers' language of the Asian provinces, and Alaric found a certain pride in speaking the language that Christ spoke.

  The boys were even reinstructed in their own Gothic—which their nation had begun to let fall into disuse in favor of the Low Latin. They also employed a sort of soldiers' German that was understood by the East and West Goths, the Vandals, the Rhaetans, the Lombards, and the Burgundians; it was even used by the Celts and Scythians and “White Huns”—that mixture of the Asian Huns and the steppe peoples, the East Goths and the Slavs.

  Rhetoric and eloquence were taught to the cadets, as was administration. So also were the arts of dissimulation and intrigue. And, as most of them were of courtly families, it was necessary that they know The Court.

  The cadets became intimates with the Royal Family, with the Emperor himself, and his children and wards. Alaric, the Boy Giant, was a favorite of these. When they dealt with him, later in life, it was not as with an alien stranger or barbarian; but as with a childhood familiar—for good, or for bad.

  4. Of Master General and Boy Giant

  The cadet group to which Alaric belonged was instructed several times by the Emperor Theodosius himself, and once by a man who may have been even greater than the Emperor—the Master General Stilicho.

  Alaric, himself a German and a Vandal, looked at this man Stilicho and knew he had found his equal. Alaric, in his sudden awakening during adolescence, had believed himself to be without equal. To the mind of Alaric, Stilicho was the only equal he would ever encounter, and the confrontation was startling. Stilicho was a man, and Alaric still a boy. But they recognized each other for what they were, and what they would be after the Emperor Theodosius was gone—the only two of first magnitude in the Empire.

  They would be allies; they would be conspirators with and against each other; they would be enemies; and, finally, they would be friends. Each was to attempt to hunt the other to his death; but they were to do it openly with a sort of rogues' honor. Alaric knew at once that he would never be able to realize his full goal—the goal that had been insinuated into his mind by Stairnon and the distant Athaulf—so long as this man Stilicho lived. Yet, when it came, the achievement of that goal would be only a side issue to Alaric's revenging the murder of Stilicho.

  Achilles, for his fame, had the poet Homer of the Golden Age. Stilicho had his Claudian of the Age of Pewter. It is not certain that Achilles was the abler soldier of the two. And it is not absolutely certain—though it tastes of blasphemy to write it—that Homer was the better of the two poets.

  The Master General practiced forms of warfare incomparably more intricate than anything that Achilles could have dreamed of. And the verse of Claudian has meaning on so many levels that it will never be all unraveled. This verse could not have the wide acceptance of that of Homer. It was really for a private audience; but Homer, had he been a contemporary of Claudian, would have been of that audience and would have admired it.

  In Claudian there are strata of encomiumia, of panegyric, of irony, of satire, of burlesque, of cipher within cipher. And the cellar of his meaning has scarcely been explored at all. Claudian wrote for a private world which, for all its narrowness, may have been the most literate world that ever existed. And the barbarian Stilicho was a full member of that world.

  Claudian was the unofficial poet laureate when Stilicho was the unofficial Emperor. Countless details of this study are out of Claudian, either direct or at second hand. For many of the events there is no other source.

  The Master General Stilicho was by blood a Vandal, of the people who rivaled the Goths as the most intrepid of all the Germans. He is sometimes spoken of as a man without a father, a new man; and yet his father had been an officer of barbarian cavalry serving the Emperor Valens.

  Stilicho was a very tall man. His poet Claudian was extravagant in his praises, but he was not foolishly extravagant. Claudian would not have described Stilicho as taller than the demigods if he had not been very tall. He would not have told of crowds gaping in astonishment at Stilicho if Stilicho had not been, to some extent, an astonishing figure. Lacking the measure of them, it is difficult for us to appraise the stature of ancient men—when all the heroes were said to be very tall; and when the Romans, who were the standard, were quite short. Athaulf, for instance, is once described as being exceptionally tall, but not so tall as his cousin and brother-in-law Alaric. And Alaric and Stilicho, at the preliminaries to the action of the battle of Aquileia and Frigidus, are described as staring each other in the faces, above the heads of their tall soldiery.

  Stilicho—whose forename was Flavius, as whose was not in that day—was raised in the service. As a young man he was famed as a horseman and archer. In Persia he had learned a manner of using the bow that was new to the Romans, and he employed a bow of his own height. He is said to have been able to bend a stronger bow than any other man in the Empire; but the same thing has been said of at least three other men in the same decade.

  Stilicho had captured the interest of the Emperor Theodosius, and he may have been known to Theodosius during his first career as General. The Emperor speaks of Stilicho as an old comrade-at-arms, by which he can hardly have referred to the no-battles and intrigues by which they had effected the containment of the Goths. They were comrades once more, though usually separated by several thousand miles. Theodosius, a very peculiar man in his second career as Emperor, had only two real intimates: the Archbishop Ambrose of Mila
n, and the Master General Stilicho. But it was not for friendship; it was for real ability that Stilicho had been moved up from office to office. The Emperor had recognized him as an indispensable man.

  Stilicho had been dispatched to negotiate a treaty with the rulers of Persia. The Roman Empire could no longer maintain any sort of warfare on that far frontier. Although Persia was not, in that generation, as formidable as she had been, the Romans were unable to support real commitments there. It would not have mattered whether the distant Roman adventures resulted in defeats or victories—the results would have been equally weakening. Rome could not afford even cheap victories beyond so distant a frontier.

  Stilicho allowed himself a year to it, handling the high dealings with ease, but not with speed. He allowed himself, at this time, the only period of real luxury in his life. And he successfully negotiated a treaty, one that would stand. This was at the time when the Persians were the most skillful negotiators in the world—in the very time that they were feared as soldiers less than formerly. It was also a time, as the Persians pointed out, when the Romans were feared less—due to the loosening of the bonds of Empire and the assaults on a dozen different frontiers.

  By this treaty Stilicho secured a quiescent frontier at the time when the maintenance of another legion-consuming frontier would have ruptured the Empire fatally. Stilicho also made a life-long friend of the second most powerful man in the world, the most powerful outside of the Roman Empire, Jezdegerd who would soon inherit as Pad-Shah or Emperor of Persia. Stilicho had dealt with the strong man Jezdegerd as Emperor before he was so in fact; and Jezdegerd would come to consider Stilicho as the only Emperor of Rome, though he was never that in name.

  On his return to Constantinople Stilicho received an award, the high office of Master General. And he received a more direct sign of the complete confidence of the Emperor Theodosius—he became a member of the royal family. Stilicho at this time married Serena, the niece and adopted daughter of Theodosius. He thus became son-in-law of the reigning emperor and was considered brother-in-law or uncle extraordinary to the two sons, the two future emperors. To one of these he would also become father-in-law. Stilicho was destined to be the guardian of two emperors and the father of two empresses.

  Serena was born in Spain, was the daughter of the first Honorius, who was the brother of Theodosius. Serena came to Constantinople after the death of her father and was adopted as a daughter by her uncle the Emperor Theodosius.

  Serena was the oldest and most attractive member of that group of children in the royal household; the others being her step-brethren and cousins—the bewildering girl Galla Placidia and the two future emperors, Arcadius and Honorius. She was called mother by these two young princes, and was to be twice the mother-in-law of one of them as the bonds of the families continued to multiply and tighten.

  Serena was to play the role of mother, aunt, cousin, and sister to all three of the children. It was a thankless role, as it happened. She was to be murdered on the secret orders of one of them, with the active connivance of the second, and by the tacit consent of the third. But now she was married to the Master General Stilicho. And now that man, during the time of the student days of Alaric, had come to Constantinople to report to the emperor on the state of the frontiers.

  It was on this visit, during which he instructed the cadets at the School, that Stilicho was made effective heir to the power of Theodosius. The Emperor knew that his two young sons would never be persons of great moment in their own right. For this reason Theodosius gave a peculiar title to his Master General. Stilicho was made “guardian” of the two future emperors as well as “guardian” of the double Empire itself. It is said that Theodosius knew, years in advance, the day and the hour of his own death. It appears as though he did, for no man ever took such a series of precautions, progressively over the years, for the care of his inheritance. But his choice of Stilicho as guardian was a good one.

  Stilicho was an honest man. When every other person involved in this study—Alaric himself, Athaulf, Emperor Honorius, Emperor Arcadius, Pope Innocent, Sarus, even Serena, Attalus, Olympius, Galla Placidia—all showed flaws of character wide enough to lose an Empire in, Stilicho stood out as the only absolutely honest person in the complex; and he had to die for it.

  But now both the Master General Stilicho and the Emperor Theodosius were still very much alive and were about their business of restoring the World.

  Stilicho talked calmly to the cadets one day and night—for the last part of his discussion was held about a camp fire in a low creek after dark. They were in the field—off from the city two dozen miles. Alaric and the other Gothic youths, Sarus and Hafras and Vargas; the Hun Uldin, the Vandal Respendial, the Spaniard Bacurinius, the African Heraclian; Gauls and Celts and Arabs, all got something from the calm and powerful man. Among the listeners of Stilicho was a boy who, as a man, would kill him; there were three future kings; there was a young man who would be pretender emperor; and there were two dozen generals in the egg.

  Stilicho first talked of himself; and then of the Empire, which was an extension of himself. He gave it as his studied and honest opinion that he was the best horseman in the world, the best archer and targeteer, the best lancer, and that he had been the best swordsman; one cannot remain the best with the sword without spending six to eight hours a day in the practice of it. Stilicho attested that he was the greatest foot soldier alive, being able to cover afoot seventy Roman miles over rough country between midnight and midnight under the full weight of arms and provisions—about a hundred pounds in modern weight. Stilicho could endure hunger and thirst and privation beyond all others; he could plan and project more than could another man; he could hold every detail of a countryside in his head, and could recall the underfoot stones of a night path a dozen years later. He could see the pattern of affairs and the pattern behind the pattern.

  Stilicho spoke of himself without vainglory, and certainly without modesty. He acknowledged that it was unusual for one man so to excel in everything; but was happy that that one person should be such a responsible person as himself. He gave the opinion that even in himself it would be a short-term affair. Soon his hand and his mind would weaken a little, and soon another man—probably one of them—would move into his place. A dozen years, he told them, is an extreme limit of the time in which a man may serve faultlessly.

  He was looking for his successor, he told them bluntly; for one who would fill his place a dozen years from that time. He would carry the qualities of them in his head and weigh them over the years ahead. It may be that he saw Alaric and Heraclian as two with the breadth he desired; that he saw Sarus and Uldin as two with the intensity; but who did he see with everything?

  Stilicho stated that every person in the world has his assigned task and that he will know it, whether he admits it to himself or not. Eutropius the eunuch had also told them that every man has his ordained place in the world; but Eutropius had not meant quite the same thing by this as had Stilicho, nor had his statement of it the same effect.

  Then Stilicho talked to them of the Empire, as had the Emperor Theodosius. Stilicho gave it to them like the Christian Catechism—an aspect of which it was. He had it, in the basic, from the Emperor, who had it from the Archbishop Ambrose of Milan.

  There are even those so base as to state that Ambrose and Theodosius concocted the theory out of political expediency, and then cynically selected the instrument for it, Stilicho, through whom they might bring it to fruit. The big Master General was a single-minded man, and he could be depended on to take the line to its end—once he had swallowed the bait. But those of this opinion are a little less than half right.

  Whether or not they concocted the thing out of political expediency, they did not do so cynically. Both the Emperor and the Archbishop were sincere in their belief that the strong idea of Empire must be built up in the people, particularly in the new people who had come into the realm. The cynic is the realist who has given up hope. The Empero
r and the Archbishop still had hope that the Empire might endure.

  Stilicho stated to the cadets that this world—though it is only a temporary arrangement—is yet a miniature of that which is to come. He swore that it was their bound duty to order the world to the best of their ability.

  The Empire, to Stilicho—as to the Archbishop and the Emperor—was itself a religion, and perhaps they gave to it an importance that was unorthodox. Stilicho stated that the Empire was the highest thing in the world, and that it was their duty to make it the only thing in the world—the universal state. He admonished that the perfect ordering of the world was required before we could even consider the ordering of the world to come. He told them that there was divine sanction for Rome, that it was the masterwork of God in this world; and that if Rome should ever fall, the end of the world was at hand. He told them that all things must be ordered in Christ. But he pictured Christ as a sort of master general. It was the Messias of the world that he worshipped as Christ.

  Stilicho instructed them that as long as there was one pauper or one slave or one heretic or one rebel remaining, then they had failed at the proper ordering of the Empire—of the world. He did not, however, give specifics for eliminating these things. He left the impression that the strengthening of the Empire would somehow work to the dissolution of all the evils remaining in it.

  Yet Stilicho was a good man. If he was a fanatic, he was a calm, even a chilly one. He would live to be the last man in the world who believed that Rome was divine, but a dozen of his sort might have made her so. He was isolated—a Catholic when most of his soldiers and under-officers were Arian. The people of the Empire were Catholic; but Stilicho did not know the people. He was too austere personally to have any real following; a conservative in a world that was prodigal; a unity-man in a civilization that was fragmenting. He was compassionate, a protector of the slaves and the poor, and a restorer of property; but he believed that the giving of bounty and gratuities was what had made slaves in the first place.