Clarus and Vestinus heaved sighs of regret. Suetonius continued.
“We have only two days to discover how and why Antinous has died. So be seated, lad. You still have not told us how Caesar came to be involved with you two fellows. We need to know. Yes, you have told us of your mutual thoughts about the erastes/eromenos custom, and of your personal friendship, but you haven’t told us how you caught Caesar’s eye. Explain it to us!”
Lysias drew himself back into his seat and fumbled distractedly with clothing items.
“It is an involved story, sirs. Two weeks after our hunting trek into the Pontines, Antinous and I competed in games at Polis in honor of Great Caesar’s visit. We wrestled, we sprinted in armor, we cast javelin. Both Ant and I were victors in various games before Caesar’s eyes.
Some days later we were summoned by Caesar’s marshals to attend an Imperial Hunt being held at Councilor Arrian’s estates outside Nicomedia. This was a very great honor, so we took to the opportunity with relish. I can recall that day and night well, yet we had several questions about our participation.”
Lysias shifted once again into reminiscence mode and began his recollections.
“I wonder why there’ll be only five or six of us?” Antinous asked me as our two ponies Tiny and Blaze ambled along a dusty road outside Nicomedia.
We were followed by our wagon stacked with provisions drawn by donkeys, and four walking servants, two spare colts in tow, plus the mule recently snared in the Pontine forests.
“Surely an Imperial Hunt would attract guys from all over the province, wouldn’t it? Keen hunters would appear from everywhere,” Antinous added. I too wondered about this.
“Maybe today’s hunt is strictly for some special purpose? Lord Arrian said it was an occasion that should make us proud. Arrian seems to know all these things,” I proposed. “Arrian and my family Elder said our palaestra wins before Caesar were the deciding factor. Caesar’s assessment of the winners in their events was crucial. I beat you in the wrestle-bout as usual, Ant, and you won your javelin and armored sprint event outright, so maybe Caesar has summoned the key victors for a special celebration?”
“Yet not a single one of the other victors at the Polis games has been invited, Lys. Just we two, plus several others from across the province who didn’t even compete in our games. There must be some other reason we don’t yet know?”
We turned a corner of the trail where the landscape ahead opened out.
“Great Apollo, Lys! We’re there! There it is!” I recall Antinous gasping.
Our party arrived at Arrian’s countryside complex of stud farm, vineyards, and vegetable gardens around a palatial villa. It lies a few miles inland from the port of Nicomedia by the Sea of Marmara. The farm was the essential acreage necessary to provision Arrian’s lifestyle.
But beyond the cultivated gardens and grazing paddocks lay a vast assembly of tents, pavilions, and marquees. It was the touring Imperial Household. It was the first time Ant and I had seen Caesar’s famous portable palace. The massed array of tents was defended by troops bristling with armor and weapons which glistened in the morning sun. It was a spectacle of fluttering pennants, high vaulted marquees, and busy workers.
“It’s Hadrian’s travelling Palatine itself! Holy Zeus, Lys!” he yelped.
“I don’t know what we did at the boy’s games at Polis, but obviously Caesar thought we were worth seeing more of!” I found myself spluttering aloud to all.
Our party was greeted by a welcoming cohort of the Guard cavalry. We were escorted into the stockaded tent complex and ambled along its central avenue to its parade ground before a massive Imperial Marquee. It faced a long plain before the tents. This plain extended beyond the pavilions towards low hills.
The plain’s rocky scrubland had been netted at the sides by attendants and slaves, with the nets extending into the far distance. It seemed the Hunt was to be held within a controlled funnel of netting, just as the huntsmen of Polis construct when trying to entrap a bear or boar to sell unhurt to dealers in animals for the arenas.
Without noticeable ceremony, Caesar Hadrian followed by Lord Arrian and other officials appeared from within the Marquee to greet our two parties. Both men were casually dressed in the long chiton tunics and loose himation swathes common to the Greek East, not the bulky Roman togas of the west of the Empire.
Hadrian seemed to be somewhat taller in this environment than he had seemed at the show-games the previous fortnight. While the youth of Polis were competing naked in the various events in their separate age and weighting grades, Antinous and I – along with all the other lads, youths, and men of the town – craned our necks to have a closer view of the Great Caesar, Hadrian, in our midst.
As you know, no women attend naked sports events, so this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the men of Polis to see their emperor at close hand. At that event Caesar’s tall height and military bearing, coupled with his close-cropped beard topped by hair combed forward across his head, may have been camouflaged by his fulsome purple toga with its glittering embroideries of gilt eagles. But now, dressed in a simple Greek tunic, his tall height was evident beside the lesser stature of Arrian and other Greek notables.
To our eyes, Hadrian was lean for his age. He was in his forties somewhere, Ant and I determined, but in very good trim. His features still displayed something of the renowned good looks of his reputation as a playboy prior to becoming Princeps. His frame retained the muscle tone of the professional soldier he had been since his youth, as well as displaying several cicatrices earned at the business end of an enemy sharp. Yet his countenance had a quality whose precise years were difficult to estimate.
His attachment to his troops of the twenty-eight Legions around the Empire was said to be expressed by a lifestyle matching the austerities and hardships of a Legionnaire’s training and diet. Whatever his legions could do, he could do. His daily regimen included the necessary exercises to ensure bodily condition, with marches in full pack, simple diet, and regularly assisting in digging stockade gutters or even latrine ditches. These shared disciplines endear him to the Legions. It earns their total allegiance.
Hadrian was nonchalantly chewing on a piece of fruit as we dismounted our ponies. He seemed genuinely pleased at our arrival. He and Arrian beamed at our group with broad grins whose informality jolted we youngsters while absolutely astonishing our stewards and slaves into rigidity. How are you supposed to respond when your emperor smiles at you?
“Welcome, fellow Bithynians,” Arrian called to us. “You are well on time, friends.”
Our entire group automatically fell to our right knees and bowed our heads. “Hail Caesar!” we proclaimed in muddy unison with a salute.
“Greetings, Antinous and Lysias of Claudiopolis,” Hadrian called back. “It’s a pleasure you should be with us today to enjoy our Hunt. My friend Arrian speaks well of your families and your service to the Empire. I myself commend you on your victories in the sports events of your town,” he called as he took a bite from his apple. “Your accomplishments were well noted, I assure you. We hope you settle-in happily here at the quarters provided for your comfort.
Prepare yourselves too to join us at the sixth hour at the start line of the Hunt when the sun reaches full height. Our Hunt promises to be challenging, so use your most effective accessories. Ask my friend the Master of the Hunt, Tribune Julianus, for any details you need. He is your commander today. And don’t forget, we will enjoy a feast and symposium at sunset to celebrate the victors of today’s chase.”
Caesar clapped his hands once and called loudly, “Geta!”
I saw a tall, lean, pale-skinned man of foreign extraction with a close-cut black beard and slicked long black tresses plaited in a barbarian’s style step forward to respond smartly.
“Here, Caesar!”
To my eye the fellow was in his late twenties. He had faded tattoo circles across each cheek. He was dressed in an eclectic mix of short Greek tunic, barbarian
leggings, Roman open-weave boots, and a looped mantle which was slung across his frame pinioned with an antique fibula. Nothing suggested he was of the slave class because of his attire’s evident quality and jeweled rings of visible costliness. Nevertheless he responded to Caesar’s call with the immediate response of a servant.
“Geta, direct these visitors to their stables and sleeping quarters,” Hadrian commanded. “Ensure they receive every service needed for grooming, feeding, and watering their mounts. Also assign staff to provide them refreshments.”
“It shall be done, Caesar,” Geta replied as he waved us to follow him down a side track of the tent complex.
This was the first Antinous and I ever saw of Geta. We soon came to know him well. And it was our first impression of the emperor himself.
“Your victim today, men,” Tribune Salvius Julianus informed us with an injection of respect as adults, or at least mature meirakia youths, “will be a young boar.”
The various groups of youths and their staff murmured appreciatively if apprehensively. Julianus was Hadrian’s Master of the Hunt who was also an advisor in the Law of Rome.
“The beast was trapped two weeks ago in the scrubland of the Troas near the site of legendary Troy,” the Master of the Hunt continued. “Perhaps it holds the soul of the warriors Ajax or Hector? It is a junior from a herd of adults whose feistier members were caged for shipment to the arenas at Rome where wild game is in high demand. So your target is smaller than a full size beast.
You should be told the creature has had its tusks filed to a dull edge to protect you against accident or misadventure. Caesar doesn’t want to send one of you men home to your family hearths with body damage.
Being a boar, you are to prosecute the Hunt with whatever mount and weapons you see fit for the challenge,” Julianus continued. “No hounds are permitted; you will be obliged to rely on your own detection and hunting skills. The victim will be loosed into a netted funnel to ensure its eventual capture. But Caesar hopes members of the Hunt will corral and destroy the creature long prior to its entrapment. It’s up to you, men.”
Antinous murmured quietly to me. “It’s lucky, Lys, we brought our own ponies for this event, mounts who already know our weight, purchase, and signals, plus who trust us. I expected the Hunt victim to be a deer or something more elegant than a boar. Boars are eccentric targets. It’ll need deft footwork and daring. This won’t be easy without mastiffs, either.”
I had to nod in agreement.
“If we work together as a team, Lys, as in the Pontines, maybe we’ll manage it,” Antinous whispered back.
Instead of the usual workaday back-cloths for bareback riding, we had brought our family’s new-fangled four-horned saddles. The saddles’ four corner pummels and seat are secured by a belly strap under the horse. This permits a better seat leverage than a back blanket, so a rider can more effectively brace himself to hurl a range of missiles. But only barely.
For weapons we assessed between lightweight short-javelins, throwing axes, bows-and-arrows, or even slingshot stones, none of which are to be disparaged. Both of us were well experienced in attacking with lightweight counter-weighted short-stave javelins projecting five-inch iron pierces for horseback hunting. Neither of our ponies, Blaze nor Tiny, nor we ourselves possessed the body-weight and expertly-braced riding seat necessary for wielding the long, heavy pilum spear used by cavalrymen. The pilum demands a large charger with a rider of a beefier body build than a meirakion carries.
Despite our physical strengths which, since childhood competitive wrestling, sprint racing in armor, javelin casting, stone discus tossing, and the other athletics of the palaestra had built, we still had a little distance to go before our body weight could anchor the heftier battle weapons.
Nevertheless each of we six youngsters were already eligible for entry into military life, as our own fathers had done at the same age. We knew how a commission in the military was the speediest path to public advancement if we survived battle action, scrapes and wounds, foul camp water, disease, or other military perils.
Fortunately, Antinous and I had each brought five plumb-balanced dart javelins in their riding quivers, as well as our family’s antique stiff-leather hunting cuirasses, battered helmets, and chipped shin greaves to wear with our hip-length rider’s tunics.
The six youngsters appeared a rag-tag mob compared to the richly outfitted officers of the Guard in their service uniforms, or the barbarian costumes in dragon-scale chain-mail of the Scythian archers whose fidgety ponies paced nervously about. We learned how Scythian archers are the precision marksmen of Rome’s forces, with the most expert hired by Hadrian’s Praetorian Prefect, Turbo, for the special protection of Caesar.
This was the day we first learned of the rule how an Imperial Hunt is one of the few occasions when people around Caesar are entitled to be armed. Except for his Guard, weapons are generally forbidden in Caesar’s presence for security reasons.
Meanwhile Hadrian was dressed simply in hunting leathers, helmet, and side-weapons, mounted on a four-pummel saddle strapped atop a high, golden chestnut Nisaean stallion. This exotic stallion was unlike any animal we had ever previously seen. Its gilded pelt shone in the thin midday sun, and it hoofed the ground with spirited life. He was named Persepolis after his origin in the wilds of Parthia. To our eyes, Persepolis was the perfection of horse flesh.
When the sun reached mid-sky Julianus raised his whip of office to signal to his beaters to sound the display. A cornu intoned darkly, drums rattled, and without further ado a cage was flied-open ahead of us.
A squat, hairy, nimble, black ball of furious darting energy was released onto the open plain. The Hunt was on! A dozen horses and their riders of varying sizes, uniforms, and ages leapt forward as one after the beast. The wild boar, all bustle and speed, hurtled forward into the scrub without a moment’s hesitation.
Despite the slight incline of the ground and the low rocky scrub, the beast slipped speedily out of sight behind rocks and foliage. The hunting pack had no idea if it was galloping non-stop towards the net funnel far away, or whether it was stalled somewhere beneath our very hooves out of sight. It was obviously canny enough to know when to move out of range, and when to stay still to hide.
Without hounds to smell it out or bark at sight, the creature was the master of the chase, denying we pursuers easy scouting.
Antinous and I, with our plucky ponies at the ready, had lurched forward first, followed by the entire Hunt with much noisy cheering, guffaws, and obscene shouts. Caesar was the third to crash forward on his golden-sheened Nisaean, but no one deferred to his status except the plait-haired barbarian with the tattooed face, Geta.
Each of the young men moved sweepingly across the course, around obstacles, into undergrowth, to seek it out. We each searched carefully for a glimpse of its hairy haunches and upright tail, speeding or stationary.
Now and then one of the boys would excitedly shout a sighting, but then decline the claim as it proved false. This ad hoc approach to tracing the beast didn’t appeal to Antinous and I. It lacked method. Half an hour elapsed as the teams eased carefully through the undergrowth searching for any signs of the quarry or its recent path.
Hadrian, the boys perceived, seemed to be in no urgent hurry to prosecute the chase, but ambled watchfully close behind the lads on his Nisaean giant.
Antinous and I followed a strategy we used in our hunts outside Polis. We cross-referenced our scanning of the scrub so, as a duo, we applied a methodical stepped sweep to our search. Mind you, using mastiffs makes such hunting far easier. In lieu of dogs, signs of tracks, fresh droppings, broken scrub, hidden shadowy shapes, even smells were to be factored into the possible location or direction of the beast. This process was time consuming but offered a better chance of spotting the creature than mere guesswork. The boar wouldn’t appear in our sight simply because we wished it to appear.
Now and then I would silently signal to Antinous with a gesture towards a
shape lurking behind a rock, so both of us would arc cautiously towards the site. Again and again, nothing.
On one occasion Antinous quietly point-marked a puddle of still-steaming pig’s piss which even Tiny and Blaze found noxious to the nostrils. Yet the boar had moved on. The direction seemed northwards, so we both guided our mounts in parallel in the same direction. Our ponies were as tense as we ourselves.
The other four lads seemed to be captivated by a separate search a hundred yards westwards, each a solitary searcher. The senior members of the hunt ambled lazily in the background, amused by our youthful intensity.
Suddenly with a rustle of foliage, a rasping grunt and cough, a fat furry bewhiskered blob snarling curled tusks leapt forward from a hidden nook and raced helter-skelter northwards. The beast grunted and rasped with each bound, bounce, or sideways dash. Tiny and Blaze lurched forward promptly at speed with a matched swing, sway, and swerve.
Antinous gripped his pony’s four-horn saddle firmly with his knees by sheer force of balance. His legs, thighs, and ankles pressed close to Tiny’s sides to steady his body weight to support a hold on the reins while his left hand balanced a javelin dart in readiness. Antinous was left-handed, you know. Tiny responded well to his knee pressures and hip sways as it danced through the scrub in speedy dives left then right, following the swerves of the boar with precision.
The wiry pony, all gristle and bone flecked with foamy sweat, knew the name of the game. He took it upon himself to keep close to the prey. The horse was as excited by the hunt as its rider.
Antinous’s body swayed smoothly with each shift in direction in a natural flow. Every muscle-fiber danced in a finely-tuned flexed response to the situation’s urgency. Yet he retained a firm balance, steady seat, and high stature in readiness for casting the dart.
His speeding reflexes had well absorbed his many years straddling ponies on the forested ranges beyond our hometown’s ramparts. Boars and game were regular targets of the hunt at Polis. Hunting and trapping was the local recreation which afforded special delicacies for feast days to honor solemn Artemis of the Hunt and her brother, beautiful Apollo, Healer of Heaven.
The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History Page 12