Urbicus stood utterly motionless and silent.
Governor Titianus broke the intensity of the atmosphere. He had quietly distanced himself from his consort who was stooping in her craven, seething manner nearby.
“Macedo, take the Horse Guard decurion into custody. And take too the woman Hagne or Perenna or whoever she is, I no longer know.
Secure the brother and sister in the woman’s chamber aboard The Alexandros. Make sure they’re isolated, restrained, well guarded, and carry no weapons for self-harm. I will access them there for intimate interrogation. Afterwards, Caesar will decide what to do with them at his leisure.
Take Urbicus and strip him of his Praetorian regalia. Imprison him in the camp guardhouse. He will meet military justice in due course.”
Suetonius noticed Titianus’s eyes and Urbicus’s eyes met for a fleeting moment. It carried a subliminal message, he thought. It was a message he sensed he might never interpret.
Hadrian slowly rose from his throne and stood silently, imperially, looking to the bier and its sad, pallid burden. It dawned on the entire assembly it was time to stand upright and be attentive under Caesar’s presence.
The Augusta rose in silent respect, Geta stood tall, and the dispersed individuals returned to their protocol order. Only Macedo’s officers were moving about as they stripped Scorilo and Urbicus of their weapons and strapped shackles to their wrists.
A hush settled upon the sanctuary. Hadrian spoke carefully, thoughtfully, as his words reverberated off the ancient stones.
“It is time to leave this dark place and this dark affair. It is to be formally recorded here under my authority how Antinous of Bithynia died by falling into the river. Nothing more. The subject of the method of his death and its perpetrators is under prohibition. They do not exist. Let our documents record nothing further of the matter. It is forbidden on pain of exile.
Suetonius Tranquillus and Septicius Clarus, you have fulfilled your commission. In return you will be awarded one hundred thousand sesterces each, as promised, and be absolved of the previous charge of laesa majestas against the empress, my wife Vibia Sabina.
For Suetonius Tranquillus a new indictment of laesa majestas against my honor will be raised. Its details will be formulated and addressed at my leisure. We move on. Hear all!
I proclaim my edict before you here at this dawn of the Third Day of the Festival of Isis. Secretary Vestinus, Quaestor Julianus, Prefect Governor Titianus, and officers of the Household hear my command and enact it immediately.
The honor of the youth Antinous of Bithynia is to be restored. The omen divined by the Priests of Amun of the youth’s divine status as Osiris Reborn is to be written into law at Egypt and proclaimed to the Empire. As Pontifex Maximus I ordain Antinous to attain Divus status before the eyes of all the Empire. He is to be celebrated accordingly.
The priests of Amun are to honor his Divus status with appropriate rites. A sufficient endowment is to be assigned to this priesthood to institute his adoration in perpetuity as a Protector of Youth, a Guardian of Healing, and a Defender of Birthing.
Temples and shrines are to be erected across the Empire to celebrate his virtues and values. Statues and portrait busts, issues of coins and medallions, plus public festivals are to be created in his honor. Youth Games are to be announced in select cities in his name, and funded with desirable prizes.”
A tear formed at Hadrian’s eye. His lip trembled faintly. He continued.
“I announce here how the city at Middle Egypt we were to inaugurate today in my honor by the name of Hadrianopolis is now relinquished. It is cancelled.
Instead, I announce the inauguration of the new city of Antinoopolis. It is to be the liturgical centre of the cult of Antinous Divus at the place where he fell into the river and today’s miracles have occurred. The new city is to be peopled with Romans and Greeks, mainly discharged Legionaries. They will be provided with free land and seed here. This will encourage immigration.
A mausoleum housing the eternal remains of Antinous Divus will be erected at Antinoopolis to be the focus of the new city and attract pilgrims to its miracles and rites. Memorial statues of Antinous Divus are to be crafted plentifully for dissemination across the Middle Sea.
His arete will be celebrated at Antinoopolis just as in life he had recommended Caesar’s be celebrated at this place. Hail Antinous! And hail to the foundation of Antinoopolis!”
Hadrian collapsed to his chair to rest. A rumble of chattering voices swept across the assembly, slowly surging to burst into enthusiastic applause. Cries of Hail Caesar! and Hail Antinous Divus! were shouted. They were accompanied by stamping of feet, rattling of swords on shields, and shrill whistles by the troops.
The priest Pachrates strode across the stone flagging and struck the granite slabs loudly three times with his staff. A hush resumed. Pachrates was beaming. Things had turned his way at last.
“Great Pharaoh! Hail to you! We too hail Osiris Reborn, the youth Antinous reborn in the guise of Antinous-Osiris! Now, Caesar, witness the light of Amun-Re on this Day of Antinous, Divine Healer and Protector of the Young, risen like Apollo Phoebus as a sign of restored vigor to the Great Pharaoh Hadrian and his Empire!”
As he uttered his praises he thrust his ceremonial scepter high towards the eight high cedar doors arcing between pillars behind the sanctuary. The priests stationed by the doors began chanting a deeply sonorous incantation. At Pachrates’ cue, united as one, they swung open the heavy cedar portals facing the chamber with a single mighty heave. It permitted a shimmering blaze of morning sunlight to flood into the stony interior.
During the debacle with Hagne and Scorilo the sun had fully risen beyond the eastern ranges opposite the temple. Its shining luminosity now swamped the broody gloom of the sanctuary with brilliant splendor. All eyes were enchanted by the intensity of the vision. Rows of priests rattled their systra and banged their cymbals or tambours to a crescendo as they completed their chant. Pachrates finalized it with a prayer of praise.
“Hail Amun-Re, the Hidden God who reveals Himself in Light and in all other deities, and reveals Himself in Antinous-Osiris Reborn!”
The central statue of Osiris as Serapis stood in sharp silhouette against the morning brightness. Its long shadow fell meaningfully through curling incense clouds across the bier supporting the dead Bithynian. Pachrates and Kenamun threw their priest’s staffs to the stones with a resounding clatter as each of the assembled clerics fell to their knees to prostrate themselves in reverence to the new incarnation of their deity lying upon the bier.
Hadrian rose slowly, tiredly, exhaustedly from his throne. He paused thoughtfully and muttered something half-voiced towards the assembled onlookers.
Many in the chamber missed his words, but Suetonius, Clarus, Surisca, and Strabon heard clearly. Thais and Lysias too caught the phrase, while Geta’s response indicated he too had apprehended the remark. The Augusta turned in reaction while Arrian stood motionless in grave solemnity. They had heard him intone feebly, even reluctantly:
“Love is something to be pitied in a Caesar. Pitied.”
Hadrian signaled to his retinue with his eagle-tipped baton of office to dismiss the assembly. He clasped his puke-soiled toga folds about himself and lunged unsteadily towards the entrance corridors followed by his staff and soldiers. He paused by the bier to look upon the face of his departed companion as the morning sunlight flared across the youth’s calm features.
Caesar lingered for an instant seemingly frozen in eternity. He then averted his eyes to move speedily away. Duty called. The business of governance beckoned. The Empire waited impatiently. Sentiment will be postponed to some other time.
Suetonius again detected the glint of moisture at his eyes as the Princeps passed by.
Yet, the biographer wondered to himself, is it really true love is something to be pitied in a Caesar?
EPILOGOS
The first sounds I heard were calls of alarm and shouted voices. The camp lanes
at the Nile’s banks were alive with slaves and attendants scurrying to-and-fro, while passing members of the Household and its military drew closer for a better view. In the sweltering blaze of noon I saw leaping flames and roiling smoke. The Governor’s barque was ablaze.
The She Wolf, Hagne, nee Anna Perenna, and her Wolf Warrior brother Scorilo had been imprisoned under guard in her witch’s den at the stern of The Alexandros. They were both manacled to separate beams facing each other in that musty chamber of decayed detritus, razor-sharps, and ill omens, to await examination by torture.
Governor Titianus announced he would comprehensively explore the origin of the conspiracy which culminated in the distasteful murder of Antinous, and determine if the incident connected to other disaffected members of the Court, Horse Guard, or Praetorians.
The barque chamber had been cleared of the remaining residues of her sacrificial victim, Antinous. These included the two amphorae of his putrefying blood and half-burned locks of hair. The ooze which had splashed over the temple flagstones was respectfully scraped up and interred in an embalmer’s canopic jar. Antinous’s bier soon carried nine jars of assorted viscera or bloody slimes.
But the remnants of desiccated organic matter, lizards, frogs, spiders, beetles, a stillborn fetus, exotic herbs, wild grasses, and evil-colored fungi, remained aboard The Alexandros. They were stocked in their racks and chests surrounding the two prisoners. Titianus anticipated his interrogation might uncover what further mischief his consort had been entertaining during the four years of their lusty, if tempestuous, relationship.
But this was not to be.
I was told by a reputed witness how under some pretext the devotee of Zalmoxis, Hagne, found a way to shift her manacled limbs to strike at a candelabrum which happened to be close nearby. She toppled its lamps and their oil splashily to the cabin’s floor. At least that’s the story we were given.
The splashed oil and nearby hangings caught fire instantly, with the flames skimming from drape to drape across the den in a cascading rush. The blaze latched onto the parched timbers and other flammable materials of the old Governor’s barque. It was soon sweeping around the chamber and taking grip of the vessel in a rapidly expanding conflagration.
Despite the efforts of staff trying to bucket water onto the flames, The Alexandros became engulfed in a raging firestorm. The gilded tinderbox confection became a searing inferno. Its few inhabitants at that time, male and female, scattered swiftly. Some leapt overboard into surrounding boats, a few hurtled less felicitously into the river’s rush. All escaped the inferno. The grand Alexandrine allegory and its two manacled prisoners were abandoned to their fiery fate.
We were told how at the advent of the fire the shrill jibes of the She Wolf, shrieking insults in the guttural rasps of her original dialect, cut through the snarl of flames. Her gales of victory laughter rose above the holocaust in defiant taunts.
I am also told no sound emanated from her brother’s lips. He journeyed to the Underworld of Zalmoxis without so much as an audible whimper.
After some moments the She Wolf’s vocal barbs transformed to less-exultant, high piercing screams of anguish and pain. Soon, only the crackle-and-snap of the consuming flames radiated across the river’s surface as the ornate craft burned spectacularly to the waterline beneath the hovering midday sun.
We four members of the investigating team recalled the words of the Oracle at Siwa, “Fire purifies!” Nevertheless it seemed a remarkably convenient accident or turn of affairs, we each thought.
So, does my secret history have a happy ending? Well no, if you consider our loss of the well-favored Bithynian youth. Yet these events possessed their own satisfactions for some.
Titianus’s Iberian slave companion Sotira moved into tent chambers with the Governor within the encampment the very same day.
Vibia Sabina Augusta and her gentlewoman companion Julia Balbilla retired from social events during the remainder of the Nile tour. The revelations at the assembly in the temple had unsettled many at Court, including Hadrian’s wife.
Instead Balbilla, a classicist poet of note, commissioned stoneworkers to inscribe flattering verses to her Imperial patron on the granite plinths of ancient monuments along the route of the Household’s travels. She intends these public tributes in elegant verse to the Augusta to weather the long life of these monuments, perhaps as eternally as those to Antinous by her husband.
It seems devising ingenious ways to survive into eternity is an almost universal compulsion among us these days?
Curiously, later I learned at a distance how the Alexandrian Praetorian, the centurion Lucius Quintus Urbicus, didn’t face a court martial. He didn’t meet discipline and execution as might be expected. After all, to our view he was implicated somehow in the death of several people including that of Antinous himself. His role seemed as murderous as the Dacian brother and sister.
Instead I am told Urbicus has been quietly reassigned to the service of the Prefect of Praetorians, Quintus Marcius Turbo, at the grim Praetorium Fortress on Rome’s Quirinal Hill. I haven’t yet fathomed the implications of this unexpected gesture, but it seems to suggest a promotion?
Clarus simply raised an eyebrow charily when I mentioned it, but he diplomatically made no comment.
One wonders at the coincidence of so many of those of African origin involved in the matter, such as Urbicus, Titianus and, more remotely, Prefect Turbo himself. Did I, Clarus, and Surisca miss something?
My complete lack of success in engaging Surisca’s professional charms continued. After three days of ineptitude in exacting a Roman male’s customary prerogative with a woman, especially a woman well paid for the purpose, I finally desisted. Fortuna is telling me something? Several days in each other’s company had changed the nature of the relationship. I became fond of her.
Perhaps it had been the Three Fates’ way of telling me I should pursue other diversions so late in life than pursuing women young enough to be my granddaughter?
Instead, I endowed Surisca with half of my award of sesterces from Caesar. I did this because she contributed to our enquiry in ways far beyond her contracted fee. In fact, her perceptions had been pivotal to the crime’s resolution. Even Clarus agreed to this, if grudgingly.
At first Surisca was wary of receiving my pledge of the fifty thousand sesterces, possibly thinking I possessed some gross intention upon her person in exchange. Once she realized my gesture was genuine and without strings attached, she became the joyful grand-daughter I had never given birth to, but vaguely hankered for. The donation, I suggested to her, might be a useful adjunct to her funds in starting her perfumes manufacturing workshop.
Even further, Geta the Dacian also approached her with warm congratulations. However he had far better fortune with her charms than I. Their memory of their playful week together at Shuni earlier in the year had lingered and prospered. In fact the two decided to retire together to somewhere like Antioch, Damascus, or Massilia at Gaul, where the huge quantities of blooms necessary for steeping in oil to create intense perfumes were more readily harvested. Geta intends to make Surisca his mistress or concubine, though I suspect Surisca has other goals.
Geta sought Hadrian’s blessing for the liaison. Someday the two might marry in the traditional manner, though a woman of Surisca’s independent lifestyle and Geta’s noble heritage probably doesn’t require such fancy formality.
Lysias and Thais too may follow a similar path. Arrian recently offered Lysias the post he once had in mind for Antinous as an officer in his administration. As the newly-appointed Governor of Cappadocia, Arrian’s offer was a remarkable opportunity for Lysias to be attached to his new administration, especially one which has been delegated the control of two additional entire Legions, not one – the Legio XV Apollinaris and Legio XII Fulminata.
This was the very target Arrian had been pursuing for several years to defend our eastern frontier against the Alans barbarians. Arrian regarded Antinous and Lysias to be major
contributors to this happy outcome. So perhaps one day Lysias too will return to Bithynia in a role as a senior officer of the Imperium.
Thais is definitely pregnant. It’s visible now. The birth is expected in early summer here in Alexandria. She will retain the child, if it is healthy. Though she has her own independent wealth, thanks to Antinous, she has accepted Lysias’s offer for her to come under the protection of his household at least until the child is secured sufficiently in maturity. They will see how things stand between them afterwards.
Lysias, of course, is as keen to see a healthy child delivered as is the mother. Both have an emotional connection to the child, in different ways. The Greek word arete comes to mind.
Yet it’s also possible Thais will accept Hadrian’s invitation to assume the role of a priestess of Antinous-Osiris.
At Hadrian’s vast palace complex at Tibur outside Rome, the one where Antinous had contributed plans and designs for artificial lakes, grottos, and a youths’ palaestra, Caesar’s architects are presently building an elegant shrine to the man based upon Hadrian’s special design. Perhaps Thais is the appropriate resident celebrant at this facility, he has suggested?
Already some very fine statues of the Bithynian are in place. These are works which idealize the lad’s features in the current fashion. They display a slight softness of muscle tone untypical of Antinous’s sturdy tissues, plus a demurely-sized penis to represent his youthful age. There are no scars on his cheek or wrist.
The likenesses are remarkably faithful to his memory, to my eye. Perhaps strikingly so. Among other things, they depict the human animal at its most elegant magnificence.
The artist Cronon of the Fayum is commissioned to supervise all reproductions of the Bithynian’s features on coins, medallions, tondos, upwards to busts and life-size statues. Cronon’s remarkably lifelike painted portraits of Antinous act as authorized guides for artisans across the Empire who have never seen the living fellow. The result is statuary of the fellow is appearing in great numbers across the Empire.
The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History Page 52