“If you abandon the idea of one justice for all and one truth for all,” he wrote to his former pupil, “where will you stop? Tyrants believe in nothing but the gratification of their own wishes; they refuse to allow anything to anyone else, and injustice is their law. I grant that you are fighting for the return of peace and justice. But to remain pure that fight must respect laws and rules. Beware of force, Alexis! Do not be like Basil or Gandolphus! I will not ask what has become of my lessons, but what of the lessons of the gods and sages whose worshiper and disciple you once were? If there is not one justice and one alone, if there is not one truth and one alone, and if you do not respect and fight for them, where are you heading for but the abyss?”
Alexis answered Philocrates with the shortest letter he ever wrote: “You think, Philocrates, and I make war.” Philocrates was bound to hear in these words the echo of his own teaching on thought and action, expounded so lucidly in his letters to Helen ten or twelve years before.[12] There is no doubt that what has been called Alexis’s relativism derives directly from the precepts of Philocrates. It was Philocrates himself who enabled Alexis to overcome the allurements of sun worship and the mystics of Asia and proceed to life and action. But now Philocrates no longer recognized himself in his faithful, perhaps too faithful, disciple. As often happens, the pupil was bettering the instruction. “A superficial observer,” writes Émile Bréhier, “might have expected Isidore to reject and Philocrates to approve Alexis’s relativism. But by a seeming reversal, it is Isidore who agrees and Philocrates who disapproves.”[13] The explanation is that Isidore’s suffering made him deeply committed to fighting at Alexis’s side, while Philocrates’ skepticism was directed toward history rather than belief, circumstance rather than principle. The priest’s main concern was victory, while for the philosopher victory was nothing without respect for something above victory. Each attitude has its greatness.
Throughout the struggle for power the difference of opinion between Alexis and Philocrates grew more and more pronounced. Philocrates carried on imperturbably with the task of organization and recruitment for the conspiracy. He went on covering the Empire with a network of fellow plotters. From the City to the source of the Amphyses, from Cape Gildor to Mezzopotamo, he raised two, three, four veritable armies. In the younger generation he kindled a wild, almost fanatical enthusiasm for Alexis’s cause. But when Alexis made use of trickery or violence, when he killed hostages, or razed villages to the ground in order to isolate Mardoch, then something in Philocrates revolted. Did reviving the Empire mean having to go on torturing it just as cruelly as the torturers they were supposed to be fighting against? And if one applied their own methods to them, was it worth driving them out only to put in their place a justice and laws that were set at naught? It was better to die than deny one’s principles! Perhaps the fundamental explanation was simply Philocrates’ horror of blood and suffering. He had never gotten over the memory of the gruesome sacrifice in the temple at Mursa. He agreed with Alexis about their ends, but he refused to acquiesce about the means. Though he went on serving Alexis’s cause as determinedly as before, Philocrates was on the brink of quarreling with him when events took it upon them to put an end to their differences.
Philocrates was on his way back to Aquileus after a secret mission to Amphibolus. As he was riding down one of the mountain tributaries of the Amphyses, a band of Kanishka’s men surprised him, killed all his escort, and took him back captive to Amphibolus, where Kanishka lived. Kanishka was not a half-witted clod like Arrhideus. He lived with a certain lavishness, even luxury, and liked to give a cheerful turn even to murder. He went in for cruelty of a refined sort, and his victims perished amidst jesting and laughter. He soon realized how he could make use of his present prisoner. He had heard about Philocrates and how clever, subtle, yet inflexible he was, and he decided to employ him to negotiate with Alexis.
“I could have you put to death here and now,” he said, “amidst torture and suffering. I prefer to send you to Alexis to propose peace, an alliance, and the division of power between us. Life is short, very short. Instead of fighting each other and wearing ourselves out, why should we not be rich and powerful together? I don’t ask you to tell me any of the secrets, which, if I liked, I could get out of you by pain. All I ask you to do is remember I am setting you free expressly to take my message to Alexis, and that I shall be waiting here for you to bring me his answer.”
“If you let me go,” said Philocrates, “I shall advise Alexis to refuse your proposal and continue the war against you.”
“Say what you like to him,” answered Kanishka, laughing. “But you must come back here. If you bring peace I will lavish gold and honors upon you and you will be my adviser as you were once his. Perhaps you will be able to persuade and convert me. If you bring war, I shall treat you as an enemy. But in any case you must come back. I am told you love justice. Tell me if my proposals do not strike you as just.”
“In the context of injustice,” said Philocrates, “they strike me as just. I shall come back.”
Philocrates left Amphibolus in chains and surrounded by men-at-arms. They returned him to where he had been taken prisoner, and set him free. Three days later he rejoined Alexis. For centuries their meeting has been an inexhaustible theme for dissertations and public speeches. From Pico della Mirandola to the Jesuit schools of the Third Republic, it was the pons asinorum of examinations and debate, a commonplace of both secular and religious culture. It is only a few years since, like Regulus and the cranes of Ibycus, it began to fade from the collective consciousness of schoolboys. Why should they remember Philocrates now when they don’t remember anything at all? Alexis greeted Philocrates with emotion. He loved, respected, and admired him, and made him laugh by still addressing him as “master.” It was unbearable to think of losing the teacher to whom he was bound by so much suffering and danger endured together. For two whole days and nights they went over and over the problem. Nothing remained of the differences that might have torn them apart. Alexis never suggested Philocrates should break his word, but offered to return to Kanishka in his stead. This Philocrates refused outright. Alexis was free to hand himself over to Kanishka if he liked. But in the first place it would be foolish, criminal, and in the second place it would not release Philocrates from his promise. Was there any sense in their both putting their heads in the lion’s mouth? No, obviously the best thing was for Philocrates to go back and confront his fate alone. There still remained the question of Kanishka’s proposals. Philocrates categorically advised Alexis to reject them. But Alexis was distraught and could not agree. “He suffered all the other’s tortures in advance,” wrote Justus Dion. For two whole days and nights, the decision was postponed from evening to morning, morning to evening. At dawn on the third day, Alexis’s men came and told him Philocrates had disappeared. Alexis knew at once he had gone back to Amphibolus.
And now we come to one of the most painful pages in the story of Alexis. Unable to overcome his anxiety and sorrow, he leaped on his horse at once and set off with a very small escort after Philocrates. For hours, braving danger, ambush, the possibility of clashes with an enemy better armed, they galloped across hills and rivers. At sunset, in a narrow pass between two high cliffs, Alexis’s horse stumbled over something lying on the path. It was Philocrates’ body.
Alexis’ despair brought him to the brink of madness. Destruction and death rained down on the Empire, and now, after so much fire and slaughter, after so many sorrows striking nearer and nearer, after the blinding of Isidore and the death of Jester, now came the loss of the oldest comrade of all, the one who had been with him always from the northern forest to Alexandria, and again from Samarkand to the borders of the Empire and to Aquileus. As his sad and silent escort stood by, Alexis wept long by the roadside over Philocrates’ lifeless body. Doubt, discouragement, and despair swept over him. He asked himself whether peace and the welfare of men and women he didn’t even know really had to be paid for with this loss
and suffering, which stripped struggle and even victory of their meaning and value. The death of Philocrates was all the harder to bear because it came soon after disagreement between them. It left Alexis alone, lost, friendless. How futile and meaningless their quarrels and arguments suddenly seemed! Isidore had supported Alexis against Philocrates, but it was Philocrates who was his master and his friend, it was Philocrates he had loved. To fight without him . . . to win without him . . . was it worthwhile? Did the struggle have any meaning now? For several hours, perhaps several days, Alexis thought seriously of giving up the fight, going back to Samarkand or the borders of China and India, burying his sorrow, and forgetting the Empire. Fortunately he did not yet know about the rumors which were to be spread, the poisonous echo of which can still be heard today.
Philocrates’ aversion to blood and violence made his courage all the more admirable. He had set out without hesitation, without a word, almost by force, on the path to torture and death. Nothing could have been more appalling in his eyes than the fate that awaited him. Nothing could illustrate more brightly his notion of trust and good faith, justice and truth, than this final act which placed his life in mortal peril. What a refutation of those who accused him of guile! Perhaps he was fortunate to be able to give, in the hour of his death, a silent answer, tinged with greatness and some disdain, to all who used his ingenuity and flexibility of mind to impugn his character. But envy and mediocrity were not to admit defeat. Because they could not square Philocrates’ death with the image they had fabricated of him, they twisted it to suit their own arguments. The repugnance he felt for the death of others could only have been even greater in the case of his own. If one imagined him, they said, going to meet suffering and torture, one began to divine the hidden truth. He may have set out in good faith and full of courage; but he must have soon weakened and betrayed to Kanishka all the secrets of the conspiracy. The whole thing was then very simple: Alexis had seen through him and had him done away with. This explanation demonstrates very well the limitations of an abstract and superficial psychology, backed up, of course, by meanness of character, which simply makes deductions from appearances without going to the roots of people’s motives. Alexis and Philocrates had quite violently opposed one another. Alexis had defended the use of violence and injustice in war. Since childhood Philocrates had had a horror of suffering and bloodshed. What more natural conclusion than that Alexis had secretly had Philocrates murdered because he disagreed with him and because, under torture, he had given away the vital secrets of the conspiracy?
The historian or chronicler must report facts and opinions impartially. But he is not precluded from expressing a preference and inclining to one side rather than another. I, for my part, do not believe for a moment in the base interpretation that accuses Alexis not only of murdering his master and friend, but also of treachery and cowardice. This explanation was, in fact, so arbitrary that other versions sprang up and multiplied. Why not? All they had in common was hatred or contempt either for Alexis or for Philocrates. Some had it that instead of a political murder it was a sordid killing carried out by acquaintances the philosopher had picked up and whose supposed tastes it is not difficult to guess. Some said it was a crime of passion organized by Alexis, suddenly overcome with jealousy. Others again said Philocrates killed himself because he was weak and a coward. I shall not even discuss the first two theories. But how could committing suicide before he got back to Amphibolus have solved the philosopher’s moral problem? He had promised to return. Suicide was as much a breach of faith as defection. He might just have well have stayed with Alexis. Philocrates could have gone back to Kanishka and then committed suicide, before the torture and suffering began. He couldn’t have done it before he had kept his promise. Moreover, his body was riddled with arrows and spear thrusts. Such wounds seem incompatible with suicide, to say the least. Instead of inventing a suicide that solves nothing or chance encounters that do not fit in with anything we know, instead of putting the blame for the murder on Alexis, why not accept Justus Dion’s account, which seems perfectly logical and natural. It is well known that tyrants do not trust each other. What is more likely than that some of Astakia’s or Mardoch’s men came upon Philocrates on his way back to Amphibolus; that they stopped him, questioned him, and learned who he was and where he was going. Philocrates going to see Kanishka! The possibility of an alliance between Alexis and Kanishka already weighed like a threat on the tyrants. The fact that Alexis’s adviser was on the way to Amphibolus was proof, and more, that the danger was real. Philocrates had offered his life to prevent Alexis from making an alliance with Kanishka, and the terrible irony of history caused him to succumb to the arrows of the other side, who also dreaded such an alliance above anything else. The black humor of war saw to it that the murderers of the philosopher who was against the alliance were those who were equally against it. Probably Philocrates was doomed anyway, whether at the hands of Astakia or of Kanishka. Nevertheless it was due to a mistake that he was pierced with spears and arrows.
This, in my opinion, is the simple truth—simple, yet devious and cruel, like the march of events. Philocrates died by mistake. But the mistake made sense in so far as it was enemies who killed him—stupid enemies who made an error, but enemies just the same. It may be objected that this is mere hypothesis. No doubt. But the explanation is probable, even convincing. Moreover it is a probability that brings, over and above the cruelty, peace and consolation. Perhaps it was a death the philosopher would have wished: at the same time as it spared him the suffering of torture, it spared him having to lie or perjure himself. He fell before the two adversaries he had hated and satirized all his life—violence and stupidity. All the inconsistencies involved in force were at last resolved. Philocrates’ whole life was justified by his death.
The extremity of Alexis’s despair had brought him near to throwing up everything, to going into exile again, to rejecting history and its tributes. Then suddenly he came down once more on the side of action. The influence of Helen is to be seen in this reversal. She had been as shattered by Jester’s death as Alexis himself, perhaps even more. The death of Philocrates made her decide in favor of an immediate rising. If, after so much loss and suffering, all was lost, why wait any longer? Since Jester, Philocrates, so many hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children were dead, so many thousands of innocent people crucified, impaled, beheaded, blinded, let those who were left go out to meet the death that would reunite them with those they loved. Messages flew to and fro. Jester’s successor went from Alexis to Helen, from Helen to Alexis. The flame of revolt spurted forth from one end of the Empire to the other. As Justus Dion puts it, “Alexis’s laments propelled the Empire to freedom.” The fighting redoubled in violence, breaking out everywhere at once. And it was not long before fate took a new turn and the miracle happened. To those who fought to die, the object of their sacrifice revealed its true face—it was the face of victory. There was really nothing surprising about it. It is fear that heralds defeat, and scorn for death that leads to every kind of triumph. Helen at last began to make open war against Arrhideus’s bands. She seized Onessa, thrust as far as Evcharisto and Mezzopotamo. Arrhideus fled to the northern forests, deserted by all and accompanied by only two or three of his men. Helen took her success calmly, welcoming it with the same equanimity as she had welcomed sorrow. To the south there was discord between Astakia and Kanishka, discord that was evidently both cause and effect of Philocrates’ death. Alexis took advantage of his enemies’ disagreements, and in less than three weeks Parapoli, Aquileus, and Amphibolus had all fallen into his hands. For him it was all a complete surprise. He had expected despair; he had met with power and glory. Astakia and Kanishka were both killed within a few hours of each other. Only Mardoch was left. He was trapped between Helen’s and Alexis’s armies, and was still keeping up some resistance south of Mezzopotamo, in a bend of the Amphyses among the foothills, together with Astakia’s son and some of Kanishka’s lieutenants. The
fighting came to an end with the brief battle of Mezzopotamo, known also as the Battle of the Princes or the Battle of the Empire. Mardoch, surrounded, could only sell his now useless life dear. His army was wiped out. He himself, disguised as an archer, managed to get through the encircling steel, but was betrayed and murdered as he was about to take ship near Cape Gildor. His murderers sent his head to Alexis in the hope of a reward. But, perhaps in memory of Philocrates, he had them arrested, tried, and executed. “The day of the murderers was over,” writes Justus Dion. “The day of justice had begun.”
One fine autumn day in Aquileus, with the town given over to rejoicing, Alexis was crowned emperor. Helen and Isidore together placed the crown on his head. A rather undistinguished fresco by Puvis de Chavannes in the main lecture-theater of the Sorbonne gives a highly inaccurate picture of the splendor of the ceremony, with its mixture of barbarity and sumptuousness so characteristic of the early days of the Empire. Unfortunately the fresco was covered with minium and Mercurochrome and badly damaged in May, 1968. It shows a crowd of armed men and women in holiday dress with their infants in their arms, in the great temple at Aquileus, the site of Arsaphes’s empty tomb and of Basil the Great’s coronation in defiance of the priests. The priests were dead. Philocrates was dead. Jester was dead. And Isidore was blind. In the square before the temple, priestesses in long white robes raised hymns to heaven, and amid the din of rattles and drums waved red and black scarves toward the east in memory of the victims, cursing the memory of their murderers for generations to come. Alexis had had Vanessa’s name joined to those of Philocrates and Jester. There in the vast temple echoing with the people’s rejoicing, Alexis dreamed—of the forests of the northeast, the feasts in Alexandria, the years in the wilderness, the silence of the tomb, the Asian night, the words of the sages and their secret truth, of death, of power. Some way off, scarcely visible among the worshippers and the companions-in-arms, a childish old man, almost an idiot, had just, in the presence of the priests, renounced his hereditary rights to the crown and the Empire in favor of Alexis. He was the last of the Eagles, the son of Irene and the great Basil, the heir of the Venostae. Perhaps he was dreaming, too—the dim, vague dreams dreamed by the failures of history. A man still not yet past his youth stood behind Alexis, in the shadow. His name was Bruince. He was a priest, the pupil of Isidore and Philocrates. How fascinating are the long chains of dreams, efforts, traditions, and revolts, of victories and defeats, death and renewal, renewal and death, which amidst faiths and empires make up the destiny of man.
The Glory of the Empire Page 24