Caprice and confusion reigned in all these fields. Even more than vocabulary and language, the systems of calculating quantity, area, and the value of goods varied from one part of the Empire to another. Thirty-seven different ways have been noted of measuring liquid capacity and the volume of timber and grain; fifty-two of estimating the area of fields and forests; and a hundred and two different methods of payment in gold, silver, copper, or bronze coins. For all these units of measurement there were countless different names: each unit might have two or three or even more separate designations, depending on the area. And a coin bearing the same name everywhere often varied appreciably in weight. The difficulties entailed by this lack of uniformity hampered trade and held back prosperity. The coinage was so uncertain that many merchants preferred to stick to barter, which reduced both complications and the possibilities of fraud. Serious accounting was practically impossible; estimates, forecasts, budgeting, and the projection of sales was laborious and unreliable. And the calculation of time was no better. It was divided into moons, though no one was very clear whether these consisted of twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, or thirty days. And variations of five or six days per month, at different times and in different areas, produced considerable confusion as to the length of a year. The soothsayers and sages who were familiar with the motions of the planets disagreed over whether the year was made up of twelve moons or of thirteen. The whole matter ended up in total confusion, based as it was on calculations that mingled mystical and religious considerations with geographical observations on the dimensions of tides and what the physicians of the time knew about menstruation. The priests had tried to introduce some sort of order into the problem, but the discussions they organized lasted so long—seven years, according to Justus Dion—that the scholars and the seers had been obliged to go their separate ways without having come to any agreement or put forward any suggestions.
Alexis, Bruince, and Logophilus also took as their basis the cycles of the moon and menstruation, the apparent trajectory of the sun, and all the great circular movements of nature. But instead of submitting to them blindly and trying to establish in detail how many fractions of each cycle could be fitted into the year, they turned the whole problem the other way up and subjected nature to the supreme authority of number. They thus took into account all the factors that had led the seers astray: moon, tides, menstruation, the magic of numbers, a mystical idea of the one and the many. But what the genius of these three men had discovered, or rediscovered, was the fertility of mathematics. It is impossible to establish with certainty to which of the three men the honor of this step belongs, though it must be remembered that it was facilitated by the earlier work of philosophers, especially Philontes’ Treatise Concerning the Worlds and the famous Book VII of Aristo’s Metaphysics. The most ancient magical and mystical traditions of the Empire held 2, 3, 7, and 12, and sometimes also 4, 5, and 9, as the sacred numbers par excellence. They were sometimes called “perfect numbers.”[2] Now, because it came closest to the facts of nature, 12 was selected, and became the foundation of what Sir Allan Carter-Bennett calls “the administrative mathematics of the Empire.”
The year was divided into twelve moons. Each moon consisted of twenty-eight days divided into four series of six days, with a holy day intercalated between each series and one day each moon dedicated to the Empire (on this day all activity was exclusively devoted to the community and the public welfare). This gave a total of three hundred forty-eight days, to which were added twelve movable days of feasts and games allotted by the Emperor each year among the different seasons, according to the course of events. So the year consisted of three hundred sixty days in all. The priests and scholars immediately pointed out the discrepancy between the religious year and the time it took the earth to make a complete revolution round the sun—or rather vice versa; this they knew all about. So to bring the two into line again, five or six days were added to the holy days, the feast days, and the days of the Empire. These extra days, known as “vague” or “embolismic” or “epagomenous” in the Empire computations of the calendar, were always regarded as erratic and irrational. They were shameful, almost accursed, and on them all kinds of folly and excess were allowed. Characterized by a strange combination of derangement and of laughter designed to exorcise it, these days were somewhat dangerous in their excitement. They had to be masked and squandered as fast as possible. They are the origin of our carnival.
The same principle that had governed the reform of the calendar was, of course, applied to measurement and money. The number 12 became the basis of calculation: 12 inches made a foot, 12 feet an imperial perch; 12 square feet made an imperial arpent; 12 scruples made a grain, 12 grains an ounce, 12 ounces an imperial pound weight. Similarly, 12 liards made an obole, 12 oboles a sou, 12 sous a stater, and 12 staters an imperial livre or lira.
But of all these reforms the most important by far was the adoption of a duodecimal numerical system, a system of what for those days were rather complex rules, later known to the history of science as positional mathematics. In Asia Alexis had been initiated into religions, mysteries, and cosmogonies that offered images of the world of varying degrees of subtlety and satisfactoriness, and that culminated in unspeakable intuitions where all the secrets of the universe might be had in exchange for the annihilation of consciousness and individuality. Minds that had not had a long familiarity with metaphysics found difficulty in accepting heady doctrines that suddenly reversed all the attitudes so familiar to the world and to mankind. As we know, Alexis himself had never followed the mystical experience right to its conclusion. The roughness of the forests of the northeast and the subtlety of Greece had accompanied him always in his descent into the abysses of Asia. Among the techniques and secrets revealed to him by the soothsayers, amidst the old wives’ remedies, the herbs that cured snake bite, the breathing methods, the balms made from tigers’ mustaches, the recipes for the raising of spirits, and the initiations into the void and the essence of the universe, he had been struck by one discovery in particular. He had long meditated on it, and the more he thought about it the more it seemed to him that this quite simple invention contained something of the secrets of nature, and at the same time offered infinite practical possibilities. This secret, this mystery, this revelation was quite trivial in itself. It was just a stroke: / or . Or, according to some schools, a square, □ , or a circle, ○. The miracle resided in the use to which the sign was put: placed beside a figure it multiplied it by ten, twelve, or twenty, according to the convention employed. The reader will, of course, have recognized the sign as nought or zero—the sign royal of civilization.
It took centuries of reflection and genius to decide whether the sign should be placed to right or left of the figure it modified, and there was endless debate about what would be its best coefficient. Today a child of five knows that the system we are steeped in is the decimal system, based on ten characters—nine significant figures and zero. In this system ten characters are enough to represent any number whatsoever, zero having the dual function of multiplying by ten, a hundred, a thousand, and so on, and at the same time of indicating the absence of any unit in the column in which it stands. The decimal system is almost universal now, and nothing could be more elementary. But since the basis of any system is the number of units of a certain order that are necessary to form a unit in the order immediately above, it is obvious that any number of systems are possible. Contemporary electronic computers, for example, use the binary system foreshadowed by Leibnitz. The use of zero represented a fabulous step forward, and having adopted it Alexis came to the conclusion that the duodecimal system was better than the decimal. Why? Probably because the figure 12 corresponded to the religious and mystical traditions of the Empire; because it corresponded to the rhythms of nature as shown in lunation and menstruation; but also, no doubt, because 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5, and 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6.[3] Many people still think the duodecimal syste
m is better than the decimal and that Alexis is in the right, not we. And the twelve feet of the alexandrine, the dozen eggs or oysters, the division of the day into twice twelve hours, and up till quite recently the twelve pence in the British shilling, all odd but remarkable vestiges surviving in an otherwise decimal landscape, are probably a heritage from the Empire. The duodecimal system did not, of course, prevent Alexis from using the sign / , , □ , or ○ , which corresponded to our zero. Only the sign royal, instead of multiplying by 10, multiplied by 12. So the order above 12 was 12 × 12 = 144, instead of 10 × 10 = 100; and so on. The Empire made use, therefore, of twelve characters: eleven characters signifying 1 to 11, and zero, which as well as multiplying by twelve also indicated, as in our own system, the absence of units in the column in which it appears.[4]
For the Empire the adoption of the duodecimal system marked the beginning of an era of incomparable prosperity. Calculation became ten times—twelve times—simpler, quicker, and easier. The progress made in trade, social and practical administration, architecture, navigation, in all the techniques and all the sciences was enormous. It would of course, be foolish to imagine that every shopkeeper and tradesman adapted himself to the duodecimal system overnight. But it was taught, a treasure buried among legendary beliefs and superstitions, among survivals of the cult of the oak and the eagle; it was taught to the priests and the soothsayers, who thus held in their hands a formidable tool of government. They were no longer just the priests of a tottering religion greatly threatened by the solar monotheism that the Emperor more or less openly favored. They became virtually the accountants of the State. Thus, by an unforeseeable twist in the history of science, their existence and the role they played were justified yet again; and a new light fell, in retrospect, on the inspired intuitions of Arsaphes and Basil, who had strengthened them and reinstated them in their powers and privileges. Now, thanks to the progress of culture and technology, these privileges made it possible to use the priests in the service of the Empire. “Alexis,” as Sir Allan Carter-Bennett profoundly observes, “would have earned imperishable glory even if he had done no more than bring to the Empire the invention of the nought. . . . Alexis’s genius consists in his conquests, and in nought.”
In the field of scientific culture, as in several others, Alexis resembles Arsaphes rather than Basil. The Bactrian captain foresaw better, and earlier, than the prince of Onessa the importance of the role that science and technology would play in the future. If one considers Arsaphes’s origins and the age in which he lived, one cannot help marveling at the immense accomplishment of the Emperor’s predecessor, at his irrigation works and his preoccupation with communications in what was to become the Empire, and at the genius for organization which foreshadowed that of Alexis. But, as we have already said, it would be wrong to see Alexis’s rule as a return to Arsaphes, an administrative or political revenge of the Porphyries against the Venostae. Despite the authoritarianism, violence, and sometimes cruelty of which Alexis gave so many examples in the second half of his reign, his title of Father of the Peoples was a rightful one. The reconciliation, that of the Porphyries and the Venostae as well as that of the Empire and the barbarians, was brought about with an iron hand. As Justus Dion naïvely put it, thus both shocking and delighting Sir Allan Carter-Bennett, “friendship between the peoples was imposed spear in hand, and sealed in blood.” All the reforms we have just been considering served first of all to consecrate the unification of the Empire. The old division between the Eagle and the Tiger was completely abolished; the armies of the Empire marched under the double emblem of the Eagle on their helmets and the Tiger on their banners. This is the origin of a proverb still widespread in Macedonia, Epirus, and the greater part of the Balkans: to leave the eagle for the tiger means exactly the same as to escape from Charybdis only to be confronted with Scylla, or to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. The Empire was divided up regularly into provinces, with regional capitals that were the seats of the governors, high military and civil officials with extensive powers. First there were twelve of them, then twenty-seven, then thirty-six. At the very height of the Empire, there were a hundred and twenty-one provinces.[5] Army officers and priests were at their disposal to help them in their work. Each province had a tribunal. The most important matters might be brought before an Imperial Tribunal in the capital, made up of priests, generals, and high officials. The Emperor himself, who might come whenever he wished and preside over the High Tribunal, always had the last word and the right of pardon.
Wise administration, stability lasting nearly half a century, and internal peace together with foreign conquest and, above all, with scientific and technical progress, gave the Empire a prosperity hitherto unknown. Less than ten years after Alexis had come to the throne, the Empire might have thought itself back in the legendary golden age of the City. The name of Bruince, indefatigable reformer and tireless worker, of whom it was said with a mixture of irony and admiration that for him a month was thirty-three days long, is linked to this renaissance. The study of the history of Pomposa and of the Phoenicians had taught Bruince that the great prerequisite of prosperity was a fleet able to ensure rapid and extensive communications. In ten years, Alexis had more ships than Pomposa and Sicily put together. Bruince had carpenters brought from the northeastern forests and settled them in the ports. They were master craftsmen whose skill had been wasted building miserable huts and making the same weapons over and over again in the backwoods. Under the supervision of defectors from Pomposa, they built high-decked ships that for centuries were the admiration of all the sailors in the world. Nelson said they were the masterpieces of a hand guided by the mind.[6] Bruince saw that a fleet was equally invaluable for both military and commercial purposes. In those days there was no distinction between navy and merchant navy. The military value of a navy was all the more evident because the barbarians, the Empire’s allies, though they had an unrivaled army, possessed no ships. Thenceforward, in peace as in war, the ships of the Empire ruled the seas. The three almost simultaneous great naval battles against the Pomposan fleets—one off Cape Malea, another off the Cerbical Islands and the third off Patmos—were resounding victories. In this sense Alexis’s links went back beyond Basil and even Arsaphes to a much older tradition: the glory of the Empire was heir to the ancient glory of the City. The explanation was that Alexis, freed by Balamir from having to worry about inland attack and protected by the New Alliance against any attack from Asia, could take over for his own purposes the old dreams of the City that the barbarians had once interrupted. To Sir Allan Carter-Bennett’s classic equation that Alexis is Arsaphes plus Thaumas,[7] we should add another factor that is perhaps essential. Alexis in all his glory is the renaissance of the City whose beginnings had already dazzled the world.
The progress of trade, the creation of the navy, his concern both with tradition and, already, with a certain idea of the universal, all inclined Alexis to restore to the City its proper place—the first place. In the sixth year of his reign he himself came to live in the City, and there, too, he brought the government, the High Tribunal, the treasury, and the army headquarters. Only the college of priests remained in Aquileus. In an imposing ceremony in which for the third time all the imperial pomp and splendor were displayed—the first two occasions being the coronation in the great temple at Aquileus, and the second the confirmation of the New Alliance—the City was solemnly declared the capital of the Empire. Aquileus had never been more than a military and religious capital made important by its strategic position and the priests. This importance was now removed by the new orientation of imperial policy. And Alexis was not sorry to have an opportunity to shake up the old structures of the priestly caste a little, and reshape it according to his own ideas and for his own ends. The transfer of the seat of government from Aquileus to the City had everything to be said for it: it marked the return to a great tradition that the priests could scarcely oppose; it bore witness to the Empire’s ambitions at sea and in
the world, and to the universality of its intellectual and artistic mission; and it was a break with the exclusive domination of the priests, to whom Aquileus really belonged.
The rivalry between the Emperor and the priests was foreshadowed in the history of the Empire, yet the Empire could not be governed without the priests. Arsaphes and Basil had both learned by experience this double and indivisible truth; and Basil, having destroyed the priests’ power on the night of the famous banquet at Onessa, had been obliged to restore it. The struggle between Alexis and the priests had been less hypocritical, less devious, but almost as violent. Jester’s death, as well as changing the course of the Empire’s foreign policy, also showed the priests who was master. But the priestly caste, still avid for power, still seethed with intrigues and plots and what the Marquis de Ségur, in Alexis and the Priests, once a standard work, called the “Frondes of the Empire.” But Bruince held them in check even more vigorously than Thaumas had done. They had lost, and for a long while to come, their political independence; the policy of the Empire was now worked out in the City, and they, relegated to Aquileus, were only the Emperor’s tool. But even with all the reforms and changes it had undergone, the tool remained a powerful one, and the technical progress that was being made rendered it more indispensable than ever. So religion was still, as before, one of the pillars of the Empire. Behind the negotiations of princes, the adventures of generals, the ups and downs of public life, the secret presence of the gods went on imparting its own rhythm to the inner life of shepherd, fisherman, and blacksmith.
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