by Kyle Onstott
“And did you . . . ?”
“No, Great Caesar. I tried, but the man was too drunk. He had passed into a weeping stage and kept calling me ‘beloved’ and when I touched him he pushed me away.”
“Then you didn’t . . . ?”
“No, Great Caesar.”
Antoninus sat back, relieved. “And you, Hierocles, do you still refuse to talk?”
“What can a Carian slave, a chariot driver, the dung of stables, say to the great Augustus of Rome?”
“Nothing!” Antoninus snapped back at him. He turned to the centurion who had accompanied the Praetorians to his chamber.
“These men are under arrest.” He pointed to Apollonius. “Take this one to the camp of the Alban Legion. Say that Caesar makes a present of a thousand-sestercii whore to the men of the legion, and that Caesar hopes they will enjoy him before morning. In the morning give him to the whips and see to it that when they have finished with him, not one inch of skin remains on his body. Then take him out and crucify him head down.” He looked at Hierocles’s face, hoping for some sign of resentment, but there was none.
“As for the other, do not torture him but crucify him along with the first.”
“Head down, Great Caesar?”
“Yes, he holds his head too high for what he is. Yes crucify him head down and sew his eyelids open so that he cannot close them.”
Still the expression on Hierocles’s face did not alter. Antoninus regarded it carefully then, unable to meet the condemning eyes, he dropped his head. He did not look up but he knew from the sounds of the soldiers’ boots on the floor that they were forming two lines with Hierocles and Apollonius between them. He heard the order to march and the sound of the hobnailed boots on the marble. Someone was sobbing. He knew it was Cleander. Was he in love with Hierocles too? He raised his head without realizing what he was doing. Why look at Hierocles now when he could see him on the cross tomorrow? Hierocles on a cross?
“Stop!” The word came without Antoninus’s thinking.
The procession halted and the rear guard parted so that Antoninus could see the top of Hierocles’s head, over the flaming red locks of Apollonius.
“Turn around.”
Hierocles and Antoninus faced each other. Antoninus got up from the chair and stumbled forward a few paces. All the bitterness had drained from his face. “Carissimus, have you nothing to say to me? Nothing at all?”
Hierocles stared at him. Slowly he got down on one knee. “Great Caesar,” the words came slowly. “I believe it is not unusual for a man condemned to die to be granted one last request.”
“It is customary.” Antoninus tried to keep his voice from quivering. “Speak, and Caesar may be willing to grant your request.”
“Then Great Caesar, this Carian slave begs but one thing. He asks that as he is nailed to the cross, Caesar will be there to watch and while he hangs there Caesar will remain until he dies.”
“Caesar had planned it that way. Your request is granted. But why do you ask it?”
“That my eyes may rest on Caesar as long as I live, for since the first day I saw him my eyes have worshiped nothing else, neither god nor man.”
A solemn hush came over the assembly. Cleander’s sobs had ceased. All Antoninus could hear was his own heart pounding. He continued to stare at the figure in the doorway. He took a step forward, placing his foot searchingly on the floor as if he feared it would give way under him then, with arms outstretched, tears streaming down his cheeks, he ran wildly across the room, threw himself on the floor before Hierocles and clasped his knees.
“Oh, carissimus! Forgive me! Forgive me for all that I am and all that I have done. Forgive my vile temper, my stupidity, my jealous rage. Forgive me for forgetting, and forgive me for remembering. Forgive me for the precious hours we have spent together and for the miserable hours I have caused you. Forgive!”
Hierocles brought his face down level with the Antonine’s. His hands were still bound behind his back and he could not touch Antoninus, but with his cheeks he brushed away the streaming tears. “Mine is the blame. I deserve to die.”
“Then let me die alongside you.” Antoninus had become maudlin in his sorrow.
“No, little Caesar, let us live.”
Antoninus reached up and drew the sword from the scabbard of the nearest Praetorian. He turned Hierocles round and cut through the bonds. Hierocles’s free hands lifted Antoninus up. They were oblivious of the soldiers and the tragic figure of Apollonius. It was Antonius who suddenly became aware of their audience.
“Go!” he commanded.
“And this man?” The centurion pointed to Apollonius.
Antoninus smiled ruefully.
“Take him not to the camp, spare him the whips and the cross. Let him live. Conduct him to his home behind the tavern of the Doves of Venus and give him time to pack his belongings. Then conduct him to Ostia and put him on the first ship that sails. Give the captain orders to disembark him at some little fishing port along the coast of Africa—some poverty-stricken little town where there is nothing but mud houses and a few fishermen. There let him ply his trade.” He turned to Apollonius. “Were you paid for tonight? I forgot that you live on your body.”
“No, I was not paid.” Apollonius was still fearful but he felt the truth might be more acceptable.
“Then wait.” Antoninus went to a cabinet on the other side of the room, called Cleander and instructed him to open it. From within he took a heavy pouch of gold and carried it back to Apollonius.
“You must have spent some four hours with Caesar,” thus he reinstated Hierocles, “and I believe you charge one thousand sestercii an hour?”
The other didn’t answer.
“Speak up!” Antoninus was insistent.
“Some of my clients have been good enough to pay me that.”
“And are you worth it?”
“I have been told so, Great Caesar.”
“ ’Tis more than I ever got. Here are twenty thousand sestercii. When you arrive at wherever you are going, you can advertise yourself as a five-thousand-sestercii whore.” He handed the bag to one of the soldiers. “Take him away and give it to him.”
The boots marched out and the door closed. Antoninus dismissed Cleander. For a long moment he looked at Hierocles.
“Your poor wrists are ‘bruised.”
“So was my heart.”
“Your feet are bleeding.”
“But your lips are smiling and happy again.”
“And so is my heart, beloved.”
“Oh, Hierocles, what fools we are. Why do we behave so insanely?”
“Because we love so much.”
“Then why did I go to Zoticus?”
“Because you are Antoninus.” Hierocles essayed a smile.
29
Although there was neither anger nor recriminations to mar the night that followed, there was little sleep for either Hierocles or Antoninus, or for the palace. With the breaking of dawn, Antoninus had dropped into a fitful slumber, only to awaken an hour later, shaken by violent, uncontrollable sobbing. He became incoherent and delirious and all Hierocles could make out of his frantic ravings was that Antoninus imagined Hierocles already on a cross.
The screams and wailings from the imperial apartments woke the entire palace and Julia Maesa, Annie Faustina, Soaemias, Mamaea, and even the ailing Alexander, attended Caesar’s bedside. Antoninus recognized none of them—he was still witnessing Hierocles’s execution. In his ravings, he became more violent, mistaking Hierocles and his relatives for executioners and although Hierocles did his best to restrain him it took four husky palace slaves to hold Antoninus down. The Greek physician finally quietened him with doses of poppy extract. When he awoke, he was quieter but still incoherent in his ravings. At times he recognized Hierocles, at others he wept violently for his lover’s supposed death.
Once, Hierocles having gone to summon Cleander, they returned to find Antoninus had discovered Hierocles’s sword and had pr
essed it against his chest, poised ready to fall on it. They managed to take it away from him whereupon he reviled them both for keeping him from joining Hierocles on the other side of the Styx.
For several days and nights, Antoninus wandered in a strange land of horror, peopled by weird fantasies and heart-breaking imaginations, pursued by the Tribune Agrippa, sword in hand witnessing over and over again in fearsome detail the torture and crucifixion of Hierocles. Every imagined nail that entered Hierocles’s palms and feet produced a like torture in him and he cried out time and time again as the nails entered his flesh. He suffered pain, thirst, and hunger on the cross the while he was witnessing another die.
With two ailing members of the imperial family on her hands, Julia Maesa was torn between the one and the other. If Antoninus should become mad should she depose him and put the ailing Alexander on the throne? If Alexander should die, would Antoninus continue being Caesar?
Then, as suddenly as the madness had taken him, Antoninus recovered and became himself again, recognizing those about him, able to separate the real from the unreal. But the memories persisted and he called several times a day for Hierocles to reassure himself of the other’s actuality, and many times in the night he would waken at the spectre of Agrippa’s sword. The sickness, though mental, had produced physical effects and Antoninus, for the first time in his life, appeared worn and haggard.
With his return to normal, Julia Maesa breathed deeply again and allowed herself to be concerned only over Alexander who, since the discontinuance of the poised mulsum was regaining some semblance of health.
Once more the palace settled into its usual routine which the convalescent Antoninus no longer found boring. He was seemingly content. The terrible ordeal he had forced upon Hierocles, which in the end had punished himself, had bound the two of them even closer, and the hours of mothering which Annia Faustina gave him endeared her still more to him.
He was now bent on righting as many wrongs as possible and to this end he gave freedom to Cleander and Rufus, neither of whom, however, chose to leave the palace. Cleander was devoted to Antoninus in the same degree that Rufus was to Alexander and although now nominally freedmen, they continued in the same duties they had had as slaves. Cleander, however, replaced his thin silver collar, which had been his badge of slavery, with a gold necklace decorated with carnelians which he had wheedled from Antoninus. Rufus, once the iron collar had been filed off, continued to dress in the same rough tunics and shabby sandals as before.
Antoninus, in excess of charity, suddenly became interested in the lot of Roman prostitutes, both male and female, and wanted to better their lot. He founded a home for female prostitutes with the purpose of teaching them honorable ways of earning a living—sewing, weaving, and cooking—but after the first week attendance dropped off and the women were only too happy to resume their usual places on the streets and in the wine shops. Why work all day for the same amount of money they could earn, more easily and pleasantly, in half an hour? With the boys he had even less luck, for after one look at the cheerless barracks he had intended for them they departed back to their cozy cubicles in the baths and the Suburra.
Life for Antoninus had become principally a matter of the palace and the family. They had never lost their Syrian clannishness. Even as the imperial family of Rome they were still typical Syrians. The family had been a closely knit group in Emesa, where their kingship and priesthood had lifted them above the rest of the city and they remained a closely knit group in Rome, where they had never been really accepted by the old Roman Patrician families.
Old Julia Maesa had always had a palace stud, but she had managed her love affairs with a modicum of restraint. She had never allowed the pleasure of the couch to interfere with her driving ambition to rule Rome.
Mamaea had inherited these traits from her mother but the plain-faced Mamaea had never had a true love affair, for no man appealed to her unless he first became the property of her sister, Soaemias. Every man Soeamias looked at, Mamaea desired. She was an unattractive woman, tall, gaunt, cold, without any of the compelling beauty of her sister. Her clothes were drab and unbecoming.
Soaemias gratified every wish. Soaemias wanted fine clothes, expensive jewels, and handsome lovers. Now she had achieved another desire, for Antoninus, her son, was on the throne and Mamaea and Alexander were still in the background. Soaemias treated her sister with indifference but did not actually dislike her. Mamaea hated Soaemias although she made some attempt to disguise it. But the fire under Mamaea’s cold exterior was always smoldering and occasionally it came to the surface. Her resentment was most pronounced when Soaemias had a new lover. So had it been with Caracalla, and with the hundreds of others who had passed in and out of Soaemias’s arms. Mamaea was even jealous of the slaves Soaemias possessed. Now it was Aegenax who was the particular object of her desires and her hatred.
Her jealousy of Soaemias, her frustrated longing for Aegenax, and the fact that she had no position at court were the underlying causes of her sudden flare-up one night at a banquet soon after Antoninus had fully recovered. It started over such an inconsequential thing as the order in which they would mount the platform and take their seats at the formal dedication of Antoninus’s statue, that which had replaced the gilded statue of Alexander, at the Praetorian Camp on the morrow.
The Palace Praefect had drawn up a plan of the seating arrangements and the order of the procession. When the whole family, including Alexander who was also able to come to the table, had assembled for the evening banquet, Antoninus casually passed the wax tablets, containing the seating arrangements to his grandmother, asking her to pass it along to the others to brief them for their places the next morning. Julia Maesa glanced at it quickly, found her own place and then passed it to Soaemias. Making sure that Aegenax would be beside her, she tossed it to a green-eyed young slave.
“Pass it to the Lady Mamaea, Lyxon,” she whispered.
Mamaea opened the tablets. One glance at them was the spark that set off the tinder of her smoldering emotions. Antoninus, as Caesar, came first, followed by Hierocles and then by Alexander as son and heir. This disposed of the male members of the family. Annia Faustina as Augusta of Rome followed, then Julia Maesa. Soaemias came behind her mother and accompanying her was Aegenax, in his official position as High Priest of Elah-ga-baal. Next came Soaemias’s female slave to carry the train of the long mantle which Soaemias and the imperial ladies always wore. After the slave came Mamaea, at the very end. Antoninus, Hierocles, Alexander and Eutychianus, as host, were in the front row. Annia Faustina, Julia Maesa, Soaemias with Aegenax beside her were in the second row but Mamaea was relegated to the third row along with Soaemias’s female slave.
Mamaea’s face flamed red, then the color drained from it. She turned to Lyxon who was standing beside her, waiting to return the tablet to the Palace Praefect. With a loud snap, she closed the ivory covers and instead of handing it to the boy, she flung it in his face—enough that he was a slave of Soaemias to warrant her anger. The corner of the tablet bit into his cheek bringing blood and he, surprised at the blow, staggered backwards, upsetting a tray of food carried by another slave. The man tried to regain his balance, slipped and fell, tipping the whole tray over Antoninus and Hierocles. It was an elaborate concoction of purple sea snails swimming in a rich sauce of lobster and the whole gaudy mess liberally doused Antoninus and Hierocles.
Antoninus rose from the table, sputtering epithets at his aunt but she ignored him and began screaming at Soaemias. “You and your Persian jackass! Who is he to precede me? Send him back to the gutter where he came from.”
Soaemias smiled aloofly while Antoninus and Hierocles tried to scrub the snails and sauce from their faces. Lyxon was wailing from the cut in his face. Mamaea continued screaming at Soaemias and Julia Maesa started shrieking even louder. Annia Faustina was helping Antoninus and Hierocles and adding her words to the general confusion. With the exception of Alexander who continued to eat placidly, the ent
ire imperial end of the table was in an uproar—a Syrian family brawl, which the Romans present, although not daring to comment openly, sneered at quietly.
“Whore!” Mamaea screamed at Soaemias, “You’d sleep with any man who would have you.”
“And how you wish just one man would have you! ’Tis common gossip that even your slaves would rather cut their wrists than be forced to sleep with you. No man ever looked at you and no man ever will unless you purchase him at the slave block and blindfold him.”
“I have my reputation to look after. Nobody can say a word against me.” Mamaea tried a tone of righteous indignation.
“And nobody can say a word for you either. Could you but see yourself with your long face, your stringy hair, your flat breasts. Even your breath stinks like the Cloaca Maxima!”
“Sleep with your studs then. Sleep with them and I hope one of them kills you.” Mamaea was screaming and sobbing now at the same time. “I hope someone kills you soon, you wicked woman.”