by Albert Noyer
The Cybelene Conspiracy
Albert Noyer
THE CYBELENE CONSPIRACY
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2005 Albert Noyer
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
express written permission of the publisher.
Published by AmazonEncore
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN: 978-1-935597-85-8
With special thanks to the writing group:
Jennifer, Melody, Mary, Frank, Russell
and
Leslie S.B. MacCoull Ph.D.
Coptic Archeological Society (North America)
Res humanas ordine nullo
Fortuna regit spartisque manu
Munera caeca, peiora fovens;
Vincit sanctos dira libido,
Fraus sublime regnat in aula.
Fate without order rules the affairs of men,
Throws about her gifts with a blind hand,
Cherishing the worst; violent desire defeats the virtuous,
Deceit reigns sublime in the palace halls.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Phaedra
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Getorius Asterius
Surgeon at Ravenna, Western Roman capital
Arcadia Valeriana Asteria
Wife of Getorius, training with him to be a medica
Thecla
Arian Presbytera of the Basilica of the Resurrection
Gaius Quintus Virilo
Master of the merchant galley Cybele
Claudia Quinta
Virilo’s daughter
Diotar of Pessinus
Archpriest of the cult of Cybele
Adonis
Disciple of Diotar
Leudovald
Investigator for the palace Judicial Magistrate
Flavius Placidus Valentinian III*
Emperor of the Western Roman Empire
Licinia Eudoxia*
Valentinian’s wife, Empress
Galla Placidia*
Mother of the emperor, daughter of Theodosius I
Publius Maximin†
Wealthy senator at Ravenna
Giamona and Tigris
A gladiatrix and gladiator
Zhang Chen
Importer from Sina (China)
GLOSSARY OF PLACES MENTIONED
GERMANY
Mogontiacum—Mainz
Treveri—Trier
FRANCE
Autessiodurum—Auxerre
Lugdunum—Lyon
ITALY
Arminium—Rimini
Classis—Classe
Ancona—Ancona
Comum—Como
Aquileia—near Trieste
Forum Livii—Forli
Bononia—Bologna
Mutina—Modena
Caesana—Cesena
Ravenna—Ravenna (Somewhat fictionalized)
AUSTRIA
Brigantium—Bregenz
Vindobono—Vienna
BALKANS
Aquincum—Budapest
Sirmium—Sremsk-Mitrovka
Epidamnus—Durres
Siscia—Sisak
Issus—Vis Island
Spalato—Split
Olcinium—Olcinj
Risinium—Risan
Scodra—Shkoder
Viminacium—Kostolc
TURKEY
Constantinople—Istanbul
Pessinus—Balhisar
RIVERS
Bedesis—Montone
Padus—Po
Gallus—near Skarya River
Rhenus—Rhine
Padenna—ancient branch of Po
Rhodanus—Rhone
Contents
Ravenna
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Olcinium
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Chapter eleven
Ravenna
Chapter twelve
Forum Livii
Chapter thirteen
Ravenna
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter seventeen
Chapter eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter twenty
Chapter twenty-one
Chapter twenty-two
About the Author
Ravenna
Chapter one
Thecla, the woman presbytera of the Arian-sect Basilica of the Anastasis, repressed a light belch with her hand—a rancid taste of cumin and crayfish—and glanced up at a flight of evening swallows.
The darting birds speckled the sunset sky like spatters of black ink on a vermilion manuscript page.
She winced at a persistent dull pain in her abdomen and sighed. “Hirundines, how I wish I had your energy. Your…freedom.”
Ahead of her, across the Via Armini, the brick bulk of the Anastasis church and its octagonal baptistery were somber silhouettes against the fading afternoon light. Already their bluish shadows stretched out to the curb where she stood. Thecla realized her stomach held a daemon, but she still needed to fill the oil lamps in the basilica for the morning service, before it became too dark. After letting a wagon pass, she made to step off the curb, but then two oxcarts loaded with matting rushes blocked her way as they rumbled slowly along the stone paving. At least because of market day yesterday the street was relatively free of animal droppings. The farmers’ slaves would have shoveled up all the manure to take back and add to the steaming piles in their yards.
“Move on, move on,” Thecla grumbled at the slow-moving beasts. “It’s not as early as I thought. I can’t see that well even in daylight, and the lamp openings are small.”
The presbytera impatiently tucked a wisp of gray hair back under her veil and touched her cheek. Wrinkled as the rind on a Calabrian melon. You’re old, woman, and you still haven’t learned to be patient. Eugenius used to tease you about it. Patience is above learning, he’d say. Strength grows in the garden of patience. Patience wins the argument. Even though her husband had been dead for fifteen years, Thecla felt a welling of tears and wiped a threadbare sleeve across her eyes.
After the two oxcarts with their load of green fronds finally passed by, Thecla hurried diagonally across the paving toward her church, clenching her jug of olive oil against her chest and skirting around a trail of manure that had dribbled from one of the oxen. She had crossed the Via Armini from her apartment every day for thirty-four years—the street measured exactly fifteen paces wide. The presbytera paused on the curb to catch her breath and watch a group of children playing a noisy hoop game in front of their apartment building. They recalled to her her childhood long ago in Philippi, in the province of Macedonia, far from this north Adriatic port of Ravenna. She had been Euodia Apollonia then, the only child of a pagan father and an Arian Christian mother. After the family moved to Constantinople, she was tutored by a deacon, then ordained an Arian presbytera at the age of twenty-nine, and Euodia became Thecla, named after a female disciple of the Apostle Paul, whose life and martyrdom she had read about in The Acts of Paul and Thecla.
After serving eight years as an assistant in the Eastern Roman capital, Thecla had b
een assigned to Ravenna, with the mandate of resurrecting its declining Arian community. Now, at the age of seventy-one, she was a gray-haired widow who had helplessly watched her responsibilities shrink to one scattered congregation in the decrepit port quarter of the city. Her energy and freedom had gradually diminished along with her flock over the past years, and Thecla’s sense of humor recognized the irony of her church being dedicated to the Anastasis—the Greek word meant “Resurrection.”
Thecla watched two members of the civic guard light torches at the street corner on the shadowed west side of the road. Near the first evening hour, the Armini was almost deserted. Only a few customers were in shops, and it was still too light for women from the local brothels to begin soliciting for temporary lovers. Although the late afternoon sun softened the port buildings’ scarred stucco faces with a clean wash of apricot-colored light, and a faint glow from unshuttered windows gave the area a deceptively well-off look, Thecla mused that if the poor indeed were to inherit the earth, the Kingdom would certainly be inaugurated in the squalor of Ravenna’s harbor area.
Apartment blocks along the Armini formed the bulwark of a warren of artisans’ workshops and two-or three-story dwellings where dockworker families lived, or slaves were quartered and rented out by their masters. Under arcades and awnings at the sidewalk level, shop owners struggled to make a living selling bread, meat, vegetables and household furnishings. Others held street-corner booths or walk-in taverns that sold cooked food and regional wines. Too many of the shops were vacant, and few of the merchants were in her congregation.
The Via Armini was the unofficial eastern boundary line beyond which Arian Christians in Ravenna could live in relative peace. The Anastasis basilica, set in an open space just west of the road, dated from an earlier time, and its walls were marred by occasional damage from the city’s more rowdy youths.
Thecla saw that lamps were gleaming at Videric’s food stall on the corner of the Via Porti, outlining a few customers who were buying his lard-fried squid or pork for their evening meal. She inhaled the cool air with a frown. The ever-present smells of animal dung, and salt-and-fish on the Adriatic off-sea breeze, had been overlaid by that of greasy smoke and garlic-laced meals being prepared in port quarter kitchens or taverns. Her stomach reacted to the smells with another gurgle of colic.
A short time earlier she had finished a supper of boiled crayfish. Now, a growing queasiness made her realize that the honey-sweetened sauce of cumin and pepper had probably masked spoilage of the crustaceans. As an unpleasant, acrid after-taste rose in her throat, Thecla swallowed hard and hoped she would not publicly embarrass herself by vomiting in the street.
“Christotokos, Mother of Christ, help me,” she muttered, hoping that an upset stomach was not of too little significance to warrant divine attention.
Covering her mouth with the edge of her veil, Thecla walked onto the new grass in the shadow of the basilica and immediately felt the damp chill of the April air seep through her black tunic. In her haste she had forgotten to slip on a cloak. At the same moment, a northeast wind gusted in from the harbor and whipped the veil over her head. As she struggled to pull the tangling folds from her face without dropping the jar, Thecla heard a voice behind her.
“Havin’ trouble, Presbyt’ra?”
She turned to see a lanky man dressed in dirty wool trousers and a scuffed leather vest; the son of an invalid parishioner. “Fabius, you…you startled me. How is your mother? Legs still bad?”
“That surgeon in the Julius Caesar makes me treat her with vinegar.”
“Good. Oh, do you recall his name, Fabius? I might need a physician to purge my stomach.”
“Getorix. Geturios. Somethin’ like that.” He held his nose and made a face. “I’m sick of th’ stink from th’ vinegar I rub on mother’s legs.”
“I’m sure it’s not pleasant for Felicitas, either. Are you working, Fabius?”
“Th’ port’s open again after th’ winter, so I been unloadin’ here and there. Nothin’ steady.”
Thecla studied his face. Gaunt, Germanic, eyes a bit too close together. Untrimmed blondish hair and mustache. Probably handsome once in a barbarian sort of way. No wedding band, so just an old mother to criticize his ways. And from the smell on his breath, he’s already made a dent in tavern wine kegs to get away from a tongue that’s probably as acid as the vinegar he complained about. She turned Fabius by the arm and pointed along the straight line of the Armini, to the masts of stone-lifting cranes at the Anastasia Gate, a quarter mile off.
“The Augustus is extending the north wall around to the harbor. You could get employment there.”
“Haulin’ brick with slaves?” Fabius spat and indicated the nearest building with a toss of his head. “Valentinian ought to spend th’ gold fixin’ up around here, instead of on his palace. Y’ heard that his mother just built herself a fancy tomb?”
Galla Placidia. All of Ravenna gossiped that Valentinian III passed most of his time hunting or drinking with his bodyguards, while his mother ran the government. “Yes, well, Fabius, Bishop Chrysologos is probably advising her that not a siliqua be spent in our Arian quarter. Have you thought of moving to Classis? There’s work there. Because the Vandals have captured Carthage, the Classis harbor is being dredged, and a fleet of war galleys reconditioned.”
“Mother would never go,” Fabius mumbled, rubbing a hand across his stubble of blond beard. “Presbyt’ra, they say th’ Vandals are Arian Christians, like us. That’s good, no?”
Thecla considered the recent Vandal victories in Rome’s African provinces to be a mixed fortune for her sect. The tribe’s reputation for destruction had already created a new verb, “to vandalize.”
“There’s a measure to all things, Fabius,” she answered, evading his question. “They threaten an invasion of Sicily, even Italy itself. There would be more killing, demands for tribute. Possible retribution against Ravenna.” Thecla decided to end speculations that Fabius would report as facts in the next tavern he entered. “Where were you going?”
“Gettin’ mother some supper. Y’ know how she loves her fried pork.”
“I’m bringing oil to fill lamps at the church. Will you be at the Eucharist Meal in the morning?”
“Meal?” Fabius echoed.
“It’s the Lord’s Day.” Thecla scowled. “Or Sunendag, under the Frankish names just adopted. I prefer the old term. Will you be there?”
“Uh…mother might need me.” Fabius looked toward the food booth and nervously jingled his belt purse.
“Another time then.” No point in pushing the man, or he’ll never come. “Greet Felicitas for me, tell her I’ll look in tomorrow afternoon.”
Fabius grunted agreement. Thecla watched him slouch off to Videric’s, and then turned back toward the basilica.
The building’s unrepaired lower courses of dark brickwork were scarred, parts even chiseled out in places, the result of vandalism by local Christians who professed the Roman creed. The spring rains had not washed off all the charcoaled graffiti that attacked the Arian belief that Christ was not co-eternal with his Father. Homoiousians, her people were called—those who believed Christ had a nature that was similar to God’s, but not the same, as the Roman Nicenes proclaimed. Still, she was grateful that the two factions generally left each other alone, even while realizing that could change like the sudden fury of an April thunderstorm, now that Carthage was in Arian hands. Danger might make men devout, as the saying went, but it also made them fearful and intolerant.
After a glance at the rounded apse and high dark windows of her basilica, Thecla decided to look into the baptistery. She put her jug down on the sill to unlock the door. Inside, three of the room’s eight alabaster-covered windows admitted a final red glare of slanting rays. She shaded her eyes against the brilliant light that illuminated the water in the central pool.
“Mother of Christ!” Thecla exclaimed, startled by its color. For an instant the reddish rays had seemed to tint the
pool water the color of blood. “Half my flock would see this as an omen of evil.”
The Feast of the Resurrection had been two weeks earlier, yet only three converts, all women, had consented to be immersed in the chill water and emerge as Reborn Souls of the Arian Creed. Thecla wondered if her Nicene rival, Bishop Chrysologos, had fared any better, or if there was general apathy among all of Ravenna’s non-baptized citizens. She realized that the sacking of Rome by Visigoths a generation earlier, and the present Vandal victory at Carthage, had shaken people’s faith. Other potential catechumens undoubtedly were attracted to the foreign cults seamen brought in on galleys. Last month was an example.
Early in March, she had seen a procession of shaven Egyptian priests from the cult of Isis bless the opening of the navigation season. A good-sized crowd had watched them move from their temple, south of the harbor, to the breakwater wharf. Men dressed in women’s tunics acted as escorts for a bear and monkey, which were costumed as demigods and carried in litters as parodies of the human and divine. Women crowned with forsythia blossoms scattered more of the yellow flowers in front of the priests. Behind them, musicians playing flutes and jingling silver sistra preceded a group of men who wore animal masks representing various Egyptian gods.
