Dominus

by Steven Saylor

“No, Father. I have to see what they do. I have to see it all.”

  Aulus opened his mouth to rebuke his son’s disobedience, then stopped himself. Titus was as much a child of the city as he was. If he had the stomach for it, why shouldn’t the boy witness with his own eyes the worst side of Rome?

  “I’ll go with you,” he said.

  Shaking his head, Philostratus stayed behind.

  Through the Circus Maximus surged the crowd, and then through the valley where the Forum ended at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, and then past the Ara Maxima, the greatest and oldest of all altars in Rome, dedicated to Hercules and sanctified centuries ago by the ancestors of the Pinarii. Of all the horrors witnessed by all the ancestors over the ages, had any been as horrible as this?

  Working their way through the crowd to the riverbank, downstream and at a considerable distance, Aulus and Titus saw the headless corpse carried onto the bridge across the Tiber. Then it was tossed, like so much rubbish, into the turbid brown waters below. At such a distance, the sound of the splash was more like a burp or a belch, as if the river Tiber itself had swallowed up all that remained of the eighteen-year-old Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, master of Rome and emperor of all her provinces, high priest of Elagabalus, born Varius Avitus Bassianus in the city of Emesa.

  * * *

  In the days that followed, there were many changes.

  The black stone said to embody the god Elagabalus was removed from its temple, lashed to a wagon, and sent back to Emesa, along with all its attendant priests, musicians, and dancers. The various sacred items that had been moved to the Temple of Elagabalus were restored to their rightful places. The temple itself was reconsecrated to Jupiter, Most High.

  Wherever the names of the late emperor were inscribed or written, the letters ANTONINUS were marked through or chiseled away. It was clear now that a mistake had been made in assuming that its bearer had been the child of Caracalla, since he had displayed no traits whatsoever in common with that legitimate ruler. It was revealed that it was actually his cousin, Alexander, son of Mamaea, who was the child of Caracalla, and thus rightful heir to the title of Augustus.

  Alexander proclaimed that he was not to be addressed as Dominus by his fellow Romans. He preferred to be called Imperator.

  He dismissed from the palace all those who had encouraged, abetted, or taken part in his cousin’s depraved behaviors. He called back from exile some who had been banished by his cousin, including the renowned jurist, Ulpian. While the False Antoninus had considered the recruitment of men with large penises to be a proper imperial project, Alexander signaled that he would concern himself with serious, sober matters of state, such as the codification of Roman law.

  He had no desire for the gaudy bangles, but wore plain white tunics and ordinary cloaks and togas. The jewels of his predecessor he sold, putting the proceeds in the public treasury. Jewels were for women, he said. A man had no need of them.

  Because of his youth, a council of senators was appointed, experts who could advise him regarding imperial management, statecraft, and war. Alexander never appointed a man to the Senate without first conferring with the senators.

  In emulation of Marcus Aurelius, he installed in his private quarters a sanctuary of guiding spirits—Lares, as they were called in Latin, though he preferred to call them demons, which came from a Greek word. Here he kept statues of the best of the deified emperors, like Marcus, and also of certain holy men, preeminent among them Apollonius of Tyana, so beloved by his grandmother Maesa and her late sister, Domna. Some said he also kept an image of Orpheus, the subject of many sacred texts, and of the Jewish holy men Abraham and Jesus. There was also a portrait of Alexander the Great, his chosen namesake, whom he ranked as a demon even more powerful than Achilles.

  The Syrian chants and wild music and orgiastic dancing that had corrupted the religion of the Roman state were banished. In their place was set a far more somber and pious religious tone, as exemplified by the heady, almost incantatory proclamation of the Senate on the occasion of the new emperor’s first visit to the Senate House. This proclamation was posted all over the Forum and was read aloud by criers in every part of the city:

  “Augustus, free from all guilt, may the gods keep you! Alexander, our Emperor, may the gods keep you! The gods have given you to us, may the gods preserve you! The gods have rescued you from the hands of the foul man, may the gods preserve you forever! You too have endured the foul tyrant, you too had reason to grieve that the filthy and foul one lived. The gods cast him forth root and branch, but you they saved. The infamous emperor has been duly condemned. Happy shall we be in your rule; happy too shall be the state. The infamous emperor has been dragged with the hook. Justly punished was the voluptuous emperor, punished justly he who defiled the sacred relics. Thus are the judgments of the gods revealed. May the gods grant long life to Alexander! In you is our salvation, in you our life. That we may have joy in living, long life to Alexander of the house of the Antonines!”

  Inside the Senator House, Alexander stood alone before the senators to receive these accolades, with no mother or grandmother present to guide him. His first reform had been to ban any woman from entering the Senate House under any circumstances. Neither Mamaea nor Maesa complained of their exclusion.

  * * *

  “Indeed, the ban was their idea,” Aulus said to his friend Philostratus one day as they stood in the Forum, reading the posted proclamation and talking about all the changes afoot.

  “So I had assumed,” said Philostratus. “It seems likely.”

  “Oh, no, it’s a fact. Maesa herself confided it to me.”

  “Really?”

  “It was in the first days of Alexander’s reign. Maesa summoned me to the palace. I was in a sweat, thinking it would be bad news—we were all in a bit of a panic, weren’t we? I was shown to a small, private room. There was only the new emperor’s grandmother and myself, and a slave who stood by, holding a pitcher.

  “And there on a table was my unfinished bust of … what do we call him now? The False Antoninus? Anyway, Maesa had some idea that it could perhaps be turned into a portrait of Alexander. Sometimes that kind of alteration can work, with a bit of chiseling here and there, but in this case I told her I didn’t think it would be possible. Do you know what she did? She picked up the marble bust—a heavy lift for such a frail-looking old woman—carried it to a balcony, and dropped it three stories to the pavement below.

  “I heard the crash and ran to look over the parapet. She barely missed killing a couple of courtiers! They stood there, staring up—the look on their faces! The marble was smashed to bits. All that work, destroyed in an instant! When she turned to face me, I thought I saw something like tears in her eyes. She launched into a long, drunken tirade.

  “‘So it must be,’ she said, ‘with everything and anything to do with my grandson Varius. Alexander must now become in every way the opposite of his cousin. He will champion Roman religion. He will defend the Senate, and allow no woman to enter the Senate House. He will respect Roman law and Roman jurists. He will speak Latin, not Greek and never Phoenician—and he will speak it like a Roman, by Jupiter, or else I will strangle that miserable wretch Philostratus!’”

  “She didn’t say that!”

  Aulus chuckled. “No, she didn’t. I think her exact words were ‘the miserable army of tutors I’ve employed to instruct him.’ And then, thinking that Maesa would be too drunk to even remember our conversation, I dared to ask her, ‘How does Alexander feel about all the things demanded of him?’”

  “Yes? What did Maesa say?”

  “She said, ‘Alexander’s feelings’—she said the word with great derision—‘his feelings are irrelevant! He will do as his mother and I tell him. We have only to remind him of the fate of his cousin and aunt to keep him on the proper course. Alexander knows what’s at stake. He will do what he must do—what Mamaea and I tell him to do.’”

  “And then?”

  “I thought sh
e would dismiss me. I was certainly ready to go! But she drank a bit more wine, and insisted that I do so, too—wine flavored with roses. ‘The only thing we still have around the palace that reminds me of Varius,’ she said. And then she said something that really shocked me. It’s hard to imagine she actually said such a thing aloud…”

  “Yes?”

  “‘The real nightmare,’ she said, ‘would have been if Varius and his mother had been the winners—if they had succeeded in bribing the Praetorians to kill Alexander and Mamaea, instead of the other way around. Then I would have been stuck with Varius and Soaemias digging us deeper and deeper into a pit. We would all have perished in the end, leaving chaos behind us. How disappointed with us my beloved sister Domna would have been, how ashamed of our failure! But with Alexander, there’s hope. No, more than hope—he must succeed, and he will. He may be the youngest boy ever to be emperor, but he will become the man we need him to be. He has no other choice now, and neither do I.’”

  “Nor do we,” said Philostratus quietly.

  A.D. 223

  The emperor and his mother were taking a tour of the Flavian Amphitheater, its restoration finally complete. Maesa was not with them, being too ill to leave the palace. As far as Aulus could tell, her daughter was a near copy of her, a generation younger and considerably more sober. Mamaea wore strictly Roman dress. Her plain stola was so old-fashioned it might have been worn by Augustus’s wife, Livia.

  Alexander said little, but Mamaea lavishly praised Aulus for his exemplary work. “How is it that a man as competent and valuable as you is not in the Senate? Alexander, perhaps you should add Aulus Pinarius to the list of men you wish to appoint to the Senate.”

  The young man nodded vaguely, more interested in a nearby statue of Hercules—or more precisely, as Aulus observed, in a bird that sat atop the statue’s head. But a scribe quickly made a note of Mamaea’s comment, and Aulus’s heart skipped a beat. To become a senator! If only his father were still alive to see it.

  After the tour of inspection, Aulus and a number of other men involved in the restoration accompanied the imperial party to the palace, where there was to be a celebratory banquet.

  Once inside the palace, Alexander became more animated. “Mother, can I show Aulus Pinarius my birds?”

  “Whatever for?” Mamaea made a sour face.

  “He might sculpt them.”

  “Make sculptures … of birds? What a silly idea,” said Mamaea. “Well, do as you wish. We have a bit of time before the banquet. I’m going to look in on your grandmother.”

  Alexander conducted Aulus into a private area of the palace. In a large, enclosed garden, an aviary had been constructed. There were hundreds of birds, of all sorts—pea-fowl, pheasants, hens, ducks, and partridges, and a great many doves.

  “It’s the doves I love most of all,” Alexander said, holding forth some seeds on the palm of his hand and letting a pair of doves peck at it. “They’re so beautiful. The sounds they make are very soothing. They coo at me, and I coo back at them.” He proceeded to demonstrate. The young man showed far greater enthusiasm for the birds than he had had for anything to do with the amphitheater.

  Another boy-emperor who dreams of being something else, thought Aulus. But not an actor, or a gladiator, or Venus—this one wants to be a bird-keeper!

  “My grandmother didn’t want me to have the aviary,” confided Alexander. “Frivolous, she called it. She even quoted Marcus Aurelius—some nonsense about quails.”

  “I believe Marcus wrote about training quails to fight. He disapproved.”

  “As do I! I would never hurt my birds, or make them hurt each other. But anyway, grandmother is too ill now to say much of anything. My mother allowed me to build the aviary, and in return I allowed her to spend a small fortune building her own wing of apartments.”

  Aulus nodded. The tremendous expense and extravagant luxury of the palace addition had become the subject of gossip. Courtiers called it the Mamaea wing, but rude wags in the Forum had another name for it: The mammary wing—where baby Alexander goes to suckle Mama’s teats!

  “You’ve sculpted a lot of people, haven’t you?” asked Alexander. “You’ve seen all sorts of people. Do I look Syrian to you?”

  Aulus was taken aback and made no reply.

  “I know I sound Syrian, but do I look Syrian?” The boy’s earnest solicitation of his opinion was oddly touching. The correct answer was obvious.

  “Not at all, Imperator.”

  “You have a son, don’t you? How old is he?”

  “Titus is a bit younger than you. Thirteen.”

  “Does he wrestle? Perhaps he and I could wrestle sometime. My mother says it’s the only exercise worthy of a young Roman. Marcus Aurelius wrestled, did you know that?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, my grandfather wrestled him.”

  “Truly?”

  “But I fear that Titus is not much for wrestling. He loves books, especially history. He’s like the Divine Marcus in that way, at least.”

  “My trainers are all bigger and better than me, so anytime I win I know it’s only because they let me. And I know hardly any boys my own age. Varius was older, of course…”

  Aulus was a bit surprised to hear the young man mention his cousin.

  Alexander saw the look on his face. “People think I hated him, but I didn’t. Not really. It was wrong that he tried to have me killed, but I think that was mostly his mother’s doing. I tried to wrestle Varius once, a long time ago, back in Emesa. But when we grappled, I realized he had … something else in mind…” He frowned and shuddered. “Well, we’re not supposed to talk about him. I’d like to be like Marcus Aurelius. Not just wrestling, I mean. And like Alexander the Great, too. That’s why I took his name, though some of the senators seem to think it was wrong of me to take a Greek name. Mother thinks I should add Severus to my name—Severus Alexander—to include my grandfather, and why not? He was also a mighty warrior. I admire them all. Septimius Severus humbled the Parthians. Marcus saved the Roman Empire. And Alexander conquered the whole world!”

  The boy might have Marcus’s mild disposition, Aulus thought, but would he ever have the intellect and political savvy? And was there any reason, other than his name, to think he might have the military genius of Alexander, or Severus for that matter? If his reign lasted any time at all, there was sure to be warfare on one border or another, if not both.

  “Mother said it would be silly to ask you to sculpt my birds. But there’s another project I have in mind for you, now that the amphitheater is done. A rather grand project. There’s an area in the Forum of Nerva that has room for some statues—colossal statues, I should like them to be, of the very best of the emperors, and columns of bronze engraved with their exploits and achievements. Would you be able to do something like that?”

  “Why, yes, Imperator. Yes, indeed.” In his imagination, Aulus heard the delightful, reassuring sound of cascading coins. Not only might he soon become a senator, but here, from the emperor himself, was the promise of more imperial patronage on the way, to keep his workshop busy and the Pinarii prosperous. If only young Titus would put down his books and show a greater interest in the family business …

  On the way out, Alexander showed Aulus something else that few people had seen, his private sanctuary of guiding spirits. In the quiet, dimly lit alcove, Aulus saw a bust of Marcus Aurelius, a statue of Apollonius of Tyana, and—

  Alexander suddenly seemed to realize that the doors of a certain cabinet were open, and he quickly moved to shut them, but not before Aulus glimpsed the object within. It was a small replica of the baetyl worshipped as Elagabalus. Alexander closed the doors of the cabinet and looked flustered.

  The boy still venerated the stone, but he preferred that no one should know—and who could blame him?

  * * *

  The banquet was elegant but restrained, conducted in a manner opposite to that of the False Antoninus. The guests, Aulus noticed, included not just men involve
d with the amphitheater, but also a number of high-ranking palace officials.

  After a number of courses there was an interval, and everyone was invited to a long gallery that overlooked a sandy, rectangular arena. Aulus had heard of this space but had never seen it. Here, generations of emperors and their guests had looked down on private gladiator contests, animal exhibits, and other amusements.

  Alexander himself introduced the entertainment. He seemed to be reciting a text from memory, like a schoolboy. Aulus could not help but notice his Syrian accent.

  “Under me and in my name, there will be no toleration of bribery, false accusations, or any other chicanery by any member or servant of the imperial household. That includes Verconius Turninus, who until recently was a trusted courtier. He has now been exposed as a greedy and totally unscrupulous ‘seller of smoke’—as the saying goes. Bring forth Verconius Turninus!”

  In the arena below, doors opened. The miscreant was led onto the sandy ground and tied to a post. Bales of hay were bought in, and flaming torches. At first, with a gasp, Aulus thought he was about to witness a man burned alive, a punishment not seen since the days of Nero, when it was inflicted on the Christians who burned Rome—including, according to family legend, a Christian Pinarius.

  Alexander spoke again. “Let the seller of smoke be punished by smoke.”

  The bales of hay were set aflame. Water was sprinkled on them, to produce smoke. Using large pieces of canvas, the men below wafted the smoke at Turninus. The bound man coughed and choked, gasped and wheezed. He was swallowed up by the smoke, made invisible, but still his suffering could be heard. There was so much smoke that many in the gallery coughed, as well. This went on for quite some time, until the flames were extinguished and the last of the smoke dispersed, and the seller of smoke was seen to be slumped against the pole, dead from smoke inhalation.

  Many of the onlookers were aghast. The execution was clearly intended to set a stark example and to put all those present on notice. Uneasily, a few of them applauded, and one ventured to cry out, “Well done, Imperator! Well done!”