by Ross Laidlaw
To Theoderic’s shocked amazement, a barrage of rude comments was hurled by the plebs at the patricians in the podium and privileged seats: ‘Hi, there, Spicy. What’s the Holy Father like in bed?’ ‘Antonia, is it true you’ve worn out three new boyfriends, and you old enough to be their grandmother?’ ‘Basilius, you old goat, that little slave-girl keeping you warm at night?’ The recipients of the taunts, though doubtless raging inside, made no response, for to do so would be a breach of dignitas.
A trumpet-blast announced the entry of the venatores or huntsmen, lean, muscled men, armed variously with spears, daggers, swords, nets, and bows. Animal-fighting alone survived of the arena’s blood sports: gladiatorial combats had been ended by Emperor Honorius ninety-six years previously, after a frenzied mob had torn to pieces a monk, Telemachus, for intervening in a fight; and a generation prior to that, Valentinian I had stopped the practice of condemned criminals, noxii, being savaged to death by wild beasts. Nevertheless, the venationes or wild-beast hunts still provided enough gore and excitement to whip the mob into a frenzy of blood-lust. After circling the arena to wild applause, the procession formed up before the royal box and saluted Theoderic and Probinus in turn, before departing.
A moment’s hush, then again the trumpet sounded, and a tide of wild animals began to pour into the arena. Until this moment, they had been kept in cages deep in the bowels of the amphitheatre; the cages were hauled by a system of lifts and pulleys to passageways leading to the arena, then opened.
Thrasamund, king of the Vandals, had done him proud, thought Theoderic, looking in wonder at the multicoloured mass of swarming animals: antelopes, jackals, hyenas, ostriches, leopards, lions, cheetahs, buffaloes, a rhinoceros, even several elephants. The marriage alliance he had forged with the Vandal widower (just one example of the good relations established with other barbarian leaders in the West) — sending him his widowed sister Amalafrida as prospective bride — had paid off handsomely. Thrasamund’s Berber and Moorish hunters had done a magnificent job; they must have penetrated deep into the continent’s interior to have been able to bring back such an astonishing variety of wildlife. Fights continually broke out among the animals, but the arena was so crowded that the contestants were swept apart as the stampeding throng frantically sought for means of escape.
At a signal from Probinus, the trumpet sounded and the venatores rushed into the arena through the openings the animals had used. The air filled with brays, roars and bellows as the huntsmen set to work, despatching their quarry with incredible speed and skill, some leaping from back to back delivering fatal thrusts in motion, or loosing volleys of arrows, each shaft finding its mark. The mighty elephants were among the easiest to slaughter — killed instantly by a chisel hammered between the cervical vertebrae, or hamstrung to immobilize them, then their trunks slashed off when they quickly bled to death. When at last the crowd of animals began to thin out, the trumpet sounded for the end of the hunt. The venatores now made way for the bestiarii, animal-handlers. These, armed with lead-tipped flails and blazing torches, drove the surviving beasts back into the passageways, whose gates had been opened, with basins of water placed inside to attract the exhausted animals. When the carcasses had been dragged out through the Door of Death, and with the arena once more empty, the crowd hushed in anticipation of the next show. Word had got around that this was to be something special. .
A team of slaves carrying a long stake hurried to the middle of the arena. Some scraped away the covering of sand to reveal the planking beneath, a section of which was removed, disclosing a hole into which the stake was fitted. Two more slaves led out a struggling young woman and chained her by the waist to the stake. A huge, heavily muscled man was then conducted to the spot, and released. Shaking his mane of red hair, he glared defiantly around at the vast audience.
Probinus moved his curule seat to be directly behind Theoderic. ‘The woman’s a murderess,’ he murmured. ‘Stabbed her master when he tried to rape her. The man’s a Celt, a runaway slave from the sulphur mines. When he was recaptured he disabled three men so badly that they’ll never work again. It should be interesting to see how long he can protect her against the assault of wild beasts.’
‘Damnata ad bestias!’ exclaimed the king. ‘But that’s unlawful, surely?’
Probinus shrugged. ‘Technically, perhaps, Your Majesty. However. .’
He was interrupted by the trumpet’s brazen clang. Into the arena walked a huge white bull with massive forequarters and long, wickedly pointed horns. The creature’s skin slid and rippled like silk above its muscles as it moved. This was Europe’s great wild ox, which the Romans called Urus and the Germans Aurochs, noted for its implacable ferocity when roused.
A gasp of excited admiration arose as the great beast trotted round the arena, establishing its territory. Spotting the woman and the huge Celt, he turned to face them and began to paw the sand. Immediately, the woman started shrieking and struggling — her cries and frantic movements providing the very stimulus to trigger an attack. With shocking suddenness the aurochs launched itself towards her.
Gripping the arms of his curule seat, Theoderic leant forward in an agony of suspense, willing the Celt to try to save the woman. But surely it could only be a doomed attempt. An unarmed man, no matter how powerful, could be no match for an enraged bull. As the ton of white destruction hurtled towards its victim, the Celt ran forward to meet it and grabbed its horns by their tips. At first he was borne along helplessly by the creature’s impetus. Gradually, however, his churning feet found purchase on the sand, until, yards from the stake, he managed to bring the monster to a halt. Legs braced like tree-trunks, biceps bulging with titanic effort, he strained to twist the creature’s horns.
A roar of incredulous delight burst from the spectators. Almost imperceptibly, the great bull’s head was beginning to turn. The movement gradually accelerated — now the neck was sharply angled to the body; an agonized bellow, a loud crack! like a snapping branch, and the animal slumped to the sand.
For a moment the audience was silent, then it broke into wild, sustained applause.
‘They await your decision, Majesty,’ prompted Probinus.
Startled, Theoderic collected himself. From his readings of Roman history, he knew the correct response. Rising to his feet, he extended his right fist. To ecstatic cheering from the crowd, he raised the thumb. Turning to Probinus he commanded, ‘Have him brought to me.’
‘You are a brave man,’ declared Theoderic, his voice warm with admiration, when the Celt — chest heaving as he fought for air, body dripping sweat — stood below the royal box. ‘What is your name?’
‘I am Conall Cearnach, a Scot from Dalriada in Caledonia. But my forebears came from Hibernia; that’s the island-’
‘-to the west of Britannia,’ finished Theoderic with a smile. ‘I am not entirely ignorant of geography, you see. The Scots are a brave and loyal race, I’ve heard. My bodyguard could use such men. What would you say to joining them?’
‘Anything is better than the sulphur mines.’
‘Have this man taken to the palace,’ Theoderic told Probinus, ‘with instructions that he be fed, allowed to wash, then clothed.’
‘The man is still a slave, Your Majesty,’ objected the senator. ‘A slave, moreover, who has inflicted grave injury on several men.’
Fury filled Theoderic. About to roar a reprimand to the editor, he remembered — just in time — to check himself. Dignitas. ‘See to it,’ he snapped.
‘Very well, Majesty.’
A growing impatient buzz alerted the king to the fact that the crowd was growing restive. Looking up, he was amazed to see the woman still secured to the stake.
‘Why has she not been freed?’ he demanded. ‘I raised my thumb.’
‘Surely, Majesty, your gesture indicated that mercy be shown to the man alone,’ Probinus pointed out.
Again, rage threatened to overwhelm the king. Was he to be balked at every turn by this arrogant aristo
crat? With a huge effort, he controlled his anger. ‘Free her,’ he ordered, forcing himself to speak evenly.
Seated to his right, Symmachus turned to speak. The great senator’s face was furrowed in concern and sympathy. ‘Serenity, would that be wise?’ he cautioned. ‘Your instinct is a noble one; it does you great credit. But to free the woman would be to disappoint the crowd. That might be’ — he paused, searching for the right word — ‘let us say, impolitic.’
‘Impolitic?’
‘Serenity, seditio popularis is easily aroused and can have terrible consequences.’ The patrician’s voice held a note of urgency. ‘Only last year the Pope himself was injured in a riot, and several priests were killed. And many present can remember the lynching by an angry mob of the emperor Petronius Maximus.’
All Theoderic’s nature, with its German sense of honour and reverence for women, rose in revolt against the idea of having to appease the Roman mob. Now he could see clearly what that snake Probinus’ game was: to box him into a corner, forcing him to act against his nature, in a demonstration that it was the Senate, not the king, who held the reins of power. Well, he was Theoderic, the warrior king of a heroic race, who ruled by right of conquest. He would show these Romans who was master. Then something tugged at his memory, cooling his indignation. Symmachus had addressed him as ‘Serenity’, a title used for emperors alone! Conflict raged within the king: desire to act honourably, according to his principles and conscience, versus a new emotion, a heady exaltation that his dream, acceptance by the Romans as their emperor, could be on the point of being realized. But that acceptance was conditional, he knew; an emperor must please his people.
Meanwhile, the clamour of the crowd had risen to a rhythmic, thunderous chant: ‘Ad bestias! Ad bestias! Ad bestias!’
Like an enormous weight, Theoderic seemed to feel the force of fifty thousand wills pressing against his own. Guilt and shame welled up within him — to be suppressed by the promptings of ambition. Again, his fist came forward, but this time the thumb turned down, in the gesture of pollice verso. A roar of triumphant approval burst from the throats of the mob.
A great spotted cat padded into the arena.
* See Appendix III: Romans and Barbarians.
†Senatus populusque romanus — The Senate and people of Rome.
* i.e., the Colosseum — a popular name, bestowed not on account of the building’s size but because of its propinquity to a colossal statue of Nero.
TWENTY-FIVE
Whatever deceives seems to exercise a kind of magical enchantment
Plato, The Republic, c. 350 BC
Concerned about his master’s growing obsession with what was bound to be a mirage, Timothy decided to find out for himself what the Romans thought of the idea of Theoderic as emperor. With his richly varied background, which had seen his career progress from streetwise gangster to royal minder to agens in rebus with an imperial commission, Timothy was well placed to move freely between the different strata of Roman society — from its dregs in the Subura, the city’s poorest quarter, to the rarified world of Domitian’s Palace populated by (menials apart) civil servants, silentiarii, and a select band of senatorial aristocrats who constituted a kind of unofficial council for Theoderic while he was in Rome. (The king’s permanent council in Ravenna consisted of Roman officials of middle-class background, along with high-ranking duces or army commanders — almost all Goths — and a very few Goths of proven ability, sufficient to enable them to hold administrative posts.)
Timothy commenced his research beneath the arches of the Circus Maximus, the vast U-shaped stadium where chariot races were held. Known as ‘Under-the-Stands’, this was an amazing world of its own, a labyrinth of interlocking passages formed by the hundreds of arches supporting the tiers of seats above, and populated by a colourful under-class of fortune-tellers, astrologers, ready-meal vendors, souvenir sellers, pimps, prostitutes, jugglers, conjurers. . The answers to Timothy’s question about Theoderic as emperor, though varied in style of expression, were remarkably consistent in content: ‘A Jerry emperor? You’ve got to be joking!’ ‘We don’t want none o’ them Tedesci* bastards wearing the diadem.’ ‘Theoderic’s all right — gives us bread and circuses don’t he? But emperor? Nah, wouldn’t be right, would it? ’E’s German, see.’ He got similar responses in the stinking alleys of the Subura, in Chilo’s Tavern near the Porta Appia — famous as an emporium of news and gossip — and in the crowded flats of that monstrous tenement the Insula of Felicula, Rome’s tallest building, home to the families of tradesmen living just above the poverty line.
From the top of the great high-rise building — which had become almost as famous a tourist attraction in Rome as the Pyramids were in Egypt — Timothy looked down two hundred feet to the vast city sprawling away to the confining circuit of Aurelian’s Wall. Northwards, to his left, between the Tiber and that great arrow-straight artery the Via Flaminia, stretched the level expanse of the Campus Martius; to his right, on the spurs of the Quirinal and Viminal hills, reared the Baths of Constantine and Diocletian. To the south, between the Baths of Trajan and Domitian’s Palace, rose the mighty oval of the Colosseum with, beyond, the pale oblong of the Circus Maximus, fully half a mile in length. Directly below, a forest of pillars extending from the foot of the Capitol to the Sacred Way, lay the city’s venerable heart, the Forum Romanum. In all directions, striding on tall arches above the roof-tops and the new basilicas everywhere replacing the ancient temples, marched the aqueducts, a network of stone suspended above the huge metropolis. Once again, Timothy found himself wondering how it was that a race capable of creating such marvels had been laid low by primitive tribesmen from the northern forests.
From comments gleaned in the palace, Timothy got the impression that the prejudice against the idea of a German emperor was even stronger among the middle and upper classes than among the plebs, although articulated with more sophistication and some attempt at reasoned argument. Germans were irredeemably wild, treacherous and unpredictable, unfitted by blood to hold the most prestigious office of all. Properly led, they could admittedly make good soldiers; some had even risen to the highest ranks of the army — witness Stilicho, the great Vandal general. But even he had proved untrustworthy, his Teutonic heritage showing through when, having spared his fellow German Alaric, Rome’s great enemy, and preoccupied with plans to invade the Eastern Empire, he failed to stop a huge German confederation crossing the Rhine and overrunning Gaul and Spain.
So ran the special pleading. Timothy, however, suspected that the real reason was much more atavistic. Barring the wastes of Caledonia and Scandia,* Germania was the only part of Europe that Rome had failed to conquer. Her one attempt to do so had ended in disaster — three legions slaughtered in the depths of the Teutoburger Forest. The horror of that event had inflicted an enduring trauma on the collective mind of Rome, something never to be forgotten — or forgiven. And in the end, Rome had endured the ultimate humiliation: being conquered by the very German tribes she feared and hated above all. Small wonder, then, that, alone of almost every race within the empire and beyond, Germans had never been permitted to wear the imperial diadem.
Although his rank of agens in rebus enabled him to mingle on the fringes of the upper class, Timothy could hardly approach the senatorial aristocracy directly. But from conversations with the silentiarii, the highest rung of the social ladder he had access to (and one that did have contact with blue-blooded patricians), he discovered some disturbing facts. Boethius and Symmachus, the very pair who commanded most influence with the king, were the leading lights of a coterie of intellectuals centred in both Rome and Constantinople. The circle also included the Greek-speaking Petronius Cethegus, son of the Probinus who led the Laurentian faction and a major thorn in Theoderic’s flesh; the young senator and historian Cassiodorus; and Priscian, a Constantinopolitan member of the African diaspora that had followed the Vandal invasion. (Priscian had met and befriended Symmachus when the latter visited the East
ern capital. He was also an enthusiastic apologist for the Eastern Emperor, Anastasius, whom he described in a panegyric as welcoming refugees from old Rome to his court in new Rome.) These were men, in constant touch through letters and mutual visits, whose views counted throughout the Roman world (rather as, three or four generations previously, had those of Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose and their circle), to the extent of being able to influence the attitude of leading Romans in both Italy and the Eastern Empire. What worried Timothy was the suspicion, ground out by the busy rumour mill of palace intrigue, that these men, all champions of Nicene orthodoxy, were strongly anti-Arian — the branch of Christianity to which Theoderic belonged.
Even more disturbing was the suggestion that they regarded a barbarian king of Italy as merely the head of a caretaker government, until, in the words of Priscian, ‘both Romes would come to obey the emperor alone’. This might be nothing more than windy rhetoric, Timothy thought, an intellectual nostalgia for the days when the empire had had a Western as well as an Eastern half. Or, taken out of context, it could be interpreted as highly treasonable. That word ‘refugees’ in Priscian’s panegyric implied that some Romans, at least, were unhappy with Ostrogothic rule, and therefore might in the future challenge Theoderic’s authority. Understanding (and caring) nothing about the theological aspects of the Laurentian Schism, Timothy nevertheless knew that its effect had been to cool relations between Rome (and by extension, Italy) and Constantinople. Therefore anything which fervently extolled the rule of Anastasius, as Priscian’s panegyric had done, could, by implication, almost be held to denigrate that of Theoderic.
