The Water Thief

by Ben Pastor

  During his well-advised reign, the conspiracy seems dormant, but it is not so. In fact, one after the other, all heirs to the throne fall away, sudden fevers and accidents cutting their lives short. Agrippa, too, the possible strongman to follow Augustus, never returns from his last campaign. Afterward, the enemies’ hand is recognizable in plots and assassinations of strong rulers who threaten their interests by military expansion or alliances. Among the noble victims are to be numbered the emperors Claudius and Titus. Nearly every excellent cadaver in Rome—so states Hadrian’s letter—was a result of the conspirators’ plan. To think that historians wondered why the Caesars died childless, and why so many of them perished in their prime! After the Flavian dynasty dies off Rome is weakened. Coincidentally, once more the conspiracy appears to wane, but it is only gone underground, accruing small successes any time the Roman state’s reach on the South and the East frontiers seems to waver.

  Antinoopolis, Heptanomia Province, Egypt, 8 Phaophi,

  (7 October, Nones, Saturday)

  Aelius’s rented quarters by the mall were ready for his arrival in Antinoopolis. Everyone but three of his guardsmen having preceded him, all flats in the building had been requisitioned for security reasons; and stalls across the road cleared to keep an open view of the marketplace.

  Following the Nile southward had been for Aelius an exercise in recent memory. Yet every time the flood receded, changes came to the banks: islets sank or came to the surface, meanders once choked with papyrus and marsh plants were swept clean, villages dissolved in water or survived, filthy and stuck in the mud. Deep odor of decay rose from the wide fertilized band of the riverside, where one advanced over planks or took long detours around it. Nearly back in its bed, the Nile—wide as a lake until the third week of September—had filled dikes and canals, which corvees painstakingly walked and repaired. It was probably these conscripted masses that carried disease from one region to the other, and farmers like Anubina’s husband were the most exposed to infection.

  This was not exactly coming home, yet stepping into his room and seeing a small, transparent scorpion scuttle under the bed made him feel that for every change, some things stayed the same. Aelius held back Sirius, knelt to pick the insect up with a cloth, and without harming it, put it outside.

  In the afternoon, what amazed him was finding the consumptive judge from Tunis Parva not only alive, but ensconced in the office of the Heptanomia epistrategos Rabirius Saxa.

  “Legatos Spartianus,” he greeted him, “it’s an honor and a pleasure! Oh, I am better. It’s an odd thing, but whenever there’s an epidemic I seem to get better. The trials against the Christians have been put on hold, I’m sure you have heard, both within the army and among civilians.” With a bow of his head he received the sealed orders. “We now have bigger fish to spear. They say Parthia is behind it, but who knows. Parthia can’t be behind everything that happens to the empire.”

  “Did you receive the list from Alexandria?”

  “Oh, yes. I know you had a hand in filling it out, congratulations, really. Names you’d never suspect: city administrators, army officers, businessmen. That Aviola Paratus should be a conspirator, legatos—scandal! Scandal, I say. One doesn’t know whom to trust anymore, if veterans prove unfaithful. It’s a bonafide purge. Treason, of course. All accused of treason. We’ll get many of them—executed, I mean. Others will escape through the dragnet, because they are too connected to trade, foreign money, and mostly because we don’t know exactly how they fit within the structure.” When Aelius showed the names of guests at Dio’s party, handed him by Harpocratio during his last permanence, the judge hunched his shoulders with glee. “One of them is already in jail!”

  Aelius felt less sanguine. That some of Paratus’s informants had spoken, there was no denying. Collaborators had been named. Documents had turned out at the veteran’s Minturnae house and in the trade exchange at Antium, but it all remained elusive. Contacts among members, their charges—it seemed largely a matter of foreign intrusion in decision-making, a laborious insectlike work of undermining by appointing some magistrates, removing others, buying off others yet. Occasionally the conspiracy resorted to murder, most of the murders having been regicides. Whatever the judge said about the scandal of known names, no foreign potentates or leaders had emerged from the investigation, and these were the ones to go after. Mercifully, it would not be his task.

  “Maximian Caesar’s party at Court sees the Christians’ hand in it,” the judge was saying, staring at him bright-eyed with interest. “What do you think?”

  Aelius shook his head. “It’s difficult to tell how much religion has to do with it, and how much power-hungry churchmen might be pursuing their own interests through a secret society’s structure.”

  “They say that even now two generals at court, Licinius and Constantius’s son Constantine—but I digress, legatos, I digress. What an intriguing vortex,” the judge said, escorting him to the door.

  Aelius thought, Yes, and recalled the day when he’d been talking to Tralles, and suddenly had felt how around the command post, the army compound, the city, and beyond, all seemed an ever-enlarging incomprehensible spiral, at the center of which lay the misery of human words and affairs.

  Yes. What about Licinius, Maxentius, and even young Constantine, as ambitious as his mother Helena was keen on young officers of the Court? It was out of his hands now.

  As he left, “What’s the latest news on the contagion?” he asked the judge.

  “The metropolis proper has been little affected, but the working-class districts outside the gates were hard hit. We no longer have a quarantine, and that’s the best I can say.”

  In the neighborhood of Anubina’s shop, by the amphitheater, warmth and an uncomfortable damp wind stuck clothes to one’s body. Few people were walking the streets. Her doorway was still locked, and asking merchants nearby, Aelius heard that two thirds of the businesses in town had reopened, but many owners still kept at a distance for health’s sake, “unless they’ve died already.”

  Outside the south gate, the Philadelphia district had its usual sleepy air, and someone had even hung a garland on the door of the old chapel to the deified Trajan and his sister. Anubina’s blue house under the acacia tree showed no sign of life, and no one answered Aelius’s knocking. Shuffling barefooted, one of her young apprentices came out from next door to see who it was. She kept an eye on the place, she said, but had no idea when mistress might be back, in fact she knew nothing except that she was to keep an eye on things.

  “I understand she was building. Could she have gone to her new house?”

  “No, ’cause it isn’t finished yet.”

  “Who would know where she is?”

  The girl squinted in the sun, shrugging.

  Next, Aelius went to visit Tralles’s widow—the expected dues to be paid to an army colleague. She was a fat blonde who had gotten over her grief in the excitement of her daughter’s approaching delivery. She thanked him for his attention while the girl, who looked about thirteen and thoroughly exhausted, sat by the wall trying to cover the bulge of her belly.

  And so ended the first day of Aelius’s return to Antinoopolis. A three-quarter moon struggled to appear from a sky that lingered bright when he rode back toward the mall. There he inquired of a bookseller about Harpocratio, who was reportedly due back from a business trip to Pelusium, and adding a wing to his villa. Theo was still in Rome, and—Aelius could imagine—disappointed to find out that Cleopatra Minor was really not his type. The stalls were closing for the night. How women had walked among them in June, ankles showing from their gauzy skirts, and how the sand-bearing wind had come down like sparkling rain.

  Final Report, continued:

  2. We come now to the deified Trajan’s reign, shortly before Hadrian’s rule. An accidental discovery (thanks to the fortunate arrest of an enemy agent during the Parthian campaign) alerts intelligence of a new Roman cell within the conspiracy. Danger comes close to t
he throne. The delicate inquiry is entrusted to the emperor’s nephew, the future deified Hadrian, who chooses to conceal his investigation out in the provinces, under the guise of a libertine and bibulous life (see the historical commentary of Marius Maximus’s). At Trajan’s death, Hadrian inherits an empire never so far-reaching, so rich, or so threatened. This is why nearly his entire rule is spent in ceaseless travel and vigilance at all levels. The state’s enemies make inroads in the City’s power structure as well. History remembers (without citing their belonging to the conspiracy), Quietus and Nigrinus, and others as well. The Great Jewish Revolt, so bloody and dangerous, is unrelated, but comes at a most critical time for Rome: The emperor will eventually settle it with the utmost severity, but between his successes against the conspiracy in Asia, there comes news of more intense activity threatening the Berenice and Myos Hormos trade routes in Egypt. He who wields the greatest economic power, he who controls the spice routes, will rule the world. The conspirators’ names and their nationalities change with the ages; but they all agree that in order to rule the world they must crush the Roman empire. They are not faceless; they have too many faces. Thus, in the fourteenth year of his reign, despite insistent talk of possible attempts against his person, Hadrian sets off for the Province of Egypt. With him are the empress and members of the court, including Antinous. Security is high, although Roman intelligence is aware that infiltration in the army and even the imperial bodyguard is a likelihood. Incidents (see Cassius Dio for historical details) mar the trip from the start.

  When the fateful trip on the Nile begins, there is near certainty that an attempt will be made at some point along the route. The deified Hadrian’s account leaves no doubt about it. To make things worse, an informer is unwisely (or on purpose?) killed by a guard before he can give any particulars. Particularly perilous, in the river trip, seem the ancient sites of Her-wer and Besa. By the time the imperial barge approaches the area, the ladies and the more infirm or elderly of the distinguished guests have been left at Cynopolis. Antinous, invited to remain on land as well, succeeds by insistence to convince the deified Hadrian to let him follow. By this time of his life—and the portraits prove it—the Borhas turned into a tall and well formed young man. As he is represented on Hadrian’s triumphal arch, he has of late also let his sideburns grow into a beard. Is it mere imitation of his master and friend, as Cassius Dio surmises? I believe Antinous has another aim in mind.

  It surprises me that no historical source mentions what Antinous wore on the night he met his end. True, Marius Maximus wrote that “his remains were gathered in purple silk,” but this was dismissed as a critique of Hadrian’s excessive regard for his favorite—allowing that his body be bound in cloth meant for kings. In fact, as the account tells us, Antinous donned the emperor’s own outfit after he had retired early, weary with the trip and feverish. Following Hadrian’s custom, he then paced the deck, precisely as the barge plied the river between Her-wer and Besa.

  I submit that at some point during the Egyptian tour, as his insistence to follow Hadrian everywhere proves, the Boy is approached by the conspirators. Hadrian makes no mention of it, but the letters I read in Repentina’s library make me suspect it. Perhaps the Boy was tempted by Marcius Turbo himself who then, of course, denies knowledge of any conspiracy in his correspondence with Suetonius. Taking advantage of Antinous’s closeness to the emperor, and perhaps of his jealousy after young Lucius is thrown in Hadrian’s path, they try to convince the Boy to join them, trusting in his youth and relative inexperience, and promising God knows what. Power? Money? At any rate, the Boy realizes Hadrian is in mortal danger. He cannot presume to accuse important men, but can at least try to protect his master. Does he see himself as predestined to do this? Do horoscopes and heavenly charts play a role? We may never know.

  Antinoopolis, 9 Phaophi (8 October, Sunday)

  Thermuthis pinned the flat braid of her red hair on top of her head. She always got up late. Full daylight flooded her bedroom window, showing the flank of Heqet’s temple and a row of sunny façades across the street. She slept alone, and rarely anymore received men. Aelius, she’d invited herself when he’d last come to Egypt, for old times’ sake. Which was why she let him visit her in her private apartment at the brothel.

  “Yes, I know she left,” she said.

  “But whereto?”

  “Ombi, on Hadrian’s Way.”

  “Is she all right?”

  Thermuthis looked over her shoulder from her dressing table. Her eyes searched him, then slowly returned to the array of makeup before her. From a paunchy little pot she scooped up white salve and dabbed it on her face, smoothing it upward with her fingertips, toward cheekbones and temples. “I’ve never seen you like this, Aelius.” Massaging her neck came next, in meticulous half-circles. “Is this for real?”

  “For God’s sake, Thermuthis, I have to know if she’s well.”

  “You can’t be in love, and anyway, her family was infected shortly after she left the city. She headed for the interior like many others, but contagion was already rampant among the travelers. Her son was dead when one of my girls met her west of Ombi, while fleeing on her own right.” Glancing into a drawer, Thermuthis distractedly pulled out a pair of earrings, put them back, and chose a twisted gold chain instead. “She said Anubina held the boy in her arms and wouldn’t let the gravediggers take him, that she tried to crawl down into the common pit when dirt was shoveled over him.” Watching him sit on her undone bed with his head in his hands, she decided not to ask him to clasp the jewel. “I know it’s hard, Aelius I’m sorry.”

  “Her daughter?”

  “Both she and Anubina were very ill when I last heard, and her husband dead also.”

  “You have to tell me where she is, I have to go there.”

  Sharply Thermuthis turned around on her lion-footed stool. “You know she lost her other one, too.”

  “Her other one?”

  “She was expecting a third child when you came in June, and lost it. I think it was because she saw you again, and it made her ill.”

  “She never told me!”

  “She never would. She started bleeding here, while she was visiting. I had been teaching her to write, you know how ambitious and intelligent she always was. We couldn’t help her, even though our inhouse doctor was immediately on hand. She’d had her daughter here at the house, too. With her old woman making herself scarce after selling her, and you gone, she had no one else. A hard birth, eight months after you left.” The gold chain in Thermuthis’s hands glinted as she let it fall into her lap. “I believe she is dead, Aelius. Spare yourself and do not go looking.”

  Final Report, continued:

  3. I quote directly from the emperor’s own words to convey the drama of what followed:

  “The enemies of Rome, then headed by Artemidoros, merchant and gymnasiarch from Hermopolis, having originally planned to assassinate Caesar in the morning during the ceremony in the city, saw an unhoped-for opportunity when they beheld what they assumed to be Caesar himself on deck, facing the water. Disguised as sailors, they brutally pushed Antinous from behind, and caused him to fall into the river. This in itself would not have sufficed to kill him, as he was a champion swimmer, but the assassins jumped in with him, and held him under water in turn until life was taken from him. By now, despite the darkness, they realized their error, and the gravity of having committed it. So, having killed Antinous, they at once began crying out ‘Man overboard!’ as is done on ships. It appeared as if, having witnessed the accident (or suicide, as evil mouths at once began to insinuate), they leaped in immediately to try to save the victim, to no avail. Caesar was awakened by the cries, etc...”

  Historians confirm that Antinous’s body lay miraculously intact in the Nile for two days, by which time the purple clothes he had been wearing were loosened and torn off by the violent current of the Nile. Found later in one of the papyrus groves along the river, it was in these that the deified Hadrian commanded
his Patroclus to be clothed after mummification, as a grieving token of gratitude for his sacrifice. Still, days passed before the emperor realized the true nature of the incident, and not at once did he identify the conspirators among his travel companions. Some, like Marcius Turbo, he suspected until the end of his life, when he finally had proofs against him, and accused him of treason—a charge that his chosen successor, in his goodness and desire to protect the senate lately so imperiled, was quick to overturn.

  Indeed, well into the last years of his reign, having realized the pervasive nature of the conspiracy, the deified Hadrian’s proscriptions and executions struck one by one all the Roman conspirators his agents were able to discover. Even men by the once glorious names such as Servianus were found guilty, and brought to justice (as we read in Marius Maximus). Unsure about the extent of the conspiracy in Italy and abroad, Caesar chose not to make it public; hence the imputation of unwonted cruelty by many historians against the aging and infirm emperor. No doubt toward the end his long and never quite won struggle against the enemies of Rome caused him to see himself under siege at all times. Illness, ever more serious eventually, enfeebled him to the extent that Antoninus Pius forced him against his will—though for his own good—to remove to Baiae, where, however; the emperor died.