by Ben Pastor
Beforehand, however, he ensured that Antinous’s body, which had always been at his side (first in his namesake temple, as long as Hadrian was in Egypt, then at his Tiburtine villa) be translated to the nameless pyramid at the crossroads of the Cornelia and Triumphal roads, enough progress having been made on his own monument in Domitia’s Gardens. I read the choice not to inscribe Antinous’s tomb not as an attempt to conceal the identity of the beloved out of shame for their relationship, but as a sign that the deified Hadrian on his deathbed still feared the existence of the conspiracy, and its possible attempts to desecrate the Boy’s resting place. I hereby ask you, Domine, to keep this wish for secrecy and the tomb’s location unrevealed.
Ombi, Herakleides Subdivision, 10 Phaophi
(9 October, Monday)
The hamlet of Ombi swarmed with those who had escaped the infected riverbanks, only to bring illness here. Housing did not suffice the refugees, so a camp of tents and makeshift shelters had cropped up in the windy, dry expanse around the single well. On this side of the camp, the stench of death pointed out well before one arrived to it, the place where victims were lined up in linen sacks for a hasty burial. Closer in, barrows like raised scars in the sand indicated the mass graves. Hadrian’s Way ran alongside the barrows, straight as a spear pointing east, marked by neatly carved milestones and swept by veils of pale silt.
No one knew anything about anybody, and not even the rich uniform, not even the offer of money made a difference. All they could say was that contagion was at an end, but the survivors who had weakened too much were still dying off, and no girls here, no young women—only feverish old people. The village itself, a few flatroofed buildings on a nearby bare rise of the land, was occupied by those who could afford to pay. Aelius left the horse with his guardsman and walked alone toward the scattering of houses.
As he’d so often done during a campaign, he had until this moment shut off all thoughts except those connected to the immediate present, the next step, the next direction to take, in a void lack of expectations. Now, however, he was too close to finding out the truth to ignore the difference it would make—the historian’s hard challenge. Boots sluicing in the crunch and collapse of sand, he understood Hadrian’s agony during those interminable hours of searching, and how utterly useless people had been even around an emperor. From the doorsteps, wasted faces turned to him, the sick and convalescent squatted or moved about slowly.
“Where are you from, soldier?”
Aelius didn’t even turn to see the man addressing him, and kept going. “Antinoopolis.”
“If you know Hierax, head councilman, tell him his wife has just died.”
“I don’t know him.”
The first three houses, crowded with women and children, had been taken over by wealthy farmers from upriver, none of them citydwellers. The fourth was filled with bundles of clothes. In the next two houses, little more than huts, men sat on pallets playing dice. Higher than the surrounding terrain, the hamlet took in the north wind; scorching gusts between the houses created funnels that rose and collapsed depositing sand.
A corpse tightly bound in linen was being carried out of a door on the right-hand side; the two men hauling it kept their heads low in the wind, each heavy step a small eruption of silk in their wake.
Aelius would not come close. “Man or woman?” he asked.
“Woman.”
“And whose house is that?”
The first man, unshaven, narrow-eyed, did not know. The second mumbled in his beard, “The seamstress Anubina’s.”
Aelius stopped breathing. For an instant, he had a strange split sense of reaching out for the body in front of him, and yet of running to the house to look inside, but he stood rooted where he was, half-turned to the place from which death had just been brought out. Unbearable to him like a mouth about to scream, the empty door gaped on a dark interior, and to that darkness he’d have to walk whether he wanted or not. Then, like a wavering pale flame, Anubina appeared on the shadow of the threshold, her head shaven in mourning.
She saw him first, and began sinking. Like a dream image, veiled by haze or silt or tears, ever so slowly she crumpled on her knees, folded down as a bird does, even as he clasped her to keep her from it.
He spoke with his mouth on the careworn side of her face. “Anubina, is she—?”
“My mother—I couldn’t leave her behind, Aelius. Thaësis is well.”
Final Report, continued:
4. Of course, as I have known since reading the letter given me by Serenus Dio, he had also placed an account of the conspiracy and his successes against it in the grave. It was to remain a memory for the ages, since he had also given orders to destroy what remained of the conspirators. Alas, his orders were intercepted and never reached Quinctianus. To the best of my reconstruction, the army courier was killed between Baiae and Rome. As the head off the conspiracy—the Water Thief in the emperor’s words—resided in Egypt, the letter was then brought to that province. I suggest the port of entry was probably Cyrenae, from where departs the caravan route of Ammoneum-Lake Moeris-Hermopolis. How the letter was lost even to the conspirators, I can only speculate. It was July, the sandstorms beleaguered the Western Wilderness—Cambyses’s own great army had been swallowed by the desert! Anyway, the conspirators might have surmised orders had been issued, but when no prosecution followed, they assumed the worst had passed. They not only rallied, but even grew in influence during Antoninus’s mild reign. Marcus Aurelius, who came after, probably had his end hastened by the conspirators through the introduction of plague-ridden coverlets in his quarters at Vindobona. As for his dishonorable son Commodus, he went as far as collaborating with the conspirators, and uselessly sought Antinous’s body at his Egyptian temple, to ensure there were no references inside the coffin to the circumstances of his death. It should be noted that as of this time the conspirators, ever renewed, but always powerful, ignored the existence of the account in the Boy’s tomb, else they’d have savaged every temporary or possible grave site to make sure the document disappeared.
After Commodus, other Caesars were surely done in by the conspirators: I submit that among these are Pertinax (who committed the imprudence of not replacing Commodus’s hangers-on after the tyrant’s death, and of not executing Falco after he threatened his reign); Severus Alexander (murdered by Maximinus, whose son I suspect to have been a member of the conspiracy); Philip (unless he really died in battle) and his son; the glorious Aurelian, nicknamed “Sword-in-hand,” whose assassin, the Thracian Mucapor, was listed in the rolls of the conspirators recently found in Rome. In other words, every prince who showed promise to reconstitute the glory of the empire (a task which you have at last accomplished by our good fortune, Domine) had his life attempted against and in many cases destroyed. The most recent self-styled usurpers, not by coincidence based in Egypt, were those Achilleus and Domitius Domitianus put down in the early years of your reign. And who soldiered in Achilleus’s and Domitius Domitianus’s ranks at the start of the Rebellion? Aviola Paratus, at the service of the conspiracy ever since his Persian days, when after being blinded he was given a chance to live by returning to threaten the Roman state. His change of heart during the Rebellion, resulting in the desertion of his old allies and enrollment in your army, was nothing but a ruse to allow him to come closer to the power structure in his quality as an intelligence officer. Given the vigilance of your rule, he could only look forward to being one of those agents who lie dormant if and until a chink of weakness opens in the government. So it was in the days of Augustus, Vespasian, Trajan, and, partly, Hadrian himself
21 Phaophi (20 October, Friday)
Baruch ben Matthias pretended to have heard nothing about the arrests in the Heptanomia and elsewhere. He and Aelius met by chance at Theo’s store, where the Jew was arguing over the quality to price ratio of ginger roots, and Aelius had entered with his dog to ask whether the spice merchant was back.
“He’s not.” Ben Matthias bran
dished the woody root against the dog, to keep him away. “Why should he mind his business when he charges enough to spend months abroad? Never mind asking these shop boys, Commander, they don’t even know the color of first-rate mustard, much less where Rome is. I met the highway robber himself, shortly before leaving the city—happy as a fat rabbit in clover, and saying he might stay through the winter. It surprised me seeing him come out of a little house by the Ostia Gate, when I thought he’d room at a fancy place?”
So, he stayed at Philo’s brother’s even after danger passed, Aelius told himself. The little house outside the walls had been where he’d realized the immediate need to deposit Hadrian’s letter in a safe place, out of his hands during his stay in Rome. Two days later, filing it at the Ulpian Library had been private and easy: one of the crates packed for transfer to His Divinity’s baths protected it now, invisible and out of reach to everyone for a few years at least. “Well, never mind,” he said out loud, “I just wanted to say hello.”
“The one who is back is Harpocratio. Shoo, dog, shoo—there’s nothing for you to eat, here.” Having chosen two large ginger roots, ben Matthias placed them in a basket, and paid. “The price is not high, Commander. I just like giving shop owners a hard time. So, yes—Harpocratio is back and looking for you. He’s thrilled at the news that those who killed Serenus Dio will be brought to justice. None of my business, but how did you ever—?” Interrupting himself, the Jew began to laugh. “No, I’m not going to ask. I know what you’ll answer, and I don’t care, either. Roman justice is not my favorite subject.”
Aelius smiled back, bending to pet his dog. “Roman justice is all there is, Baruch. You found that out. Roman peace is all there is.”
“That’s where you’re quite mistaken, Commander.” Already on the doorstep, ben Matthias stepped back to let Aelius pass first. “Please, you go ahead, dog and all—I insist, please. It may sound odd to your Romanized ears, but the world is larger than Rome. Older, too. There’s talk that even now the spice routes, the wealth of the eastern provinces are actually controlled by men who may talk, walk, and act like Romans, yet are planning disaster with Rome’s foreign enemies. They say Helena’s son Constantine is a favorite with them, and they’re betting on his imperial bid. But, as you would say, it is none of my business, is it?”
Final Report, continued:
5. Serenus Dio’s discovery of Hadrian’s written orders to wipe out the conspiracy, mentioning the account kept in Antinous’s grave, changed everything. Suddenly the evil work of three hundred years, perhaps more, stood to be exposed. Had the conspiracy been a thing of the past, nothing would have happened. A proof that Rome’s enemies were still at work as late as the past summer is that Serenus Dio, incautiously dropping hints about his find at a house party, became at once a marked man. But those who pushed him to his drowning death (much as they had Antinous) could not find Hadrian’s letter on him. Fearing for their secrecy, they killed Serenus’s freedman Pammychios; in vain, as the letter was not found with him either. By this time I arrived on the scene. As you know, Domine, I cannot claim to have been aware of anything at first but my desire to investigate Antinous’s drowning death. After reading Serenus Dio’s letter, however, the shift in my research corresponded on the enemy side (for I was being watched even then, in my unofficial role as Caesar’s envoy) to a change of plans, too. Suddenly, like Soter and Philo, I became the one to eliminate in hopes of securing the deified Hadrian’s letter.
Once it became apparent that I had secured the letter, either by absconding it, or, as I did, by entrusting it to safe hands, the conspirators’ task changed once more. They would have to follow my steps, leaving me unhurt though not unthreatened, until I led them to Antinous’s grave. Through the unknowing help of my former colleague Gavius Tralles, they also placed on my path none else than Paratus himself, that seemingly unimpeachable veteran and war hero. To say that I fell for it is not a justification, but all spoke in his favor, and so it was that our collaboration began—even if it took the destruction of his vineyard (a cleverly conceived ruse) to convince me that he was pursued by the same enemies of the state. Believing that he was supplying me with helpful support, I was in fact the one keeping him abreast of my search for the Boy’s grave and the hidden account.
Once the tomb was found, and the document secured, Paratus would only have to eliminate me to obtain and destroy it. Your awareness through our correspondence of the letter’s existence, Domine, would have been kept incomplete without full knowledge of its content, and the conspiracy could have continued its hidden and pernicious life.
Now at last we can breathe a sigh of relief The real Water Thief—Time—is on Rome’s side again, and we are blessed among nations.
25 Phaophi (24 October, Tuesday), 304.
174th anniversary of Antinous’s death
Harpocratio showed him around the new wing, among the buckets of paint, ladders, and drop cloths. “The truth is, Commander, that I am not redecorating. I am selling the place. All these months I tried to keep living here, but I can’t take the thought that all his things are still here while Serenus is gone forever.” Because Aelius felt embarrassed for supposing otherwise, and it likely showed, Harpocratio made a fussy waving gesture in the air. “I must shake myself from it; buy myself something. Buy myself something; go on vacation.” His voice had taken once again the vapid tone, high-pitched and effete, that was as much protection as a cultural habit. Aelius was touched by his grief, much as the first time he’d met him, and like the first time, he went out of his way not to show it. Or so he thought.
“You have been very good,” Dio’s lover—Dio’s pal, as Tralles used to say—was adding now. “As soldiers go, and as we’ve learned to know them in this province, you proved yourself a most unusual one. It makes me hope well for the future.”
So it was, Aelius thought. His nature, God-given, was taken like everything else with him, for a professional trait. He didn’t fit the mold others expected, so he must be an unusual soldier. Because he was a soldier, and not to be thought of outside that context. Passing from one room to the other, smelling the chalky freshness of paint, he wished there were a way to paint over the preconceived ideas others had of him or of anyone. A room is a room, like a man is a man, but soldiers and Caesars and homosexuals and murderers and whores, all were seen exclusively for what they did, or appeared to do. It was a historian’s job to make sure of that—minding the deeds.
Hadrian, so long ago, had by far exceeded the mold in all aspects of his life, and his biographers had not been able to accept that slippery, mercurial self. They’d only been able to describe him by paradoxes and opposites, losing himself after the disquiet reality of a troubled imperial life. As for the Boy, in death he managed to be all that everyone wanted, whatever and whoever he had been in life. So much so that in the end it mattered little what the real individual had represented. It was all a question of interpretation.
And so with history. Perhaps there was no objective getting beyond the gossip, and the historian was relegated to the butler’s role, an eye to the crack in the door, ear strained in the cupped hand. A door stood always between him and the past, him and the truth.
“Are you going back to Rome after this?” Harpocratio asked.
“No”
“Nicomedia?”
“Probably. I have to finish the biography, and have more to begin.”
“And then?”
Then, who knows. Aelius had no idea, no other plans. He would wait. Even Anubina needed time to heal from her suffering, before agreeing to join him with their daughter. She had accepted no arrangement between them, had not moved in, had wanted nothing but transportation back to her blue house in the Philadelphia district. He’d known she still loved him as far back as the day he’d sat at her table, and she’d given him food. Things were so simple and so in plain view, when one did not complicate them. Give me time, she’d said, I can take no happiness before I let go of grief.
Opening
a door onto the garden, Harpocratio asked, “So, are you satisfied with your research?” and stepped outside.
“No.”
“Why not? You even made us all safe again.”
“Let’s say it’s the historian’s curse.”
“There’s a nice view from here, Commander. Come see.”
Walking out on the terrazzo, where his host waited for him, Aelius considered it a strange metaphor of his task, that he should emerge from shadow to sun (Death, the beyond) in order to escape rooms and hallways redone, repainted, always only half-seen. Because, contrary to what biographers would like to think, history ends with its protagonist’s life. The rest is—in one way or another—always conceit, and legend.
Harpocratio leaned over the banister, his golden little curls sitting like salad on his head. “Why can’t you be satisfied, and just enjoy this lovely view?”
“Ask me in ten years.”
“Why? We’re Romans! Ten years from now the view will not have changed.”
E P I L O G U E
Shortly after Diocletian’s abdication in 305, Licinius murdered the emperor’s wife and daughter; Maxentius and Constantine separately usurped the throne, and fought it out with Roman armies at the Milvian Bridge, where Constantius’s and Helena’s ambitious son won the bloody day. Constantine’s first official act in Rome was to visit Diocletian’s great baths, alone, and requisition—from the lot brought in crates from the Ulpian Library—the file under the rubric of the deified Hadrian.
G L O S S A R Y
The Names
Cambyses—ancient Persian ruler, whose rich army vanished without a trace in the Egyptian desert
Cassius Dio—Roman historian
Cicero—Roman orator, whose daughter Tullia died young
