A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven

by Levkoff, Andrew

  On this morning, the plebeian crowd of ticket holders cheered, waiting as senators, patricians and knights filed past them to take their seats. The late morning sun was warm, but not oppressively so. At least not to the lower classes. Crassus and Pompeius paid the price that every senator and person of status must at public events: dressed in their formal togas, their faces were flushed, their bodies damp with perspiration. The heavy wool draping was not meant for spring or summer. But the custom was rigid. The two consuls were almost invisible, surrounded as they were by a small army of lictors, twelve guardians assigned to each, jostling to stay near their charges. These two men, who had never seen eye to eye on almost anything, waved amiably to the people, smiling at everyone, even each other. Pompeius had assigned six servants to throw coins over the heads of the lictors into the sea of waiting hands waving like kelp fronds. I had chosen a dozen for the task, but Crassus bid me instruct half their number to keep their bags tied. I saw his point.

  Crassus cared as much for such entertainments as he did for Pompeius. The man might make a decent merchant, but his ability to govern inside the pomerium was universally recognized by those who mattered as staggeringly fairish. When they first shared the consulship fifteen years earlier, they could agree on almost nothing. Pompeius did not understand the workings of the senate, he had flouted the time-honored cursus honorum and many senators, including dominus, thought him unworthy of his wealth and status. But had Crassus not attended today, the people would have cried out in protest. There must be amity between the city fathers who protected and fed them. Especially these two; now that they had finally taken office, the turmoil must certainly end, mustn’t it?

  Crassus held his wife’s hand, slowly making his way along the arc of the aisle to sit in the first row beside his co-consul, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Above the amphitheater, the vault of the sky was the unbroken blue of a wood thrush’s egg. The box of honor was festooned with white and gold banners, golden statuettes and four splendid and imposing guards, one at each corner. The colors of their uniforms matched the cushioned chairs to which dominus and domina were led, a goblet of spiced wine pressed into their hands almost before they were comfortably seated.

  Senators and knights stopped to offer their congratulations before they found their own places. A purple rope designated 300 seats reserved for the conscript fathers. After them, non-senatorial patricians arrived, followed by those of the equestrian class, the knights. These nobles were only slightly less venerable than patricians and therefore markedly more arrogant. They were assigned the fourteen curving rows behind the seating reserved for the senate. As the plebs poured in, the shadow cast by the temple looming high above and directly behind us crept up the travertine rows of benches like a reticent supplicant to the goddess.

  “A stunning achievement, Gnaeus,” Crassus practically shouted.

  “Gratitude, Marcus. With luck, my gift to the people will divert discord and channel harmony back into our streets.” And drown you in a renewed flood of popularity. “Ciro!” he called to a servant sitting beside me in the row behind the box. “Food for our guests!” He looked over, nodded and said, “Alexander.”

  “Congratulations, my lord,” I said, “on your election to consul for a second term.”

  “So gratifying to see your solemn Greek face again.” He turned back to his guests. “Marcus, you honor your man, bringing him here, but I warn you, there is talk: it is said that if one wants Crassus, one need only seek out Alexander.”

  “I find his counsel useful.”

  “Indeed? A shame his station must bar him from our consular deliberations.”

  “Indeed.” In communication, tone is everything. With the way dominus delivered that response, one could almost see the insult sailing high above the head of Magnus. If one wanted an unobstructed view, one need only have looked for the smile that played briefly upon domina’s lips.

  “Have you discovered,” Pompeius continued, “some invisible thread from the East with which you bind him to your ankle? I hope for your wife’s sake you untie him at bedtime.” He turned to laugh with whoever had overheard his jest, but was disappointed to find there was no one of consequence within earshot.

  “He goes where he is bid,” said my lady.

  “Truly? Alexander, you are the quintessential servant. Have some wine.”

  Ciro handed me a cup. I bowed my head in thanks, then toasted both Pompeius and his creation. As I drank, I looked about me. This was one of those moments, more and more infrequent over the years, where I stepped outside myself to see what had become of me. On this day, nowhere in Rome was there a more important place to be, and if that were true, then I was indeed sitting at the very center of the world.

  I had lost everything, and what was taken could never be retrieved, yet fate or luck or Melyaket’s goddess had brought me to this place, basking just outside the light illuminating these demigods of Rome. I smiled, not because of what even I must admit was my good fortune. Now I had a reason to suffer my servitude. She waited for my return at the place we called home. And what passed between us was ours. We shared it. We owned it. It could not be taken from us.

  I turned my attention back to the most powerful nobiles in the city. Save for his height, Marcus Crassus had the look of the ideal Roman patrician—his grey hair cropped tight, his eyes clear, his cheeks hollow, his mouth fighting against the gravity of both age and the knowledge of what life has in store for all of us. Even if you’re a demigod.

  Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, though younger than my master by nine years, was not faring near as well. He had gained more than a few pounds since I had last seen him on the rostra. Touring his several country estates with his wife…I beg your pardon – pretty, young wife…must have agreed with him. Unfortunately, this extra weight, packed into his round face and stubby nose had only served to further pinch his nasal speech. And it did nothing at all to diminish the inevitable, indelicate whispers of porcine disrespect.

  “I’m sorry Julia is not here today,” Tertulla said. “Is she unwell?”

  Pompeius leaned across Crassus. “On the contrary. She is feeling poorly, but only because…”

  “Oh!” Tertulla said, taking the consul’s hand across her husband’s lap. “Joyful news!”

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Pompeius said. “Julia told me this morning. I am destroyed that she cannot be here to share this moment. This is going to be the best day of all.”

  The arranged marriage of Caesar’s daughter to Pompeius, his fourth and second-to-last, had been born of political need, but despite their difference in age, there was true affection between them which only grew over time. His love for Julia would make Pompeius a laughingstock, but the old general cared not a fig for their jokes and jealousies. Destiny, however, would be unkind, and their union would end tragically. In only three months, violence would erupt at the elections for the aedile magistrates. Several people would be killed. Pompeius would intervene unsuccessfully, and in his attempt to separate the parties, would be spattered by blood. His servants would bring him a fresh toga, returning the stained garment to his home. There, Julia would chance to see it. She would become so upset at the sight of it, thinking her husband had been wounded or worse, that she would faint. Landing badly on the hard floor, a few days later she would lose the child. Livia’s and Julia’s pregnancies must have begun only weeks apart, and we would weep to hear of her sorrow. The following year, she would recover well enough to try again, but she was such a frail creature. She would die in childbirth, and her daughter, seeking the arms of her mother, would follow her to the underworld only a few days later.

  I tell you this, not in order to inundate you with yet more tragedy, with which these scrolls already drip, but to make you understand that as this marriage began with politics, so it ended. Julia was one of only two tenuous threads holding the alliance between Pompeius, Caesar and dominus together. With Crassus on his way to Syria, the once-tight ball of power that bound these three would be well on i
ts way to unraveling.

  •••

  Pompeius was a child with a new toy. Unlike most children, myself included, he at least was willing to share. A dozen horn blowers took the stage and sounded a fanfare, while behind them, workers folded the segmented purple curtain and pulled it aside. “You must excuse me,” Pompeius said, getting to his feet, his smile plumping his cheeks to the size of ruddy apricots. “The people want to hear from me.”

  Tertulla leaned over to her husband and as the crowd quieted I caught her saying, “Doesn’t he have that the wrong way around?”

  I will not bore you with Pompeius’ opening speech. It was just another litany of his accomplishments, which the crowd acknowledged politely but with only modest enthusiasm. I have always held that lists of one’s triumphs sound considerably more grand and are more likely to be cheered when they are spewed from someone else’s mouth. Even if true, when self-touted, achievements are by some arcane mystery less likely to be believed. Humility is the best braggart.

  Other than the grain contracts, Pompeius’ victories had grown stale with age. This encouraged my master, who became even more convinced the time was right to bring a new province home to the Roman masses, thereby undercutting Caesar’s lesser contributions in Gaul. If the rumors of Parthian riches were true, Gaul would seem a paltry conquest by comparison.

  The morning was filled with music and gymnastic competitions. When the great tragedian Clodius Aesopus took the stage, the raucous applause multiplied with such amplitude in the acoustically perfect bowl of the amphitheater that I was obliged to hold my hands to my ears. After several soliloquies, the aged actor spied his old friend, Cicero, and called upon him to ascend the stage. While this galled both consuls, there was little to be done about it without appearing ungenerous—they were forced to endure an unscheduled performance by the orator. Cicero, like Aesopus, never missed an opportunity to perform, but he was gracious and blessedly brief, congratulating both Pompeius and Crassus (which visibly annoyed the former) before taking his seat once again.

  A small group of players took the stage and spent a moment tuning their instruments. The crowd grew quiet. Then, from the opposite end of the stage, a woman of roughly forty years emerged from between the giant columns so quietly and unobtrusively that the audience, their attention drawn to the greater activity and noise of the musicians, did not notice her entrance. When at last a knot of those in the lower tiers saw her and recognized her, their enthusiasm swept up the curved rows until the entire amphitheater was on its feet. Galeria Copiola, the most famous of all the interlude dancers of the Roman theater had been coaxed out of her six-year retirement by Pompeius. She had given up her art at the height of her abilities, having found that wealth, of which she had accumulated much, was preferable to fame, of which she had had enough. “Better to leave,” she is reputed to have said, “to the cry of tears than the outrage of offended jeers.” A lesson learned by far too few of the politicians who witnessed her final performance that day.

  The interlude dancer provided entertainment while actors and stage hands prepared for the next act in the play, which was always a comedy, since dance and pantomime, especially of Copiola’s sprightly energy, did not lend themselves to tragedy. This performer and her talent were so beloved that when she was on the bill, she packed the old wooden theaters regardless of the play being performed. While her performance this day was as memorable as the leaps and twirls of her teens, forgive me while I allow the lady Galeria to lapse back into her early retirement so that I may rush ahead to describe the day’s finale.

  Within moments after her final number, an army of stage hands began to appear between the tall columns at the back of the stage. Each pair of men carried a segment of iron fence, six feet wide by ten feet tall. Three vertical bars were topped by gold-painted spikes and weighted at the base with heavy iron plates. The workers quickly created a barrier about the entire circumference of the orchestra and stage, each segment linked to its neighbor by heavy bolts through each crosspiece. When it was done, Pompeius walked through an open section directly before us, crossed the semi-circle of the orchestra and climbed the stage. He stood inside the enclosure, dwarfed by a fifteen-foot tall statue of Venus draped in fine, green wool, the color of the goddess. The marble likeness smiled down upon him, peering over the bars that separated them.

  Someone high up amongst the plebeians shouted, “Magnus, the great hunter, has captured himself!”

  From the opposite side of the theater, someone else called, “At least the goddess knows on which side of the iron to stand!”

  Pompeius, normally one for whom the dimmest star was more discernible than his own inchoate sense of humor, smiled and soldiered on. “On this the final day of dedication of my theater, what goddess better exemplifies the Roman spirit than Venus Victrix, embodiment of both beauty and victory. Today, I place upon the largest altar ever built in her honor a sacrifice of such proportions it will dwarf any offering that has come before.

  “The creature loxodonta africanus pharaoensis is no stranger to Romans. Our ancestors knew them, fought them, captured them, defeated them. King Pyrrhus brought them to our shores to wage war against us. Your forbears have seen them but two or three times, always on display, docile, chained, paraded about like pets on their leashes.” The crowd began to stir, and I, too, had the sinking premonition that there are times when the best seats in the house are those furthest from the stage.

  “Today,” Pompeius continued, “A story for your grandchildren. You will pass on to them the lesson learned first by Epirus, then by Carthage, both to their undoing: no army, no creature on earth is a match for Rome’s indomitable legions! Never before have the monstrous beasts you are about to see fought so close to the city walls. Not until today! I give you…the African War Elephant!” A fanfare sounded while Pompeius crossed back to his seat. As his section of fence was bolted shut behind him, from the shadows of the proscenium, a small, dark and barefoot man, wearing nothing besides a loincloth and a willow switch backed onto the stage. He spoke foreign, halting words and gently tapped his branch on something lingering in the shadows.

  “Quick, Ciro, fill my cup.” Pompeius turned to dominus, noting how his wife clung to him. “Tertulla, there is absolutely nothing to fear. We rehearsed with bears yesterday, and no one received so much as a scratch.”

  Crassus said, eyeing the few feet between the iron bars and where they sat, “Bears? You might as well have practiced with puppies.”

  My lady did not look reassured, but even she, like the hushed crowd, was struck by the wonder of the animals being led into the light. The elephants were over ten feet tall at the shoulder, fifteen feet in length, with long, curving white tusks that flanked their drooping trunks. Their ears, thin and veined, were larger than the feathered fans that waved us cool in summer. It should have been the most terrifying site any of us had ever seen, yet their eyes looked out at us with benign intelligence and unutterable sadness. I thought I must be ascribing human feelings to the moist, black orbs which gazed at us, but when the creatures’ trainer, having lined nine of the elephants up on the left side of the stage returned to lead the second group out, there was no mistaking the tears that stained his dusty cheeks. When all were assembled, he walked up and down the line of eighteen males, reaching up to pat their cheeks, soothing them with lies. As he passed, several of the animals blew gusts of air or raised their trunks to sniff at him.

  “Do they not look ridiculous?” Pompeius asked. “They are as brainless as they are massive. I know, for I hunted them in Africa back when Sulla was dictator.”

  “They look vulnerable,” Tertulla said, “but I see no sign of stupidity, nor any indication of aggression. They just stand there.”

  I could not restrain myself. I leaned forward to our host and said, “Aristotle has studied these creatures. He has called them ‘the animal which surpasses all others in wit and mind.’”

  “And fierceness,” Pompeius said. “And fierceness.”


  As if having heard us, one of the animals let out a low grumble and swung his trunk to curl it about his neighbor’s. Another down the line raised his snout and trumpeted, answered by an exclamation of astonishment that rose as one voice throughout the amphitheater. Many patricians seated in the front rows stood and clambered up the aisles to the laughter of those already seated high up. We held our ground. Pompeius rose to calm the people’s fear. “To represent our brave legionaries in today’s exhibition, behold the hunters of Gaetulia!”

  Behind him, from each side of the stage, eight tall, olive-skinned men costumed in Roman military tunics, sandals and helmets entered the fabricated arena and lined up, their backs to the audience. Their shields were not Roman, but small and round, painted with designs of white and brown. If anyone looked ridiculous, it was they. There was one, nearest Pompeius on the other side of the bars whose bronze helmet bore the black and white plume of an ostrich feather. He, like all the others, balanced a long, smooth lance in his right hand, much different than the Roman shield-piercing pilum. The legionary spears were tipped with soft iron, meant to be thrown once to disrupt an enemy’s line, bending upon impact lest they be hurled back at our own troops. These African weapons, with their flat, leaf-shaped spearheads were designed for deep penetration.

  The gates through which the Gaetulians entered clanged shut, startling the animals. They brayed and bumped into each other, clearly becoming more agitated at the sight of what they recognized as their assailants. Their trainer had retreated to the far right corner where Pompeius had stood before the statue of Venus. The little man leaned with his back against the bars, eyes closed, hands pressed together. I doubted his prayers would be heard.