As we marched back to Antioch the same soldiers who had been frightened of meeting the Parthian army complained that a civilian lawyer had cheated them of victory. Macrinus could do nothing right.
For the rest of a very hot summer the army remained mobilized near Antioch; and the Emperor enforced strict discipline. Men who robbed with arms in their hands were put to death, even though they had killed no one. The police tried to make burning alive the standard method of military execution, but this put the troops into such a bad humour that the innovation was dropped. All the same, life in camp was not what it had been in the gay riotous days of Caracalla. Soldiers might be punished on the complaint of mere civilians, and since there was no fighting we were employed on public works.
Praetorians in particular took that badly. We considered ourselves to be chosen heroes, whose sole duty was to win battles and safeguard the person of the Emperor. Whenever we marched we would willingly fortify our camp, for that has always been the custom. But we thought it shameful that veterans of our service should dig a road over a mountain pass, or strengthen a bridge. Discipline held, for that also is a custom of the Roman army; but any sensible man could see that it was wasteful to employ picked soldiers, drawing very high pay, at hacking through rock or hammering piles in a river-bed. Syria was full of hungry peasants who would be glad to get work; and if there was peace on the eastern frontier we should have gone to reinforce the Danube or the Rhine, where they are always short of trained men. The fact is that the Emperor wanted to stay in Antioch; and he would detach drafts for the west because he felt safer when surrounded by a numerous army.
In the autumn we heard definitely that the Parthian host had been disbanded, and the rains ended the campaigning season. The Emperor still kept us hanging about in the east, though on the Danube the Dacians were giving trouble. Instead of chastising these barbarians the Emperor freed certain Dacian hostages and made peace, to the disgust of every experienced veteran who knew that you cannot make a firm peace with Germans. The only way to cope with Germans is to kill them – or enlist them in the Roman army.
I spent most of my spare time wandering about the city of Antioch. I soon discovered that philosophical disputations were not in fact typical of civilized life; the only men who took them seriously were a small clique of self-conscious eccentrics, or else young lawyers waiting for family influence to get them a high place in government service. Nowadays the mark of a man of culture is an informed interest in chariot-racing.
In Antioch, as elsewhere throughout the east, the racing stables are financed by clubs of supporters. The Blues were glad to make me a temporary member, since every citizen assumes that a Praetorian has money to burn. At the races I sat on the club benches and cheered my colour, but that was the least part of it. Membership of the Blues gave me the freedom of their training stables. I watched charioteers school their teams, and admired at close quarters their amazing skill. My wrists are strong, after long years of arms-drill; sometimes as a treat I was allowed to take a team of tired horses back to their loose-boxes, though of course I was never permitted to handle fresh teams eager to gallop. A few charioteers even spoke to me as an equal, which was considered a very high honour. That is odd, when you come to think of it; these charioteers all begin as bought slaves, though they have usually been freed by the time they are ready to race in public. None the less, free-born citizens revere them.
The factions of the circus were the only truly vital institutions in Antioch. The city councillors reluctantly accepted an expensive honour which they could not refuse; the rare parades of the civic militia were perfunctory ceremonies, the sacrifices in the temples mere excuses for distributing free beef. But any citizen would work hard in his spare time, and give generously of his spare cash, to help his colour to victory at the races. When I put my subscription in the collecting box, when I held a restless team while the charioteer gathered his reins, I felt I was genuinely living as a real educated townsman.
About the middle of November my turn came round for leave. I had forty days of freedom, though I must remain in the province of Syria; and since the Emperor had recently distributed another donative, to celebrate the elevation of his ten-year-old son Diadumenus to the rank of Caesar and heir-apparent, I had plenty of money. I decided to look up Hippias the caravan-manager at his office in the sacred city of Emesa.
I journeyed in style, with my baggage on a mule. At Emesa I stopped at a good inn near the great temple. On the evening of my arrival I strolled over to pay my respects to the god; for though I serve more particularly the Three Ladies they like their followers to be polite to other divinities.
This great religious foundation is a local affair, and the rites are conducted in the local language. But there was a Greek-speaking priest lounging by the entrance, ready to entertain foreign pilgrims. The first thing he showed me was a fine marble basin, in which I was expected to deposit my offering; and he watched quite openly to see that my gift was sufficient. But priests must live, and I was under no compulsion to visit his temple. I paid up cheerfully, since a soldier gets money almost as easily as a priest.
Perhaps I was too generous. The delighted priest insisted on dragging me over the temple by myself, instead of waiting until he had collected a group of pilgrims. He told me the history of the place, with special emphasis on the antiquity of the cult.
‘Emesa has been holy since the world began. This was where the Sun himself came down to see the newly-made earth, and promised to shine on what he saw. As a pledge of his promise he left us a part of his body, a part he no longer needs now that creation is finished. You will see it presently. Of course it has cooled since it fell from the sky, but there it is: a piece of sky-stone, unlike any stone found normally on earth. It fell in the garden of a virtuous man, who guarded it with all reverence. Since then, for countless generations, the descendants of this virtuous man have been hereditary high priests of the Sun-god of Emesa, the great god Elagabalus.’
‘I should very much like to see your god,’ I answered politely. ‘Your priest must be a man of very ancient lineage. Has the office really come down from father to son since the creation of the world?’
‘Not exactly,’ the priest admitted with a sigh of regret. ‘I don’t think you would find such a lineage anywhere in the modern world. The Parthians overturned the holy dynasties of Babylon; even in Egypt the direct line of the priests of Apis was broken in the turmoil of the Greek conquest. But our high priest is undoubtedly descended from the founder of the temple, though his pedigree runs through the female line. He is a very young man, almost a child, and oddly enough he was educated to be a Roman nobleman. Now he takes an interest in his duties and promises very well. His grandmother was the daughter of a high priest, so his descent is clear.’
‘Strange that a boy with such a future should be educated as a Roman,’ I said with mild curiosity.
‘Ah, but his Roman descent is also very distinguished. The high priest Bassianus left no son but two daughters. The elder daughter married a Roman officer who in due course achieved the Purple as the Divine Severus. The younger also married a Roman officer, now dead; her daughter is the widowed mother of our present ruler. Both the old ladies came back to the home of their childhood soon after the death of the Divine Caracalla.’
I was genuinely interested. ‘Does the Empress live here now? I served under the Divine Severus, and I was one of the guard when the Empress left Antioch. When next she receives visitors I should like to pay my respects.’
‘You have come too late,’ the priest answered brusquely. ‘The lady Julia Bassiana died a month ago. Some say she died of grief at the murder of her son, but it may have been sickness. No man knows what passes in the women’s quarters. Anyway, as you will see for yourself if you stop to think, it will be unfortunate if Roman veterans come here to remind our young ruler of his imperial connexions. At best it might unsettle the boy, who must work hard to learn his sacred functions. At worst it would annoy the police.�
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‘Very well, I shall keep away, if you think a visit would be indiscreet. I came here to see your famous temple – and to call on an acquaintance, one Hippias, who runs caravans eastward from these parts. Do you know of him?’
‘I don’t. Now if you want to bow before the sky-stone this is where you take off your shoes.’
The priest stopped his flow of chatter. He kept me hanging about the entry to the shrine until a group of pilgrims caught up with us, so that he could begin his usual description of the might of his god. Evidently he feared that I was a secret agent.
The god Elagabalus, who was at the same time the Sun and a small black stone, I found interesting, though not very interesting. For one thing, his identity was difficult to explain to a simple Gaul, though I believe these complications go easily into the local language. The priest was emphatic that the god had not been made by human hands; he was not an image or a symbol, but an actual fragment of the Sun’s divine body. He was a bit of black stone about a foot long, shaped like a phallus. Modern philosophers hold that these stones from the sky are as natural as the stones you kick up in any field, having nothing about them of the divine. I was taught another opinion: that many objects are in a sense divine, but that such divinity is not very important. I was willing to grant the claims made for Elagabalus, but I was not impressed by them.
In Emesa the sky-stone evidently carried great weight. The pilgrims were most devout, and so was the priest who saw it every day. That morning a ram had been sacrificed, and a tethered he-goat was waiting to be killed at sunset. The god received two lives every day.
All over Syria the gods are very close to mankind; because they are not very nice gods you sometimes wish they were farther off. Most of our Gallic gods live at the bottom of springs and pools, and it is hard to get in touch with them. That is the system I prefer.
I passed a pleasant evening at the inn, reclining on a couch and reading a book of travel as I sipped my wine. It is a way of life that would bore me after a month, but it is also the life I was brought up to, the life I would have led if my parents had not been killed by rebel stragglers; every now and again I liked to get away from the army and taste it.
I slept alone, in spite of hopeful suggestions from the innkeeper. In the morning I sent my muleteer to find out whether Hippias was at his Emesa office. It took most of the forenoon to get a straight answer; the office door-keeper was one of those trusted slaves who are jealous of paid menials and delight to make things difficult for them. After about three hours my man returned to say that Hippias was willing to receive me. I put on a clean tunic and went out to call.
The office stood at a corner of the caravan stable, a hollow square of stout buildings crammed with bales. Hippias had of course forgotten me, as I ought to have understood from the start; but when he saw me he made me welcome. Soon we were sitting under a shady tree, with wine and fruit before us.
While we exchanged conventional remarks about the beauties of Emesa, Hippias examined me from twinkling little eyes that lurked deep behind bushy brows. He was a very large solid man, slow-moving and too fat; yet he had an air of dashing independence. The combination puzzled me at first; a civilian is usually timid in the presence of a soldier. Then I realized that he was a civilian who earned his living on the fringe of the Empire; when he traded over the border he must himself protect his wealth. He was a civilian who did not rely on hired swords.
Abruptly he began to talk about serious things; he must have made up his mind that I could be trusted. ‘You are a soldier,’ said he, ‘one of the Praetorians who make Emperors. I was going to say that your visit comes at an unfortunate time. My stable is nearly empty and I can’t show you a good caravan. Now I shall tell you the truth. If you repeat it in Antioch perhaps they will heed a Praetorian. My stable is empty because my drivers are in Mesopotamia, and I can’t persuade them to come back.’
‘Can’t you seek justice from the Parthian governor?’ I asked.
‘If my beasts had been stolen the Parthians would help me to recover them. That’s not exactly what’s happened. My drivers are willing to serve me; they admit that the camels are mine. But they have quite lawfully gone beyond the reach of Rome, and they refuse to come back. The Parthians will not use force to return refugees.’
‘What do these men fear? Do you hire criminals? If our police are after them can’t you hire others?’
‘There are not many more to be hired. You cannot leave the Empire unless your papers are in order. I have a permit from the governor of Syria, permitting me to send camel-drivers into Parthia. Dozens of young men come to me, offering to take a caravan east; but I know they won’t come back again. If that goes on, I shall lose my permit.’
‘If they are native Syrians, why do they flee from home?’
‘To escape the tax-gatherer. That’s what I want you to tell them in Antioch. The Parthians rule Mesopotamia as a conquered land. They have no written law; so that even if the governor is willing to do justice you never know how a case will go. But my men, native Syrians, prefer barbarism to the Roman tax-gatherer. You must tell them that when you get back. Tell them that the taxes are too heavy.’
‘I’ll say so, if you like. No one will contradict me. But what can be done about it? The soldiers must be paid. As you know, that’s where the money goes.’
‘But surely the Emperor, a lawyer and a civilian, would like to reduce the taxes?’
‘Our present Emperor would never dare to tamper with military expenditure. Already the soldiers distrust him, just because he is a civilian. He’s the last man to do anything of the kind. I agree with you that the taxes should be reduced. But only a soldier-Emperor, certain of the army’s loyalty, would be strong enough to reduce them.’
‘Then I shall be open with you.’ Hippias glanced down at the dagger in his belt. ‘We have the wrong kind of Emperor. The Republic can prosper only under a ruler who controls the soldiers.’
‘I see. Have you a candidate in mind?’ I also glanced down at my scabbarded sword, lying handy on the grass beside me. If this interview took the wrong turning I might be forced to silence the only witness against me.
‘Would a son of the Divine Caracalla appeal to the soldiers? If you think so, take a look at the high priest here, young Bassianus. Then when you get back to the army you can tell your comrades about him.’
‘But the high priest is the grandson of the Empress’s sister. That makes him first cousin to the Divine Caracalla, on the distaff side. But he does not share the blood of the Divine Severus. Only yesterday the guide at the shrine explained it all to me.’
‘Nevertheless, take a look at him. And remember that his mother was at court when Caracalla was approaching manhood.’
Hippias jumped to his feet with a sudden exclamation. ‘ I must catch that man passing the office. I have been looking for him. Excuse me.’
There was no one by the office. But Syrians take no trouble when dealing with westerners, whom they suppose to be lacking in guile. I went back to my inn.
Just before sunset a slave brought a message to say that Hippias had been called to the frontier on urgent business; he regretted that we would be unable to meet again during my visit. I told the slave his message had been expected; but that was only because I wanted to make Hippias feel uncomfortable. He was somewhere in Emesa, and I knew that however hard I looked I would not find him.
I waited three days to see the young high priest. I was told that he visited the shrine daily, but that was for private worship; only for solemn sacrifices did he go in public procession. But the public procession would comprise also his family and his principal officers, so it was worth waiting for.
In many Syrian temples they use a strange measure of time, a cycle of seven days which does not fit properly into either the month or the year; it has something to do with the seven influences of astrology. On the first day of this cycle Elagabalus was honoured with a sacrifice of unusual splendour, held at midday. I went to the temple
in plenty of time, wearing my dress uniform. The crowd made way for a Praetorian, and I could see everything.
The ceremony had been devised to give pleasure to a sky-stone long domiciled in Syria; I do not think it would have pleased an Olympian, or any of the lesser gods who guard the west. But then our gods are helpers of mankind against indifferent nature, while this little black stone was the Sun, who looks on everything without taking sides, or so the priest had tried to explain to me.
The purpose of the rite was the sacrifice of a bull; but in the eyes of the spectators the procession was more important than the bloodshed. The great stairway of the temple was interrupted in the middle by a sloping ramp. We stood on either side, kept back by temple guards; while the bull and his escort ascended the ramp at a slow impressive pace.
First came a band of musicians, blowing trumpets and banging on cymbals; behind them were singers. Of these nine were female, though whether they were beardless boys, well-shaved youths, or eunuchs who had kept their figures I could not be sure. Eunuchs might seem inappropriate ministers for a sky-stone shaped so accurately as a phallus; but perhaps the need for the right kind of voice outweighed other considerations.
Behind the music came a long file of priests, walking two by two. They were clothed in long tunics reaching to the ankle and in tall pointed caps tied under the chin. These were certainly men, though to a westerner their dress seemed oddly feminine. There followed a small detachment of temple guards, wearing armour of an antique fashion and carrying unhandy spears and swords; they marched clumsily, and seemed ill at ease in their accoutrements. I suppose they were local peasants who put on this disguise for great occasions, to persuade the god that he still, ruled in Emesa. A temple guard with any serious military value would be suppressed by the police.
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