A Pillar of Iron

by Taylor Caldwell

  “What!” said Marcus, with a smile. “Are you gathering together what is portable?”

  “Do not smile,” said Noë. “I am thinking of that very thing.”

  “You do not trust Rome,” said Marcus.

  “I do not trust ambitious nations. But when was a nation not ambitious?”

  “Then, you do not trust men.”

  “Do you?” asked Noë.

  Marcus considered, then shook his head. “No.” He contemplated this sadly and repeated, “No.” A few moments later he added, “I remember what Aeschylus says in Agamemnon: ‘God leads us on the way of wisdom’s everlasting law, that truth is only learnt by suffering it.’”

  Noë nodded his head and remarked, “So, you have suffered it. As for me, I shall take my family to Jerusalem.”

  “What shall I do for the next games? Roscius has left for Alexandria.”

  “You will not take my advice,” said Noë. “I suggest you retire to Arpinum.”

  “At my age?”

  “Does a man need a gray beard to be wise?”

  “I must serve my country,” said Marcus. He paused. “All men are tragic. Evil is universal. The Greeks have said it and I repeat it. But there is nobility in tragedy. Man is mysteriously cursed. But he rises above his tragedy, and the curse, because he has the courage to oppose evil. The most terrible temptation we have is to leave the fight. For that, God will not forgive us.”

  He smiled faintly at Noë. “Do not leave me, friend.” He became sad again. “Socrates told his friends: ‘Some of you will say to me, “But surely, Socrates, you can mind your own business and thus escape the wrath of government!” But I cannot. Life unexamined is not worth living.’ And the least that must be expected of us is that we must be men.”

  “If any event, you are no hair-splitter and a maker of paradoxes, like Socrates. Hence, you avoid exasperating those who could ruin you.”

  Marcus reflected on this. He recalled that he had been accused of sitting on two stools at the same time. “You are implying that I now compromise,” he said to Noë. “Yes, that is true and sometimes I fear it is a weakness. However, I can truly say that I admit to compromise only when no injustice will be done to either disputants. I have a loathing for brute violence, and that may be weakness also.”

  He had large offices in one of the great public buildings near the Forum. He was encountering the most irritating people who can afflict a politician with any conscience: bureaucrats and those seeking his influence in government contracts. “A bureaucrat,” he wrote to his friend, Atticus, “is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of a little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures? But nations excrete them when they become complex.

  “As for the manufacturers and merchants and road and sewer builders and the architects of aqueducts, the suppliers of military material, the raisers of buildings, and all others who supply government, they offer bribes for my influence. But I approve only that which is best. You may consider this folly to an extent, and so do many of these men. I live pleasantly without their approval.”

  He was careful, however, to keep the subject of bribery from Terentia. His wife was virtuous and an “old” Roman and upheld morals and integrity in private life. But Marcus doubted that she would consider the acceptance of bribes as heinous on the part of a politician.

  When some men complained to Crassus of various matters which offended their probity—men too influential and important to be quietly assassinated—Crassus would answer, “Look upon my friend, Cicero. Would I be so benign to him, and so approving, if I were an evil man? Evil does not admire the good; it only destroys it.”

  Marcus acquired many friends while he was Curule Aedile, but he discounted their protestations of loyalty and affection. Amid the hubbub of his work and his law cases and his clients he found life pressing. He had to attend public dinners in honor of various politicians and Senators and patricians, for he did not intend to live and die an aedile. He was also often feasted by Crassus and Julius Caesar and Pompey. He admitted at one time that scoundrels were frequently more engaging and amusing than virtuous men, and far better company. This offended his sense of rightness. Scoundrels should be repulsive, the virtuous charming. The reverse was proved only too often. He recalled what Noë had once quoted to him: “The children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” He would add to himself, “And more attractive.” The dark children were not hounded by conscience and therefore could be exuberant and merry. But the children of light wore heavy countenances and grieved over the evil in the world. This did not make for frolic and the more amusing things of life. “Let us hope they receive a reward in an everlasting existence. They certainly do not receive it here.”

  There were many times when an intense weariness overcame him. He recalled what Aristotle had said: “A wise man does not give his life lightly, for he knows that there are few things for which it is worth dying. Nevertheless, in periods of great crisis the wise man will give up his life, for under certain circumstances it is not worth living.”

  He was aware even more than Noë was aware that some evil was deeply stirring in Rome, which bore an enigmatic face and could not be pursued and exposed. It was like a shadow seen only through the corner of the eye, which when swung upon fully disappeared and was not to be seen at all. There was a haunting movement in Rome, at once urgent and silent, like the movements of rats deep in cellars. The atmosphere in the city was pent. Yet to the facile gaze all was prosperous and calm, and the populace said the Great Games had never been better. All was complacency and busyness and laughter and much coming and going. Marcus knew this was deception, and a deliberate deception, but on whose part he did not know.

  “You are growing grayer,” said Terentia. “You work too hard.”

  “You spent but four weeks on the island this year, my son,” said Helvia, who was now very plump and solid and whose hair was the color of silver.

  He established the first State Library in Rome, based on the tremendous museum in Alexandria. “An informed people will be suspicious of politicians,” he wrote to Atticus, when asking for donations of manuscripts and books for the library. Later, he was to laugh drearily at this naïve statement. A literate people, he was to discover, made a larger public for the deceivers and mountebanks. Literacy did not guarantee discrimination, skepticism or wisdom. When, following his example, provinces also established libraries he was to say, “There is much to be said for the lack of learning in the barbarian. Then he must use his wits and not books. He hears with an innocent ear not confounded by a babble of words.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  It was at sunset that Marcus felt both old and very young, almost a child. The clarity of air, the pure transparency of light purged of heat, the soft stillness that had seemed to draw within its mouth all the clamorings of the day and had silenced them, the faint gilt that lay on limb and branch and leaf, the sweet clattering of the fountains, the murmurous dialogue of birds, the silent freshness of a quiet wind—all these, to him, seemed a profound and intimately personal blessing of the gods bestowed on men, a hiatus of refreshment and reflection, a holy hour. Then one could forget the city so close below, the swelter of the hills, the hot-faced Tiber, and the harsh walls and the many roads of Rome, and could contemplate for a blessed time relieved of both the pressure of the day and the sombreness of night.

  The Egyptian and other eastern temples possessed bells. At this hour they rang over the mighty and heaving city, sweetly, haunting, speaking only to the soul, calling for prayer and meditation, for men to leave the office, the bank, the market place, and to enter into the quietness of shadowy portico, altar fires and incense; for men to realize if but for an hour that they
were spirits as well as animals.

  Marcus was very tired. He was feeling, again, that burden of the mind and heart which had so afflicted him years ago and had immobilized his body and had tormented his brain. Now the burden was almost always present on him, a tangible presence he carried on his shoulders; he was like one of the unfortunate condemned who must bear on his back the weight of the cross upon which, in a last agony, he must expire. He no longer said to himself: Tomorrow I will be refreshed and buoyant. Tomorrow, I will again be eager. He knew that this was the illusion of very early youth. To the mature and thinking man tomorrow was the stony road that led only to frustration and extinction and the eternal question: Wherefore am I living, and to what purpose, and to what end? Why should I, tomorrow, take up again what I lay down today?

  There was often little comfort when he said to himself resolutely, I live for abstract and eternal justice; I serve God, when I remember Him.

  “Once the evening had been for him a period of tranquil expectation. Now, he knew that expectation was the sole possession of innocent youth, and that it was a deceit to persuade the intelligent organism to continue and not to die in despair. He had much money, land, orchards, groves, fields, meadows, cattle; he had villas and he had farms; he had his ancestral island. He had wife and child and parents. He had fame of a considerable order. But still, he now had nothing to expect. He had no desire to excel in the eyes of others. To him, these were the vanities of childhood, the dreams of rank youth, and not the concern of ripened men. Crassus was an old man, but he was ambitious. Crassus was old, but he wished still to be acclaimed. The conclusion, then, was that some men never matured whatever their years and he, Cicero, was not one of them. There were times when he felt envy for an illusion, for a lie. Then he would not have hours like these, listening to the warm bells of the eastern temples, and aching and yearning after what he knew not, and looking into a future which held no more than this.

  Contentment! The drug and stupefaction of little souls! What man of thought could be contented? Happiness, bliss: They meant different things to different men, and they too had no reality. Marcus looked at the wide and golden sky. He looked at the columned façade of his house, and it too was as gold as butter and shining in the light of the dropping sun.

  Simplicity, said the Stoics, enviously staring at those who were not simple and were not poor. Resignation, said the eastern gods—but resignation to what? God, said the Jews. But He was unknowable and silent, if He existed at all. Yet, if one could but know Him perhaps one would know rapture, and life at its best and its worst would be endurable.

  “Why so grave?” said a voice near Marcus, both mocking and fond, and Marcus turned on the marble bench under the myrtle trees to see Julius Caesar, magnificent as always, smiling at him.

  Marcus rose quickly and grasped the hands of his old friend with a vehemence and a smile that agreeably startled the younger man and made him peer inquisitively into Marcus’ face. Marcus laughed, as if delivered, and embraced Julius, then held him off to look at him.

  “When did you return from Further Spain?” Marcus demanded.

  “But last night, very late. What! Is it possible that you are happy to see me?”

  “Yes. Do not ask me why. Sit beside me. Let me look upon you. It has been two years since last we met. Ah, you have not aged in those hot Spanish suns!” Marcus clapped his hands loudly for a slave, then beamed on Julius, who sat beside him. Then Marcus no longer smiled.

  “I forget. You are still in mourning for your sweet wife, Cornelia, who died while you were a quaestor in Spain.”

  “The sweetest of women,” said Julius, and for a moment or two he stared at the golden and sandy earth that surrounded the flowerbeds and the trees and cypresses, and his antic dark face was sombre. Then he smiled again, quickly. “She has been relieved of her pain, which she suffered for years, and is at peace.”

  For some reason, obscure even to himself, this annoyed Marcus. “And you are still young,” he said.

  “We have not lost our waspish tongue,” said Julius, and his white teeth flashed in a wider smile. He had always been elegant and there had always been about him the iron scent of potency. The elegance remained; the aura of power was almost visible now, and Marcus thought of the terrible lightnings of Jupiter, the patron of Julius. These were in no wise diminished by the splendor of raiment, his silver armor, the leopard cloak on his shoulders, his heavier but still virile flesh, the foreign length of his sword in its Spanish enameled sheath, and the high silver boots embroidered and tasseled. Julius had passed his thirty-fourth birthday this very summer, and only six weeks ago, and his fine black hair was patched with the first gray on his temples. But he was vital as always and exuded a delicate force, as always, and his immense intelligence glittered restlessly in his dark and ironical eyes.

  In his turn Julius studied his friend and saw the weary lines about the still beautiful and changeful eyes, the paling streaks in the mass of brown and curling hair, the clefts that enclosed the controlled lips, and the thin furrow that ran horizontally and deeply across a noble forehead that had long since lost its innocence and had acquired exhausted wisdom in its place.

  A slave brought refreshments, and in a little silence poured wine. The sound of the pouring was loud and musical in the quiet; rays of sunlight pierced the falling column of fluid and lighted it up so that it resembled bright blood. Then Julius said, “I encountered your brother, Quintus, in Spain.”

  “Yes. So he wrote me.” The slave placed a tray of delicacies on the round marble table near at hand, and Marcus dismissed him. Julius raised his goblet in salute, poured a little libation, and put the goblet to his lips. Marcus drank also. His first pleasure was subsiding. He felt oddly depressed. He continued: “And your duties, Julius, are completed in Spain?”

  “Completed.”

  Marcus inquired about Julius’ family and their health, and particularly about young Julia. “I am betrothing her to Pompey,” said Julius.

  “That child?”

  “She is no child, Marcus. She has passed her fourteenth birthday and should be betrothed.” Julius paused, then grinned into Marcus’ eyes. “And I, not one to be left mourning forever, am to marry again. Pompeia. A man needs a dear companion as he grows older.”

  “You have never lacked companions, Julius. And you have always deplored marriage. Yet you wish to assume its burdens again.”

  (It was not possible for them to know that at that very hour, leagues across the brilliant sea, in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, a foolish Greek Pharaoh, disdainfully called “the divine flutist,” leaned over his” infant daughter’s cradle and said in his light and lilting voice, “She shall be called Cleopatra, for she is the glory of her country.” As the two men sat in a Roman garden the babe opened eyes the color of violets and stared at her father and her cheeks were flushed with rose.)

  “But Pompeia will be my last love,” said Julius, and his eyes twinkled. His skin, darkened deeply by Spanish sun, sprayed into fine lines of gay mockery.

  “I am certain she will be,” said Marcus with sarcasm. “What are your plots now?”

  “I find a certain repetitious tedium in your words,” said Julius. “You have never ceased asking me the same question, and my reply is the same: I do not plot. I love life and I accept each day as it comes, with no thought of the morrow. I am not ambitious.”

  “No?”

  “No. But let us talk of you, dear friend. You grow increasingly famous. Yet, you do not appear content or happy.”

  “Perhaps I do not have the gift of happiness. And I lack contentment, but what it is I wish I do not know.” Marcus’ face turned melancholy again. “I have all that most men desire, yet I do not know peace.”

  “I heard, in Spain, that in every man’s garden there lurks a hidden tiger waiting to devour him. What is your tiger, Marcus?”

  Marcus did not answer. Julius studied him with a secret smile. Then Julius said, “Could it be your gift for compromise, whic
h I hear is becoming more evident each day?”

  “I do not compromise on principle,” said Marcus with some anger. “If I am excessive or too ardent in any matter, then I await the arguments of more objective men and balance them against mine. When a whole object is not obtainable, I am agreeable to part.”

  “It is still your tiger, Marcus. This is an eminently unreasonable and irrational world. A man who compromises is considered guileful, and therefore dangerous, and not to be trusted. We all proclaim our admiration for restraint and reason, but they are the most detested of virtues. The man who succeeds—and thus is adored—is a man who never compromises, for good or for evil, and especially evil. To whom are our statues and monuments raised? To Socrates, to Homer, to Plato? No. They are raised to generals who were obdurate and could not be moved. They are raised to political murderers, who pursued their own way and did not hearken to others. In short, they were successful, and the world loves success no matter how it is obtained.”

  “And what is your tiger, Julius?” asked Marcus.

  Julius raised his eyebrows. “Mine? Possibly the love for women. A most delightful tiger.”

  “I think your tiger bears another name.”

  Julius shook his head. “No. Even that should be obvious to you now. I have no political power; I have displayed no greed for it, despite what you always say. I am a man no longer young. I have been only a quaestor in Further Spain, and it was tedius to me. Now I ask only a pleasant life.”

  Marcus was again pursuing his melancholy thoughts. “And that contents you?”

  He was suddenly aware of a sharp silence. He looked up and saw Julius smiling at him quizzically. But Julius said, “I am content.”

  “Then God preserve us from contented men!”

  Julius was not offended. He laughed. Marcus said, “You remind me of Erisichthon, who cut down the sacred oak, in contempt for Ceres, the goddess of the earth and of calm contentment. Ceres delivered him to her dread sister, Famine, who gave him an insatiable appetite. He even sold his one and beloved daughter so that he could satisfy his ravenous stomach. Finally, he was forced to eat his own body. That is the story of ambition.”