"So what was Commodus doing in Arrian's private chambers?" Suetonius added.
"Well, they weren't playing knucklebones," Clarus said. "Are Commodus and Arrian intimate? Did Arrian's boudoir debris tell us as much? But I thought Commodus was strictly Caesar's intimate friend? And a long term one at that. Perhaps that's why Arrian and Commodus weren't keen to be discovered together? Hadrian would be offended."
"Are we putting too grand an interpretation upon our intrusion?" Suetonius offered. "They may have been simply talking politics, trade, or of Caesar's mourning?"
"Or does Commodus aspire to fill Antinous's boots again?"
"My friend Septicius," Suetonius corrected him, "Commodus is now in his late-twenties. He is married at Rome to an equally noble patrician family with Imperial bloodlines. I am told his wife Avidia is currently pregnant with his child.".
"Yet what do we know about Commodus?" Clarus asked.
"Well, gossip tells he was Hadrian's lover at one time. Today he is a good looking fellow in his way. But in his late teens he was truly an elegant beauty, if somewhat feminine in his manner," Suetonius recalled from his days as Hadrian's secretary.
"He's also notorious for his sybaritic ways and love of luxury. I've heard he prefers to sleep amidst flower petals and Persian fragrances. It's said he holds extravagant dinner parties with inventive, if somewhat eccentric, dishes. He has a serving staff of very young boys with Cupid's wings attached to their shoulders to amuse his guests. He's irrepressible, if perhaps also irresponsible. His wife Avidia already complains about his sleeping around, which he justifies with his joke Pray allow me my indulgence with others because 'wife' is a term of respect, my dear, not of pleasure. Overall, he is a mixed bag of values."
"And this is the man Caesar wishes the Senate and the Legions to accept as his successor!" Clarus exclaimed.
"Strabon, I hope you recorded that quatrain which Arrian erased from your tablet," Suetonius interjected. "Please read it back to us again."
The scribe speedily rummaged through his wax tablets to retrieve the notepad recorded. He read aloud from his coded inscription.
"I've notated Arrian's reading of the translation as being — When the king of the lionhearted Toys with his man cub no more It is time for this lackey To return to.. no.. To restore his own pride."
"Fine, Strabon," Suetonius confirmed. "Tell me, gentlemen, who is the king of the lionhearted and who is the man cub or lackey? Identify who is doing the toying, and who is being toyed with? Who is this person who needs their pride restored? What hunter's game is being played here, my friends, and who precisely are the hunter and the hunted?"
CHAPTER 20
A tall slender woman swathed in fine silks with her shawl draped elegantly across her high-plaited hair to shade her against the midday sun trod gracefully in kidskin sandals from the riverside access jetty. She stepped with a securely confident gait up the sloping embankment path towards the waiting group of four.
She was accompanied a few paces behind by an officer of Caesar's Horse Guard acting as her protector in public places, with a slave holding a parasol high. All three had journeyed in an Imperial gondola from The Dionysus moored offshore nearby.
"Welcome, Lady Julia Balbilla of Commagene," Clarus intoned on her arrival. "You evidently received our message from Secretary Vestinus?"
The 30-ish year-old, fine-complexioned woman stepped beneath the shade of the lookout's enveloping sun umbrella and dipped a restrained curtsy. She drew back the veil from her face onto her shoulders to reveal unadorned features, clear skin, bright eyes, a piled hairstyle in the conservative aristocratic Roman matron's manner, and a confident but supremely polite manner.
"Greetings, Senator Gaius Septicius Clarus of Rome," she purred softly in purest Palatine Latin. "Gentlemen, in what way may I be of value to you, seeing you've requested my company?"
"My lady," Suetonius opened the interview, "we have been commissioned by Great Caesar to explore the circumstances of the death of his Companion of the Hunt, Antinous of Bithynia. We are instructed to determine the manner of the lad's death and by what path he came to it. We are hoping you can throw some light on the matter."
"Do you mean Caesar's Companion of the Hunt, Suetonius Tranquillus, or do you mean Caesar's eromenos? Or perhaps you really mean Caesar's catamite? Which definition suits you, Tranquillus?"
The elegant figure challenged the Special Inspector with a faintly deprecating, amused smile. Suetonius and Clarus choked.
"Caesar's eromenos, perhaps, my lady," Suetonius responded diplomatically.
"You need not be too polite in my company, gentlemen. I am not a delicate flower, easily crumpled. My Lady the Augustus and I have no illusions about Antinous and his allure to our imperial master. I'm told the fellow possessed definite enticements to very many at Court, though such attractions pass me by I'm afraid.
Yet we both certainly agree Antinous was a charming young man. Vibia Sabina and I enjoyed his conversation on many occasions, so we were very saddened to hear of his fate. He deserved better, we feel, despite being a foreigner diversion of no real consequence.
But I can see, Suetonius Tranquillus, you're still up to your old tricks. The past decade hasn't taught you much, has it, since your debacle with My Lady at Rome?"
"I don't know what you mean, madam," Suetonius lied as a bright flush swamped his features. Surisca took an enhanced interest in this dialog while Clarus shuffled his laced boots uncomfortably beneath his toga.
"All the ladies of court, Suetonius, were aware of your chauvinism, and probably still are. Even your wife or concubine, or whatever she was at the time, poor thing. She was your second partner, wasn't she? Did she leave you, like the first one?
But it was only when you decided to put your lechery to the test with Caesar's wife that the sky fell in, taking our good friend Septicius Clarus with you," the gentlewoman with the purebred accent and an almost imperceptible smile lobbed devastatingly.
Suetonius smarted.
"The entire Court knows how Caesar doesn't share his wife's bed, he far prefers the company of virile males," Balbilla continued unabated. "Perhaps the twelve year age difference when the Augusta was married to Hadrian impeded their marital relationship? We note, however, how a thirty year differential between the emperor and his eromenos doesn't induce similar consequences.
Yet this doesn't mean, Suetonius Tranquillus that menials therefore have license to be familiar with the Augusta. The empress wasn't then, and isn't now, in urgent need of a mercy fuck."
Gulping, Clarus interrupted this unexpected, escalating exchange. It was getting out of hand.
"Be that as it may, Julia Balbilla, we're here to explore other matters today. The death of Antinous, in fact.
We wish to take your legal statement of what you might know about the boy's death. We've reason to believe the lad engaged in sexual activities through the day he died, though we don't know where or with whom," Clarus explained. "We're trying to clarify the picture of how his death occurred and who might know something about it."
"Well, I can assure you, gentlemen, I have never been a recipient of the young man's attentions. Half the Court aspired to his charms, but I was not one of them," Balbilla teased. "Why don't you ask Caesar himself? Surely he knows what his young friend gets up to in his free time? Besides, hadn't he been preparing for it for weeks?"
Julia Balbilla's four auditors were smitten silent for several moments. Clarus dared revive the dialog.
"Madam, both the Princeps and likewise the Augusta are forbidden to us for interview. You know, above our station, and all that," Clarus explained. "So instead, we wish to take a deposition from you on these matters. We're obliged to report with our summary to Caesar before dawn tomorrow under pain of penalty."
"Why dawn tomorrow? Why specifically that date, the third day of The Isia? Is it to do with the summons everyone has received about tomorrow's dawn ceremony?" Balbilla queried.
"We do not know, m'lady.
This was Caesar's instruction. I am sure he will have his motives," Suetonius reassured. "Shall we begin? Please state your names and titles, and then we'll follow questioning from there."
The lady smirked calmly at Suetonius in the standard-issue patrician dismissive mode.
"Who and what I am you know better than I do myself, Tranquillus," she announced. "Your books prove it so. Proclaim my pedigree to your satisfaction, and I'll respond to your questions if they suit my temper."
"Oh," Suetonius responded, somewhat fazed. "Scribe, record me now. This is an interview with Julia Balbilla Philopappus, the daughter of Antiochus Epiphanes, Prince of Commagene, and grand-daughter of Antiochus IV, King of Commagene. This was the same Antiochus who was once friend to Caesars Gaius Caligula and Claudius. On her mother's side she is a grand-daughter to Tiberius Claudius Balbillus 'The Wise' of Rome, advisor to Caesar Nero on matters astrological and spiritual.
From recall, m'lady was born at Rome in the third year of Caesar Trajan. At twenty-nine years of age she travels as a gentlewoman-companion under the protection of the empress, Julia Vibia Sabina Augusta. Mistress Balbilla is renowned among her peers as a poet and a master of classical languages, as well as a consultant on mystical issues."
"Consultant on mystical issues?" Clarus asked querulously. "Please explain to us this role, m'lady."
Balbilla sighed impatiently.
"By Isis, gentlemen, you already know more about my heritage than I understand myself, and you both know it! Tranquillus, you report in your scandalous diatribe The Lives of the Caesars details of my family's history which have sorely injured my reputation," the frank-and-forthright lady expounded censoriously. "You know precisely what I mean in this!"
"M'lady — ," the biographer stammered in escalating agitation. Balbilla was persistent in her withering regard of her present company.
"Don't be so obdurate, Suetonius Tranquillus. Your account of my grandfather's service to Caesar Nero in your scandal-sheets has implied many things about my heritage which people find distasteful."
"Such as, m'lady?" Suetonius uttered timorously.
"You will recall, Tranquillus, how you accused my grandfather, the astrologer Balbillus at Nero's Court, of colluding with that foolish emperor in some of his more cruel crimes?" she rebuked. "Your book on Nero's reign-of-terror reports how Balbillus acted cravenly in telling that erratic ruler how, when the omen of a comet appeared in the night sky over Rome, its warning of the death of great rulers such as Caesar could be diverted by the substituted death of lesser distinguished men.
Nero, you report, fearful for his own life because of my grandfather's prediction, viciously turned upon all the eminent men of the time. Nero invented the Piso and the Vinicius Conspiracies to justify killing all so-called conspirators, their wives, and even their children and slaves. But it was really done to confiscate their properties and wealth into his own profligate coffers.
Your book suggests my ancestor Balbillus was party to this grievous mischief. We of the line of Balbillus now carry this slander forever."
"But, my lady, these things are true. Your ancestor is recorded acting in this way. It's in the archives stored at the Palatine," the biographer pleaded. "He did indeed advise Nero in this manner, and the human cost to those brave critics of Nero's larceny was harrowing. Much blood flowed."
"Yet my grandfather too was a victim of Nero's malevolence, Tranquillus!"
Suetonius sparked up at this exchange. One feature became prominent.
"You remind me, my lady, how your ancestor advised Caesar that a substituted death could defer his mortality?" he reiterated.
"Yes, Tranquillus," she responded, irritated. "My pedigree is now burdened with this defamation for evermore."
"— of how a substituted death could defer or deflect Nero's own fatality?" Suetonius repeated.
Balbilla nodded querulously at this repetition.
Suetonius, Clarus, Surisca, and Strabon looked towards each other. There was something of pertinence in Julia Balbilla's words, they each realized.
Suetonius shifted his line of questioning.
"Tell me, Julia Balbilla of Commagene, with whom have you discussed in recent times either my book on the Life of Nero or, more likely, the actions of your ancestor Balbillus in recommending the strategy of a substituted victim?" the biographer prodded. All eyes turned to the Commagene.
"Of a substituted victim? Oh, I recall it passed through a dinner-party conversation at the old Antirrhodos Palace of Cleopatra's at Alexandria some weeks ago.
I was telling the guests how I had visited The Soma with Hadrian and Antinous a few days earlier. We were a small party including the Governor and the priestess Anna Perenna, to view the ancient sarcophagus of Alexander the Great on display at The Soma. Caesar had ordered its lid to be removed so we could have a better inspection of the embalmed body within.
I suppose, considering Alexander Divus had been lying in his tomb for four hundred years, he was in fairly good shape. His flesh has darkened with age to a waxy dark gray, and he didn't look quite human to me. In fact I wondered if it was the real Alexander at all, these Egyptians can be so tricky in these things, can't they?
Governor Titianus told us how a century ago the accursed Caesar Caligula had stolen Alexander's breastplate and cloak from the sarcophagus because of their presumed magical properties. In the previous generation Caesar Augustus had accidentally knocked a piece off Alexander's nose, proving how even a Divus, the godlike, are corruptible like the rest of us.
Yet in the course of this recent visit both Hadrian and the lad were entranced by Alexander's survival after so long a time. We each asked if we too would still be enticing visitors in four hundred years time? Without that corpse as its core symbol, Alexandria would have come to nothing as a city.
While dining at Antirrhodos, this theme led to the fashionable subject of surviving death. It seems to be everywhere these days. Antinous was particularly fascinated. Not satisfied with the tale of Osiris being killed and re-assembled by Isis, or the story of Bacchus surviving death to be resurrected, and so on among others, Antinous regaled us with even newer tales.
The fellow was struck by the story put about by certain people at Alexandria. He seemed especially interested in fanciful tales of surviving death told by the followers of Chrestus, who are everywhere across the Empire these days.
Well, in the course of all this heady discussion Antinous and the woman Perenna began talking together to one side. I didn't catch the drift of it, but I think Titianus's consort impressed the lad with her reputation as a mystic-priestess and dream-reader of her antique Roman lineage.
At the dinner I reminded the Governor's consort of her earlier Soma visit, but she had the gall to claim she had no recollection of it at all. It irked her to remember it, it seems. I have no idea why she was so obstreperous about something so readily recalled by everyone else."
Julia Balbilla sat back to relax beneath the riverside lookout's shady parasol. The blinding white haze of an Egyptian noon seared one's sight.
"In what context did your ancestor's advice to Nero arise?" Clarus reminded the gentlewoman.
"Of a substituted death?" she reflected. "After discussing all these fashionable resurrection cults at dinner, I responded how the Anna Perenna form of resurrecting the dead seems far more plausible than the Eastern ones. At least you get to see the living result."
"What way is that?" the biographer queried.
"Well, each high priestess of the ancient cult of Anna Perenna, who is known as the grandmother of time, assumes the title and name of her predecessor, also named Anna Perenna. After all, 'Anna Perenna' means something like the perennial year, it's not a family name, is it? It's a priestess's rank, not a bloodline," she stated. "When the high priestess of the cult dies she resurrects as a new priestess, her former assistant priestess, who is now endowed with the same name. The Grandmother of Time becomes eternal, generation by generation, onwards into eternity. That's what I'm tol
d. It's a very clever ruse."
"What happens to her original family name before being named Anna Perenna?" Clarus enquired. "Does she deny her heredity and her family gens?"
"It's subsumed behind her cult one," Balbilla replied. "It's relinquished for the remainder of their lives. This particular priestess at Alexandria travels under the Prefect Governor's protection as his consort while Titianus's legal wife stews in Rome with his four children. Perenna even has a detachment of Praetorians to protect her.
But in discussing such 'resurrection', she grew irritable with me. This lady is quite strong willed. It was she who loudly reminded me of my grandfather's faux pas under Nero. She had read your book, Tranquillus, and knew the details."
"I see. You said earlier how Caesar had been preparing for Antinous's death for weeks. What did you mean by that?"
"I didn't say preparing for Antinous's death, but I did say he'd been preparing for something for weeks. Surely, gentlemen, you've been aware of the unusual activities going on around this Encampment?" Balbilla asked. "We at The Dionysus have been very aware of these activities ever since we moored here a week ago.
Governor Titianus and his architects have been busy surveying and measuring the landscape for many weeks now. Macedo's Praetorians have been running messages up and down the river at haste speed. Vestinus's couriers have been trotting to and fro with more-than-usual Empire correspondence, and teams of engineers, tradesmen, and builders have been assembled at a special camp just outside the nearby village. Something big is going on."
"What do you think Caesar has been preparing?" Suetonius furthered.
"I don't wish to spread gossip, but some around the Court report how Caesar was hugely impressed by that magician-priest Pachrates' killing of a condemned man, who was then magically resurrected. It gave him the idea of extending the same principle to this year's Isia," Balbilla revealed. Her voice had lowered to a confidential hush. "It's said how, because the annual Nile deluge has been so paltry for the second year in a row, he would sacrifice a condemned criminal into its waters to fulfill the people's expectation.
A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma Page 34
