'Julian,' I shouted, pushing forward through the guards and onto the balcony. The majestic bronze statue of Julius Caesar in the middle of the forum begin to sway ominously on its pedestal. 'They are destroying the city, and the army will soon be helping them. Unless you seize what is offered, you will have lost everything. They will kill you!'
His eyes shone strangely, firelike, and he stared hard at me for a moment. The corners of his mouth twitched and the veins stood out on his forehead. The man was under tremendous pressure, I reflected, more than any mortal should have to bear. Then he looked back to the crowd, and raised his hands high for silence.
Nothing happened, and I despaired. Only those in the front ranks of the crowd were even looking at him, while those on the rooftops and farther back in the forum had become crazed, rioting openly and willfully, hurling building materials down on their fellows and screaming blind insults at the Emperor Constantius. Julian raised his hands higher, shouted for silence, but in vain, for his words were unheard, as if released silently from a dry throat. The feeling was nightmarish.
Without hesitation, he stepped back for a moment, beckoned to the archers behind us, and six of them stepped forward, all that could fit side by side on the wide balcony. At a shouted order that only they could hear, they unslung the compact, army-issue crossbows from their shoulders and in one, smooth motion strung the heavy gut cords and fitted the thick, ugly bolts that passed for arrows to their strings. These weapons I had never seen fired in anger or in battle, but I had heard tell of their capabilities — a practiced archer could pierce armor at a half-mile's range. The smooth, gray iron tips gleamed dully in the torchlight, round and barbless, the weapon relying on sheer force of impact, rather than the shredding effect of the warhead for its killing capacity.
Hesitating but a moment, waiting to see if the sight of the poised archers would attract the attention of the crowd, Julian shook his head in frustration, pointed out to the archers a tall, particularly active individual prancing on a rooftop with a large building stone held over his head, and made a short, chopping motion.
Simultaneously, as if from one hand, the six arrows leaped from the drawn strings with a speed that made them disappear from view by the naked eye. A second later, however, the results were clear.
Four of the iron bolts found their mark, while the fifth and sixth clattered noisily against the tile roof and caromed off into the streets beyond. The rooftop marauder, pierced twice in the chest, once in the throat, and once in the thigh, looking for all the world like the martyred Saint Sebastian, may God forgive me for saying so, froze suddenly on the roof, the building stone still balanced high above his head. A moment later the stone fell, glancing painfully off his shoulder and rolling down the roof and off the gutter, while the man himself sank to a sitting position, then lay back onto his shoulders like an exhausted stonemason settling down for a rest. He slid weakly down the steep pitch of the roof on which he had been standing, gathering speed and leaving a dark, glistening trail on the russet tiles above and behind him, before pitching feet first, stone dead, over the eaves and onto the heads of the horrified crowd below. I was unable to determine who the man might be, and I prayed that he was not one of Julian's soldiers. Screams erupted from the onlookers near the building from which he had fallen, pierced by the high, frantic wailing of a woman, likely the wife or concubine of the man who had been struck — but elsewhere around the forum, a sudden, barely controlled hush fell upon the crowd, and all eyes turned back to the balcony, the expressions on their faces a mixture of terror and relief.
Julian waved the archers back inside behind the balcony and again stepped forward, into the silence of the frozen crowd.
'The Emperor's duty, however,' he continued calmly, as if having never been interrupted in his previous harangue, 'is to guide and honor his subjects, and in my effort to remain obedient to the Emperor to the end, I have contributed to his dishonoring of his subjects, contributed to the breaking of Rome's solemn vow to its Gallic auxiliaries, and therefore made myself unworthy of your obedience.'
The crowd was stunned and silent.
'We are told in the ancient myths,' he continued calmly, his voice rising as he found his orator's rhythm, 'that the eagle, when testing which of its brood are genuine, carries them yet unfledged into the upper air and exposes them to the sun's rays, that the god Helios may determine whether the brood are true born and destroy any spurious offspring. In the same way I submit myself to you, as though to the sun god himself. It rests with you to decide whether I am fit to lead you or not. If I am not, then fling me away as though disowned by the gods, or plunge me into the river as a bastard. The Rhine does not mislead the Celts, for it sinks deep within its current their bastard infants, taking fit revenge on the offspring of an adulterous bed; but all those it recognizes as being of pure blood, it floats on the surface of the water and gives back to the mother's trembling arms, rewarding her for a marriage pure and beyond reproach. Thus so, I throw myself on your judgment, to determine whether I am legitimate in this task, and to accept my due punishment should I fall short in your eyes.'
At this Julian stopped short, his head bowed, as if waiting for the mob's judgment to be passed on him, prepared for whatever verdict might be handed down. The crowd stood silent a moment, puzzled and dismayed at his hesitancy to assume their command. Then a single cry rose from the back, from the area where stood the soldiers, the pennants drooping lazily in the still air.
'Ju-li-an Augustus! Ju-li-an Augustus!'
Instantly, the cry was taken up by all, and the forum again resounded with the tremendous cry — this time, however, unbesmirched by rioting or violence. The entire crowd stood motionless, all eyes on Julian, lips only moving, a hundred thousand of them opening and closing simultaneously with the mouthing of the syllables as the words poured over us, reverberated off the limestone behind and above us, pounding into our heads -
'Ju-li-an Augustus! Ju-li-an Augustus!'
He looked up, nodded, and a cheer rose from the mob. The archers behind pushed me roughly out of the way and lifted Julian high above their shoulders on a military shield in the traditional posture of triumph, swiveling him slowly this way and that above the heads of the people, as he held his arm before him in a solemn salute.
After long moments of cheering, the women crying in loud wails of relief, knowing merely that their men would not be sent to the sweaty, painted harlots of Syria, the archery captain stepped forward and announced crisply that to complete the ceremony, the newly acclaimed Emperor had to be crowned. Julian raised his eyebrows in surprise.
'I am a soldier,' he shouted to the man over the continued cheering. 'I do not own a diadem.'
The officer looked at me, recognizing me for the palace physician. I shrugged.
'I could run up to fetch a necklace or tiara of Helena's,' I offered. Julian visibly shuddered.
'The omens would not be good,' he said. I stared at him in exasperation and frustration that he could be so selective about his jewelry at a time such as this. 'A cavalry frontispiece, then,' I said unthinkingly, imagining the highly ornamented ironwork and jewels worn on the face of Julian's warhorse during ceremonial occasions. Julian scoffed.
'I take responsibility for my actions,' he shouted, visibly affronted. 'I shall not be portrayed as a horse led by the nose.'
The crowd's cheering was dying down and an ominous restlessness was beginning to set in as the people watched the animated discussion being held on the balcony, wondering whether they should fear for the validity of their acclamation. Finally, one of the soldiers resolved the issue.
Stepping forward, he removed the thick golden neck chain he was wearing as standard-bearer of the Petulantes' cohort, and, without ceremony or permission, simply placed it on the head of the newly acclaimed Augustus. Julian looked back out at the crowd, the long chain perched precariously in a gleaming heap on the top of his head, one loop dangling lopsidedly off his left ear, and as the roar swelled for the las
t time, I saw now that the faces were smiling, and I knew all would be well.
Later that day, when Julian learned of the hasty, terrified departure of Decentius and Florentius from the city after the acclamation, Eutherius advised him to kill the latter's family and relations who remained in trembling disguise in the suburbs, and to appropriate his considerable wealth for the treasury. Instead, Julian ordered their possessions to be carefully cataloged and packed, and all to be sent in covered wagons to Rome, with the family to be carried comfortably, if not luxuriously, and safeguarded on the journey by the same cohort of Petulantes archers. It was a magnanimous act, one that flabbergasted and confounded Constantius when he heard of it; it was an act entirely in keeping with Julian's forgiving but crafty nature; it was an act that was his last as a Christian and his first as the disputed Emperor Augustus of Rome.
BOOK SEVEN
BELLUM CIVILE
Occasio in bello amplius solet juvare, quam virtus. Amplius juvat virtus, quam multitudo.
In war, valor is more useful than strength of arms, but even greater than valor is timing.
— Vegetius
I
What a terrible thing, Brother, is a civil war. One week your dominion is at peace, the enemy on all borders has been subdued, the army is draining marshes for farmland and repairing fortifications, the Emperor is satisfied, and the Church is expanding; then with one fell blow, one ill-advised order from on high, all is a shambles. One's life is uprooted and overturned, the Empire is on the brink of schism, and death is all around. One week, within which one day was the turning point, though I would be hard-pressed to determine precisely which day that was, as all seem to run together in an evil blur; and within that day a critical hour, minute, and second. Before which point, if the fatal order had not been issued, all would have remained the same; after which infinitesimal lapse, all is lost, or gained, depending upon the side you are on, and on that side, depending upon whether you are a general who will be allowed to retire peacefully to an estate in Pannonia, or a mud-booted infantryman, in which case it hardly matters on which side you fight, for the end result will be the same either way, and the twenty years' service in exchange for retirement, a thick-armed barbarian wife, and two acres of bottomland for a garden are as impossible as Perseus' flight to the sun. A week is all it takes, Brother, for God to create the universe, for civil war to erupt, for a plot of beans to sprout in the summer. A day is all that is needed to watch the gladiator battles in the circus, for a baby to be born. An hour to attend a Communion service, or for that same baby to die. A minute to tell a joke, to say a prayer, to ask forgiveness, to utter a betrayal. A second for a wasp to sting, for an archer to loose an arrow, for a murderer — or an Emperor — to snuff out a life. Yet that insignificant period of time is impossible to predict in advance, or its inexorable progress to be stopped, and despite every good intent, that which God hath decreed is made manifest, and the wasp stings, and the war erupts.
Like the deified Julius four hundred years before, Julian had crossed his Rubicon, yet if the first Caesar had known what he was about when he took this fatal step, the same could not be immediately said of his successor. For though the Gauls praised and acclaimed him as the savior of their nation, and indeed of the Empire, this was because most of them had never been farther than twenty miles from Paris and could scarcely imagine an empire much bigger than their own country. There were very few rays of sun on the horizon; all of Julian's outlook was darkened by clouds. He could indeed boast of having raised and trained a crack army in the past five years, but so too had Constantius during his own reign, and his troops numbered four times as many as all that could be mustered in Gaul, and he had the treasure of Rome and Constantinople and all the mighty cities of the East to support him if any more were needed. If the Gallic people and troops could scarcely look beyond their own day-to-day existence, Julian and his advisers could; and our prospects were not promising.
For lack of a better strategy, he resolved to stall, to gain as much time as he could to solidify his local base, while softening Constantius, even dissuading him from his anger. He entered into direct negotiations with the Emperor, explaining to him in a respectful letter precisely how his acclamation of Augustus of equal rank to the Emperor's own had occurred, and stating his desire to come to an understanding. We spent days drafting and honing the wording of this missive, to convey a tone neither timid nor arrogant, continuing to recognize Constantius as senior ruler of the rest of the Empire, but requesting in return recognition of Julian as the Supreme Ruler in the West. In what I thought was an additional fine touch, he decided to have the letter personally delivered to the Emperor by old Eutherius, a man whom Constantius had long known, and one of the few men in Gaul whom he respected and trusted. He issued similar explanatory letters to the Senates of Rome and Athens, and in a characteristic anachronism, a nod to his desire to safeguard the ancient morals and customs, he sent copies to the Spartans and Corinthians as well, though it had been six centuries, at least, since their cities had carried any political weight in the world.
The gesture was wasted. Eutherius and his party were impeded and harassed every step of the way by hostile customs agents and other imperial authorities. After they finally crossed the Bosphorus and presented the letter to the Emperor, who was then visiting in Caesaria of Cappadocia, Constantius broke into a murderous rage, screaming at them and spitting from his flabby, unwieldy lips, sending his court diving for cover and causing even the stalwart old eunuch to fear for his life. Without even questioning Eutherius, denying him the right to explain the letter, the Emperor ordered him to leave, and Eutherius scuttled back to Gaul and advised Julian to prepare for war immediately.
The old adviser's haste, however, was not warranted, at least not yet. Shortly after the interview in Cappadocia, the Emperor came to his senses and determined that of the two threats arising on either side of him, the newly acclaimed Augustus in the West and the Persians in the East, the Persians were the more dangerous. Accordingly, he too adopted stalling tactics and engaged in his own exchange of letters, demanding that Julian immediately renounce his title of Augustus and retain only his early, subordinate authority in Gaul, and all would be forgiven, though no mention was made of the terms of service of the Gallic troops. This letter was delivered by a group of court officials, all of whom had been appointed by Constantius to various senior military and civil posts in Gaul, in an effort to deny Julian the right to fill these positions with men of his own choosing.
I shall make a long story short, Brother, for almost the whole of that year of Our Lord of 360, and half the next, was spent in these diplomatic skirmishes and thinly veiled insults. Constantius became bogged down with his diplomatic and military campaigns against the Great King Sapor, drawing new levies of troops to fill the gaps in his legions, increasing the numbers of cavalry, imposing heavy tax burdens on all classes without distinction, and drawing huge quantities of provisions, men, and treasure from Italy and all the other provinces under his control.
Julian, meanwhile, spent all his time strengthening his army, recruiting auxiliaries from both sides of the Rhine, tightening the collection of taxes to ensure that every copper due was paid, and assigning his troops to rigorous training and mock battles. The Gauls took this in good stride, indeed cheered him and encouraged him in these ventures, to the point of even volunteering for him large sums of silver and gold beyond what was due in tribute or taxation, which he initially refused, but eventually accepted when they practically forced him to take it.
Dozens of times, however, I urged him to caution. 'Julian,' I would say on a typical occasion, while reviewing correspondence from the garrisons with him, or studying our respective texts at night, 'with the military you would do well to be discreet. Every company you add to your legions is fodder for the Emperor's spies to report. He already suspects your intent. You are eliminating your options, making it all the more difficult to turn back.'
Normally he would nod in
silence or simply ignore me. On the final occasion that I made such a warning, however, he slammed down the codex of laws he was reading and stood.
'Damn it, Caesarius, you underestimate me, just as General Marcellus and Sallustius and the others do!' His voice was controlled but tinged with anger. 'You and I — we have fought together, grieved together — you buried my own son! Do you know me so little? Have all my efforts to preserve Gaul, to glorify Rome, passed over your head? You still assume I nurture the option of turning back. You are wrong. There is only one direction, forward to the end, and only God knows whether I will be Emperor or a dead man. But I will not rule jointly with Constantius. I cannot apply philosophy to a man who has none. There can be no more cohabitation with the man who killed my son.'
'But, Julian,' I protested, 'the letters you have written him… the embassies you have sent. Surely something-'
'Surely nothing,' he interrupted hoarsely, in a voice barely contained. 'Don't mistake my delays for hesitation. I am building my strength, Caesarius. Time favors me, and I will not be rushed on this enterprise.'
At this I was silent, merely staring at him as I pondered the implications. He breathed slowly and deeply for a few moments, his eyes locked on mine the whole time, and again I noticed their strange light, the fanatical gleam that had so disturbed me the first time I saw it, at Strasbourg, when he was contemplating the execution of the Beast. Finally looking away, he gathered his composure, lowered himself slowly back to his seat, and bent his head to the codex he had been reading before I had spoken. I sat thunderstruck at the transformation I had witnessed, from calm strategist a few moments before, to a man consumed by a furious hatred, and back again to studious analyst. I rose to leave, but before I made my way to the door, he had one more point.
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