by Jack Lindsay
“Don’t be afraid. It was only the milk of a negress.”
“Pah!” said Ammonios, and spat, remembering in time to catch the spittle on his robe. A filthy negress! He was a pure-blooded Greek, as he was ready to prove; there was no darker strain in his family; what insult had Cleopatra intended? Perhaps his great-grandmother — but no, that was too far away; he was ready to prove his blood was pure.
“What is the consul Antonius doing?” Cleopatra demanded, suddenly serious.
Ammonios bowed. “Nothing, your Majesty, except receive petitioners and deputations. The business of the State is falling into his hands, merely through the collapse of all the parties. The Caesarians are no more dismembered and scared than their opponents. The heart has gone out of them all.”
Cleopatra nodded. “Rightly so. Their world has been ended. They ended it by their own treachery. They have no faith now. Each man fears his brother. Rightly so. May they rot in hell.”
She turned away, biting her lip, feeling the lazy length of her body to be irksome. She was a sealed vase. The kiss of Caesar could not be removed. Almost she called to Ammonios, to the first available man-slave, to come and break that seal. But she couldn’t. She was frightened. Her limbs felt heavy, useless; and there was no faith left in the world. Rightly so.
*
“I can’t look my father in the face,” said Amos, lugubriously. He had decided that the safest person to use as confessor was Gallus; but Gallus, suffering for the lack of a girl whom he had never possessed, could not grasp the qualm of Amos, which was based in too ardent and continuous possession. That was consoling, if also rather annoying. Amos felt himself to be burdened with sinfulness; and to be told that the burden was non-existent amounted to being told that he wasn’t spiritually rent, and rent he was. He sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Why don’t you go to the Baths?” suggested Gallus, trying to take an interest and to comprehend these eastern superstitions. Amos brightened. Although the suggestion didn’t solve the spiritual pollution, it wasn’t a bad idea. The cheapest baths wouldn’t cost much, though the louts would jeer at his circumcision, and therefore Amos felt a religious objection to showing his nakedness. He didn’t tell Gallus that Karni had lent him a few coins.
Gallus, rousing himself from the egoism of his own despair, was touched by the devotion of Amos, even if it included scruples of a shadowy nature. How could a man and woman in love do anything together that wasn’t blessed from all stain by the guardian Venus? But he longed to help the loving pair, to enable them to live in each other’s arms forever. That would somehow shame Cytheris and himself, and at the same time perhaps charm his own love affair into a more halcyonic season.
“You couldn’t get your father to buy and free her.”
“O no, no,” pleaded Amos, throwing up his hands. “I asked you not to say such things. He’d never forgive me. Karni couldn’t even get the head of the washing-department to send us along some clothes. The head’s a eunuch, and he hates her because she served out some stuffed sows-womb when he asked for apple-fritters. She’s a wonderful girl, only too full of spirits. I’ll have to lose her after all.”
Gallus was saddened. No lovers had a chance. Either Love coupled those who couldn’t find harmony together, or mated a suitable pair and then dragged them apart. It was so hard to forget Cytheris; but in his sympathy for Amos he found the smart least painful.
They began talking of the Messiah again.
“I’m not so sure now,” admitted Amos. “The words of the prophets are dark, and who has the lamp to read them?” He quoted glibly from Isaiah. “Thus says the holy man who was sawed in half by his enemies: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we thought him struck and afflicted by the Lord. But he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. He was despised and rejected of men. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoils with the strong, because he has poured out his soul unto death.”
Gallus was deeply affected. “Stop,” he said. “I remember something.” What was it? Ah, a passage from Plato that he had heard used as a text by a declaiming Stoic; he had thought it mere rhetoric at the time, but now the words returned, indelibly real and ghastly. He quoted as closely as he could recall the sentence.
“The righteous man will be scourged and tortured on the rack, and bound; and he will have his eyes burned out, and then after much suffering he will be crucified.”
Amos listened attentively. “So the Gentiles have their prophets.” He didn’t like to tell Gallus that those prophets were assuredly inspired by evil daemons, by enemies of the great god Yahwe who would one day own the earth. Instead he told of Isaiah’s vision of the day when the babe of peace would be born and the lion would lie down with the lamb.
But all the staved-off suffering of Gallus had swooped back upon him. He remembered the men and women wildly entranced in the Forum, and knew suddenly their hungry souls. Out of those souls a god would be created, a terrifying god, a god of humiliated and humiliating love, a god who was not satisfied with a fair exchange but would demand all, a god of intolerable love allowing no rival, leaving man no privacy, breaking down all the walls of reserve, the social quietudes, the compacts of family and friendship.
For a moment the jealous suffering soul of Gallus pierced the future.
Words from the Attis of Catullus rushed through his head as they had rushed through Clodia’s. He murmured the prayer to the Mother of All Living:
Far from my home keep this wild ecstasy.
Drive on the others, madden the others, not me.
“What is it?” asked Amos, fearful that some spell was being cast on him, and feeling under his shirt for the phylactery which was tied round his neck on a string.
*
After Amos went, Gallus set to work again writing. He felt that he must express his bitterness or die. An idea came to him. He would write a devastatingly cruel satire and take it to Cytheris with a mock request that she would add it to the other for a public reading.
His stylus slid across the wax of the new tablet that Leonidas had bought. The abuse tumbled from him. Let it go down crudely; he could smooth it out later.
O twisted mouths can kiss her if they hold
a golden coin between the dirty teeth.
She longs for Midas parching life to gold;
a golden weapon in a scabrous sheath
is all her wish. It’s stabbed her to the heart,
upwards, with gold. Her wounded body bleeds:
staunch her with gold; and should her sickness start,
clysters of gold will liquidate her needs.
And yet I die in beggary of a kiss.
Because she will not crook her little finger
with mine in love, I die ...
His hand trembled viciously. He was getting his own back.
VIII — AN ALTAR IS BUILT
It was now nearing the end of the first week in April, and Antonius daily found himself more isolated. Whatever business of State was transacted went almost privately through his hands, not out of any intention on his part, but because no other magistracy was functioning. The Senate was moribund. The provincial governors had not even been notified of Caesar’s death. The upper classes were only concerned with the tightness of money which made it difficult for them to pay the interest on their loans and to get out of Rome as quickly as they wished. Even Cicero, finding that all his friends had left Rome, decided to go south and see if he couldn’t organise an opposition for the summer sessions. Atticus, his friend, wrote abusing Antonius and despairing over the fate of his lands at Buthrotum.
False reports, which could not be tested, arrived of alarming outbreaks. Gaul was on the verge of revolt; the Getae were invading Macedonia; the Empire was falling.
The people were quiet. To the observer it seemed that they were apathetic; but that was far from the truth
. The burning of Caesar and the days of revelling riot had left them sated, not exhausted — cloyed with a heat of devotion that bade them rest and await the next message. For all their stillness they were tensely waiting. Then the rumour awoke that the prophet had been found. He was named Marius, a descendant of Marius the great hero and democrat, to whom Caesar had been related by marriage. His eyes had flame in them; and he spoke of the day of vengeance and the earth consumed in fire and the mighty of the earth fallen into the trough of hell. He proclaimed Caesar the God, and promised that under the reign of the Divine Caesar all would be well. All wrongs would be righted. Men would live at peace. The earth would bring forth plentifully, and there would be no more famine or disease or tears. Death would be conquered, for the dead would live.
Then one morning the prophet appeared with a rabble in the Forum; and they worked all day, and at evening they had raised a pillar of Numidian marble, twenty feet high, on the spot where Caesar’s body had last rested; and they inscribed it to the God Caesar, to the Father of his People. They prayed to it, and poured wine and unguents about it, and kissed it. Men with lifelong quarrels were reconciled before the Altar, and women embraced it and brought their children to touch it. Men came to take oaths and vows before it, swearing by the Genius of Caesar, his vital force; for the Genius of a man was the power by which he procreated and, procreating, made contact with the life-stream of the race.
Antonius was outraged. “So that damned veterinary-surgeon has come back,” he said. “The man that Caesar banished as a noisy fraud. I’d like to screw his neck and knock down that pillar of his. What can Caesar want with a pillar and an altar? It’s madness.”
All the true-blooded Romans felt likewise. They hated these deificatory rites, this eastern abandonment of the principle of will. Yet they couldn’t clear themselves altogether of the emotion with its wish for an incarnated saviour. Even before Caesar’s death they had voted him honours approaching those of the gods, had put his statue in temples (where stood statues of other famous men), allowed his house to have a gable as temples had, and appointed Iulian priests to make a third guild of Lupercals. They had also permitted him to engrave his face on the coins — a divine prerogative. The eastern cities, indeed, had long past hailed him in terms of worship; four years ago Ephesus had described him as God Manifest and Common Saviour of Man. But now this attitude had come immeasurably closer; from a vague sentiment it had grown to a concrete obsession.
*
Unable to face Cytheris, Gallus sought to summon courage by trying out the poems on his grammarian friend Nicias. He changed the name Cytheris to Lycoris; for it was usual in love-verses to have a pseudonym that scanned the same as the original name, and he didn’t want Nicias to guess.
Nicias read the poems through, pausing to argue over certain scansions and word-usages; and then praised them in a non-committal way. Gallus saw that he couldn’t place the work and therefore didn’t like it; and he was pleased at this. But he also wanted to accuse Nicias of his hidebound inappreciation and force him to perceive what the poems meant. They were good; Gallus was sure of it.
To change the subject, Nicias went on, “What a long time since I saw you last. That night at Dolabella’s.”
Gallus frowned but Nicias wouldn’t be stopped. “Didn’t you think Dolabella’d collapse under the weight of Cytheris when he carried her off? I bet she weighs twice as much as he does. To my mind it was a worthier performance than the rape of Helena. A man could dare the Argive spears more easily than the jeers of his dinner-guests; and politeness wouldn’t have stopped our mouths if his knees had given way.” He sniggered importantly. “Dolabella was concerned when she didn’t call again at his invitation. He sent me to persuade her. She promised but didn’t go. Don’t tell anyone I told you.”
Gallus was overjoyed. Surely her avoidance of Dolabella must have been on account of him, Gallus. But his joy was dashed by the next remark from Nicias. “Still, that hasn’t stopped him talking about her everywhere. He says she has a mole on her left buttock and that the decoration ought to be made compulsory for all ladies of distinction. But that’s enough scandal. Did you write to Pollio with the letter of introduction I gave you?”
Gallus escaped as soon as he could, retired to the nearest tavern, and drank. After his sixth unmixed cup he looked up to see a shadow flitting across the table. Fabullus. The wretch seemed always hanging about somewhere nowadays.
“Give me a drink,” said Fabullus in an aggrieved voice, finding himself observed. “Unless you’ve spent all your money with that Jew Ezra that cheated me, and his good-for-nothing son that’s sponging on you.”
“Go to hell,” said Gallus, and then, feeling very lonely, added, “Sit down and help yourself.”
Fabullus poured out an overbrimming cupful with shaky hand, his tongue passing thirstily over his lips. “You’re a true friend. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. Well, here’s to Caesar. If only he hadn’t died, everything would have gone all right. He’d promised me to fix things up. I saw him only an hour before he died. Look here, Fabullus, he said, speaking man to man, this fullery is yours, he said, and yours shall it be.”
“You’re all wrong. Women are the curse. So nothing Caesar could have done would have altered things.”
“Been turned down, have you?” sneered Fabullus, taking more wine. “Serves you right for spending your money on Jews instead of giving her a present.”
“She didn’t turn me down,” said Gallus, ferociously. He wasn’t going to have the world thinking Dolabella had succeeded where he’d failed. After all, he could have had her if he hadn’t bungled everything. “I turned her down. She’s a fat trollop. I found her out. And how do you think I’d know her in a crowd. She’s got a mole on her left buttock.”
“Serves her right,” said Fabullus, morosely, staring into his cup, and whirling the wine round. “Serves her right for touching a man like you. What’s her name, if she remembers it herself?”
“Cytheris is her name,” boasted Gallus. “Yes, the famous actress.” He bellowed with laughter. “You didn’t expect a fellow like me to have had a woman of her name and figure, did you? But I did, and I don’t care who knows it. Cytheris. Can you spell it?”
He called for a piece of chalk and drew the back view of a woman on the wall, smearing a large star for the mole and writing underneath: “Cytheris the bandy actress as owned by Gallus the great poet.”
“Don’t you believe me now?” he asked, threateningly.
“I’d believe anything about women,” replied Fabullus, “even that they’d cuddle a man like you. Jews are the only things worse than women, and there’s not much difference. A woman sits on a pig where she can’t look at it, and a Jew can’t look at it without spitting. I tell you what. I’ll sell you my share in the fullery for ten thousand. You’ve been a good friend.”
Gallus was feeling sick. “I’m going home.”
Fabullus, with a great show of cleverness, stood up and leaned across the table to hide the half-full jar. “Go and pay your bill first,” he cautioned. “I wouldn’t like them to go chasing you.” Gallus staggered off, and Fabullus quickly placed the jar under the table. It was his, paid for by the money that was rightfully his since otherwise Gallus would have used it to pay the fullery-account, out of which Ezra would cheat Fabullus.
When Gallus had gone, Fabullus sat at the table, slowly finishing the jar, which he hugged between his knees when not filling his cup. “I’ll tread on that Gallus some day,” he mumbled to himself. “He’s come between me and a fortune. He’s done me a wrong.” He searched his drunken mind to locate the wrong, but failed. It didn’t matter, however. Since he had long ago lost all sense of time, he saw all wrongs done to him as the primal wrong, and the primal wrong he interpreted as the loss of his fullery. Gallus had somehow put the Jew up to his tricks. Fabullus sat drinking and staring at the inscription on the wall.
*
The cat miaowed and stretched out its paws, the
n sank back into the bed of rags. The tall, gaunt man who was seated on a stool beside the brazier turned and looked at the cat for a while, and curled up again on his stool, biting his thumbnails. Then he looked again at the cat with bright, cunning eyes. His lips framed soundless words. He reached over, fondled the cat, feeling with active fingertips on its throat and belly. At last, with a quick nip, he caught a flea, and, raising his hand over the brazier, dropped it upon the flames.
A young girl entered, dressed in a dark blue shift of coarse stuff, above which her face showed palely, with thin regular features; her long hair hung down her back, unbound; her voice was timid.
“There’s someone to see you.”
“Have I not told you that I see no one till Jiar has fed,” he answered, in a low, rasping voice.
“It’s a message from the Queen,” she persisted, weakly. The man regarded the cat for a while. The cat again shot out its forelegs with claws opening, dug the claws into the cloth, carefully unhooked them, and returned to its sleep. “Send the messenger in.”
The girl came slowly forwards. “You’re not angry with me ...”
He hit out at her, striking against her hip. “Go away and do as I tell you.”
Meekly the girl left the room. The man did not stir again till he heard the door open and someone enter. When the newcomer was close, he looked up abruptly, laid his finger on his lips, and pointed to the cat.
Sara grinned, bowed to the cat, and then turned to the man on the stool.
“I come from my royal and divine mistress Cleopatra to speak to one that calls himself Marius —”
The man interrupted him with a wild gesture and started up, knocking over the stool. “I tell you that my name’s Marius,” he shouted. “I come of the stock of the conqueror, and I claim his property at Arpinum. One day I’ll make the council there kiss my thumbnail while I spit in their faces. I have written to Cicero. He’s a relation of mine. His grandmother Gratidia adopted a Marian child. Unless he gives me his support, I will wipe him out. I will have no mercy.” His voice lowered. “I must obey the voice.”
