Roma Eterna

by Robert Silverberg

  He closed the book, and looked up at Antipater, and smiled a bleak, chilly little smile. Antipater had no difficulty in reading the Emperor’s thoughts. The last of all that great list! What a distinction, Antipater! What an extraordinary distinction!

  That night Antipater dreamed of wild-eyed drunken Greek soldiers in bulky blue-green linen jerkins running jubilantly through the streets of Roma, laughing and shouting, looting stores, pulling women into alleyways. And then the Emperor Andronicus riding in glory down the Via Flaminia into the city, resplendent in his purple chlamys, his robe of authority, with his great mane of golden hair flowing behind him and his enormous yellow beard tumbling over his chest. Throngs of Roman citizens lined the great highway to pelt him with flower petals and cheer him on, crying out enthusiastically in praise of their new master, hailing him in his own language, calling him Basileus Romaion, “King of the Romans.” Spurning the use of a chariot, the conquering monarch sat astride a colossal white horse bedecked with jewels; he wore the shining Greek crown crested with peacock feathers and carried in one hand the eagle-headed scepter of rule, and with the other he waved magnanimously to the crowds. And went on toward the Forum, where he dismounted and looked around in satisfaction. And, sauntering on into the avenue running below the Capitoline Hill, paused there and gestured to a member of his entourage with a broad sweeping movement of his hand, as though to indicate where he intended to erect the triumphal arch marking his victory.

  The next day—a day of endless pelting driving rain—a messenger arrived at the palace bearing word that Greek forces had landed on the Ligurian shore. The ports of Antipolis and Nicaea had fallen to them without a battle, and the Greeks were presently en route along the coastal highway toward the city of Genua. In the afternoon came a second runner, half dead on his feet, who carried news from the south that a tremendous military engagement was under way in Calabria, where the Roman army was hard pressed and slowly retreating, while a second Greek force out of Sicilia had unexpectedly landed farther up the peninsula, had captured the harbor of Neapolis, and was laying siege to that essential southern city, whose fall was imminent.

  The only piece missing, thought Antipater, was an attack on the northeastern frontier by the Byzantine forces in Dalmatia. “Perhaps we’ll get news of that invasion too, before long,” he said to Justina. “But it hardly matters, does it?” The soldiers of Andronicus were already moving through the Italian peninsula toward Roma from both the north and the south. “The goose is cooked, as Germanicus would say. The game is lost. The Empire’s finished.”

  “You will take a letter to the Basileus Andronicus,” said the Emperor.

  They were in the little Indigo Office, next door to the Emerald one. In dank, rainy weather it was a little warmer there than in the Emerald. This was the fourth day of rain, now. Neapolis had fallen, and the Greek army of the south, having polished off most of the southern Roman garrison, was moving steadily up the Via Roma toward the capital. The only difficulties it was encountering were from mudslides blocking the roads. The second Greek force, the one coming down from Liguria, was somewhere in Latium, it seemed, perhaps as far south as Tarquinii or Caere. Apparently it, too, was meeting no resistance other than from the weather. Caere was just thirty miles north of Roma. There had also been a Byzantine breakthrough on the Venetian front out of Dalmatia.

  Maximilianus cleared his throat. “‘To His Royal Splendor Andronicus Maniakes, Autocrat and Imperator, by the grace of God King of Kings, King of the Romans and Supreme Master of All Regions’—you have all that, Antipater?—”

  “‘Basileus basileion,’” Antipater murmured. “Yes, majesty.” He gave Maximilianus a carefully measured glance. “Did you say ‘Supreme Master of All Regions’?”

  “So he styles himself, yes,” said Maximilianus, a little irritably.

  “But, begging your pardon, the implication, sire—”

  “Let us just continue, Antipater. ‘And Supreme Master of All Regions. From his cousin Maximilianus Julianus Philippus Romanus Caesar Augustus, Imperator and Grand Pontifex, Tribune of the People, et cetera, et cetera’—you know all the titles, Antipater; put them in—‘Greetings, and may the benevolence of all the gods be upon you forever and ever, world without end.’” Again the Emperor paused. He took two or three deep breaths. “‘Whereas it has been the pleasure of the gods to permit me to occupy the throne of the Caesars these past twenty years, it has lately begun to seem to me that the favor of heaven has been withdrawn from me, and that it is the will of the most divine gods that I lay down the responsibilities that were placed upon me long ago by the command of my royal father, His Most Excellent Majesty the Divine Imperator Maximilianus Julianus Philippus Claudius Caesar Augustus. Likewise it is evident to me that the favor of heaven has fallen upon my Imperial cousin His Most Puissant Majesty the Basileus Andronicus Maniakes, Autocrat and Imperator, et cetera, et cetera,’—give his full titles all over again, will you, Antipater?—”

  Antipater was on to his second wax tablet by this time, and he had scarcely written down anything but strings of royal titles. But the sense of the message was already quite clear. He felt his heart beginning to thump as the meaning of what the Emperor was dictating to him sank in.

  It was a document of abdication.

  Maximilianus was handing the Empire over to the Greeks.

  Well, of course, the Greeks had grabbed the Empire already, essentially, everything but the capital itself and a few miserable miles of territory surrounding it. But still, was this proper Roman behavior? There was hardly any precedent for the capitulation of a Roman Emperor to a foreign conqueror, and that was what Andronicus was, a Greek, a foreigner, whatever pretense the Byzantines might make toward being a legitimate half of the original Roman Empire. Rulers had been deposed before, yes. There had been civil wars in ancient times, Octavianus versus Marcus Antonius, and the squabble over the succession to Nero, and the battle for the throne after the assassination of Commodus. But Antipater couldn’t recall any instances of a defeated Emperor supinely resigning the throne to his conqueror. The usual thing was to fall on your sword, wasn’t it, as the troops of the victorious rival drew near? But what had been usual a thousand years ago might no longer be considered appropriate behavior, Antipater decided.

  And Maximilianus was still speaking in a steady flow, every sentence constructed with a careful sense of style and precise in its grammar, as though he had begun drafting this letter many weeks back, revising it again and again in his mind until it was perfect, and nothing remained now but for him to express it aloud so that Antipater could render it into Byzantine Greek.

  Definitely, a document of abdication. To Antipater’s astonishment, Maximilianus was indeed not merely giving up his throne, he was designating Andronicus as his legally valid successor, the true and lawful wielder of the Imperial power.

  There was, of course, the problem that Maximilianus had not managed to produce any children, and the official heir to the throne, Germanicus, was hardly suitable for the job. But Maximilianus was basically handing Andronicus clear title to the crown, not just by right of conquest but by the explicit decree of the outgoing monarch. In effect he was reuniting the two halves of the ancient Empire. Was it really necessary for him to carry the thing so far? If he didn’t plan to kill himself, Antipater thought, and who could blame him for that, couldn’t he simply acknowledge his defeat with a curt letter of surrender and go off into history with a certain degree of dignity intact?

  But Maximilianus was still speaking, and suddenly Antipater realized that there was another, and deeper, purpose to this document.

  “‘I have grown old in office’”—not true; he was hardly more than fifty—“‘and the burden of power wearies me, and I seek only now to live a quiet life of reading and meditation in some corner of Your Imperial Majesty’s immense domain. I cite the precedent of the Caesar Diocletianus of old, who, after having reigned exactly twenty years, as I have, voluntarily yielded up his tremendous powers
and took up residence in the province of Dalmatia, in the city of Salona, where the palace of his retirement stands to this day. It is the humble request of Maximilianus Caesar, my lord, that I be permitted to follow the path of Diocletianus, and, in fact, if it should be pleasing to you, that I even be allowed to occupy the palace at Salona, where I spent a number of nights during the years of my reign, and which is to me an agreeable residence to which I could gladly retire now—’”

  Antipater knew the palace at Salona well. He had grown up virtually in its shadow. It was quite a decent sort of palace, practically a small town in itself, right on the sea, with enormous fortified walls and, no doubt, the most luxurious accommodations within. Many a Caesar had used it as a guest house while visiting the lovely Dalmatian coast. Perhaps Andronicus had stayed in it himself, inasmuch as Dalmatia had been under Byzantine control the past couple of decades.

  And here was Maximilianus asking for it—no, begging for it, the fallen Emperor making a “humble request,” addressing Andronicus suddenly as “my lord,” using a phrase like “if it should be pleasing to you.” Turning over legal title to the Empire to Andronicus on a silver platter, asking nothing more in return than to be allowed to go off and hide himself behind the gigantic walls of Diocletianus’s retirement home for the rest of his life.

  Dishonorable. Disgraceful. Disgusting.

  Antipater looked hastily away. He did not dare let Caesar see the blaze of contempt that had come into his eyes.

  The Emperor was still speaking. Antipater had missed a few words, but what did that matter? He could always fill in with something appropriate.

  “‘—I remain, I assure you, dear cousin Andronicus, yours in the deepest gratitude, offering herewith the highest regard for your wisdom and benevolence and my heart-felt felicitations on all the glorious achievements of your reign—cordially, Maximilianus Julianus Philippus Romanus Caesar Augustus, Imperator and Grand Pontifex, et cetera, et cetera—’”

  “Well,” Justina said, when Antipater summarized the abdication document for her the next evening after he had spent much of yet another rainy day copying it out prettily on a parchment scroll, “Andronicus doesn’t have to give Maximilianus anything, does he? He can simply cut his head off, if he likes.”

  “He won’t do that. This is the year 1951. The Byzantines are civilized folk. Andronicus doesn’t want to look like a barbarian. Besides, it’s bad politics. Why make a martyr out of Maximilianus, and set him up as a hero for whatever anti-Greek resistance movement is likely to come into being in the rougher provinces of the West, when he can simply give him a kiss on the cheek and pack him off to Salona? The whole Western Empire’s his, regardless. He might just as well make a peaceful start to his reign here.”

  “So Andronicus will accept the deal, do you think?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. If he has any sense at all.”

  “And then?”

  “Then?”

  “Us,” said Justina. “What of us?”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes. The Emperor had a few things to say about that, too.”

  Justina drew her breath in sharply. “He did?”

  Uneasily Antipater said, “When he was finished dictating the letter, he turned to me and asked me if I would come with him to Salona, or wherever else Andronicus allowed him to go. ‘I’ll still need a secretary, even in retirement,’ he said. ‘Especially if I wind up in the Greek-speaking part of the Empire, and that’s surely where Andronicus will want to put me, so that he can keep me under his thumb. Marry your little Greek and come along with me, Antipater.’ That’s exactly what he said. ‘Marry your little Greek. Come along with me.’”

  Instantly Justina’s eyes were glowing. Her face was flushed, her breasts were rising and falling quickly. “Oh, Antipater! How wonderful! You accepted, naturally!”

  In fact he had not, not exactly. Not at all, as a matter of fact. Nor had he refused, exactly, either. Not at all. He had given Caesar no real answer of any sort.

  In some discomfort he said, “You know that I’d be delighted to marry you, Justina.”

  She looked perplexed. “And the part about following Caesar to Dalmatia?”

  “Well—” he said. “I suppose—”

  “You suppose? What other choice do we have?”

  Antipater hesitated, fumbling in the air with his out-spread hands. “How can I say this, Justina? But let me try. What Caesar is asking is, well—cowardly. Shameful. Un-Roman.”

  “Perhaps so. And if it is, so what? Better to stay here and die like a Roman, do you think?”

  “I’ve already told you, Andronicus would never put him to death.”

  “I’m talking about us.”

  “Why would anyone harm us, Justina?”

  “We’ve been through all this. As you yourself pointed out last week, you’re an official of the court. I’m a Greek citizen who’s been consorting with Romans. Surely there’d be a purge of the old bureaucracy. You wouldn’t be executed, I guess, but you’d certainly be given a hard time. So would I. A worse time than you, I’d think. You’d be reassigned to some grubby menial job, maybe. But they’d find some very nasty uses for someone like me. Conquering soldiers always do.”

  It was hard for him to meet the implacable fury of her eyes.

  All yesterday afternoon since he’d taken his leave of Caesar in the Indigo Office, and most of today as well, his head had been swirling with ringing heroic phrases—in the end, one must comport oneself as a Roman must, or be seen to be nothing at all—our great heroic traditions demand—history will never forgive—a time comes when a man must proclaim himself to be a man, or else he is nothing more than—how shameful, how unutterably and eternally shameful, it would be to affiliate myself with the court of so despicable a coward, an Emperor who—and much more in the same vein, all leading up to his grand repudiation of the invitation to accompany Maximilianus into a cozy Dalmatian retirement. But now he saw only too clearly that all that was so much nonsense.

  Our great heroic traditions demand, do they? Perhaps so. But Maximilianus Caesar was no hero, and neither was Lucius Aelius Antipater. And if the Emperor himself could not bring himself to behave like a Roman, why should his Master of Greek Letters? A man who was no sort of warrior, only a clerk, a man of books, and not all that much of a Roman, either, not so that Cicero or Seneca or Cato the Censor would have believed. They would have laughed at his pretensions. You, a Roman? You with your oily Greek hair and your little snub nose and your ballet-dancer way of walking? Anybody can call himself a Roman, but only a Roman can be a Roman.

  The time of Seneca and Cato and Cicero was long over, anyway. Things were different today. The enemy was at the gates of Roma, and what was the Emperor doing? Serenely falling on his sword? Calmly slitting his wrists? No. No. Why, the Emperor was busy composing a letter that pleaded abjectly for a soft safe withdrawal to a big palace on the Dalmatian coast. Was the Master of Greek Letters supposed to stand at the bridge facing the foe with a blade in each hand like some indomitable hero of old, while the Emperor he served was blithely running out of town the back way?

  “Look,” Justina said. She had gone to the window. “Bonfires out there. A big one on the Capitoline Hill, I think.”

  “We can’t see the Capitoline from that window.”

  “Well, some other hill, then. Three, four, five bonfires on the hills out there. And look down there, in the Forum. Torches all along the Sacra Via. The whole city’s lit up.—I think they’re here, Antipater.”

  He peered out. The rain had stopped, and torches and bonfires indeed were blazing everywhere. He heard distant shouts in the night, but was unable to make out any words. Everything was vague, blurry, mysterious.

  “Well?” Justina asked.

  He let his tongue slide back and forth across his upper lip a couple of times. “I think they’re here, yes.”

  “And now? It’s too late for us to run, isn’t it? So we stand our ground and await our fates, you and I and the Emperor Maximilianus,
like the stoic Romans that we are. Isn’t that so, Antipater?”

  “Andronicus won’t harm the Emperor. No harm will come to you or me, either.”

  “We’ll find that out soon enough, won’t we?” said Justina.

  The next day was a day like none before it in the long history of Roma. The Greeks had come in the night before just as darkness was falling, thousands of them, entering through four of the city’s gates at once; and they had met with no opposition whatever. Evidently the Emperor had sent out word to the commanders of the home guard that no attempts at resistance were to be made, for they surely would be futile and would only lead to great loss of life and widespread destruction within the city. The war was lost, said the Emperor; let the Greeks come in without prolonging the agony. Which was either a wise and realistic attitude, thought Antipater, or else a despicably faint-hearted one, and he knew what he believed. But he kept his opinions to himself.

  The rain, which had halted for most of the night on the evening of the conquest, returned in the morning, just as the Basileus Andronicus was making his triumphal entrance into the city from the north, along the Via Flaminia. The scene was almost as Antipater had seen it in his dream, except that the weather was bad, and there were no flower petals being thrown, and the people lining the road looked stunned rather than jubilant and no one hailed the new Emperor in Greek. But Andronicus did ride a huge white horse and looked rather splendid, even in the rain with his great mass of golden hair pasted together in strings and his beard a soggy mop. He went not to the Forum, as Antipater had dreamed he would, but straight to the Imperial palace, where, the conqueror had been told, he would be presented with the document of abdication that the Emperor had dictated to Antipater the previous day.