Roma Eterna

by Robert Silverberg

  The entire Great Council was present at the ceremony. It took place in the glittering Hall of the Hunting Mosaics, built by one of the later Heracliuses, where the Emperor usually received delegations from distant lands under showy depictions in glowing red and green and purple tiles of the spearing of lions and elephants by valiant men in ancient Roman costume. Today, though, instead of seating himself on the throne, Maximilianus stood meekly at the left side of it, facing the Byzantine monarch, who stood just opposite him at a distance of some eight or ten paces. Behind Maximilianus were arrayed the members of the Council; behind Andronicus, half a dozen Greek officials who had traveled with him in the parade down the Via Flaminia.

  The contrast between the two monarchs was instructive. The Emperor seemed dwarfed beside Andronicus, a giant of a man, by far the tallest and burliest in the room, who had thick heavy features and the coarse unruly yellow hair of a Celt or a Briton tumbling far down his back. Everything about him, his broad shoulders, his massive chest, his long drooping mustaches, his jutting jaw and vast beard, radiated a sense of bull-like, almost brutish, strength. But there was a look of cold intelligence in his small piercing gray-violet eyes.

  Antipater, standing at Maximilianus’s side, served as interpreter. At a nod from the Emperor he handed the scroll to some high magistrate of Andronicus’s court, a man with a tonsured head and a richly brocaded robe inset with what looked like real rubies and emeralds; and the magistrate, giving it only the merest glance, solemnly rolled it up and passed it on to the Basileus. Andronicus unrolled it, quickly ran his eyes along the first two or three lines in a nonchalantly cursory way, and let it roll closed again. He handed it back to the tonsured magistrate.

  “What does this thing say?” he asked Antipater brusquely.

  Antipater found himself wondering whether the King of the Romans could be unable to read. With some astonishment he heard himself reply, “It is a document of abdication, your majesty.”

  “Give it here again,” said Andronicus. His voice was deep and hard and rough-edged, and his Greek was not in the least mellifluous: more a soldier’s kind of Greek, or even a farmer’s kind of Greek, than a king’s. An affectation, most likely. Andronicus came from one of the great old Byzantine families. You would never know it, though.

  With a grandiose gesture the tonsured magistrate returned the scroll to the Basileus, who once more made a show of unrolling it, and again seemingly reading a little, another line or two, and then closing it a second time and casually tucking it under his arm.

  The room was very quiet.

  Antipater, uncomfortably conscious of his place much too close to the center of the scene, glanced about him at the two Consuls, the assembled Ministers and Secretaries, the great generals and admirals, the Praetorian Prefect, the Keeper of the Imperial Treasury. Unlike the Emperor Maximilianus, who bore himself now with no sign whatever of self-importance, a small man who knew he was about to be diminished even further, they were all holding themselves bolt upright, standing with ferocious military rigidity. Did any of them realize what was in the letter? Probably not. Not the Salona part, anyway. Antipater’s eye met that of Crown Prince Germanicus, who looked remarkably fresh for the occasion, newly bathed and spotless in a brilliant white robe edged with purple. Germanicus too had adopted today’s general posture of martial erectness, which seemed notably inappropriate on him. But he seemed almost to be smiling. What, Antipater wondered, could there be to smile about on this terrible day?

  To Antipater the Basileus Andronicus said, “The Emperor resigns his powers unconditionally, does he not?”

  “He does, your majesty.”

  From members of the Great Council here and there around the room came little gasping sounds, more of shock than surprise. They could not be surprised, surely, Antipater thought. But the blunt acknowledgment of the reality of the situation had an unavoidable impact even so.

  Prince Germanicus’s demeanor did not change, though: the same lofty stance, the same calm, cool half-smile at the corner of his lips. His elder brother had just signed away for all time the throne that Germanicus might one day have inherited; but had Germanicus ever really expected to occupy that throne, anyway?

  Andronicus said, “And are there any special requests?”

  “Only one, majesty.”

  “And that is?”

  All eyes were on Antipater. He wished he could sink into the gleaming stone floor. Why was it necessary for him to be the one to speak the damning words out loud before the great men of Roma?

  But there was no escaping it. “Caesar Maximilianus requests, sire,” said Antipater in the steadiest voice he could muster, “that he be permitted to withdraw with such members of his court as may care to accompany him to the palace of the Emperor Diocletianus in Salona in the province of Dalmatia, where he hopes to spend the rest of his days in contemplation and study.”

  There. Done. Antipater stared into the air before him, looking at nothing.

  The hard gray-violet eyes of the Basileus flickered shut for half an instant; and something like a scornful smirk was visible just as briefly at a corner of the Byzantine Emperor’s mouth. “We see no reason why the request cannot be granted,” he said, after a time. “We accept the terms of the document as proposed.” Yet again he unrolled it; and, taking a pen from the magistrate beside him, he scrawled a huge capital A at the bottom. His signature, evidently. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, your majesty.”

  Andronicus nodded. “Well, then. Inform the former Emperor that it is our pleasure to spend this night in our camp beside the river, among our men. Tomorrow we intend to take up residence in this palace, from which nothing is to be removed without our permission. Tomorrow, also, we will present to you our brother Romanos Caesar Stravospondylos, who is to reign over the Western Empire as its Emperor thenceforth. Tell all this to the former Emperor, if you will.” He beckoned to his men, and they strode in a stiff phalanx from the room.

  Antipater turned toward Maximilianus, who stood completely still, like a man transformed into a stone statue of himself.

  “The Basileus says, Caesar, that he—”

  “I understood what the Basileus said, thank you, Antipater,” said Maximilianus, in a voice that seemed to come from the tomb. He smiled. It was a death’s-head smile, the merest quick flashing of his teeth. Then he, too, went from the room. The members of the Great Council, most of them looking dazed and disbelieving, followed him in twos and threes.

  So this is how empires fall in the modern era, Antipater thought.

  No bloodshed, no executions. A parchment scroll passing back and forth a couple of times from conqueror to conquered, a scrawled letter A, a change of occupants for the royal apartments. And so it will go down in history. Lucius Aelius Antipater, the defeated Emperor’s Master of Greek Letters, presented the statement of abdication to the Basileus Andronicus, who gave it the most perfunctory of glances and then—

  “Antipater?”

  It was Germanicus Caesar. He alone remained in the great room with the Master of Greek Letters.

  The prince beckoned to him. “A word with you on the portico, Antipater. Now.”

  Outside, strolling together down the long enclosed porch that ran along this wing of the palace, with the rain clattering on the wooden roof overhead, Germanicus said, “What can you tell me about this Romanos Caesar, Antipater? I thought the Basileus’s brother was named Alexandros.”

  There was something strange about his voice. Antipater realized after a moment that the prince’s indolent drawl was gone. His tone was crisp, business-like, curt.

  “There are several brothers, I believe. Alexandros is the best-known one. A warrior like his brother, is Alexandros. Romanos is very likely of a different sort. The name ‘Stravospondylos’ means ‘crook-back.’”

  Germanicus’s eyes widened. “Andronicus has picked a cripple to be Emperor of the West?”

  “It would seem so from the name, sir.”

  “W
ell. His little joke. So be it, I suppose.” Germanicus smiled, but he did not look amused. “One thing’s clear, anyway: there’ll still be two Emperors. Andronicus isn’t going to try to rule the whole united Empire from Constantinopolis, because it can’t be done. Which is what I told you, Antipater, in the Forum that day, at the Temple of Concordia.”

  Antipater found himself still amazed by the abrupt change in Germanicus, this new seriousness of his, this no-nonsense manner. Even his posture was different. Gone was the easy aristocratic slouch, the loose-limbed ease. Suddenly he was holding himself like a soldier. Antipater had not noticed before how much taller Germanicus was than his brother the Emperor.

  “How long,” Germanicus asked, “do you imagine that this Western Greek Empire will last, Antipater?”

  “Sir?”

  “How long? Five years? Ten? A thousand?”

  “I have no way of knowing, sir.”

  “Give it some thought. Andronicus marches west, knocks over our pitiful defenses with two flicks of his fingers, sets up his deformed little brother as our Emperor, and goes back to the good life in Constantinopolis. Leaving a dozen or so legions of Greek troops to occupy the entire immensity of the Western Empire: Hispania, Germania, Britannia, Gallia, Belgica, on and on and on, not to mention Italia itself. For what purpose has he conquered us? Why, so our taxes will flow eastward and wind up in the Byzantine treasury. Are the farmers of Britannia going to be happy about that? Are the wild whiskery men up there in Germania? You know the answer. Andronicus has captured Roma, but that doesn’t mean he’s gained control of the whole Empire. They don’t want Greeks running things, out there in the provinces. They won’t put up with it. They’re Romans, those people, and they want to be ruled by Romans. Sooner or later there’ll be active resistance movements flourishing all over the place, and I say it’ll be sooner rather than later. The assassination of Greek tax collectors and magistrates and municipal procurators. Local rebellions. Eventually, wide-scale uprisings. Andronicus will decide that it’s not worthwhile, trying to maintain supply lines over such long distances. He’ll simply shrug and let the West slide. He’s not going to come out here twice in one lifetime to fight with us. Either we’ll kill all the Greek occupiers, or, more likely, we’ll simply swallow them up and turn them into Romans. Two or three generations in the West and they won’t remember how to speak Greek.”

  “I dare say you’re right, sir.”

  “I dare say I am.—I’ll be leaving Roma tomorrow evening, Antipater.”

  “Going to Dalmatia, are you? With the Emp—with your brother?”

  Germanicus spat. “Don’t be a fool. No, I’m going the other way.” He leaned close to Antipater and said, in a low, hard-edged voice, “There’s a ship waiting at Ostia to take me to Massalia in Gallia. I’ll make my capital there or at Lugdunum, I’m not yet sure which.”

  “Your—capital?”

  “The Emperor has abdicated. You wrote the document yourself, didn’t you? So I’m Emperor now, Antipater. Emperor-in-exile, maybe, but Emperor none the less. I’ll proclaim myself formally the moment I land in Massalia.”

  If Germanicus had said that a week ago, Antipater thought, it would have sounded like madness, or drunken folly, or some derisive joke. But this was a different Germanicus.

  The prince’s sea-green eyes bore down on him mercilessly. “You’re a dead man if you say a word of this to anyone before I’m gone from Roma, of course.”

  “Why tell me in the first place, then?”

  “Because I think that in your weird shifty Greek way you’re a trustworthy man, Antipater. I told you that at the Temple of Concordia, too.—I want you to come with me to Gallia.”

  The calmly spoken sentence struck Antipater like a thunderbolt.

  “What, sir?”

  “I need a Master of Greek Letters, too. Someone to help me communicate with the temporary occupying authorities in Roma. Someone to decipher the documents that my spies in the East will be sending me. And I want you as an adviser, too, Antipater. You’re a timid little man, but you’re smart, and shrewd as well, and you’re a Greek and a Roman both at the same time. I can use you in Gallia. Come with me. You won’t regret it. I’ll rebuild the army and push the Greeks out of Roma within your lifetime and mine. You can be a Consul, Antipater, when I come back here to take possession of the throne of the Caesars.”

  “Sir—sir—”

  “Think about it. You have until tomorrow.”

  Justina’s expression was entirely unreadable as Antipater finished telling the tale. Whatever was going on behind those dark glistening eyes was something he could not guess at all.

  “It surprised me more than I can tell you,” he said, “to find out how much deeper a man Germanicus is than anybody knew. How strong he really is, despite that foppish attitude he found it useful to affect. How truly Roman, at the core.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It must have been quite a surprise.”

  “It’s a noble romantic idea, I have to admit, this business of proclaiming himself Emperor-in-exile and leading a resistance movement from Gallia. And his invitation to be part of his government, I confess, was very flattering.—But of course I couldn’t possibly go with him.” He would not go, Antipater knew, because Justina surely would not; and if one thing was clear in his mind just now amidst all the chaos of the suddenly whirling world, it was that wherever Justina wanted to go, that was where they would go. She was more important to him than politics, than empires, than all such abstract things. He understood that now as never before: for him it all came down to Justina and Lucius, Lucius and Justina, and let other men fret over the burdens of empire.

  “Will he succeed, do you think, in overthrowing the Greeks?” she asked.

  “He stands a good chance,” said Antipater. “Everyone knows that the Empire’s too big to be governed from one capital off in the East, and appointing a Greek Emperor for the West won’t work for long either. The West is Roman. It thinks Roman. For the time being the Greeks have the advantage over us, because we weakened ourselves so much through our own imbecility in the past fifty years that they were able to come in and take us over, but it won’t last. We’ll recover from what’s just happened to us, and we’ll return to being what we once were.” He had a sudden vivid sense of the river of time flowing in two directions at once, the past returning even as it departed. “The gods intended that Roma should govern the world. We did for a thousand years or more, and did it damned well. We will again. Destiny’s on Germanicus’s side. Mark my words, there’ll be Latin-speaking Emperors in this city again in our lifetime.”

  It was a long speech. Justina greeted it with a spell of silence that lasted almost as long.

  Then she said, “It gets very cold in Gallia in the winter, does it not?”

  “Rather cold, yes, so I’m told. Colder than here, certainly.”

  Too cold for her, that much he knew. Why would she even ask? It was unthinkable that she would want to go there. She would hate it there.

  “It’s very strange,” he said, since she was saying nothing. “The Emperor is worthless and the brother that I thought was worthless turns out actually to be a bold and courageous man. If there’s such a thing as a Roman soul, and I think there is, it goes westward with Germanicus tomorrow.”

  “And you, Lucius? Which way do you go?”

  “We’re Greeks, you and I. We’ll be going the other way, Justina. Toward the East. Toward the sun. To Dalmatia, with Caesar.”

  “You’re a Roman, Lucius.”

  “More or less, yes. What of it?”

  “Roma goes west. The coward Maximilianus goes east. Do you truly want to go with the coward, Lucius?”

  Antipater gaped at her, stunned, unable to speak.

  “Tell me, Lucius, how cold does it really get in Gallia in the winter? Is there very much snow?”

  He found his voice, finally. “What are you trying to say, Justina?”

  “What are you trying to say? Suppose I didn’t exi
st. Which way would you go tomorrow, east or west?”

  He paused only an instant. “West.”

  “To follow the Emperor’s brother into the snow.”

  “Yes.”

  “The brother that you thought was worthless.”

  “The Emperor is worthless. Not so the brother, I begin to think. If you weren’t in the equation, I’d probably go with him.” Was it so, he wondered? Yes. Yes. It was so. “I’m a Roman. I’d want to act like a Roman, for once.”

  “Then go. Go!”

  He felt the room rocking, as if in an earthquake. “And you, Justina?”

  “I don’t have to act like a Roman, do I? I could stay here, and continue to be a Greek—”

  “No, Justina!”

  “Or I could follow you and your new Emperor into the snow, I suppose.” She wrapped her arms around her body and shivered, as though white flakes were already falling, here in their snug room. “Or, on the other hand, we still have the option, both of us, of going east with the other Emperor. The cowardly one who gave his throne away to be safe.”

  “I’m not very brave myself, you know.”

  “I know that. Yet you would go with Germanicus, if I were not here. So you just said. There’s a difference between not being very brave and being a coward. Which is worse, I wonder, to walk through the snow once in a while, or to live in warmth among cowards? How can you live among cowards, unless you’re a coward yourself?”

  He had no answer. His head was throbbing. She had him outflanked on every front. He understood only that he loved her, he needed her, he would make whatever choice she wanted him to make.

  From outside came shouting again, raucous, jubilant. He could hear what sounded like screams, also. Antipater glanced toward the window and saw new fires burning on the hills. The conquest was beginning in earnest, now. The victors were raking in their spoils.