“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 told. 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.
This appears to be the traditional solution to low flooding. The sacrificed man assuages the gods somehow; he is magically resurrected in their view to become Osiris Reborn on the third day of The Isia. This act guarantees next year’s flood will be normal. Well, that’s what they claim. It’s all very convoluted, but these superstitious people have faith in it.”
“My lady, seeing we’re talking plainly, allow me to question you plainly,” Suetonius roused himself. “Where do you think Antinous spent the day or night of his death?”
“Gentlemen, you appear to know as much as I do, and that’s absolutely nothing. But if you want my advice, considering the preparations underway nearby, I’d suggest you talk with Governor Titianus. He knows everything worth knowing in this land.
Besides, Tranquillus, both the Augusta and I suspect the young man’s death is too convenient by half. We’d say there’s more to it than meets the eye.”
CHAPTER 21
“Reporting as instructed, sir!”
Urbicus saluted the group of four. His Alexandrian Praetorian troop was approaching the riverside jetty giving access to The Alexandros. Suetonius, Clarus, Surisca, and Strabon were proceeding along the same pier.
“You requested my report by the highest sun, sir,” he announced with a fumbling stammer. He seemed ill-prepared to meet the four.
“Greetings Centurion!” Clarus responded crisply. “Make your report.”
“Hail Caesar! I and my men have searched for the river craft painted blue bearing the Eye of Horus and without sail markings, just as the fishermen who discovered the deceased described to us yesterday.
We have located such a vessel secured in slips by the river at an inlet close by the Temple of Amun near the Imperial Encampment. I am told on authority it is the only such boat on the river here. The temple is less than a stadion north of our protected stockade, surrounded by palm trees. You’d never know it was there it’s so well concealed.”
“Have you been able to establish whether this vessel was sailing the river at dawn on the day of Antinous’s death, and who its sailor or sailors may have been?” Suetonius queried.
“This was difficult, sirs, as our enquiry would have raised suspicion among the chief priests of the temple. But yes, we apprehended a worker-priest attached to the temple who was performing manual work in the vicinity of the docked vessel. We persuaded the man to join our company so we could question him in private,” the officer announced in crisply-articulated soldier-speak.
“Question him? You mean you abducted the fellow, put him to the sword, pressured him, and probably threatened him to some degree?” Suetonius asked genially, if apprehensively.
“Indeed this might be so, Special Inspector,” the Praetorian confirmed with no hint of irony. “The fellow resisted and claimed he knew of no such voyage. But he was eventually amenable to persuasion and revealed what we wished to know.”
“Amenable? So what was revealed?” Suetonius queried. He was alarmed at the Guard’s impetuosity in dealing with a workman, priest, or slave under some other institution’s protection.
“He told us the master of the Temple, a priest of Amun named Panchrates or Pachrates of Memphis, had been sailing the river at the appointed time in this vessel accompanied by an acolyte,” Urbicus concluded. The Praetorian officer fell silent, displaying visible satisfaction.
“Pachrates?!” both Clarus and Suetonius exclaimed. “But why? What was he doing on the river at that time, Centurion?”
“Well,” the Praetorian offered as an information coup-de-grace, “the slave told us he’d heard gossip how Panchrates had ritually sacrificed the youth Antinous in a magical rite to invoke health, and was delivering the corpse upstream to be discovered in the river at dawn. Perhaps this is why the youth’s left wrist had been slashed when he was found by the fishermen, and why he was attired in his formal parade armors.”
The group of four was astonished. At last a breakthrough!.
“But why would the priest Pachrates slay the Bithynian? What profit is there in this to an Egyptian priest? Especially a Bithynian who was Caesar’s Favorite?” Clarus demanded. He was entering his legalist’s temper of cui bono?
Urbicus replied carefully.
“The temple slave did not know these things, my lords, he was a lowly laborer, but he’d heard it said it was to allay Pharaoh’s concerns about correcting the low flooding of the Nile,” the Praetorian stated. “It was a public gesture for this year’s Festival of Isis.”
“Where is this slave informant now, Urbicus?” Suetonius demanded. “We must keep him isolated and protected until we can authenticate this story. These are sensitive claims you make, and this workman i
s our only witness to such charges.”
“This is not possible, sir,” Urbicus offered with a lowered voice. “The slave expired under our exactions. We may have overdone the persuasion a little, sir. He bled liberally under the duress. So we tossed his carcass into the river to appear to be a drowning accident too. It seems Osiris will have two claimants to resurrection this Isia.” Urbicus was engaging in droll Praetorian wit.
“Separately, Special Inspector,” he continued, “we’ve been searching for your interviewees Lysias of Bithynia and the freedwoman Thais of Cyrene. They too have gone missing, despite your demands they attend your interview today. We searched for them last night at their tents. They could not be found anywhere.
However, we did find the mutilated corpse of their senior steward, a Judaean freedman from Bithynia. He’d been decapitated in a similar manner to the fisherman from Besa. But we couldn’t locate either the offenders or the two young people in the vicinity.”
It was Suetonius’s turn to feel discomfort at these revelations.
“You didn’t mention this incident earlier this morning when you delivered the head of the fisherman Ani to our breakfast table?” he enquired. “Nor mention another decapitation. Had you forgotten such a grisly discovery?”
Urbicus shuffled momentarily with unease but did not lose his verbal stride.
“No, my lord, I had not forgotten. It was simply that the fisherman Ani’s murder and return of his head to his family, as well as the search for the river craft, had a higher priority in your instruction. Were we being negligent, sir?” the officer offered with an air of impervious innocence.
Suetonius was now beginning to feel even greater discomfort. Looking to Clarus for confirmation, the biographer was coming to appreciate how the death of the Bithynian youth seemed to provoke increasingly violent, yet inexplicable, responses from unknown forces.
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