A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

by Taylor Caldwell

  “You think him an oracle?”

  “No. He has been prophesying the death of Rome for a long my son would kill me. Do I have a son? No.” time. Is she dead? Have we been murdered? No. He said.

  Catilina smiled. “What of M. Junius Brutus? That little boy?”

  Julius’ face became cold and he fixed his black and sparkling eyes upon his friend. “You defame his mother. And his father, whom I hold in high regard, and who is my friend.”

  But Catilina smiled even more. “Your friends cannot destroy the rumors that young Brutus is your son. Before your advent, his mother was barren.”

  “I hear she is devoted to Juno and made many visits to her shrine.” Julius’ eyes, which had the capacity to look like the points of presented blades on occasion, deadly and violent, now smiled again. “Rumor!” he exclaimed. “If one listened to rumor one would become mad. I prefer facts. On that foundation one can build cities.”

  “You are building too slowly.”

  “I build well.”

  Catilina moved restively on the marble seat. “You are not bold, Julius.”

  “When necessary I am a lion. The time to roar has not yet arrived. Let us wait until Lepidus has destroyed himself.”

  “Let us return to that Cicero. He haunts my mind like an evil dream. He is powerful in Rome now. Moreover, he is studying politics. He may rise to confront and challenge us.”

  “He is very sick. He may die.”

  “Let us, then, end his pain.”

  Julius carefully placed his goblet on the table before him. He said, “What do you recommend, Lucius? Poison?”

  He raised his eyes slowly and fixed them on Catilina. Catilina’s blue eyes shifted, like the flick of a snake’s tongue. “Poison is a woman’s weapon.”

  “Ah, so. Livia employed it. I should have remembered.”

  “Are you threatening me, Caesar?”

  Julius was astonished. “I? Why should I threaten you, Lucius?”

  “To save your incredible friend, the Chick-pea.”

  Julius laughed. “It is true that I have an affectionate regard for Cicero, who was my mentor in my youth, and who protected me against you, dearest friend. The loves of one’s childhood are not easily forgotten. However, if he rose in my way I should dispatch him. Do you not believe me?”

  Catilina gazed at him thoughtfully. Then he said with reluctance, “I believe you. What, then, am I to conjecture? That you think the Chick-pea will be of some assistance to you.”

  Julius, who was rarely startled, was not taken aback. But he stared into the eyes of Catilina with candor. “How could he assist me?”

  “That is what is mystifying. But I feel that you think it.”

  “You are as fanciful as a woman. My path is not the path of Cicero. They will never cross. I love Cicero, for many reasons which would seem absurd to you. My mother gave him an amulet—”

  “Which I believe saved his life.”

  “You are superstitious. Again, let us consider Cicero. He has many powerful advocates in Rome, if few intimates. Should he die, he would be avenged. His political ambitions, if any, are small. He has made no move to satisfy them. He is speaking of going to Greece. He is a scholar, a poet, an essayist, an orator, a lawyer. I admire him. And his brother is a soldier. Do you think Quintus, who is devoted to him, would accept his death meekly? Let us not complicate our affairs.”

  “He spoke of his own death, you have told me,” said Catilina with satisfaction. “Did he see my face among his murderers?”

  “He does not speak of you, Lucius. Now let us talk of realities.”

  As the hot summer inclined toward autumn Marcus made little progress. His joints were suffused. The physician was alarmed at his heart sounds. “You must go at once to a milder clime,” he said.

  Now Marcus knew he must go if he were to survive. His young lawyers came to his bedside for advice on law matters which must be brought to conclusion in the coming months. Quintus, eager to go with his brother, and to escape from his young wife, urged haste. He looked at his brother’s pale and haggard face with terror.

  In the next month or so Marcus almost forgot his pain and his illness because of events. Aemilius Lepidus, the dictator of Rome, was indeed banished to his province of the Transalpine Gaul by the angered Senate. He agreed with apparent meekness. But he stopped at Etruria and began to levy an army amongst disgruntled veterans of many wars, who felt that they had been treated with disregard by the masters of Rome. The Senate declared him a public enemy, and rumor excitedly ran through the streets like a carried torch. Lepidus’ army grew daily, and it was said he would soon march against Rome, to seize ultimate power and avenge himself on the Senate.

  Pompey was commissioned to meet him in arms, and taking Catulus Pompey met Lepidus on the Campus Martius and defeated him. Lepidus, escaping, fled to join Sertorius in the Spains.

  But so long as he lived he was a menace to Rome. “Ah,” said Julius, to his many secret friends in the Senate, “If one only possessed a helmet from Hades, so one could be invisible and approach Lepidus at night and destroy this enemy of our nation!”

  “We are a lawful body,” said the Senators. “Besides, Lepidus still has many friends in Rome, and in the provinces, among the military.”

  “Am I not a soldier?” asked Julius. “Lepidus does not lack guards. Nevertheless, he must die. He is a traitor.”

  “True,” said the Senators, averting their eyes from Julius’ face. “But he still has friends. We have been through a difficult and dangerous time. If he dies, it must be by accident, or in a way so mysterious that his death cannot be laid to our offense.”

  Julius, satisfied, nodded in agreement. And so it was that Lepidus, who had considered himself a greater Sulla, died mysteriously in the very house of his friend Sertorius, who vowed to avenge his murder by someone unknown. The Senate issued a proclamation in Lepidus’ behalf, saying that though he had set himself against the Senate and the people of Rome he had been a noble soldier. It was obvious that he had become deranged. The Senate ordered a period of mourning for him, and publicly honored his family.

  Marcus, who had despised and feared Lepidus, who was of an unstable and violent character, was nevertheless greatly disturbed over the murder. It was another example, to him, of lawlessness overcoming law in the name of expediency. When Julius visited him Marcus expressed his alarm. Julius agreed with him.

  Marcus looked at him with the acuteness of grave illness. “You never cared about law, dear young friend. There were some weeks, Julius, when you did not visit me. Were you in the Spains?”

  Julius was all amazement and offense. “What are you implying, Marcus?”

  “Nothing. I was merely wondering,” said Marcus, with weariness. Julius’ eyes narrowed on him. But he spoke no more of Lepidus.

  Nor did Sertorius, the friend of the Consul. Rome subsided. Many old and disgruntled and crippled veterans were delighted to receive handfuls of gold sesterces from a treasury that was almost bare, and they forgot Lepidus also.

  Two nights before Marcus left with his brother for Greece, the father visited the older son in his cubiculum. “I have discerned a sadness of spirit in you, Marcus, that seems even greater than your illness. You speak to me no longer of God; you turn from His name. Why is this?”

  Marcus murmured, “I have considered if He is dead. He is silent in the face of enormities.”

  “He is concerned with man, not with men,” said Tullius, seating himself and taking his son’s hand.

  Marcus moved restively. But Tullius would not free his hand. “Let me repeat to you, Marcus, what Plotimus of Egypt said over a hundred years ago. ‘But mind contemplates its source, not because it is separated from it but because it is next after it and there is nothing between.’ This is true also in the case of soul and mind. Everything has a longing for and loves that which begot it, and especially when there are only the One that begot and the one begotten. And when the Supremely Good is the One who begot, the one beg
otten is necessarily joined to Him so intimately that it is separated only insofar as it is a second being.”

  “The Greeks,” said Marcus, listlessly, “knew of Plotimus, and so invented the Unknown God, who would be begotten of the Godhead and would descend to earth. The Jews have that fable, also. It runs through our own religion.”

  “Because God willed it so, for it is His truth.”

  But Marcus felt defeated in his mind and his soul and his body, and he did not know why. Always, he had wanted to go to Greece. Now he contemplated the thought with dismay and without desire.

  Helvia said to him, “When you return, with your health restored, you must marry. You have waited long enough.” He did not dispute with her, for he had no strength.

  Atticus, in Athens, had expressed his joy in a letter to his author. Marcus and Quintus must be his honored and beloved guests. Marcus, in that benign climate of sea and sun and cerulean sky and wisdom, would regain his health rapidly. He would also begin to write again, for the edification of mankind. Marcus laughed.

  His friends repeatedly brought news of the concern of Romans for the great lawyer and orator. But Marcus looked at them incredulously and said to himself, “Do they speak of me? What nonsense!” He would move his anguished limbs and it seemed to him that the pain of his body was less than the pain of his mind. As for himself, he should prefer to die here in his bed, defeated and alone, and join his spirit with that of Livia’s. Sometimes he became petulant in the face of his family’s concern and grief for him. It seems he must live for them. Have I not always? he thought, with bitterness. On the night before he left for Greece, he dreamed of his grandfather, who regarded him with sternness.

  “Are you a dog, or a Roman?” asked the old man, who seemed of a towering height.

  His strength was a little renewed during the night. In the morning he huddled in the family car while Quintus drove the fine horses. In a few hours they set sail for Greece.

  Marcus sat on the deck of the galleon and the fair breezes of the sea struck his face and the sun lay on his cheeks. He was very exhausted. Syrius, who had accompanied the brothers, covered him with quilts against any chill. He lay back in his chair and closed his eyes and let himself be carried on the gentle swell. He had never been on the sea before. At last, he opened his eyes and looked upon the water, and for the first time in months he felt a quickening in his body. He said to his heart, Be still. And to his restless sick mind, Be quiet. It is enough that I have eyes.

  When Quintus brought him wine Marcus smiled at him, and Quintus’ strong bright face jerked with emotion. “I feel much better,” said Marcus. “I am glad that you forced this journey upon me.”

  He looked at the sea, which ran past the ship in foam and in millions of rainbows. The masts creaked; there was a smell of oil and tar and hot wood. The sails held the red sunlight cupped within them. Sailors sang. Marcus said, “I fear I shall live.” But he smiled.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “It is a strange thing which I have heard before,” said Marcus to his affectionate host, Atticus. “Greek temples and even the great theatres and public buildings have been erected not to please the eye of man but the eye of God. That is why they are so marvelous, so mysteriously fascinating. I have seen magnificent buildings in Rome, overpowering with might and glory and columns and arches. They were built only for the exaltation and panoply of man.”

  The hot dry climate, parched as the silvery dust of Greece, had restored his health. He had indulged Quintus, and even the skeptical Atticus, by going to Epidaurus, where he had slept one night in the temple of Aesculapius, called by the Greeks Asclepius. Here was the final refuge of the afflicted whom doctors had abandoned for incurability. But Marcus noted that the priests of the divine one, son of Apollo, student of Chitron, the centaur, were all notable physicians also and treated the hopeless not only with solicitude but the best of medicines and their own skills. “It is said,” one old priest remarked kindly to Marcus, discerning he was not superstitious—or, rather, not more superstitious than the average Roman sufferer—“that God heals. This is true. He is the Great Physician, as Hippocrates often asserted. To point a lesson in piety He will often cure instantaneously, in a miracle, to bring men’s minds to Him. But He has endowed good and dedicated physicians as His deputies, His messengers.”

  Quintus and Marcus had found lodgings in a fine inn in Epidaurus, among others who could afford it. Many were Roman officers and gentlemen, and their wives and their children. Some were Hellenistic Jews, urbane nobles with pale and learned faces and the delicate features of the well-born, aristocratic Jew. It was obvious that they avoided the company of the Romans, no matter the Romans’ station, but they were friendly to the Greeks especially those of wisdom and education. Most were Sadducees, cynical and worldly men, whom Noë ben Joel deplored. When Marcus spoke to them of the Messias, they smiled tolerantly as if a child had spoken to them of a myth. They had made an exception of him, for all he was a Roman, for he was a lawyer and many of them were lawyers.

  He would sit with them in the sharp blue evenings, when the sun declined, on the terraces of the inn, looking toward the distant plains. They conversed with him concerning international law, and their respect for him grew. They had heard of him, they said, even in Athens, and even in Jerusalem. But they rallied him somewhat for his dedication. Law, they said, was invented to control the vehement masses and make them malleable to order. They smiled at him, and fingered their necklaces and armlets and rings, when he said that Law was of God, for all men. “Why, then,” one asked him, “does your face become so sad and withdrawn when you speak of God? Do you suspect He is dead, or never existed?”

  “I was overcome, in Rome, by a sense of inevitable disaster,” Marcus replied with reluctance.

  “You have come to an answer, then?” asked the Jew, with a smile.

  Marcus looked into that fine, grave face with the amused eyes and said suddenly, “Yes. But it is an answer I had forgotten. God will not interfere if man is bent on destruction. He has given us free will.”

  The Jew lifted his delicate eyebrows. “You are conversant with Jewish theology.”

  “The theme runs through all religions, from the most ancient Egyptian down. So universal a concept, then, can have no source but an original one, and that one is God.”

  The Sadducee was disappointed in Marcus, and rallied him a little for his superstition. But others of the Sadducees, men worn with illness, looked on him with some hesitant uncertainty. They pondered. If even a Roman believed what they themselves had been taught as children then they should re-examine their skepticism.

  Marcus said, “A very young and still unknown poet in Rome sent me one of his poems. He has read some of my work, and wanted an opinion. May I quote that poem to you, written by Lucretius, who is still almost a boy?:

  “‘No single thing abides, but all things flow,

  Fragment to fragment clings; the things that grow

  Until we know and name them,

  By degrees

  They meet and are no more the things we know.

  Thou, too; O Earth—thine empires, lands and seas—

  Least with thy stars of all the galaxies,

  Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too

  Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like these.

  Globed from the atoms, falling slow or swift,

  I see the suns, I see the systems lift

  Their forms, and even the systems and their suns

  Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

  Nothing abides. Thy seas in delicate haze

  Go off; those mooned sands forsake their place,

  And where they are shall other seas in turn

  Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays.’”

  The skeptical Sadducee thought on that for a few moments. Then he said, “So, as nothing abides, nothing is important.”

  “Except God, and His children. For they are immortal, though the wor
ld and the suns, and their worlds in order, shall pass away.” Suddenly Marcus’ languor and pain diminished and he was filled with a brilliant courage and new fortitude, as if a divine Hand had touched him.

  “I had thought,” Marcus mused, “that only Rome was important, that her death would be the death of all mankind. But now, suddenly, I know that even if Rome passes away God will remain, and all His plan for humanity. Nevertheless, that does not give me warrant to cease my personal fight on evil, for those who fight evil are the soldiers of God.”

  “And you believe that God will manifest Himself through His Messias?” asked another of the Sadducees with intent interest.

  “Yes. The belief runs through all religions of the worlds. Socrates called Him the Divine One. Aristotle called Him the Deliverer. Plato spoke of Him as the Man of Gold who would rescue the cities. The Egyptians call Him Horus. We all await Him.”

  One of the Sadducees, who had earlier expressed his opinion that the story of the Messias was one to comfort the masses, said, “But the Messias is of the Jews only!”

  “No,” said Marcus. “Even your own Sacred Books speak of Him as a ‘light unto the Gentiles.’ Isaias spoke so. And your wise men in the gates of Jerusalem speak of Him as imminent.”

  “Ah, the old men with the rheumy eyes and the white beards!” said the Sadducee. “They dream.”

  “The dreams of old men are the sunrise of the children,” said Marcus, and wondered why he, who had been so sick of soul, should speak like this now.

  But the Sadducee, who was mysteriously disturbed that a materialistic Roman should touch his worldly conscience with a finger of fire, said scoffingly, “Romans eat at every man’s table and reside in no man’s house of philosophy. You have originated nothing; you have only borrowed, a fragment here, an urn there, a law here, a theory from yonder dead mists, a column from a grave, a wall from a lost city, a myth from some forgotten pantheon, a goblet of water from a stream which comes from no source you know.”

  “But man persists,” said Marcus. “His empires die, but he remains. All that man knows is a synthesis of dead men’s knowledge. Did you not borrow from the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Hittites, the Babylonians, the Persians, and others of the Hebraic peoples? Your Abraham was a Babylonian, but not a Hebrew, as you are not Hebrews, though you call yourselves so, erroneously. You speak of yourselves as Jews, but that is only because your founder, Judah, son of Abraham, claimed that section of Israel now known as Judea. From whence do you come? You men like myself, who were never one with the brown Babylonians, and the dusky Egyptians who ejected you because you clung to the Faith of your Fathers and would have naught to do with local gods? And because your skin is fair?”