Emperor, p.15
Emperor, page 15
Spies probing the loyalty of the Praetorian Guard to the tyrant: no report.
Attached: a list of new elements recruited to the enemy: their arms, experience, names of commanders.
May the Augustus live for ever.
XV
Journal-Memoir of Constantine.
Suilla, 8 October
For the last three days we’ve moved among wooded hills. The road has been overlooked from many sides and it’s impossible that our advance has not been detected, For twenty miles the way followed the Metaurus valley, the river a mere trickle, and wound in and out of passes shaley with erosion. There were signs of viniculture here, but the farmers have long since gone. For an hour a day I’ve been riding with the court secretariats, receiving petitions and complaints. There’s a restful domesticity about settling the stipends for junior clerks when we may all be dead in a week.
After Luceoli the road left the river and lifted among grey boulders. Sometimes I saw my legions coiled below and was gripped again by dread at our defencelessness.
[Here follow sketches and notes on infantry formations most effective for the defence of wooded inclines.]
We entered the clouds, This afternoon they were so thick that I could see no farther than my own retinue. Synesius made learned allusions to The Clouds of Aristophanes. He inhabits a strange world. Wherever we are, he is somewhere else.
For a while I stood on a knoll with the Bishop of Cordoba, but the sight of the spear-tips in the haze below unsettled me. They looked not only threatened, but drowned. I told my standard and tribunes to precede me on the road, and the bishop and I rode out of sight of the army and talked for a few minutes. I took the opportunity of asking him about the Christians martyred under Diocletian and Galerius, and he told me, with a wary respect, that there could only be One God, and that not all the emperors had been his servants. I heartily agreed. It is sad what a perilous world these Christians live in. But when he started talking about the Christian god, I could not grasp whether there was one of him or three. Five minutes listening to doctrine, and even my horse is asleep.
I asked: “This Jesus of yours, did he marry?” I sometimes think Fausta literally haunts me.
“No, Augustus.”
I looked at his genial face, and wondered how much of my anguish was known to the court. I said: “It was you who told me that love covers many sins. Do you remember?” He inclined his head. “What do your gospels say about women?”
I noticed that his expression at once grew hot, almost angry. “They say, Augustus, that those who touch women shall have trouble in the flesh.” He flushed and went on: “They say that it’s better to marry than to burn in hell, Eternity. But they exalt celibacy.” His hands had dropped the reins of his mule and were clenched at his chest. “Augustus, in all the works of our fathers there is no commending word on sexual love.”
These words filled me with an obscure peace. But this quiet did not transfer itself to him. His voice shook a little, “Women are a corruption of the mind, Eternity! They deflect the soul from its purpose.” His neck quivered. “What is pure in love, Augustus, you will not find in that between men and women.”
The new calm went on spreading through me. I closed my eyes in the sunlight. My horse grazed. The misery of the past two weeks had dulled in me, ready to erupt again, but for the moment eased away. The army’s tramp and clinking were no louder than a stream on the other side of the knoll. The bishop subsided, afraid, I think, that he had alienated me. He said more composedly: “Even your Plato calls the body the tomb of the soul.”
I answered to reassure him: “All you say is true, bishop.”
I took off my helmet and rubbed my fingers through my hair. I felt surprised at my own peace. The clouds flooded to the horizon, and lapped at the hills under our feet. We looked towards Rome. The bishop seemed happy again and was beaming up at the sky as if it belonged to him. His confidence is contagious. This, I think, is why I can speak to him in depression. He will not accept and echo it, but meet it with optimism.
I said: “Have you ever looked down on clouds before, bishop?”
“Never, Eternity.”
I pointed at one shaped like a cat. As we discussed it, it elongated to a crocodile.
“What miracles!” the bishop said. “Everything changing, reforming! The clouds make their own hills and valleys. What a greatness it is, Augustus! And will my lord look over there” — he pointed to a grey cluster. “What is it doing? It’s bubbling like a pot! Who could look on such things and deny God?”
These suppurating clouds appeared to lie north of Rome. I don’t know what kind of omen this was. I said: “The tyrant’s committing new horrors.”
The bishop replied formally: “My lord will be victorious.”
I remembered the latest reports from Rome. I suppose I wanted the bishop’s comfort. I said: “He’s surrounded himself with Chaldean demon-worshippers and astrologers. Hosts of them. Do you know about such people?”
“They tamper with the underworld,” the bishop said. “I knew them in Spain. But I was not afraid of them.” He did not look afraid either. He was smiling. “Demons are only evil angels.”
I stared into his round face. “Angels are stronger than men.”
“But we have the cure for such evil, Augustus!” he answered ebulliently. “We are invulnerable!”
“How?”
For a moment he looked uneasy, then he edged his mule away from me a little and felt inside his robes. “With this!” he answered, and held something up. It flashed in the sun above me. I stared up at it. It was a large, silver cross. “Nothing can withstand this!” He was almost laughing with his certainty. “Not even demons which inhabit bodies! It tears them from their lairs, Augustus. It drives them even from shrines and statues!” He cradled the cross in his fat hands. I could not take my eyes from it.
But I said harshly: “What can your cross do to a tyrant? He’s set people to dig in graveyards for amulets. Every hour he recites the Seven Vowels.”
“Good, good, my lord! That means he’s afraid!” Even his mule, as it shuffled and pawed, seemed to be dancing a little with the ecstasy of this extraordinary man. “Amulets! He’s serving gods who’ve died, Eternity.”
All the time he spoke he was fondling the cross. In the declining sun it glittered against his dark robes. “The tyrant has treated with demons for years,” I said.
“Demons are not easily summoned,” the bishop answered. “And when they come they’re unpredictable. There were demons in my native city which turned and devoured their magician. Their only certain exorcism is by the cross.” It lay still and shining in his hands now. It mesmerised me.
“Why then do you conceal it in your robes?” My voice sounded bullying in spite of myself.
“Some people are afraid of it, my lord,” he said. “Godless people. Its power is known.”
I noticed how low the sun was, and turned my horse. “You may wear it if you wish,” I said.
XVI
Fausta to Marina at Nice.
[about 9 October]
I have little to tell you, dear Mari, except of endless horizons. Every time we crest a hill or spur, there is another hill or spur before us — or twenty of them. But we are half way through the Apennines towards Rome, and other news of us may reach you before this does.
What can I say? I close myself in my carriage. The soldiers, apparently, are singing lewd songs. Livilla has tried to be kind. I must be a dull friend, and I think she’s frightened.
Whenever we are moving, I open the window and look out at mountains. Sometimes gold and reddish shrubs show among the green on the hillsides, rather pretty. Today our tent was pitched by autumn crocuses of a kind you and I never found in Gaul: white, feathered with violet.
He comes occasionally to my carriage. We talk surrounded by his staff.
The road now goes through hills which are fearfully eroded. Rifts of flaking stone line some of them from top to bottom, and the valleys are full of torn-up trees. Our carriage wheels make an odd rustle on the polished stone. Several of the siege engines in front of us have broken down and were abandoned because of the speed of our march. I haven’t seen a single inhabitant for three days.
But there was one moment of beauty which pierced even this heart. Four days ago we entered a great gorge. You’ve never seen such a place. On one side, a hundred feet below, the river wound over white rocks. On the other the slopes lifted into fearful precipices. We went like mice high above the water along the flank of the cliff, which was streaked with black as if the stone were weeping. The clash of our armour was frightful. Livilla grew scared and closed her window. You could feel the nervous dancing of our horses on the rock floor. But I went on looking out.
And suddenly, as we rounded a corner, the sun struck the cliffside beyond. it rose eerie and beautiful out of its shrubs, two hundred feet above us perhaps. Rooks were flying far up in the half-light, with the river green below.
It’s terrible how I ache for something, anything, to lift me from my own littleness. And that, for a moment, is what this place achieved. How I long to feel the passion which Gaius has felt, and so despises! I wouldn’t care if it was good or evil, provided it delivered me from my eternal self-control. Just once. just for a day, an hour. I imagine your forehead frowning, Marina, and this isn’t anything I expect you to understand.
Yesterday he talked for a little longer than usual. We looked dead into one another’s eyes. Once we actually laughed at something together. But even our laughter sounded different, as if we were decorating with it, and our talk was about anything unimportant. We’re like ancient children, playing together.
XVII
Synesius, Master of the Sacred Memory and private secretary of Constantine, to Geta, Master of the Offices.
10 October
This army being like a snake, with you at its head and I, I unfortunately, in its belly, I take the liberty of sending my messenger to you.
You will have observed the unease of the Augustus, and will have recognised from what it springs. I would respectfully suggest the following:
1. That the more disturbing reports from Rome, especially those relating to the magic arts et cetera of the tyrant, be deferred for the time being, since they cannot bear practically on the decisions of the August’s.
2. That reports on the health of the Empress, which is manifestly insecure, be forwarded to the Augustus by the imperial physician.
XVIII
Geta to Synesius.
[By return messenger]
The interests of the state will not be served by averting our eyes from facts. Few men would agree with you that the magic practices of the tyrant may not bear on our circumstances. Nor is it my custom to suppress anything which His Eternity wishes to know.
The reports of the imperial physician do not fall within my department.
XIX
Commonplace Book of Synesius.
Mevania, 12 October
We are ruled by madmen. Every officer in the army seems to mutter protective gibberish, and now even Geta is infected. The closer we draw to Rome the more bedevilled and bedemoned we become. As for the priests, a mouse cannot squeak in the Umbrian woods without its being ominously interpreted. Very soon the motions of an eagle or a woodlouse will redirect the whole campaign.
For several days we have marched through upland valleys, lightly farmed for rye. Unlike the towns in the eastern Apennines, which had been deserted in fear, these ones are surprised altogether by our arrival, and their people cluster in the doorways to watch us, with women and children unafraid. Our quartermaster has paid for the food and fodder requisitioned from them — all through the valleys their barns are full — and the Augustus deals sternly with any of our men found marauding, and savagely with those convicted of rape.
Yesterday evening, while I was riding with the imperial staff, we reached Forum Flaminii where the road bifurcates. The townsmen lined the streets and stared at us curiously, not knowing which the Emperor was and making no obeisance. I told Constantine about the emperors slain here by the pretender Aemilianus sixty years ago, and either because of this, or to obtain an augury on the road, he made sacrifice. I was standing close to him as he did so, and I observed how grim he looked. He killed the offering himself, but his hand shook with the knife and when he dedicated it he did not cry “To our Comrade, the Sun Invincible” as he used, but simply said rather quietly: “To the Great God.” Nothing more.
This afternoon we reached Mevania and I saw again, for the first time since my youth, the soft flood of the Clitumnus idling through its trees. This is the river, sacred to our fathers, which carries the merchandise of the plains in small boats to Rome. So we have entered at last the watershed of the Tiber. The whiteness of the cattle on the banks, some say, derives from the purity of the waters by which they pasture a pretty legend — and I could not look at it without nostalgia. How many afternoons I remember, strolling among its cypresses as a student and talking philosophy with friends long dead! Plotinus, Porphyry the New Cynics — such earnest, hopeful times! I could scarcely bear to witness our legionaries gouging out earthworks for their night camp all along the green glades. I’m becoming a sentimental old man. After all, what did that Neoplatonist talk amount to? Pretentious humbug!
To the perplexity of his staff and the panic of his physician, the Augustus plunged naked into the river’s cold waters, and remained swimming for a long time. If this was done for cleanliness, I sympathise. The sweat of armoured men is appalling; you’d think our smell must precede us by fifty stadia, and vitiate any chances of surprise. But the Augustus could have cleaned himself better in the public baths of Mevania, as I did. No, I think his motive for immersing himself in these purifying waters was very different. I stood a little downriver from his staff, watching him, and he swam with a rapt preoccupation, not noticing their anxiety. When he moved close to me I saw that his eyes were closed, as if he were asleep. But as he came near the bank he suddenly looked up and demanded in his blunt way, as if we were talking in his tent: “Have you sent my message to the Empress?”
His face looked pared and unfamiliar below me, with its hair flattened and beard plastered against his cheeks. “I have, Eternity,” I answered.
He grunted and swam away. What was in the grunt I don’t know, but I think I heard relief. Every evening he sends her a curt enquiry after her health — a substitute for seeing her. Since I ride not far from the Empress’ carriage, I’ve noticed how they never converse for more than five minutes. Once I was close enough to see his expression as he talked, and I thought he watched her with a kind of appalled fascination, as a man watches a snake. She has grown thinner and paler, and closes the window of the carruca whenever we halt. Sometimes I’ve glimpsed her before her tent is set up, pacing over the grass like a cat; but more likely one sees only the Lady Politta, mincing about with a depleted train of servants. It is clear to me now that the Augustus and the Empress, whatever they may believe, are fatally attached to one another. She, for some reason, has suppressed this. He has argued himself away from it. Theirs is the reciprocal yearning of two people utterly unlike. However much they rage or confess, they will always remain ignorant of one another, and such ignorance will be tinged with respect.
The Augustus climbed from the river with the same drugged movements as those of his swimming, and was rubbed down on the bank by slaves. It was now dusk. I walked among the trees, remembering foolish things, and enjoyed the sleek waters and the wakening stars. My own past used not to interest me, but nowadays I sometimes find myself speculating on it, as if it was somebody else’s, and recall a young man named Synesius, who seems too ugly and pedantic to have been me. Forty years ago my friends called me ‘Scorpion’, because I was small, dry and stinging. I wonder: do we have no power to change ourselves at all? Sometimes in those days I wanted to fling my arms about and speak hugely and irresponsibly. (I would have been more attractive to women that way.) Why did I never do it?
I noticed lamps shining among the cypresses, and went quietly. Some thirty soldiers were squatting in a clearing. I thought I must have stumbled on a rite of Mithras, because the men were holding hands. Then I saw the Bishop of Cordoba sitting amongst them, cradling a loaf like a baby and beaming in his fatuous way as if this circle of half-wits was the senate of Rome. I did not care to approach nearer, but they were evidently starting one of their sacramental meals. I heard disconnected phrases chorused through the trees. “. . . For life and knowledge . . . slain for us . . . in remembrance. . . .” just as the worshippers of Dionysus gnaw bulls’ flesh hoping to imbibe the strength of Zeus, so do these Christians, with the followers of Attis and the rest, eat the flesh and drink the blood of their god to gain his strength. Doubtless, like all other gods, his blood will be sucked until he is withered and forgotten; but it pains me to think that our army brings nothing finer to Rome than these stagnant orientalisms.
As I walked back along the river I remembered the talk of the Divine and of Matter which my friends and I had exchanged so fervently along these banks. That talk, at least, sprang from free minds. We may have been pedants, but we were not slaves. For any rational man the truth of Christianity was long ago demolished by Porphyry. But then there are no rational men any more. They are all mystics and fools.
XX
Journal-Memoir of Constantine.
Mevania, 12 October
We reached Mevania by early evening. The air was full of a presaging heaviness, and I made sacrifice. I could not tell what this atmosphere meant, only that it clustered thick about us and that the whole land was quiet For the first time in many days we entered a town which had been abandoned. The noise of our marching intruded like a blasphemy, and I had the soldiers pitch camp beyond the walls.
I made a routine inspection of the bridge over the Clitumnus, and crossed back as the sun was falling. The sacred river glided among trees; even the cattle on the banks are white with its purity. I looked, its surface darkened and shone, as if some hand were smoothing the waters in flowing circles of light. It was very tranquil.
