Текст книги "Empire"

Автор книги: Steven Saylor

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

Lucius found himself at the back of the crowd; he could not have pushed his way to the front if he had wanted to. There was nothing to see, at least at first. The beginning of the ceremony took place out of sight, within the House of the Vestals. That was where Cornelia would be relieved of her vitta and her suffibulum, stripped naked, and scourged with rods while the Pontifex Maximus, the other Vestals, and the assembled priests of the state religion watched. Then she would be dressed as a corpse and placed in a closed, black litter, with restraints on her limbs and a gag over her mouth, and the litter would be carried aloft, like a funeral bier, through the streets.

The crowd awaiting the appearance of the funeral litter grew restless. Some the women began to keen and tear out their hair. Some of the men muttered curses against the guilty Vestal. Some made obscene jokes, smirking and laughing. A few dared to speculate that the Vestal might be innocent, despite the judgement of the Pontifex Maximus, for it was said that she had comported herself with utmost dignity throughout her trial and that not one of the condemned men had spoken against her.

At last, preceded by musicians with rattles and pipes, the funeral litter appeared. Black curtains concealed the occupant, but the knowledge that a living woman was inside – the Virgo Maxima herself, known to everyone because of her appearances at religious rites and at the amphitheatre – caused people to shudder and gasp.

The procession passed at a stately pace through the Forum, then entered the Subura, heading for the Colline Gate. This was the very route, thought Lucius, that his father had taken with Nero on their final journey out of Roma.

The procession moved slowly down the narrow street. Oppressed by the crush of people, Lucius left the route and took other streets to arrive ahead of the procession at an open area just inside the old Servian Walls. Here the crowd had only begun to gather and Lucius was able to find a place near the front. There was not much to see – only a hole in the ground from which a ladder protruded, and next to it a pile of freshly dug earth. This was the opening, normally covered over, to the underground vault that had existed since the time of Tarquinius Priscus, in which, for centuries, condemned Vestals had been interred and left to die.

How large was the chamber, and how deep underground? No one knew except the very few officials of the state religion who had seen it. It was said to contain a cot, a lamp with a little oil, a few scraps of food, and a pitcher with a bit of water – cruel gestures of welcome and comfort for a victim doomed to starve to death in darkness. Presumably the vault was quite small, but for all Lucius knew it extended under his feet. He might be standing over the very spot where Cornelia would breathe her last.

What became of the previous Vestals who died in this place? Were their remains ever removed, or were they left in the chamber on grisly display for each new victim to see? If that was true, the chamber would house the remains of every Vestal who had been condemned to die there. Cornelia would be made to see exactly what was to become of her and to contemplate the company she was joining, and to realize that her own remains would be there for the next condemned Vestal to see. Lucius found himself imagining the scene in horrifying detail, unable to think of anything else.

At last he heard the sound of horns and rattles, along with cries and moans of lamentation. The procession was approaching.

The crowd grew thick around him, but Lucius stayed where he was, determined to be as close to Cornelia as possible.

At last the funeral litter arrived, surrounded by a great many lictors to hold back the crowd and keep order and followed by the Vestals and numerous priests. Among them was Domitian, wearing the toga of the Pontifex Maximus with its many folds gathered and tucked in a loop just above his waist and the cowl pulled over his head, casting his face in shadow. Near him was Catullus, dressed in black and guided by a boy who held his hand.

The litter was placed on a platform near the opening. The bearers drew back. Priests opened the curtains, undid the straps that held Cornelia in place, and removed the gag from her mouth. They roughly pulled her from the litter onto her feet.

Cornelia stood before the crowd, dressed not in her linen vestments but in a simple stola made of black wool. The sight of a Vestal without her headdress was startling, even shocking. Without her suffibulum her uncommonly short hair was visible to all. To see her that way, in public, knowing all eyes were on her, made Lucius’s face turn hot. The sight of her short hair had been his exclusive privilege; now all Roma saw her that way. The indignity was as obscene as if she had been stripped naked. Some in the crowd dared to jeer at her. Without her vestments she was no longer a priestess but a mere woman, and a fallen woman at that, a wicked creature deserving a horrible death.

Domitian put an end to the jeering. Lictors with rods quickly moved into the crowd, striking anyone who failed to maintain the proper decorum.

Cornelia was expected to walk the short distance from the litter to the opening in the ground by herself. She did so with halting steps. Her body was stiff. She seemed to be in pain. Lucius knew that she had been beaten with rods and wondered what sort of wounds and bruises were concealed by her black stola.

She reached the opening and looked down at the ladder that descended to the vault. She swayed and jerked, like a reed blown by a wind. She looked upwards and stared at the sky. She raised her hands.

“Vesta!” she shouted. “You know I never betrayed you. While I served in your temple the sacred flame never wavered.”

“Silence!” cried Domitian.

Cornelia lowered her eyes and gazed at the crowd, looking from face to face. “Caesar says I am guilty of impurity, but my conduct of Vesta’s rituals was immaculate. Every one of his victories, every triumph he celebrated, is proof of the goddess’s favour.”

Domitian signalled to one of the lictors, who moved towards Cornelia. If she would not step onto the ladder and begin the descent of her own volition, she would be forced to do so. When the man reached out to grab her arm, she shrugged him off. It was only a slight movement, but the lictor recoiled violently, as if he had been struck.

“Cornelia never touched him!” cried a woman in the crowd. “It was the hand of the goddess that threw him back!”

“See how calm she is, how dignified,” said someone else.

His heart racing, Lucius dared to raise his voice. “Perhaps she’s innocent after all, if Vesta allows no man to touch her!”

It made no difference. The crowd ignored these scattered protests.

Cornelia stepped onto the ladder and took hold of it with trembling hands. She took a step down, and then another, until she was visible only from the waist up. It was all Lucius could do not to call to her. Despite his silence, she seemed to sense his presence. She paused and turned her head. She looked straight at him.

She moved her lips, mouthing silent words intended only for him: “Forgive me.”

Cornelia took another step, and another, then vanished from sight. The crowd let out a collective groan. Men shook their heads and shuddered. Women dropped to their knees and wailed.

While she descended, the ladder moved slightly, relaying the vibration of her steps. Then the ladder was still. Lictors stepped forward and pulled it from the hole. The ladder was a long one; the vault was many feet underground. A large, flat stone was placed over the opening. The mound of earth was spread over the stone and pounded with mallets until the ground was even and no sign remained of the opening.

The new Virgo Maxima, with averted eyes and a trembling voice, stood on the spot and uttered a prayer to Vesta, asking the goddess to forgive the people of Roma for allowing such a breach of piety and to restore her favour to the city. The Pontifex Maximus and his retinue began to withdraw. Catullus was the last to leave, led off by the boy. It seemed to Lucius that there was a smile on the man’s gaunt face.

The crowd gradually dispersed, until only Lucius remained. He stared at the place where the opening had been. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. Cornelia had been swallowed by the earth. Yet he knew she must be still alive, still breathing.

Why was Lucius still alive?

Lucius knew the answer. He had been saved by a quirk of fate. The Master and God of the world, who saw enemies everywhere and executed men without reason, who watched thousands die in the arena without mercy, had been swayed by a sentimental whim. Earinus was the one human being for whom Domitian felt any semblance of love; when Earinus sang in the black room, Lucius had wept. For that reason alone, Domitian had spared him.

Lucius had been saved by a tear. The absurdity of it only deepened his despair.

He thought of Cornelia’s final words: “Forgive me.” He was alive and unscathed, a free man. For his affair with Cornelia he had suffered no consequence whatsoever. For what should he forgive Cornelia? It made no sense, yet he was certain that she had mouthed the words forgive me.

What did it mean?

AD 93

Reclining in the shade of his garden on a hot afternoon in the month of Augustus, Lucius reflected on the unexpected path his life had taken over the last two years.

The punishment of Cornelia had marked a low point in his life. Existence had lost all meaning. His taste for life had vanished. Nothing brought him pleasure. Was he in pain? If so, his pain was not a sharp agony – a reminder that he was alive – but a dull, hollow sensation, like a foretaste of death. He was stripped of all emotion. He did not loathe the world or hate the people in it; he felt nothing.

Now, all that had changed. His time of utmost despair was in the past. Once again he was able to take enjoyment from simple pleasures – the bright colours and sweet fragrances of flowers in his garden, the cheerful songs of birds, the humming of bees, the warm sunshine on his face, the cooling breeze on his fingertips. He was alive again – fully alive, not merely existing, experiencing each moment as it occurred. He was conscious of himself and accepting of the world in which he lived. He had attained a state of contentment that he had never before thought possible.

His newfound peace was due to one man: the Teacher.

What had his life been like before he met the Teacher? Lucius recalled his frequent visits to the house of Epaphroditus over the years. Friendship had been the main reason for those visits, but he had also been seeking wisdom. But after the death of Cornelia, Martial’s wit no longer amused him, and Lucius found the poet’s ties to the emperor intolerable. The philosophy of Epictetus seemed bland and insubstantial. Nor did the letters Lucius received from Dio convey any sense of enlightenment. Lucius’s visits to the house of Epaphroditus grew less and less frequent. The unanswered letters from Dio piled up on the table in his study.

Yet, even at the deepest point of his despair, Lucius had continued to seek comfort and enlightenment. Turning away from his circle of friends, for a while he had studied the more esoteric modes of belief available to a curious man in Roma. Of these, there were a great many; every cult in the empire eventually found adherents and proselytizers in Roma. As Epaphroditus had once told him, people were capable of believing anything; the startling array of religions practised in the city was proof of that. Lucius even investigated the much-despised cult of the Christians, of which his uncle Kaeso had been a member, but found it no more interesting than any of the other cults.

He had also made a study of astrology, since so many people held such store by it. But the fatalistic nature of it had only made him more despondent. The astrologers taught that every aspect of a man’s life was determined in advance by powers unimaginably larger than himself; within that predestined fate a man had very little leeway to affect the course of his life. What was the point of knowing that a certain day was ill-omened if one could do nothing to reverse the tide of events? A man could hope to propitiate a temperamental god, but nothing could be done to alter the influence of the stars – if indeed such an influence existed. For although wiser men than himself considered astrology a science and devoted great study to it, Lucius was unimpressed by all the charts derived from ancient texts and the endless tables full of esoteric symbols. He had a uneasy suspicion that astrology was a fraud. Certainly, astrologers had carefully observed the heavens and had learned to predict the movements of the celestial bodies with considerable accuracy, but the rest of the so-called science – determining precisely how those celestial bodies affected human existence – seemed a mere invention to Lucius, a compendium of nonsense contrived by men who understood no more about the secret workings of the universe than did anyone else.

Philosophy, exotic religions, astrology – Lucius had been open to them all, but none had provided him with any sense of purpose or enlightenment. None had relieved the emptiness he felt at the core of his being.

Then, he met the Teacher, and everything changed.

It happened on the first anniversary of the day Cornelia was buried alive.

For a long time Lucius had been dreading that day, knowing that when it arrived he would be able to think of nothing else. That morning he woke early. He had no appetite. He put on a plain tunic and left his house. For hours he walked aimlessly all over the city, lost in memories. Eventually he found himself standing before the house on the Esquiline where he had met with Cornelia so many times over the years. He had sold the house, quickly and for less than its value, only a few days after her interment, thinking that he would never want to step inside it again. Now he stood before it in the street, longing to go in, to stand in the vestibule and remember the sight of her face across the room, to smell again the jasmine in the small garden where they had made love.

The door of the house opened. A mother and her young daughter stepped out, followed by a slave carrying a basket for a trip to the markets. The spell was broken, and Lucius moved on.

Inevitably, he found himself at the Colline Gate, standing exactly where he had stood when he saw her last, before the entrance to the sealed underground chamber. In his hand he held a single rose, the symbol of love, and also of secrecy. He could not remember where he had gotten it; he must have bought it from a vendor. He clutched it so carelessly that a thorn had pricked his palm; he did not feel the wound, but saw a trickle of blood run down his fingers.

The moment felt unreal, dream-like. He found himself kneeling at the very spot where the stone had been covered over. As one might place a garland on a sepulchre, he placed the rose on the beaten earth. Blood dripped from his fingers.

A shadow fell across him. He imagined that he had been observed by some disapproving magistrate and that a lictor stood over him. But the outline of the shadow was not that of a soldier. He looked up to see a small man with a long white beard. The sun was directly behind the man’s head, making his unruly hair into a wispy halo. His features were surprisingly youthful for a man with snow-white hair, and deeply tanned – the sunburned face of a traveller, or a man without a home. His eyes were bright blue and appeared to sparkle; later, Lucius would realized this was impossible, since the sun was behind the man’s head and his face was in shadow. From whence came the light that emanated from his eyes? This was Lucius’s first indication that the man who stood over him was more than an ordinary mortal.

“You’re suffering, my friend,” said the man.

“Yes.” Lucius saw no point in denying it.

“Such suffering is like a flower that blooms. It opens all at once and engages all our senses, but soon enough it fades and falls away. You will remember it always, but it will no longer be present before you. Take heart, my friend, for the time when your suffering will fade and fall away is very near.”

“Who are you?” Lucius frowned. He was still on his knees. Anyone seeing him now would assume that he was kneeling to honour the man before him, despite the fact that the man was barefoot and dressed like a beggar, wearing a threadbare, ragged tunic. Strangely, the idea did not displease Lucius. He stayed on his knees.

“My name is Apollonius. I come from Tyana. Do you know where that is?”

“In Cappadocia, I think.”

“That is correct. Have you heard of me?”

“No.”

“Good. Those who have heard of Apollonius of Tyana often have certain preconceptions about me, which I am not interested in fulfilling. What is your name, friend?”

“Lucius Pinarius. Are you some sort of wise man?” Cappadocia, with its weird desert cities carved from rock, was famous for breeding hermits and seers.

The man laughed. The sound was very pleasant. “I am whatever people choose to call me. When you know me better, Lucius Pinarius, you will decide what I am.”

“Why are you talking to me?”

“All men suffer, but no man should suffer in secret, as you do.”

“What do you know of my suffering?”

“You loved a person whom law and religion decreed you should not love, and her separation from you has caused you much pain.”

Lucius gasped. “How can you know this?”

The man smiled. There was no mockery in his smile, only gentleness. “I suppose I could put on airs of mystery and pretend that the stories about me are true – that I can read men’s minds, that I have occult means of gaining knowledge – but the truth is much simpler. I’m a visitor to Roma. Before this morning I never passed though this particular neighbourhood, but even a casual visitor will quickly be told by the locals what happened on this spot a year ago. When I observed a man standing here, clutching a rose and staring for a long time at the ground, I knew you must have had some relationship with the Vestal who was buried here. When you knelt and placed the rose so carefully, heedless of your own bleeding wound, I knew you must have loved her. Anyone with eyes could have seen this, but in such a busy spot, where everyone is passing by in such a hurry, I alone observed your suffering.”

“Who are you?” said Lucius.

“You asked me that already. I am Apollonius of Tyana.”

“No, I mean-”

“Here, why don’t you stand, my friend?” Apollonius offered his hand. “Let’s take a walk.”

Lucius said little. He listened to Apollonius, who spoke of his travels. Apollonius talked about these journeys in an offhand way, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for a man to have gone to Egypt to learn what the priests there could teach him about the hieroglyphs on the ancient tombs, and to Ethiopia to meet the naked sages who live at the source of the Nile, and even all the way to India to consort with the fabled wise men of the Ganges.

A light rain began to fall. They had wandered into an area of fine homes on the Quirinal Hill. Lucius was looking for a tavern or eatery where they might take refuge when Apollonius noticed that the door of a nearby house was open. He cocked his head.

“Do you hear that?” he said.

“I hear nothing,” said Lucius.

“No? I distinctly hear the sound of weeping, coming from that house.” Apollonius walked towards the open door.

“What are you doing?” said Lucius.

“Going inside. Where there is weeping, there is need for comfort.”

“Do you know these people?”

“I’ve never been on this street before in my life. But all streets and all people are the same. Once a man knows that, he is a stranger nowhere.”

Apollonius stepped inside the house. Against his better judgement, Lucius followed him.

Beyond the vestibule, in the atrium, a drizzling rain fell from the open skylight into a shallow pool. Beyond the pool, on the tile floor, lay the body of a young woman. She wore a white bridal gown with a purple sash around her waist. Gathered around the body were several women, all dressed for a wedding. They looked stunned. Some quietly wept. Farther back stood a group of men who looked helpless and confused.

How had Apollonius heard the sound of the women weeping, when Lucius had not? For an old man, his hearing was very acute, thought Lucius.

Apollonius looked down at the young woman. “Is this her wedding day?” he said.

One of the kneeling women looked up. There was an expression of shock on her face. “Yes. This is my daughter’s wedding day – and the gods see fit to strike her down!”

“What happened?” said Apollonius.

The woman shook her head. “We were organizing the procession to set out for the bridegroom’s house. We were in her room and I was tying the sash around her waist, and she complained I was pulling too tight. She said she couldn’t breathe. But the sash wasn’t too tight; I slipped a finger under it to show her. Still, she couldn’t catch her breath. She said her face felt hot. A servant told us it was raining. Without a word she pulled away from me and ran here, to the pool. I thought she wanted to cool her face. I told her she mustn’t get her gown wet, and then… she collapsed. She fell, just as you see her now.”

“Perhaps she only sleeps.”

“She has no heartbeat! She isn’t breathing!”

“Alas,” whispered Apollonius. He looked intently at the girl, then at the huddled women. He waved his hands before him – to get their attention, Lucius thought, but then the old man continued to move his hands, making signs in the air. Apollonius had the full attention of everyone in the room, including the men who stood farther back. They all stared at him. The women who had been weeping were now silent.

“Stand back,” said Apollonius.

Without a word, the women drew back. Apollonius circled the pool and knelt beside the girl. He put one hand on her forehead and passed the other hand over her body, not touching her. He whispered inaudible words.

Apollonius snapped his fingers. In the quiet room, where the only other sound was the fall of drizzling raindrops on the pool, the noise echoed like the breaking of a small branch. He paused, then snapped his finger twice more.

The girl shuddered, drew a deep breath, and let out a sigh. She opened her eyes, “Where am I?” she said.

Her mother cried out. The women gasped, uttered exclamations of thanksgiving, and shed tears of relief.

Some of the men began to weep as well. One of them stepped forward.

“Stranger, you brought my daughter back to life!” The man was giddy with joy.

“Your daughter is indeed alive, but I am no stranger. I am Apollonius of Tyana.”

“How did you work such a miracle? What god did you call upon?”

Apollonius shrugged. “I merely spoke to your daughter. ‘Awake, young woman!” I said. ‘The rain is about to stop, and you shall be late for your wedding. Breathe deeply and awake!’ And then, as you saw, she woke. What girl wants to be late for her own wedding?”

“But how can I repay you? Here, you must take these.” The father fetched a pair of drinking cups. “Solid silver,” he said, “decorated with bits of lapis. And not just any lapis, but the special variety flecked with gold that comes only from Bactria.”

“The workmanship is exquisite,” said Apollonius.

“They were to be a gift to my daughter and her new husband. But here, I want you to have them.”

Apollonius laughed. “What use have I for cups, when I never drink wine?”

“Drink water from them, then!” The man grinned. “Or sell them. Buy yourself a tunic with no holes in it!”

Apollonius shrugged. “A few more holes in this garment, and I shall be as splendidly arrayed as the naked sages of Ethiopia.”

The man looked puzzled but was so happy that he burst out laughing.

“I see that your daughter is on her feet again,” said Apollonius. “Go to her. She won’t be yours for much longer. You should enjoy every precious moment.”

“Precious, indeed!” said the man. “How precious I never knew until this day. Thank you, Apollonius of Tyana! May the gods bless you!” The man joined his wife, who was making a great fuss over their daughter.

Amid the hubbub, Apollonius discreetly withdrew. Lucius followed. On the way out, they passed a young Vestal who was just arriving to take her place in the procession. The sight of her sent a chill through Lucius. In the street he had to pause to collect himself. Apollonius stood by, observing him with a sympathetic smile.

“I don’t understand what happened in there,” Lucius finally said. “Was the girl dead or not?”

“Ah, wedding days! They bring out a great deal of emotion in people.”

“Are you saying they only imagined she was dead?”

Apollonius shrugged. “I suspect they were less observant than they might have been. People often are. Did you notice, for example, how the women near the misty drizzle exuded a faint but visible vapour with each exhalation?”

“Are you saying you observed such a vapour coming from the girl’s nostrils?”

“I saw what there was to see. My eyes see no more and no less than those of other men.”

Lucius raised an eyebrow. “You did something with your hands. They all watched. Did you bewitch them somehow?”

“I made them take notice of me, and when I asked them to move aside, they did so. Does that sound like magic to you?”

Lucius crossed his arms. “Those cups he offered you were quite beautiful. Quite valuable, too, I imagine.”

“I had no use for them.”

“Nonsense! As the man said, you could have sold them. Those cups would have paid for three months’ lodging in a nice apartment on the Aventine.”

“But I never pay for lodging.”

“No?”

“I always stay with friends.”

“Who are you staying with now?”

“With you, of course!” Apollonius laughed.

His laughter was infectious. Lucius felt his suspicions of the man fade away. He began to laugh, too, and realized that it was the first time he had done so in more than a year.

So began his relationship with the Teacher.

Apollonius did not ask Lucius to call him the Teacher; that was Lucius’s decision. As Apollonius told him at their first meeting, “I am whatever people choose to call me… you will decide what I am.”

Apollonius was not a teacher in any traditional way. He did not cite authorities and recite from texts, as Lucius’s boyhood tutors had done. He did not construct edifices of logic leading to rational conclusions, like Epictetus did. He did not tell stories that led to some moral or theological conclusion, like the man-god of the Christians did. He did not create charts and diagrams or write long treatises, like the astrologers did. And he certainly claimed no special status for himself or any special connection to the gods, as did the priests of the state religion. Apollonius simply rose from his bed each morning and went about his day. He visited old friends and made new ones. By the example of his behaviour, he showed that a man could move through the world without vanity or fear, never showing anger or despair, envious of no one, wanting for nothing.

When asked, Apollonius would state his opinions and preferences, but he never expounded on these to offer proof, and he never insisted that others should agree with him. He professed to believe in the gods, but only as shadowy manifestations of a higher, all-encompassing principle, and he claimed no special relationship with this principle beyond that which belonged to all living things, which were equally a part of the Divine Unity and had equal access to the blessings that radiated, like sunshine, from that being. “I am to that deity as I am to the sun, and so are you,” he would say. “I am no closer than you; it warms me no more than it warms you; it sheds no more light before me. Its blessing are for all, equally and in endless abundance.”

Often, it seemed to Lucius that Apollonius behaved in ways contradictory to what other men called common sense. When Lucius would question these seemingly perverse actions, Apollonius would patiently explain himself; even so, Lucius could not always understand the Teacher’s words. But Lucius was ceaselessly amazed by the Teacher’s unfailing equanimity, and he came to trust the man implicitly. Even when Lucius could not follow Apollonius’s reasoning, he strove to emulate the Teacher as best he could, and to accept on faith that a fuller understanding might someday come to him.

Apollonius did not drink wine. Intoxication did not bring a man closer to the deity, he said, but interposed a veil of illusion. Lucius followed his example.

Apollonius did not eat meat, saying that all life was sacred, including that of animals. Nor did he wear anything made from an animal; there were no scraps of leather, bones, or ivory on his person. Lucius followed this example as well, and, like Apollonius, he came to see the slaying of animals as no different from the slaying of men. Men did not kill other men for food or for hides; nor should they kill animals. And just as civilized men had long ago given up the religious practice of human sacrifice, so it was time for men to give up animal sacrifice; the slaying of a beast could be no more pleasing to the gods than the slaying of a child. As for the killing of animals in the arena for sport, that was sheer cruelty and, if anything, was worse than the killing of humans for sport, for the animals did not possess speech and could not beg for mercy. Lucius, who had enjoyed hunting all his life, gave it up.

Apollonius did not engage in sexual intimacy with others, which he called an illusion and a trap; fleeting moments of pleasure led only to endless agitation and suffering. Lucius asked him if copulation was not a virtue, since it was necessary for procreation. Apollonius, who believed in reincarnation, replied, “What is the virtue of creating more human beings, and thus more mortal life, and thus more suffering? If there were to be no more human beings, eventually the population would vanish, and would that be a bad thing? If we possess spirits, those spirits will still exist; they will simply be freed from the onerous process of transmigrating from body to body, wearing out one after another, endlessly suffering the pains of mortal decay. With or without humanity as we know it, the Divine Unity will continue to exist. This sentimental attachment to creating endless replicas of ourselves is yet another illusion, another trap. Procreation only perpetuates the cycle of suffering. There is no virtue in it. It is a vice.”