Текст книги "Empire"

Автор книги: Steven Saylor

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Текущая страница: 41 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

Without a word, Hadrian left the room. Suetonius and Favonius and the rest followed after him, but Apollodorus stayed where he was. He sipped his wine and gazed at the model, shaking head.

“Father-in-law, what have you done?” said Marcus.

Apollodorus shrugged. “He asked me what I thought, and I told him. Better now than later. He may yet be able to salvage something from this folly.”

“Father-in-law, do you imagine you’re so important – do you think the emperor is so unfeeling-”

Apollodorus waved his hand dismissively. “If you have nothing intelligent to say, Pygmalion, go home and change my grandson’s diapers.”

Marcus hurried after the others. He hoped to find the emperor laughing and joking with his friends in the gallery, making light of Apollodorus’s comments. But as Marcus caught up with the retinue, he saw that Hadrian’s attention had been claimed by a most unseemly sight: two naked, middleaged men, one on each side of the gallery, were furiously rubbing their backs against protruding corners, just as the impoverished veteran had done earlier.

Apparently, word of the emperor’s kindness to the veteran had spread, and these two were hoping to elicit a similarly generous response. Hadrian angrily seized one of the men by the shoulders and pushed him towards the other, then called to his bodyguards.

“If these fellows need a backrub so badly, let them rub each other. Tie them together, back-to-back. Let them they stay that way for the rest of the day, as an example to anyone who presumes to make a fool of Caesar.”

Hadrian walked away at a fast clip. Marcus followed him for a while, then gradually slowed his pace and came to a stop, watching as the emperor and his retinue receded in the distance, listening to the echo of their footsteps down the long gallery.

AD 122

“Don’t stack those stones here,” said Marcus. “Can’t you see there’s more digging to be done? Stack them over there!”

The workmen charged with enlarging the basement of the Temple of Venus and Roma were probably the stupidest Marcus had ever dealt with, and he had dealt with some very stupid workers. These fellows did not have even the excuse of being slaves; they were all skilled stoneworkers. Hadrian had insisted that only artisans of a certain calibre be employed at each stage of the temple’s construction, including the enlargement of the basement.

How had it fallen to Marcus to oversee the project? It was a matter of attrition, he thought. He had done nothing to rise in the emperor’s favour; rather, those of greater experience and standing had lost the emperor’s favour, one by one, until Marcus had found himself called on to manage the work on the Temple of Venus and Roma while Hadrian was away from the city on his tour of the northern provinces. It was a great honour, but at this early stage there was nothing challenging about it and certainly nothing that called on his skills as an artist. Essentially, the temple was still just a hole in the ground, and at Hadrian’s decree that hole was being made larger.

“I spend my days with idiots in a hole in the ground,” Marcus muttered, shaking his head.

The slave who assisted him at the site each day – running errands, carrying messages, taking dictation – was a red-headed Macedonian named Amyntas. The youth scurried down the ladder and approached him.

“Master, your wife has come to visit you.”

“Did she bring my son with her again?”

“Yes, Master.”

Marcus sighed. How many times had he asked Apollodora not to visit him at the work site, and especially not to bring the baby? Even on the best of days, accidents happened – a cart stacked with stones might spill its load, or a carpenter with a sweaty hand might send a hammer flying through the air. But Apollodora was truly the daughter of her father; she would do as she pleased.

Marcus decided that the workmen could restack the stones without his supervision. He climbed up the ladder, secretly glad for a chance to get out of the hole and breathe some fresh air.

A little distance away, with the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Colossus for a backdrop, Apollodora sat on a pile of neatly stacked bricks. Nearby, one of her slaves was holding little Lucius in her arms, cooing to him. Apollodora did not look happy.

“Has something happened?” asked Marcus.

“Two letters arrived for you,” she said, producing the little scrolls. “Brought by separate messengers.”

“Did you read them?” said Marcus, frowning.

“Of course not! That’s why I’m here.”

He understood. She wanted to know what was in the letters.

She handed him the first letter. The seal was familiar. Marcus himself had carved the carnelian stone in Apollodorus’s ring; when pressed into the sealing wax, it left an image of Trajan’s Column.

“This is from your father,” he said. “You could have opened it, if you wished.”

Apollodora shook her head. “I was too nervous. You read it, husband, and tell me what he says.”

The letter had come from Damascus, where Apollodorus had been living for several months. Technically, Hadrian had not banished Apollodorus from Roma, but the imperial order that assigned him to an indefinite posting in his native city amounted to the same thing. Apollodorus had no desire to return to Damascus. Officially, Hadrian had claimed that he needed a builder with Apollodorus’s experience to oversee repairs to the Roman garrison, but the posting was clearly a punishment.

In the letter, Apollodorus made no complaints and said nothing that might be construed as criticism of the emperor. Perhaps, Marcus thought, his father-in-law’s exile had at last taught him to choose his words carefully. Marcus skipped over the formalities and found the gist of the letter, which he read aloud to Apollodora.

“‘You know that I am most eager to return to Roma, so that I can resume my work on the Luna statue and serve the emperor to my fullest capacity on any other projects that may please him. Towards that end, in my spare time – of which I sadly have too much here – I have composed a treatise on siege engines. This treatise I dedicated to the emperor. I sent him the first copy, with a note to express my hope that this small contribution to the science of war might meet with his approval. Though I sent this copy to him some months ago, I have not heard back from him. If you have any way to discover whether the emperor received this offering, and what he thought of it, I should be grateful if you could let me know, sonin-law…’”

Marcus scanned the rest of the letter. Apollodorus described a sandstorm that had swept through the city, made some wry comments about Damascene cuisine (“goat, goat, and more goat”), and noted that unrest among the Jews throughout the region seemed to be on the rise again. Attached to the letter was a scrap of parchment upon which Apollodorus had drawn his latest version of the Luna statue.

“Poor father,” said Apollodora. “He’s so miserable.”

“He doesn’t say that.”

“Because he’s afraid to. That’s the saddest thing of all.”

Marcus had to agree. His father-in-law’s vanity and bombast had sometimes been difficult to take, but Marcus cringed to see the once-proud man reduced to the status of a miscreant servant, desperate to return to the emperor’s good graces.

“What’s the other letter?” Marcus said.

Apollodora handed it to him. It bore the imperial seal in red wax, and the parchment was of the high quality that Hadrian always used when corresponding with Marcus, which he did quite often, using the new imperial postal service, which was far quicker and more reliable than the piecemeal system it replaced.

Marcus broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. The letter came from a far northern outpost in Britannia. He quickly scanned the letter for any mention of his father-in-law, but saw none.

As usual, Hadrian inquired about progress on the temple and offered highly detailed instructions on how the work was to be carried out. He described his tour of Gaul and Britannia, which had succeeded in making him known to the legions with whom he had previously had no contact. Hadrian relished his reputation as a soldier’s soldier, able to endure hardship alongside his troops; like Trajan, he was not afraid to sleep on the ground, march for days, ford rivers, and climb mountains. He also included a few sketches he had made, studies for a massive wall that would cross the entire breadth of the island of Britannia at its narrowest point. To man this fortified wall he would need at least fifteen thousand auxiliaries from all over the empire.

“A wall across Britannia?” said Apollodora, looking at the drawings over his shoulder. Her dismissive tone made her sound uncannily like her father. “Trajan wouldn’t have built a wall. He would have conquered whatever lay beyond.”

“Only if the barbarians had something worth looting,” said Marcus.

The wall was emblematic of the emperor’s new frontier policy. Hadrian believed that there was no longer any incentive to push outwards in conquest; nothing remained that was worth conquering except the western provinces of Parthia, which Trajan had briefly seized but could not control.

Under Hadrian, a consensus was forming that the empire had reached a natural limit; the wild, impoverished lands beyond its borders offered little to loot, and instead were full of potential looters. It was Hadrian’s goal not to conquer these people but to keep them out. His task was to maintain peace and prosperity within the existing boundaries of the empire.

Almost as an afterthought, Hadrian mentioned that he had dismissed his private secretary, Suetonius, who would returning from Britannia to private life in Roma. Marcus read aloud: “‘I realize that you have been on friendly terms with this person, so I wish to tell you this news myself. You will doubtless hear rumours regarding the reason for his dismissal. The fact is that this person developed an inappropriate professional relationship with the empress.’”

“What in Hades does that mean?” said Apollodora.

“Court politics,” said Marcus. “Sabina has her courtiers and Hadrian has his, and when relations between the emperor and empress are strained, those courtiers sometimes find themselves in an awkward spot. Anyone too closely allied with Sabina runs the risk of being dismissed by Hadrian. I suspect that’s what’s happened to Suetonius.”

“My father, and now Suetonius – and there have been quite a few others,” said Apollodora. “Men whose lives have been ruined because they said a wrong word or gave the emperor a wrong look.”

“I hardly think Suetonius’s life is ruined,” said Marcus. “He’s coming back to Roma, isn’t he? He’ll finally have time to finish that history he’s always dreamed of writing, about the first Caesars.”

Apollodora gazed despondently at the letter. “No mention of my father, then, or the treatise he sent to Hadrian?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What will happen if you cross the emperor, husband?”

Marcus blew out his cheeks. “I shall try my best not to do so.” He wanted to tell her there was no cause for fear, but in truth, there was a harsh and even petty side to Hadrian. Marcus told himself that the situation could be much worse. Except for the small number of executions that took place at the outset of his reign, Hadrian had kept his word to kill no senators, and his punishments were mild compared to those of some of his predecessors. When Marcus recalled the stories his father had told him about the reign of Domitian – who had forced Lucius Pinarius to face a lion in the arena, and whose favorite method of interrogation had been burning men’s genitals – the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian seemed gentle by comparison.

Still, Marcus was acutely aware that he served at Hadrian’s pleasure. In a state ruled absolutely by one man, no matter how enlightened that man might be, every other man was at his mercy. Marcus felt a sudden rush of anxiety, thinking how far he had risen in life and how much he had to lose. He calmed himself by touching the fascinum at his breast and thinking of the nameless god who visited him in dreams.

His distracted gaze fell on the Colossus beside the amphitheatre, dazzling under the sunlight. He glanced again at the drawing of the Luna statue in Apollodorus’s letter, and then at the nearby spot the statue was intended to occupy. Try as he might, he could not envision the Luna statue looming over him; he saw only empty sky. The masterpiece that was to be Apollodorus’s crowning achievement, his monument for the ages – would it ever be built?

Apollodora began to weep. Tears ran down her cheeks. Little Lucius began to cry as well, filling that air with loud wailing.

Marcus looked on, feeling helpless to comfort either of them. He whispered a prayer. “God of the dream who protects me, give me a great work to do, and give me an emperor who will let me do it!”

A.D. 125

The city was abuzz with excitement at the emperor’s long-awaited return to Roma. What had begun as a trip to the northern provinces had turned into a grand tour that spanned the empire, taking him from Britannia down to the Pillars of Hercules and Mauretania – where he put down a bloody revolt – then across the Mediterranean Sea to Asia Minor, and then to Greece, where Hadrian showered favours on the city of Athens, restoring it as a great seat of learning by endowing it with a new library as well as a forum and an arch and restoring the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

Now, at last, Hadrian was back in Roma, and on this day he was to visit the house of Marcus Pinarius.

The household was in a frenzy of last-minute preparations. Everything had to be made perfect. Marcus thought how very different this visit felt from the first time Hadrian had visited the house, some twelve years ago, when Marcus’s father had hosted a dinner party to honour Marcus for his work on Trajan’s Column. Hadrian had been an honoured guest on that occasion, but today, one would have thought that a god was about to come calling. Apollodora was driving the slaves to tidy every corner, prune every bush in the garden, and polish every marble surface to a lustrous shine. Marcus knew what she was thinking: if only they could make the right impression on the emperor, perhaps he might yet relent in his banishment of her father, who continued to languish in Damascus.

“You will bring up the subject, won’t you?” Apollodora asked him, for the tenth time that day.

“I’ll try, wife. If the right moment arises-”

Amyntas came running. “Master, they’re coming up the street! They’ll be at the door any moment!”

“Calm yourself, Amyntas. Take a deep breath. When you answer the door-”

“I, Master? I’ m to answer the door?”

Marcus smiled. Who else in the household was more suitable to greet the emperor than the handsomest of his young slaves? “Yes, Amyntas, you.

“But I’m so nervous, Master. Look how my hands tremble.”

“The emperor will find your demeanour charming. Now go – I hear a knock at the door.”

The retinue of some twenty people filed through the vestibule and the atrium, then into the formal reception room, where refreshments awaited them. Hadrian, resplendent in a purple toga, accepted Marcus’s formal greeting, then drew him aside.

“Let’s retire to your garden, Marcus Pinarius. Just the two of us.”

Marcus walked beside the emperor. “You look well, Caesar,” he said. It was true. Though close to fifty, with touches of grey in his hair and beard, Hadrian was as trim and muscular as ever, and his mood was buoyant. His years of travel had agreed with him.

“Ah, there it is!” he said as he stepped into the garden. Marcus remembered the awed expression on Hadrian’s face when he first laid eyes on the statue of Melancomas. The emperor seemed less impressed now. He cocked his head and looked the statue up and down with an expression more wistful than astonished.

“Caesar must have seen many beautiful works of art during his travels,” Marcus said.

“Oh, yes. Amazing things. Amazing experiences. My induction into the Mysteries of Eleusis was the most remarkable of those experiences, though I can say nothing specific about that, of course. My travels have opened my eyes. I received a very good education when I was young. My teachers did their best to enlighten me. But books and words can relate only so much. Actual experience is the key. Oh, before I forget, Epictetus asked me to give you his regards. I believe that he and your father were very close.”

“Yes, Caesar. How is he?”

“As brilliant as ever, and still teaching at his school in Nicopolis. I hope that my wits will remain as quick when I’m in my seventies.”

“I think Epictetus must be the very last of my father’s circle who’s still alive,” said Marcus thoughtfully. Hadrian was in such high spirits that Marcus wondered if this might be a good time to bring up the matter of his father-in-law. He was clearing his throat to speak when Hadrian returned his attention to the statue of Melancomas.

“Do you recall, Pinarius, what we said about this statue, that evening many years ago? I said, ‘If only, someday, I could meet a youth as beautiful as this.’ To which you responded, ‘If only, someday, I could create a statue as beautiful as this.”

Marcus smiled, remembering. “Yes, and Favonius said, ‘May each of you be granted his desire – and be happy with it!’”

“The scurra! I had forgotten he was here that night, but yes, you’re right, I remember now. Well, Favonius was a wise man after all. You know, seeing it again after all this time, the Melancomas statue doesn’t impress me as much as it once did. And you, Marcus, as an artist, with many more years of experience now: what do you think of it?”

Marcus tried to look at the familiar statue with fresh eyes. “Perhaps the shoulders are a bit too wide, and the hips too narrow; but of course the sculptor had a duty to record the actual proportions of the living model. The workmanship itself seems quite flawless to me.”

“Does it? Here, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

Hadrian summoned a secretary who stood at the garden’s edge and spoke in his ear. The man hurried to the reception room to fetch someone. Marcus noticed that Apollodora was peeking at them from behind a corner, looking anxious. As he wondered again if he should mention his father-in-law, Hadrian’s young friend stepped into the garden and joined them.

Marcus was stunned. The youth who stood before him was the very incarnation of the god from his dreams.

Hadrian laughed. “That’s a typical reaction of those meeting Antinous for the first time But really, try not to gape, Pygmalion. That’s what they used to call you, isn’t it? Just as they used to call me the Little Greek?”

Marcus closed his mouth. The resemblance was too uncanny to be accidental. He touched the fascinum at his breast. “Forgive me, Caesar. It’s only… that is, it’s hard to explain…”

“Then don’t try. Not with words, anyway.” Hadrian shifted from speaking Latin to Greek. “Here, Antinous, what do you make of this statue?”

The youth likewise answered in Greek, with a Bithynian accent. “It’s very beautiful. Who is it?”

“This is Melancomas, a famous wrestler.”

“Is he still alive?”

Hadrian laughed. “Melancomas and the emperor Titus were lovers fifty years ago.”

“So?” Antinous cocked his head. “He could be a handsome man in his seventies today.”

Hadrian’s smile faded. “No, Melancomas died young. But here, I want you to stand next to the statue. I want to see the two of you side by side. This is something I’ve been curious to see since I first met you. Take off your clothes, Antinous. There’s no need to be modest before Pygmalion; he’s an artist.”

Antinous stood next to the Melancomas. He pulled off his chiton and dropped it to the ground, then undid his loincloth and let it fall.

Hadrian crossed his arms and nodded. “There, do you see, Pinarius? They’re not really comparable, are they? As beautiful as we thought the Melancomas, it pales beside Antinous.” He circled the youth and the statue, looking from one to the other. “Of course, cold marble can never compete with warm, living flesh, just as words in a book cannot match the actuality of experience. But even if Melancomas were alive and breathing and standing next to Antinous, would there be any competition as to which was more beautiful?”

Marcus was still too stunned to think clearly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then say nothing. You’re not a poet, after all, you’re an artist. And that’s what I want from you – art. I want you to sculpt Antinous. Of course, as I said, I know that marble or bronze can never fully capture the subtlety and solidity of flesh, but you must do your best. What do you say, Pygmalion? Will you make me a statue of Antinous?”

“Of course I will, Caesar.” Marcus, dazed, saw his wife peering at him from her place of concealment. For the life of him, he could not remember what she wanted.

To carry out the emperor’s commission, Marcus set up a workshop at the foot of the Aventine Hill, not far from the river. It was a lofty space with excellent light and plenty of room. Soon the shelves were lined with scores of clay models of the youth and all the various parts of his body. Occasionally Marcus heard the sounds of workers on the waterfront, but otherwise the space was very quiet.

Marcus had never enjoyed anything as much as he enjoyed working on the statue. All his other work, even on the Temple of Venus and Roma, was suspended.

Antinous was the ideal model. He was never late, had impeccable manners, and carried himself with a composure beyond his years. He was willing to quietly hold a pose for hours, content simply to exist and be still inside his perfect body, letting whatever thoughts were behind his perfect face remain a mystery.

From the brief conversations that occasionally took place between them, Marcus learned that Hadrian had met the youth while travelling in Bithynia. Marcus noted that Dio of Prusa had been a Bithynian, but Antinous had never heard of him. Philosophy did not interest him.

Nor was he much interested in religion or science, but when the subject of astrology came up, he told Marcus that the emperor himself was an expert astrologer. “Caesar frequently casts his own horoscope,” said Antinous. “He can’t let anyone else do it, you see, because that would give them too much knowledge. That’s why he won’t allow any astrologers in the court and studies the heavens himself. How he can remember the meanings of all those configurations of the stars is beyond me, but of course he has a very scientific mind. He casts horoscopes for the people around him, too.”

“Including you?”

Antinous frowned. “No, never for me. He seems to be superstitious about that. He says some things should remain a mystery.”

What the boy really loved was hunting. One day, when the subject happened to come up – Marcus was talking about all the famous statues that had been made of the hunter Actaeon – Antinous became more animated than Marcus had ever seen him.

“I was very nearly killed by a lion once,” he said.

“Really?”

“Caesar and I were hunting together, on horseback. We trapped a lion against a cliff face. Caesar wanted me to have the kill, so I threw my spear first. But I only wounded the beast. The lion was furious. It roared and crouched, and whipped its tail, and then it sprang at me. My heart stopped. I thought I was dead. But while the lion was in mid-air, Caesar’s spear struck the beast and pierced its heart. It fell to the ground, dead. If Caesar hadn’t killed the lion, it would surely have torn me to pieces. Caesar saved my life. I can never repay him for that.”

“That’s a remarkable story,” said Marcus, seeing a glint in the youth’s eyes that he was determined to capture. He seized a piece of charcoal and some parchment and began sketching furiously.

“I think someone is making a poem about it,” Antinous said blandly, in his charming Bithynian accent, as if having one’s activities recorded in verse were an everyday occurrence. There were probably a great many things Antinous took for granted, Marcus thought. What must it be like to go through life looking like that, attracting the admiration of every person you met?

After his initial awe, Marcus had come to realize that Antinous was not his dream-god. For one thing, despite Marcus’s overwhelming first impression, he began to see that the youth was not exactly identical to the dream-god, or at least not all the time. There was something quicksilver about his appearance, as there was about every human face; it changed depending on his mood, the angle, the light. Sometimes Antinous did not resemble the dream-god at all, and Marcus could not imagine how he had ever thought he did; then, in the next instant, Antinous would turn his face just so, and he was the dream-god come to life. It was this elusive nature of the youth’s appearance that Marcus was striving to capture, a challenge he found all-consuming. If Antinous was not a god, he was surely the vessel of a god, possessing some degree of divine power. Marcus would do his best to capture that divinity in marble.

Uncharacteristically, Hadrian had refrained from taking any part in the process, not even dropping by to look at Marcus’s sketches or clay models. He declared his intention to wait until the statue was finished before he laid eyes on it. Marcus was touched by the emperor’s trust, and the privacy of the process had allowed him to invest himself completely in his work.

Antinous had just left for the day when Marcus heard a knock on the door. A small vestibule separated the studio from the entrance, and it was here that he admitted an unexpected caller: Gaius Suetonius.

“Marcus Pinarius! I haven’t see you in ages,” said Suetonius. “I pass by the site of the new temple occasionally, but I no longer see you there.”

“My duties at the temple have been suspended for a while. I come here to the workshop every day.”

“Hiding out, eh? I thought I’d never find this place, tucked away among the granaries and storehouses. Working on something for the emperor, are you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Oh, come, Pinarius, everyone knows what you’re up to. You’re making a statue of that Bithynian boy.”

Marcus frowned. “How did you know?”

“Favonius told me. I’m no longer privy to imperial comings and goings, but Favonius keeps me informed. He says everyone is talking about this statue of yours, just as everyone is talking about Hadrian and his new favourite.”

“What do they say?”

“Some people claim to be scandalized by Hadrian’s lack of propriety, elevating a foreign youth of no standing to a place of honour in his household. Sabina’s faction certainly isn’t happy; Caesar has less time for the empress than ever. But others are pleased to see the emperor so content. A happy Caesar is a benevolent Caesar. So, can I have a look at the statue to see what all the fuss is about?”

Marcus shook his head. “No one is allowed to see the statue, I’m afraid.”

“No? Perhaps you could let me see a preliminary sketch? I’ve never even seen this boy. I’m curious to know what he looks like.”

“Not possible. Even Caesar hasn’t see my work yet, and no one can be allowed to see it before Caesar.”

Suetonius made a sour face. “Ah, well, one Bithynian youth looks like another, I imagine. They’re all available to a Roman with money, or so it seemed when I was stationed there in the imperial service. You couldn’t set foot in the baths without those boys practically throwing themselves at you.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Marcus. “I’ve never been to Bithynia.”

There was an awkward silence, broken by Suetonius. “I’ve been hard at work, too.”

“Have you?”

“Toiling away on my collection of imperial biographies. I’ve been writing about Domitian lately – that could put anyone in a bad mood. I was wondering, did your father ever talk about those days? In particular, did he ever mention a ‘black room’? Apparently there was a chamber in the imperial palace to which Domitian invited certain guests when he wanted to frighten them half to death.”

“No, I don’t remember any stories about a black room.”

“Ah, well, plenty of others have stories to tell. I have to say, some of the tales I’ve collected about the emperors almost defy belief. They’re quite shocking, and all the more so because they’re true. I rather hate to end my collection with Domitian – such a grim fellow – but one can’t yet write this sort of biography about Trajan or Nerva, the emperor’s father and grandfather by adoption. One never knows what might cause offense. Even the most flattering account might somehow provoke the emperor’s displeasure.”

“Caesar is letting you write whatever you want about the previous dynasties?”

“Amazing, isn’t it? Everyone in a position of authority assures me that I may proceed as I wish. My biggest worry is what the emperor will say about my prose. Hadrian fancies himself a writer, you know. Architect, emperor, author, literary critic – is there nothing the man can’t do? His own specialty is collecting odd bits of information and compiling catalogues of marvellous facts. His book will be forthcoming any day now. Of course he can’t publish such a thing under his own name, so he’s having his creature Phlegon put his name on the book. Trivial, time-wasting miscellany – just the sort of thing everyone’s reading nowadays.”

“Not a work of true merit, like your imperial biographies?”

“Exactly. Perhaps you’d like to read what I’ve written so far. I could profit from the reactions of a fellow like yourself, a man of learning and experience but with no literary pretensions or axes to grind. Shall I have a copy sent to you?”

“Yes, please do,” said Marcus, just to get rid of the man. He was eager to return to the studio, where he could be alone to contemplate his progress on the statue of Antinous.

A few days later, while he was preparing to leave home for the workshop, an imperial messenger arrived with a request for Marcus to come to the House of the People.

“Do you know why I’m being summoned?” said Marcus.

“I’m afraid not,” said the messenger.

Marcus was perturbed. His work on the statue had progressed to a stage that was particularly pleasurable to him – smoothing and polishing the stone and making very small adjustments. Now he would lose the best part of the day, when the light was brightest, and he would have to go through the bother of changing his simple tunic for a toga.