Roma Eterna (40 page)

Color had come to his face. His eyes were bright with anger and shock.

“My quiet life of retirement, Apollinaris—my work as a scholar—”

“You can read and write just as well in the palace. The Imperial library, I assure you, is the finest in the world. Refusing is not an option. Would you have Roma tumble into anarchy? You are the only possible Emperor.”

“What about yourself?”

“I was bred to be a military man. An administrator. Not an Emperor.—No, there's no one else but you, Caesar. No one.”

“Stop calling me ‘Caesar'!”

“I must. And
you
must. I'll be beside you, your senior Consul. I had thought to retire also, you know, but that too will have to wait. Roma demands this of us. We have had madness upon madness in this city, first the madness of Demetrius, then the different sort of madness that Torquatus brought. And there are men in the Subura threatening yet another kind of madness. Now all that must end, and you and I are the only ones who can end it. So I say it once again: ‘Hail, Laureolus Caesar Augustus!' We will present you to the Senate tomorrow, and the day after that to the people of the city.”

“Damn you, Apollinaris! Damn you!”

“For shame! What way is that, Caesar, to speak to the man who has placed you on the throne of the great Augustus?”

 

Lactantius Rufus himself, as the presiding magistrate of the Senate, presented the motion that awarded Laureolus the titles of Princeps, Imperator, Pontifex Maximus, Tribune of the People, and all the rest that went with being First Citizen, Emperor of Roma, and, as the Senators got quickly to their feet to shout their approval, lost no time in declaring that the vote was unanimous. The Count Valerian Apollinaris was confirmed immediately afterward as Consul once again, and the eighty-three-year-old Clarissimus Blossius, the eldest member of the Senate, won
quick confirmation also as Apollinaris's new colleague in the Consulship.

“And now,” said Apollinaris that night at the palace, “we must begin the task of restoring the tranquility of the realm.”

It was a good glib phrase, but converting it from rhetoric into reality posed a greater challenge than even Apollinaris had realized. Charax had built a network of agents who traversed the city day and night to detect unrest and subversion, and they reported, to a man, that the poison of democratic ideas had spread everywhere in the capital. The people, the plebeians, those without rank or property of any kind, had not been in any way distressed to see mass executions of Imperial courtiers in the plaza of Marcus Anastasius, nor did it trouble them when the Consuls were sending packs of Senators to the scaffold, nor when they learned of the virtually simultaneous deaths of the Consul Torquatus and the Emperor Demetrius. So far as they were concerned it would be just as well to arrest the entire class of men who were qualified to wear the toga of free-born citizenship, and their wives and children as well, and send them off for execution, and divide their property among the common folk for the welfare of all.

Apollinaris decreed the formation of a Council of Internal Security to investigate and control the spread of such dangerous ideas in the capital. He was its chairman. Charax and Lactantius Rufus were the only other members. When Laureolus protested being omitted from the group, Apollinaris named him to it also, but saw to it that its meetings always were held when the new Emperor was otherwise occupied. Many unpleasant things needed to be done just now, and Laureolus was, Apollinaris thought, too proper and civilized a cavalier to approve of some of the bloody tasks ahead.

So am I, Apollinaris thought, a proper and civilized cavalier, and yet these weeks past I have waded through rivers of blood for the sake of sparing our Empire from
even greater calamity. And I have come too far now for turning back. I must go onward, on to the other shore.

The ringleader of the rioting in the Subura had now been identified: a certain Greek named Timoleon, a former slave. Charax brought Apollinaris a pamphlet in which Timoleon urged the elimination of the patrician class, the abolition of all the existing political structures of the Empire, and the establishment of what he called the Tribunal of the People: a governing body of a thousand men, twenty from each of the fifty districts of the capital city, chosen by popular vote of all residents. They would serve for two years and then would have to step down so that a new election could be held, and no one could hold membership in the Tribunal twice in the same decade. Men of the old Senatorial and knightly ranks would not be permitted to put themselves forth as candidates.

“Arrest this Timoleon and two or three dozen of his noisiest followers,” Apollinaris ordered. “Put them on trial and see to it that justice is swift.”

Shortly Charax returned with the news that Timoleon had disappeared into the endless caverns of the Underworld, the ancient city beneath the city, and was constantly moving about down there, keeping well ahead of the agents of the Council of Internal Security.

“Find him,” Apollinaris said.

“We could search for him in there for five hundred years and not succeed in finding him,” said Charax.

“Find him,” Apollinaris said again.

The days went by, and Timoleon continued to elude capture.

Other plebeian revolutionaries were not as clever, or as lucky, and arrested agitators were brought in by the cartload. The pace of executions, which had fallen off somewhat during the period of official mourning following the announcement of Emperor Demetrius's death and the ceremonies accompanying Emperor Laureolus's accession, now quickened again. Before long there were as many
each day as there had been toward the end of Torquatus's time; and then the daily toll came to surpass even that of Torquatus.

Apollinaris had never been one to indulge in self-deception. He had removed Torquatus in the interests of peace, and here he was following the same bloody path as his late colleague. But he saw no alternative. There was necessity here. The commonwealth had become a fragile one. A hundred years of foolish Emperors had undermined its foundations, and now they had to be rebuilt. And since it appeared unavoidable that blood must be mixed into the mortar, so shall it be, Apollinaris thought. So shall it be. It was his duty, painful though it sometimes was. He had always understood that word, “duty,” as meaning nothing more complicated than “service”: service to the Empire, to the Emperor, to the citizens of Roma, to his own sense of his obligations as a Roman. But he had discovered in these apocalyptic days that it was more complex than that, that it entailed a heavy weight of difficulty, conflict, pain, and necessity.

Even so, he would not shirk it.

During this time the Emperor Laureolus was rarely seen in public. Apollinaris had suggested to him that it would be best, in this transitional period, if he let himself be perceived as a remote figure sequestered in the palace, floating high above the carnage, so that when the time of troubles finally ended he would not seem unduly stained with the blood of his people. Laureolus seemed willing to follow this advice. He kept to himself, attending no Senate sessions, taking part in none of the public rituals, issuing no statements. Several times a week Apollinaris visited him at the palace but those visits were Laureolus's only direct contact with the machinery of the government.

Somehow he was aware, though, of the hectic activities in the plaza of execution.

“All this bloodshed troubles me, Apollinaris,” the Emperor said. It was the seventh week of his reign. The intol
erable heat of summer had given way to the chill of an unnaturally cold and rainy autumn. “It's a bad way to begin my reign. I'll be thought of as a heartless monster, and how can a heartless monster expect to win the love of his people? I can't be an effective Emperor if the people hate me.”

“In time, Caesar, they'll be brought to understand that what is happening now is for the good of our whole society. They'll give thanks to you for rescuing the Empire from degradation and ruin.”

“Can we not revive the old custom of sending our enemies into exile, Apollinaris? Can we not show a little clemency now and then?”

“Clemency will only be interpreted as weakness just now. And exiles return, more dangerous than ever. Through these deaths we guarantee the peace of future generations.”

The Emperor remained unconvinced. He reminded Apollinaris that the brunt of punishment now was falling on the common people, whose lives had always been hard even in the best of times. The contract that the Emperors had made with the people, said Laureolus, was to offer stability and peace in return for strict obedience to Imperial rule; but if the Emperor made the bonds too tight, the populace would begin turning toward the fantasy of a happier life in some imaginary existence beyond death. There had always been religious teachers in the East, in Syria, in Aegyptus, in Arabia, who had tried to instill such concepts in the people, and it had always been necessary to stamp such teachings out. A cult that promised salvation in the next world would inevitably weaken the common folk's loyalty to the state in this one. But that loyalty had to be won, over and over again, through the benevolence of the rulers. Thus the need for judicious relaxation, from time to time, of governmental restraint. The present campaign of executing the people's leaders, said Laureolus, flew in the face of wisdom.

“This man Timoleon, for example,” the Emperor said.
“Must you make such a great thing of searching him out? You don't seem to be able to find him, and you're turning him into an even bigger popular hero than he already was.”

“Timoleon is the greatest danger the Empire has ever faced, Caesar. He is a spear aimed straight at the throne.”

“You are too melodramatic sometimes, Apollinaris. I urge you: let him go free. Show the world that we can tolerate even a Timoleon in our midst.”

“I think you fail to understand just how dangerous—”

“Dangerous? He's just a ragged rabble-rouser. What I don't want to do is make him into a martyr. We could capture him and crucify him, yes, but that would give the people a hero, and they would turn the world upside down in his name. Let him be.”

But Apollinaris saw only peril in that path, and the search for Timoleon went on. And in time Timoleon was betrayed by a greedy associate and arrested in one of the Underworld's most remote and obscure caverns, along with dozens of his most intimate associates and several hundred other followers.

Apollinaris, on his own authority as head of the Council of Internal Security and without notifying the Emperor, ordered an immediate trial. There would be one more climactic spate of executions, he told himself, and then, he swore, the end of the time of blood would finally be at hand. With Timoleon and his people gone, Laureolus at last could step forth and offer the olive branch of clemency to the citizenry in general: the beginning of the time of reconciliation and repair that must follow any such epoch as they had all just lived through.

For the first time since his return to Roma from the provinces Apollinaris began to think that he was approaching the completion of his task, that he had brought the Empire safely through all its storms and could retire from public responsibility at long last.

And then Tiberius Charax came to him with the astonishing news that the Emperor Laureolus had ordered an
amnesty for all political prisoners as an act of Imperial mercy, and that Timoleon and his friends would be released from the dungeons within the next two or three days.

“He's lost his mind,” Apollinaris said. “Demetrius himself would not have been guilty of such insanity.” He reached for pen and paper. “Here—take these warrants of execution to the prison at once, before any releases can be carried out—”

“Sir—” said Charax quietly.

“What is it?” Apollinaris asked, not looking up.

“Sir, the Emperor has sent for you. He asks your attendance at the palace within the hour.”

“Yes,” he said. “Just as soon as I've finished signing these warrants.”

 

The moment Apollinaris entered the Emperor's private study he understood that it was his own death warrant, and not Timoleon's, that he had signed this afternoon. For there on Laureolus's desk was the stack of papers that he had given Charax less than an hour before. Some minion of Laureolus's must have intercepted them.

There was a coldness beyond that of ice in the Emperor's pale blue eyes.

“Were you aware that we ordered clemency for these men, Consul?” Laureolus asked him.

“Shall I lie to you? No, Caesar, it's very late for me to take up the practice of lying. I was aware of it. I felt it was a mistake, and countermanded it.”

“Countermanded your Emperor's orders? That was very bold of you, Consul!”

“Yes. It was. Listen to me, Laureolus—”

“Caesar.”

“
Caesar
. Timoleon wants nothing less than the destruction of the Imperium, and the Senate, and everything else that makes up our Roman way of life. He
must
be put to death.”

“I've already told you: any fool of an Emperor can have
his enemies put to death. He snaps his fingers and the thing is done. The Emperor who's capable of showing mercy is the Emperor whom the people will love and obey.”

“I'll take no responsibility for what happens, Caesar, if you insist on letting Timoleon go.”

“You will not be required to take responsibility for it,” said Laureolus evenly.

“I think I understand your meaning, Caesar.”

“I think you do, yes.”

“I fear for you, all the same, if you free that man. I fear for Roma.” For an instant all his iron self-control deserted him, and he cried, “Oh, Laureolus, Laureolus, how I regret that I chose you to be Emperor! How wrong I was!—Can't you see that Timoleon has to die, for the good of us all? I demand his execution!”

“How strangely you address your Emperor,” said Laureolus, in a quiet voice altogether devoid of anger. “It is as if you can't quite bring yourself to believe that I
am
Emperor. Well, Apollinaris, we are indeed your sovereign, and we refuse to accept what you speak of as your ‘demand.' Furthermore: your resignation as Consul is accepted. You have overstepped your Consular authority, and there is no longer any room for you in our government as the new period of healing begins. We offer you exile in any place of your choice, so long as it's far from here: Aegyptus, perhaps, or maybe the isle of Cyprus, or Pontus—”