The Forest House (42 page)

“There's a certain appropriateness in the location,” Corax observed as they took their seats in the section reserved for the Equestrians, “since Nero himself put on Games such as Rome had never seen before, especially when he was trying to convince everyone that that odd Jewish sect—you know, the Christians—had caused the great fire.”

“Did they?” Gaius was looking around him. They had arrived between fights, and slaves were replacing the bloodstained sand.

“You hardly need deliberate sabotage to start a fire in this city, my lad,” his host said wryly. “Why do you think every district has a fire watch to which we all contribute so willingly? But this was a particularly bad one, and the Emperor needed a scapegoat to counter the rumors that he had started the blaze himself!”

Gaius turned to stare at him.

“New buildings, lad, new buildings!” Corax explained. “Nero fancied himself an architect, and the people who owned the property where the fire started wouldn't sell. The fire got out of hand, and the Emperor needed someone to blame. The Games were really quite horrid—no skill involved at all—just a lot of poor souls who died more like sheep than like men.”

Gaius was suddenly glad he had not captured Cynric after all. Such a fighter would certainly have been sent here, and he did not deserve it, though surely he would have not been a sheep but rather a wolf or a bear.

Trumpets blared and a shiver of expectation ran through the vast throng. Gaius felt his own heartbeat quicken and was reminded oddly of the moment before battle; it was the only time he had been in the presence of so many thousands, all nerving themselves up to make blood flow. But at least in war both sides were at equal risk. It was other men's blood these Romans were offering, not their own.

He had seen bear baitings at home, of course, as entertainment for the Legions. There was certainly a fascination in some of the pairings of wild beasts imported for the Games. A lion and a giraffe, for instance, or a wild boar and a panther. Corax told him that on one occasion a pregnant sow had been fighting and actually farrowed a piglet during her death throes. But the real focus of the afternoon was on the most dangerous of all animals—man.

“Now we shall see some skill,” said Corax as the mock combats finished and the first of the gladiators, hide and armor alike oiled and gleaming, stalked across the sand. “This kind of thing is what makes the Games worth seeing. Those fights in which they throw in untrained prisoners of war or criminals, even women and children, are simply a stupid slaughter. Here, for instance, we have a Samnite and a Retarius—” He indicated the first gladiator, wearing greaves and a visored helmet crowned with a tuft of feathers and armed with a shortsword and big rectangular shield, and his more agile opponent, flourishing his net and trident.

Gaius, trained to judge fighting men, found his professional interest engaged. All around him bets were being placed with an intensity that almost matched that of the fighters. Corax kept up a running commentary, and it was not until the Samnite fighter was down with the net-man's trident at his throat that he realized that the man giving the thumbs-down signal from the purple-hung box was the Emperor.

The trident thrust and the Samnite convulsed and then was still, his bright blood staining the sand. Gaius sat back, licking dry lips, his throat raw from cheering. He must have been intent indeed not to hear the trumpets announcing the entrance of the Emperor. From this distance he could see only a figure in a purple tunic, wrapped in a mantle that glittered with gold.

Later that night, as Corax's masseur pummeled him after his soak in the bath, Gaius realized that his whole body was a mass of aching muscles, which had been tensed against one another as he watched the Games. At the time he had not noticed.

But he felt also a great sense of release. Going to the Coliseum was indeed like being in a battle, like that moment when all existence is simplified into a single struggle, and you are carried beyond yourself and become one with a greater whole. For a moment, it seemed to him he understood why the Romans loved their Games with such a passion. However perverse and pointless it seemed, they were moved by the same force that had enabled the Legions to conquer half the world.

 

The night of Malleus's party was cold and windy, but the streets were choked as usual with food sellers and barbers, men hawking pots and every other kind of street merchant, hoping for one more sale before darkness forced them all indoors. As Gaius's litter bearers forced their way towards the Aventine, it occurred to him that he had almost become used to the noise, as he had grown accustomed to the clatter of iron-shod cartwheels on cobblestones that made the night almost as noisy as the day.

But as they turned on to the main avenue he heard a new sound. The litter stopped, and he stuck his head through the curtains to see. A religious procession was making its way along the road; he glimpsed shaven-headed priests in white robes and women in veils. The women were wailing, their lamentations punctuated by the sibilance of shaking sistrums and the deep boom of a drum.

Despite the warmth of his toga Gaius found himself shivering, for the mourning touched something that deeply disturbed his urbane persona, and even the easy competence of the man he was at home.

Even without understanding its cause, he felt that anguish as his own. It was like the mourning in the Mithraeum when the bull is killed. Another group of priests went by, and then more women, their gliding gait reminding him of the priestesses at home, and then a litter on which he could see the black-veiled statue of a golden cow. For a few moments longer the drumming pounded in his ears; then the procession passed.

When Gaius finally got to it, the dinner party proved to be a gathering of the kind that he had come to feel represented the best in Roman society. The food was simple but well prepared, the company urbane and well informed. Gaius felt outclassed, but these were men from whom he could learn.

The topic that had been proposed was “pieta`s,” the wine mixed half and half with water so that everyone remained focused enough to discuss it seriously.

“I suppose one question is whether there is more than one true religion,” Gaius said when his turn to speak arrived. “Of course each people has its faith and should be allowed to keep it, but here in Rome you seem to worship more gods than I ever knew existed. Just tonight, for instance, I saw some kind of procession that sounded oriental, but most of those following it looked Roman.”

“That must have been the Isia,” observed Herennius Senecio, one of the more important of the guests. “The followers of Isis celebrate her search for the dismembered body of Osiris at this time of year. When she has gathered the pieces she reanimates his body and conceives the sun-child Horus anew.”

“Do not the British tribes have a festival at this time also?” asked Tacitus. “I seem to remember processions around the countryside with masks and bones.”

“True,” replied Gaius. “At Samaine the white mare goes around with her followers and the people invite the souls of their ancestors to reincarnate in the wombs of the women of the tribe.”

“Perhaps that is the answer then,” said Malleus. “Though we all have different names for the gods, they are all in essence the same, and therefore to worship any of them is piety.”

“For instance, the god whom we call Jupiter is known by his oak tree and his thunderbolt,” said Tacitus. “The Germans worship him as Donar, and the British as Tanarus or Taranis.”

Gaius was not so sure. It was hard to imagine any Celtic deity being worshipped in a great temple like the one dedicated to Jupiter in the Forum. At one party he had met a woman they said was a Vestal and he had observed her with curiosity, but although the woman was marked by a certain dignity and certainly more decorum than most of the Roman women he had seen, there was none of the nobility he associated with the women of the Forest House. Curiously, it was easier to identify the Egyptian Isis, whose procession he had just seen, with the Great Goddess Eilan served.

“I think that our British friend has put his finger on a real problem,” said Malleus. “Surely that is why our fathers fought so hard to keep foreign cults like that of Cybele and Dionysos from taking root in Rome. Even the temple of Isis was burned.”

“If we include all the peoples of the world in our Empire,” Tacitus countered, “then we must also include their gods. I would never deny that, for I think that there is more honor, more purity of morals, and more of what we would call piety in the hall of any German chieftain than in most of the mansions of Rome. There is no harm in that, so long as the rituals that preserve the State are given first priority.”

“That seems to be what the deified Augustus had in mind when he allowed his cult to spread through the Empire,” Malleus replied. There was a short silence.

“Dominus et Deus…”
someone said softly, and Gaius remembered hearing that was how the Emperor liked to be addressed these days. “He goes too far! Will we return to the days when Caligula trotted out his favorite horse for everyone to worship?”

Gaius looked around and realized in some surprise that the man who had spoken was Flavius Clemens, some kind of cousin of the Emperor.

“
Pieta`s
is the essence of reverence and obligation between men and the gods, not adulation for a mortal!” Senecio exclaimed. “Even Augustus insisted that ‘Roma' be coupled with his name. We do not worship the man, but his genius, the god within him. To believe that a mere human has the wisdom and power to govern an Empire like this one would be impiety indeed.”

“Well, in the Provinces the cult works as a force for unity,” Gaius observed brightly in the even more uncomfortable silence that followed. “When nobody knows what the Emperor is like personally, all they can do is to worship the idea of a Divine Ruler. Whatever their personal religion, everyone can come together to burn incense to the Emperor.”

“Everyone except the Christians,” someone observed, and, except for Flavius Clemens, they all laughed.

“Well, there's no need to persecute them and make more martyrs,” Tacitus pointed out. “Their appeal is mostly to slaves and women. And they have so many factions, they can be depended upon to destroy each other if we only leave them alone!”

Sweets and cheese were served then, and the conversation passed to other things. These were all civilized men, after all, not likely to be swayed by religious enthusiasm. But Gaius could not help wondering if piety, duty, and mutual obligation were enough to nourish the human soul. Perhaps people were driven to cults such as that of Isis or the Christos by the aridity of the State religion, or perhaps the bloody rituals of the Coliseum had become the real religion of Rome.

The other thing he was beginning to realize was that among the thinking men of the city—the men whose company he was increasingly coming to value—there was a growing opposition to the Emperor. These connections would not bring him the patronage he needed to advance in his career. If it came to a choice between ambition and honor, which would he choose?

 

Shortly after Gaius's arrival, the Imperial Procurator's staff of busy freedmen went to work to digest the content of the report from Licinius that he had carried and analyze its implications for the Emperor. Yet the city fathers retained enough authority so that this information must be delivered to them eventually, and Gaius discovered that the influence of his new friends was sufficient to win him an invitation to address the Senate and meet the Emperor afterward.

On the morning he was to appear, Gaius had himself shaved with special care—though he sometimes thought that the bearded Ardanos and Bendeigid were less barbarian than he was himself, he did not think he could explain that to the assembled conscript fathers.

It was very early when he arrived at the Senate and was given a seat beneath a statue of the deified Augustus, who stood on his pedestal looking as cold and cross as Gaius felt. The senators entered by ones and twos, talking softly, followed by the secretaries with their piles of wax tablets, ready to record the debates and decisions of the day. This, reflected Gaius, was where the lords of the world decided the fates of nations. On this marble floor they had debated the defense against Hannibal and the invasion of Britannia. The river of time flowed strongly in this chamber; in comparison, even the pride of the Caesars was only a ripple on the stream.

Just as the opening invocations were beginning the Emperor arrived, resplendent in a purple toga sewn all over with golden stars that made Gaius blink. He had heard of the
toga picta,
but had thought it was only worn by a general presiding over his triumph. It was rather disturbing to see it worn here, and he wondered if Domitian wanted to be seen as a conqueror, or was simply fond of finery. This was the first time Gaius had seen his Emperor at such close hand. The youngest son of the great Vespasian had the bull neck and well-muscled shoulders of a soldier, but Gaius read petulance in the twist of his mouth and suspicion in his eyes.

It was almost time for the noon recess before Gaius was beckoned forward to read Licinius's report on the finances of Britannia. There were a few questions, mostly on the subject of resources, and one from Clodius Malleus that allowed Gaius to mention the part he had played in controlling the latest rebellion. Despite some recent tutoring in oratory, he felt he must have bored them, but at the end of his speech, they voted him a perfunctory round of applause and—as Licinius had foreseen—confirmed that for the next year a reasonable percentage of the tax money they had collected might be retained in Britain. Since this was why Licinius had sent him in the first place, Gaius was hardly surprised.