Steven Saylor - Wrath of the Furies

As well as creating a strangely horrifying effect, the slow rotation also allowed everyone in the room to get a good look at the face of Oppius. Some device inside his mouth forced it to gape open. He could move his lips a bit, but he could not close his jaw. I think the poor man was trying to maintain an expression of grim dignity, which was impossible with his mouth forced open. During one turn he looked quite mad, and at the next turning as if he might burst into tears, and then like a constipated man at the public latrina desperate to relieve himself. There was laughter in the room despite the gravity of the prophetic words being recited by the actor, which we were to imagine coming from Oppius’s gaping mouth and trembling lips:

“Oh, my country, what destruction will Ares bring to one

Who dares to ravage Asia and the lands of the rising sun?

From all the East, as far as Babylon, an army will arise

To wreak their vengeance on a land that all despise.…”

There was a great deal more in this vein. Then, slowly, both the puppet body and the head of Oppius stopped spinning, until body and head were again properly aligned. Oppius looked pale and queasy. I felt a bit dizzy myself from watching all that spinning and counter-spinning.

The actor uttered another burst of poetry, speaking more quickly and raising the pitch of his voice. I knew, of course, that it was not Oppius speaking. Nevertheless-perhaps it was the genuine look of alarm in Oppius’s eyes, and the wormlike writhing of his lips-the words seemed somehow to issue from his open mouth:

“The demon wolf comes! Step back and let him pass, you clods!

He can’t be killed. He can’t be stopped. He does the work of the gods!

The red wolf comes!”

From a patch of darkness at one end of the room a gigantic wolf-three or four dancers inside another oversized costume-came running toward Oppius and his now motionless puppet body. The reciter cried out:

“I am like the helpless tree before the ax. I cannot move. I cannot run.

The red wolf comes! He looms so large he hides the sun.

Ravenous, he eats me whole. I am Rome. I am dismembered.

I am Rome, eaten alive, vanished, not even remembered.”

To achieve this effect, the puppet wolf snapped its jaws as it circled the puppet body, which rapidly began to dwindle-swallowed not by the red wolf but by a trapdoor in the floor. As the puppet body vanished, the head of Oppius sank lower and lower, as his real body was lowered through the same hidden hatch.

By some theatrical effect, the snapping jaws of the wolf turned crimson, as if stained with blood. Sated, the red wolf made a final circuit, then headed back whence it had come, leaving the head of Oppius on the floor, surrounded by a circle of blood-red cloth. The illusion that Oppius had actually been beheaded was so startling that I heard gasps all around me.

The reciter spoke again, now in a thin, reedy voice that seemed to issue from the bodiless head on the floor:

“My body is devoured. Only my head remains. I am asunder.

No head, however swollen, can live without what’s under.

The end approaches.”

The head began to spin again, and slowly to sink into the floor, sending wave-like billows through the surrounding pool of blood-red cloth. Just before the spinning head vanished, the face of Oppius turned ivory-white. He made a weird sound, and suddenly a stream of vomit erupted from his propped-open mouth. As Oppius spun around, the jet of pale green vomit fell in a spiral pattern upon the scarlet cloth.

An instant later, still vomiting, the head vanished from sight. Then the red cloth began to disappear, from the outside in, like blood running into a drain. A clash of cymbals disguised the noise of the trapdoor snapping shut, then nothing at all remained of Oppius or his puppet body. There was only a bare, spotless floor, looking as if it had been freshly swept.

No poet, dramatist, or even king could have forced such a singular occurrence, or foreseen its effect. The sight of Oppius vomiting capped the presentation with an image as shocking as it was spectacular, as sordid as it was unforgettable. The audience erupted in helpless laughter. There was thunderous applause. Queen Monime was the first to jump to her feet. Everyone else did likewise.

Only one man in the room kept his composure. Barely smiling, the king slowly looked from face to face. He even deigned to look at me, with a blank, unblinking gaze that sent a shiver though me. At last he stood and raised one hand to acknowledge the acclaim of the audience. The rapturous cheering and applause did not abate, but grew louder.

We had seen the enactment of an old legend. We had heard the ancient prophecy. We had witnessed with our own astonished eyes the fulfillment of that prophecy, the devouring of Rome by the red wolf-Rome in the person of Quintus Oppius, not only forced to foretell his own destruction but humiliated in a manner so complete and so spontaneous that no one could have anticipated it, not even Mithridates.

Next to the king, standing along with everyone else, was Rutilius, the Roman without a toga. His applause was more restrained than that of the others-it would hardly have been seemly for any Roman to cheer and stamp his feet at the symbolic annihilation of Rome-but Rutilius applauded nonetheless.

I suddenly thought of the destruction that was closer at hand-the king’s imminent plan to kill every Roman still alive in the territories under his control. Would Quintus Oppius be among those killed? Or was he too valuable a hostage, or too precious a plaything for the king? And what of Rutilius? Surely the king would spare a Roman who had seemingly joined the royal court.

At that moment, while I watched, Mithridates turned to Rutilius and spoke in his ear. Rutilius nodded and made some reply. They were of an age to be father and son, I thought, and that was what they looked like-two men of different generations but of one accord. Could it be that Rutilius himself had a hand in planning the impending massacre? Who better than a Roman to root out the hiding places of his fellow Romans?

I looked at the rapturous people around me, who continued to shout and cheer and applaud. Would this be their reaction to the genuine slaughter to come? Would they laugh and jeer as women and children were massacred before their eyes? Would they join in the killing like the wine-maddened maenads of Bacchus, gouging the eyes from old men and tearing the limbs off babies?

Suddenly I felt so faint that I could hardly remain standing. Yet, like an automaton, I kept clapping my hands together until my palms were numb, and I shouted until I was hoarse. What choice had I, with everyone watching everyone else across the room, and the gaze of the king or the queen likely to fall upon me at any moment?

I have learned, in such moments of despair, to purposely turn my mind to some thought that gives me comfort. Of late only one such thought provides a respite, and that is the fact that I parted ways with young Gordianus back in Alexandria. I can at least be thankful that he is far away from this dangerous place. Alas, almost certainly I will never see him again. But at least I will not see him put to death before my eyes.

[Here ends this fragment from the secret diary of Antipater of Sidon.]

The Phoenix rounded a bend in the Cayster River, and there ahead of us lay the city of Ephesus, glittering in the lowering sunlight like a many-faceted jewel set into the scooped-out hillside. Crowning Mount Pion, the city’s highest point, and dominating the skyline was the massive semicircular theater, one of the grandest in the world. Antipater had called Ephesus the most cosmopolitan of all Greek cities, the pride of Asia, the jewel of the East.