Robert Silverberg - The Reign of Terror

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 intolerable 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.