Robert Silverberg - Waiting for the End

He closed the book, and looked up at Antipater, and smiled a bleak, chilly little smile. Antipater had no difficulty in reading the Emperor’s thoughts. The last of all that great list! What a distinction, Antipater! What an extraordinary distinction!

That night Antipater dreamed of wild-eyed drunken Greek soldiers in bulky blue-green linen jerkins running jubilantly through the streets of Roma, laughing and shouting, looting stores, pulling women into alleyways. And then the Emperor Andronicus riding in glory down the Via Flaminia into the city, resplendent in his purple chlamys , his robe of authority, with his great mane of golden hair flowing behind him and his enormous yellow beard tumbling over his chest. Throngs of Roman citizens lined the great highway to pelt him with flower petals and cheer him on, crying out enthusiastically in praise of their new master, hailing him in his own language, calling him Basileus Romaion, “King of the Romans.” Spurning the use of a chariot, the conquering monarch sat astride a colossal white horse bedecked with jewels; he wore the shining Greek crown crested with peacock feathers and carried in one hand the eagle-headed scepter of rule, and with the other he waved magnanimously to the crowds. And went on toward the Forum, where he dismounted and looked around in satisfaction. And, sauntering on into the avenue running below the Capitoline Hill, paused there and gestured to a member of his entourage with a broad sweeping movement of his hand, as though to indicate where he intended to erect the triumphal arch marking his victory.

The next day—a day of endless pelting driving rain—a messenger arrived at the palace bearing word that Greek forces had landed on the Ligurian shore. The ports of Antipolis and Nicaea had fallen to them without a battle, and the Greeks were presently en route along the coastal highway toward the city of Genua. In the afternoon came a second runner, half dead on his feet, who carried news from the south that a tremendous military engagement was under way in Calabria, where the Roman army was hard pressed and slowly retreating, while a second Greek force out of Sicilia had unexpectedly landed farther up the peninsula, had captured the harbor of Neapolis, and was laying siege to that essential southern city, whose fall was imminent.

The only piece missing, thought Antipater, was an attack on the northeastern frontier by the Byzantine forces in Dalmatia. “Perhaps we’ll get news of that invasion too, before long,” he said to Justina. “But it hardly matters, does it?” The soldiers of Andronicus were already moving through the Italian peninsula toward Roma from both the north and the south. “The goose is cooked, as Germanicus would say. The game is lost. The Empire’s finished.”

“You will take a letter to the Basileus Andronicus,” said the Emperor.

They were in the little Indigo Office, next door to the Emerald one. In dank, rainy weather it was a little warmer there than in the Emerald. This was the fourth day of rain, now. Neapolis had fallen, and the Greek army of the south, having polished off most of the southern Roman garrison, was moving steadily up the Via Roma toward the capital. The only difficulties it was encountering were from mudslides blocking the roads. The second Greek force, the one coming down from Liguria, was somewhere in Latium, it seemed, perhaps as far south as Tarquinii or Caere. Apparently it, too, was meeting no resistance other than from the weather. Caere was just thirty miles north of Roma. There had also been a Byzantine breakthrough on the Venetian front out of Dalmatia.

Maximilianus cleared his throat. “‘To His Royal Splendor Andronicus Maniakes, Autocrat and Imperator, by the grace of God King of Kings, King of the Romans and Supreme Master of All Regions’—you have all that, Antipater?—”

“‘ Basileus basileion, ’” Antipater murmured. “Yes, majesty.” He gave Maximilianus a carefully measured glance. “Did you say ‘Supreme Master of All Regions’?”

“So he styles himself, yes,” said Maximilianus, a little irritably.

“But, begging your pardon, the implication, sire—”

“Let us just continue, Antipater. ‘And Supreme Master of All Regions. From his cousin Maximilianus Julianus Philippus Romanus Caesar Augustus, Imperator and Grand Pontifex, Tribune of the People, et cetera, et cetera’—you know all the titles, Antipater; put them in—‘Greetings, and may the benevolence of all the gods be upon you forever and ever, world without end.’” Again the Emperor paused. He took two or three deep breaths. “‘Whereas it has been the pleasure of the gods to permit me to occupy the throne of the Caesars these past twenty years, it has lately begun to seem to me that the favor of heaven has been withdrawn from me, and that it is the will of the most divine gods that I lay down the responsibilities that were placed upon me long ago by the command of my royal father, His Most Excellent Majesty the Divine Imperator Maximilianus Julianus Philippus Claudius Caesar Augustus. Likewise it is evident to me that the favor of heaven has fallen upon my Imperial cousin His Most Puissant Majesty the Basileus Andronicus Maniakes, Autocrat and Imperator, et cetera, et cetera,’—give his full titles all over again, will you, Antipater?—”

Antipater was on to his second wax tablet by this time, and he had scarcely written down anything but strings of royal titles. But the sense of the message was already quite clear. He felt his heart beginning to thump as the meaning of what the Emperor was dictating to him sank in.

It was a document of abdication.

Maximilianus was handing the Empire over to the Greeks.

Well, of course, the Greeks had grabbed the Empire already, essentially, everything but the capital itself and a few miserable miles of territory surrounding it. But still, was this proper Roman behavior? There was hardly any precedent for the capitulation of a Roman Emperor to a foreign conqueror, and that was what Andronicus was, a Greek, a foreigner, whatever pretense the Byzantines might make toward being a legitimate half of the original Roman Empire. Rulers had been deposed before, yes. There had been civil wars in ancient times, Octavianus versus Marcus Antonius, and the squabble over the succession to Nero, and the battle for the throne after the assassination of Commodus. But Antipater couldn’t recall any instances of a defeated Emperor supinely resigning the throne to his conqueror. The usual thing was to fall on your sword, wasn’t it, as the troops of the victorious rival drew near? But what had been usual a thousand years ago might no longer be considered appropriate behavior, Antipater decided.

And Maximilianus was still speaking in a steady flow, every sentence constructed with a careful sense of style and precise in its grammar, as though he had begun drafting this letter many weeks back, revising it again and again in his mind until it was perfect, and nothing remained now but for him to express it aloud so that Antipater could render it into Byzantine Greek.

Definitely, a document of abdication. To Antipater’s astonishment, Maximilianus was indeed not merely giving up his throne, he was designating Andronicus as his legally valid successor, the true and lawful wielder of the Imperial power.

There was, of course, the problem that Maximilianus had not managed to produce any children, and the official heir to the throne, Germanicus, was hardly suitable for the job. But Maximilianus was basically handing Andronicus clear title to the crown, not just by right of conquest but by the explicit decree of the outgoing monarch. In effect he was reuniting the two halves of the ancient Empire. Was it really necessary for him to carry the thing so far? If he didn’t plan to kill himself, Antipater thought, and who could blame him for that, couldn’t he simply acknowledge his defeat with a curt letter of surrender and go off into history with a certain degree of dignity intact?