Robert Silverberg: A Hero of the Empire

Here I am at last, Horatius, in far-off Arabia, amongst the Greeks and the camels and the swarthy Saracen tribesmen and all the other unpleasant creatures that infest this dreary desert. For my sins. My grievous sins. “Get you to Arabia, serpent!” cried the furious Emperor Julianus, and here I am. Serpent . Me. How could he have been so unkind?

But I tell you, O friend of my bosom, I will employ this time of exile to win my way back into Caesar’s good graces somehow. I will do something while I am here, something , I know not what just yet, that will remind him of what a shrewd and enterprising and altogether valuable man I am; and sooner or later he will recall me to Roma and restore me to my place at court. Before many years have passed you and I will stroll together along Tiber’s sweet banks again. Of this much I am certain, that the gods did not have it in mind for me that I should spin out all my remaining days in so miserable a sandy wasteland as this.

A bleak forlorn place, it is, this Arabia. A bleak disheartening journey it was to get here, too.

There are, as perhaps you are aware, several Arabias within the vast territory that we know by that general name. In the north lies Arabia Petraea, a prosperous mercantile region bordering on Syria Palaestina. Arabia Petraea has been an Imperial province since the reign of Augustus Caesar, six hundred years ago. Then comes a great deal of emptiness—Arabia Deserta, it is called—a grim, harsh, barren district inhabited mainly by quarrelsome nomads. And on the far side of that lies Arabia Felix, a populous land every bit as happy as its name implies, a place of luxurious climate and easy circumstances, famed for its fertile and productive fields and for the abundance of fine goods that it pours forth into the world’s markets, gold and pearls, frankincense and myrrh, balsams and aromatic oils and perfumes.

Which of these places Caesar intended as my place of exile, I did not know. I was told that I would learn that during the course of my journey east. I have an ancient family connection to the eastern part of the world, for in the time of the first Claudius my great ancestor Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo was proconsul of Asia with his seat at Ephesus, and then governor of Syria under Nero, and various other Corbulos since his time have dwelled in those distant regions. It seemed almost agreeable to be renewing the tradition, however involuntary the renewal. Gladly would I have settled for Arabia Petraea if I had to go to Arabia at all: it is a reasonable destination for a highly placed Roman gentleman temporarily out of favor with his monarch. But of course my hopes were centered on Arabia Felix, which by all accounts was the more congenial land.

The voyage from Roma to Syria Palaestina—pfaugh, Horatius! Nightmare. Torture. Seasick every day. Beloved friend, I am no seafaring man. Then came a brief respite in Caesarea Maritima, the one good part, lovely cosmopolitan city, wine flowing freely, complacent pretty girls everywhere, and, yes, Horatius, I must confess it, some pretty boys, too. I stayed there as long as I could. But eventually I received word that the caravan that was to take me down into Arabia was ready to depart, and I had to go.

Let no one beguile you with romantic tales of desert travel. For a civilized man it is nothing but torment and agony.

Three steps to the inland side of Jerusalem and you find yourself in the hottest, driest country this side of Hades; and things only get worse from there. Every breath you take hits your lungs like a blast from an oven. Your nostrils, your ears, your lips become coated with windborne particles of grit. The sun is like a fiery iron platter in the sky. You go for miles without seeing a single tree or shrub, nothing but rock and red sand. Mocking phantoms dance before you in the shimmering air. At night, if you are lucky enough or weary enough to be able to drop off to sleep for a little while, you dream longingly of lakes and gardens and green lawns, but then you are awakened by the scrabbling sound of a scorpion in the sand beside your cheek, and you lie there sobbing in the stifling heat, praying that you will die before the coming of the fiery dawn.

Somewhere in the midst of all this dead wilderness the traveler leaves the province of Syria Palaestina and enters Arabia, though no one can say precisely where the boundary lies. The first thing you come to, once across that invisible line, is the handsome city of Petra of the Nabataeans, an impregnable rock fortress that stands athwart all the caravan routes. It is a rich city and, aside from the eternal parching heat, quite a livable one. I would not have greatly minded serving out my time of exile there.

But no, no, the letter of instruction from His Imperial Majesty that awaited me in Petra informed me that I needs must go onward, farther south. Arabia Petraea was not the part of Arabia that he had in mind for me. I enjoyed three days of civilized urban amusement there and then I was in the desert again, traveling by camel this time. I will spare you the horrors of that experience. We were heading, they let me know, for the Nabataean port of Leuke Kome on the Red Sea.

Excellent, I thought. This Leuke Kome is the chief port of embarkation for travelers sailing on to Arabia Felix. So they must be sending me to that fertile land of soft breezes and sweet-smelling blossoms, of spices and precious stones. I imagined myself waiting out my seasons of banishment in a cozy little villa beside the sea, nibbling tender dates and studying the fine brandies of the place. Perhaps I would dabble a bit in the frankincense trade or do a little lucrative business in cinnamon and cassia to pass the time.

At Leuke Kome I presented myself to the Imperial legate, a sleek and self-important young popinjay named Florentius Victor, and asked him how long it would be before my ship was to leave. He looked at me blankly. “Ship? What ship? Your route lies overland, my dear Leontius Corbulo.” He handed me the last of my letters of instruction, by which I was informed that my final destination was a place by the name of Macoraba, where I was to serve as commercial representative of His Imperial Majesty’s government, with the special responsibility of resolving any trade conflicts that might arise with such representatives of the Eastern Empire as might be stationed there.

“Macoraba? And just where is that?”

“Why, in Arabia Deserta,” said Florentius Victor blandly.

“Arabia Deserta?” I repeated, with a sinking heart.

“Exactly. A very important city, as cities in that part of the world go. Every caravan crossing Arabia has to stop there. Perhaps you’ve heard of it under its Saracen name. Mecca , is what the Saracens call it.”

Arabia Deserta, Horatius! Arabia Deserta! For the trifling crime of tampering with the innocence of his unimportant little British cup-boy, the heartless vindictive Emperor has buried me in this brutal netherworld of remorseless heat and drifting dunes.

I have been in Macoraba—Mecca, I should say—just three or four days, now. It seems like a lifetime already.

What do we have in this land of Arabia Deserta? Why, nothing but a desolate torrid sandy plain intersected by sharp and naked hills. There are no rivers and rain scarcely ever falls. The sun is merciless. The wind is unrelenting. The dunes shift and heave like ocean waves in a storm: whole legions could be buried and lost by a single day’s gusts. For trees they have only scrubby little tamarinds and acacias, that take their nourishment from the nightly dews. Here and there one finds pools of brackish water rising from the bowels of the earth, and these afford a bit of green pasture and sometimes some moist ground on which the date palm and the grapevine can take root, but it is a sparse life indeed for those who have elected to settle in such places.