Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

It was the first time Galen had ever felt that Rome was a city filled with people. For seven years it had seemed a half-empty tomb, inhabited only by the shades of its residents and the echoes of memory. Today, riding in the white chariot through the avenues, seeing the endless lines of people thronging the streets and alleyways, their voices cheering him as he passed, at last he saw the city that had raised an Empire. At last, after years of struggle, it was alive.

"Has there been sign of him of late?" Galen worried at the question of his missing brother like a dog with an old bone.

"Sign-no, but rumor? Yes. The Duchess sent word to me no more than a week ago that one of her agents had reported that our little piglet had returned to Italy and was hiding out in the hills above the city. I sent men to investigate, but I have not heard what transpired. The Duchess and I are meeting in a few days."

The praises of the priests ceased and the Pontifex Maximus came forth, holding aloft the signs and symbols of his office. Incense drifted around him, making white trails that tracked into the dim recesses of the vault that towered above the great statue of the god. Around the fringe of the temple, a thousand acolytes and priests bowed their heads. Galen, seeing the movement, composed his face and did the same.

"The omens are good!" the voice of the Pontifex rang throughout the temple. "The gods are pleased. Let the Imperator enter his city."

Galen stood, his knees sore from so much kneeling and the long, slow ascent of the steps of the temple. He turned, clasping his brother's wrist with his right hand.

"Well met, brother." Aurelian smiled back, his broad grin shining in his face. "This is a doubly joyous day!"

"Come," Galen said to the assembled host of priests and his Legion commanders, "let us proclaim the celebrations."

– |"They will drink and carouse and dance and sing until the day comes again," Aurelian said, still smiling, as they stood on the balcony of the Severan Palace at the south end of the Palatine hill. A hundred feet below, in the long rectangle of the Circus Maximus, great bonfires were burning. The sky above was clear and dark, scattered with stars and Venus, bright on the horizon. But below, amid the smoke and fume of hundreds of roasting cattle and swine, the populace of the city celebrated the return of their Emperor and of the Legions, victorious against an ancient enemy.

Galen answered with a nod, leaning against the marble balustrade of the balcony. Here, safe at the heart of his domain, he had released his men from the long discipline that had held them in check from the sack of Ctesiphon. Finally they could celebrate their great victory, spend some of their loot, drink and tell tales of their valor and bravery to wives, barmaids, and maidens. Across the whole city, in every public place, the Emperor's purse was open, filling the bellies of the citizen and the slave and the visitor with wine and bread and hot pies and roasted flesh from every kind of creature. Below, in the circus, with its great doors flung open, the men of the Legions held forth-seeing their families again, meeting old friends and new. For this whole day and night, the city reveled in triumph.

"Maxian came to me in Albania," Galen said, turning to his brother with a pensive face. "All unbidden, he appeared-a ghost in black and gray-as I sat in my tent late at night, working. He was so thin and worn looking! Have you ever seen him in such a state?"

Aurelian shook his head in negation. He was disturbed more, now, by the pain in his brother's voice.

"He told me a tale," Galen said, "an impossible fancy. But he believed and asked me for my help. I could not believe it… it seemed so fantastical!" The Emperor's voice faded to a whisper.

"What happened?" Aurelian was staring at his brother with unaccustomed concern. Though the brothers had bickered and quarreled over the years-even fought on occasion, when they were in their cups-none had ever refused another's plea for help. The bonds of family ran that close. What would pater et mater think if they fell out among themselves? "What did you say to him?"

"There were harsh words," Galen said in a small voice, refusing to meet his brother's eyes. "My guardsmen took him away to sleep-he was so tired! I was sure it was fatigue that made us quarrel. But then morning came and he was gone. Not even one trace of him remained. Aurelian, he was a ghost…"

Aurelian shook his head and took his brother by the shoulders, shaking him lightly. "The Piglet will come back," he said softly. "He always does, beard half grown in, stinking of wine. Put those thoughts aside for now; today is the day of your victory, of your triumph. Listen to the night, to the cheerful songs of men who you led to victory on a foreign field. Hear the city rejoicing."

Galen looked up and sighed, then ran a thin hand over his face. "It was very fine to ride in that chariot and hear the adulation of the crowds. It was a good show today."

"But, brother-no races? No gladiatorial games or elaborate staged battles in the Coliseum? No munera to please the gods?" Aurelian was grinning, but puzzlement marked his bluff, open face.

Galen shook his head, pursing his lips in a quiet smile.

"My gift to the city is the safe return of these men. Besides, any eager senator can put on a giant octopus and shipwrecked Numidian fishermen show in the Flavian. This does not obscure the joy a mother feels to see her son come home again, alive and whole."

The Emperor turned, putting his back to the railing. Above him, he could see the courses of the Capitoline ablaze with light. Every window held a lamp, and the lines of the rooftops were shining with torches and lanterns. The whole of the city, sprawling away behind him, was glowing. Rome could be seen, he was sure, from a hundred miles away. A breeze off the mountains ruffled his lank dark hair, and the Emperor signaled to one of the slave girls loitering just out of earshot. "Vidia, bring us hot wine, please."

The girl bobbed her long blond hair and hurried off, her short skirt showing fine pale legs.

"I am not an emperor given to excesses, my brother, you know that!"

"True," Aurelian said, shaking his shaggy head, "but it strikes everyone as odd that you do not lavish such gifts and exhibitions upon the city as others have done in the past." Aurelian avoided mentioning the other words he had heard: miserly or cheap or penurious.

"Let them think it odd," Galen growled, finally rising to his brother's bait. "In another time the Emperor would have unleashed each and every man in the army-their shoulders bent with the weight of their looted coin and jewels-all willy-nilly upon the city in a storm of debauchery. Half the army would be drunk and useless for a month from it. And all that silver and gold would be gone from each soldier's purse in half the time. Prices would rise, driven by such an influx of coin, and the poor man in the street would be pinched worse than ever."

Aurelian frowned and scratched his nose. "That has been the tradition," he allowed, and took a goblet from the tray that Vidia had brought. "Why meddle with tradition? It pleases the men, and the innkeepers, too!"

"That is so," Galen said, taking the other goblet. The surface of the wine, a deep red Falernian, was steaming in the cool air, and he drank thirstily. It had been hot work, riding in the chariot through all the winding ways of the city, passing through each square and market, so that all could look upon him and his men and see that Victoria had graced Rome with her favor again. "But it would not please me, nor you if you thought beyond the next horse race or bottle of wine. I have held back each legionnaire's share of the booty from Ctesiphon to place in the Treasury. A third of that sum due each man will be paid out to them when they leave Legion service as an addition to their honesta misso. For many, that will double the coin they would receive on their discharge day. Another third will be paid out over time as a supplement to their pay. The last third, they have today, to spend in the fleshpots and tavernae and baths."