Harry Sidebottom: The Caspian Gates

A sharp tug on Ballista’s waist, then another. The northerner lay waiting – maybe he had missed the first pull on the rope. He said something to Constans; something reassuring, nothing valedictory about it at all. Ballista started to move backwards.

At first, he moved slowly, not wishing to unsettle Constans. Then he realized this was madness. Hands, elbows, knees, feet working furiously, he propelled himself away. He felt the sharp things; the abrasions, nicks and cuts blossomed all over his body.

Maximus caught him as he shot out feet first. The Hibernian set him down. Ballista was retching, wiping his eyes. They should have brought water.

Maximus pointed to the side of the depression. Smoke issued from at least a dozen vents. One streamed out in a jet, as if from a crack in a charcoal burner’s stack. Another gave out distinct puffs, like an angry chthonic god signalling catastrophe.

‘We cannot leave him,’ Ballista said.

Maximus nodded, hoisted himself into the opening.

Ballista knew what Maximus was going to do. Should he stop him? Ballista drew back from the abyss of the huge moral dilemma. He looked over the ruins; perilous and transitory. Ballista shut his eyes.

There came the sound of scrabbling. Maximus was back. He got out, re-sheathed the knife.

‘Time to go.’

‘ Dominus, have you decided what to do with Ballista?’ At the words, a silence spread through the dining room of the requisitioned house in Byzantium.

The Roman emperor, the pious, invincible Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus, did not respond to his a Studiis. The responsibilities of Voconius Zeno were to aid the emperor in his cultural studies, duties which did not stretch anything like so far as this.

‘The man has killed a pretender, had the temerity to assume the purple, even for only a few days,’ Zeno continued.

Gallienus selected a pear from the low table by his couch. Who has bribed you? he thought. How much did this question cost?

‘Ballista is in Ephesus, waiting for the start of the sailing season to take a boat and return to Sicily. In five days he will be gone. He is not coming here to the court,’ said Zeno.

Gallienus turned the fruit in his hand. It had a lustre in the spring sunshine. Biting into it, he took in the other men in the room. There were fourteen apart from himself: five civilians; heads of imperial chanceries, including Zeno; and nine military men. It was a small, intimate lunch after the formal consilium. The serious business of the morning was done. They had discussed at length the imperial decision, as implacable and irrevocable as that of a god, concerning the city of Byzantium.

‘Of course, Dominus, I am not suggesting a course of action.’ Zeno was losing confidence in the face of continued imperial silence. ‘It may well be he should be rewarded, rather than punished.’

Gallienus noted that, while all were quiet, only one of the others seemed especially interested. It was not Rufinus, the Princeps Peregrinorum. As head of the secret service, Rufinus should have been all ears. The man who was paying close attention, although hiding it well, was Censorinus, the deputy Praetorian Prefect.

It could be time for a change, thought Gallienus. Censorinus may be a low-bred individual, his misquotations of Homer the talk of the court, but he had served as Princeps Peregrinorum to both Gallienus’s father, Valerian, and the short-lived pretenders Macrianus and Quietus. He was a political survivor: untrustworthy, but ruthless and efficient. Gallienus knew he needed men with the latter qualities, and he had never been one to hold a man’s birth against him.

‘Try a pear,’ the emperor said to Zeno. ‘You know how I enjoy things out of season.’

A servant passed the silver fruit platter, and Zeno helped himself. Gallienus suppressed a smile. It may well be that Zeno detested pears, but an imperial suggestion always had the force of a command. And – the urge to smile was hard to resist – Zeno would be turning over all the possible meanings of what he had said, and must recognize the dangerous implications of ‘things out of season’.

‘My mind is not yet made up,’ Gallienus said. ‘But now I want my comites to advise me on my decennalia.’

Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the subject, it was a civilian, one of the heads of chanceries, who began. ‘ Dominus,’ said Caecilius Hermianus, the ab Admissionibus, ‘your ten glorious years on the throne demand a fitting, magnificent spectacle.’

‘Indeed,’ replied Gallienus. ‘Although I was hoping for more specific suggestions.’ The pleasure of crushing men with words was insidious. He must keep it in check. He did not want to become like Tiberius or Caligula: kingship and tyranny were two sides of a coin.

‘It will have to wait for the autumn, when the campaigning season is over.’ The senior Praetorian Prefect, unlike his deputy, Censorinus, did not affect the accent and manners of the upper class. Volusianus was a military man through and through. He had started out as a cavalry trooper, and he was proud of it. He was one of the few men Gallienus trusted unreservedly. How the senate had loathed it when he had made Volusianus consul the year before.

‘Which gives us time to plan a truly wonderful occasion.’ The urbane voice of Palfurius Sura, the ab Epistulis, was full of enthusiasm. ‘Obviously, it must open with a grand procession: the senate and equestrian order, in togas, selected matrons of good character; torch-lit, at night, ascending the Capitol.’

‘White oxen with gilded horns, white lambs: two hundred of each – a holocaust to thank the gods of Rome for their providence in watching over the best of emperors in these difficult times.’ Achilleus, the a Memoria, nodded at his own sagacity and plain speaking in even alluding to the chaos that disfigured the empire.

One of the military officers spoke. ‘The standards of the legions and auxiliaries, the prisoners-of-war: Persians, Goths, Sarmatians.’ Aureolus, the Prefect of Cavalry, once a shepherd boy among the Getan tribesmen up by the Danube, was another tough military man whom Gallienus trusted.

‘Elephants,’ said Achilleus. ‘They would add grandeur to the procession; and golden cloaks for the matrons.’

‘There must be at least three days of spectacles.’ The ab Admissionibus Hermianus clearly wished to win back ground after his earlier rebuff. ‘Circus races – a full programme of course; gladiators – fewer than 1,200 would not be right; and theatrical performances of all kinds: mimes and buffoons, as well as pantomimes and serious actors.’

‘Buffoons putting on a Cyclops-performance, and boxing. Your people love both.’ Zeno was on good ground; all knew the emperor’s liking for such things – nothing out of season here.

‘Excellent,’ pronounced Gallienus. ‘Excellent. The gladiators will march in the procession, and the boxers and pantomimes can be exhibited on wagons.’

There was a tiny pause, as the comites assured themselves that the emperor was serious, before a great deal of decorous agreement.

‘And buildings – an emperor must provide work to feed his people – there must be buildings.’ Some of the glacial self-control customary with an emperor slipped. Architecture was one of Gallienus’s keenest passions, along with philosophy, poetry, oratory, women, his patron god Hercules, and several other things; he was a man of many and varied passions. ‘The architects have been commissioned to draw up plans for the new colossus on the Esquiline Hill. The foundations at least must be ready to be dedicated by the decennalia. But more is needed. I wish to construct a portico along the Via Flaminia. It will extend as far as the Mulvian Bridge. It should be four columns deep, the foremost bearing statues of the great men of Rome.’