Harry Sidebottom - The Amber Road

His first view of their destination had moved Gallienus to recite Homer:

For I know this thing well in my heart, and my mind knows it:

There will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish,

And Priam, and the people of Priam of the strong ash spear.

The same words of Hector recited by Scipio as he gazed on the ruin of Carthage some four hundred years before. Unsurprisingly, the imperial entourage — the philosophers included — had shaken back their cloaks and quietly lauded the appositeness of the quotation. Only Freki the Alamann and the Germanic bodyguards he commanded had not joined in the applause. Paideia meant nothing to them — it was doubtful any of them understood Greek — but even on a day devoted to culture an emperor could not be without armed guards.

The town was a ruin. Its outer wall could just be traced as a low grassy bank from which poked occasional blocks of weathered stone. Inside, the streets were choked with weed-covered rubble. Mature trees grew in what had once been the agora and gymnasium. The walls of few houses remained above a couple of feet. Lonely columns, some at dangerous angles, marked the site of temples long abandoned by gods and men.

The citadel had fared a little better. In places, its wall still stood, if insecurely. At its height, their condition defying the ages, loomed one huge tower and a temple to the Egyptian gods. Dark and primordial, it was as if they still waited, for guards, for priests and worshippers.

And over everything soared the heights of the Apennines, gorgeous, bright and remote in the spring sunshine.

Alighting from his carriage, Plotinus had conducted Gallienus around the site. Supported on one side by his philosopher’s staff and on the other by Amelius, his fussy, aging chief disciple, Plotinus was indefatigable. In practical demonstration of his belief that the body was no better than a prison, he had made no concessions to the ulcers on his feet. Pushing through undergrowth, clambering around fallen masonry, disturbing small lizards where they basked, throughout the heat of the day he had set out his vision. Courtiers and German bodyguards flagged — the latter were never good in hot weather — but Plotinus had not let up. Gallienus thought the philosopher’s old eyes had become less bleared; certainly his voice had gathered strength.

Once, this desolation had been a city of the Pythagoreans. Their worn inscriptions and strange symbols were discernible through ivy and moss. In their way they had been seekers after wisdom and the divine. But they had chosen the wrong path. They had erred into dark magic and political tyranny. For these, rightly, they had been condemned. Now, with the favour of the emperor, this place could rise again, rise in justice and truth under the tenets of Plato.

It would cost the imperial fiscus little, probably no more than a million sesterces, for contributions had been promised by many affluent followers of Plato. The senators Firmus, Marcellus Orontius and Sabinillus already had pledged large sums. Five thousand settlers were needed. Military veterans would be best, as used to discipline, but landless peasants, members of the urban plebs, even barbarian refugees or prisoners would be acceptable — true philosophy can enlighten the most ignorant, tame the most savage. A select group of eminent philosophers would form the Nocturnal Council. These guardians of virtue would govern the town. Platonopolis would be the wonder of this and future ages — a city run by the Laws of Plato, a utopia made real by the paideia of Gallienus Augustus, by the wisdom and learning of the emperor.

At last it had been time for the midday meal, and it was Gallienus’s turn to amaze. In a shaded olive grove on a slope overlooking the projected city, the emperor had had his servants prepare rustic couches and cedarwood tables spread with out-of-season delicacies. Boys dressed as Pans played pipes, and pretty young shepherdesses tended their artfully groomed flocks. For postprandial rest there were cubicula of roses. No expense had been spared creating this transient ideal of bucolic simplicity.

Garlanded and replete, Gallienus lay back, cup in hand, a handsome Greek boy at his feet. Other comely servants glided through the grove, their smooth youth a delicious contrast to the gnarled silver trunks of the trees. Gallienus noted that most of Plotinus’s followers exhibited a detachment suitable to their calling. One Diophanes, however, despite his rough cloak and untrimmed beard, appeared far from indifferent to their charms.

On the couch next to Gallienus, the elderly senator Tacitus was utterly unmoved by either the pulchritude on display or the food and drink. Solemnly he nibbled at a piece of dry bread, which from time to time he dipped in a little olive oil. The only other items on his plate were a morsel of cold pheasant and some leaves of lettuce. He had drunk just enough watered wine to be polite. He had unbent no more than loosening his sword belt.

Gallienus knew all about Tacitus’s austere domestic regime. The Danubian subscribed to the belief that lettuce cooled the desires of the flesh — he was very opposed to the desires of the flesh. Likewise, Gallienus knew why Tacitus had journeyed from his estate at Interamna and requested permission to be one of the imperial comites today. Naturally a figure of such seniority and influence — a powerful military man from the Danube risen to the rank of consul — was watched by the frumentarii . The imperial spy in Tacitus’s household had given ample forewarning of the request and its reason.

Platonopolis had aroused vehement antagonism. Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans, Peripatetics and, of course, latter-day Neo-Pythagoreans had united with Megareans and Cyreneans and followers of doctrines of yet greater obscurity to denounce the whole concept. No sect wanted to see another singled out in imperial favour. They had all been most unphilosophic in their complaints.

More telling opposition had come from within the military. Some years before, struck by the sworn-bands of the northern barbarians who would not leave the field alive if their chief fell, and thinking a little of the companions around Alexander the Great and his successors, Gallienus had instituted the protectores . Part bodyguard, part senior officer, a protector took a personal oath on a naked blade to fight to the death for the emperor. Their oath brought the right to bear arms in the imperial presence.

The protectores had appeared united in their hostility to Platonopolis. Their loyalty gave them a certain latitude. Aureolus, the Prefect of Cavalry, had used smooth words for one raised as a shepherd among the semi-barbarian Getae. Domitianus had argued in the sonorous tones of a man who claimed descent from an emperor. However, others had gone further. The Praetorian Prefect Volusianus had spoken as the blunt ex-trooper he was. Camsisoleus had waved his hands about, as excited as might be expected of an Egyptian. Aurelian — the one they called Hand-to-Steel — had even raised his voice in the imperial consilium ; to the horror of the silentarii . Tacitus was one of their number, and he was the last throw of the protectores.

Gallienus had decided to grant the petition of Plotinus. An emperor’s reign demanded monuments. The architects had produced nothing but problems, delays and additional expense with the new colossus of Gallienus on the Esquiline. No more than its gigantic feet existed. And future generations might mistake its size for something hubristic. A city dedicated to paideia , to Plato, could never incur that charge.

Yet Gallienus would give Tacitus a hearing. A civilis princeps did not act on a whim, on personal inclination, like an oriental despot. A good emperor consulted his friends, let his amici speak their minds. Free speech should be allowed in formal council, and also away from the consilium at a rustic meal in the foothills of the Apennines.