Harry Sidebottom - Smoke & Mirrors

The Kalends of January AD236

‘What do you know about Abonouteichus?’ Vollo asked.

Censorinus thought before answering. ‘A town in Paphlagonia, on the southern shore of the Black Sea. Now called Ionopolis. There is an oracle of a god called Glycon there.’

‘And what does Lucian tell us about the oracle?’

Censorinus took his time. When the commander of the imperial spies asked a question any of his men would do the same. Sometimes, Censorinus thought, just sometimes, honesty was best. ‘I have never read Lucian.’

Vollo nodded, as if he had already known the answer, and was pleased that the young frumentarius had not lied.

‘You should, you really should,’ Vollo said. ‘You have to read widely if you want to rise in the world. Being a good frumentarius involves much more than delivering covert messages, eavesdropping and opening the letters of the disloyal, much more than occasionally, for the safety of the Emperor, removing such people from this world with speed and discretion.’

Censorinus took the words not as a rebuke, but an encouragement. There had been no call for literature in the remote Alpine village in which he had been born. He had learnt to read and write serving in the Legion in Raetia. Although his Greek had not progressed much beyond putting the letter theta on rosters against the name of a soldier who was thanatos , dead. His promotion into the frumentarii had been the result of native wit, a good memory, and the efficient obeying of orders, no matter how unsavoury. Yet now he accepted that knowledge, if not power itself, was a key to gaining that desirable and both status and wealth enhancing quality. To move unnoticed in elite circles, a frumentarius needed to be able to pass himself off as a man of culture. Censorinus had bought a primer on the poetry of Homer, and, when unobserved in the barracks, had begun to laboriously plough through its turgid pages.

‘The oracle was founded back in the reign of Marcus Aurelius by a man called Alexander. Lucian says that he was as great in villainy, as his namesake the son of Philip was in heroism. This Alexander was worse than a bandit, because he filled not just one region, but the whole empire with brigandage. His soul was a compound of lying, trickery, perjury, and malice. He deserved to be torn apart by foxes and apes in the amphitheatre.’

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