Colleen McCullough - 4. Caesar's Women

It wasn't until Quintus Marcius Rex arrived in Antioch that Clodius began to see one revenge was at hand. "Invasion" was the term Rex had employed, but of fighting there was none; Lucullus's puppet Antiochus Asiaticus fled, leaving Rex King to do his own kingmaking by installing one Philippus on the throne. Syria was in turmoil, not least because Lucullus had released many, many thousands of Greeks, all of whom had flocked home. But some came home to discover that their businesses and houses had been taken over by the Arabs whom Tigranes had winkled out of the desert, and to whom he had bequeathed the vacancies created by the Greeks he had kidnapped to Hellenize his Median Armenia. To Rex it mattered little who owned what in Antioch, in Zeugma, in Samosata, in Damascus. But to his brother in law Clodius it came to matter greatly. Arabs, he hated Arabs! To work went Clodius, on the one hand by whispering in Rex's ear about the perfidies of the Arabs who had usurped Greek jobs and Greek houses, and on the other hand by visiting every single discontented and dispossessed Greek man of influence he could find. In Antioch, in Zeugma, in Samosata, in Damascus. Not an Arab ought to remain in civilized Syria, he declared. Let them go back to the desert and the desert trade routes, where they belonged! It was a very successful campaign. Soon murdered Arabs began to appear in gutters from Antioch to Damascus, or floated down the broad Euphrates with their outlandish garb billowing about them. When a deputation of Arabs came to see Rex in Antioch, he rebuffed them curtly; Clodius's whispering campaign had succeeded. "Blame King Tigranes," Rex said. "Syria has been inhabited by Greeks in all its fertile and settled parts for six hundred years. Before that, the people were Phoenician. You're Skenites from east of the Euphrates, you don't belong on the shores of Our Sea. King Tigranes has gone forever. In future Syria will be in the domain of Rome." "We know," said the leader of this delegation, a young Skenite Arab who called himself Abgarus; what Rex failed to understand was that this was the hereditary title of the Skenite King. "All we ask is that Syria's new master should accord us what has become ours. We did not ask to be sent here, or to be toll collectors along the Euphrates, or inhabit Damascus. We too have been uprooted, and ours was a crueler fate than the Greeks'." Quintus Marcius Rex looked haughty. "I fail to see how." Great governor, the Greeks went from one kindness to another. They were honored and paid well in Tigranocerta, in Nisibis, in Amida, in Singara, everywhere. But we came from a land so hard and harsh, so stung by sand and barren that the only way we could keep warm at night was between the bodies of our sheep or before the smoky fire given off by a wheel of dried dung. And all that happened twenty years ago. Now we have seen grass growing, we have consumed fine wheaten bread every day, we have drunk clear water, we have bathed in luxury, we have slept in beds and we have learned to speak Greek. To send us back to the desert is a needless cruelty. There is prosperity enough for all to share here in Syria! Let us stay, that is all we ask. And let those Greeks who persecute us know that you, great governor, will not condone a barbarity unworthy of any man who calls himself Greek," said Abgarus with simple dignity. "I really can't do anything to help you," said Rex, unmoved. "I'm not issuing orders to ship all of you back to the desert, but I will have peace in Syria. I suggest you find the worst of the Greek troublemakers and sit down with them to parley." Abgarus and his fellow delegates took part of that advice, though Abgarus himself never forgot Roman duplicity, Roman connivance at the murder of his people. Rather than seek out the Greek ringleaders, the Skenite Arabs first of all organized themselves into well protected groups, and then set about discovering the ultimate source of growing discontent among the Greeks. For it was bruited about that the real culprit was not Greek, but Roman. Learning a name, Publius Clodius, they then found out that this young man was the brother in law of the governor, came from one of Rome's oldest and most august families, and was a cousin by marriage of the conqueror of the pirates, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Therefore he could not be killed. Secrecy was possible in the desert wastes, but not in Antioch; someone would sniff the plot out and tell. "We will not kill him," said Abgarus. "We will teach him a severe lesson." Further enquiries revealed that Publius Clodius was a very strange Roman nobleman indeed. He lived, it turned out, in an ordinary house among the slums of Antioch, and he frequented the kind of places Roman noblemen usually avoided. But that of course made him accessible. Abgarus pounced. Bound, gagged and blindfolded, Publius Clodius was carried to a room without windows, a room without murals or decorations or differences from half a million such rooms in Antioch. Nor was Publius Clodius allowed to see beyond a glimpse as the cloth over his eyes was removed along with his gag, for a sack was slipped over his head and secured around his throat. Bare walls, brown hands, they were all he managed to take in before a less complete blindness descended; he could distinguish vague shapes moving through the rough weave of the bag, but nothing more. His heart tripped faster than the heart of a bird; the sweat rolled off him; his breath came short and shallow and gasping. Never in all his life had Clodius been so terrified, so sure he was going to die. But at whose hands? What had he done? The voice when it came spoke Greek with an accent he now recognized as Arabic; Clodius knew then that he would indeed die. "Publius Clodius of the great Claudius Pulcher family," said the voice, "we would dearly love to kill you, but we realize that is not possible. Unless, that is, after we free you, you seek vengeance for what will be done here tonight. If you do try to seek vengeance, we will understand that we have nothing to lose by killing you, and I swear by all our gods that we will kill you. Be wise, then, and quit Syria after we free you. Quit Syria, and never come back as long as you live." What you do?'' Clodius managed to say, knowing that whatever it was could not be less than torture and flogging. "Why, Publius Clodius," said the voice, unmistakably amused, "we are going to make you into one of us. We are going to turn you into an Arab." Hands lifted the hem of his tunic (Clodius wore no toga in Antioch; it cramped his style too much) and removed the loincloth Romans wore when out and about the streets clad only in a tunic. He fought, not understanding, but many hands lifted him onto a flat hard surface, held his legs, his arms, his feet. "Do not struggle, Publius Clodius," said the voice, still amused. "It isn't often our priest has something this large to work on, so the job will be easy. But if you move, he might cut off more than he intends to." Hands again, pulling at his penis, stretching it out what was happening? At first Clodius thought of castration, wet himself and shit himself, all amid outright laughter from the other side of the bag depriving him of sight; after which he lay perfectly still and shrieked, screamed, babbled, begged, howled. Where was he, that they didn't need to gag him? They didn't castrate him, though what they did was hideously painful, something to the tip of his penis. "There!" said the voice. "What a good boy you are, Publius Clodius! One of us forever. You should heal very well if you don't dip your wick in anything noxious for a few days." On went the loincloth over the shit, on went the tunic, and then Clodius knew no more, though afterward he never knew whether his captors had knocked him out or whether he had fainted. He woke up in his own house, in his own bed, with an aching head and something so sore between his legs that it was the pain registered first, before he remembered what had happened. Pain forgotten, he leaped from the bed and, gasping with terror that perhaps nothing remained, he put his hands beneath his penis and cradled it to see what was there, how much was left. All of it, it seemed, except that something odd glistened purply between crusted streaks of blood. Something he usually saw only when he was erect. Even then he didn't really understand, for though he had heard of it, he knew no people save for Jews and Egyptians who were said to do it, and he knew no Jews or Egyptians. The realization dawned very slowly, but when it did Publius Clodius wept. The Arabs did it too, for they had made him into one of them. They had circumcised him, cut off his foreskin.