Raptor (116 page)

When we arrived at the Forum of Constantine, Zeno was waiting, and he escorted Theodoric from the chariot up onto a platform garlanded with flowers. The marchers and riders and musicians kept on moving, circling about the forum’s great central column so the two monarchs could formally make review of the procession. Each body of men, as it passed the platform, in unison roared a mighty shout of “Io triumphe!” and gave the Roman salute of raised right fist or the Ostrogoth salute of stiffly extended right arm. And the cityfolk standing packed all around the circumference of the forum enthusiastically echoed each shout, “Io triumphe!” Zeno and Theodoric then repaired to the Church of Hagía Sophía to make devotions.

On his emergence from the church, Theodoric gave the order “Dismissed!” and when that was repeated by officers up and down the columns, the triumphal riders and marchers and musicians broke ranks. Then, from kitchens all over the city came obsonatores bearing high-heaped trays and platters and salvers, and brimful jugs and ewers and amphorae. Soldiers and citizen spectators alike fell to on the abundance of viands, while we higher-rankers proceeded to the Purple Palace for a more formal, less lusty feast.

We were escorted to the palace’s most elegantly appointed triclinium, the room called the Dining Hall of the Nineteen Couches. Since there were
only
nineteen couches, no one of lesser title than myself and Soas and Bishop Akakiós could be accommodated, meaning that all the senators and magistrates and minor churchmen had to dine elsewhere. As we favored few lounged about—eating breast of pheasant cooked in raspberry wine, and roast kid doused with garon sauce, and drinking the finest Khíos wine—I heard Zeno’s stout and middle-aged but still handsome empress, the Basílissa Ariadne, congratulating Theodoric on his consulship.

“Even the commonfolk seem to approve of your preferment,” she said. “All the polloi were cheering you right heartily. You must be proud, Consul.”

“I shall strive to maintain humility, my lady,” Theodoric replied good-humoredly. “After all, the Emperor Caligula once proposed awarding the consulship to his favorite
horse.”

The empress laughed, but Zeno looked half peeved, half rueful that his lavishing of honors evidently had not yet won Theodoric over to brotherly affection. However, Zeno was not going to give up on his courtship. During the subsequent days and weeks, he continued to ply Theodoric with blandishments—and of course we attendants of the king got to enjoy them as well. I, for one, was probably more impressed by all the entertainments and diversions than Theodoric was, because he had spent much of his childhood here among the wonders of Constantinople.

We were shown the city’s religious treasures. A staff once belonging to Moses is reverently kept within the Purple Palace itself. The Church of Hagía Sophía, besides housing what is said to be the well from which Jesus asked a drink of the Samaritan woman, also contains a robe and girdle once worn by the Virgin Mary. Still, as I have said, this city founded by the “Nobilium Christianissime” Emperor Constantine has yet to learn good Christian intolerance. The Church of Hagía Sophía is hedged all about with a multitude of statues—exactly 427 of them—most of which are of such non-Christian personages as the Pythian Apóllon, the Samian Hera, the Olympian Zeus and the like.

In an amphitheater overlooking the beautiful Propontís, we were treated to a whole afternoon of Pyrrhic dances done by a throng of graceful maidens impersonating not just goddesses—Venus, Juno, Minerva—but also godlings like Castor and Pollux, the Muses, the Graces, the Hours. The most amazing thing about this entertainment was the setting the theater’s artificers had devised for it. On the stage sat an entire mountain covered with trees, a stream flowing down it, goats grazing on it while the dancers flitted merrily about to the music of massed pipes. The dancing depicted a series of well-known myths, and came to culmination with Paris presenting the golden apple to Venus. At that, the music and the dancing became even more than Pyrrhically lively and wild—and, believe me or not, the stage mountain
erupted.
From its peak jetted up a fountain of water, descending like rain on all the performers. That water was somehow tinted yellow, perhaps with powdered saffron, so that everything it sprayed—the dancers, the musicians, even the goats—turned to gold as we spectators stood and applauded and shouted in surprise and wonder.

There were games specially arranged for our amusement at the city’s Hippodrome, the most magnificent such structure in the world. We went there, not through the common entrance gates, but straight from the palace, by way of the private staircase that led from Zeno’s Oktágonos chambers to his imperial podium overlooking the vast oval arena. Towering above his podium was a column made of intertwined brass serpents, holding aloft a golden basin full of fire. The arena floor, exclusive of the high-soaring tiers of seats, measured at least a hundred paces in one direction and four hundred in the other. Around its perimeter stood massive obelisks brought from Egypt, statues from Messana and Panormus, tripods and incense-burners from Dodona and Delphi, the great bronze horses taken from Nero’s arch in Rome. The contests of chariot-racing, riding, wrestling and pugilism between the city’s Green and Blue factions were full of excitement, frenzied action and sometimes suspense. Theodoric and I and everyone else in our party laid heavy wagers, but even when I lost I deemed the money had been well spent just for the opportunity of visiting the world’s grandest Hippodrome.

When Theodoric and I and our companions were not being entertained or feasted or shown the sights of the city, we frequently sat in converse with the emperor—with interpreters present to make conversation easy for all, and with amphorae of Khíos wine to make the conversation fluent. I kept waiting for Zeno to broach the subject of dispossessing Odoacer from the throne of Rome—or, more likely, for him to take Theodoric into private, secret conference for that purpose—but he was evidently in no hurry to do so. He discoursed only elliptically on imperial affairs, and seemed content to have his interpreters pass along his words to all of our party, and he never yet mentioned Odoacer’s name.

I remember him saying one night, reflectively, “You saw the helmets that my legionaries wore during the triumph. Those parade helmets are really masks, to maintain the fiction that the Roman legions still are composed entirely of
Romans
—all olive-skinned natives of the Italia peninsula. Without the masks, the legionaries would be seen to have pale Germanic complexions, and yellow Asiatic, and swarthy Greek, and even charcoal-black Libyan. Very few of them olive. But… papaí…” He shrugged. “That has been a fact for a long, long time now, and who am I to repine? I am called a Roman emperor, and I am an Isaurian Greek.”

“Vái,” grunted Soas. “The veriest Romans are likewise Greeks, if you trace back far enough, Sebastós. Every person native to Italia shares the blood of Albans, Samnites, Celts, Sabines, Etruscans
and
the Greeks who early set colonies on that peninsula.”

“And in more recent times an infusion of Germanic blood as well,” said Theodoric. “Not just in the peasant stock, mind you, but in the uppermost classes. Men like the Vandal Stilikho, and the Franks Bauto and Arbogast, and the Visigoth-Suevian Rikimer, after they came to renown at Rome, married their children into the best Roman families.”

We all noticed that Theodoric stopped short of naming the Scyrrian Odoacer as the latest of those Germanic eminences.

Pitzias said, “Long before the peninsula was named Italia, it was called Oenotria—the Land of Wine—and it is said that an early Roman there got angry with his fellow Romans, and decided to do them an evil turn. So he spitefully sent samples of wine to the Germanic barbarians beyond the frontier, who had never before tasted wine. They were so enraptured by it that they swarmed into Oenotria. And that, says the story, was the first barbarian invasion of the empire.”

We chuckled at that, and Zeno said, “A winsome fable, and not too far from the truth. In olden time, the Romans did send gifts to the Vandals and Visigoths and others beyond their borders, and those novelties may well have included choice wines. Of course, the gifts were intended to persuade the outlanders to stay in the outlands, but they had the opposite effect. The outlanders so prized those exotic novelties that they wanted to acquire more. What better way than to descend on Rome and take them?”

Herduic spoke up. “But, as you say, Sebastós, that was in the olden time. Nowadays every Germanic inhabitant of the empire, west or east, thinks of himself, not as an Ostrogoth or a Suevian or a Gepid or whatever, but as a Roman citizen. He regards the empire as eternal, inviolate, sacred, an institution to be preserved, and he will do his utmost to keep it so. He may be a far better Roman than that olive-skinned native of Italia.”

“The olive-skinned native would not agree,” Zeno said coolly, “and I will tell you why. All those Germanic outlanders you have mentioned, those who rose high in the councils of Rome, every one of them—from Bauto to Rikimer—was a pagan or an Arian. That is why every one of them fell short of achieving any lasting eminence. The Western Empire being officially and predominantly Catholic Christian, and those men
not
being, the Catholic Roman populace might allow them to rise, but only so high, and for only so long. Now, friend guests, who is for more wine?”

Later, when the emperor had drunk his fill of Khíos, and he and his interpreters had departed, Theodoric said to the rest of us, “Zeno gave himself away in that speech. It explained why he wants Odoacer overthrown. Because Odoacer is a Catholic Christian.”

“Ja,” rumbled Herduic. “Odoacer even claims that it was a hermit Catholic priest whom he met in his youth, one Severinus, who foretold that he would one day take the throne of Rome.”

Pitzias said, “Odoacer keeps old Severinus still by him, as his personal chaplain, only now he is
Saint
Severinus.”

Soas explained, “The new Patriarch Bishop of Rome, Felix the Third, is said to have attained that high bishopric only after he agreed to sanctify old Severinus. Ja, ja, Odoacer is Catholic, right enough.”

“So,” said Theodoric, “Zeno fears that Odoacer
could
attain the renown impossible for his pagan and Arian predecessors. Perhaps even overshadowing Zeno himself in popular esteem and in the annals of the empire.”

“Therefore the emperor wants him expelled,” mused Soas, “and the replacement, besides being
able
to overthrow Odoacer, must not be another of the Catholic Christian faith.”

I said, “Strabo fit those qualifications. Seasoned warrior. Leader of a warrior people. And an Arian Christian. So the emperor would have been willing to see even that loathsome tyrant on the throne of Rome. But now he has an equally qualified but far superior candidate in you, Consul.”

Theodoric said firmly, “Not even for the winning of the whole Western Empire will I consent to be Zeno’s creature. I shall not leap at the opportunity.” Then he grinned and said, “I shall instead play the coy maiden. Make Zeno court me until he has to make his proposal most fervently, on bended knee. We will see then, my friends, what terms he offers, and decide among us whether we find them acceptable.”

Months passed, and still the emperor refrained from saying anything whatever about Odoacer, but only continued to regale us visitors with cornucopian hospitality and entertainment. Since Theodoric seemed happy enough to go on wearing the purple and living the irresponsible life of a hedonist, and since he needed no assistance in doing that, I asked his leave to go on a journey.

“As long as I am here in the Eastern Empire,” I said, “I should like to see more of it, beyond Constantinople.”

“By all means, Thorn,” he said indulgently. “If I have need of you, I can send a messenger to find you.”

So I had one of the palace boatmen ferry me and Velox from the Boukóleon harbor across the Propontís to Chrysopolis on the other shore—which is to say that I crossed from the continent of Europe to the continent of Asia. I kept mostly to the coastal plains and beaches, traveling at random, at leisure and generally at ease. With towns and villages not far apart, with good Roman roads connecting them and with a comfortable Greek pandokheíon in almost every community, there is no hazard or hardship in traveling. Also, the climate is Mediterranean-mild, and since I was wending more or less southward, I scarcely noticed when autumn became winter and winter became spring.

I passed first through the region, just south of the Propontís, where the Mysians live. In former times, those people were very warlike, but over the ages they were so often defeated and cast down and oppressed that they lost all their bellicosity. Indeed, so far have the Mysians degenerated that now they earn their living chiefly by hiring themselves out to be mourners at funerals. Because of their woeful history and melancholy heritage, they can spontaneously shed copious tears for any defunct stranger.

On the Aegean coast I came to many a community that clearly had been much more populous and prosperous in the long ago. Smyrna has been Smyrna since the remotest beginning of human history, and it still is a busy seaport, but its great days are all behind it. Assos is only a rustic town now, but it must have been a mighty city in its time, for its terraces, carved from its high hilltop, hold the shells of once imposing edifices—theater, agora, baths—long empty, neglected, crumbling. At Pergamon and Ephesus and Miletus are ruins of temples and thermae and libraries that will never be used again but will doubtless endure forever, because they were most astonishingly cut in their entirety—columns, doorways, porticos, friezes—out of the living rock of cliffsides.

At Smyrna I saw camels for the first time; I even drank some camel milk, but I do not highly recommend it. In the wild, in the countryside between communities, I saw other creatures new to me—several jackals and hyenas and once (I think but cannot be sure) I fleetingly glimpsed a leopard. At Miletus I looked on the Meander, the vagrantly wandering river that is supposed to have inspired Daedalos with the idea for his impenetrable Labyrinth.