Empire r-2, page 63
part #2 of Rome Series
The veteran turned around and gaped. “Well, I never! You are truly a soldier’s friend, Caesar, to do such a thing for an old veteran of the Minerva. May all the gods bless you! But how am I to pay for these slaves’ upkeep? Slaves have to be fed, and I can barely afford to feed myself.”
Hadrian turned to the secretary. “Along with the slaves, give this fellow a monthly stipend for their upkeep.”
“How much, Caesar?”
“How should I know? Ask Suetonius for a figure. He knows that sort of thing.”
Hadrian walked on. The veteran gazed after him in awe. “Bless you, Caesar!” he cried.
After a brief soak in the cool plunge, Hadrian sent slaves to fetch everyone’s clothing. He put on a purple toga trimmed with gold, and those in his retinue wore togas, rather than the simple tunics that Marcus and Apollodorus found suitable for a visit to the baths. It was curious, Marcus thought, that the emperor didn’t mind being seen naked by half of Roma, but, when dressed, he wished for himself and those in his train to be seen only in formal attire.
After everyone was dressed, Hadrian led them to a suite of private rooms reserved for the emperor’s exclusive use. Marcus had seen these rooms when they were being built but had never been admitted into them since they were finished. The columns and walls were of the rarest marbles. The floors were decorated with extraordinarily detailed mosaics. The furniture was all of Greek design. The pillows and draperies were of silk. The paintings and statuary had been selected by Hadrian himself. There was no denying that the emperor had exquisite taste.
Hadrian called for delicacies and wine to be served. The conversation turned to the trip that Hadrian would soon be taking to visit the troops and talk with provincial magistrates along the Rhine and in Gaul and Britannia. Apollodorus ate little, Marcus noted, and drank his wine straight, without water. When Hadrian invited his guests to follow him into an adjoining room, Apollodorus called for a slave to refill his cup and carried it with him.
The room was dominated by a large table upon which architectural plans had been unrolled, the corners held down by marble weights in the shape of eagles’ heads. There was also an architectural model of a temple, made not of painted wood but with actual marble columns and steps, a gilded tile roof, and bronze doors. Every aspect of the model, even to the painted friezes in the pediments and the finely carved capitals of the columns, was rendered with uncanny detail.
Hadrian stepped back and studied his guests, gratified to see the looks of astonishment on their faces. “As you will have realized, these are the plans for the Temple of Venus and Roma. The architect Decrianus made this model for me – amazing, is it not? – but the plans were entirely my own. Because progress has been so swift, and because there’s no telling how long I may be away, I’ve decided to show these plans to you at last.”
Apollodorus slowly circled the table, studying the plans and the model. He raised an eyebrow. “But where is the front of the temple, and where is the back? I think Decrianus must have misread your plans. Or perhaps Caesar can point out to me what I’m missing.”
Hadrian smiled. “You see, Apollodorus, but you do not perceive. Decrianus was also taken aback when he saw what I had done, but soon enough he came to appreciate the novelty of it. Let me explain. This temple is situated at the very centre of the city – which means it is at the centre of the empire, and thus at the centre of the world. I ask you, can a centre have a front and a back? No. From the centre of something, one faces outwards, no matter what the direction.”
“Perhaps this should have been a round temple, then,” said Apollodorus.
Hadrian frowned. “That was my first conception, but the engineers were unable to guarantee that a dome of the span I envisioned could remain aloft. So this was my solution: a double temple, with a dividing wall running through the middle, which can be entered from either side. The side facing the Flavian Amphitheatre is dedicated to Venus Felix, Bringer of Good Fortune. The side facing the ancient Forum is dedicated to Roma the Eternal. There will be no front or back, but rather two entrances of equal importance. Within their respective shrines, the statues of Venus and of Roma will sit back-to-back, with a wall between them, one gazing east, the other gazing west. Here, I’ll show you. This is quite ingenious.”
Hadrian took hold of the gilded roof of the model, which lifted completely off, exposing the interior, which was as finely finished and detailed as the exterior, with tiny porphyry columns, marble apses, and beautifully rendered statues of the goddesses.
Apollodorus gazed at the model without speaking.
Hadrian cleared his throat. “Of course, you will have grasped the rather clever wordplay at work here. Venus represents love – amor – and ‘amor’ spelled backwards is Roma. Thus, placing the two divinities of Venus and Roma back-to-back in a single temple creates a further symmetry with the back-to-back symmetry of their names. Within Roma’s chamber there will be an altar where officials of the state will make sacrifices for the good fortune of the city. Within Venus’s sanctuary, there will be an altar where newlywed couples can make sacrifices to the goddess. I’ve designed the altars myself, of course…” His voice trailed off. He was waiting for Apollodorus to say something.
At last Apollodorus waved at the model and said, “I don’t suppose the whole temple lifts up, to show what’s underneath?”
“No,” said Hadrian. “What would be the point of that?”
“To allow us to see the basement.”
“There’s a basement, but it’s of no particular interest-”
“I presume there’s also a tunnel, leading from that basement to the subterranean chambers beneath the Flavian Amphitheatre?”
Hadrian shook his head. “I have no plans for such a tunnel-”
“That’s too bad. The need for one is so obvious, I should think even Decrianus would have seen it. Probably he did, but was afraid to say anything.”
“What are you talking about, Apollodorus?”
“The basement of this temple is going to be huge. That much space, in the heart of the city, shouldn’t go to waste. It would have been the ideal place to store the various mechanisms for the amphitheatre when they’re not in use – the lifts and pumps and cranes and so forth. With an underground tunnel, those machines could have been moved from the basement of the temple to the amphitheatre and back, out of sight. What a shame. What a wasted opportunity! If only I had been consulted-”
“Only you would look at a temple and see a closet!” said Hadrian. “This building isn’t about creating storage space. It’s about beauty, and worship, and-”
“Ah, yes, the temple itself.” Apollodorus sighed. “I suppose we can be thankful that the engineers couldn’t solve your dome problem, or else we’d have gotten a gigantic gourd plopped down in the very centre of the empire. Instead, we have… this. Well, it has a normal ceiling and a normal roof; I can approve of that. Yes, the double-temple idea is clever – rather too clever, I think. The temple as palindrome! Personally, I think there’s something unnatural about a building which has two fronts and no back – I can’t say I find it pleasing. The whole conception is flawed, from the ground up – literally. The structure should have been built on higher ground to make it stand out more conspicuously at the head the Sacred Way. If Trajan could excavate a hill to make space for his Forum, surely his successor could have built a hill on which to place his temple. That would have given you an even larger basement, and more storage space, by the way. Of course, you might yet be able to make the ceiling higher; it may not be too late to fix that problem, at least.”
“Higher ceilings?” said Hadrian. His face was ashen.
“Obviously. Any beginning student of architecture could see that these statues are too large for the interiors.”
“Too large?”
“What if the goddesses should wish to get up and leave? They’ll hit their heads on the ceiling.”
“But why would the goddesses-”
Apollodorus kept a straight face for a moment, then burst out laughing. No one joined him.
Despite the warmth that radiated from the heated floors and walls, it seemed to Marcus that the room was suddenly chilly. Hadrian’s face was as red as if he had just stepped from the hottest pool in the building. Apollodorus seemed oblivious of the scene he had just caused. He gestured to one of the slaves and asked for more wine.
Without a word, Hadrian left the room. Suetonius and Favonius and the rest followed after him, but Apollodorus stayed where he was. He sipped his wine and gazed at the model, shaking head.
“Father-in-law, what have you done?” said Marcus.
Apollodorus shrugged. “He asked me what I thought, and I told him. Better now than later. He may yet be able to salvage something from this folly.”
“Father-in-law, do you imagine you’re so important – do you think the emperor is so unfeeling-”
Apollodorus waved his hand dismissively. “If you have nothing intelligent to say, Pygmalion, go home and change my grandson’s diapers.”
Marcus hurried after the others. He hoped to find the emperor laughing and joking with his friends in the gallery, making light of Apollodorus’s comments. But as Marcus caught up with the retinue, he saw that Hadrian’s attention had been claimed by a most unseemly sight: two naked, middleaged men, one on each side of the gallery, were furiously rubbing their backs against protruding corners, just as the impoverished veteran had done earlier.
Apparently, word of the emperor’s kindness to the veteran had spread, and these two were hoping to elicit a similarly generous response. Hadrian angrily seized one of the men by the shoulders and pushed him towards the other, then called to his bodyguards.
“If these fellows need a backrub so badly, let them rub each other. Tie them together, back-to-back. Let them they stay that way for the rest of the day, as an example to anyone who presumes to make a fool of Caesar.”
Hadrian walked away at a fast clip. Marcus followed him for a while, then gradually slowed his pace and came to a stop, watching as the emperor and his retinue receded in the distance, listening to the echo of their footsteps down the long gallery.
AD 122
“Don’t stack those stones here,” said Marcus. “Can’t you see there’s more digging to be done? Stack them over there!”
The workmen charged with enlarging the basement of the Temple of Venus and Roma were probably the stupidest Marcus had ever dealt with, and he had dealt with some very stupid workers. These fellows did not have even the excuse of being slaves; they were all skilled stoneworkers. Hadrian had insisted that only artisans of a certain calibre be employed at each stage of the temple’s construction, including the enlargement of the basement.
How had it fallen to Marcus to oversee the project? It was a matter of attrition, he thought. He had done nothing to rise in the emperor’s favour; rather, those of greater experience and standing had lost the emperor’s favour, one by one, until Marcus had found himself called on to manage the work on the Temple of Venus and Roma while Hadrian was away from the city on his tour of the northern provinces. It was a great honour, but at this early stage there was nothing challenging about it and certainly nothing that called on his skills as an artist. Essentially, the temple was still just a hole in the ground, and at Hadrian’s decree that hole was being made larger.
“I spend my days with idiots in a hole in the ground,” Marcus muttered, shaking his head.
The slave who assisted him at the site each day – running errands, carrying messages, taking dictation – was a red-headed Macedonian named Amyntas. The youth scurried down the ladder and approached him.
“Master, your wife has come to visit you.”
“Did she bring my son with her again?”
“Yes, Master.”
Marcus sighed. How many times had he asked Apollodora not to visit him at the work site, and especially not to bring the baby? Even on the best of days, accidents happened – a cart stacked with stones might spill its load, or a carpenter with a sweaty hand might send a hammer flying through the air. But Apollodora was truly the daughter of her father; she would do as she pleased.
Marcus decided that the workmen could restack the stones without his supervision. He climbed up the ladder, secretly glad for a chance to get out of the hole and breathe some fresh air.
A little distance away, with the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Colossus for a backdrop, Apollodora sat on a pile of neatly stacked bricks. Nearby, one of her slaves was holding little Lucius in her arms, cooing to him. Apollodora did not look happy.
“Has something happened?” asked Marcus.
“Two letters arrived for you,” she said, producing the little scrolls. “Brought by separate messengers.”
“Did you read them?” said Marcus, frowning.
“Of course not! That’s why I’m here.”
He understood. She wanted to know what was in the letters.
She handed him the first letter. The seal was familiar. Marcus himself had carved the carnelian stone in Apollodorus’s ring; when pressed into the sealing wax, it left an image of Trajan’s Column.
“This is from your father,” he said. “You could have opened it, if you wished.”
Apollodora shook her head. “I was too nervous. You read it, husband, and tell me what he says.”
The letter had come from Damascus, where Apollodorus had been living for several months. Technically, Hadrian had not banished Apollodorus from Roma, but the imperial order that assigned him to an indefinite posting in his native city amounted to the same thing. Apollodorus had no desire to return to Damascus. Officially, Hadrian had claimed that he needed a builder with Apollodorus’s experience to oversee repairs to the Roman garrison, but the posting was clearly a punishment.
In the letter, Apollodorus made no complaints and said nothing that might be construed as criticism of the emperor. Perhaps, Marcus thought, his father-in-law’s exile had at last taught him to choose his words carefully. Marcus skipped over the formalities and found the gist of the letter, which he read aloud to Apollodora.
“‘You know that I am most eager to return to Roma, so that I can resume my work on the Luna statue and serve the emperor to my fullest capacity on any other projects that may please him. Towards that end, in my spare time – of which I sadly have too much here – I have composed a treatise on siege engines. This treatise I dedicated to the emperor. I sent him the first copy, with a note to express my hope that this small contribution to the science of war might meet with his approval. Though I sent this copy to him some months ago, I have not heard back from him. If you have any way to discover whether the emperor received this offering, and what he thought of it, I should be grateful if you could let me know, sonin-law…’”
Marcus scanned the rest of the letter. Apollodorus described a sandstorm that had swept through the city, made some wry comments about Damascene cuisine (“goat, goat, and more goat”), and noted that unrest among the Jews throughout the region seemed to be on the rise again. Attached to the letter was a scrap of parchment upon which Apollodorus had drawn his latest version of the Luna statue.
“Poor father,” said Apollodora. “He’s so miserable.”
“He doesn’t say that.”
“Because he’s afraid to. That’s the saddest thing of all.”
Marcus had to agree. His father-in-law’s vanity and bombast had sometimes been difficult to take, but Marcus cringed to see the once-proud man reduced to the status of a miscreant servant, desperate to return to the emperor’s good graces.
“What’s the other letter?” Marcus said.
Apollodora handed it to him. It bore the imperial seal in red wax, and the parchment was of the high quality that Hadrian always used when corresponding with Marcus, which he did quite often, using the new imperial postal service, which was far quicker and more reliable than the piecemeal system it replaced.
Marcus broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. The letter came from a far northern outpost in Britannia. He quickly scanned the letter for any mention of his father-in-law, but saw none.
As usual, Hadrian inquired about progress on the temple and offered highly detailed instructions on how the work was to be carried out. He described his tour of Gaul and Britannia, which had succeeded in making him known to the legions with whom he had previously had no contact. Hadrian relished his reputation as a soldier’s soldier, able to endure hardship alongside his troops; like Trajan, he was not afraid to sleep on the ground, march for days, ford rivers, and climb mountains. He also included a few sketches he had made, studies for a massive wall that would cross the entire breadth of the island of Britannia at its narrowest point. To man this fortified wall he would need at least fifteen thousand auxiliaries from all over the empire.
“A wall across Britannia?” said Apollodora, looking at the drawings over his shoulder. Her dismissive tone made her sound uncannily like her father. “Trajan wouldn’t have built a wall. He would have conquered whatever lay beyond.”
“Only if the barbarians had something worth looting,” said Marcus.
The wall was emblematic of the emperor’s new frontier policy. Hadrian believed that there was no longer any incentive to push outwards in conquest; nothing remained that was worth conquering except the western provinces of Parthia, which Trajan had briefly seized but could not control.
Under Hadrian, a consensus was forming that the empire had reached a natural limit; the wild, impoverished lands beyond its borders offered little to loot, and instead were full of potential looters. It was Hadrian’s goal not to conquer these people but to keep them out. His task was to maintain peace and prosperity within the existing boundaries of the empire.
Almost as an afterthought, Hadrian mentioned that he had dismissed his private secretary, Suetonius, who would returning from Britannia to private life in Roma. Marcus read aloud: “‘I realize that you have been on friendly terms with this person, so I wish to tell you this news myself. You will doubtless hear rumours regarding the reason for his dismissal. The fact is that this person developed an inappropriate professional relationship with the empress.’”
