Empire

PART IV
MARCUS
The Sculptor
AD 113

Marcus Pinarius woke with a shiver and a start. The first dim light of morning seeped through the shutters. In the distance, a cock crowed.

A hand touched his face. He drew back with a jerk, then saw his father standing over him.

“You were dreaming, my son,” said Lucius Pinarius.

“Was I?”

“I heard you whimpering, even from my room. Was it the same dream?”

Marcus blinked. “Yes. I think so. It’s already faded away…”

For years, even before his father had found him, Marcus had been haunted by a recurring dream. In the dream he was shivering and frightened and naked, and the place in which he cowered was dank and dark and cold. A giant hand reached for him and grabbed him, and he gave a cry – and at that point in the dream he always woke up. He never saw the giant who caught hold of him. He never knew what happened next.

What did it mean? Did the dream recall a genuine memory, or was it a fantasy from his imagination? The dream always exerted such a powerful spell that after waking, it took Marcus a moment to remember who and what he was: not a child any longer, and not a helpless slave, but a man of twenty-eight, living with his father in their house on the Palatine Hill.

“Are you really my father?” he whispered.

Lucius sighed. “I am. By the shade of the blessed Apollonius of Tyana, I swear it. Never doubt it, my son.”

“But who was my mother?” whispered Marcus.

After much deliberation, and despite the boy’s desperate desire to know his origin, Lucius had made up his mind never to reveal to him the secret of his birth. The truth was simply too dangerous, and not only because Lucius himself had committed a capital crime each time he made love to Cornelia. How could it possibly benefit young Marcus to know that his mother had been a Vestal, that she had broken her sacred vow of chastity, that she had been buried alive, and that his own conception had been the result of a sacrilegious crime? Surely such knowledge could only plague him with more nightmares. Lucius would tell his son only that his mother had been a woman of patrician rank with whom Lucius had carried on an illicit and impossible liaison, whose family would never forgive her lapse, and who had died years ago. “I loved her deeply, and still miss her every day,” he would add, for this was the truth. At the age of sixty-six, Lucius was determined to go to his grave without revealing to anyone the fact that Cornelia Cossa was the mother of his child.

“I, too, woke from a familiar dream,” he said, ignoring his son’s question.

“You were visited again by Apollonius?” said Marcus.

“Yes.”

“He visits you often in your dreams.”

“More often now than when he was alive!” said Lucius with a laugh. “I only wish he had returned to Roma before he died, so that you could have been blessed with the chance to meet him.”

“I have been blessed by having a father who knew him,” said Marcus. He flashed a weak smile. The dreadful spell cast by the nightmare was fading.

“Of course, there are those who question whether Apollonius actually died, at least in the usual sense,” said Lucius, “since no corpse was ever discovered.”

“Tell me the story,” said Marcus, closing his eyes. His father had told him the tale many times before, but Marcus was always glad to hear it. It would help him to forget his bad dream.

“This occurred a few years ago on the island of Crete, where the Teacher had acquired a great following. He arrived late one night at the temple of the Minoan goddess Dictynna, which stands on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. The wealthy people of Crete deposit their treasures in the temple for safe keeping. At night the doors are locked and fierce dogs stand guard. But when the Teacher approached, the dogs wagged their tales and licked his hands, and the doors of the temple sprang open. When the priests found him sleeping inside the next morning, they accused him of drugging the dogs and using magic to open the doors. They put him in chains and confined him in an iron cage suspended from a precipice overhanging the sea, with crashing waves below. But late that night, unfettered and free, again the Teacher approached the entrance to the temple, and this time there was a great crowd gathered in anticipation of his appearance. Again the dogs grew tame and fawned on him, and again the locked doors sprang open. He stepped inside. The doors shut after him, and from within there came the sound of women singing. ‘Hurry, hurry, upwards, upwards!’ they sang. ‘Fly away from this place and ascend to the heavens!’ When the doors opened, no singers were to be seen – and neither was the Teacher. Apollonius has never again been seen on this earth, except in the dreams of those who knew him.”

“Do you think he’ll ever visit me in my dreams, father?”

“I don’t know, my son.”

“What did he say to you this time?”

“He talked to me about the immortality of the soul. He said, ‘Here is the proof, presented to you from beyond the grave, which I couldn’t offer to you when I was a living man. The fact that I endure, and visit you in your dreams, shows you I have survived beyond my mortal life. Your soul is no less immortal than mine – but it is a fallacy to speak of ‘your’ soul and ‘my’ soul, for the soul is no one’s possession; it emanates from and returns to the Divine Singularity, and the body it inhabits is mere gross matter, which decays and vanishes. When the body dies, the soul rejoices; like a swift horse freed from its traces, it leaps upwards and mingles with the air, loathing the spell of harsh and painful servitude it has endured.’”

“You should write all this down, father.”

Lucius shook his head. “I’m not sure that I should. Because in the next breath, the Teacher told me that all he had just said was of no real value to a living man. ‘But of what use can this knowledge be to you while you live?’ he said. ‘The truth will be known to you soon enough, and you shall have no need for words to explain it or to convince you; you shall experience it for yourself. As long as you live, and move among other living beings, these things will be mysteries to you, like shadows cast on a wall by a light you cannot see.’”

Lucius looked down at his son, who gazed back at him with trusting green eyes – the eyes of his mother. Marcus sometimes still looked like a boy to him, though the world by every measure considered him a man.

“Come,” Lucius said. “Wash your face and dress yourself. Hilarion will have woken the kitchen slaves by now, and our breakfast will be waiting. You have a busy day ahead of you.”

Later that morning, holding a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other, Marcus stepped back and read aloud the inscription on the massive marble pedestal to which he had been putting some finishing touches: “‘The Senate and People of Roma Dedicate this Monument to the Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanicus Dacicus, Son of the Divine Nerva, Pontifex Maximus, in His Seventeenth Year in the Office of Tribune, Six Times Acclaimed as Imperator, Six Times Consul, Father of His Country.’”

He stepped farther back from the immense pedestal and gazed up. The towering column was surrounded by scaffolding, but in his mind’s eye Marcus could see the structure as it would appear when it was completed and the scaffolds were removed. Never before had there existed a monument like this one, and Marcus was immensely proud to have had a hand in creating it.

The column rose 100 feet – if one included the pedestal and the statue that would top the column, the total height would reach 125 feet – and was made of eighteen colossal marble drums stacked one atop another. Within the hollow column was a spiral staircase of 185 steps, lit by narrow slits in the drums. Wrapped around the column in an ascending spiral was a series of relief sculptures depicting Trajan’s conquest of Dacia. These sculptures were the reason for the scaffolds that surrounded the column; the hundreds of images that circled the drums were still being finished and painted.

The height of the column corresponded to the height of the hillside that had been excavated to make room for it; the volume of earth that had been removed by human labour – mostly Dacian slave labour – was staggering. Where before a spur of the Quirinal Hill had blocked the way between the city’s center and the Field of Mars, there was now a new forum bearing Trajan’s name, the centerpiece of which was the enormous column that pierced the sky above Marcus’s head.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Standing beside him was the man who had designed not just the column but the entire forum complex. People called Apollodorus of Damascus a second Vitruvius, comparing him to the great architect and engineer who had served Julius Caesar. Trajan had met Apollodorus during his service in Syria, had realized his genius, and had kept him busy ever since.

In the Dacian campaigns, Apollodorus had served the emperor by designing siege engines and other weapons. To facilitate troop movements, he had constructed a stupendous bridge across the Danube River, the longest arch bridge ever built. To allow a vast army to move quickly and safely through the Iron Gates of the Danubian gorges, he had built a wooden roadway cantilevered from the sheer rock face; the legions had literally walked on top of the river and penetrated to the heart of the enemy’s territory. Roman bravery, the favour of the gods, and the leadership of the emperor had won the day, but it was the brilliance of Apollodorus that had allowed the legions to move with the speed and force of a lightning bolt.

Early in the Dacian war, Apollodorus had asked Trajan to give him an assistant. The emperor recalled the strikingly handsome youth who had stood before him one day in the House of the People, and the comment made by the boy’s one-time master: “His talent is considerable

… he has a gift from the gods.” It had been the great good fortune of Marcus Pinarius to be summoned by the emperor to serve under Apollodorus of Damascus. Throughout the Dacian war, Marcus was at the man’s side day and night, assisting him, watching him work, learning from him, earning his trust and respect. Now, back in Roma, Apollodorus continued to work for the emperor, and Marcus continued to work under Apollodorus.

Marcus’s aptitude for engineering was considerable, but his special gift had always been for sculpture. Anything he could visualize in his imagination he could render in stone with a sureness and ease that astounded even Apollodorus. While Apollodorus could take credit for the concept and the overall design of the great column, Marcus had sculpted many parts of the spiral relief, as well as the monumental sculpture at the base, a pile of weapons that symbolized the enemy’s defeat. With vivid images of warfare, many witnessed by Marcus firsthand, the spiral relief recounted the struggle of the Dacians, ending in their slaughter and enslavement by the Roman legions. Over and over in the sequence of images, the figure of the emperor appeared, often sacrificing animals to the gods or taking part in a furious battle.

Apollodorus joined Marcus in gazing up at the column. He was a tall man with big arms who kept fit by taking part in the actual construction of his projects, not merely overseeing the work. Like many of Trajan’s legionaries, his hair was shoulder length and he wore a beard, claiming that he had no time for barbers. At middle age, his hair was still thick and dark, with a bit of silver beginning to show at his temples and on his chin.

He gave Marcus’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. His grip was painfully strong. “What do you feel when you look up at it?”

“Pride,” Marcus said. It was true: Marcus took great pride in his artistry. And pride was what Romans were meant to feel when they gazed at the column – pride in their soldiers, pride in their emperor, pride in the conquest of another people. But pride was not all Marcus felt when he looked at the images that wrapped the column. Many of those images had been summoned from his own memories. Though he had not taken part in the fighting, Marcus had seen the aftermath of many battles, stepping over corpses, severed limbs, pools of blood, and scattered entrails. He had seen long trains of exhausted, naked Dacian prisoners, chained neck-to-neck with their hands tied, being driven to their new lives of slavery. He had seen the sack of villages and the rape of women and boys by Roman soldiers enjoying the privileges of victors after the terror and exhilaration of battle.

His father had taught Marcus the precepts of Apollonius of Tyana; it was hard to reconcile the ideas of a man who refused to kill an animal with the horrors Marcus had witnessed in the war, and the fact that the world glorified such horrors. Marcus had experienced life as a slave; it was hard for him to take pride in the enslavement of free men, even though their enslavement meant the enrichment of the Roman state and of Roman citizens like himself.

The war against Dacia had been necessary to secure Roma’s frontiers, and had been sanctioned by the gods, whose favour was made manifest by auguries and other portents. To please Jupiter, the Romans desecrated every temple of the god Zalmoxis, pulling down his altars, smashing his images, and obliterating all inscriptions that referred to him. The Dacians’ holiest shrine, the cave in Mount Kogaionon where Zalmoxis had lived as a mortal, had been ruined, its interior looted and the entrance filled with rubble. Zalmoxis must have been a very weak god, for he had been powerless to save his followers. Except in a few remote corners of Dacia, his worship was now extinct.

The Dacians were an ignorant, impious, and dangerous people, a threat to the Danube frontier and, with their vast hoard of wealth, a menace to Roma itself; so the legionaries were told as their commanders exhorted them to fight. But sometimes it seemed to Marcus that the Dacians were simply a proud people desperately fighting to save themselves, their religion, their language, and their native land. Just as the atrocities he had witnessed in the war sometimes caused him distress, so Marcus’s work on the column that commemorated the war sometimes afflicted him with doubts. However dazzlingly executed the images on the column, were they not a celebration of brute strength and human suffering?

“Let’s take a closer look, shall we?” said Apollodorus, who seemed never to be bothered by such thoughts. He and Marcus mounted the scaffolding. They had examined the images many times before, yet each time, Marcus always saw a bit more work to be done. The most vexing problem at this late stage was the placement of the miniature swords. In numerous places, tiny holes had been drilled so that tiny metal swords could be fitted into the hands of the figures on the relief; it had been Marcus’s idea to use this novel effect, which gave the sculpture even greater depth, especially when seen at a distance. Unfortunately, the artisans responsible for the tedious task of fitting these embellishments had been quite careless and had missed a great many places on the first pass. Every time Marcus inspected the relief he found another area that had been overlooked. With 155 individual scenes, each blending into the next, and more than 2,500 individual figures, perhaps it was not surprising that the workmanship was not always consistent. Still, Apollodorus demanded perfection, and Marcus was determined to meet his expectations.

As the two men ascended the scaffolds, Marcus was swept into the encyclopedic history of the war recounted by the images. Taking thirteen legions – more than 100,000 men – into the field, Trajan’s campaign had resulted not just in victory but in a cultural annihilation. The fortresses of the Dacians had been demolished along with their temples and cities. Facing defeat, King Decebalus made a last, desperate attempt to hide his vast treasure: he diverted a river, buried trunks of gold and silver in the soft riverbed, then returned the river to its course. But an informant revealed the secret to the Romans, and the treasure was recovered. Hundreds of tons of gold and silver had been seized, carted out of Dacia under heavy guard, and brought to Roma. There would be more treasure to come, for the mines of the Dacians had been discovered, and Dacian slaves had been put to work digging new veins.

His armies defeated, his people enslaved, his cities and towns in flames, his treasure stolen, King Decebalus at last killed himself. He was discovered sitting upright on a stone bench outside the sealed cave at Mount Kogaionon, wearing his robes of state and surrounded by a great many of his nobles, who had all taken poison. The body of Decebalus was stripped and decapitated. The robes were burned. The naked, headless body was thrown down the rocky mountainside to be consumed by vultures. The head was taken to Roma by the same speedy messengers who brought news of the war’s successful conclusion. As the people of Roma thronged the Forum to celebrate, the head of Decebalus was displayed on the Capitoline Hill as proof of the Dacians’ defeat, then thrown down the Gemonian Stairs. Someone kicked the head into the crowd, where it was batted about like a ball until it was dropped on the paving stones. The crowd swarmed around it, competing with one another to stamp the last remains of King Decebalus into the ground.

When Trajan returned to Roma, he celebrated with an unprecedented 123 days of games at the Flavian Amphitheatre and at other sites across the city. Ten thousand gladiators fought. Eleven thousand animals were slaughtered. The scale of these spectacles had never been seen before; nor had the scale of his lavish building programme, the results of which were to be seen in all directions from the uppermost tier of the scaffolding around the column. Apollodorus and Marcus gazed down at the largest basilica ever built, a vast hall revetted with marble and flooded with light. An adjoining courtyard, the largest open space in the city center, was dominated by an enormous statue of Trajan on horseback. Farther away, against the cliff face of the excavated Quirinal Hill, a sprawling, multistory shopping arcade was being built. There was also a gymnasium for sporting competitions and a new bathing complex even grander than the one Titus had built. On either side of the column, directly below them, were the two wings of Trajan’s library. The wing for Latin literature was almost finished, and the extravagantly decorated reading room, lined with busts of famous authors, would soon open to the public; the Greek wing was still under construction. Apollodorus, who had served as chief architect and designer of these new constructions, called them “the fruits of Dacia.”

As grand as they were, none of these buildings approached the height of the column. From the topmost scaffold, Apollodorus and Marcus stepped onto the top of the column. Their view of the city in all directions was virtually unimpeded; only the Temple of Jupiter atop the Capitoline loomed higher. Turning slowly, Marcus saw his father’s house and the sprawling House of the People on the Palatine, the Flavian Amphitheatre and the towering statue of Sol at the far end of the Forum, the cluttered tenements of the Subura, the Hill of Gardens, and the vast expanse of the Field of Mars with the bend of the Tiber beyond.

The only man-made object that reached to their level was an enormous crane situated just beyond the Greek wing of the library. Apollodorus pointed to it with a satisfied nod.

“I reworked the last of the calculations last night. Everything is ready. We’ll lift the statue into place today.”

Marcus gazed down at the workmen who surrounded the statue of Trajan that was to be placed atop the column. The men were securing the statue with padded chains and ropes connected to the crane. “How soon?”

“As soon as I can get all the workmen in place. Here, we’ll go down using the stairway inside the column. You can observe as I give my final instructions. Come along, Pygmalion.”

Long ago, from the emperor himself, Apollodorus had learned that Pygmalion had once been Marcus’s name. To Marcus, the name was a reminder of his years as a slave, but when Apollodorus first used it as a pet name for him, he had been too intimidated to object. Apollodorus clearly intended no malice; he seemed to think that the name was a compliment, an acknowledgement of Marcus’s skill as a sculptor.

As they descended, Marcus counted each of the 185 steps. He always did this. All the artisans and workmen practised similar rituals – always tying an odd number of knots, or using an even number of nails, or stepping onto a scaffold with their right foot first.

They walked to the crane and stood before the gilded bronze statue of Trajan. Apollodorus had executed the basic design, but Marcus had sculpted most of the finer details, including Trajan’s face and hands. This had meant spending long stretches of time with the emperor, who listened to reports and dictated correspondence while Marcus observed him and sculpted his likeness, first making preliminary models and then working on the full-scale statue. Marcus vividly remembered his first meeting with Trajan thirteen years ago, when his father had petitioned the emperor to recognize Marcus’s status as a freeborn citizen. Trajan had seemed larger than life to Marcus then, and he still did.

Far more accessible was the emperor’s protege, Hadrian, who had often been present when Marcus was sculpting Trajan’s likeness; perhaps Marcus found the man more approachable because he was closer to Marcus’s own age. Hadrian had distinguished himself in the Dacian wars, commanding the First Legion Minerva, but he also had an avid interest in all things artistic and had strong opinions about everything from the poetry of Pindar (“incomparably beautiful”) to Trajan’s collection of silver Dacian drinking cups (“unspeakably hideous; they should be melted down”). He was known even to dabble in architecture, though none of his fanciful drawings had ever resulted in an actual building.

Hadrian joined them as Apollodorus and Marcus were making a final inspection to see that the statue was securely fitted for lifting.

“Is the operation on schedule?” asked Hadrian.

“We’ll begin at any moment,” said Apollodorus. “Will the emperor be present?”

“He intended to be here, but affairs of state preclude his presence,” said Hadrian. He cracked a smile and lowered his voice. “Actually, I suspect he’s a bit unnerved by the whole thing. I don’t think he fancies the idea of seeing himself being hoisted a hundred feet in the air and dangling from a chain.”

“Perhaps it’s better that he’s not here,” said Apollodorus. “His presence might make the men nervous.”

Hadrian slowly circled the statue, then nodded. “What a clever idea you came up with, Marcus Pinarius, to slightly exaggerate and elongate the emperor’s features, so as to make them appear more natural when viewed by spectators on the ground. What’s the word for that?”

“It’s a trick of perspective called foreshortening,” said Marcus. “I’m grateful that you supported my idea.”

“Let’s hope it works. Caesar was certainly skeptical when he saw the result. Horrified, actually. ‘No man’s nose is that long, not even mine!’ he said. It does look a bit of a caricature when seen this close. But at a distance of a hundred feet and from a low angle, I suspect that nose will actually flatter him.”

The workmen assigned to stand atop the column and guide the placement of the statue were in place; they called and waved to Apollodorus to signal their readiness. The workmen who would operate the various hoists and pulleys of the crane were also at their stations, as were the slaves who would supply the labour to pull the ropes, turn the winches, and steady the counterweights. The statue was ready to be lifted. Apollodorus closed his eyes and muttered a prayer. Marcus touched the fascinum at his breast.

Apollodorus gave the signal for the operation to begin. With a great groaning noise, the various parts of the crane began to move. The statue cleared the ground and began to ascend.

The statue rose to half the height of the column, and then higher still, until it dangled above the column. Apollodorus peered at all the various mechanisms in play, and suddenly seemed nervous. “Marcus, run up to the top of the column,” he said. “See that everything is done correctly.”

Marcus ran to the column, stepped inside, and bounded up the steps. He was so intent on reaching the top that he forgot to count them.

The workmen atop the column stood in a circle, ready to guide the statue into the spot intended for it, the outline of which had been drawn with chalk. Each of the men wore a rope around his waist that was secured to an iron pin driven into the marble, to catch them should they fall. Marcus was not wearing a rope.

The statue seemed to float on the air nearby, twisting slightly so that the gilding reflected sparkles of sunlight. Then it began slowly to move towards them, until it appeared just above their heads. The men reached up and touched the base of the statue, which then began very slowly to descend. Their foreman shouted instructions, making sure the orientation of the statue remained true as it was lowered into place. Marcus stayed out of the way, crouching to keep his balance.

The statue was still two feet above the top of the column when Marcus heard a sharp noise. Somewhere, a chain had snapped.

He looked at the statue, which swayed a bit. He looked at the crane, which also seemed to sway very slightly. Then the crane began to tilt to one side.

“Numa’s balls!” cried the foreman. “The statue’s coming down, right now! Keep it steady!”

The workmen grabbed hold of the statue, but they were powerless to guide it any longer as it swung one way and then the other. With a tremendous cracking noise, part of the crane collapsed. As he strove to keep his balance and stay clear of the statue, Marcus saw in glimpses that a section of the crane was falling and men on the ground were scrambling to get out of the way. He experienced a moment of vertigo in which it seemed that the huge statue was stationary while everything else – earth, sky, and the column under his feet – was spinning off-kilter.

The statue bumped one of the workmen. The movement was relatively small, but the weight of the statue lent tremendous force to the slight contact. The workman went tumbling backwards, paddling his arms in the air. He stepped off the column and onto the topmost scaffold, but couldn’t regain his balance and kept staggering backwards. Marcus waited for the man’s safety rope to stop his fall, but the knot at his waist had been poorly tied. The man slipped free from the rope and went flying off the scaffold, somersaulting backwards. His scream pierced the air as he plummeted to the ground. There was a sickening sound of impact, then a moment of silence, then a tremendous crash as the broken section of the crane fell onto the Greek wing of the library.

Marcus experienced a moment of sheer panic. He imagined the statue swinging ever more wildly out of control, knocking off more and more of the workman, until it actually struck the column, dislodging the top drum, throwing the whole column out of balance and causing it to topple over.

But that was not what happened.

The statue twisted one way, then the other, then suddenly dropped and landed with a jarring thud atop the column. None of the workmen were harmed, and when they took a closer look, they were amazed to see that the statue had landed precisely within the chalk outline. Despite the broken crane, the outcome could not have been more perfect.

For Marcus, the earth and the sky gradually stopped spinning and all was still. He realized that he was clutching the fascinum with his right hand. His knuckles were bone white. As he slowly unclenched his fist, he stepped onto the scaffolding and took stock of the damage below.

The crane was ruined beyond repair. One end of the Greek wing of the library was destroyed, but that part of the building was unfinished and the repairs would be relatively minor. The body of the man who had fallen lay twisted on the paving stones below, surrounded by a pool of blood. As Marcus watched, Apollodorus and Hadrian approached the lifeless body. Apollodorus gazed down at the corpse for a moment, then up at Marcus. His face was ashen.

Marcus, too stunned to speak, extended his arm and turned his thumb upwards to signal that all was well atop the column. Apollodorus looked as if he might faint with relief.

Hadrian took a step back to avoid the spreading pool of blood, then stared up at Marcus, or rather, beyond him, at the towering statue of Trajan. “The nose!” he shouted.

What was Hadrian talking about? Marcus craned his neck to peer up at the statue. The gilding reflected the sunlight so brightly that he was blinded. He looked down at Hadrian and made a quizzical gesture.

Hadrian smiled broadly. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. “The nose… looks… perfect!”

A month later, Lucius Pinarius hosted a small dinner party in honour of his son.

The Column would soon be officially dedicated, and in the various celebrations the emperor and his chief architect would be the focus of all attention. Before that happened, Lucius wanted to acknowledge his son’s accomplishments and tremendous hard work. The dinner party was to be a major event for the Pinarius household, which seldom saw guests outside the small circle of Lucius’s friends, most of whom were advanced in years and fellow followers of Apollonius of Tyana – not a group much given to traditional feasting, since they ate no meat and drank no wine.

No meat had been cooked or served in Lucius’s house for many years, and he could not bring himself to include any sort of flesh, fowl, or fish on the menu; his cook assured him that no one would even notice the omission among the highly spiced delicacies and sumptuous sweets that would be offered. But for a dinner party that included a member of the imperial household – Hadrian had accepted an invitation – there would have to be wine. Lucius never drank wine, but Marcus occasionally did, and Lucius had no objection to serving it to his guests. If they should be disappointed by the absence of meat, he was determined that they would have no cause to be disappointed with the wine; he had stocked a variety of what a reputable merchant assured him were the very finest vintages, both Greek and Italian.

For such an occasion, his son informed him, there must be a scurra among the guests; no memorable social occasion could take place among the elite of the city without a scurra to amuse them. Apparently there existed an entire class of such persons in the city, men who literally made their way by their wit. A scurra cadged dinner invitations to the homes of the wealthy and in return shared gossip, told jokes, injected double entendres into the conversation, flattered the host, and gently mocked the guests.

“And where on earth will I find such a person?” Lucius had asked his son, quite certain there were no scurras among the staid acolytes of the Teacher.

“Apollodorus says he’ll bring someone, a fellow named Favonius,” said Marcus. Apollodorus had also invited the director of the imperial archives, a man in his forties named Gaius Suetonius, who had learned that the elder Pinarius had known Nero and his long-vanished circle and was eager to meet him.

After many days of preparation, the appointed hour arrived. The guests appeared in quick succession and were shown to their dining couches. The house was filled with the steady hum of conversation and laughter.

The scurra showed his worth early on. Favonius had frizzled red hair, plump cheeks, and a peculiar nose that skewed to one side; from his protruding belly, it appeared that he loved food and seldom missed a meal. When it became evident that no meat would be served, Favonius pretended to pout. “I see we’re to be served a gladiators’ diet tonight: no meat, just barley and beans! Ah, well, thank the gods that gladiators are allowed to drink wine.” Both Lucius and Marcus were taken aback by the man’s rudeness, but everyone else laughed, and not another word was said all night about the lack of meat or fish; the scurra’s blatant complaint forestalled any further grumbling. Instead, the guests vied with one another to praise the cook’s skill and ingenuity.

Hadrian and Suetonius engaged Lucius in conversation. The archivist was curious to learn anything about Nero, while Hadrian wanted to know every detail of his host’s friendship with Apollonius of Tyana, Epictetus, and Dio of Prusa.

Marcus noticed that Apollodorus stayed largely out of the conversation. It seemed to him that there was some tension between the architect and Hadrian, who had always been on friendly terms.

Hadrian excused himself to go to the latrina. As soon as he was out of sight, the scurra grunted. “I do believe that fellow has lost his provincial accent entirely.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” said Lucius. “When he first came to Roma, I seem to recall that his accent was quite pronounced.”

“You recall correctly,” said Favonius. “People still talk about the occasion, early in Trajan’s reign, when Hadrian read one of the emperor’s speeches aloud to the Senate, and the senators laughed out loud. Hadrian blushed so brightly you couldn’t even see his acne scars.”

“Hadrian’s worked very hard to get rid of his accent, and I think he’s succeeded,” said Suetonius, whose own diction was elegant to the point of pedantry.

Apollodorus, who was from Damascus and whose Latin had its own provincial accent, shook his head. “He now sounds so much like a city-born Roman that Trajan has stopped calling him the Little Greek. He calls him the Little Roman.”

Favonius tittered. “Oh, dear, I am going to have to steal that one from you.”

“It’s not a joke,” insisted Apollodorus, “it’s the truth!”

When Hadrian returned, the entire company fell silent. Hadrian took the opportunity to steer the conversation back to Dio of Prusa, whose latest writings had been much concerned with the subject of marriage. Happily restored to his native city, Dio also seemed to be quite happily married, and expressed his contentment by extolling the virtues of marital union above all other forms of love.

The topic cheered no one. Lucius Pinarius had known love, but never marriage. Apollodorus’s wife had been very ill lately, and thoughts of her only made him gloomy. Hadrian had been married for several years to Trajan’s grand-niece Sabina, but their marriage was childless and thought by many to be in name only. As for Marcus, his irregular origins, a subject never openly discussed by those who knew him but apparently known to all, had made it difficult for him to find a match suited to his family’s ancient name and patrician status; not yet married, and with no immediate prospects, he had given up thoughts of creating a family and devoted himself entirely to his work.

The scurra, seeing the gloominess caused by the subject, managed to crack a few crude jokes about marriage, but these seemed forced and stale. It was Suetonius who rescued the conversation. As a sidelight to his work as an archivist, he was a dedicated antiquarian and amateur historian, and kept a notebook dedicated especially to anecdotes about imperial marriages. He amused them at length with stories about the duel of wits between Livia and Augustus, Caligula’s so-called marriages to his sisters, Claudius’s misery with Messalina and his agony with Agrippina, and Nero’s marriage to the beautiful but ill-fated Poppaea, followed by his betrothal to her double, the equally ill-fated Sporus.

“You must have known Sporus,” said Suetonius, looking at their host.

Lucius made no answer for a long moment. “Yes, I did,” he finally said.

“Was the eunuch as beautiful as they say?” asked Hadrian.

“Yes, she was,” said Lucius, lowering his eyes. The others waited for him to elaborate, but instead he said, “Shall we retire to the garden? Carry your cups with you. I shall be serving a special wine from Samothrace with a jasmine flavour that emerges only under moonlight – so the merchant assured me.”

As they stepped into the garden, Hadrian came to a sudden halt. He stared at the statue of Melancomas. Marcus had noticed that visitors were often a bit startled by the image of the naked boxer, probably because it stood at ground level and was so extraordinarily realistic that a casual observer might mistake it for a living man. But Hadrian’s reaction went beyond mere surprise: his face was lit with wonder and delight. He reached out to touch the smooth marble of the statue’s face. A moment later, he stepped back and touched his own cheek, running his fingertips over the rough, mottled blemishes.

“Melancomas,” said Lucius.

“Yes, I’ve seen other images of him – but none that could match this one,” said Hadrian, unable to take his eyes from the statue. “They say Melancomas was beloved by the Divine Titus. Lucky Titus! If only, someday, I could meet a youth as beautiful as this…”

Marcus smiled. “If only, someday, I could create a statue as beautiful as this.”

Favonius stepped between them and tilted an eyebrow at each in turn. “May each of you be granted his desire – and be happy with it!”

Apollodorus joined them. He was a bit drunker than the rest. For Apollodorus, the evening was a rare break from months of unceasing labour, and he had imbibed a considerable quantity of the fine vintages on offer. Seeing that they were all gazing at the statue, he nodded. “Ah, the Melancomas. Superb! Without a doubt, the most beautiful and most valuable thing in the house.” He looked from Marcus to Hadrian. “Look at the two of you – spellbound! But for rather different reasons, I suspect. Which of you is truly Pygmalion, and which is the Little Greek? It seems to me that Marcus here is more the pure connoisseur, the Greekling who loves art for its own sake, and you, Hadrian, are the lover who longs to see a statue brought to life! Perhaps we should call you Pygmalion!”

Favonius laughed, but Marcus was not amused. Being called Pygmalion in private was one thing, but hearing his old slave name used in front of others rankled him. Nor was Hadrian amused: he looked quietly furious, and the acne scars across his cheeks turned bright red. Again, Marcus was puzzled by the tension between the two men.

Favonius, who missed nothing, saw the look on Marcus’s face and drew him aside. As they strolled to the far end of the garden, the scurra spoke in a low voice. “Are you not aware of the tiff between those two?”

Marcus wrinkled his brow. The scurra’s eyes lit up. There was nothing that gave Favonius greater pleasure than the chance to deliver fresh gossip. “Everyone’s talking about it! Where have you been the last couple of days?”

“Helping my father plan this party,” said Marcus.

“Ah! Then you haven’t heard about the meeting Caesar had with Apollodorus, about the reconstruction of the Greek wing of the library?”

“I know about that. It was two days ago.”

“But you weren’t there?”

“I won’t be involved until the time comes to decorate the interior.”

“I see.” The scurra nodded knowingly. “Well, it so happens that Hadrian did attend that meeting.”

“As he often does.”

“But this time he put forward some plans of his own.”

“What sort of plans?”

“Apollodorus was explaining to Caesar how long it will take to finish the repairs to the Greek wing, when Hadrian interrupted and proposed that the wing should have a dome on it – the man is crazy for domes – and produced some very elaborate drawings and plans which he insisted they both look at.”

“But such an idea isn’t possible. The Latin and Greek wings are intended to be symmetrical, and the Latin wing has no dome.”

“That’s exactly what Apollodorus said. Whereupon Hadrian said, ‘That’s why I propose to remodel the Latin wing and give it a dome as well.’ Apparently he has some idea that a dome is absolutely necessary for such a building, something about letting in light from the ceiling. He produced another drawing to show how the library would look if both wings had a dome, with the Column rising up between them, and apparently Trajan rather liked the notion.”

Marcus raised his eyebrows, thinking of all the time and effort such a scheme would entail. “How did Apollodorus react?”

“Apparently, he was absolutely scathing. You know he’s not afraid to be outspoken when it comes to such things. Even as Hadrian was expounding on the beauty of his domes, Apollodorus pointed at the drawings and turned up his nose. ‘What are these supposed to look like,’ he said, ‘two swollen testes flanking the upright Column?’ Well, once that image is in your mind, you can’t picture it any other way, can you? ‘These bulbous monstrosities not only spoil the overall symmetry of the whole forum,’ he says, ‘but they’ll collapse even before they’re completed.’ To which Hadrian made some crack about that unfortunate business with the broken crane, whereupon Apollodorus looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘It’s one thing to draw your fantasy, young man, another to actually build it. Be off, now, and draw your giant gourds elsewhere. Caesar and I have a lot to talk about, and you understand nothing of these matters.”

“Trajan let him speak that way to his own cousin?”

“The emperor gives Apollodorus a very long leash, as you know, at least in matters to do with art and architecture. He trusts his judgement implicitly, whereas Hadrian, when all is said and done, is still the Little Greek, an over-educated dabbler who would do better to concentrate on his military career and leave art to the hirelings who create it for the pleasure of their betters. Hadrian was crushed. He gathered up his precious drawings and stalked off, practically in tears. Oh dear, but now we’ve come full circle, and there they are, still staring at that statue and not saying a word to each other.”

Marcus tried to think of a new topic for discussion. “What word, Hadrian, about this expedition being mounted by the emperor against Parthia?”

The question seemed to draw Hadrian out of a trance. He smiled. “I’m to go with him. It seems I’ll finally see the cities of the East – perhaps even Ctesiphon.”

He alluded to the capital of Parthia. Not content with the conquest of Dacia, Trajan had been seized by an even grander conceit – to fulfill the repeatedly thwarted Roman ambition that went back to the days of Julius Caesar, to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and expand Roma’s empire eastward into the realms of ancient Persia.

Lucius Pinarius, who had joined his guests in the garden, cleared his throat. “Of course, there’s no real strategic purpose for inciting such a war, except that the Parthians present the only empire in the world to rival that of Roma.”

“I should think there’s every reason to conquer them,” said Favonius. “Or rather, the only reason there ever is for a war – wealth to plunder. The Dacians were the last neighbour left on the edges of the empire who actually possessed anything worth taking. Beyond our provinces on the northern coast of Africa lies a trackless desert; beyond Egypt lies a land of savage troglodytes and impassable jungles; the northern part of the island of Britannia is a frigid wasteland; and the realms beyond Germania and Dacia seem to be completely uncivilized, inhabited by such foul barbarians that they’re not even worth taking as slaves. There is India, of course, and beyond that the kingdom of Serica, the land of silk, which surely must be wealthy, but the world beyond the Indus River is so remote that hardly any Roman has ever traveled there, except for a few intrepid merchants. Within our reach, only Parthia and its satellite kingdoms remain to be conquered – and the wealth of its empire must be staggering.”

“As will be the challenge of taking it,” said Hadrian. “Even the Flavians at their most ambitious never dreamed of such a thing. But Caesar is ready for the challenge.”

“You won’t be going, will you, Marcus?” said Lucius, with a slight quaver in his voice.

“No, father. The emperor has decided that Apollodorus and I should remain here in Roma.”

Apollodorus nodded. “I’m compiling a handbook of designs for siege engines and such for the emperor to take with him, and training some of my best engineers for the expedition. But there’s still a great deal of work to be done on Caesar’s grand building projects here in the city, and whom could he possibly leave in charge but myself? Naturally, he looks to someone with experience, someone who knows how to get things done in strict accordance with his own high standards.” His boasting seemed to Marcus a deliberate attempt to needle Hadrian. After another swallow of wine, Apollodorus spoke to Hadrian directly. “But while Pygmalion and I stay here in the city to finish the projects, I’m sure you’ll manage to kill a Parthian or two, Little Greek! And like every conqueror, you’ll find it’s easier to demolish buildings and strip their ornaments than to put one up in the first place.”

Hadrian blushed furiously. Apollodorus laughed and held out his cup for more wine. Did he not realize how deeply he had offended Hadrian? Did he not care?

Lucius stepped forward. “Caesar shows great trust to keep you here in Roma, Apollodorus. And you must have great trust in Marcus, to keep him here with you.”

“No one else has the skill to finish the interior decorations of the Greek wing of the library, for one thing,” said Apollodorus, looking askance at Hadrian.

“I’m gratified to hear you say that,” said Lucius, “because, as our evening together draws to a close, I wish to remind you of the reason for this occasion: to honour my son for all he’s accomplished in recent months. I ask you to drink a toast. Raise your cups, please. To Marcus Pinarius – the best son a man could ever hope for.”

“To Marcus Pinarius!” said the rest, except for Apollodorus, who shouted, sounding quite drunk, “To Pygmalion!”

As soon as the toast was finished, Hilarion entered and spoke in Lucius’s ear. Lucius hurried to Apollodorus. “Your daughter is in the vestibule,” he said quietly. “Hilarion invited her to the garden, but she wouldn’t come. Apparently she’s quite upset. Your wife has taken a turn for the worse.”

Apollodorus, looking suddenly sober, drew a deep breath and left them without a word.

The guests began to amble out of the garden, until no one was left except Marcus and Hadrian, who stood gazing at the statue of Melancomas and rubbing his chin. Marcus interpreted the gesture to mean that Hadrian was brooding or lost in thought, then realized that the man was once again touching the acne scars that disfigured his otherwise handsome face.

While the guests said their farewells to his father, Marcus proceeded to the vestibule, where Apollodorus was having a hushed conversation with his daughter. Marcus had met Apollodora when he first began working for her father. She had been a mere child then. He had not seen her since.

As Hilarion opened the door for Apollodorus and his daughter to make their exit, Apollodora looked back at Marcus for a moment. He was startled to see what a beauty she had grown into, with her lustrous dark hair, shimmering skin, and enormous eyes.

Later, when he went to bed, Marcus fell asleep thinking about her.

Lucius Pinarius claimed that wine disturbed sleep, and that this was yet another reason to avoid it; perhaps it was the wine that caused Marcus’s strange dreams that night.

His pleasant thoughts about Apollodorus’s daughter vanished as he fell asleep. He was back in Dacia. A village was in flames. As if he were a bird, he followed a boy with unkempt hair and ragged clothes who ran through the narrow streets. Laughing and making obscene noises, Roman soldiers pursued him. The boy tripped over a dead body, threaded his way through jumbled ruins, leaped over raging flames. Suddenly he reached a dead end. He was trapped. He screamed, but there were plenty of other people screaming in the village; he was just one more.

Suddenly, Marcus became the boy. The soldiers converged on him. He was tiny, and they were huge, looming above him in darkness so that he could not see their faces. A giant hand reached for him…

Marcus had experienced this dream before, or dreams much like it. Always, this was the point at which he would awaken, shivering and covered with sweat. But this time he seemed to fall even deeper into the dream. The leering soldiers vanished, as did the ruins of the village. All was suffused with a golden light. Hovering before him was a beautiful, naked youth. He reminded Marcus of the statue of Melancomas, but this being was so radiantly beautiful that he seemed more than human. Was he a god? The youth regarded him with an expression of such tenderness and compassion that Marcus was suddenly close to tears.

The youth reached towards him. He whispered, “Do not fear. I will save you.”

Then Marcus woke.

His room was lit by the first faint glow of dawn. He reached for the coverlet he had thrown off during his nightmare and pulled it to his chin. The warmth comforted him, but it was the lingering impression of the dream that filled him with an exquisite sense of well-being. He had never experienced such a feeling before, a certainty that somewhere in the universe there existed a power that was perfect and loving, that would shield him from all evil in the world.

Who was the divine youth of his dream? There had been nothing to identify him as one of the familiar gods of Olympus. Was he Apollonius of Tyana, who often visited Marcus’s father in dreams? Marcus didn’t think so; surely Apollonius would have shown himself as Marcus had always heard him described, an old man with a white beard. Was he a manifestation of the Divine Singularity, of which Marcus’s father spoke? Perhaps. But it seemed to Marcus that the youth in his dream was a completely new being, never before seen by anyone in this world. He had shown himself to Marcus and to Marcus alone.

As the afterglow of the dream began to fade, Marcus tried to remember the face of the youth – he even tried to draw him, reaching for the stylus and wax tablet he kept at his bedside, but he found it impossible to recapture the features. The face Marcus drew was only a rough approximation that gave no hint of his unearthly perfection.

Perhaps the youth was nothing more than a creation of Marcus’s imagination. And yet, the dream had seemed more real than waking life. Marcus was convinced that this being came from a place outside himself, a world that was unimaginably vast and beautiful and full of wonder.