Gods and Legions

II

I have aged, Brother, faster even than the days that are passing me by, which tear the years off my life as does an infant the leaves of a book that has been left within its grasp. Over the past five years I fear I have aged ten, and over the next five years it will be twenty, and at this rate I shall soon catch up and pass you, and give even Father a good run for his money. Yet it is not in physical years that I am becoming elderly; by many standards I would still be considered a relatively young man, and indeed though my hair is thinning and growing gray at the temples, still my waist is trim, my bowels strong, my pace rapid, and my ability to turn a maiden's head now and then undiminished, though the desire to even tempt such a distraction is another matter indeed. No, of course it is not by fleshly standards that I am growing old, for all flesh must follow the laws of nature and only the steady passage of the days and nights can contribute to one's physical aging. I am growing old inside, for my spirit is tired, bone tired, if you will forgive the mixing of a spiritual metaphor with a carnal one, and this exhaustion, which does not leave me even now, began to be felt the day I arrived in Antioch and confirmed Julian's designs against the Persians. Despite the jauntiness of the soldiers, the cockiness and profanity of the sailors, the laughter and jests of Julian, and even the occasional excited grin from the pustulant mouth of Maximus, I felt a foreboding, a sadness about the expedition, perhaps as a result of the shallowness of its motives. As we prepared for the march, I felt like an old man with a very long way to travel.

The campaign against the Persians, let it be said, was entirely unnecessary. Even Sallustius had tried to dissuade Julian, to no avail.

'He believes it will resurrect Rome's ancient glory,' the adviser muttered, when I once cautiously asked him Julian's motives.

'So he told me, too. And will it?' I countered.

Sallustius grimaced, and sidestepped the question. 'He's following his vision, his goddess, and Maximus encourages him. You know Julian as well as I do, physician. You cannot talk him out of something he feels is his destiny. And Persia, he says, is his destiny.'

'Every Roman emperor for four centuries has believed that. Some have won battles, even wars, but none have truly conquered Persia. Surely he doesn't believe Maximus' claims for his "destiny."'

'Oh, he believes,' Sallustius said resignedly, turning back to the army's preparations for the march. 'He truly believes.'

King Sapor was no fool. Indeed, I would even venture that he was the wiliest monarch any Roman emperor had ever faced. Though now in the thirtieth year of his reign, he was still a young man, since by a strange fluke he had held the title of Great King for longer than he had actually been alive. His father, King Hormouz, had met an untimely death while his wife was pregnant with their first child, which had excited the ambitions of other princes in the royal family who aspired to the enormous empire. To forestall civil war, Hormouz' widow arranged immediately to crown the prospective heir, even before knowing the infant's sex. An enormous royal bed was constructed in the coronation hall for the ceremony, on which the queen lay in state in the presence of all the courtiers and nobles. A magnificent diadem was balanced on the spot assumed to conceal the head of the future king, and all the satraps present threw themselves prostrate before the queen's majestic belly and its royal contents. The infant ruler Sapor, with his official title of King of Kings, Partner of the Stars, and Brother of the Sun and Moon, was delivered several weeks later, and by that time his accession to the throne was a foregone conclusion.

King Sapor's spies in Antioch soon informed their employer of Julian's preparations. The King was well apprised of the extent of the military forces and foreign alliances being arrayed against him, and, most important, of the quality of its leader, the young, energetic emperor who had decimated the barbarians of the Rhine, crossed the Roman Empire like a lightning bolt, and seized the capital without spilling a drop of Roman blood. When Julian's preparations were confirmed, Sapor dropped all pretense at haughtiness and sent a polite letter to the Emperor, claiming kinship with him in their mutual capacity as great leaders, and suggesting that they negotiate their differences in a friendly manner.

Yet Julian's qualities and reputation, which had so terrified the King of Kings into suing for peace, were the same ones that prevented him from changing his course of action, despite the clear advantages and the saving of treasure and men. Julian's energetic efforts over the past year in Antioch had yielded an army of sixty-five thousand Roman legionaries, plus that number again of Arabian, Scythian, Goth, and Saracen auxiliary troops; an alliance with King Arsaces of Armenia to hold another sixty thousand Armenian troops in readiness to tie down the Persians on their northwestern front; a river fleet awaiting him on the Euphrates under the command of Count Lucillianus, consisting of a thousand transport ships laden with arms and provisions of every sort; and fifty massive ships of war for fighting, with an equal number of engineering barges for bridge-building and other riparian works. The wooden vessels, covered with raw hides and laden to the gunwales with an inexhaustible supply of arms, utensils, provisions, and engines, were so numerous that they crowded the entire Euphrates River from bank to bank. With a commitment such as that, what answer could possibly be given to King Sapor's diplomatic letter, offered in all humility by the lavishly arrayed uncle of the King himself, who presented rich presents, a fine Arabian stallion, the granting of territories Rome had long coveted, and peaceful coexistence between the two mighty empires as long as both rulers should live?

Unfortunately, in presenting the letter, the King's uncle did not stop with his humble entreaty, as a wise man would have. He also pointedly reminded Julian of the misfortunes of his predecessor, the elderly Valerian, during his own Persian expedition a century earlier, when he was captured and flayed and his wrinkled skin displayed as an 'eternal trophy' at the Persian court. As Julian sat seething, the dim-witted ambassador went on to blithely describe the debacle of Galerius, so recent that it was still fresh in the minds of older veterans. His army had been almost destroyed and the general himself had barely managed to return to Antioch alive. Julian's eyes flashed in anger as he listened to the diplomat drone on.

And then he tore up the letter.

With a sneer, he flung the scraps in the face of the King's astonished uncle. 'Tell your sovereign,' he snarled, 'to take heed, that I, Julian, Supreme Pontiff, Caesar, Augustus, servant of the gods and of Ares, destroyer of the barbarians and liberator of the Gauls, recognize no man's superiority over me, nor any empire's over Rome. Hasten, man, warn him, for I intend to deliver confirmation to him personally, at the head of my army!'

War was now not only possible, but inevitable, and the only conceivable destination for Julian's huge army was Ctesiphon, the royal capital of Persia itself.

The massive collection of troops set out on the fifth of March, a time that had been carefully planned to take advantage of the season, which was still sufficiently cool for comfortable marching. The normally arid, barren hills were this time of year still green with pasturage and liberally watered by a multitude of small streams. Our route took us due east across Syria, through the towns of Litarbae and Beroea, and on to Hierapolis, an important caravan center for the region, where additional troops and provisions were being assembled to join with us upon our arrival.

The omens were not good, however, and I am ashamed to say that perhaps because of my constant proximity to Julian and his augers, even I was beginning to take an interest in such signs. They would have been difficult to ignore by even Bishop Athanasius himself, however. Our entry into Hierapolis was staged to represent a triumphal march, preceded as we were by the vast arrays of colorful foreign troops marching in perfect unison, their polished armor gleaming in the bright sunlight. Just as we entered, however, a massive stone colonnade at the very gates of the city fell, narrowly missing Julian's chariot, which had just passed under. It killed fifty soldiers and severely injured untold numbers of civilians who had been standing near or climbing upon it, which was no doubt the cause of its toppling. Julian, however, unable to focus on any thought but the destruction of Persia, scarcely seemed to notice, even when the entire city threw itself into a frenzy of wailing and mourning for its dead. It was only with the greatest of efforts that he was convinced by Sallustius to pay a courtesy visit to the soldiers injured in the catastrophe, the first casualties of his campaign. His mind, however, was elsewhere, on troop counts and supply lines, negotiations with allies and terms of surrender for the Persians. He had no emotion to spare for the dead and injured.

Here we stayed three days, adjusting formations and marching orders, and then, rather than simply following the Euphrates downstream toward Ctesiphon, as King Sapor might perhaps have expected us to do, we crossed the mighty river on a pontoon bridge in the dead of night, and struck out again across the desert in a series of forced marches, twenty or thirty miles a day in full gear. The route took us through Batnae, where another unfortunate event occurred — a huge stack of grain collapsed at a supply station, burying and suffocating another fifty men who were gathering fodder. Still, however, we paused no longer than it took for Julian to perform a brief sacrifice for the care of the men's souls, a ceremony that left even the most ardent bull worshipers cold with the haphazard and absent way that Julian conducted it. Without lingering, we pushed on to Carrhae, an ancient town memorable as the scene of the destruction of a Roman army under Crassus centuries before. We were well on the road now to the mighty Tigris River, several weeks' journey distant, which also led to the same goal of Ctesiphon.

Ctesiphon had, in fact, been the mark achieved by the Emperor Trajan two and a half centuries earlier, in his victorious campaign against the Parthians. Trajan, however, had started from the north, in Armenia, and marched to the Persian capital along the more favorable course of the Tigris, leaving his secondary army to advance to the capital along the more difficult Euphrates shore. By marching well past the Euphrates and moving toward the Tigris with his huge army, Julian aimed to keep Sapor's spies guessing as to which of the two attack routes he intended to take; and perhaps he himself was unsure at this time which he would choose, as he attempted to monitor Sapor's own forces from afar. Ultimately, he decided to use the pincer tactic that had served Trajan so well in his assault, though with a twist: Julian's secondary force, under the command of his kinsman, General Procopius, would continue east toward the Tigris, joining with Arsaces' Armenians if called upon to do so, and then lay waste the districts along the banks of that river while advancing to Ctesiphon. Julian, meanwhile, with the bulk of the troops and supplies, would double back south to rejoin the massive Euphrates fleet at Callinicum, and then push forward to meet Procopius at Ctesiphon upon his arrival.

At Carrhae I was again party to a perceived good omen involving his horse. Ever since the embarrassing event in Thrace when I had fallen on my face in the mud, I had been particularly cautious, when invited for a ride with Julian, to plant my feet sturdily before assisting him into the saddle Persian-style, if his lance hook was not available. I was unconcerned here, however, for there was no mud.

He had invited me for a short ride to watch a detachment of Scythian slingers and archers at their target practice, and I had gladly joined him, eager for the excuse to leave the confines of the camp. On the way, however, Julian's usual stallion pulled a shoulder, and he borrowed a horse from one of the groomsmen accompanying us. We watched the practice for perhaps an hour, and were just mounting our horses to leave, when suddenly an errant stone from a slipped sling slammed into the side of the borrowed horse's face.

The weapon was not one of the deadly, lead, acorn-shaped missiles that the slingers use in actual battle, but rather simply a round, hard river stone that had been casually picked up by the slinger from the ground where he was practicing. Nevertheless, the speed of its impact knocked the poor beast's head to the side with a spurt of blood that bespattered the surprised Julian, as the stone penetrated its cheek and shattered the molars on that side of its face. The horse fell in agony to the ground, throwing its rider clear, but writhing and rolling in the dirt, its hooves flying in all directions, scattering its priceless silken trappings trimmed with gems and gold.

Julian was red-faced with fury. 'Where is he?' he shouted, stalking toward the dumbfounded centurion who had been training the slingers, the crowd of confused soldiers clustering behind him in terror. 'Where is the ass who felled my horse, and who damn near killed me?'

The centurion looked behind himself in consternation at his squad, wondering what he should do, as the groom and I rushed behind Julian to calm him before any damage was done. Rarely had I seen Julian in such a fury — even when his son had been killed he had been able to control his emotions, but his moods of late, swinging from utter apathy at the death of fifty soldiers, to sputtering rage at a mere injury to his borrowed horse, confounded me. I seized his shoulder to hold him back from launching himself at the centurion. Suddenly one young Scythian, scarcely a boy, stepped out from the crowd of slingers and made his way shakily toward the Emperor.

Julian watched, trembling with rage, and when he had approached near, roared, 'Do you realize what you have done, boy? With your clumsiness, the horse is as good as dead, and it is only by the grace of the gods that I am not too! A fine horse, this… this… damn it all, groom, what was the name of the horse?' he said, whirling around to where I stood next to the trembling stable hand.

'Babylon,' the groom croaked, and as Julian turned back to the boy to continue his tongue-lashing, he suddenly stopped.

'Babylon?' he repeated, in wonder. 'Babylon… Boy, Babylon has fallen!' and a broad grin suddenly wreathing his face, he threw his arm around the astonished slinger's shoulders and turned to stare calmly at the trembling, moaning horse struggling to stand to its feet, its rich trappings torn and hanging off its sides. 'It has fallen, boy, stripped of all its wealth! You have killed Babylon!' And so saying he rushed to the horse, ripped off a strand of decorative gold chain that had been partially torn from its position on the saddle, and thrust it into the dumbfounded boy's hands. 'May your aim never improve beyond today!' he shouted, and the wonderstruck archers and slingers cheered, though more with relief and surprise than in true support.

I returned to camp shaking my head in amazement that a man who professed such belief in the gods could ignore the signs given by disasters that had killed dozens of men in recent weeks, yet continue his campaign on the basis of a misguided sling stone.