Gods and Legions

VI

'Burn the fleet.' Maximus' head shot up, his red-rimmed eyes wide in a kind of malignant amazement. Even staid Sallustius recoiled.

'Sire?' he inquired after a moment, setting to one side the maps he had been examining in Julian's tent.

'You heard me. Burn it. Every vessel. We'd have to occupy half the army dragging the damn ships up the Tigris, and they would be a temptation for us to flee. Burn the fleet, or it will prevent us from meeting Sapor with all our strength and wits.'

Already the decision had been made not to lay siege to Ctesiphon. The city was simply too strong, its surviving garrison too numerous, its supplies, according to information we had received from defectors, too copious. Moreover, our position at the foot of the walls was untenable, if only for a hazard we had not counted on: the enormous clouds of biting flies and mosquitoes that swarmed in from the nearby river and canals, in such quantities that they dimmed the sun by day and obscured the stars by night, driving the men and animals to near madness. Thus God's tiniest creatures summon the attention of His largest. Sapor's prime minister within the city had sent Julian a cautious embassy, offering to cede back to him all the Roman cities the Persians had taken in the last decade, but this proposal was scornfully rejected.

'Returning that which is already rightfully ours is no concession!' Julian stormed, flinging the calligraphed document back in the face of the startled ambassador. 'Let the cowardly Persians emerge from their walls and fight on the plains like men!'

But this the Ctesiphon garrison would not do. They shouted taunts and fired arrows at us desultorily, challenging the Emperor to demonstrate his bravery by seeking out the Great King himself and engaging his army rather than a besieged city garrison. Julian took the insult to heart. But to attack King Sapor without being pincered by the garrison on the other side would require leaving Ctesiphon and marching north along the Tigris — upstream. It would be impossible to bring the enormous fleet.

'Burn it,' he repeated stubbornly.

'Augustus,' Sallustius interjected cautiously, as if addressing an overexcited child, 'at least keep it here where it is, as a… as a…' He faltered uncharacteristically for a moment as Julian glared at him stonily. '… as a fallback. Post a guard on it to defend against attacks by the Ctesiphon garrison. If worse comes to worse, our men can burn it then, to prevent it from being captured. Otherwise, if Sapor forces us to… retreat, we would still be able to sail down the Tigris to the Gulf and make our way safely from there to Egypt.'

These were more words than Sallustius was accustomed to speak at any one time — clearly the issue was important to him. Julian would have none of it, however.

'Retreat is not an option, Sallustius,' he snapped, 'and I will suspect your loyalty, as I already do your wisdom, if you raise the issue again. Nor do we return the way we came. We have already laid waste to that country and there would be no provisions for us. Tomorrow we march up the Tigris to meet with Procopius, and Sapor, sooner or later, will meet us and fall. Burn the fleet.'

As he looked around the tent, all his old comrades, Oribasius, Sallustius, myself, all of us who had served him so faithfully in Gaul, whose advice he had solicited and followed in the past, all fell silent. Even Maximus remained motionless, refraining from his customary whispering in Julian's ear.

Julian surveyed our sullen faces with what seemed a look of satisfaction.

'Is that clear?'

As we left, Sallustius pulled me aside. It was the first time, I believe, he had ever sought me out directly.

'Physician,' he said gruffly, as if embarrassed, though staring at me intently, 'you have served him for years. Has he gone mad?'

'Yes,' I said, without hesitation. 'Years ago, when he first made sacrifice to Mithras.'

Sallustius snorted. 'Then we are all of us mad, are we not? Except you. Are you the one voice of sanity in the Emperor's circle?'

'Perhaps. I cannot speak for the rest of you.'

At this, Sallustius' face became uncharacteristically tense.

'If he is mad, why did you follow him to this hellhole, rather than staying in your precious Nazianzus?'

I paused, slightly stunned at this one time I had ever seen Sallustius drop his perpetual mask of calm and self-composure. Sallustius apparently thought I had not heard, for his face contorted even more. 'I said, physician, if he is mad-'

I snapped out of my reverie and interrupted him.

'You are asking the wrong person, General,' I said. 'I go where healing is required. It is because he is mad that I followed him to this hellhole. You would do better to ask that question of yourself.'

The next morning the greasy, black smoke from the sacrifice was uncustomarily thick. For twenty miles around the city, every field, every mill, every orchard, house, and vineyard had been torched. The pall mingled dolorously over the river with the thin wisps still wafting up from the smoldering remains of a thousand ships — the largest destruction of a Roman fleet since Actium four centuries before. Within an hour we had broken camp.

The inhabitants of Ctesiphon lined the city ramparts to watch our departure, shaking their heads in relief and wonder.

For a week we marched north, our goal the Roman province of Corduene, some three hundred miles distant. We lived only on the provisions we carried with us, for all about us, for miles on every side, the country had been laid to waste, first by our own troops in the vicinity of Ctesiphon, and thereafter by the Persians themselves. A large body from the Ctesiphon garrison followed us at a respectful distance. Not large enough, Brother, to engage us in pitched battle, for the Persians had found that their forces were no match for us in direct combat. Nevertheless, they continually harassed and raided our flanks, making off with precious supply wagons, diverting troops that could otherwise have been used to assist with the provisions, and burning the country far ahead of us, leaving us to march in ashes. At one point we were unable even to move for two days, surrounded by flaming grasses and choking smoke on all sides.

Finally, Julian could take no more of the men's muttering and fears, for even the Gallic veterans were beginning to openly express their doubts as to our prospects. He resorted to an old tactic of the Spartan king Agesilaus, and calling a hurried assembly, he stood before them with Arintheus, a burly Thracian commander. Exhausted in both body and mind, Julian could scarcely bring himself to talk, much less compose a rousing speech of the kind he had habitually used in the past to encourage his men.

'Tribunes, centurions, and soldiers of the Roman army!' he shouted hoarsely. His voice barely carried beyond the front rows. 'Word has come to my ears of the fright you are taking from the enemy's harassment. Their armor, you say, is impenetrable. Their archers are unerring. Their cavalry too fleet of foot for our heavy Roman ponies to catch.'

He paused, and disgruntled muttering was heard from all around.

'Look you!' he shouted. 'Look here at your fears!' And as Arintheus nodded, three Persian prisoners were brought forward, clad in the magnificent, gleaming mail of the King's infantry, the articulations of the joints so skillfully worked as to conform precisely to the wearers' muscles and limbs, and with representations of human faces so closely fitted to their heads that the men seemed to be clothed in metal scales. The only openings where a weapon could possibly lodge were small holes for the nostrils and eyes. The overall effect was terrifying. The impact was muted, however, for the hands of the three soldiers were tied behind their backs and they shuffled and cowered shamefully, as if afraid of being beaten by their captors. Indeed, they undoubtedly already had been, for as they stood before us one of them was dribbling blood into the ashes at his feet.

The men were silent as they gazed at the three prisoners. Arintheus nodded again, and three heavily muscled guards stepped forward, one to each prisoner, and rudely began stripping them, tearing their helmets off with a roughness that bruised the Persians' faces, hastily cutting through the straps and clasps in the back that cinched the armor. The men were pushed before us, naked but for their loincloths, and were made to stand thus before the Roman army, a thing supremely shameful to the modest Persians. At the prisoners' clear signs of embarrassment, their hands clenching uncertainly in front of their groins, some of the Roman troops began laughing uncomfortably.

'See here your fears!' Julian shouted, his eyes bulging and his face flushing in rage as he stared at the bewildered prisoners. Truly it is a condition peculiar to man alone to hate his own victims. 'See here the flower of the Persian army! Filthy little wretches who throw down their arms and flee like she-goats whenever battle is joined.'

Indeed the scene was ludicrous, for as they stood next to the huge, tanned Thracians Julian had handpicked for the demonstration, the Persians looked like wretched beggars, their chests and limbs scrawny, their emaciated bodies white. They shrank away from the enormous legionaries, who glared at them in contempt.

This time he himself nodded, and each Thracian quickly put his arm around the neck of his assigned prisoner and without further instruction cracked it to the side. The three captives crumpled to the floor without a word, their dead eyes staring upward in surprise. The Roman army fell silent.

'Thus the fate of King Sapor when he dares to confront our forces!' Julian screamed, his voice rising to an almost hysterical pitch. He was rewarded with scattered, desultory cheers, and he stalked away, back to his quarters, muttering angrily to himself and gesturing broadly.

The men shuffled off to their duties, and I ducked into my tent in shame at this appalling demonstration. Julian was cracking. For years I had suspected it, for months I had been convinced, but now even the troops could have no doubt in their minds. I pored through my medical texts in increasing despair at finding any remedy that would stabilize his looming paranoia, his overweening desire for glory even at the expense of his very survival. It was a disease that, I feared, was not organic, it was not of the body, for if it had been, it would have long been cured by the geniuses of medicine in recent centuries. No, it was one of mind, and not just of any mind, but the mind of the powerful and ambitious. Indeed, with few exceptions, it had afflicted to a greater or lesser extent every Roman emperor since time immemorial. And even philosophy was not an antidote for him — if it ever truly had been.

Soon after departing the next morning we spied on the horizon an enormous cloud of smoke or swirling dust, a dark mass rising suddenly above the plain, far beyond the distance our scouts dared to range. Rumor spread at first that it was a huge herd of onagers, the wild asses that abound in these regions, traveling in a dense pack to protect themselves against attack from the equally numerous lions. This thought then gave way to the rumor that it was the army of Procopius, arriving with the Armenian hordes of King Arsaces to give us sufficient strength to resume our attack on Ctesiphon and to capture the city once and for all. The fear then surfaced that it was the mighty forces of King Sapor, finally returning from his misguided attempt to intercept us in the north. Julian listened to all these reports impassively, eyeing the cloud like every other man as it rose brown and soiled-looking into the sky, but he, too, was unable to divine what it might mean.

To avoid making a fatal mistake in an uncertain situation, he ordered the trumpets sounded and the men to make camp where they were, on the banks of a small stream, though it was scarcely past the noon hour. He ordered it to be fortified by a palisade of shields stacked in serried sequence and braced in the earth like a wall. The dust from the enormous cloud moved toward us, blowing far ahead of the vast numbers of moving bodies that were at its source, and it soon enveloped us, blocking out the meager light of the setting sun and reflecting an odd, glowing red on the men's faces and skin. We went to bed that night in considerable alarm, still unable to make out what was approaching in the silent cloud to the north.

We woke at dawn to find ourselves surrounded by a Persian army. They were silent, mysteriously subdued. They did not attack, nor bluster, nor even send envoys — they merely observed us from a safe distance. We struck camp and continued our march north, the barbarians parting before us from afar as we moved, accompanying us cautiously from the sides and behind. We soon found that their passivity was due not to fear, but rather to the fact that they were waiting — for this was merely the van of the King's army. Another huge body arrived the next day, an enormous troop of a hundred thousand infantrymen, archers, and elephants commanded by the King's senior general, Meranes, and assisted by two of the King's sons. Nor was this all. Heaven help us, a third detachment, of equal size to that of Meranes, yet advancing somewhat more slowly because of its heavy equipment and additional elephants, arrived soon afterwards. The third army was commanded by King Sapor himself.

Still the Persians refused to join battle with us, and wisely so, for time was on their side. The full force of the summer was now dead upon us and the heavy-set veterans of Gaul and Germany were wilting under the suffocating layers of dust and the incessant heat. Their heads and bodies baked if they wore armor, yet they were wary of removing it, for the constant flank attacks and alarms by the Persian archers and cavalry forced them to be constantly vigilant. The men's faces and necks, especially those of the palest races, were reddened and blistered from the constant beating of the sun, and raw from the bites of the blackflies that hovered everywhere. Stinging insects landed and lingered on any place where moisture was to be had: a sweaty armpit, a corner of a mouth, a draining sun blister on a neck or shoulder. The men were in constant torment, and still the Persians harassed us only from a distance, burning every living plant around us, forcing us to march through miles of smoking desert waste which only hours before had been grassy plains and fields of ripening grain.

At a dry, desolate valley known in the local dialect as Maranga, the king finally showed himself, commanding a cavalry charge against our troops in an action almost worthy of being termed a battle, though still nothing on the scale we were desperate to provoke. Nevertheless, the clash was marked by a considerable loss of Persian satraps and cavalry, and not a few infantrymen on our side as well. The conditions were most favorable to the training and skills of the Persian cavalry, able as they were to dart their javelins and shoot arrows at full speed from any direction on their swift horses, and then flee in a cloud of dust before any Roman defenses could be brought to bear.

On the evening of this action, the twenty-fifth of June, with Julian still unsure as to which side had taken the greater losses, a truce of three days was arranged for the two sides to clean the field and tend to the wounded. Our men worked in the darkness by torchlight to collect the Roman dead, for it was Julian's intent to take advantage of the truce to depart the next morning and put space between us and the King, or to at least find favorable ground on which to draw up lines and provoke a full-scale battle. Our strategizing session that night extended so late, and Julian's advisers were so weary, that most of us simply dozed off fitfully where we were, on benches and the floor in Julian's crowded and paper-strewn field tent.

And thus we come full circle in my narrative, Brother, for this was the night of which I have already written, the darkest night of my life, when I dreamed that the strange woman of unearthly beauty had entered the tent and silently approached Julian, bearing the mysterious burden in her arms.

After I awoke in alarm from the vision, Julian ordered us all to return to our own quarters. I trailed out the tent behind Sallustius and Maximus, while Julian attempted to laugh off my bewilderment, which was apparently still evident by the paleness of my face.

'A dream!' he pronounced. 'Our physician has had a dream! Perhaps it is the gods finally coming to communicate with him after all!'

I winced. When we emerged from the tent, however, an enormous meteor streaked across the sky from the house of Ares, just as it had in the mountains of Thrace, trailing flame in its wake until it vanished into the dark horizon as suddenly as it had appeared, startling Julian into silence. Without his saying so, I knew he was thinking it a response from the gods to his oath at Ctesiphon, when he swore he would not sacrifice again to the god of war. I could see from the perspiration suddenly standing out on his brow that he regretted those hasty words.

'Maximus and the haruspices will say that we must abstain from action until a more favorable sign is revealed to us,' he said, as if unaware as to where my own sympathies lay in this wizards' game.

'If you believe in omens, Julian, there is no reason to think that a comet is not a favorable sign for you,' I said.

He paused long, still staring into the dark sky.

'Caesarius, I have lost my confidence. My dream appeared to me again tonight, the Genius of Rome.'

'I know, Julian.'

He looked at me, surprised. 'But it was different from before. She held out the cornucopia to me, but this time it was — empty.'

'It was only a dream,' I said cautiously.

He considered this for a moment. 'The ancients say there are two gates of Sleep: the first is of common horn, through which all spirits easily pass. The second is of flawless, gleaming ivory, pure white — yet through this gate false dreams are sent by wicked shades, to torment us in the upper world. Through which gate did my dream come to me?'

I waited for him to say more, but he fell silent, and when I turned to look at him he appeared exhausted and small, his shoulders slumped, his face discouraged.

'Tomorrow,' I said firmly, 'you will do what you must to protect the safety of the army.' He sighed wearily, and looked at me in resignation.

'Caesarius, pardon me for mocking you in the tent a few minutes ago,' he said after a moment. 'You know I consider no man braver than you, either on or off the battlefield. Stay close beside me tomorrow.'

May the Lord forgive me for obeying his order. To Julian's great loss, I stayed with him to the end.