Wrath of the Furies

IX

[From the secret diary of Antipater of Sidon:]

… having just locked myself in this room after enduring a most disturbing dinner with the king.

As always I was obliged to maintain my identity as nonentity, posing as Zoticus of Zeugma. A poet unable to recite his own verses might as well be mute! Instead, when asked about my life and work, I stutter and stammer and inevitably come off as an old fool who’s risen above his station. They must all think: What in Hades is that fellow doing among us? Is he here to play the fool in the king’s court!?

Of course, the court has plenty of fools already. The Shahansha has a weakness for fawning underlings who happen to possess some paltry talent. A juggler named Sosipater is probably the worst of the lot. “Juggle this!” says the king, pointing at a stool. “Now juggle that!” he says, throwing a cup or a bowl at the poor wretch. “Poor,” I say, but Sosipater owns vineyards and ships and mines and pastures and vast herds of livestock. Not bad for a man who began as a street urchin in a village on the Euxine Sea, and now dines with the King of Kings, even if he must juggle for his supper.

I was forced to sit next to this creature at the banquet, which was in honor of the father of Queen Monime, Philopoemen, marking his investiture as Episcopus of Ephesus. Philopoemen has been running Ephesus for some time, but Mithridates has only now decided the title by which his royal overseer should be addressed, what rank he should have in the court, what sort of regalia he may wear, and so on.

There is a great deal of pomp and ceremony at these banquets, which wear on for hours. In between the boring parts the guests are treated to an endless parade of acrobats, contortionists, singers, dancers, musicians, and actors. These are the people I am forced to sit with, with whom I have nothing in common.

This banquet was held in what surely must be the largest dining chamber in all of Ephesus. Half of the guests reclined on couches along one long wall, while the other half reclined across from us, with the space between open for recitations and other entertainments. Thus I was kept at a distance from anyone with whom I could possibly have enjoyed an intelligent conversation.

Across the way, I could see young Prince Ptolemy, formerly resident on the island of Cos but now, through no choice of his own, a member of the royal retinue. Does the king have designs on Egypt as well as Rome? One hears that all of Egypt is in chaos, and thus vulnerable to invasion, but surely Mithridates is not so mad that he wants to try his hand at ruling that unruly land!

Also across the way-he might as well have been across the sea-I spotted Metrodorus of Scepsis, a man with whom I would dearly love to converse. Everyone here calls him Misorhomaios, “Rome-Hater,” as if that were his official title. Metrodorus is famous for inventing a scientific method of memorization and perfect recollection-he does this somehow by assigning one of the 360 degrees contained in the twelve houses of the zodiac to whatever detail needs to be remembered. It is said that 360 random words can be recited to him, and he can recite them back in precisely the same order, or even in reverse order. Such a thing hardly seems possible, yet Metrodorus is famed for it. He is also famed for his eloquent and unrelenting diatribes against the Romans, from which has arisen his title of Rome-Hater. He and the king are said to regard each other almost as father and son, so great is their mutual fondness and their accord on matters of state. I’m lucky to say two words to the man-much less 360 words!-at these interminable royal banquets, where men infinitely more important than Zoticus of Zeugma are all eager to have the ear of the esteemed Misorhomaios.

Also present were a great many of the Persian wise men called Magi, dressed in exotic robes and colorful turbans. They tend to keep to themselves and to cluster about their leader, a half-blind old man whom they address as the Grand Magus. The Magi are neither philosophers nor priests, at least not in the Greek sense. I think they draw wisdom from the stars. Mithridates thinks very highly of them.

An equal number of the Megabyzoi were present, the priests of Artemis who dress in yellow and wear towering yellow headdresses, the tallest of which is worn by the Great Megabyzus, a tall, slender fellow. From across the room he looks like a yellow stick insect. His predecessor disappeared some years ago-young Gordianus was involved in that affair, during our visit to Ephesus-leaving this fellow to rise to the foremost place among the Megabyzoi. He treads a rather delicate course these days, obliged on the one hand to genuflect before the King of Kings, and on the other to fulfill his sacred duty to offer sanctuary to all who seek it at the Temple of Artemis. The temple and the sacred precinct around it are filled to overflowing with Romans and others fleeing the wrath of Mithridates. They say that Chaeremon of Nysa is in the temple even now, and that Mithridates will not rest until he sees the fellow’s head on a stick, with or without the blessing of Artemis. Shall the sanctity of the temple remain inviolate, or shall the priests expel the asylum seekers and consign them to certain death? With such a choice facing him, it was no wonder the Great Megabyzus was the only guest at the banquet with a gloomier expression than mine.

No, I take that back. For also in attendance was the captured Roman general Quintus Oppius, dressed in a spotless white toga and seated very near the king, as if he were a guest of honor. But next to him sat the giant Bastarna, holding a chain connected to an iron collar around Oppius’s neck. Every now and then, either at his own whim or at some secret signal from Mithridates, Bastarna would give the chain a hard yank, causing Oppius to spit out a mouthful of wine or half-chewed food, then sit there, mortified and red-faced, not daring to wipe his chin or dab the drivel from his toga while everyone laughed, with the Shahansha laughing loudest of all. Yes, Quintus Oppius wore an expression even gloomier than that of the Great Megabyzus.

And what is one to make of the other Roman in attendance, a former consul named Publius Rutilius Rufus? He sat on the other side of the king and in even greater proximity-at the right hand of Mithridates, in fact. When we were both in Rome, somehow I never made the acquaintance of Rutilius, though I knew his reputation as one of the more generous and cultured patrons of the Greek arts. His recent tenure as a provincial legate in Anatolia is recalled by the natives as a kind of golden age-for once, a Roman seemed more interested in cultivating good will and fostering prosperity than in filling his private treasury. Such exemplary behavior made the other Roman officials look bad, so it was no surprise that when Rutilius returned to Rome four years ago he was immediately put on trial, accused of doing the very things he did not do-pilfer tax revenues and extort the locals. All too predictably, he was found guilty of these trumped-up charges. Even after selling all his properties, Rutilius lacked sufficient funds to pay the fine imposed on him by the court-that fact in itself was proof that the charges were false, for if Rutilius had committed the crimes of which he was accused, he could easily have paid the fine and had a fortune left over.

A handful of Romans of the better sort helped Rutilius to pay the fine, after which, now in his seventies, he went into voluntary exile, returning to the very region he had been accused of plundering-yet another proof of his innocence, for the locals gave him a hero’s welcome. Apparently he was able to lead a comfortable life, being kept in funds by his friends in both Rome and Asia, including heads of state whom he had befriended. He was in Mytilene, on Lesbos, when Mithridates’s troops took the island and captured Manius Aquillius. Rutilius was “captured” at the same time, if that is the word for it, for he gave himself up voluntarily and was treated by his captors as an honored guest. I have heard a rumor to the effect that Rutilius actually colluded in the capture of Manius Aquillius, leading Mithridates’s men to the place where that doomed wretch was hiding, but I am not sure I believe this story. Perhaps there was bad blood between them. Still, Rutilius is a Stoic of great integrity, hardly the sort of fellow to betray a fellow Roman citizen.

Unlike Quintus Oppius-and in flagrant violation of the king’s recent decree that all Romans must at all time wear their national garment-Rutilius was not wearing a toga. He was dressed in a rather simple green and yellow robe and slippers. At first glance, no one would have taken him for a Roman, but simply as another member of the king’s court. For a Roman of consular rank to be seen out of toga at a dinner with a head of state is almost unthinkable, whatever the circumstances; a Roman without his toga is not quite a Roman. And despite the royal decree regarding Romans and togas, the king clearly approved of Rutilius’s appearance. So it would appear that Rutilius has cut his ties to Rome completely. What role does Mithridates intend for this renegade Roman? I have no idea, for I had no chance to speak to Rutilius, being relegated to a place among the actors and contortionists.

Of course Queen Monime was there, looking as pleased as a cat with a bird in its mouth to see her father invested with the rank of episcopus. Mithridates clucked his tongue and kissed her dainty fingers and doted on her as if she were a child, which she is, completely lacking in the mature refinement and dignity one wishes to see in a queen. Of course, refinement and dignity were not the attributes that induced Mithridates to marry the little vixen and seat her on a throne next to his.

Mithridates himself was more splendidly adorned than I had previously seen him. He literally sparkled, so covered with jewels and precious metals was every garment he wore, from his curl-toed shoes to his necklace-laden breast. But for a crown, as always, he wore only a simple fillet of twined purple and white woolen yarn. From his broad shoulders, as if it were his own family heirloom, hung the centuries-old cloak of Alexander the Great.

After the investiture of Philopoemen, amid the feasting, the guests were treated to an entertainment combining dancing with a recitation in verse. The story was based on a century-old legend: the tale of the Syrian warrior Bouplagos, who came back to life to prophesy the end of Rome. No author was credited. The man who recited the poem was clearly a professional actor, not the poet.

Who composed this entertainment? I do not know. Before I describe it, let me admit something. Before I arrived, when I looked forward to taking my rightful place in the king’s court, I anticipated that one of my roles would be to compose just this sort of entertainment, providing uplifting verses to be recited for the edification of the king, his household, and his guests. Instead I am made to sit in silence while the verses of some unknown, second-rate poet are inflicted on us.

With the dancers I have no quarrel. In fact, they displayed a great deal of skill and created several memorable tableaux as they acted out the scenes described by the poem. The lighting effects, the costumes, and the various theatrical illusions were all very well done. Nor do I fault the actor who recited the poem, for he did his best with the text he was given.

I will not attempt to quote the entire text. Suffice to say that for the most part the metaphors were unoriginal, the rhythms awkward, and the vocabulary unimaginative. What might I, Antipater of Sidon, have done with the same material? I am tempted to write my own version of the tale of Bouplagos, to show the king what can be achieved when a true poet rises to the occasion. But no, the material is simply too sordid and sensational to inspire a first-rate poem. I suspect it was the king himself who chose the topic, judging by the rapt expression on his face all though the recitation. Perhaps-horrible thought!-he even wrote the poem himself.

The setting of the story was a battle at Thermopylae-not the famous last stand of the three hundred Spartans, but the much later battle that took place only a hundred years ago, between the Romans and King Antiochus of Syria, who was then laying claim to that part of Greece, and who counted among his mercenaries that old “Rome-Hater,” Hannibal of Carthage. (Already you can see why this tale fascinates Mithridates, who sees himself as the successor of these noble warriors against Rome.) In this battle, the Romans were triumphant. So devastating was his defeat that King Antiochus was forced to withdraw from Greece entirely, fleeing all the way to Ephesus, leaving behind at Thermopylae a veritable mountain of fallen soldiers.

After the battle, the Romans set about the grisly task of stripping armor and other spoils from the corpses of their enemies. Among these cadavers was the body of Bouplagos, a Syrian cavalry commander held in great esteem by Antiochus. Bouplagos had fought long and nobly against the Romans, suffering twelve ghastly wounds before he fell.

While the Romans were stripping the dead bodies, Bouplagos suddenly got to his feet. Fresh blood began to pour from his twelve wounds. It hardly seemed possible that he could have survived those wounds, yet the alternative-that he had come back to life-seemed even more impossible.

This part of the story was well enacted, I must admit. The dancer playing Bouplagos sent a tremor of fear through the audience. He was dressed in bloodstained armor, his face was made to look waxy and pale, and fluttering streamers of red cloth simulated blood flowing from his wounds.

Bewildered and terrified, the Roman soldiers fell back. Bouplagos marched slowly but steadily through the Roman camp and into the tent of the generals, who were as frightened as their soldiers. Standing before the Roman commanders, Bouplagos spoke. At this point in the recitation, the actor pitched his voice in a manner calculated to chill the blood of everyone in the room:

“Cease despoiling my brave comrades, gone to Hades’s lands.

Already Zeus is angry at the slaughter by your hands.

He shall raise up a leader to bring about your fall.

The name of Rome shall be spat upon by all.”

As soon as the reciter finished speaking the prophecy, the dancer playing Bouplagos collapsed into a heap of bloody armor, as if his bones had turned to water.

For the next tableau the room was made very dim. This was the visit by the Roman generals to the Oracle of Delphi, asking what the temporary resurrection of Bouplagos signified. The Pythia, the priestess of Apollo’s temple at Delphi, was danced by a figure in heavy robes, illuminated by lamps set all about her but seen by the audience only through a screen of dark veils-an ingenious effect that created a genuine aura of mystery. From offstage, a female singer provided the voice of the Pythia, making birdlike, nonsense sounds. At last she fell silent, leaving it to the priests of Apollo to discern her meaning. The reciter spoke the oracle:

“Restrain yourselves, Romans, let justice abide,

Lest Ares in his anger support the other side.

Your farms and cities will be made a desolation.

Your women to their conquerors will look for consolation.”

Such a stark, unambiguous message was something rare from the Oracle of Delphi, but the Romans shrugged off this warning and continued their war against Antiochus. But no sooner had they returned to the theater of battle than one of the generals suddenly began to rave and to thrash about, so violently that the other commanders gave up trying to restrain him and fell back.

This tableau began with the dancers, dressed in stage armor and red capes, all gathered in a circle. Then, as the reciter imitated the incomprehensible rantings of the possessed Roman general, the dancers gathered more closely, and at the same time began to whirl about in a circle, causing their red capes to whip through the air. As the whirling grew more and more frenzied, one dancer after another flew away from the group, like sparks from a whetting stone, until, revealed at the center, was none other than … Quintus Oppius!

I looked at the place where Oppius had been sitting, next to the giant Bastarna. Sure enough, both were gone. It truly was Quintus Oppius before us, a genuine Roman general playing the role of a Roman general-or at least it was the head of Oppius, for the oversized body beneath him, dressed in stage armor and a cape, was some sort of grotesque puppet, with thrashing limbs that moved in impossible ways. It appeared that Oppius was somehow restrained inside the costume, along with one or more unseen dancers, who operated the arms.

The effect was macabre, and became even more so when the head of Oppius began to rotate one way, while the puppet body in which he was encased started to rotate in the opposite direction. There must have been some mechanical apparatus beneath the floor, such as those that produce gods from nowhere on the stage.

As well as creating a strangely horrifying effect, the slow rotation also allowed everyone in the room to get a good look at the face of Oppius. Some device inside his mouth forced it to gape open. He could move his lips a bit, but he could not close his jaw. I think the poor man was trying to maintain an expression of grim dignity, which was impossible with his mouth forced open. During one turn he looked quite mad, and at the next turning as if he might burst into tears, and then like a constipated man at the public latrina desperate to relieve himself. There was laughter in the room despite the gravity of the prophetic words being recited by the actor, which we were to imagine coming from Oppius’s gaping mouth and trembling lips:

“Oh, my country, what destruction will Ares bring to one

Who dares to ravage Asia and the lands of the rising sun?

From all the East, as far as Babylon, an army will arise

To wreak their vengeance on a land that all despise.…”

There was a great deal more in this vein. Then, slowly, both the puppet body and the head of Oppius stopped spinning, until body and head were again properly aligned. Oppius looked pale and queasy. I felt a bit dizzy myself from watching all that spinning and counter-spinning.

The actor uttered another burst of poetry, speaking more quickly and raising the pitch of his voice. I knew, of course, that it was not Oppius speaking. Nevertheless-perhaps it was the genuine look of alarm in Oppius’s eyes, and the wormlike writhing of his lips-the words seemed somehow to issue from his open mouth:

“The demon wolf comes! Step back and let him pass, you clods!

He can’t be killed. He can’t be stopped. He does the work of the gods!

The red wolf comes!”

From a patch of darkness at one end of the room a gigantic wolf-three or four dancers inside another oversized costume-came running toward Oppius and his now motionless puppet body. The reciter cried out:

“I am like the helpless tree before the ax. I cannot move. I cannot run.

The red wolf comes! He looms so large he hides the sun.

Ravenous, he eats me whole. I am Rome. I am dismembered.

I am Rome, eaten alive, vanished, not even remembered.”

To achieve this effect, the puppet wolf snapped its jaws as it circled the puppet body, which rapidly began to dwindle-swallowed not by the red wolf but by a trapdoor in the floor. As the puppet body vanished, the head of Oppius sank lower and lower, as his real body was lowered through the same hidden hatch.

By some theatrical effect, the snapping jaws of the wolf turned crimson, as if stained with blood. Sated, the red wolf made a final circuit, then headed back whence it had come, leaving the head of Oppius on the floor, surrounded by a circle of blood-red cloth. The illusion that Oppius had actually been beheaded was so startling that I heard gasps all around me.

The reciter spoke again, now in a thin, reedy voice that seemed to issue from the bodiless head on the floor:

“My body is devoured. Only my head remains. I am asunder.

No head, however swollen, can live without what’s under.

The end approaches.”

The head began to spin again, and slowly to sink into the floor, sending wave-like billows through the surrounding pool of blood-red cloth. Just before the spinning head vanished, the face of Oppius turned ivory-white. He made a weird sound, and suddenly a stream of vomit erupted from his propped-open mouth. As Oppius spun around, the jet of pale green vomit fell in a spiral pattern upon the scarlet cloth.

An instant later, still vomiting, the head vanished from sight. Then the red cloth began to disappear, from the outside in, like blood running into a drain. A clash of cymbals disguised the noise of the trapdoor snapping shut, then nothing at all remained of Oppius or his puppet body. There was only a bare, spotless floor, looking as if it had been freshly swept.

No poet, dramatist, or even king could have forced such a singular occurrence, or foreseen its effect. The sight of Oppius vomiting capped the presentation with an image as shocking as it was spectacular, as sordid as it was unforgettable. The audience erupted in helpless laughter. There was thunderous applause. Queen Monime was the first to jump to her feet. Everyone else did likewise.

Only one man in the room kept his composure. Barely smiling, the king slowly looked from face to face. He even deigned to look at me, with a blank, unblinking gaze that sent a shiver though me. At last he stood and raised one hand to acknowledge the acclaim of the audience. The rapturous cheering and applause did not abate, but grew louder.

We had seen the enactment of an old legend. We had heard the ancient prophecy. We had witnessed with our own astonished eyes the fulfillment of that prophecy, the devouring of Rome by the red wolf-Rome in the person of Quintus Oppius, not only forced to foretell his own destruction but humiliated in a manner so complete and so spontaneous that no one could have anticipated it, not even Mithridates.

Next to the king, standing along with everyone else, was Rutilius, the Roman without a toga. His applause was more restrained than that of the others-it would hardly have been seemly for any Roman to cheer and stamp his feet at the symbolic annihilation of Rome-but Rutilius applauded nonetheless.

I suddenly thought of the destruction that was closer at hand-the king’s imminent plan to kill every Roman still alive in the territories under his control. Would Quintus Oppius be among those killed? Or was he too valuable a hostage, or too precious a plaything for the king? And what of Rutilius? Surely the king would spare a Roman who had seemingly joined the royal court.

At that moment, while I watched, Mithridates turned to Rutilius and spoke in his ear. Rutilius nodded and made some reply. They were of an age to be father and son, I thought, and that was what they looked like-two men of different generations but of one accord. Could it be that Rutilius himself had a hand in planning the impending massacre? Who better than a Roman to root out the hiding places of his fellow Romans?

I looked at the rapturous people around me, who continued to shout and cheer and applaud. Would this be their reaction to the genuine slaughter to come? Would they laugh and jeer as women and children were massacred before their eyes? Would they join in the killing like the wine-maddened maenads of Bacchus, gouging the eyes from old men and tearing the limbs off babies?

Suddenly I felt so faint that I could hardly remain standing. Yet, like an automaton, I kept clapping my hands together until my palms were numb, and I shouted until I was hoarse. What choice had I, with everyone watching everyone else across the room, and the gaze of the king or the queen likely to fall upon me at any moment?

I have learned, in such moments of despair, to purposely turn my mind to some thought that gives me comfort. Of late only one such thought provides a respite, and that is the fact that I parted ways with young Gordianus back in Alexandria. I can at least be thankful that he is far away from this dangerous place. Alas, almost certainly I will never see him again. But at least I will not see him put to death before my eyes.

[Here ends this fragment from the secret diary of Antipater of Sidon.]