Roma Eterna

To Romans I set no boundary in space or time.
I have granted them dominion, and it has no end.

—V
IRGIL
,
The Aeneid

Epigraph

A Note on Dates

A.U.C. 1203:
Prologue

A.U.C. 1282:
With Caesar in the Underworld

A.U.C. 1365:
A Hero of the Empire

A.U.C. 1861:
The Second Wave

A.U.C. 1951:
Waiting for the End

A.U.C. 2206:
An Outpost of the Realm

A.U.C. 2543:
Getting to Know the Dragon

A.U.C. 2568:
The Reign of Terror

A.U.C. 2603:
Via Roma

A.U.C. 2650:
Tales from the Venia Woods

A.U.C. 2723:
To the Promised Land

About the Author

Praise

Other Books by Robert Silverberg

Copyright

About the Publisher

T
he traditional date assigned by Roman historians to the founding of the city of Rome was 753
B.C
., and the Romans reckoned time from that date, designating the year as such-and-such
ab urbe condita
, or
A.U.C.
—“from the founding of the city.” Thus
A.D.
1 was
A.U.C
. 754,
A.D.
1000 was
A.U.C.
1753,
A.D.
1492 was
A.U.C.
2245, and so forth. All dates used within the text of this book are
A.U.C.
and should not be confused with dates of the system used in the Christian world.

T
he historian Lentulus Aufidius, whose goal it was to write the definitive biography of the great Emperor Titus Gallius, was now in his third year of research in the Imperial archives at the Palatine Library. Every morning, six days a week, Aufidius would trudge up the hill from his lodgings near the Forum, present his identification card to the Keeper of the Archives, and set about his daily exploration of the great cabinets in which the scrolls pertaining to the reign of Titus Gallius were stored.

It was a formidable task. Titus Gallius, who had come to the throne upon the death of the madman Caracalla, had ruled over Roma from 970 to 994 and in that time had completely reorganized the government that his predecessor had left in such disheveled condition. Provinces had been merged, others had been broken up, the system of taxation had undergone reform, the army had been ripped apart and reconstructed from top to bottom to meet the growing menace of the northern barbarians, and so on and so on. Lentulus Aufidius suspected that he had two or three more years of study ahead of him before he could at last begin writing his text.

Today would be devoted, as each previous day of the past two weeks had been, to an inspection of Cabinet 42, which contained the documents concerning Titus Gallius's religious
policies. Titus Gallius had been much troubled by the way mystical Oriental cults—the worship of Mithras the bull-slayer, of the mother-goddess Cybele, of Osiris of Aegyptus, and many others—were spreading through the Empire. The Emperor feared that these alien religions, if allowed to become deeply established, would weaken the fabric of the state; and so he had done what he could to suppress them without at the same time losing the loyalty of the common folk who adhered to them. That was a delicate task, and it had been only partly accomplished in Titus Gallius's time. It remained for Titus Gallius's nephew and successor, the Emperor Gaius Martius, to finish the work by founding the cult of Jupiter Imperator, which was intended to replace all the foreign religions.

Someone else was already at work at Cabinet 42 when Aufidius reached it. After a moment he recognized the man as an old friend and colleague, Hermogenes Celer, a native of Tripolis in Phoenicia who was, perhaps, the Empire's leading scholar of Eastern religions. Aufidius, though he had corresponded occasionally with Celer, had not seen him in many years, nor had he known that Celer was planning a visit to the capital. The two men embraced warmly and—to the annoyance of the librarians—began at once to discuss their current projects.

“Titus Gallius?” Celer said. “Ah, yes, a fascinating story.”

“And you?”

“The Hebrews of Aegyptus,” said Celer. “A remarkable group of people. Descendants of a nomadic desert tribe, they are.”

“I know next to nothing about them,” Aufidius said.

“Ah, you should, you should!” said Celer. “If things had gone differently for them, who can say what path our history would have taken?”

“
Please,
gentlemen,
please,
” one of the librarians said. “Scholars are at work in here. If you must have a conversation, there is a hall available outside.”

“We must talk later,” Aufidius said. And they agreed to meet for lunch.

Celer, as it turned out, was overflowing with tales of his Hebrews, and spoke of little else while they ate. In particular he told of their passionate belief in a single lofty god, remote and stern, who had decreed for them an intricate set of laws that controlled everything from how they should speak of him (it was forbidden to utter his name) to what foods they could eat on which days of the week.

Because they were such a stubborn and difficult tribe, he said, they were often in trouble with their neighbors. Having conquered a large portion of Syria Palaestina, these Hebrews—who also called themselves Israelites—founded a kingdom there, but eventually were subjugated by the Aegyptians and forced into slavery in the land of the Pharaohs. This period lasted hundreds of years. But Celer declared that he had identified a critical moment in Hebrew history, some seventeen centuries in the past, when a charismatic chieftain named Mosaeus—
Moshe,
in their language—had attempted to lead his people on a great exodus out of Aegyptus and back to their former homeland in Palaestina, which they believed had been promised to them as an eternal homeland by their god.

“And then what happened?” said Aufidius politely, although he found none of this very interesting.

“Well,” said Celer, “this grand exodus of theirs was a terrible failure. Mosaeus and most of the other leaders were killed and the surviving Hebrews wound up back in slavery in Aegyptus.”

“I fail to see—”

“Ah, but I do!” cried Celer, and his plump, pasty face lit up with scholarly fire. “Think of the possibilities, dear Aufidius! Let's say the Hebrews
do
reach Syria Palaestina. They settle themselves permanently, this time, in that hotbed of mystical fertility and harvest cults. Then, many centuries later, someone combines the ferocious religious zeal of the Hebrews with some native Palaestinian belief in rebirth and resurrection derived from the old Aegyptian business about Osiris, and a new religion under an invincible new prophet is born, not in distant Aegyptus but in a
province of the Roman Empire much more closely connected with the center of things. And, precisely because Syria Palaestina by this time is a province of the Roman Empire and Roman citizens move freely about from district to district, this cult spreads to Roma itself, as other Eastern cults have done.”

“And?” said Aufidius, mystified.

“And it conquers everything, as Cybele and Mithras and Osiris have never been able to do. Its prophets preach a message of universal love, and universal sharing of all wealth—
especially
the sharing of wealth. All property is to be held in common. The poor people of the Empire flock to the churches of this cult in huge droves. Everything is turned upside down. The Emperor himself is forced to recognize it—to convert to it himself, perhaps, for political reasons—this religion comes to dominate everything, and the basic structure of Roman society is weakened by superstition, until the Empire, consumed by the new philosophy, is toppled by the barbarians who forever lurk at its borders—”

“The very thing that Titus Gallius fought to prevent.”

“Yes. Therefore in my new book I have postulated a world in which this Hebrew exodus
did
happen, in which this new religion eventually was born, in which it spread uncontrollably throughout the Empire—”

“Well,” said Aufidius, suppressing a yawn, “all that is sheer fantasy, you know. None of that happened, after all. And—admit it, Celer—it never
could
have happened.”

“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I find speculating about such possibilities very stimulating.”

“Yes,” Aufidius said. “I have no doubt that you do. But as for me, I prefer to deal with matters as they really are. No such cult ever infiltrated our beloved Roma, and the Empire is sturdy and sound, and for that, Celer, let us give thanks to nonexistent Jupiter, or to whichever other deity you pretend to believe in. And now, if you will, I'd like to share with you a few discoveries of my own concerning the tax reforms of the Emperor Titus Gallius—”

T
he newly arrived ambassador from the Eastern Emperor was rather younger than Faustus had expected him to be: a smallish sort, finely built, quite handsome in what was almost a girlish kind of way, though obviously very capable and sharp, a man who would bear close watching. There was something a bit frightening about him, though not at first glance. He gleamed with the imperviousness of fine armor. His air of sophisticated and fastidious languor coupled with hidden strength made Faustus, a tall, robust, florid-faced man going thick through the waist and thin about the scalp, feel positively plebeian and coarse despite his own lofty and significant ancestry.

That morning Faustus, whose task as an official of the Chancellery it was to greet all such important visitors to the capital city, had gone out to Ostia to meet him at the Imperial pier—the Greek envoy, coming west by way of Sicilia, had sailed up the coast from Neapolis in the south—and had escorted him to the rooms in the old Severan Palace where the occasional ambassadors from the eastern half of the Empire were housed. Now it was the time to begin establishing a little rapport. They faced each
other across an onyx-slab table in the Lesser Hall of Columns, which several reigns ago had been transformed into a somewhat oversized sitting-room. A certain amount of preliminary social chatter was required at this point. Faustus called for some wine, one of the big, elegant wines from the great vineyards of Gallia Transalpina.

After they had had a chance to savor it for a little while he said, wanting to get the ticklish part of the situation out in the open right away, “The prince Heraclius himself, unfortunately, has been called without warning to the northern frontier. Therefore tonight's dinner has been canceled. This will be a free evening for you, then, an evening for resting after your long journey. I trust that that'll be acceptable to you.”

“Ah,” said the Greek, and his lips tightened for an instant. Plainly he was a little bewildered at being left on his own like this, his first evening in Roma. He studied his perfectly manicured fingers. When he glanced up again, there was a gleam of concern in the dark eyes. “I won't be seeing the Emperor either, then?”

“The Emperor is in very poor health. He will not be able to see you tonight and perhaps not for several days. The prince Heraclius has taken over many of his responsibilities. But in the prince's unexpected and unavoidable absence your host and companion for your first few days in Roma will be his younger brother Maximilianus. You will, I know, find him amusing and very charming, my lord Menandros.”

“Unlike his brother, I gather,” said the Greek ambassador coolly.

Only too true, Faustus thought. But it was a remarkably blunt thing to say. Faustus searched for the motive behind the little man's words. Menandros had come here, after all, to negotiate a marriage between his royal master's sister and the very prince of whom he had just spoken so slightingly. When a diplomat as polished as this finely oiled Greek says something as egregiously undiplomatic
as that, there was usually a good reason for it. Perhaps, Faustus supposed, Menandros was simply showing annoyance at the fact that Prince Heraclius had tactlessly managed not to be on hand to welcome him upon his entry into Roma.

Faustus was not going to let himself be drawn any deeper into comparisons, though. He allowed himself only an oblique smile, that faint sidewise smile he had learned from his young friend the Caesar Maximilianus. “The two brothers are quite different in personality, that I do concede.—Will you have more wine, your excellence?”

That brought yet another shift of tone. “Ah, no formalities, no formalities, I pray you. Let us be friends, you and I.” And then, leaning forward cozily and shifting from the formal to the intimate form of speech: “You must call me Menandros. I will call you Faustus. Eh, my friend?—And yes, more wine, by all means. What excellent stuff! We have nothing that can match it in Constantinopolis. What sort is it, actually?”

Faustus flicked a glance at one of the waiting servitors, who quickly refilled the bowls. “A wine from Gallia,” he said. “I forget the name.” A swift flash of unmistakable displeasure, quickly concealed but not quickly enough, crossed the Greek's face. To be caught praising a provincial wine so highly must have embarrassed him. But embarrassing him had not been Faustus's intention. There was nothing to be gained by creating discomfort for so powerful and potentially valuable a personage as the lord of the East's ambassador to the Western court.

This was all getting worse and worse. Hastily Faustus set about smoothing the awkwardness over. “The heart of our production lies in Gallia, now. The Emperor's cellars contain scarcely any Italian wines at all, they tell me. Scarcely any! These Gallian reds are His Imperial Majesty's preference by far, I assure you.”

“While I am here I must acquire some, then, for the cellars of His Majesty Justinianus,” said Menandros.

They drank a moment in silence. Faustus felt as though he were dancing on swords.

“This is, I understand, your first visit to Urbs Roma?” Faustus asked, when the silence had gone on just a trifle too long. He took care to use the familiar form, too, now that Menandros had started it.

“My first, yes. Most of my career has been spent in Aegyptus and Syria.”

Faustus wondered how extensive that career could have been. This Menandros seemed to be no more than twenty-five or so, thirty at the utmost. Of course, all these smooth-skinned dark-eyed Greeks, buffed and oiled and pomaded in their Oriental fashion, tended to look younger than they really were. And now that Faustus had passed fifty, he was finding it harder and harder to make distinctions of age in any precise way: everybody around him at the court seemed terribly young to him now, a congregation of mere boys and girls. Of those who had ruled the Empire when Faustus himself was young, there was no one left except the weary, lonely old Emperor himself, and hardly anyone had laid eyes on the Emperor in recent times. Of Faustus's own generation of courtiers, some had died off, the others had gone into cozy retirement far away. Faustus was a dozen years older than his own superior minister in the Chancellery. His closest friend here now was Maximilianus Caesar, who was considerably less than half his age. From the beginning Faustus had always regarded himself as a relic of some earlier era, because that was, in truth, what he was, considering that he was a member of a family that had held the throne three dynasties ago; but the phrase had taken on a harsh new meaning for him in these latter days, now that he had survived not just his family's greatness but even his own contemporaries.

It was a little disconcerting that Justinianus had sent so youthful and apparently inexperienced an ambassador on so delicate a mission. But Faustus suspected it would be a mistake to underestimate this man; and at least Menan
dros's lack of familiarity with the capital city would provide him with a convenient way to glide past whatever difficulties Prince Heraclius's untimely absence might cause in the next few days.

Stagily Faustus clapped his hands. “How I envy you, friend Menandros! To see Urbs Roma in all its splendor for the first time! What an overwhelming experience it will be for you! We who were born here, who take it all for granted, can never appreciate it as you will. The grandeur. The magnificence.” Yes, yes, he thought, let Maximilianus march him from one end of the city to the other until Heraclius gets back. We will dazzle him with our wonders and after a time he'll forget how discourteously Heraclius has treated him. “While you're waiting for the Caesar to return, we'll arrange the most extensive tours for you. All the great temples—the amphitheater—the baths—the Forum—the Capitol—the palaces—the wonderful gardens—”

“The grottoes of Titus Gallius,” Menandros said unexpectedly. “The underground temples and shrines. The marketplace of the sorcerers. The catacomb of the holy Chaldean prostitutes. The pool of the Baptai. The labyrinth of the Maenads. The caverns of the witches.”

“Ah? So you know of those places too?”

“Who doesn't know about the Underworld of Urbs Roma? It's the talk of the whole Empire.” In an instant that bright metallic façade of his seemed to melt away, and all his menacing poise. Something quite different was visible in Menandros's eyes now, a wholly uncalculated eagerness, an undisguised boyish enthusiasm. And a certain roguishness, too, a hint of rough, coarse appetites that belied his urbane gloss. In a soft, confiding tone he said, “May I confess something, Faustus? Magnificence bores me. I've got a bit of a taste for the low life. All that dodgy stuff that Roma's so famous for, the dark, seamy underbelly of the city, the whores and the magicians, the freak shows and the orgies and the thieves' markets, the strange shrines of your weird cults—do I shock you, Faustus? Is this dread
fully undiplomatic of me to admit? I don't need a tour of the temples. But as long as we have a few days before I have to get down to serious business, it's the other side of Roma I want to see, the mysterious side, the dark side. We have temples and palaces enough in Constantinopolis, and baths, and all the rest of that. Miles and miles of glorious shining marble, until you want to cry out for mercy. But the true subterranean mysteries, the earthy, dirty, smelly, underground things, ah, no, Faustus, those are what really interest me. We've rooted all that stuff out, at Constantinopolis. It's considered dangerous decadent nonsense.”

“It is here, too,” said Faustus quietly.

“Yes, but you permit it! You revel in it, even! Or so I'm told, on pretty good authority.—You heard me say I was formerly stationed in Aegyptus and Syria. The ancient East, that is to say, thousands of years older than Roma or Constantinopolis. Most of the strange cults originated there, you know. That was where I developed my interest in them. And the things I've seen and heard and done in places like Damascus and Alexandria and Antioch, well—but nowadays Urbs Roma is the center of everything of that sort, is it not, the capital of marvels! And I tell you, Faustus, what I truly crave experiencing is—”

He halted in midsentence, looking flushed and a little stunned.

“This wine,” he said, with a little shake of his head. “I've been drinking it too quickly. It must be stronger than I thought.”

Faustus reached across the table and laid his hand gently on the younger man's wrist. “Have no fear, my friend. These revelations of yours cause me no dismay. I am no stranger to the Underworld, nor is the prince Maximilianus. And while we await the return of Prince Heraclius he and I will show you everything you desire.” He rose, stepping back a couple of paces so that he would not seem, in his bulky way, to be looming in an intimidating manner over the reclining ambassador. After a bad start he had re
gained some advantage; he didn't want to push it too far. “I'll leave you now. You've had a lengthy journey, and you'll want your rest. I'll send in your servants. In addition to those who accompanied you from Constantinopolis, these men and women”—he indicated the slaves who stood arrayed in the shadows around the room—“are at your command day and night. They are yours. Ask them for anything.
Anything,
my lord Menandros.”

 

His palanquin and bearers were waiting outside. “Take me to the apartments of the Caesar,” Faustus said crisply, and clambered inside.

They knew which Caesar he meant. In Roma the name could be applied to a great many persons of high birth, from the Emperor on down—Faustus himself had some claim to using it—but as a rule, these days, it was an appellation employed only in reference to the two sons of the Emperor Maximilianus II. And, whether or not Faustus's bearers happened to be aware that the elder son was out of town, they were clever enough to understand that their master would in all probability not be asking them to take him to the chambers of the austere and dreary Prince Heraclius. No, no, it was the younger son, the pleasantly dissolute Maximilianus Caesar, whose rooms would surely be his chosen destination: Prince Maximilianus, the friend, the companion, the dearest and most special friend and companion, for all intents and purposes at the present time the
only
true friend and companion, of that aging and ever lonelier minor official of the Imperial court, Faustus Flavius Constantinus Caesar.

Maximilianus lived over at the far side of the Palatine, in a handsome pink-marble palace of relatively modest size that had been occupied by younger sons of the Emperor for the past half dozen reigns or so. The prince, a red-haired, blue-eyed, long-limbed man who was a match for Faustus in height but lean and rangy where Faustus was burly and ponderous, peeled himself upward from a divan
as Faustus entered and greeted him with a warm embrace and a tall beaker of chilled white wine. That Faustus had been drinking red with the Greek ambassador for the past hour and a half did not matter now. Maximilianus, in his capacity as prince of the royal blood, had access to the best caves of the Imperial cellars, and what was most pleasing to the prince's palate were the rare white wines of the Alban Hills, the older and sweeter and colder the better. When Faustus was with him, the white wines of the Alban Hills were what Faustus drank.

“Look at these,” Maximilianus said, before Faustus had had a chance to say anything whatever beyond a word of appreciation for the wine. The prince drew forth a long, fat pouch of purple velvet and with a great sweeping gesture sent a blazing hoard of jewelry spilling out on the table: a tangled mass of necklaces, earrings, rings, pendants, all of them evidently fashioned from opals set in filigree of gold, opals of every hue and type, pink ones, milky ones, opals of shimmering green, midnight black, fiery scarlet. Maximilianus exultantly scooped them up in both hands and let them dribble through his fingers. His eyes were glowing. He appeared enthralled by the brilliant display.

Faustus stared puzzledly at the sprawling scatter of bright trinkets. These were extremely beautiful baubles, yes: but the degree of Maximilianus's excitement over them seemed excessive. Why was the prince so fascinated by them? “Very pretty,” Faustus said. “Are they something you won at the gambling tables? Or did you buy these trinkets as a gift for one of your ladies?”