Empire (87 page)

Apollodora had insisted on bringing along four-year-old Lucius as well, saying that the boy should be there to see his father’s proud moment. No doubt she also thought that the sight of Lucius might move the emperor to be merciful to the boy’s grandfather.

As the hour for the visit drew near, Marcus was increasingly fretful. Not only would Hadrian be judging his work, but Marcus would have to put the delicate matter of his father-in-law to the emperor, with his wife’s happiness hanging on the outcome. Marcus stood before the statue a final time, studying the sensual curves of the naked body, the tilt of the head, the faraway look, and the elusive smile. Without a doubt, this was the finest and most beautiful thing Marcus had ever created. He reached for a sailcloth and threw it over the statue.

There was a sound from the vestibule. Amyntas came running. “Master—”

“Yes, I know, the emperor is here.”

“He’s left his retinue in the street. Only Antinous is with him.”

“Well? Show them in!”

The emperor and Antinous entered. Marcus stood next to the draped statue. Apollodora stood nearby, with little Lucius beside her.

No one said a word. Hadrian smiled and gave a slight gesture with his hand, to indicate that Marcus should proceed.

Marcus pulled aside the sailcloth. The statue was unveiled.

Hadrian approached the statue. He slowly circled it, looking it up and down. His face was expressionless.

Antinous was smiling; he seemed pleased with his image. Of course, the statue offered no surprise to him, since he had seen it at every stage of its creation.

In his mind, Marcus rehearsed the little speech he had prepared:
Caesar, you recently saw fit to praise the plea my grandfather made, asking for clemency to be shown to even the lowliest of men. I also have a plea to make, which only Caesar can grant. I ask that you show mercy and forgiveness to
—

“A mistake,” said Hadrian. He had concluded his full circuit of the
statue and stood in front of it, staring at it. There was no expression on his face.

Marcus blinked. The utterance was so abrupt that he was not sure he had heard it correctly. “A mistake, Caesar? If some tiny flaw remains, an area where I failed to smooth the marble sufficiently . . .” said Marcus, though he knew every inch of the statue was perfect.

“No. The entire idea was mistake.” Hadrian’s tone was frigid. He averted his eyes from both Marcus and the statue. “The fault is mine, Marcus Pinarius, not yours. I should never have expected that you, or anyone else, could do the thing I desired. I understand that now.”

“Caesar, if the pose of the statue is not to your liking, or if the tilt of the head—”

“Nothing about the statue is to my liking. By Hercules, look at Antinous! And then look at this . . . this travesty.”

Trembling, Apollodora stepped forward. “Caesar, it’s a true likeness.”

“What would you know? You might as well be blind. And so might you, Marcus. You possess a certain skill, yes. This is the image you intended to shape, I’m sure. But you have no eyes to see. This . . .
thing
. . . is not Antinous, not even a vague approximation. Am I the only one who can see him?”

Hadrian turned his back on the statue, as if disgusted by it.

Apollodora looked desperately at Marcus. “Husband, do it!” she whispered.

“Now is not the time,” he said through clenched teeth.

But Apollodora had staked so much on this meeting that she could not let the chance go by. She rushed to Hadrian, even as he was departing, and dropped to her knees. “Caesar, we have a favor to ask. My father, in Damascus—he longs to return to Roma. If you could forgive him—we beg you!”

Hadrian shuddered. He waved his hand dismissively, turned away from her, and walked on.

Following him, Antinous looked over his shoulder and cast a parting glance at the statue. To Marcus, the face of the youth and the face of the statue were mirror images, perfectly alike in every way.

At the doorway to the vestibule, Hadrian stopped and collected himself. He kept his eyes averted. His voice was strained but calm. “You will
return to work on the temple, Marcus Pinarius. There is still much you can accomplish there. But you will destroy this abomination, and everything to do with it. Do you understand? As soon as I’m gone, you will destroy every model and burn every drawing. You will break this statue into pieces. You will grind the pieces to dust. No one must ever see it.”

Work continued on the Temple of Venus and Roma—with the huge columns at last in place, the true massiveness of the structure was becoming evident—but on this day Marcus was at work at different site, out on the Field of Mars, where Hadrian had decided to rebuild a neglected ruin called the Pantheon.

The original structure, a temple dedicated to the great gods, had been erected by Agrippa in the reign of Augustus. Damage caused by fire in the reign of Titus had been repaired by Domitian. Another fire, caused by lightning, virtually destroyed the temple while work was under way on Trajan’s Column and Forum, and with those enormous projects claiming all available resources, the rebuilding of the Pantheon was neglected. For almost twenty years the Pantheon remained in ruins, a cordoned-off area in the bustling heart of the Field of Mars. Passing the familiar eyesore one day, Hadrian suddenly saw it afresh. The limitations of the site were such that any rebuilt temple would have to be nearly square in shape. It was hard to imagine an aesthetically pleasing temple no deeper than it was wide—essentially a cube. But what if the rebuilt temple was circular—or indeed, as Hadrian perceived in a flash of inspiration, spherical? Here at last, the emperor realized, was the project to which he could give full expression to his fascination for domes—the “giant gourds” that Apollodorus had derided. The rebuilt Pantheon would be unique, a sphere within a square, surmounted by a dome of almost inconceivable size. The challenge of constructing such a dome had defeated engineers in the past, but Hadrian insisted that it could be done, and had charged Marcus with doing so.

The emperor’s expression of confidence in him had surprised Marcus, who had been badly shaken by Hadrian’s rejection of the statue. But not once had Hadrian ever reminded Marcus of his displeasure on that
occasion, and Marcus was determined to show the emperor that his trust was well placed. Fired by Hadrian’s enthusiasm, Marcus and a team of engineers had conceived new ideas for making such a vast dome feasible—making the concrete thinner near the top, using coffers to lessen the mass, and using an oculus, an eyelike opening at the top, to admit light and further reduce the weight. Marcus was determined that his efforts should not disappoint the emperor. He often wished that Apollodorus were with him to offer advice and help oversee such a hazardous but thrilling enterprise.

The actual construction of the dome was still a long way off. On this day, Marcus was inspecting recent work on the thick, load-bearing walls when he heard a familiar cry and looked up to see his son’s blond curls glinting in the sunlight.

At the age of eight, Lucius was now old enough to visit his father’s work sites, as long as he was always supervised. Marcus was surprised to see that Lucius was accompanied not by one of the slaves who usually chaperoned him but by Amyntas, who had rapidly risen in the ranks of the household and was usually occupied with more-important duties.

Marcus greeted the boy by lifting him in the air—not as easy a task as it once had been—then saw the reason why Amyntas had come. In the slave’s hand was a scroll, and even at a distance Marcus could spot the imperial seal pressed into the wax.

Hadrian was again off traveling. He frequently corresponded with Marcus, but those letters were usually bundled with other imperial documents and delivered by couriers to the palace, where Marcus sent a slave to fetch them. A letter that had come not to the palace but directly to Marcus’s house was unusual.

While Amyntas took Lucius to look at the walls, Marcus broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. Previous letters had come from Sicily, Carthage, the interior African city of Lambaesis, Athens, Ephesus, and Antioch. The heading of this letter showed that it had been posted from the desert trading city of Palmyra. Recalling its close proximity to Damascus, Marcus felt a twinge of hope. Apollodorus in his latest letter had expressed his intention to do his best to gain an audience with Hadrian, should the emperor’s travels bring him anywhere near Damascus.

The letter was written not in Hadrian’s usual first person, full of learned
asides and literary allusions, but in a very stiff and formal third person. From the first words, Marcus knew the letter contained bad news:

Caesar wishes to inform Marcus Pinarius personally of an unfortunate event, so that he will hear of it first from Caesar and not from some other source. Caesar will state the fact plainly: the father-in-law of Marcus Pinarius, Apollodorus of Damascus, has been executed for plotting against the life of the emperor. Because of irrefutable evidence supplied to Caesar, Caesar had no other recourse. This action was carried out swiftly and with respect to the person’s status as a citizen.

Marcus knew what that meant: Apollodorus had been beheaded and not killed in some more disgraceful way, like crucifixion.

Marcus Pinarius need fear no recrimination against himself. Although Caesar is aware of the natural bond of affection between Marcus Pinarius and his father-in-law, Caesar is of the belief that Marcus Pinarius played no part whatsoever in the plot, is certain of Marcus Pinarius’s loyalty to the emperor, and desires Marcus Pinarius to continue his valuable work on the Temple of Venus and Roma and on the Pantheon. It is the wish of Caesar that this unfortunate event shall have no effect on the amity between himself and Marcus Pinarius. We shall not speak of it again.

Stunned, Marcus put down the letter. Could it be true that Apollodorus had conspired against the emperor? Had the bitterness of so many years of exile driven him to involve himself in some desperate plot? Hadrian’s journeys exposed him not just to those who sought favors from the emperor but to those in each region who craved revenge, and in the vicinity of Damascus, where so many had been subjected to so much suffering under Roman rule, there must be many such persons. Had Apollodorus conspired with other malcontents and been discovered by Hadrian’s agents? Or had he been the victim of rumors and lies? Hadrian spoke of “irrefutable evidence,” but that phrase was invariably used when a declared enemy of the state was put to death.

Marcus would probably never know the truth. The emperor was above being questioned. Apollodorus was beyond giving answers.

Marcus saw something from the corner of his eye. It took him a moment to realize that it was a man in a toga. Only when the man spoke did he recognize Gaius Suetonius.

“Pinarius! I haven’t see you in a Titan’s age. Only yesterday, I was revising a passage about Marcus Agrippa, and I thought to myself: I must drop by to see what you’re up to here at Agrippa’s ruined temple. Those walls look awfully thick—must be quite a heavy roof you’re planning to put on top! You know, I never heard a word from you when I sent you my work in progress, all those years ago. Oh, that’s alright, not everyone’s a literary critic, and thank the gods for that. But now—good news! I’ve finally finished the work, and I have an army of scribes busy making copies. Shall I send you one? It’s not a bad read, if I say so myself. I promise you won’t be bored. Indeed, you may think I’ve written a book of marvels, like our friend Phlegon, it’s so full of outrageous anecdotes. Amazing, what some of those emperors got up to! Even I was surprised at the details I discovered, and I spent years combing through the imperial archives. There’s one story about Caligula—truly, it defies belief. . . .”

Marcus didn’t hear. He was wondering how he was going to tell Apollodora the news.

He was suddenly distracted by a glint of sunlight on his son’s blond curls. Lucius had wandered into an area where loose bricks had been piled in high stacks.

“Amyntas!” Marcus shouted. “Amyntas, look after Lucius! He doesn’t belong over there. It’s too dangerous.”

Suetonius smiled. “Boys! Always getting into trouble, eh? A pity our emperor hasn’t got one; that might keep
him
out of trouble. Oh, but I forget; Caesar
does
have a boy to look after. Takes him everywhere—so my correspondents along his travel route tell me. I hear he’s headed for Jerusalem next—or what they used to call Jerusalem. Hadrian plans to rebuild the city Vespasian destroyed and give it a rather pretty new name: Aelia Capitolina, named for his ancestors, the Aelii. I suspect he’ll put a statue of himself next to Jupiter and see if he can’t convince those stubborn Jews to burn a bit of incense on the altar. Then he’s to press on to Alexandria for his first look at Egypt. He and Antinous will play Caesar and Cleopatra,
languidly cruising up the Nile past hippopotami and crocodiles. Do you suppose the Egyptians will put some sort of animal head on Hadrian’s statue and declare him a god?”

The man chattered on and on. Marcus did not hear a word.

Hadrian was back in Roma.

After years of travel, the emperor’s return to the capital was to be marked with celebrations and banquets. But his very first excursion, bright and early on the morning after his first night back in the imperial palace, was an unannounced visit to the site of the Temple of Venus and Roma, to see what progress had been made in his absence. When the emperor was informed that Marcus Pinarius was not present, being occupied that morning at his workshop, Hadrian and his retinue headed directly to the Aventine Hill.

Marcus and his assistants were busy piecing together some sections of the gigantic bronze statue of Venus that was to be installed in the temple.

When Amyntas came running in to announce that the emperor was in the vestibule, Marcus told everyone to cease working and stay exactly where they were. He put down his tools and dusted off his tunic. Amyntas, checking Marcus’s appearance, flicked some bits of metal from his beard.