Empire (91 page)

Antoninus gave him a piercing look. “You’ve known him a very long time, so I won’t lie to you. In recent days, he’s tried several times to take his own life. First he ordered a slave to stab him. When the slave refused, he tried to stab himself, but he was too weak. Then he sought poison from a doctor. ‘Caesar asks me to be his murderer,’ said the poor man, and Hadrian quoted Sophocles to him: ‘I ask you to be my healer, the only physician who can cure my suffering’—the words of Hercules from
The Women of Trachis,
dying in agony and begging his son to set him afire. The doctor refused to give him poison, whereupon Caesar ordered that the man should be executed, along with everyone else who had thwarted his suicide attempts.”

Marcus wiped fresh beads of sweat from his brow. “And was the doctor executed?”

“Of course not. I simply removed the offending persons from Caesar’s presence and replaced them with others. They all have strict orders to keep close watch on Caesar and prevent any further suicide attempts. Meanwhile, since his physicians have failed to cure him, Caesar has called upon a series of wonder-workers and magicians. Mostly charlatans, I have no doubt, but just lately Caesar seems a little better. He insists that he’s well enough to travel. He intends to depart for Baiae tomorrow. He says the sea air will improve his health. Before he goes, he wants to see you.”

Antoninus escorted him to the door of the bedchamber. He opened it but stayed where he was, indicating that Marcus should enter alone.

Curtains had been pulled to block the sunlight. By the glow of several lamps, Marcus saw the grotesquely swollen figure of the emperor on the bed. A statue of Antinous, not quite life-size, stood on a pedestal at the foot of the bed, looking down on the emperor.

As Antoninus had warned him, the edema made Hadrian almost unrecognizable—his cheeks and chin and even his forehead were massively swollen, while his eyes and mouth looked small and pinched. But when he spoke, his voice was the same, except that a hint of his old Spanish accent kept breaking through.

“Pygmalion! Is that you?”

“It is. Caesar wished to see me?”

“Yes. Come closer. You’re looking well, Pinarius. No, don’t bother to return the compliment. I shudder to think what I must look like. You’ll notice
that Antoninus has thoughtfully removed all the mirrors from this room.” Hadrian managed a weak laugh.

Marcus was surprised to find him in such good spirits. Was this the bitter man who had been ordering executions right and left?

“I called you here, Pinarius, because I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for me over the years, and especially for your service to the worship of Antinous. The Divine Youth has no follower more devoted than you. The images you’ve created will outlast us all. The flesh is all we know in this life, but the flesh grows old and withers and rots, as I know only too well. Only perfection is immortal, and we were blessed by the god to witness perfection, and to touch it, you and I.”

Speaking wearied him. Hadrian paused to rest for a while, then went on. “Have a look at the object on the table over there, by the window. Open the curtains, if you need more light.”

On the table, Marcus saw a model of the new mausoleum. When he parted the curtains, he saw that the window framed a distant view of the building itself on the far side of the Tiber. Construction was well under way, but whatever decoration the emperor had in mind for the top of the huge circular building had remained a mystery—until now. The top of the model was fitted with a statue of Hadrian riding a chariot pulled by four horses. Marcus gaped. Judging by the scale of the model, the quadriga sculpture would be one of the largest statues ever made. Though not as tall, the sheer mass of the thing would rival the Colossus of Sol.

“What do you think, Pygmalion?”

“May I ask who made this model, Caesar?”

“I made it myself, with these swollen fingers of mine. Yes, it’s a crude thing, but I never called myself a sculptor. The details I’ll leave to a true artist—to you, Pinarius. So? What do you think?”

“Are the proportions of the statue to the mausoleum correctly rendered?”

“Closely enough.”

Marcus frowned. “The mausoleum rises to almost sixty feet. This statue is very nearly as tall as the structure upon which it stands. Is Caesar aware of just how large the full-scale piece would be?”

“I am.”

“But how is such a huge monument to be built? How is it to be
transported and assembled atop the mausoleum? The enormous amount of bronze required—”

“I leave those petty details to you, Pygmalion!” Hadrian snapped. His face turned dark red and his eyes were reduced to two baleful points of light. For a moment Marcus imagined that the man’s head might actually burst, like a grape squeezed between two fingers.

Then Hadrian laughed. “Listen to me! Did you hear that accent? Thicker than Trajan’s! When I think of all those hours I spent with my elocution teachers, reading Cicero aloud until I was hoarse. Numa’s balls, I haven’t sounded so much like a Spaniard since I was a boy. That was so long ago. . . .” He closed his eyes and drifted off.

Marcus stared at him for a long time. What would Apollonius of Tyana have made of Hadrian? Certainly he was infinitely better than Domitian, and more knowledgeable of philosophy than Trajan, but if philosophy reconciled a man to life and prepared him to face death, then in Hadrian all the lessons of philosophy came to naught. As death approached, he was more tied to the material world than ever, craving a monument larger than anyone else’s and determined to decide who would rule after him even to the second generation. Life obsessed him; death to him was unacceptable—his own death no less than the death of his beloved Antinous, whom Hadrian had sought to keep alive by populating the whole world with his image.

Perhaps no emperor could truly be a philosopher, since his duty was to care so deeply about the material world and the mortals in it, but Hadrian had come as close as anyone. Perhaps Hadrian, with all his flaws, was as good a ruler as the world could ever hope to see. Would Antoninus do a better job? Would young Marcus Aurelius, if he ever came to power?

Reflexively, Marcus reached to touch the fascinum, but it was not at his breast. The fascinum belonged to Lucius now. To the Divine Youth who looked over him, he whispered aloud, “I am a fortunate man, to have lived in such an age, and under such an emperor.”

“What’s that?” Hadrian muttered. He opened his eyes. “Are you still here, Pygmalion?”

“I am, Caesar.”

“I almost forgot to tell you. I’ve made you a senator.”

“I, Caesar?”

“Why not?”

“There are some in the Senate who’ll say that a mere sculptor has no place among them.”

“Who cares what those useless creatures think? I say you’re a senator, and so you are. You’ve served me as well as any general or magistrate—better than most. And never forget that your grandfather was elevated to the Senate by the Divine Claudius, and that his father was a senator, and that your great-great-grandfather was one of the three heirs of Julius Caesar. So from now on, you are Senator Pinarius—except when I make a slip and call you Senator Pygmalion.”

Marcus smiled. “Thank you, Caesar.”

“I’ve also named you to the priesthood of Antinous.”

“I, a priest?”

“Religious service is in your blood: you come from a long line of augurs. In essence you’re already a priest of Antinous, so you might as well enjoy the title, and the stipend, along with the duties.”

“What duties?”

“You will make more images of Antinous so as to propagate his worship.”

“I’ll do my best, Caesar.”

Hadrian closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. Marcus thought he slept, but then he began to speak, very softly. He was reciting a poem. Perhaps he had composed it himself; Marcus had never heard it before.

Sweet soul that inhabits this clay,

Soon you will flit away.

Where will you go? To what place

dark and cold and stripped of grace,

never again to laugh and play?

Hadrian sighed and fell asleep. Marcus quietly left the room.

The next day, the emperor and his retinue left for Baiae. Ten days later, word reached Roma that Hadrian was dead.

Antoninus, who had been running the state in Caesar’s absence, departed at once for Baiae to look after the remains and bring them back to Roma. It fell to young Marcus Aurelius to oversee preparations for the funeral rites, including the gladiator games in honor of the dead.

Upon his return to Roma, Antoninus was recognized as emperor by unanimous declaration of the Senate. “May he be even luckier than Augustus!” they shouted. “May he be even better than Trajan!”

Hadrian’s final months left a bitter taste in the mouths of many senators. There was a movement to annul many of his final acts—including the naming of several of his favorites to places in the Senate and other high positions. Antoninus said these annulments would dishonor the memory of his adoptive father and refused to allow them. He insisted that the Senate should deify Hadrian, despite widespread reluctance. Thus, Marcus Pinarius retained his status as a senator and a priest of Antinous, and the late emperor became the Divine Hadrian.

The construction and decoration of the mausoleum of Hadrian was at last complete. On this day the late emperor’s remains were to be officially interred.

To reach the mausoleum, a new bridge had been built across the Tiber. The bridge offered an impressive view of the huge structure, and it was here that the emperor Antoninus and a host of dignitaries assembled for the ceremony. Along with Hadrian, the remains of the empress Sabina and of Hadrian’s onetime heir, Ceionius, would also be interred.

For Marcus Pinarius, dressed in his senatorial toga, the occasion marked the pinnacle of his long career; it also provided a rare moment to simply stop and catch his breath. Marcus had never been so busy in his life, not even during the hectic years of the Dacian campaigns, when he was Apollodorus’s assistant. He regularly attended meetings of the Senate in Roma. He made frequent trips to the villa at Tibur to oversee the worship of Antinous, and he made new images of the Divine Youth whenever the inspiration struck him. But most of his efforts in the last few years had been consumed by the design and construction of the massive statue atop Hadrian’s
mausoleum. The images of Antinous were unquestionably the most beautiful of all the works Marcus had made, the closest he would ever come to creating perfection, but the quadriga statue with Hadrian was by far the grandest.

Constructing a work on such an immense scale had been one challenge; creating a sculpture of sufficient grandeur to properly honor Hadrian was another. As he stood on the new bridge, listening with only one ear to the endless speeches and invocations, Marcus gazed up at the gigantic sculptural group and felt tremendous satisfaction. Apollodorus would have said that the statue was much too big, its bulk reducing the mausoleum beneath to a mere pedestal, making the whole structure appear top-heavy. But Marcus had resisted the temptation to revise Hadrian’s model and had stayed true to the emperor’s wishes, though he had employed various tricks of perspective to give the figures a more pleasing proportion when seen from the ground. Over the last few days Marcus had ventured all over the Seven Hills and out on the roads that radiated from the city, seeing what the sculpture looked like from various viewpoints and distances. For sheer prominence, Hadrian in his quadriga rivaled the Temple of Jupiter atop the Capitoline, the Colossus of Sol, and even the Flavian Amphitheater. Indeed, Marcus had chanced upon one vantage point, north of the city, from which nothing of Roma could be seen except the quadriga; the illusion of seeing a titanic figure riding a gigantic chariot across a landscape devoid of humanity had been complete. As an artist, Marcus had known no moment of greater satisfaction, not even when gazing upon his images of the Divine Youth.

Next to Marcus stood Apollodora. Her features were those of an aging Eastern beauty, but she displayed the inscrutable expression of a true Roman matron. Marcus had no idea what she was feeling. It had been a long time since she had expressed resentment or grief about her father’s death.

Next to her was Lucius, who had continued to grow until he was a head taller than his father. Lucius was wearing the fascinum, though the amulet was hidden under the folds of his toga. He saw his son exchange glances with young Verus—or Aurelius, as everyone now called him.

The emperor himself had recently acquired a new cognomen. He was Antoninus Pius now, so named by the Senate, ostensibly in recognition of his filial piety in discharging his duties to his adoptive father, including
his insistence that the Senate vote divine honors to Hadrian; but many people thought the granting of the cognomen Pius was to thank Antonius for saving the lives of a number of senators whom Hadrian would otherwise have put to death in the last days of his reign. “I had rather save the life of one innocent citizen than take the lives of a thousand enemies,” Antoninus had remarked. He had none of Hadrian’s restlessness or brooding nature; he was known for a placid temperament and a gentle sense of humor. Under his benevolent rule, the bitterness that had marked the end of Hadrian’s reign had almost faded from memory.