Marcus Aurelius Betrayed (2 page)

I got to know the Emperor personally when, upon the recommendation of his friend and teacher, the Urban Prefect Quintus Junius Rusticus, he appointed me an imperial emissary to Egypt and a
iudex selectus
, a special judge, to discover who tried to assassinate the Prefect
of Egypt. On the one hand, that investigation involved me in murder, crime and corruption, on the other it drew me into the world of Marcus Aurelius in a deep way and gained for me an association with a great, though troubled, soul. He was a soul who inevitably was betrayed because his ideals, his vision and his way of life did not conform to the world’s; they were not really compatible. As one example, he told me he hated the gladiatorial games, yet he had to attend. No one else in Rome had to go, if he chose not to. But Aurelius, the philosopher, the Emperor, was required to attend, lest he endanger his reign. Yes, he could read and sign documents during the Games and not pay much attention, but he had to be there. He once tried to introduce gladiatorial combats with wooden swords, but the spectators wouldn’t have it. So he had to see the blood, the pain, the death, and he had to hear the roar of the crowd, the thousands of his fellow men and women who loved it and for whom it was a major part of their emotional lives. But for Aurelius, it was a personal war to get himself to attend and preside at the amphitheater, an arena of death alien to his philosophy of life.

I was brought to meet him by the Urban Prefect in order to receive an imperial appointment. But this was not the first time I had met Marcus Aurelius. As children we lived in the same neighborhood on the Caelian Hill, he in his parents’ wealthy city
domus
town house, me in my parents’ luxury
insula
apartment house. We occasionally played together on the street with the other ‘chicks’. But that was years before the Emperor Hadrian picked him out to be adopted into the imperial family and trained for
future greatness. When I knew him he was just a ‘chick’ like the rest of us.

I wondered when I was brought to see him on the Palatine if he might remember me from our childhood.

I

AN AUDIENCE WITH THE EMPEROR

M
arcus Flavius Severus, judge in the Court of the Urban Prefect, was escorted to the Palatine Hill by the Urban Prefect, Quintus Junius Rusticus. They both wore freshly laundered spotless white togas with the reddish-purple border of judicial authority. Rusticus’ tunic showing through the gap in the toga bore the broad reddish-purple stripe of a member of the Senatorial Order, while Severus’ tunic stripes were the same color, but he wore the narrow stripe of the Equestrian Order. At the second hour of the morning, under a resplendent and warming sun, they ascended to the Palatine in litters from the Old Forum up the Clivus Victoriae, the slope of victory, and were carried toward the
Aula Regia
, the royal hall and the throne room.

The Palatine was already a busy place. Swarms of officials darted in and out of buildings, conferred on the streets, in the porticoes, on the steps of palaces and administrative buildings. The Palatine was not just the residence of the Emperor and the imperial family, but the
center of a large and complex government. There were the major government Bureaus, among them Treasury, Judicial Affairs, Latin and Greek Correspondence and the Bureau of Petitions. It was the seat of deals and negotiations and policy assessments and the place where hopes and dreams were every day encouraged, frustrated, fulfilled, crushed, delayed. The buildings were beautiful, with marbled columns, intricate mosaics and sculptured pediments, set amidst gardens and libraries and awnings of every color, though on the Palatine purple awnings were the favored color.

The litters were carried behind the House of Augustus to the
Aula Regia
, built by the Emperor Domitian 75 years before. Severus and Rusticus were helped out of their litters by waiting slaves who made certain their judicial togas did not touch the ground. They were then escorted into the vestibule. There, they had to wait with others waiting to see the Emperor to pay respects, to seek favors, to transact business. Among those waiting there were animated discussions and nervous silences. Some looked ethereal, some tried to appear nonchalant and some looked sick. One of those waiting, Severus noticed, was the famous hermaphrodite and albino sage and scholar Favorinus. He was surrounded by others who seemed to be enjoying him putting down an arrogant and pretentious poseur with a remarkable display of literary erudition. But Severus was himself a little too nervous to pay attention to the discussion.

Without much delay, Rusticus and Severus were called into the throne room, crossing the threshold of a single large slab of white Grecian marble and passing
through the entrance door flanked by two large columns of a deep yellow Numidian marble mottled with pink.

Two Praetorian Guard soldiers flanked the entrance, dressed in civilian togas with swords concealed underneath. Republican forms adopted by the first Emperor Augustus were still in use, particularly by an Emperor like Marcus Aurelius who was noted for being
civiliter
-- acting in a civilian manner. His practice was to treat everyone as a fellow citizen and hope, without much expectation, that he would be treated that way by them. So the protocol was no bowing and scraping in his presence, not even standing while he sat. If Aurelius sat, so should the people who were attending him. That was his “imperial” protocol. He hated pomp and fawning and catering and did his best to discourage it, hopeless as that endeavor might inevitably be.

Severus took in the large throne room hall. Its walls were covered with rich marbles and a circuit of 28 Corinthian columns. Eight large niches contained large statues of basalt, the gods Hercules and Bacchus among them.

The throne itself was in a niche at the far end of the hall. Though set on a raised dais, it was not much more than a gilded
curule
camp chair of a traditional Roman magistrate of the Republic, without back or arms. The Emperor was not on it, however. He was walking about conversing with an official over a document he was holding.

Marcus Aurelius was of medium height, somewhat shorter than Severus, and his hair and beard were short trimmed and curly, in the style of the last Emperor Antoninus Pius, who Marcus Aurelius had assisted as
Caesar for 23 years. Severus’ beard and hair were in the same style as the Emperor’s, as was Rusticus’. Aurelius looked somewhat wan and a bit frailer than he appeared in public statues and paintings. He looked like he hadn’t had enough sleep. He was reputed to be somewhat sickly, perhaps even a hypochondriac, but he carried himself with dignity, with
gravitas
. He was dressed, like Rusticus, in tunic with the broad stripe of the Senatorial Order and a toga with a magistrate’s border.

Aurelius finished with the official and came over to Rusticus and Severus, exchanging polite words of address and greeting kisses, first with the Urban Prefect and then with Severus. His voice was low and pleasant. He smiled at Severus and said,

“How are you Marcus, are you still as good in games as you were when we were chicks on the Caelian Hill?”

Severus laughed and relaxed. “Maybe even better,
domine
. But as I remember, you were a first class ball player.
Trigon
was your game, wasn’t it?”

Aurelius smiled in return. “It still is, at least when I get the time for it. My physician Galen tells me that exercising with the small ball is good for my health. So I do it. But I hope you’ll excuse me for coming directly to the point of why you’re here. In this job time is of the essence. Perhaps later on we will get a chance to discuss old times when we were chicks. I would like that very much.”

“As would I,
domine
.”

“I asked Rusticus to bring you here because he has recommended you for an important assignment. He has informed me about your clever solution to the Cyclops case two years ago and I knew how you solved the
infamous murder on the steps of the Temple of Mars the Avenger a few years before that. Rusticus thinks you’ll be perfect for a mission I have in mind as my personal emissary and imperial judge. As my mentor, teacher, friend and member of my
consilium
, I trust his judgment. So I hope you will agree to take on this mission. It involves traveling to Alexandria.”

Severus was taken aback by this unexpected and rather stunning suggestion. “I have always wanted to travel to Alexandria and to Egypt,” he managed to reply. “The Great Library, the Museum, the Pyramids, the Sphinx.”

“So now you will have the opportunity.
Carpe diem
, as we say -- seize the day.” Aurelius led Severus and Rusticus to an open air portico behind the
Aula Regia
.

The Emperor continued. “Someone has tried to assassinate Marcus Annius Calvus, the Prefect of Egypt. Someone put poison into his personal drinking cup. Fortunately for the Prefect, and unfortunately for another person, that other person drank from the cup by mistake and died.”

“How did that happen?”

“I understand there was a drunken orgy going on and a lot of confusion. It was in the confusion that the victim took the Prefect’s cup by mistake and drank from it. But the poison was intended for the Prefect.”

“Why can’t the authorities in Alexandria find out who did it?”

“Maybe they can, but they haven’t. And Severus, we’re at war with Persia, as you know, and now we’re ready to launch our counterattack and take back what they won in their invasion of the Empire and more. As
everyone knows, including the Persians, Egypt is our most important province because the city of Rome gets most of its grain supply from there. Any interruption there would cause a calamity here. The attempted assassination may be the result of action by the
spasaka
, the Persian secret service. You’ve encountered them in the past, in the Cyclops case, as I’ve been informed.”

“But our secret service, the
curiosi
, has agents on the spot. Aren’t they able to handle the situation?”

“Frankly, Severus, my
consilium
voted that we should have our own independent investigator looking into it. There is some question about the competence and trustworthiness of the authorities in Alexandria, though I believe the Prefect himself is reliable. He’s a relative, as perhaps you noted from his cognomen Annius. Annius was my original cognomen, as you’ll remember from our childhood when my name was Marcus Annius Verus.

“So if you agree to be my personal emissary, I will provide you with all the necessary authority. You will not just be a judge from the judicial panel of the Urban Prefect in Rome, but I will appoint you a
iudex selectus
, a special judge empowered personally by me, just like the ones I sometimes appoint to hear cases referred to the Emperor. You may also take your own staff with you, as many as you need, and you will be provided with slaves in Alexandria, though you may take some of your own along as well. In Alexandria and Egypt you will have independence to act, subject of course to the Prefect of Egypt. You will travel by warship, a fast quadrireme, with a full complement of sailors and marines, so you will also have your own personal navy and army to
follow your orders and carry out your wishes. I hope you will agree to be my emissary and judge in this matter.”

“I will gladly undertake this mission,
domine
. And I will add, on a personal note that my wife Artemisia will be overjoyed to travel with me to Egypt. She has been writing a biography of Cleopatra for the last five years and for her to see those places…”

“Then that’s a further inducement.” Aurelius escorted Severus and Rusticus back into the
Aula Regia
and to the doorway. “Please keep me informed regularly by letter about developments. I want to know what you find out.”

II

A SEA VOYAGE TO ALEXANDRIA

A
t the first hour of the day, under a clear and cloudless sky, Judge Severus stood at a dock in Ostia, the port of Rome, and admired the 120 foot long, sleek quadrireme
Argo
that would take him to Egypt. Its black hull was decorated with thin green strakes along the length of its sides and red eyes were painted on a yellow background on the prow, just behind the gleaming bronze-clad ram in front. The rear curved upwards and was painted green and yellow. A pennant of the Misenum Fleet stood proudly next to and above the tail. While in port, the sails and masts were not set up and the oars were shipped, though their blades projected slightly from each side. Some quadriremes had four sailors to each oar arranged in one bank, and others, like he
Argo
, had two sailors to each oar arranged in two banks, the upper bank projecting through an outrigger and the lower bank from underneath the outrigger. The ship’s 170-man crew were all professional navy personnel, the rowers
trained to a high level of skill to row precisely in unison to the measured beat of a drummer signaling the pace.

Severus boarded the ship up a gangplank and went into the deck cabin at the rear, lavishly appointed with silk hangings and finely woven Egyptian mats. Glycon, his slave, began unpacking his traveler’s bags, while his wife Artemisia supervised her slave Galatea in unpacking her bags.

Severus, however, had eyes only for Artemisia, whose combination of intelligence and beauty never ceased to enrapture him. Though Artemisia was a Roman citizen, she had grown up in Athens and considered herself Greek. She wore her dark hair loose and flowing and her brown eyes sparkled with life. Her mind, Severus often said, was just as keen as his own and her scholarly interests just as wide and diverse.

Meanwhile, Severus’ private secretary Alexander and his staff of police aides, Vulso and Straton, and court aides – judicial assessor Flaccus and court clerk Proculus -- busied themselves finding places for their belongings and sleeping areas on deck.

“Compliments of the Trierarch,” saluted a sailor entering the cabin. “
Eminentissime
,” he addressed Severus using an Equestrian Class honorific, “the Trierarch Tiberius Valens requests you join him on the poop deck when you have a moment.”