A Roman Summer, pt. 104: The Consul Concludes

Other bad news: graffiti, as these Italiani call it, remains a problem, but that is and ever was what whitewash is for. The catacombs continue to be dug out, and more and more ‘Japanese’ and/or ‘Chinese’ (my workers’ terms) are being located. They continue to be trucked out to the countryside to be buried in pits, at your command. The Cardinals are protesting this as well, and my response has been that these are without doubt not Romans so they are not due the largesse of the Roman State. In an imitation, perhaps, of the Galileans’ all-day, all-week ritual schedule, which continues to largely somnolent, snoring multitudes, I hear, the temples now in operation burn incense from very early dawn to past dusk to drown out the awful stink of the bodies being found and carted out of the gates. Well, Rome always looked more grand than she smelled, so this situation aids my nostalgia, to some extent.
We shall soon come to that juncture, I believe, in which the amount of time between when you send me missives to when I receive them, and vice versa, will prove more and more a difficulty. Is it at all possible that a boat could be used to cut the time down? You and the army may not always keep to coastal roads, so my suggestion could be more useful once you feel it is safe to march inland again. I trust no agents of this Judith have lately been seen; your recent dispatches have not mentioned her.
Finally, before I shall close, a thought on your discovery of just why the army was so eager to leave Rome when you and they did. This was several dispatches ago, I admit, but to be unsentimental about it, it is further evidence of how these modern barbarians know what will occur if they dispose of us. The Beast’s spoor, as it has been interpreted, would seem to have appeared in the known world at exactly the correct time, but what will sustain your authority, I believe, is the uncertainty of any alternative. Until we are so well seated, of course, that we can no longer be dislodged under any circumstances! Ergo, that very answer we have given the man who is putting up his screeds about our ‘legitimacy’! Furthermore, we rule such an utter polyglot of men and women and children here that the vast majority seem not capable of communicating with more than a few of one another, much less plotting an uprising with sufficient manpower. It was for this reason, let’s recall, that we have made it a point to combine as wide-ranging a selection of ethnic groups as possible in each legion or vexillation, teaching them enough Latin to drill them and command them but no more, to say nothing of insisting how everyone else must learn Latin without our entirely following through! It is also why the Acta Urbis is now posted in twenty-two languages. This idea of yours was, no sycophancy intended, Caesar, brilliant. In such a way, unable to compare notes widely, their superstitious fears have preyed upon them until you learned of their existence, and you saw fit to redirect them elsewhere, to the advantage of the State. If you will allow, however, your decree while on campaign that the Christian deity is considered banned from the Empire shall not be repeated in the text of the Acta Urbis. I would not give the Cardinals the satisfaction. Let them arrive at that conclusion with no help from us.
It is getting later in the day and I have to make my rounds of construction sites, meet with ministers, and so on. I shall expect your latest dispatch later in the day, and shall keep you informed of all events. May the gods, be they distant or present, keep you and the army safe until we correspond again.

Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, Consul of Rome

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A Roman Summer, pt. 103: The Consul Continues

To the bad news, Caesar: men and women and children of the north and south of Latium, Etruria, Calabria, and even further north and south of these, have been coming to Rome’s gates in ever greater numbers over these weeks since your and the army’s departure, begging us for shelter. Some arrive in those odd ‘cars’ of theirs, others on foot or ahorse, and as you would insist, I think, we find places for them whereverwe can. The stories they tell have been heart-rending. Looters, rapists, madmen of all kinds have begun stealing into the area. Interviewing many of the refugees, Caesar, I have become very upset and had the thought to send punitive strikes beyond our fortified farm suppliers and minor allies to the northwest. But these raiders attack one moment and in the next melt away, which would make their capture difficult. Even the Goths, if my readings are correct, were not so base. To do so would be to remove troops from Rome and I won’t do that until more legions are ready. I have sent men out foraging in opposing directions around the walls and a few miles out; a few heavily armed men have been caught and garroted, but I have no doubt that they are not all! In time we’ll have men trained to garrison the towns south of here, but all we can do at this time is let the stragglers in, teach them Romanitas, and find them work. No shortage of that, thankfully! A new legion may well be able to join you within the next month. While I am thinking of it, thus far I have no news of attacks on any of our garrison towns. No doubt the rats would rather strike at those who cannot strike back.
Number two: rivalling the Acta Urbis of late on the designated walls of the city would seem to be a tacked-up treatise some learned miscreant has dreamed up in which he claims the Roman State is ‘fraudulent.’ Time only goes in one direction, he declares, and an earthquake is no excuse to drop 2200 years of history. Modern men are not Romans and no amount of decrees will make them so. And on and on et ad nauseum. The position we have taken in subsequent Actae in reply has been (1) that earthquakes do not build mirror Pantheons, nor do they bring times, men and women back who have for all intents been dead for centuries; proof positive that these ‘vanished years’ were an illusion, so how can one wish back what never was? and (2) as you once put it, given the choice is between the Empire and anarchy, where is the complaint? The Quaestor’s listeners have been plumbing the city for this man’s or these men’s identity(ies). Once they have been located, I have recommended (unless you order otherwise) that they be silenced quietly. You have been lenient towards what few nay-sayers have appeared in order to gather all of our citizens under Rome’s expansive roof as decreed during the reign of Antoninus Bassianus Imperator, to say nothing of those orders issued by the Republic after the Social War and which would appear were never remanded, but there are definitely some who require application of the knife you counseled me to keep sheathed. It should not remain so much longer. Give me your permission and I will at last lend it out. I have several worthy candidates.
Next, the Amphitheatrum Flavianum is now complete but Cardinals ‘Mea Culpa’ and ‘Mea Maxima Culpa’ continue to lead a vigil every day and night to prevent it from being re-inaugurated for the munera. Though is this such a bad situation? As we have agreed in previous dispatches, there is no point in using the Amphitheatre when no gladiatorial schools have yet been re-founded, and to this day none have come forward who ran one in our former time. Mock sea-battles could be staged there, for that. I have let the Cardinals fulminate, and had the Aedile designate a detail to keep the Amphitheater swept out and tidy until you return to reopen it properly. Next, over these weeks a few men and women have contacted me who have proven to my satisfaction that they hail from closer to our time, although sadly not close enough! One wanted to know when the Republic was to be re-established; I asked if he recalled Lucius Cornelius Sulla or Gaius Marius, and he said he knew the former as a lute-playing teenager! He won’t do for a higher-level official, it is obvious, but as he was previously a Latin master I have set him up to teach some more of our new Romans some of the language, while one of our ‘newer’ Romans teaches him ‘Italian.’ An equally fortunate – in one way - woman was found in a ruined building as it was being demolished, living on stolen cat food, or something equally disgusting, until the wrecking crew came across her. We had no facilities to assist her in her distressed state, so packed her off to the Little Mother’s hospital in the Trastevere. Upon her return to us this week I asked that she describe her previous circumstances; the woman’s last memory had been of the Vandals’ sack of the Urbs in a year that she referred to as ‘455.’ Some long division ensued, you may be certain, and it appears she was speaking of a mere century and change after the death of Constantine, or the 1208th year ab urbe condita. How great, exactly, was this Constantine if the Empire tottered so soon after he ‘went to heaven,’ if that’s what the Galileans call it? It helps not at all that the balls-less Valentinian III had put a Scythian in charge of the army, yes, while that donkey Petronius ‘Maximus’ murdered him without asking the Vandal Geiseric’s opinion of the matter; no wonder Rome fell a third time! Her tale was unspeakable, I will not burden you with it. She has been assigned to the Temple of Vesta, though given her treatment by the Vandals she cannot participate in ceremonies. I rather wanted to find her a position she would appreciate, and this seemed to do. I was not surprised to note that she never ‘converted,’ to utilize the Galilean term. Thankfully, no sign of Titus, Nerva or any of our other turncoats just yet. We keep watch.
Parenthetically, the above matter brings forth a question on which I’d like your opinion: you have said that one reason why the Empire was saved after Rome’s 1000th anniversary was because Philippus Arabs Imperator had thought to celebrate the event, while Constantius II’s failure to do so 100 years later and Valentinian III’s a century after that partially explains Rome’s fall. We must not make that similar mistake. But how, then, are we to decide what, and when, the next centennial shall be? Will the vanished years remain vanished, or shall they be factored in for the sake of those new Romans who still demand acknowledgment of the impoverished lives they led until we arrived to again set things right? Please consider this when you have a free moment. We have ignored the question until now, but for all we know, and depending upon your calculations, it may become an urgent matter.

Copyright 2008 by K. Griffiths. Al rights reserved. This episode dedicated to the memory of Paul Raven (1961-2007). "And when you find yourself upon the untrodden path/ remember me with a smile, a drink, a gesture or a laugh... and gratitude." (J. Coleman, 2006)

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A Roman Summer, pt. 102: The Consul Writes

“To Titus Flavius Domitianus Imperator, victor upon land and sea and eternal Augustus:
Greetings, Caesar! This dispatch, it is hoped, finds you and the army well. I write upon the Nones of the month of Augustus. As ever there is both good and bad news. We continue filling administrative posts, the Urbs looks more and more like Rome every day, and the temples are very slowly filling. The Homeric hymns have been very helpful in bridging the gaps in our memories, I would say, of the temple rituals. And, yes, hymns XI and XXVIII to a certain goddess who is not to be named have been outlawed, as you have ordered. How odd that in these later, sadder days they would all still be in print! Why do you suppose would that have been? You have indicated that you feel the Galileans were ‘pack rats’ and kept far too many mementos of our previous day but I wonder, begging your pardon, that the reverse may not be more the case. Given what we were not able to locate, to say nothing of what we have discovered in Vatican records of the suppression of the Gnostics and the Albigensiani, to name a mere two of dozens of Christiani cults, it would appear to me that the Galileans labored to excise everything they felt they could safely excise – where, after all, are the thousands of scrolls that graced the libraries in the original Basilica of Trajan? Just as one example – once they had taken over Rome in that Constantine’s day. They appear not to have known exactly what to retain, however correct you may be to so point out the reverse. Neither did it did serve them well that later Imperators vacillated painfully on the final and total outlawing of the gods’ worship; eg. the merry dance of one Christian Emperor removing the Altar of Victory from the Senate House, another putting it back, and a third removing it yet again. How we managed to locate it one last time, after all that, I can’t imagine. A sign, however, is a sign. I conclude for the moment, therefore, that the Christiani never took the lesson of what Rome did to Carthage after the Punic Wars! Sad for them, not us.
One last thought on the above matter; very intriguing that Rome under the Caesars allowed the flourishing of the most maniacal variation of cults, as long as they paid their taxes, while the Galileans abolished everything in sight after Constantine legalized them. How might that have been an improvement? Little wonder the late Empire ran low on tax receipts! But as you have said to me previously, we Romans are civilized.
At any rate, administration goes on as well as can be expected. A few magistrates have been removed from the Basilicas for insisting on use of ‘British common law,’ whatever that is, as a basis for their decisions as opposed to the Legem Julianem, but replacements have been found and we are nearly keeping apace with the exhausting pile of legal actions which mount up daily. I will not waste your time with a list of the madnesses being charged, one party upon another. At least the Roman State figures in a very few of them! Taxes are being collected, the idlers remain on the other side of the Tiber and as such are the Cardinals’ concern, and I awoke this morning to hear a bird in the courtyard! I cannot recall when that last took place. As a politician who never read either Pliny, I admit shamefully, I am not advised as to what one bird is as opposed to some other, but since I first found myself in this depleted, despoiled Rome, I have needed its song that I might find a bit of hope that this invisible miasma of quiet, of which we have written, will one day dissipate. Is this evidence that the Galilean Beast has broken north or northeast in his path to go lick up the Marcomanni and the Heruli? Good news if so. Who needs them, or him? Incidentally, would it not be odd if this Beast were female? Please inform if you have seen evidence of animals and birds in your own current location. It is early yet today and not propitious for any reading to be taken, naturally; I did not want to have the bird shot down that I might call the one augur we’ve trained to examine its entrails, nor did I wish to appear a fool and ask the man whether he can make sense of the flight of one bird. Its song was sign enough, for now. Equally, when I went to bed last night the silence in our streets was as murderously oppressive as ever, so one bird’s appearance may not betoken as much as I mightwish it did. Heartening, yes, but not conclusive. I would posit that if the animals would return, perhaps the gods might do so as well, but we know that is not the way things work. No worries about our defense of the Urbs, please note. I will not lower our guard. As for Rome’s one bird, let us hope the cats don’t get him!

Copyright 2008 by K. Griffiths. All rights reserved.

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A Roman Summer, pt. 101: Only outlast all others...

Bypassing the few troops in front of him/ Domitian, guards and scribe-messsenger hurry forward to join the scouts at a turn in the road/ shouts of “Stand down!” rear behind them, fading away towards XXI Rapax at the column’s rear/ the boy doubles over, retching when he sees what became of Diocles’ men

“…Get that out of your system, Tertius. So to speak.”
“ugh…Dominus…acccchhhhh…”
“Do not yet ask me, I have no idea. Where is Petrus Detritus? Anyone know?”
“Up front with the foreguard, sir.”
“Very well, what do we think thus far?”

Twenty-nine guardsmen lie sprawled and gutted/ in and out of the odd pattern of abandoned automobiles on the road/ skin carved off and baking in strips on the asphalt/ days-dried organs and bones lying about in every direction/ bloody uniforms torn off and flung from each one/ some are missing faces/ others, arms and legs/ a few, all of the above

“Dominus et Deus, my twelve men a kilometer further on have seen no further bodies than these.”
“No blades did this. Claws and teeth…”
“Dominus… the Beast…”
“You have heard too many campfire stories, Tertius! The Beast of your Revelations would have lain in wait and struck our column at its softer center, were it here at all. And its claws and its teeth marks would by nature be far larger. No, he’d have left nothing but bloody uniforms, if that! Household guards are never trained as well as soldiers, don’t forget. Look! They traveled in a clump. No scouts, as we do, and no rearguard. Very foolish, and very sad. That’s all.”
“Dominus et Deus, your orders.”
“Call your men back before we lose them as well. I could care less about 'the filth,' but drag him here too.”
“At your command.”
“Dominus et Deus…?”
“Ah, Tertius, you have control of your gullet now?”
“I’m sorry, sir -- ”
“You missed my tunic, at any rate, there is that. Pius Unus, bring our burial kit. These were Romans, they shall be sent back to the underworld appropriately.”
“At your command.”
“But Dominus et—“
“Get it into your head, child, there is no Beast here. Not yet. Were he so, we’d see no evidence of animals! We may have been following him earlier, but he most probably did not come this way. We have seen deer since just before we reached Diocles’ villa, have we not? What feeds on deer, may I ask? To say nothing of unsuspecting men. Packs of wolves or feral dogs! They were clearly mad as opposed to starving. They didn’t even take all the meat, you see? Just as well, we have something to bury. Spintrius! Have the legati order the men to take their ease awhile. I’ll need diggers as well, about sixty in number.”
“At your command, Dominus et Deus.”
“I heard, Dominus, what is the situation!?”
“Aculus, there you are! Romans here await their passage to Pluto’s realm.”
“…By the gods…”
“Well parroted. Find Gerulus Novus and have him dispatch fifty horse troops to the Illyrian border crossing. Have them ask each garrison along the way if any animals have been sighted that far northwest. Anything. Squirrels, mice, rats, whatever. They are to record anything that the garrisons have seen along those lines, and bring me a complete written record. Let’s see if there’s a pattern here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dominus et Deus, will you continue to dictate—“
“Clearly not, young man! You may stay, however, I will resume as soon as this is taken care of.”
“Will we pursue the Beast? Will we change direction?”
“It is our first job to take back the Empire. He’s gone off upon another path across the earth, it appears! So we’ll continue with our business, shall we? Who knows, possibly we frightened him away! We’ll meet him another time, I have no doubt… what, now? Tertius! Soldiers do not weep. Not my men. Stop this.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry… but it’s exactly as you said, Dominus et Deus. Nothing lasts. Nothing.”
“Never listen to what you transcribe, Gerulus Tertius.”
“…I apologize. Don’t kill me, please.”
“What did you just say?”
“…Please don’t have me killed.”
“I do not understand, young man. Have I called a Praetor over to take your head?”
“…no…”
“No, Dominus et Deus. We are forgetting our manners.”
“…no, Dominus et Deus.”
“You are quite safe until my dispatch to the Consul is finished.”
“!!!”
“That was a jest.”
“…I am very sorry, Dominus—“
“There is no further need to apologize. I swear by the gods, child. Can you compose yourself?”
“…yes, sir….”
“Will it help at all if I say that you are correct.”
“I am?!”
“Exactly so. Nothing lasts. Absolutely nothing. All that rises, falls. Even though for now, Rome rises yet again, and shall remain so for all the time I can guarantee it. So then! What’s the proper answer to this state of affairs?”
“Dominus et Deus?”
“That’s my name, and well-established. What’s the proper answer?”
“…Last longer than everybody else?”
“You’re learning. For if you are the only one left standing, all the rest makes no difference. Does it.”

The Emperor’s eye is caught by a movement on one carcass/ while he half-watches the boy wipe his face of tears/ a fly moves, unsteady, across an exposed rib/ he smiles to himself/ It won’t be long now

Copyright 2008 by K. Griffiths. All rights reserved.

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A Roman Summer, pt. 100: An interruption

To continue, Tertius, yet again…
“’We’ll just have to be the stone that chokes the Beast, should we be so fortunate and he so unlucky. But in any case, allow me to to tie together a few threads of assumption. You may recall how Signor Vucci of Eraclea told me that it is these Galileans’ belief that their Bible is true that makes it so. No research on their part is required. Very convenient, is it not. Now then, in Diocles’ reasoning from what he read in this Ovid fellow’s Metamorphoses, there appears to be some implication that this discorporation of the gods was bound to have occurred eventually anyway. Nothing holds its form, Ovidius intimates, including the gods. The first part of this motif is overfamiliar from Heraclitus and Lucretius, you will agree. As a whole it may not serve the Roman State, however, and I think already you know why. Romanitas is a liturgy, an unceasing state of praises sung and duties carried out by the Roman from the opening of the eyes at dawn to the closing of them after the last bedroom light is snuffed. If there are no gods, if they indeed lie shattered in scraps throughout the landscape, Rome has no right to exist and no reason to do so. I will not allow this conclusion under any circumstance, and neither would any Imperator with half a jar of sense. No wonder the divus Augustus exiled that blabbermouth Ovid! One wonders he didn’t burn his poetry as well. He certainly could have done, though we might still have to live with the ever-popular Ars Amatoria, for obvious reasons. I understand that poets were never your strong point, but this Ovid jams into the mouth of Pythagoras in his Book XV a lengthy grocery list of all that alters, at which point he stops dead to say…

“‘Sparta remains not upon naked, raked earth, while Mycenae’s towers fell,
while naught of the Thebes Oedipus recalled, or the Athens of Pandion remains,
but for the names they bore. While the message spreads how Dardanian Rome
lifts up. Hard by the river swelling down off the Apennine Mountains, the Tiber,
the cornerstones are set for a magnificent city, and an empire.’

“’He yammers on along these lines a while, but never concludes as one would expect, though with some whit of self-preservation he then changes topic to why one should not eat meat. What has that to do with his praising Rome to the skies, given how earlier on he mouthed Epicurus’ cry of how all that rises falls again? What sort of asses did the man think his audience was?’
“Are we keeping up, young man? No, don’t write that!”
“Pardon, me, Dominus et—“
“Just scratch this bit out! You need rewrite it anyway. Now, then.
“’Pompeianus, let us consider these two varying streams. The Christiani felt no need to plumb the existence about them. They were happily cocooned in their ignorance. No doubt other cults had similar feelings. In contrast, this Ovid delves well past the proper depth of conjecture and finds an apparent truth in the philosophers toward which his Metamorphoses drags the reader, but which it never fully forces him to confront. May I say, no wonder! At least the divus Augustus had the wisdom to toss him out anyway, even if he did edit himself, and let us thank him for that. Wise man. However, Pompeianus, as there is no Ovid any longer to banish, let us give him no undue attention. While Diocles may well have discovered an explanation here that we too have long sought, let us yet leave it where it lies. It does not serve us, its neatness notwithstanding. The gods will remain ‘present or absent,’ implying that theiy exist to return at their leisure. Rome shall remain eternal, within whatever bounds truly exist. We will not suppress this Ovid’s work. We will ignore it. Once we believed our legends with all our hearts and minds. We reinforced them with our actions. We now know them no longer to hold water as they did, but we as the State shall continue to believe them anyway, that they might reinforce us. All shall be as it is because we say it is. An equally familiar idea, one that the divine Augustus would approve of, as he himself used it. Rather like the willful ignorance of the Christiani, I shall admit, it is yet not a set of metaphorical horse blinders, but a construction upon the world we live in which we see through yet serve because it serves us. Had Rome not caught the Galilean plague, of course, all this woolgathering might have been moot. Let our new Romans again live within the airy and sunwashed house of their adopted fathers, therefore, content that all is where it belongs, and let the opinion of the majority, however Greek a fallacy that may be, reign supreme, in order that Rome do likewise. Our resurgence proves our thesis, after all. Indeed, for all we know, the Galileans truly did enforce the world they knew with nothing but their opinion. In the event that this is how existence truly works, we must do the same -- ”
“Dominus et Deus!”
“Tertius, I assume you didn’t write that down. Yes, Pius, what.”
“We’ve found Diocles’ household guard, sir—“
“Take me to them, then! Legatus, call a halt! Tertius, with me.”

Copyright 2008 by K. Griffiths. All rights reserved.

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The new ground rules for this page
originally posted: February 19, 2009

Time to make up your own.

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Recent emails can be found above. Further commentary may go to the hyperlink at the end of any post, or to the following email addresses:

war@warfampestdeath.net

famine@warfampestdeath.net

pestilence@warfampestdeath.net

death@warfampestdeath.net

Exactly how interesting can the author be, anyway, when nobody has any idea where their creativity comes from or how the mechanics of inspiration works? Maybe it's something we all have access to. Maybe it's a sluice that empties into your head when you're facing in a particular direction and thinking a particular series of things. Then again, maybe not.
However benevolent inspiration really is, to say nothing of what it is, I suspect that any good fictional character is a lot more interesting than the person who dreams it up. So mine speak for me here.