|
XXV. GLIMPSING CONSTANTINE AND THE FUTURE
Darwin calls you privately into the garden, where the two of you sit eating fruit and drinking fruit juice. You are surprised to find bits of shattered ice floating in the heavy glass containing freshly pressed raspberry and blackberry juice. One of the great luxurious of the ultra-wealthy is to have runners carry blocks of ice from the mountain peaks in sealed containers on a litter, probably by night, and you can imagine them running breathlessly on moonlit paths down to the nearest paved post road, where horseback riders of the imperial mail service, or perhaps private horsemen, pick up the load and gallop in relays down to the city. There, customers are those for whom money is no object. They are the type who could casually serve their dinner guests wine into which handfuls of priceless pearls have been dissolved.
"I’m afraid I see," Darwin says, "now that I’ve had a chance to orient myself and talk to a few people, that there has been a slight miscalculation. We arrived a few years earlier than I had planned, and I have to reconsider the entire operation now."
"Will we be able to return safely and on time?" you ask, voicing your immediate greatest concern.
He looks worried. "I am making new arrangements."
You press him: "Is that a yes or a no?"
He frowns. "I can only be honest with you. It’s an I don’t know. However, the parties who brought us here will soon be in touch with me, and as long as I know they know where we are, or I should say when we are, I’m confident all will go well."
It’s time for you to voice your deepest curiosity. "Amalthea—is she your contact?"
He nods. "She is not my daughter. She is an agent of the company that sent us here. She makes sure that the arrangements go smoothly, and she keeps an eye on us to make sure we don’t violate the rules of Time, like trying to change something."
"I could go on sightseeing forever," you say, "but I’m already sickened by the cruelty and the carnage I’ve seen. I’m ready to go home anytime you are."
"I understand, and I will send you home very soon."
Startled, you ask: "Wait a minute, that sounds as if you don’t plan to return."
He regards you with a grim humor that questions why you haven’t seen the obvious. "Here, I own the body of a condemned man who won’t need it any longer. I don’t know how much time I have left in my own body, and I don’t fancy being tied to some sterile hospital bed with a dozen tubes and opiate drips. I have decided that I will stay here, doing research in the field, and writing down my observations. You will return to the future and find my writings there. To that end, let’s take a little walk." You follow him to the end of the garden. You pass through a pleasant labyrinth of flowers, in which the Lord’s children play with the youngsters of the high-class slaves. In the same yard, but out of touch by a vast difference of social status, ordinary slave children in their dirty tunics and filthy faces labor with their parents at garden tasks; they are very lucky, for they do not starve and do not appear to be abused. You pass through the lives of all these people, unable to grasp or accept much of what you see, but feeling deeply privileged to witness some of the minor and banal horrors of human history. Darwin brings you to a shady corner among some flower trellises. There, surrounded by brick walls, is a cool and mysterious passage down into the earth. You walk down a stone ladder together and emerge in a sort of catacomb. This is not a burial for people, however, but for precious wines, pickled vegetables, salted hams, and other delicacies. Several slaves wearing padded jackets labor down here, and you quickly see the reason for the thick clothing. You walk down a sloping rock path, black and slimy with moisture, and your breath begins to come out in vapor. The only light is from several tiny candles kept in thick glass tubes attached to wooden wall beams. Darwin explains: "This is Ulpian’s ice house. They keep blocks of ice in here, packed in sawdust. When all is gone above ground, these chambers will collapse on themselves during the Middle Ages, and they will long be forgotten until modern times." He gives you a wink. "It should start hanging together for you."
The realization dawns on you. "You must be joking. No. You can’t mean it. This is—?"
"This is the ground that will become the cellar of my townhouse in Rome, where you first came to meet me. Look at this." He takes you to a far niche in the coldest and darkest part of the caverns, and there you see blocks of cheese and sausage stacked on stone shelves. Darwin has you bend down and regard a simple stone box under the bottom shelf. It has a heavy rectangular stone lid and is about twice the size of a Modern shoe box. "That is a receptacle Ulpian has agreed to give me. I had to be very careful to negotiate with Amalthea's corporation that my writings will not play any role in the conflict among various religious groups. I assured them that you and I are not partisan theologians but philosophers like Cicero (de Natura Deorum) or Lucretius (de Rerum Natura)."
You find a heavy container of travertine, like a stone sarcophagus the size of a small sewing chest. You need both hands to lift off the lid. The inside is dark and dry, lined with lead. "That is where I will leave my notes," Darwin tells you. "You’ll simply recover them from my basement when you return."
"Won’t that affect Time somehow?"
He shrugs. "It will be like a pebble thrown into the stream. Whatever I reveal to the future will have no effect on history for almost two thousand years. Let’s not worry about it." You return to the sunlight garden together. Both of you are glad to be back in the warmth and sunshine. Deep down, you now have doubts about the wisdom of this entire venture. More and more, you begin to think that the slightest action or even inaction can have some huge downstream effect. You hope Time does not nullify you in order to preserve the integrity of what is fated to happen.
"I am afraid we have more immediate things to worry about," Darwin says. "I had hoped to arrive during the reign of Diocletian, under whom the last great persecution occurred." He has borrowed scraps of parchment, a glass inkbottle, and a wooden dipping pen. He keeps the nib sharpened with quick snips of the paring knife with which he peels an apple or a pear on the plate at his side. Rome was founded 753 B. C. and becomes a Republic 509 B. C. In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar declares himself dictator but murdered by the Senators in 44 B. C. After a brief civil war, his adopted nephew Octavius becomes Augustus, the first emperor. The empire is to end (technically) with the deposition of the last emperor in 476 A.D. Darwin says: "We are in 285 A.D. in the brief reign of a very forgettable emperor named Carinus. He and his brother Numerian are the questionable sons of a relatively substantial fellow named Carus. This Carus wasn’t a terribly bad emperor, considering what has gone on for the past fifty years. It’s been one disaster after another, the lowest point of all perhaps being when the Roman emperor Valerian is captured by the Persians in 260 and kept by the Persian emperor as a footstool in full imperial uniform. After his humiliating life and death, his corpse is stuffed and stands for many years in full regalia in a corner of the Persian emperor’s throne room as a trophy. You’d think that might be the low point in Roman history, but far worse is to come. Valerian’s co-augustus, Gallienus, is murdered by his troops near Milan in 268. That’s nothing new—emperors have been made and unmade at an alarming rate, usually by their own troops. Now Gothic tribes invade Italy, signaling the beginning of a direct threat to the heartland of the empire. Emperors come and go—sometimes several rivals declared by army units in various parts of the empire, sometimes one after another murdered by their troops. Meanwhile, the empire goes through its shakiest period. A pretender named Postumus actually breaks off part of the empire and starts his own Gallic state from 260-275. There are one or two ‘better’ emperors to keep it all from going totally off the track, like Claudius II Gothicus, who ruled only two years, and Aurelius, who squashed the Gallic state and restored the empire, and started building the first defensive walls around the city in something like 600 years (the Aurelian Wall). Probus was a good emperor, murdered by his own troops 282 near Sirmium, allegedly because they refused to build public works as Roman soldiers had done for over 1,000 years. Then we get Carus, who ruled for barely a year. Official records say Carus died by a lightning strike, but rumor and humor combine to say the lightning bolt was fashioned in a military sword factory (ahem, get it?). Now his sons Carinus and Numerian share the throne, Carinus in the west, Numerian in the east. That’s another interesting story. Numerian takes charge of the armies in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq) after the death of Carus, but Numerian is a frail individual, who contracts an eye infection and goes at least partially blind, amid other maladies. He has to travel in a closed litter, where he is murdered. The litter is carried around with the corpse in it, enabling his praetorian commander Aper to rule, until the smell gets so bad that Aper’s crime is revealed and Aper gets the axe. Now oddly, the man who accuses Aper is one Diocles (soon to become the renowned emperor Diocletian). Diocles takes charge in the east, and Carinus goes forth with a huge army to meet him in battle. That’s where I believe it stands right now."
You say: "Well? How does it end? We should know, since we are from the future."
Darwin nods. "That’s part of my changing gears. There is a mystery about how Carinus dies, though we know Diocles replaces him as sole emperor. Diocles, or Diocletian, then becomes one of the last great figures in Roman history. Under him occur the worst of the Christian persecutions. That’s unfortunately twenty years in the future, since we landed in the wrong time, so I probably will never find out what happened. The question we might be able to explore is: how did Carinus meet his end, since it is evident he actually won the war against Diocles?" Darwin leans forward conspiratorially and says: "Rumor has it that Carinus is a real scoundrel, into all sorts of nasty activities, which included molesting the wives and daughters of all his top commanders. His other pleasure was to find the basest of people, and promote them to the highest position. For example, he made a pimp the mayor of Rome. When you see his image (the Romans generally made very photographic official portraits in marble), you see the sort of immature and cruel humor in his features. Just as he is winning the great battle, he loses the war, because his top generals run him through with their swords and acclaim Diocles as supreme augustus of the entire Roman empire."
You sigh rather morosely. "We didn’t come all the way back here just to find out something that trivial, did we?"
Darwin shakes his head. "No, and that’s why I have decided to remain. I will write a history of the times for you. When I am gone, my trusted friend Marcellus will continue the work, and hide our writings in that box in the cellar. All you need to do is recover it, under the observing eye and recording hand of leading archeologists, of course, and historians will then know what caused the great persecution under Diocletian, and even more importantly, what made his successor Constantine in 313 declare universal toleration for all religions, while effectively making Christianity the official state religion."
"That seems like a worthwhile reason for our trip," you agree. "I have a question, though. There are some controversies about Constantine."
"Many," Darwin agrees with that characteristic twinkle in his eyes.
You recall from your reading of history: "He claimed to have seen a sign in the sky just before his final battle with his rival Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 312."
Darwin nods. "I won’t be around, I’m sure, but Marcellus will be there to see what it was Constantine may have seen. That’s almost 30 years in the future from now. Let’s just think about the here and now, shall we?" He rises. "Would you like to meet Constantine the Great, in any case?"
You rise too. You know you look confused. Darwin laughs. "Come, I smell dinner. Let’s walk through the passageways into the main villa." The two of you walk through the long brick passage, with its pleasant if austere filtered light coming down in narrow slits from high windows. "Constantine’s father, Constantius I, is a man on the make. He is a young and ambitious army officer, very capable, and still a relative unknown just now. Ulpian and men like him in the Senatorial class keep grooming potential leaders they hope will find their way into power and save the empire from ruthless and debauched generals and wealthy business tycoons. At the moment, Ulpian is hosting Constantius and his family. It’s almost a little bit embarrassing, because Constantine’s mother Helena is of very humble birth and they are reputedly not married but Constantius keeps her in concubinage. That’s a common practice for a man whose wife is of a lower social status. Helena is supposedly a stable-keeper’s daughter. Later she will be declared a saint, along with her son, by the propaganda machinery of the Christian church. There is your saint now," Darwin says pointing out of a second story window into a courtyard. You look down, and see a tall, dark-haired boy of 13 among some children his own age. Some of those are slaves, others girls, a few equestrian boys. Constantine stands out among them as a leader, by his stature and seriousness. Thus you have a brief glimpse of the future Imperator who will create a new capital in his own name in the ancient city of Byzantium, which sits astride the Golden Horn between Europe and Asia. He is the man history credits with ending the last great persecution and installing Christianity as the state religion.
You watch in fascination as the young man attracts a crowd of onlookers and admirers before his father summons him from a briefly opened door, and Constantine hurries obediently into a remote part of Ulpian’s villa. You will never see him again, but ironically his reign from 306 to 337 will have a greater effect on your life as a 21st Century person than the actions of any other Roman emperor. Darwin comments with a briefly lingering glance: "He’ll keep his options open. Like his father, a careful chess player, great administrator, ruthless operator who commands the killing of his rivals including the nine-year-old Licinius, son of his co-ruler Licinius whom he orders hanged after promising him safe exile after a civil war started by Constantine—a fellow to stay clear of. In the end, he is instrumental in the deaths of his own son Crispus and wife Minervina on trumped up charges of sexual misconduct. Constantine’s ever meddling mother Helena tells him that the deaths were caused by Constantine’s conniving later wife Fausta, who wanted Crispus out of the way in favor of her own son, and Constantine drives Fausta to suicide. Christian historians like to claim, with some plausibility, that Constantine’s guilt feelings helped drive him into the arms of the religion of forgiveness. And yet, he continues supporting some polytheist cults. It’s not entirely clear if he ever gives up his involvement in the cults of Mithra and Sol Invictus. I was hoping to clear up those questions, but now it will be up to Marcellus to find out for us. Or maybe it’s not possible to learn truths in such granularity. Maybe some things remain forever ambivalent."
"Maybe that is where reason leaves off and faith picks up," you offer.
"And faith is what we inherit when the facts are long dust, such as they were," Darwin adds. "Constantine left us a great basilica that was later replaced by St. Peter’s, and many other churches. Constantine and the empire evaporated over time, as did all those rival religions, not without some help from the church fathers, and we wonder in our own century what the future will hold, just like the people of 285." He adds: "Constantine was famous not only for emancipating Christianity, but also for codifying Roman law. There had not been a written constitution since the Twelve Tables, long lost by the time the republic became an empire. Constantine was too late to save the empire as he had known it. What he left the world was a Christianity fused with legalism and hierarchy. The Sack comes less than a century later, and the empire vanishes in the west, but the machinery Constantine created virtually rules the world in the 21st Century. Think about it—a third of the human race speak a language loaded with Latin. Half the human race worships a monotheistic god whose servants on earth owe their powers to scriptural legalisms in the Roman model. Just as the main temples here are also banks, so there are banks with pillars and porticoes all over the world. There are guys named Marco or Julio or Victor all over the world, not to mention women named Priscilla and Julia and Victoria, and dozens of other names that conquered people kept long after the Romans left."
You nod in agreement as you listen to the litany of a thousand ways in which the shadowy, vanished Roman Empire continues to rule the world. You offer a thought of your own that is no less startling: "You know, Professor, I get the feeling here that people don’t want to think about the future much. Rome has always come through in a pinch, and nobody here imagines a world that’s not run by the Romans. What I suspect they are more concerned about is their past. When was this golden age their myths talk about? Can they ever go back there? Just as the Spanish Conquistadores thought they might find the secret of eternal life in Florida (as many New Yorkers still do in our time), the Romans probably figured if they could just go back to the early days they’d find eternal life, good looks, and an end to their toothache." It turns out you are more right than you realized. You learn this when Marcellus takes you on a tour of the city’s religious institutions, and, away from Polybius’ stern eyes, confides in you some of his doubts and questions.
|
