Hadrian blushed furiously. Apollodorus laughed and held out his cup for more wine. Did he not realize how deeply he had offended Hadrian? Did he not care?
Lucius stepped forward. “Caesar shows great trust to keep you here in Roma, Apollodorus. And you must have great trust in Marcus, to keep him here with you.”
“No one else has the skill to finish the interior decorations of the Greek wing of the library, for one thing,” said Apollodorus, looking askance at Hadrian.
“I’m gratified to hear you say that,” said Lucius, “because, as our evening together draws to a close, I wish to remind you of the reason for this occasion: to honour my son for all he’s accomplished in recent months. I ask you to drink a toast. Raise your cups, please. To Marcus Pinarius – the best son a man could ever hope for.”
“To Marcus Pinarius!” said the rest, except for Apollodorus, who shouted, sounding quite drunk, “To Pygmalion!”
As soon as the toast was finished, Hilarion entered and spoke in Lucius’s ear. Lucius hurried to Apollodorus. “Your daughter is in the vestibule,” he said quietly. “Hilarion invited her to the garden, but she wouldn’t come. Apparently she’s quite upset. Your wife has taken a turn for the worse.”
Apollodorus, looking suddenly sober, drew a deep breath and left them without a word.
The guests began to amble out of the garden, until no one was left except Marcus and Hadrian, who stood gazing at the statue of Melancomas and rubbing his chin. Marcus interpreted the gesture to mean that Hadrian was brooding or lost in thought, then realized that the man was once again touching the acne scars that disfigured his otherwise handsome face.
While the guests said their farewells to his father, Marcus proceeded to the vestibule, where Apollodorus was having a hushed conversation with his daughter. Marcus had met Apollodora when he first began working for her father. She had been a mere child then. He had not seen her since.
As Hilarion opened the door for Apollodorus and his daughter to make their exit, Apollodora looked back at Marcus for a moment. He was startled to see what a beauty she had grown into, with her lustrous dark hair, shimmering skin, and enormous eyes.
Later, when he went to bed, Marcus fell asleep thinking about her.
Lucius Pinarius claimed that wine disturbed sleep, and that this was yet another reason to avoid it; perhaps it was the wine that caused Marcus’s strange dreams that night.
His pleasant thoughts about Apollodorus’s daughter vanished as he fell asleep. He was back in Dacia. A village was in flames. As if he were a bird, he followed a boy with unkempt hair and ragged clothes who ran through the narrow streets. Laughing and making obscene noises, Roman soldiers pursued him. The boy tripped over a dead body, threaded his way through jumbled ruins, leaped over raging flames. Suddenly he reached a dead end. He was trapped. He screamed, but there were plenty of other people screaming in the village; he was just one more.
Suddenly, Marcus became the boy. The soldiers converged on him. He was tiny, and they were huge, looming above him in darkness so that he could not see their faces. A giant hand reached for him…
Marcus had experienced this dream before, or dreams much like it. Always, this was the point at which he would awaken, shivering and covered with sweat. But this time he seemed to fall even deeper into the dream. The leering soldiers vanished, as did the ruins of the village. All was suffused with a golden light. Hovering before him was a beautiful, naked youth. He reminded Marcus of the statue of Melancomas, but this being was so radiantly beautiful that he seemed more than human. Was he a god? The youth regarded him with an expression of such tenderness and compassion that Marcus was suddenly close to tears.
The youth reached towards him. He whispered, “Do not fear. I will save you.”
Then Marcus woke.
His room was lit by the first faint glow of dawn. He reached for the coverlet he had thrown off during his nightmare and pulled it to his chin. The warmth comforted him, but it was the lingering impression of the dream that filled him with an exquisite sense of well-being. He had never experienced such a feeling before, a certainty that somewhere in the universe there existed a power that was perfect and loving, that would shield him from all evil in the world.
Who was the divine youth of his dream? There had been nothing to identify him as one of the familiar gods of Olympus. Was he Apollonius of Tyana, who often visited Marcus’s father in dreams? Marcus didn’t think so; surely Apollonius would have shown himself as Marcus had always heard him described, an old man with a white beard. Was he a manifestation of the Divine Singularity, of which Marcus’s father spoke? Perhaps. But it seemed to Marcus that the youth in his dream was a completely new being, never before seen by anyone in this world. He had shown himself to Marcus and to Marcus alone.
As the afterglow of the dream began to fade, Marcus tried to remember the face of the youth – he even tried to draw him, reaching for the stylus and wax tablet he kept at his bedside, but he found it impossible to recapture the features. The face Marcus drew was only a rough approximation that gave no hint of his unearthly perfection.
Perhaps the youth was nothing more than a creation of Marcus’s imagination. And yet, the dream had seemed more real than waking life. Marcus was convinced that this being came from a place outside himself, a world that was unimaginably vast and beautiful and full of wonder.
AD 118
Trajan was dead.
Four years of campaigning in the East had yielded a series of conquests, including the capture of Ctesiphon and the subjugation of much of the Parthian empire. Armenia was made a Roman province, expanding Roma’s empire to the shores of the Hyrcanian Sea, as were Mesopotamia and Assyria, which included the fabled city of Babylon and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, giving Roma direct access to the Persian Gulf and control of all imports from India and Serica, including silk. Trajan sent a letter to the Senate in which he declared that his mission was accomplished; he regretted only that he was too old to follow the example of Alexander and march all the way to India. In fact, throughout the campaigns, he often displayed the vigour of a man half his age, marching on foot and fording swift rivers alongside his soldiers, who worshipped him like a god.
Then, even as scattered rebellions broke out in the newly conquered territories, Trajan fell ill. His condition became so grave that Plotina, who was with him, persuaded him to set sail for Roma. He did not get far. Off the coast of Cilicia, he suffered a paralyzing stroke, then was afflicted with a dropsy that caused parts of his body to swell to enormous size. Further travel was impossible, and the imperial fleet made harbour at the small port city of Selinus. Trajan died there at the age of sixty-four, ending a twenty-year reign that had added unprecedented wealth and territory to the empire.
Hadrian, serving as governor of Syria, was declared emperor.
He had arrived in Roma some days ago, but as yet he had been seen by only a handful of people. This was to be the day of his public debut as emperor, with a triumphal procession to celebrate the stupendous conquests in the East. The triumph would not be for Hadrian but in posthumous honour of the Divine Trajan.
In preparation for the triumph, Marcus and Apollodorus had been very busy. The entire route of the procession had to be decorated with pennants and wreaths, as did various temples and altars all over the city. Viewing stands had to be erected near the Column, where the procession would reach its climax. Stage sets had to be designed for the plays that would be produced in the days ahead. Decorations had to be made for a great many banquets, large and small. Apollodorus had been summoned for a private audience the first day Hadrian arrived and had been in daily contact with him ever since. Marcus, working under Apollodorus, had not yet seen the new emperor.