“Poor father,” said Apollodora. “He’s so miserable.”
“He doesn’t say that.”
“Because he’s afraid to. That’s the saddest thing of all.”
Marcus had to agree. His father-in-law’s vanity and bombast had sometimes been difficult to take, but Marcus cringed to see the once-proud man reduced to the status of a miscreant servant, desperate to return to the emperor’s good graces.
“What’s the other letter?” Marcus said.
Apollodora handed it to him. It bore the imperial seal in red wax, and the parchment was of the high quality that Hadrian always used when corresponding with Marcus, which he did quite often, using the new imperial postal service, which was far quicker and more reliable than the piecemeal system it replaced.
Marcus broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. The letter came from a far northern outpost in Britannia. He quickly scanned the letter for any mention of his father-in-law, but saw none.
As usual, Hadrian inquired about progress on the temple and offered highly detailed instructions on how the work was to be carried out. He described his tour of Gaul and Britannia, which had succeeded in making him known to the legions with whom he had previously had no contact. Hadrian relished his reputation as a soldier’s soldier, able to endure hardship alongside his troops; like Trajan, he was not afraid to sleep on the ground, march for days, ford rivers, and climb mountains. He also included a few sketches he had made, studies for a massive wall that would cross the entire breadth of the island of Britannia at its narrowest point. To man this fortified wall he would need at least fifteen thousand auxiliaries from all over the empire.
“A wall across Britannia?” said Apollodora, looking at the drawings over his shoulder. Her dismissive tone made her sound uncannily like her father. “Trajan wouldn’t have built a wall. He would have conquered whatever lay beyond.”
“Only if the barbarians had something worth looting,” said Marcus.
The wall was emblematic of the emperor’s new frontier policy. Hadrian believed that there was no longer any incentive to push outwards in conquest; nothing remained that was worth conquering except the western provinces of Parthia, which Trajan had briefly seized but could not control.
Under Hadrian, a consensus was forming that the empire had reached a natural limit; the wild, impoverished lands beyond its borders offered little to loot, and instead were full of potential looters. It was Hadrian’s goal not to conquer these people but to keep them out. His task was to maintain peace and prosperity within the existing boundaries of the empire.
Almost as an afterthought, Hadrian mentioned that he had dismissed his private secretary, Suetonius, who would returning from Britannia to private life in Roma. Marcus read aloud: “‘I realize that you have been on friendly terms with this person, so I wish to tell you this news myself. You will doubtless hear rumours regarding the reason for his dismissal. The fact is that this person developed an inappropriate professional relationship with the empress.’”
“What in Hades does that mean?” said Apollodora.
“Court politics,” said Marcus. “Sabina has her courtiers and Hadrian has his, and when relations between the emperor and empress are strained, those courtiers sometimes find themselves in an awkward spot. Anyone too closely allied with Sabina runs the risk of being dismissed by Hadrian. I suspect that’s what’s happened to Suetonius.”
“My father, and now Suetonius – and there have been quite a few others,” said Apollodora. “Men whose lives have been ruined because they said a wrong word or gave the emperor a wrong look.”
“I hardly think Suetonius’s life is ruined,” said Marcus. “He’s coming back to Roma, isn’t he? He’ll finally have time to finish that history he’s always dreamed of writing, about the first Caesars.”
Apollodora gazed despondently at the letter. “No mention of my father, then, or the treatise he sent to Hadrian?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What will happen if you cross the emperor, husband?”
Marcus blew out his cheeks. “I shall try my best not to do so.” He wanted to tell her there was no cause for fear, but in truth, there was a harsh and even petty side to Hadrian. Marcus told himself that the situation could be much worse. Except for the small number of executions that took place at the outset of his reign, Hadrian had kept his word to kill no senators, and his punishments were mild compared to those of some of his predecessors. When Marcus recalled the stories his father had told him about the reign of Domitian – who had forced Lucius Pinarius to face a lion in the arena, and whose favorite method of interrogation had been burning men’s genitals – the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian seemed gentle by comparison.
Still, Marcus was acutely aware that he served at Hadrian’s pleasure. In a state ruled absolutely by one man, no matter how enlightened that man might be, every other man was at his mercy. Marcus felt a sudden rush of anxiety, thinking how far he had risen in life and how much he had to lose. He calmed himself by touching the fascinum at his breast and thinking of the nameless god who visited him in dreams.
His distracted gaze fell on the Colossus beside the amphitheatre, dazzling under the sunlight. He glanced again at the drawing of the Luna statue in Apollodorus’s letter, and then at the nearby spot the statue was intended to occupy. Try as he might, he could not envision the Luna statue looming over him; he saw only empty sky. The masterpiece that was to be Apollodorus’s crowning achievement, his monument for the ages – would it ever be built?
Apollodora began to weep. Tears ran down her cheeks. Little Lucius began to cry as well, filling that air with loud wailing.
Marcus looked on, feeling helpless to comfort either of them. He whispered a prayer. “God of the dream who protects me, give me a great work to do, and give me an emperor who will let me do it!”
A.D. 125
The city was abuzz with excitement at the emperor’s long-awaited return to Roma. What had begun as a trip to the northern provinces had turned into a grand tour that spanned the empire, taking him from Britannia down to the Pillars of Hercules and Mauretania – where he put down a bloody revolt – then across the Mediterranean Sea to Asia Minor, and then to Greece, where Hadrian showered favours on the city of Athens, restoring it as a great seat of learning by endowing it with a new library as well as a forum and an arch and restoring the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
Now, at last, Hadrian was back in Roma, and on this day he was to visit the house of Marcus Pinarius.
The household was in a frenzy of last-minute preparations. Everything had to be made perfect. Marcus thought how very different this visit felt from the first time Hadrian had visited the house, some twelve years ago, when Marcus’s father had hosted a dinner party to honour Marcus for his work on Trajan’s Column. Hadrian had been an honoured guest on that occasion, but today, one would have thought that a god was about to come calling. Apollodora was driving the slaves to tidy every corner, prune every bush in the garden, and polish every marble surface to a lustrous shine. Marcus knew what she was thinking: if only they could make the right impression on the emperor, perhaps he might yet relent in his banishment of her father, who continued to languish in Damascus.
“You will bring up the subject, won’t you?” Apollodora asked him, for the tenth time that day.
“I’ll try, wife. If the right moment arises-”
Amyntas came running. “Master, they’re coming up the street! They’ll be at the door any moment!”
“Calm yourself, Amyntas. Take a deep breath. When you answer the door-”
“I, Master? I’ m to answer the door?”
Marcus smiled. Who else in the household was more suitable to greet the emperor than the handsomest of his young slaves? “Yes, Amyntas, you.