And it was then that the wisest of my good geniuses came to my aid: Plotina. I had known the empress for nearly twenty years. We were of the same circle and of about the same age. I had seen her living calmly through almost as constrained an existence as my own, and one more deprived of future. She had taken my part, without appearing to notice that she did so, in my difficult moments. But it was during the evil days at Antioch that her presence became indispensable to me, as was always her esteem in after times, an esteem which I kept till her death. I grew accustomed to that white-clad figure, in garments as simple as a woman’s can be, and to her silences, or to words so measured as to be never more than replies, and these as succinct as possible. Nothing in her appearance or bearing was out of keeping with that palace more ancient than the splendors of Rome: this daughter of a race newly come to power was in no way inferior to the Seleucids. We two were in accord on almost everything. Both of us had a passion for adorning, then laying bare, our souls, and for testing our minds on every touchstone. She leaned toward Epicurean philosophy, that narrow but clean bed whereon I have sometimes rested my thought. The mystery of gods, which haunted me, did not trouble her, nor had she my ardent love for the human body. She was chaste by reason of her disgust with the merely facile, generous by determination rather than by nature, wisely mistrustful but ready to accept anything from a friend, even his inevitable errors. Friendship was a choice to which she devoted her whole being; she gave herself to it utterly, and as I have done only to my loves. She has known me better than anyone has; I have let her see what I carefully concealed from everyone else; for example, my secret lapses into cowardice. I like to think that on her side she has kept almost nothing from me. No bodily intimacy ever existed between us; in its place was this contact of two minds closely intermingled.
Our accord dispensed with explanations and avowals, or reticences: facts themselves sufficed. She observed these more closely than I; under the heavy braids which the fashion demanded her smooth brow was that of a judge. Her memory retained the exact impression of minutest objects; therefore, unlike me, she never had occasion to hesitate too long or to decide too quickly. She could detect at a glance my most secret adversaries, and evaluated my followers with cool detachment. In truth, we were accomplices, but the most trained ear would hardly have been able to catch the tones of a secret accord between us. She never committed the gross error of complaining to me about the emperor, nor the more subtle one of excusing or praising him. On my side, my loyalty was not questioned. Attianus, who had just come from Rome, joined in these discussions, which sometimes lasted all night; but nothing seemed to tire this imperturbable, yet frail, woman. She had managed to have my former guardian named privy councillor, thus eliminating my enemy Celsus. Trajan’s mistrust of me, or else the impossibility of finding someone to fill my post in the rear, would keep me in Antioch: I was counting upon
[Hadrian 82a.jpg] Plotina Rome, Capitoline Museum
[Hadrian 82bc.jpg] Romans in Combat with Dacians
Sarmatian Cavalry in Action Rome, Reliefs on Trajan’s Column
[Hadrian 82d.jpg] Trajan in His Last Years
Netherlands, Museum of Nijmegen (Bronze, found in the Roman Camp Nijmegen)
these friends to inform me about everything not revealed in the official dispatches. In case of disaster they would know how to rally round me the fidelity of a part of the army. My adversaries would have to reckon with the presence of this aged sufferer from gout, who was setting forth only in order to serve me, and with this woman who could exact of herself the long endurance of a soldier.
I watched them depart, the emperor on horseback, firm and admirably placid, the patient group of women borne in litters, Praetorian guards mingled with the Numidian scouts of the redoubtable Lusius Quietus. The army, which had passed the winter on the banks of the Euphrates, moved forward as soon as its chief arrived; the Parthian campaign was beginning in earnest. First reports were magnificent: Babylon conquered, the Tigris crossed, Ctesiphon fallen. Everything, as always, gave way before the astonishing mastery of this man. The prince of Characene Arabia declared his allegiance, opening thus the entire course of the Tigris to the Roman barges. The emperor embarked for the port of Charax at the head of the Persian Gulf. He was nearing the fabled shores. My fears persisted, but I hid them like something criminal; to be right too soon is to be in the wrong. Worse still, I was beginning to doubt my judgment; had I been guilty of that base incredulity which keeps us from recognizing the grandeur of a man whom we know too well? I had forgotten that certain beings shift the boundaries of destiny and alter history thereby. I had uttered blasphemy against the Genius of the emperor. I was consumed with anxiety at my post: if by chance the impossible were to take place, was I to play no part? Since everything is always easier than to exercise common sense, the desire seized me to don once more the coat of mail of the Sarmatian wars, using Plotina’s influence to have myself recalled to the army. I envied the least of our soldiers their lot on the dusty roadways of Asia and the shock of their encounter with Persia’s mailed battalions. This time the Senate voted the emperor the right to celebrate not one triumph but a succession of triumphs which would last as long as he lived. I myself did what the occasion demanded: I ordered festivities and went to offer sacrifice on the summit of Mount Casius.
Suddenly the fire which was smoldering in that land of the Orient burst forth everywhere at one time. The Jewish merchants refused to pay tax at Seleucia; Gyrene straightway revolted, and the Oriental element of the city massacred the Greek element; the roads by which Egyptian grain was brought to our troops were cut by a band of Zealots from Jerusalem; at Cyprus the Greek and Roman residents were seized by the Jewish populace, who forced them to slay each other in gladiatorial combats. I succeeded in maintaining order in Syria, but could see flame in the eyes of beggars sitting at the doors of the synagogues, and mute sneers on the heavy lips of the camel drivers, a hatred which after all we did not merit. The Jews and Arabs had made common cause from the beginning against a war which threatened to ruin their commerce; but Israel took advantage of the times to throw itself against a world from which it was excluded by its religious frenzies, its strange rites, and the intransigence of its god. The emperor, returned with all speed to Babylon, delegated Quietus to chastise the rebel cities: Gyrene, Edessa, Seleucia, great Greek centers of the Orient, were set on fire as punishment for treasons planned at mere caravan stops or contrived and directed from Jewries. Some time later, in visiting these cities for reconstruction, I passed beneath colonnades in ruins and between rows of broken statues. The emperor Osroës, who had subsidized these revolts, immediately took the offensive; Abgar rose up in resistance to re-enter demolished Edessa; our Armenian allies, on whom Trajan had thought he could depend, lent a helping hand to the Persian war lords. Without warning, the emperor found himself at the center of an immense field of battle where he had to face the enemy on all sides.