‘Prefect,’ Felix snapped, ‘your men may have committed some dereliction, but the soldiers with me have done nothing to deserve punishment.’
Ballista’s sympathy went out to the prefect, who appeared both baffled and anxious.
‘Millet!’ Felix said. ‘My men are being served millet.’
Understanding dawned on the prefect’s face, but not ease. ‘Oh no, not a punishment, nothing of the sort.’
Felix continued to look like thunder.
‘No slight intended,’ the prefect floundered on. ‘A forced measure, supplies of wheat have not been shipped to the garrison since… since the…’ He seemed to be struggling to find the right words to describe the recent years of continuous usurpation, civil war and repeated barbarian triumph. ‘Since the troubles,’ he concluded lamely.
Now it was the elderly senator’s turn for confusion. ‘Why not purchase wheat locally?’
‘We do, we do, but little is grown in Colchis. It is prohibitively expensive. Although, of course, we would never serve anything else to a Vir Clarissimus and his comites.’
‘Then requisition the stuff.’
The prefect looked as if he were going to raise some objection, but did not. ‘Of course, Dominus.’
Over the apples and nuts, Felix announced a desire to view the monuments and places associated with the heroic age, with Jason and the Argonauts, with princess Medea and her bloody-minded father Aeetes. So strong was his desire, he would set out straight after lunch.
‘Of course, Dominus.’
And when he returned he would both inspect the garrison and conduct a lustrum of the expedition.
The Spanish prefect looked far from happy at this.
Felix smiled. ‘Have no fears, Prefect, I am fully aware of the difficulties faced by commanders of far-flung forces in these difficult times.’
The prefect did not appear mollified. ‘ Dominus, it is the lustrum.’
‘No, no,’ Felix said. ‘I will, of course, reimburse you the price of the sacrificial beasts – only those our traditions require: a boar, a ram and a bull. You will be put to no expense.’
‘ Dominus.’ Clearly the prefect was still unhappy. Ballista had no idea where the problem lay, but he suspected it was not about money.
‘Make sure the attendants with them have propitious names – and that there are plenty of musicians, all soldiers, or suitably martial instruments.’
As soon as the Vir Clarissimus had sipped the last of his conditum , they made a start. A local guide led them first to the temple of the Phasian goddess on the headland. Here, they were shown two anchors – one iron, one stone – both said to be from the Argo. Next, they were led across the heavily wooded Plain of Circe. Walking the sun-dappled path overhung by a profusion of elms and willows, they all felt a pleasurable frisson of horror. Just as they had been led to expect, from the uppermost branches hung any number of untreated ox-hides, each containing its corpse.
The guide laughed like a conjurer who had completed his trick. ‘It is an abomination to us to cremate or bury a man. But do not think us barbarians, do not think we do not honour our mother the Earth – we give her the bodies of women.’
‘Everywhere custom is king.’ Felix sonorously quoted the famous line of Herodotus. This was the sort of exoticism hoped for at the edge of the world.
Ballista reflected that the Sassanid Persians, as Zoroastrians, exposed their dead too; men and women.
A brisk walk, the path damp underfoot, and they came to the palace of Aeetes. They stepped through the broad gates in the columned walls. There in the shady courtyard, the guide pointed out the bronze bulls crafted by the god Hephaistos and the four miraculous springs. The former no longer moved – indeed, they were now all bronze – and fire no longer belched from their mouths, and the channels of the latter no longer ran with milk, wine, unguent and water, but Felix seemed most impressed. Apart from a prurient interest in the bedroom of Medea – Ballista caught Maximus sniffing the sheets – the rest was less arresting; less opulent than many a senator’s villa on the Bay of Naples.
A walkway of wooden boards led them down to the river. They passed the temple of Hecate. ‘Think,’ the guide urged them. ‘The priestess Medea trod on that very threshold.’ Felix nodded, struck by the worn stone. Ballista was less convinced they would have decorated temples or palaces with Corinthian columns in the age of heroes before the Trojan war.
A suitably Stygian ferry conveyed them across the river. They crossed the Plain of Ares, the water again squelching under their boots, until they came to the sacred grove of oaks and the vine-tangled temple of Phrixus. ‘Nothing to fear now, ha, ha,’ the guide prattled. ‘The terrible draco, the serpent’s teeth which bring forth the armed men from the soil, all vanquished by your predecessor Jason from the west. Of course, his life would have ended here if not for the love of the princess Medea.’
They studied for a time a particularly venerable oak, on which, the guide assured them, the golden fleece had hung. Felix declared it time to return. He resolutely declined invitations to view the polis, its emporion or anything else modern. The primitive ferry rowed them back to the vicus and the fort.
There were two units stationed at Phasis, the Vexillatio Fasiana and the Equites Singulares. Both were notionally composed of select soldiers drawn from other units from across the province of Cappadocia. In reality, they were little more than a local militia. Even on the small campus martius their inadequate numbers were evident: perhaps three hundred in all. The prefect hurried to inform the Vir Clarissimus and his comites that another hundred men, fifty from each, were upriver in the fort of Sarapanis.
Felix was at his most gracious – he was certain that the detachment was as well turned out as the soldiers in front of him; a most creditable sight in a difficult age; sharp in their movements, resolute in their demeanour; it spoke most highly of their officers. As the prefect and his under officers relaxed, Felix mentioned the lustrum.
‘All is ready, Dominus.’ The prefect looked as if he were about to be thrown into the arena.
‘What is it? Are the animals not ready?’
‘No, Dominus, they are all here.’
‘Then what? Trouble finding musicians or men with the right sort of name?’
‘It is the ram, Dominus.’
‘Providing its entrails show the favour of Mars, it will not matter if it is not too good-looking a beast outwardly.’
The Spanish officer took a deep breath. ‘ Dominus, I do not want you to think that we have in any way deserted the traditions of Rome, or her religious rites, which have given her imperium without end. Although stationed in a far-off place, we are soldiers of Rome. We renew our sacramentum every year. We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’
‘What is it?’ Felix said, not unkindly.
‘The majority of our men are drawn from the local population; have been as far back as our muster rolls go. It is against the customs of Colchis to sacrifice rams. It is the same in Iberia and Albania, throughout the region of the Caucasus. Tacitus mentioned it.’
Felix considered this seriously. ‘Our expedition has been dogged by misfortune – Gothic pirates, storms – we have lost time and men. The gods have not been well disposed towards us. A new beginning is necessary. A lustrum is the time-honoured way for Romans to supplicate the gods in such a case. To alter the ritual might offend the natural gods of Rome. While I have no wish to offend our subjects, we have our mandata – Rome must come first. Let the lustrum be performed.’
To brazen tunes, the bull, the boar and the contentious ram were brought out and led around the members of the expedition. Three circuits from their violent end.
Ballista thought about the elderly senator Felix. He was no more hidebound than most of his order. He had been faced with a difficult choice. He had made his decision. It was not the one Ballista would have made. But Ballista, unlike Felix, was far from convinced the natural gods of Rome existed, or any gods at all.