Definitely, a document of abdication. To Antipater’s astonishment, Maximilianus was indeed not merely giving up his throne, he was designating Andronicus as his legally valid successor, the true and lawful wielder of the Imperial power.
There was, of course, the problem that Maximilianus had not managed to produce any children, and the official heir to the throne, Germanicus, was hardly suitable for the job. But Maximilianus was basically handing Andronicus clear title to the crown, not just by right of conquest but by the explicit decree of the outgoing monarch. In effect he was reuniting the two halves of the ancient Empire. Was it really necessary for him to carry the thing so far? If he didn’t plan to kill himself, Antipater thought, and who could blame him for that, couldn’t he simply acknowledge his defeat with a curt letter of surrender and go off into history with a certain degree of dignity intact?
But Maximilianus was still speaking, and suddenly Antipater realized that there was another, and deeper, purpose to this document.
“‘I have grown old in office’”—not true; he was hardly more than fifty—“‘and the burden of power wearies me, and I seek only now to live a quiet life of reading and meditation in some corner of Your Imperial Majesty’s immense domain. I cite the precedent of the Caesar Diocletianus of old, who, after having reigned exactly twenty years, as I have, voluntarily yielded up his tremendous powers and took up residence in the province of Dalmatia, in the city of Salona, where the palace of his retirement stands to this day. It is the humble request of Maximilianus Caesar, my lord, that I be permitted to follow the path of Diocletianus, and, in fact, if it should be pleasing to you, that I even be allowed to occupy the palace at Salona, where I spent a number of nights during the years of my reign, and which is to me an agreeable residence to which I could gladly retire now—’”
Antipater knew the palace at Salona well. He had grown up virtually in its shadow. It was quite a decent sort of palace, practically a small town in itself, right on the sea, with enormous fortified walls and, no doubt, the most luxurious accommodations within. Many a Caesar had used it as a guest house while visiting the lovely Dalmatian coast. Perhaps Andronicus had stayed in it himself, inasmuch as Dalmatia had been under Byzantine control the past couple of decades.
And here was Maximilianus asking for it—no, begging for it, the fallen Emperor making a “humble request,” addressing Andronicus suddenly as “my lord,” using a phrase like “if it should be pleasing to you.” Turning over legal title to the Empire to Andronicus on a silver platter, asking nothing more in return than to be allowed to go off and hide himself behind the gigantic walls of Diocletianus’s retirement home for the rest of his life.
Dishonorable. Disgraceful. Disgusting.
Antipater looked hastily away. He did not dare let Caesar see the blaze of contempt that had come into his eyes.
The Emperor was still speaking. Antipater had missed a few words, but what did that matter? He could always fill in with something appropriate.
“‘—I remain, I assure you, dear cousin Andronicus, yours in the deepest gratitude, offering herewith the highest regard for your wisdom and benevolence and my heart-felt felicitations on all the glorious achievements of your reign—cordially, Maximilianus Julianus Philippus Romanus Caesar Augustus, Imperator and Grand Pontifex, et cetera, et cetera—’”
“Well,” Justina said, when Antipater summarized the abdication document for her the next evening after he had spent much of yet another rainy day copying it out prettily on a parchment scroll, “Andronicus doesn’t have to give Maximilianus anything, does he? He can simply cut his head off, if he likes.”
“He won’t do that. This is the year 1951. The Byzantines are civilized folk. Andronicus doesn’t want to look like a barbarian. Besides, it’s bad politics. Why make a martyr out of Maximilianus, and set him up as a hero for whatever anti-Greek resistance movement is likely to come into being in the rougher provinces of the West, when he can simply give him a kiss on the cheek and pack him off to Salona? The whole Western Empire’s his, regardless. He might just as well make a peaceful start to his reign here.”
“So Andronicus will accept the deal, do you think?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. If he has any sense at all.”
“And then?”
“Then?”
“Us,” said Justina. “What of us?”
“Oh. Yes. Yes. The Emperor had a few things to say about that, too.”
Justina drew her breath in sharply. “He did?”
Uneasily Antipater said, “When he was finished dictating the letter, he turned to me and asked me if I would come with him to Salona, or wherever else Andronicus allowed him to go. ‘I’ll still need a secretary, even in retirement,’ he said. ‘Especially if I wind up in the Greek-speaking part of the Empire, and that’s surely where Andronicus will want to put me, so that he can keep me under his thumb. Marry your little Greek and come along with me, Antipater.’ That’s exactly what he said. ‘Marry your little Greek. Come along with me.’”
Instantly Justina’s eyes were glowing. Her face was flushed, her breasts were rising and falling quickly. “Oh, Antipater! How wonderful! You accepted, naturally!”
In fact he had not, not exactly. Not at all, as a matter of fact. Nor had he refused, exactly, either. Not at all. He had given Caesar no real answer of any sort.
In some discomfort he said, “You know that I’d be delighted to marry you, Justina.”
She looked perplexed. “And the part about following Caesar to Dalmatia?”
“Well—” he said. “I suppose—”
“You suppose? What other choice do we have?”
Antipater hesitated, fumbling in the air with his out-spread hands. “How can I say this, Justina? But let me try. What Caesar is asking is, well—cowardly. Shameful. Un-Roman.”
“Perhaps so. And if it is, so what? Better to stay here and die like a Roman, do you think?”
“I’ve already told you, Andronicus would never put him to death.”
“I’m talking about us.”
“Why would anyone harm us, Justina?”
“We’ve been through all this. As you yourself pointed out last week, you’re an official of the court. I’m a Greek citizen who’s been consorting with Romans. Surely there’d be a purge of the old bureaucracy. You wouldn’t be executed, I guess, but you’d certainly be given a hard time. So would I. A worse time than you, I’d think. You’d be reassigned to some grubby menial job, maybe. But they’d find some very nasty uses for someone like me. Conquering soldiers always do.”
It was hard for him to meet the implacable fury of her eyes.
All yesterday afternoon since he’d taken his leave of Caesar in the Indigo Office, and most of today as well, his head had been swirling with ringing heroic phrases—in the end, one must comport oneself as a Roman must, or be seen to be nothing at all—our great heroic traditions demand—history will never forgive—a time comes when a man must proclaim himself to be a man, or else he is nothing more than—how shameful, how unutterably and eternally shameful, it would be to affiliate myself with the court of so despicable a coward, an Emperor who—and much more in the same vein, all leading up to his grand repudiation of the invitation to accompany Maximilianus into a cozy Dalmatian retirement. But now he saw only too clearly that all that was so much nonsense.
Our great heroic traditions demand, do they? Perhaps so. But Maximilianus Caesar was no hero, and neither was Lucius Aelius Antipater. And if the Emperor himself could not bring himself to behave like a Roman, why should his Master of Greek Letters? A man who was no sort of warrior, only a clerk, a man of books, and not all that much of a Roman, either, not so that Cicero or Seneca or Cato the Censor would have believed. They would have laughed at his pretensions. You, a Roman? You with your oily Greek hair and your little snub nose and your ballet-dancer way of walking? Anybody can call himself a Roman, but only a Roman can be a Roman.