Back then, though, it was still standing more or less as it had for centuries past. Of course, it had lost all its adornments, and the doors had been smashed open so beggars could squat there. In better circumstances, I’d have turned tourist. But we walked right past the temple and continued on our way. We walked along a wide street lined with the ruins of ceremonial buildings, then into a maze of side streets so narrow that even the lowish buildings there kept out the daylight. Some of the bigger tenements in these streets were still inhabited.
‘That is the remnant of the Basilius fortune,’ Lucius said, pointing. ‘I collect the rents in person, and sometimes pay my creditors with the proceeds. I suppose I’ll have to shell out something to them next month. But Constantinople and Ravenna aren’t cheap places to visit. So, for the moment, they can go fuck themselves.’ He laughed and moved on.
We came suddenly into a large square, dominated by a cluster of temple buildings. The main courtyard had once been a colonnaded rectangle. But the columns had mostly been taken off for use elsewhere. The temple, though, remained – itself apparently in all its former glory. I could see brick here and there, but most of the marble facing was still in place. It was easily the biggest temple I’d ever seen – a cylinder about a hundred and fifty feet across, topped by a vast dome that terminated perhaps another hundred and fifty feet above the ground. It was fronted by a portico that, big as it was, seemed nothing by comparison with the main building. I leant against an empty plinth.
‘What is that?’ I asked, pointing at the building.
‘That,’ said Lucius, ‘is something you have to see, tired as you are.’
He sent the slave off to order food for us at his house. We would follow more slowly behind. ‘We’ll be safe enough as a pair. It’s not even dark yet,’ he said.
We’d approached from the side. I moved back from the portico, so I could take it all in from the front. The portico was made of three rows of granite columns topped with Corinthian capitals. Above this was a long entablature. On this was the inscription: ‘Marcus Agrippa Son of Lucius Consul for the Third Time Made This’.
‘Who was this Agrippa?’ I asked.
‘He was the son-in-law of the great Augustus,’ Lucius replied. ‘He built this temple around the time your Galilean carpenter was born.’ He looked at me closely. ‘Or is he your Galilean carpenter?’ he asked. ‘I’m beginning to wonder what you do actually believe… But never mind this.’ Lucius turned back into well-informed guide. ‘The temple was almost entirely rebuilt by Hadrian a hundred or so years later. You know Hadrian? He was my favourite emperor – a man of great learning and of piety for the Old Gods.
‘Do you know about Antinous?’ he asked with a change of tone.
I knew something, but shook my head. I’d read something of Hadrian’s catamite in the Encyclopaedia that Saint Jerome put together. Since I didn’t know what of this I should believe, I waited for Lucius to enlighten me. But he shrugged and turned back to his main theme.
‘The main structure is all by Hadrian,’ he said. ‘He left only the portico. He left Agrippa’s name because he was always too modest to have his own put on his works.
‘Let’s go in.’
We walked through the portico and Lucius rapped on the huge bronze door. It wasn’t locked, but swung noiselessly open, just enough for a priest to stick his head round.
‘This building is shut until the consecration,’ he said officiously. ‘Come back for the ceremony.’
Lucius pushed his usual key in the lock: ‘I am Lucius Decius Basilius,’ he drawled. ‘I go where I please. You will open the door now.’
Another priest looked out, then withdrew his head. There was a whispered conversation inside. Finally the door opened and we entered.
Nothing had prepared me for the astonishing beauty of the interior. It was one great circular room, topped by the coffered, hemispherical dome. The light of a very late afternoon entered obliquely through a hole, or oculus, at the centre of the dome. This fell directly on the upper part of the dome, and was then diffused lower onto walls of the most glorious polychrome marble. Around the walls, taking the weight of the dome, was a circle of elegant Corinthians.
The overall impression in that late, golden light was of immense yet restful magnificence. I could hardly reconcile the people of the Rome I knew with the race that could have conceived and built something so completely wonderful. It was like the most beautiful and technically perfect ancient poem, enlarged and made into stone.
We stood awhile in silence, then Lucius said: ‘It was built as a temple to all the Gods. Now it is to be stolen and given over to the worship of the Jewish Sky God of the Galileans.’
Then I noticed for the first time the frantic work all around us. I was confused for a moment as to how I could possibly have ignored it. Workmen ran up and down ladders. They were taking down any obvious symbol of the old worship. Already, a giant cross was in place before one of the main recesses. There was a high altar that hadn’t yet been set in position.
In another of the recesses I saw a pile of broken statuary. We walked over to this. The disfigured beauty of the Old Gods pierced my heart, lifting me for a moment from my own personal grief.
‘The “demons” are to be cast out,’ said Lucius flatly. ‘When I was last in here, they were still in the places given them long ago. Now, they have been pulled down, and the smashed fragments are to be burnt for cement. The walls are to be scraped. I am told there are to be twenty-eight cartloads of corpse parts delivered from the catacombs to complete the desecration. They’ll need to burn half a ton of incense to cover the stench of death. But these will be old relics. I regret to say your friend looks set to join this lot. He’ll be a nice, fresh, convenient martyr to add to the pile and inflame the passions of the mob.’
Would Maximin have wanted this? Probably, he would. ‘When is the consecration to be?’ I asked.
‘Around the Ides of next month, I believe,’ said Lucius. ‘If Boniface is still sweating pus in Naples – a punishment, be assured, for his impiety here – it may all be delayed. Or this new plague may force delay. Or the dispensator may take his place. That’ll please the grisly old creep, I’m in no doubt.
‘Do you know, he helped stop my father’s legal challenge to the will that left everything to the Church? He was only a deacon back then. Even so, he was in thick with Pope Gregory. If beggaring his own family helped advance him in the corpse cult of the Galileans, he didn’t care shit.’
Suddenly: ‘Did you miss something? Would you have me speak louder?’ Lucius wheeled round and spat the questions at the priest who’d let us in. He’d been following us round the temple.
‘My lord Basilius,’ the priest answered, looking panicky, ‘you speak too freely in this house of God.’
‘Well, you can speak freely too – that is, if you want a stick taken to your back one night. Fuck off back to your work, scum, and stop snooping on your betters. Do you hear me?’
The priest walked away with a stiff dignity. The dispensator would have this on this desk well before breakfast, I had no doubt. But Lucius seemed untouchable. Perhaps I was too, if I kept in with him, but my own mouth shut. Just to make sure, though, that something acceptable got back, I turned and ostentatiously crossed myself as we left.
25
Lucius had his house not far away from the temple. I say house, but it was in fact a little palace – and mostly in good condition, once you got past the shabby brick exterior. We passed into a high, wide entrance hall, faced with marble that glowed a gentle pink in the fading light that came from above. In the centre was a fountain that still splashed water over a statue of a naked boy.
A slave bowed low to Lucius and removed a cloth from a little block that I gathered was an altar to the household gods. Lucius took up a gold crucifix that had been placed on the cloth and spat on it, holding it upside down. As the slave took the thing away, Lucius prayed silently and scattered a few petals on the altar. ‘I feel cleansed from that,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Let’s eat.’
Dinner was plain but good – bread, olives, a little baked rabbit, and plenty of wine mixed with clean water. We didn’t recline in the pompous manner of old, but sat opposite each other at a small table. Slaves stood behind to refill our cups.
I stuffed myself and drank until I saw two lamp flames where only one had been. I began to feel better than I had all day. Drugged cakes are all very well. But nothing beats good food and plenty of wine.
