All in all, the northerner had been glad to be on the boat. It was a time out of time. Soothed by the ever repeated, hypnotic rhythms of life on a warship, he felt urgency, even responsibility itself, slip away. He was rather like a boy unexpectedly released from school.
Ballista had given out that their stay on Cyprus was in order to honour the senatorial governor – having taken his hospitality on the voyage east, it would be a terrible snub not to visit him on the return.
At least one member of Ballista's familia was delighted. All his young life Demetrius had wanted to see the ancient shrine of Aphrodite at Old Paphos. Although it was just down the coast from the seat of the Roman governor in the new city, the pressing urgency of their mission to Arete three years earlier – everyone continuously crying, 'No time to lose' – had prevented him up until now.
This time, Demetrius had had a whole day; more than enough time to ride there, study the antiquities, worship the goddess, consult her oracle, and return. Ballista had let himself be persuaded to go as well. Actually, the cloak of religion was welcome; the governor, although well meaning, was a crushing bore, much given to lengthy expositions on the genealogy of the Roman elite and the size and location of their land holdings – 'Your wife's family, my dear Vicarius, of course must be kinsmen of the Julii Liciniani, who have such broad estates in Cisalpine Gaul up near the lakes around Sermio.' The governor was far too well mannered to give any hint that he had noticed the barbarian origins of his guest, yet it had been a relief to escape from him.
Ballista and Demetrius had ridden alone, leaving Maximus and the others to their own devices. Cyprus was a quiet province, far from any enemies and with no great reputation for bandits, and it was almost two years since the three assassination attempts many miles away on the mainland at Antioch. Ballista was certain in the knowledge that his would-be killers had been hired by Quietus and Macrianus the Younger but still had no idea why they had not tried again. And, confusing matters further, he did not understand why their father, the powerful Macrianus the Lame had wanted him sent to Ephesus. Certainly he did not like the feeling of being an ordinarius, a pawn, in a game of latrunculi, robbers – moved here and there across the board with no idea of his role in the game.
The Cyprian plain sloping up from the sea to the parched-looking brown foothills was green even in August. The road east had been empty, the only sounds the clop of their horses' hooves and birdsong. 'Where Aphrodite treads,' Demetrius quoted, 'grasses and flowers spring up, doves and sparrows fly around her head.'
When they reached the sanctuary, Demetrius had loved everything about it: the cult object of the black stone fallen from heaven, the open-air altar on which no rain ever fell and where a sacred fire burned for ever, the glitter and antiquity of the many offerings. Demetrius happily paid his money and went to wait for a private oracle. Less keen on gods, even those he had grown up with, Ballista had found some shade and looked at the sun sparkling on the sea a couple of miles away.
When the Greek youth had returned, his mood had changed to one of anxious introspection. Ballista could recall clearly how their conversation had gone.
'Priests often misinterpret the will of the gods,' he had said.
'Not in this case,' the boy had replied glumly. 'The priests here are all descended from Cinyras who founded the sanctuary. Everyone knows their reputation. I paid for them to inspect the liver of a kid goat- expensive, but it ensures infallibility. A long time ago, they correctly foretold that Titus would accede to the throne.'
'I know. I also have read the Histories of Tacitus.'
'I am sorry, Kyrios. I did not mean to imply…'
'It is all right. I only wanted to make you less anxious about whatever the goddess had foretold of your future.'
'The answers to the questions about me were propitious. It was the answers about you – you and your friend Aurelian – which trouble me. They said the goddess promised both of you the highest glory, but that it would vanish in a moment.'
Ballista had laughed. 'Glory – and what do your beloved philosophers make of it? For most, it is no more than a threadbare cloak, the worthless shouts of the mob. It is better gone. Anyway, its loss does not have to mean exile or death. Think of our situation. It may mean no more than that the emperor will praise me for persecuting the Christians of Ephesus, then his words will be quickly forgotten.'
On the ride back, Ballista had put himself out to cheer the youth, but it was not until they were approaching the suburbs of New Paphos and he told the story of the embarrassing incident in a backstreet in Massilia that had happened to Maximus a long time ago that Demetrius had brightened. It was a favourite story in the familia. Ballista told it well, with free addition of dialogue and anatomical detail. As they had crossed the breezy headland to the palace of the governor, Demetrius had begun to laugh.
With these memories turning in his mind, Ballista walked to the prow of the trireme. The Venus was nosing into the great harbour of Ephesus. Progress was slow. There was a great deal of traffic in the fairway, from massive merchantmen out of Alexandria and Ostia, down to minuscule local fishing boats. It was good that the fear of Gothic pirates out of the Black Sea had not strangled trade in the Aegean.
Behind him, Ballista could hear Maximus and Demetrius talking. The Hibernian was teasing the young Greek.
'And what makes the temple of Artemis here better than any of the other hundreds or thousands of temples of Artemis scattered all over the place?'
'Even a barbarian must know it is one of the seven wonders of the world? It is its size and beauty that makes it so. Its inviolable right of asylum. The power that comes from being the favourite dwelling on earth of the goddess.' The Greek boy's voice rang with the tones of a true believer.
'Sure, but in the back of my barbarian mind is there not a story that it once all burned down?'
'It is true. Long ago, a madman committed that terrible sacrilege. Great Artemis of the Ephesians had gone north to attend the birth of Alexander the Great.'
'Was that not terrible careless of her? It being her favourite place and all.'
The Venus lay motionless in the water, resting on her oars. Large mudflats had narrowed the entrance to the harbour. Many vessels were waiting to enter or leave. The military engineer in Ballista considered the difficulties of closing the harbour. There would be a serious problem putting a chain across, with the oozing reed beds providing no secure footing for the towers and winches necessary on either side. Dredging would be the only answer. Ruinously expensive and hideously time-consuming, but the only answer. As it was, with the port wide open and all the wealth bobbing about on board the moored ships and stored along the quays, if he were the leader of a Gothic pirate fleet, he would be sorely tempted. A moonless night. A quick raid. Cut out one or two of the richer-looking roundships. Be gone before dawn. But if the fleet were big enough, what then? What of the city itself, let alone the famed wealth of the temple of Artemis just beyond? Flavius Damianus, the scribe to the Demos, stood waiting dutifully on the quay. He looked around him. It was the festival of the Portunalia, the dock-hands' holiday, but everything seemed in order. The retinue behind him was sober and quiet. It was of just the right number and quality – enough to show respect for rank but not so exalted as to give the man arriving ideas above his station. Flavius Damianus looked up at the harbour gate, with its triple arches flanked by tall Ionic columns. He surveyed the white marble quay curving away on either side. It was all good, possibly too good for a barbarian. Marcus Clodius Ballista: from his name you would not know he was a barbarian. The praenomen and nomen might indicate that he had been given Roman citizenship by Marcus Clodius Pupienus, one of the two emperors that had ruled for a few months after the killing of the tyrant Maximinus Thrax. The cognomen, Ballista, was a civilized name, if unusual.
The scribe to the Demos permitted himself a slight smile. Words can mislead. His own title might suggest that he was a minor functionary and that Ephesus was a democracy. Both impressions would be very wrong. Flavius Damianus was happy to avow publicly that his was the magistracy that carried the weightiest duties and thus, naturally, the highest honour in the city. As for Ephesus, of course it was a democracy in name, but it was one where there was a property qualification to attend the assembly and whose agenda was strictly controlled by the council, the Boule. There was a high joining fee to pay when elected to the Boule. Some four hundred and fifty men – rich men, men of prudence, men who served for life – controlled the politics of Ephesus, the city of Great Artemis. Flavius Damianus knew from his wide reading of the ancients that the well-ordered government of modern Ephesus was little like the ochlocracy, the mob rule, for which the Athenians had invented the term democratia, and of which they had been so proud in the days of Hellenic freedom long before the coming of Rome, before even the rise of Macedon under Alexander the Great and his father Philip.
The imperial trireme carrying the new Vicarius to the Proconsul of Asia had cleared the confusion at the
