teach them never to ask such a question again.
Sat overlooking the adyton, dependent on the god’s house for his safety, Ballista thought it was not the place to voice his doubts over either the piety or the logic of Apollo’s words. ‘What did the Cymeans do?’
Hippothous smiled. ‘They sent Pactyes to Mytilene. When they heard the men there were going to give him up, they shipped him to Chios. The Persians bribed the Chians with the territory of Atarneus on the mainland. The Chians hauled Pactyes out of their sanctuary of Athena and gave him to the Persians.’
‘What happened to Pactyes?’
Hippothous paused, thinking. ‘I am not sure if Herodotus recorded that. But nothing good.’
‘And what happened to the Chians?’
The Greek frowned. ‘For quite a long time, they would not use barley from Atarneus in offerings to the gods, or sacrificial cakes.’
Not the most taxing way of easing one’s guilt, thought Ballista. It was just time for him to go down to the entrance and relieve Maximus when something happened down on the floor of the adyton. There was hoarse shouting in the murk. The mass of refugees huddled on the lower steps parted and the dust-caked figures of the prophetes and his aide stumbled upwards. They were both grinning.
Politely getting to his feet, Ballista spat the pebble into his left hand.
‘They have struck water,’ Selandros said. ‘We are saved.’
With a restrained formality, Ballista and the prophetes shook hands. The Stygian gloom below was transformed by shouts of good omen, husky cheering. They were all indeed saved – at least for the moment. ‘I am Apollo’s water, to the inhabitants a gift Given freely by the player of the golden lyre, in the Scythian war.’
The youthful aide beamed as he extemporized the poem. His role in the oracle was suddenly clear to Ballista. The priestess from the inner temple muttered the words of Apollo, this young hypochrestes transformed them into verse, and Selandros, the dignified prophetes, spoke them through the high window to the pious waiting below.
‘When around the temple dashed Ares
Leto’s son himself saved his suppliants.’
Selandros applauded the efforts of his aide.
‘This has happened before.’ The youth, buoyed up with relief, rattled on. ‘The sacred spring ran dry, Alexander the Great came, Apollo opened a vein and the golden waters flowed.’ He was looking at Ballista in a strange way. So was the prophetes. Even Hippothous had an odd look in his eye.
‘No,’ said Ballista. ‘Euphorbus, Pythagoras, Alexander – I have been none of them.’
The prophetes shook his head. ‘Unless you were a seer, you would not know.’
Once everyone had drunk their fill, the barrels were refilled; a spring that had failed twice could do so a third time. Ballista had the men at the entrance and up on the walls be particularly profligate with water; drinking copiously, splashing it over each other in the heat. Likewise, although the dwindling food stocks were strictly doled out, the men on view were often eating. It was important that the Goths thought the defenders were well refreshed, their morale high.
It was late afternoon. As the sun had moved down, somehow the heat seemed to have intensified. In the relative cool of the forest of columns at the front of the temple, Ballista hunkered down with his back to the hastily erected wall. Close to exhaustion, he looked at the sparrows chattering in and out of their nests, and his thoughts went along similarly random-seeming trajectories. Euphorbus, Pythagoras, Alexander. If you believed in the transmigration of the soul, as the prophetes and his aide obviously did, any of the swooping birds might once have been a philosopher or a hero. Such a conviction must paralyse action. You could never tell who or what you were killing. What sort of a man would you be if you could not kill? It was better not to enjoy it too much, but circumstances sometimes demanded it be done. Belief in transmigrated souls seemed a road that must inexorably lead to pacifism, vegetarianism, and other insanities embraced by Christians and other obscure sects of Jews. Not that they held to that sort of reincarnation.
Maximus broke into Ballista’s fatigue-muddled thoughts. ‘What?’
‘Come and watch the Goths leave.’ Maximus extended a hand, and helped Ballista to his feet.
It was true. From up on the roof terrace, they saw the last of the northern raiders passing out of the gate, streaming away to the north-east towards Panormos. The Goths appeared to have little booty, were driving but a few captives before them. Something was impelling the warriors to hurry.
Wary of a trick, Ballista sent Hippothous down to the entrance to ensure that the soldiers there did not relax their vigilance. Ballista systematically scanned the rooftops and groves of Didyma but could see no evidence of lurking Gothic warriors.
Ballista gazed hard into the distance to the north and north-east. He began to smile. Out towards Miletus, some six or seven miles away, was a tall pillar of dust. Dense, isolated; he knew what it meant. A large body of mounted men was crossing the scrubby hills. They were coming south, following the Sacred Way that would bring them to Panormos. Ballista’s smile broadened slowly. His message had got through. The governor had done the right thing. Maximillianus had diverted the unit of auxiliary cavalry from Ephesus and sent them south. One thousand cavalry, riding to Panormos, where the Gothic ships were moored. Threaten their longboats, and the Goths would leave.
Allfather, Deep Hood, Death-blinder; they were saved.
XIII
Gallienus thought he had overdone the poison that morning. He had been awake well before dawn. As he had been with Demetrius in the night, he had not sacrificed to the gods. Instead he had decided to go riding. While the horses were being tacked up, he had drunk some milk and eaten a little bread and fruit. With something in his stomach, he had gone to the one thing he had that was completely private. Unfastening the triple locks of the chest, he had poured out and taken a little of every poison that nature and human ingenuity provided.
Perhaps he had been careless. He had felt fine on horseback. There had been a low mist covering the Pannonian plain, the lights of Sirmium dim and haloed in the distance. Gallienus had galloped hard. His favourite hunter, Spoletium, easily outpaced the mount of Freki the Alamann, the commander of his recently created barbarian inner bodyguard. Gallienus had taken only Freki out with him. Sometimes it was good to be alone, or as near as could be for an emperor.
After a time, the sun had come up in splendour, lighting a wide blue sky with just a few high, dappled clouds. The Savus river shone, broad and placid, on the horizon. When Freki caught up, they had ridden back.
Now Gallienus did not feel so good. Sitting on the high imperial throne in the apse of the basilica in the palatium, he felt sick. He must have been careless. It had been ten years since his elevation to the purple. Every morning of those ten years, he had taken the poisons. His body was well used to it, his immunity strong. Emperors had died in many untimely ways but, since the time of Claudius, over two hundred years earlier, none had died by poison.
The low imperial altar with the sacred fire was in front of him. The incense burning there and the smell of horse and sweat coming off his riding clothes added to the nausea. There was nothing to be done. He would have to endure the consilium.
A formal speech was in progress. The man speaking was Nummius Faustinianus. Gallienus had immortalized Faustinianus by granting him the signal honour of being the emperor’s colleague as the first pair of consuls to take office that year. Forever it would be known as the year in which Gallienus, for the fifth time, and Faustinianus were consuls.
The theme of the oration, as far as Gallienus’s discomfort – and, it must be said, boredom – allowed him to listen, was the excellent state of the imperium. The rhetoric put it all down to the manifest virtues of the most noble emperor: Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus; more fortunate than Augustus, better than Trajan.
If only such was the case in an age of iron and rust, thought Gallienus. He considered the true, harsh practicalities of the empire. The situation was stable in the centre of the imperium. The Danube frontier and its hinterland were under control. After four revolts in two years – Ingenuus, Regalianus, Piso and Valens – no further usurpations appeared to be imminent. Clementius Silvius, the governor of the provinces of the Panonnias, both
