Vergil in Averno

“Of course, Lictor. I am honored by his Honor’s invitation and by your own kindly offer. However” — he delved into his pouch and disclosed his own pouncet box. Its classification as “medicine” was, in his own opinion, doubtful: but the stinking and maleficent air was less afflictive when strained through the dried spice-studded fruits and fragrant herbs. He had gotten into the litter even while the lictor murmured his appreciation at getting his own pomander back. Dignity did not perhaps allow him to bear it openly in one hand as he marched holding the fasces, so he thrust it high into his tunic and bowed his head so that his nose was almost next to it.

“Litter-bearers! Up, litter! March.”

March they did, through the grimy streets. It might well be that money did not stink. But it was not money that Vergil saw through the slightly parted curtains. He saw garbage and slag and slops which had not waited the collectors of the night soil, and people with cutpurse (and, for that matter, cutthroat) looks; and — endlessly — slaves crouching and stumbling beneath every sort of burden; bundles and bales of rags awaiting the sole washing ever they were likely to get before being dyed and clipped and resewn; saw the as-yet-uncollected recently dead, and the as-yet-unrelieved-by-death, animal and human. Saw faces sullen and faces scornful and faces devoid, seemingly, of capacity for expression; saw faces all filthy and glances grim. He saw the steamy tipped-out rank residue of the reeking dye-pots, and smelled, above even the sulfurous and omnipresent breath of “the good gods of hell,” the rotting offscrape of the inner, fleshy sides of pelts in the wool-pulleries; used-up wads of foul, fetid tanbark -

In short: all, or most of all, of the characteristic sights of the Very Rich City. He did not, though, as they marched, and at no slow pace, see the torture chambers.

But then, of course, he had already seen them.

Sissinius Apponal Casca was the gray-faced shadow of what had been a large and healthy man, as witness his own bust in a niche in the wall. Since those days he had lost most of his hair, most of his teeth, most of the flesh beneath his skin, and most of that sense of firm control of life that the bust (and it alone) presently commemorated. He did, however, both look up and, somewhat, cheer up, as Vergil entered. The Emperor Julius had of course been bald, and the Emperor Sulla, that famous Sulla, entirely edentulous, in their days of command, victory, and glory: neither of them had looked a tithe of a tithe as bad as this Legate Imperial, nor would they, had their losses in one countenance been combined.

“One doesn’t dare attempt to keep wine, once it’s been opened,” Casca said, formulas of greeting and respect done with; “not here. My butler is opening the best jug right now. Also I have fresh spring water brought twice a day. . from a spring well outside this horrid place, that is. . to use the local water to mix even the worst wine, let alone the best, well …”

Understanding looks were passed, the wine was decanted and mixed, libations poured, and the wine tasted. “It is good,” said Vergil.

The Legate’s next words almost caused Vergil to spill the wine, good as it was. “What of this fellow who is called King Cadmus?” asked S. Apponal Casca. And suddenly Vergil had an image of those rods lacerating the dancing madman’s back, of that ax severing the curly head from its wounded shoulders.

He obliged himself to speak carelessly. “Why, he is mad, that’s all.”

“There was a certain madman who claimed to be a certain emperor, after the real emperor was dead, and kept half of Little Asia in turmoil for two years and more.”

“Ah, but that fellow was merely mad enough to believe his masquerade could succeed. This fellow — Cadmus — is utterly mad. Doesn’t know the calends from the ides. Surely you have seen that. . if you have seen him.”

“I have seen him. Yes.”

“Well, then.”

But beneath the gray and wasted skin some muscle twitched; the flabby mouth suddenly became, somehow, firm. “I haven’t asked you here for you to say, ‘Well, then,’ I have asked you here to ask you what you can tell me. And by that, I mean everything.”

In the brief instant of fear that shot through him, Vergil now recalled something which had flashed through his mind as he was getting into the litter and as swiftly had flashed out of it. A brief exchange of words, that time past, with Armin, the young Avernian. . Avernian so different from almost every other Avernian, young or old, whom he had so far met.

What will you tell them, when you go to Rome?

I do not go to Rome.

Ah, no? But you know. . Rome may come to you….

Rome, in the form of the lictor and the litter, had gone to him.

And so, of course, in effect, he had now gone to Rome.

“Well, your Honor, as I understand it — merely, I have heard, this happened before my arrival — the man was elected as a King of Fools at the local Feast of Unreason. As such he was crowned. Surely a greater fool, in the old and real sense of the word, could scarce be found. And so he wore his crown, why not, and so he danced. I must say he dances uncommonly well.”

The Legate stared at him, gray and wasted face unmoving. “The Feast of Unreason was over some while since. Yet, still he dances. And still, he wears his crown.” Vergil said nothing. A silence fell between them. Neither was trying to stare the other down. Then, again: “What can you tell me?”

Vergil cleared his throat. “Have the taxes been collected, paid?”

“If you mean the Imperial tributes, they have all been collected and paid. If you mean the municipal taxes, they are no official concern of mine, but I assume that if they had not been gathered all as usual, I should certainly have heard. No, no. In this you are of course correct: a place on the verge of rebellion — ”

“Rebellion!” Vergil made to rise; the Legate gestured him down.

“ — does not bother to pay its tributes and its taxes promptly. No. . again you are right. Rebellion, no. O Apollo! this is a perfidious place! I have served in every corner of the Empire, even have been beyond the farthest realms of the oeconomia. What haven’t I seen! Villages, two of them each claiming to worship the evil god and each full of hatred because each had a different evil god; when a man from one town was rash and ventured near to the other, they would catch him and eat him alive: fact! Travelers’ tales about ‘the blessed Ottocoronae,’ you’ve heard about the ‘Blessed’ — indeed, fellows are so filthy and crawling with lice a civilized man daren’t go near them. The Melanchlanae, do you know what they do, those supposedly oh-so-sage fellows in their long black robes? Eat their own dead is what they do! Fact! Filial piety, they call it. Ha!

“I’ve been in places where one might perish with the cold if one stepped outside between autumn and spring, and I’ve been in places where the very houses are built of salt, and skin sloughed off and left a man looking and feeling raw and flayed. And one place, you know, near the Great Zeugma, richest toll bridge in the world, men are so pretty you’d think they were girls, and the women, O Apollo! the women are ugly as sows and have beards as black as yours: Facts! Facts, Master Vergil!”

He paused and drew thirstily at his wine. He began to wave his hand while his mouth was still full. Then, having swallowed, said, “But this place may be worst of all. How near it is to the sunlight and the beauty of the Parthenopean Bay. . how ugly it is, how it stinks, what a moiling mob of brutes the people are, one can scarcely breathe…. Well, well, I know they do needed work. And though they are savages and swine, they know well enough I’ve only to send one signal, and” — he blew an imaginary trumpet — ”down comes the legion. And that’s the end of that. — What do you have to tell me?”

Slowly some thought had been working its way up through Vergil’s mind, came, at last, into clear compass. It both troubled and comforted him. “But surely, Legate,” he said, “even if this man Cadmus should be charged with lese-majeste, he would draw the Fool’s Pardon?” But Casca was not concerned with that. He was thinking of beginnings, not of ends.

A silence fell for long enough for Vergil to become aware once again of the din caused by the clashing of hammers at factory and forge and the thumping of mallets as the fullers expressed from the coarse wool cloth the urine in which it had been steeped to dissolve the suint. At length the legate said, “Tell me then. . yourself. . here. . what …?”

Vergil told him as much of his task as he felt he could without much wearying the man. Casca nodded, but it was a slow, fatigued, nod.

“Not my sort of thing. I don’t know about such …” He failed to find his word, simply surrendered the attempt.