All The Evils: Pandora's Jar, #2

But with her hands the woman raised the jar’s great lid (and) released all these (evils), devising grievous cares for men

Hesiod, c 750-650 BC

Sunday

How does it feel when the world is about to change, and you are at the very centre of it? When an Empire is in the balance, and power stares death in the eye? When your city is in ruins, its colonnades and porticoes fallen to ash and rubble, and the stink of smoke and corpses taints the air?

How does it feel? Terrifying, sickening, desolate – and yet also exhilarating, because it seemed that something which had seemed fixed almost as the heavens – I mean the rule of the Emperor Justinian and Theodora his Empress – was about to end, and I was there. In Constantinople, jewel of the Roman Empire, in the Chrysotriklinos, the throne room of the Great Palace, surrounded by officials and hangers on as terrified as I was, and like everyone else, waiting for the doomed Emperor and his generals to decide whether to flee or make a pyrrhic last stand. 

I remember standing in the Chrysotriklinos, with its great arched columns all around and the high windows framing the hard blue of a winter sky. Between my feet was a mosaic telling the story of Theseus and Ariadne; my left foot was on the tail of the Minotaur.  Behind me, in the official waiting room, the Pantheon, worried functionaries whispered to each other, or hurried in and out on secret errands, their eyes bent on the ground. Nearer to the dais, beneath the bronze railing that divided the imperial couple from mere mortals, clustered senators with their richly bordered mantles and nervous, darting glances. Closer still stood the Emperor’s generals – the brilliant Belisarius, old Mundus and Constantiolus, the eunuch Narses – grim-faced and dressed for battle.

I remember looking up at the dais, with its twin thrones upholstered in purple and gold, and the figure of Christ Pantokrator in splendour up above, and thinking, tomorrow perhaps a new Emperor and his Empress will look down upon all this magnificence. But how much blood will have been spilt by then? What a beginning that will be for them, to reign over the burned and bloodstained ruin that our city has become. Even here, deep inside the Great Palace, we could hear the noise of the huge mob gathered in the Hippodrome, no more than an arrow’s flight from the walls. It had a hungry sound to it.

So this is it? the Empress said – or rather, hissed – at us all.

Oh – not at me, I was behind a pillar near the silver door that led to the imperial private quarters, trying to be inconspicuous. I had no right to be there. No, she was glaring at the men clustered about the throne, their expressions ranging from frank terror to embarrassment, calculation and smooth duplicity. Her glance swept over the assembled senators, lighted on Narses with his hairless eunuch’s face, hands clasped in front of him, and on Belisarius, sweating in his cuirass.

After all we've been through? Her voice dripped with disdain.

I watched Justinian's expressions change as he sat beside her, the emotions following one another across it like cloud shadows. Annoyance - what man, after all, likes to be spoken to by his wife in that tone. Chagrin – I think he knew at this point that he'd got himself into a mess of his own making. Desperation. Because, after all, the situation was desperate.

A stone’s throw from the Palace precinct the great race course of the Hippodrome was packed with rioters, roused and armed, and ready to march on their Emperor. Throughout the week the mob had burned and rampaged through the City, right up to the walls of the Great Palace itself, wielding fire brands, clubs and whatever could be found. The outer buildings of the Palace precinct, together with much of the surrounding area, lay in ruins. Decent citizens – those who had not joined the mob or fled to the provinces - hid trembling in their houses behind barred doors. Here, inside the palace, Senators clustered like sheep – or like wolves in sheep’s clothing – and the Emperor’s most trusted generals urged immediate flight.

‘Take a galley,’ Belisarius said, in his quiet, firm way, ‘and go to Herakleia in Thrace. It’s not too late, and there you can gather your strength and make ready to take back the City.’  It was clear to all of us that even the great Belisarius thought all was lost.

All eyes were on the Emperor, Justinian. Silent, he tapped his fingers on the carved armrests of the throne, staring out over us with a blank, unfocused gaze. The Empress sat silent, her pointed face pale and tight. Justinian could not make up his mind; that much was obvious. He had never been in such mortal danger, and yet all courses of action now seemed fraught with risk.

Belisarius’ suggestion had merit. The Great Palace was flanked on one side by the Bosporus, and there were imperial galleys docked there which could convey the Emperor to safety, even now. He could abandon his throne and save his life – but who would willingly abandon supreme rule over the Roman empire and over the greatest city in that empire?

Or he could stay and fight. But when even Belisarius advised him that it was hopeless, that would be suicide. We all knew well enough what happened to Emperors who fell from power. Basiliscus starved to death in an empty reservoir. Julius Nepos was slaughtered by his servants. Majorian had his head cut off, Avitus was strangled, his body thrown in a ditch. The odds of survival were pretty slim; as for the Empress, what was she but a jumped-up actress, a whore? She’d be lucky to be whipped through the City naked and then sent to a nunnery.

Watching him, you could see all this going through Justinian’s mind. His was not an expressive face; round, with narrow lips and large, cold brown eyes, it was said that he rarely smiled or frowned. But it was clear in the way he kept raising his hand to his chin to rub at it and then, conscious of the movement, forced it back down; the way he avoided looking at us but just stared at a detail of one of the arches, as if he was trying to memorise it – that he was paralysed by fear. All this magnificence, he must have been thinking, soon to belong to another man.

Go, they’d all told him – get yourself and Theodora on a ship, make a run for it. One by one the generals and senators had stepped up to the Imperial throne, heads bowed in deference, and offered their advice. Each time he’d shaken his head impatiently and waved them away, as if the waiting – it had been hours – would bring a solution of itself. Do nothing, and all will be resolved. I could see from Narses’ clenched hands and Mundus’ tight-lipped scowl that his generals didn’t agree.

I have never understood, really, why anyone wishes to be an Emperor. When all goes well, one is at the centre of power, ruling all men with a wave of the hand and a flourish of the pen. But by virtue of that very fact, one is responsible for everything. Taxes. War. The decline of family values. Drought. Hunger. Even earthquakes, they say, are sent by God as punishment for the sins of the ruler. When matters go ill, one's enemies gather like kites, and he who wears the golden crown one day may, the next, be hanging from a post with his guts strewn in the dust.

I, of course, was only a minor and unnoticed observer to these events. Even so, I was perhaps more afraid then than I have ever been in my life. When the mob stormed the Palace – as they soon would – they would very likely murder everyone inside, without asking tiresome questions. You could see that most of the men clustered below the dais, and in the Pantheon, were thinking the same thing. It was like being in a yard of nervous beasts destined for slaughter, not knowing quite what was to happen but smelling the fear in the air. I smelled it too. I admired Theodora – sometimes, I think, I almost liked her – but I was damned if I wanted to follow her down into Hell. Which, the Bishops no doubt agreed, was her certain destination.

Again, from the Hippodrome, we heard the chanting of the rebels. There is nothing, I think, quite so menacing as a mass of people thinking as one, acting as one, intent on reckless destruction. Even now I remember my stomach turning over, feeling a strange sensation both of burning heat and icy prickling of my skin - as if I had been turned out into the amphitheatre with a beast of nightmare, hatred incarnate.

The Emperor must make a decision. Otherwise, from the restive glances of some of the senators, it was possible that it would be made for him. Justinian knew it. His gaze came down from the window and slid across to his wife’s set face. I heard someone behind me mutter, The man can’t take a piss without her permission!.

I looked at the Empress, and - against all expectation – she saw me there, pressed against the pillar. For a moment she looked back at me, her eyes huge and green and more than faintly contemptuous. ‘Men!’ her expression clearly said. She stood up. Against the towering magnificence of the throne, and swathed in brocade, she seemed tiny.

She cleared her throat. Far be it from me, as a mere woman, to offer an opinion...

____________________

But I should begin at the beginning, I suppose. As you may remember, I had left Constantinople in autumn of the previous year, following the murder of my beloved protégé Helena. I was following the trail of Euphemia, my ex-lover’s Michael’s child bride; it took me to Cappadocia and then to Persia, where I entertained the crown prince Khosroe. Having uncovered a treasonous plot against the Emperor, I made my way back to the City by the skin of my teeth, only to find the news had got there before me.

I arrived home in January, when the breeze blew chill from the north and those trees which lost their leaves in winter had not yet grown the pale green buds of spring. People walked about clutching their woollen cloaks close about them, if they had them, and I was sorry for those who had not.

I went first to the Palace, to report what I knew of the schemes of my ex-lover and his friends. I might have hesitated, save that Michael was already dead and could not be harmed now by anything I might disclose.

There Theodora, the Empress herself, made me an offer. Of what kind, I was at first not sure – her words were somewhat vague, but I gathered that the Palace might (at some point in the future, if they had need, and if they remembered my existence, and thought that I might be useful) require me to provide information. Rumours. Gossip. Secrets.

I considered it, of course, as my litter swayed its way home through the familiar, crowded streets of the capital. It's true that I was in an ideal position to gather information. As a result of my former occupation, I knew many people of both high and low extraction, and naturally was privy to much gossip and rumour, some containing a nub of truth, some not. But I was by no means anxious to join the army of palace spies and informants that surround power like flies to rotten meat, and my friends are just that – my friends – not goats for milking.

In any case, having just come home to my beloved City after a long and dangerous journey in the provinces, during which I was often in fear of my life, my main thought after leaving the Palace was to resume a quiet existence, secure, safe and settled. Home – how often had I thought of it and longed for it, while I was bumping over rutted provincial roads and sleeping in flea-infested inns! My cosy well-appointed villa, with its sunny terrace and its scented lemon trees and small but well-stocked library, everything just as I liked it, and not a plump murderous diplomat or hawk-nosed rapist in sight.

And there were many matters that needed to be attended to, in any case. Lucius, my secretary and household manager, had been absent along with me; no doubt there were accounts to be checked and completed, tenants to be seen to, and slaves to be reminded of their duties. Besides that, I had friends to see, books to read, and dinner parties to organise. All in good time, for first I intended to spend as much time as possible bathing, sleeping and generally putting my feet up. Those of you who have returned home after many dangers will understand how strange and yet wonderful it felt to be in one’s own house, in one’s own city, and safe at last. In short, I was not at all sure that I wanted to be a spy.

However, there was one task – or rather pleasure – I could not put off. So on the day after my interview with the Empress, I sent a slave with a message to my dearest friend, Hypatia, to tell her that I had returned in good health and looked forward to our re-union at her earliest convenience. Hypatia -by giving me the name of her ‘trusted’ friend Dorylaeus - had inadvertently been responsible for one of the more upsetting episodes of my recent trip, in which my slave Chloe had been abducted by murderous traitors, Lucius had nearly been killed, and Euphemia and I had been handed over to said murderous traitors like so many sacks of grain. However, that was none of her fault, and I didn’t hold it against her.

Hypatia came bustling over at once with a jar of wine and a newly-baked batch of sweetcakes (under the impression, clearly, that I would have no food in the house). We sat out on the terrace, out of the wind, and at once I poured out the story of my travels. When I explained to her about Euphemia, and Michael, and the real cause of poor Helena's death, she oohed and ahh-ed in all the right places, and patted my knee, and said how brave I had been (But reckless, my dear! Didn’t you think what might have come of it – oh but never mind!). She listened with a salacious gleam as I told her of Khosroe (Don't tell me you weren't tempted, darling. Why, you could have ended up as his nineteenth favourite concubine!). And she was outraged when I mentioned Dorylaeus' treachery in more or less selling us off to our enemies (Oh, the beast! I will write to him and tell him just what I think of him!).

But I could tell, even focused, as I was, on my own adventures, that there was something on her mind. She looked as if she hadn't been sleeping well. Her face was puffy and there were dark circles under her lustrous eyes (and not just from encroaching middle age). I hesitated to broach the subject – after all, no woman likes to be told she looks tired – but it could not be ignored.

Well, I said, rounding off my tale, "so that's my story. Now, out with it. What's going on? Are you ill, my dear? Or have you got yourself a new lover?" I hoped it was the latter. A new lover can certainly put bags under one’s eyes, in the most delightful of ways.

Clearly I’d said the wrong thing. She sniffed, and gulped back a sob. I noticed that the blue of her eye paint was heavier than usual against the pallor of her skin. If it was love, it was not the good kind.

I'm seeing a charioteer... she began, and immediately I thought I guessed the story. Charioteers can be arrogant, boastful fellows, puffed up with their triumphs on the track and the adulation of the crowds, and they are apt to play the field. There is a certain thrill in being on the arm of a public idol, but they are always more interested in their horses than their women. Besides, possessing a man who is an object of desire to many other women is a recipe for trouble.

Blues or Greens? I asked, trying to look neutral.

Blues, of course. Hypatia was a devoted Blue. His name is Peter.

I'd never heard of him. Granted, I'd been away for a while, but I did used to know all the charioteers, by name and reputation if not personally. One likes to keep abreast of things.

He’s just come up from the provinces, she explained, seeing my puzzled expression.

I nodded and smiled. That's nice.

She sniffed again, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

Isn't it?

It would be, she said, her eyes filling with tears, and it was, but he's been arrested.

Oh dear, I'm so sorry! I motioned to one of her slaves for a handkerchief. Is it in connection with anything...serious?

Stupid question – of course it must be, for her to be so upset about it. I cursed myself for chattering on for so long about my own affairs.

He has been accused of murder. They are going to execute him!

Oh dear, I thought, it could hardly be more serious. I embraced her, and patted her back like a mother with a small child while she shuddered and hiccupped on to my shoulder, and then eventually she pushed me away, and took up her goblet, and drained it like a trooper. If they hang him, she announced hoarsely, wiping the drops from her lips with the back of her hand, I don't know what I'll do. I'll probably throw myself into the sea!

She probably didn’t mean it – after all, with Hypatia, lovers came and went like copper coins - but I nodded sympathetically, and we drank some more, and eventually the whole story came out.

The affair had been going on for a little over a month. Peter, Hypatia assured me, was not at all like other charioteers. He was, for a start, new to the Hippodrome and fairly unknown; he had come up from winning races in the provinces and been sponsored by an uncle who was somebody in the Blues. But he's very good,