A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  Once completely involved in all that affected his city, he would not force himself to be interested in those letters from family and friends which told him, with happy malice, that Clodius and Pompey were now the bitterest of enemies, that Caesar used and despised both, that the Triumvirate “is now considered despicable and dangerous even by the dullest man in the street, and Pompey and Crassus look upon each other through crossed swords, for one is a soldier and the other a man of financial affairs with an eye on his purse.” He could not be interested in the stories of Calpurnia, Caesar’s new wife, who was rumored to be a soothsayer and hysteric and a woman of awesome tempers. That mind which had once embraced a world had unaccountably shrunk to the size of his own suffering ego.

  He could not live as an exile. His former resolution to exist and endure vanished. He would die. He could dispense with anything but his country, which he had served with all his heart from his earliest youth, and which had now destroyed him. “All else is nothing, but the hills of home,” he wrote to Atticus, “and the sound of the dear beloved tongue. If a man does not love his country more than all other things, then he is a miserable and rootless creature, and no abomination is beyond him, no, not even treason. For a man’s gods stand in that sweet familiar soil, and where the ashes of his fathers lie is where he desires to lay his own. My dear country! Let me look upon you again and I will die joyfully.”

  Calmer since he had decided to take his life, he arrived at the villa of a friend in Salonika, which looked upon the violet Aegean at its feet and the silver mountains at its back. Ah, Greece was no longer Greece to him, who was an exile! The resonance of absolute color, which pervaded land and sea and sky around him, no longer could enchant and awe and elate his senses. In truth, it blinded him, for here he feared to die and be buried in an alien grave. He had planned his death in this place, but now he was terrified that, in dying here his ashes would not lie in Rome or on the island, but become one with this silvery dust and blow in this blue and ardent air. The splendid sun, which had once cured his illness and had burned in his very heart, became terrible to him, he who longed so dreadfully for the murky sun of Rome. The villa was beautiful and graceful, and filled with delicate copies of the statues on the Parthenon, and everywhere there was the lovely simplicity of Ionian columns casting purple shadows before them, and white walls foaming with scarlet flowers. Everywhere there was shining serenity, the sweet cry of birds, the aromatic air of Greece, the scent of balsam and grape and salt and laurel, and the vasty silky azure of the sea on which fled the winged ships of commerce. Everywhere there was comfort and peace and even luxury, and at sunset the white villa turned as brightly gold as a new sesterce.

  He could not endure it. He was like one blind and deaf in the Isles of the Blessed, and his heart did not sing with Greece but held black dirges rising from the River Styx. More and more he wrote wild and disheveled letters to his friends in Rome, reproaching them that they had prevented his suicide.

  Greek was the language of all cultivated gentlemen of Rome. But now Cicero, staggering weakly about the beautiful villa, spoke only Latin to the Greek servants, who knew little of it and anxiously watched his tremulous gestures to guess his commands. They had at first felt derisive and mocking toward him—he a powerful Roman who was now less than the dust at the behest of “that nation of grocers.” But as servants and overseers and gardeners saw his agony, their emotional Grecian hearts were moved to indignation against Rome, and to pity for this distraught man with the livid and haggard face and gray hair and sunken eyes. They became his champion, half through compassion and half through natural hatred for Rome. The overseer, Adoni, was an intelligent man of considerable learning, and he had heard of Cicero’s books as well as his fame as a lawyer, an orator, and a Consul of Rome, and the victor over a man who was detestable to a true Greek’s heart, for had not Catilina been a traitor? It was Adoni who urged the cook to prepare the most delicate viands for the wretched exile, who barely touched them. It was Adoni who stole upon him while he sat like a blind man in the furiously colored gardens, and pointed out to him the fervency of sky and sun and the white calm of Salonika and the incredible violet of the sea.

  “Alas,” said Cicero, not insensible even in torment to the kindness of Adoni, “I see nothing, for a man sees with his heart more than with his eyes, and my heart is black and dead and cold. Better to be a slave in Rome than a king anywhere else in the world.”

  With which Adoni, of course, did not agree. He had lived for several years in Rome, for he was a freedman and cherished of his Roman master. He thought Rome to be a putrescent abscess which was rapidly infecting the whole majestic earth. What did Rome know of beauty and splendor, of science and art and philosophy, of the artfulness of frieze and the passionate loveliness of white columns at noon against a lucent sky? Did the gods live in Rome? No. They lived on Olympus. He argued gently with Cicero. The Romans built bloody circuses or bawdy theatres where buffoons howled and pranced and infamous women displayed their overblown bodies. But in Greek theatres one heard the voices of Aristophanes and Euripides and Aeschylus. Did Greece stink as Rome stank? For the first time since he arrived here Cicero smiled, a feeble smile but still a smile. “We have excellent sewers in Rome,” he said. Adoni was delighted at his success. “We taught Romans how to build sewers, lord,” he replied, “but the reek is their own.”

  Cicero seized his white temples in his hands and he muttered, “The reek of one’s own country is fragrance to the exile. Give me peace, Adoni.”

  Adoni brought him roses, but the scent of them reminded Cicero of his lost gardens. He held the roses in his hands and openly wept. His eyes, once so compelling, so lighted with blue and amber fire, so changeful and fascinating, were drained of color and stained with crimson veins. His face, once so quiet and affable, so furrowed with secret laughter and humor, was the face of a wandering shade, lost and seeking. The noble forehead was diminished in its grandeur; the rough gray hair straggled on his sunken cheeks, his thin nape. Day by day he aged.

  “He is dying for Rome,” Adoni said to the servants. “For what base, swaggering and terrible Titan does he pine! Rome bestrides the earth in terror and fury, and where her iron feet pound death trickles from the wounded earth and every wall and mountain resounds with her hoarse and bestial voice.” Adoni knew that the beauty which surrounded Cicero only augmented his agony, for he lived outside it in some icy crevice of suffering. He was like a prisoner who sees a vision from behind prison bars, and knows that never again will he be free to move within it and be one with it. Let a summons reach him, recalling him to Rome, and the spiked door would open at once for him and he would love, again, what he now lacked the capacity to love.

  One day Adoni said to him, “Lord, a ship has arrived from Israel, and the Jews are very clever with artifacts of silver and bronze, and their weavers do excellent things with silks, and their oil is better even than the olive oil of Greece, and they have marvelous fruits and salt olives, and always, always, do they write books. Shall I go to the port and see what I can find for you, which will please you?”

  Whether or not it was the name of Israel or the mention of books, or Adoni’s kind concern for him, Cicero did not know. But he said, after a little hesitation, his mind faintly stirred from its lethargy and threatened madness, “Go to the port, Adoni, and—” He could not think what he desired, he who desired nothing but Rome. He continued, “You know that I live here at the sufferance of one of my dear friends and have little money. Be prudent.”

  Adoni took the big car which Cicero never used, for never did he go anywhere or visit anyone, though many invitations from old Greek families had come to him. Adoni also took with him some of the young female servants, who longed to look upon the strange seamen from foreign parts, and bargain with the shrewd Jewish merchants. The happy laughter of the young creatures preparing for their sojourn to the port reached even Cicero’s weeping and deprived heart, and forgetting his necessary frugality he gave the girls so
me coins, for which they thanked him with tears and with kissings of his hands. The two horses and the car clattered away in a cloud of bright silvery dust and a burst of laughter and song, and Cicero heard and saw as a condemned man sees and hears, or as one who is old and dying.

  He sat in the garden as still as the graceful statues all about him, and they were no more sentient than he. He heard fountains as with the dulling ear of death. Birds flashed through the radiant spray. Beyond the gardens lay the sea, soft and placid as peacock silk. A few little scarlet sails knifed the incredible brilliance of the blue sky, which pulsed with glowing light. How shall I live, where shall I go? Cicero asked himself, and his cheek was made sore again by his tears. A man spends his life, climbing painfully up a mountain, his eyes fixed on the gleaming peak, and he dreams of standing there on the summit for a space and contemplating the whole earth at his feet before he slowly descends in the gold sunset on the other side. So I was, too. But when I reached the shining marble of the peak I discerned there was no gentle slope below it, but an abyss, hurtling down to stony shadows and jagged death and desert. Oh, if I had only remained in the green valley below the mountain and had never climbed at all! I should, at least, now be drinking of the rivers of home and walking on the blooming soil of my own land. Dreams can lead to destruction, and even love for country can be a betrayal, and God is indifferent or does not exist. He threw up his hands in an access of relentless despair, and cried out, “Oh, is it possible that I must remain here until I am dead, and that never again shall I see Rome!”

  He thought that all his tears had been shed, that all his sorrow had been expressed. But now he learned that the spring of tears never dries and that sorrow has ten thousand tongues, and that grief endlessly invents new weapons to pierce the soul. The world was not the garden and the hot and joyous arena which youth believed. It was a pit of torture and no man ever learns all the labyrinths and never meets all the minotaurs. There are fresh agonies on fresh new paths, which he has not experienced before. There is always a unique enemy to challenge him, until the soul expires of weariness and lack of hope. All was now malign in the universe to Cicero. Was it true, as the Jews said, that creation is pervaded with evil, just as it is also pervaded with good, and that both are aware of man, one to destroy, the other to save?

  At sunset Adoni returned with the car and the maidens. And among them were two visitors.

  The sky was pure gold, the sea ran with gold, the air quivered with golden dust, and all the hills were aureate and every leaf in the gardens was gilded. In that drenching and golden light the man sitting on the marble bench under the myrtle trees resembled the statue of a dying man, abandoned, lonely, lost, and crushed by mortal pain. The visitors paused and gazed at him with consternation, for he did not see them or was indifferent to their appearance.

  “It is true,” said one to the other, “that years make changes in all of us. But yonder man, in such an agonized and frozen posture, is not the Marcus I knew! Not even age could so obliterate him.”

  They had been warned by the intelligent Adoni, but still they were confounded as well as moved to tears. They advanced into the gardens, and one of them cried out, “Marcus! Is it you?”

  Cicero looked up with the vague lethargic stare of a man suddenly awakened in a strange place and who cannot immediately understand where he is. The blankness did not recede, and with the apathetic eyes of a babe he watched the approach of his visitors until they stood directly before him.

  Then one of the men, weeping, fell upon him and embraced him where he sat, calling to him as one calls to the deaf, “Marcus, dear beloved friend, my Jonathan! Do you not know me?”

  Marcus endured the embrace; his eyes opened and shut. He appeared to concentrate, and then to give up the unendurable effort. He saw before him a tall and slender middle-aged man with a long gray beard, a white face, and large brown eyes which were both soft and probing. The man wore an elegant robe of bright saffron embroidered with gold and silver, and a cloak of rich purple and a headcloth of striped gold and purple. An Egyptian necklace with tassels of gold and emeralds was about his throat, and he sparkled with many jewels on hands, wrists and arms and sandals. Marcus tried to speak listlessly; his voice was a dry rustle.

  “Do you not remember me, Noë ben Joel, your childhood’s friend, your almost-brother?”

  “Noë? Noë?” Marcus’ thin and trembling hands lifted, and then suddenly seized the bare arms of the other man and a great light fell on his face, so intense that Noë was moved to fresh tears. “Noë!” cried Marcus, and tried to rise, but was too weak and undone. So Noë pressed Marcus’ head to his breast fervently, partly in love and partly to hide from his own sight that most devastated face.

  “It is not possible!” exclaimed Marcus. “I thought all was dead!”

  “God lives, therefore the world still lives,” said Noë, and he sat down beside his friend and continued to hold him in his arms as one holds a suffering child. Marcus’ hand, tremulous and searching, took one of Noë’s hands and held it tightly. “And see,” said Noë, “you have another old friend here with you, Anotis the Egyptian. Have you forgotten him? We met in Jerusalem, and when we discovered that you were our friend we became friends also.” Noë’s voice was soothing, slow and clear, as he tried to reach that besieged and distant spirit. “I have heard from friends in Rome of your—state—and decided to visit you when it was written to me that you were in Salonika. Anotis vowed to come with me also, and we arrived today on the ship from Israel. There we met your overseer, that marvelous Adoni, and begged for conveyance to you. And here we are, our eyes gladdened with joy to behold you once more!”

  “Anotis?” said Marcus in a faint and troubled voice, as if trying to remember. He looked at his other visitor, so tall and lean in his crimson and green robes, his jewels, his stately manner. He saw the clear gray eyes that not even age could dim, the dark aquiline face, and the narrow pointed beard as white as snow. “Anotis? Anotis!” cried Marcus, and life suddenly ran through his emaciated body and quivered all over his face as he stretched forth his hand and burst into tears.

  They sat beside him, he in the middle, and embraced him over and over and mingled their tears with his. The golden light suffused the whole world of sea and sky and earth; the scent of jasmine rose, and the sharp odor of salt. A wind came in from the water, bringing strange voices. The black cypresses swayed their pointed tops in the radiant light. Scarlet wings swept over the sea as ships came into port. Birds suddenly raised ecstatic voices to heaven. And Marcus Tullius Cicero sat with his friends and rejoiced, and could not believe his eyes or his ears. It was as if he had been called from the cold blackness of the tomb and was resurrected and looked upon life again, he who had lain so lifeless for so long.

  “Do not leave me!” he implored them. “Forsake me not again!”

  “We will stay with you many days, dear Marcus,” Noë assured him, “for did we not travel far to be with you?”

  “Alas,” said Marcus. “I am nothing. I have lost my family and my home. I have lost Rome.” His voice, however, was no longer listless but sharp and living with pain. “Do you understand what it is to lose your country? Noë? Anotis?”

  “Yes,” said Noë. “For we Jews were driven from our land and were captives in Babylonia. Hear what David says: ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yes, we wept, when we remembered Sion. We hanged our harps in the midst thereof. —How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.’ And God remembered the exiles and the homeless and restored them to their land. So He will restore you, Marcus, in His own good time, to the confoundment of your enemies. You are not the only exile who mourns and has mourned.”

  “And it is so with us Egyptians,” said Anotis, with sadness. “The Greeks have long since seized our holy land and made us exiles the
rein, and scorned. Do we not weep for our country? Who shall restore her, and us? Centuries have passed, and in our own land we are not known.” But he looked at the golden sky and at the west which flamed in scarlet, and his ascetic face was suddenly bright as if he had heard a promise.

  They had brought him gifts, as if knowing his agony. Noë had brought him a tiny replica of the Sacred Scrolls, with silver rods, and parchmentlike silk on which were written the holy words. Anotis had brought him the golden figure of a Woman, crowned with stars and standing on the world with a crushed serpent under her heel, and her body great with child. He said, “The Chaldean priests have told me a strange thing. Their astronomers now watch nightly for a stupendous Star, which will rise in the East and lead the holy men to the birthplace of Him Who shall save the world and deliver us from death. For so it has been promised to all men who have ears to hear and a soul to listen.”

  Marcus listened to what they said, and moment by moment his worn face became younger and it was, indeed, as if he had been delivered from the grave. He clung to his friends and wept, and they let him weep away his grief and his anguish, for like showers, his tears would bring a new spring to him and a new hope.

  In the days that followed it was if he had been newborn and was seeing and hearing for the first time, and he marveled with them at the beauty of the gold and silver days of Greece as if he were a newcomer, too, and not one who had lived there for months. Youth came to him again; he spoke buoyantly as a young man. He, for the first time, opened the books in the library and read to his friends in Greek. He praised the gardeners for their skill, he who had not looked on the gardens before. Adoni took the three friends in a vessel for a pleasure sail on the violet sea, and they fished together and laughed like boys, and were no longer men who were staring at the years of old age. Cicero’s step became light. He spoke eagerly of what he hoped to accomplish when he was recalled to Rome. He boasted of his children, his brother, his friends, even his wife. At night, he wrote furiously on new essays for his long-suffering and much-abused friend and publisher, Atticus. He found new delights in every day, and new laughter, and the servants rejoiced to hear his ringing voice. His old humor returned, and it gave him joy that his wry jokes did not arouse hostility in his friends, but answering mirth. Sometimes, without apparent reason, he would run to one or the other and embrace him passionately and kiss his cheek like a repentent but happy child. “Oh!” he would exclaim, “God is good, that He sent you to me, when I contemplated nothing but death!”