Ashes Under Uricon

Chapter 23. Warnings (383-92)

By Mihangel

Conscius Oceanus virtutum, conscia Thule
Et quaecumque ferox arva Britannus arat,
Qua praefectorum vicibus frenata potestas
Perpetuum magni foenus amoris habet.
Extremum pars illa quidem discessit in orbem,
Sed tamquam media rector in urbe fuit.

Well does the ocean knows Victorinus' merits; so does the far north, and the fields ploughed by the wild Briton where his self-restrained authority as Deputy Prefect earned him the endless dividend of deep affection. Britain may be the remotest of lands, but he ruled it as if it were the heart of Rome.

Rutilius Namatianus, On his return

I hope I will be excused if I skip lightly over the ensuing years, for more than a summary would border on the tedious.

Soon after Maximus' downfall, the Picts launched a big offensive in the north, and the Saxons were battering at the east. Theodosius sent a few troops over in part-compensation for those which Maximus had removed. But our side of Britain was relatively calm. The Irish settlement, although it took time to find its feet and minor hiccups inevitably arose, worked well. Bran and I spent much time ensuring that everyone was happy. Maqqos-Colini himself settled in an old hill-fort on the Ganganorum peninsula. From this eyrie his view across the sea to his homeland in Laigin was blocked by an adjacent mountain, which he declared a good thing because it prevented homesickness; and before long the peninsula itself acquired the name of Laigin. His lieutenants were distributed along the coast. The Irish intermarried with local Britons and in time, as with the Attacotti, a hybrid society evolved.

The Cohort was now mounted. Everyone brought up among the Cornovii, as all its members had been, could ride as well as they could swim. Theirs was a hard life, scattered in small groups over the mountains and by the sea, living mainly in tents in old hill-forts. But their ultimate base was Viroconium, which saw a constant coming and going of troops on leave or conveying the silver from the lead mines, and we were in regular touch with Amminus as he toured his far-flung command. For a while other Irish continued to try their luck on our coasts, but in the end, learning that landings always brought a small but effective force against them, they largely gave up trying. Further south the Attacotti were equally protective, and sea-borne raiders, finding few worthwhile pickings to the north of us, tended to sail right round to the south coast of Britain where there was little defence. The Pagenses, restive when policed by Romans, accepted the Cohort as their own kind and perversely, once the Romans had gone, began to adopt Roman ways. Relations between upland and lowland had never been so good.

In Viroconium itself, sadly, the new arrangements increased the polarisation of opinion. Broadly speaking, the pagans and the Britons were in favour of the federates as a pragmatic and effective solution, while the Christians, who were still increasing in number, and the traditional Romans regarded them with horror as barbarians and infidels perfidiously insinuated into the province by the back door. Bran and I became correspondingly more and less popular, as the case might be. The pagans and Britons had always been our friends, for we were like them. The others had always viewed us with suspicion or worse, for we were different, not only in our beliefs but in our relationship. Bran, moreover, was an upstart who had risen from slavery. On top of that they were jealous that we were, as they put it, toadies of the governor and the emperor. Papias, who might have acted as a peacemaker and intermediary, had left to live with his daughter in Luguvallium where, we heard, he shortly died.

The majority on the council tried hard to thwart our plans. But Sebastianus instructed it to release Bran from his charge of water and sewers, and it could not refuse. He also instructed it to appoint an Assistant Procurator of Mines to help with my extended work-load. Not surprisingly, no councillor volunteered. But Maglocunus did. He was about to turn sixteen. He would then willy-nilly, as a senator, become a Provincial Councillor. And, because the law exempting senators from municipal service had recently been reversed, he would willy-nilly become a Town Councillor too, and before long, maybe, would have to shoulder a civic duty himself. He might be young, but he was wholly capable of acting as Assistant Procurator; and Dumnorix, having finished his schooling, joined him, unofficially but inevitably, as Deputy Assistant Procurator.

"Fortunate puer, tu nunc eris alter ab illo," Bran remarked. "Lucky boy, now you'll be next after him."

Our new mines and our new miners fom the Iceni and Brigantes also took time to settle down, but their output gradually grew and, although we closed Croucodunum, brought in substantially more than our quota. While we were entitled to keep the difference, we gave it to the civitas. We could afford to, and we felt we had to. This astonished our opponents, and won grudging respect from some of them. Perhaps, they began to admit, there was something in this settlement after all. But the bishop and his cronies remained implacably hostile.

Another factor in reconciling the doubters was Cunorix. The boys took him in hand, introduced him to the bath, carefully cleared him of lice and fleas, and taught him to read and write. He acclimatised fast to our life-style. He learned how to use coins and water taps. He grew fluent in British and Latin, so that our house contained no fewer than five who were trilingual, or six if you counted Tigernac. He adopted British dress and hairstyle, and, when the time came, shaved. Maqqos-Colini, in contrast, paid one brief and bewildered visit to the town, where his shaggily outlandish appearance drew suspicious glances. He was diplomatic enough never to come again. But Cunorix, debonair and ever friendly, became hugely popular and a walking example that the Irish were not necessarily uncouth barbarians. He served, in effect, as the Irish ambassador in Viroconium and helped us immeasurably in liaising with the federates. Rather than the short-term stay we had all envisaged, he became an integral member of the family.

But he did not remain idle. He was, like Lucius before him, an avid huntsman, and with financial help from his father and from us he bought a plot in an empty part of the town where he bred Irish wolfhounds. We had retained Pulcher's land and hunting lodge near Croucomailum, and there he trained his dogs. His business built up a good reputation and throve. At home, neither the boys nor Bran and I disguised our relationships from him, and he had no problem whatever with them. But he did not imitate us. Seven years later, at twenty-one, he married a local girl called Aesicunia, and, rather than see him move out, we added new rooms to accommodate them. There their only son was born, and they named him Eriugenus, which means Irish-born.

There were other domestic changes. Tigernac and Roveta both died, full of years, and were laid to rest in our family plot in the cemetery. We had once thought them irreplaceable, but the solution lay next door. Brica stepped into their shoes and moved in with us, while Cintusmus preferred to live alone with his accounts and his beliefs and to have his simple meals taken to him. That was a relief, for he would have been a difficult man to live with cheek by jowl.

At this point, therefore, our household numbered eight, but in point of fact, so much did we have to travel, it was not often that we were all at home at once. The boys -- for so we still called them, even in their twenties -- tended to operate as a pair, and so did Bran and I.

If for some time I have said little of Bran, it is not because we were drifting apart. Very much the reverse: we had never been closer. Our love, like us, was mature. We were now into middle age -- by the end of this period he was forty-seven and I was forty-four -- but he remained as handsome as ever, as heroic, as considerate, as lovable. We drew huge comfort from one another, in good times and in bad, for we were truly a single soul in two bodies. Between us there was still unreserved trust, understanding, care, fulfilment, fun. And we still loved each other's bodies. If we were sleeping on the floor of a communal Irish hut we observed the proprieties, but in our own bed we were as active as, we were sure, the boys were in theirs. It harmed nobody. It was good, it was right, it was love at its true best. How anyone could think otherwise was beyond us.

Thus ten years passed in hard work but in peace.

We no longer personally carried the silver from the mines to Viroconium, or the wages back. The Cohort could be trusted with that. But we did take it on to Corinium, with an escort, because one or other of us had to meet regularly with the Count of the Mines and the governor. There came an occasion when a meeting was urgently needed but, the Cohort being on exercise, Amminus could not immediately spare the men. The four of us decided to go down together, and Cunorix came with us. Five armed men -- we were allowed to bear arms for this purpose -- would be adequate defence against robbers, and we felt that we deserved a holiday.

So we made a leisurely journey rather than our usual hurried one, and enjoyed each other's company. At the bookseller's we bought the latest instalment of Ammianus Marcellinus' Histories, just published as far as Jovian's death. We also found a copy of Ausonius' poems, and there among them was the Nuptial Patchwork, complete with the boys' lines which Majorianus had duly passed on: a little expanded, adapted from an encounter between boy and boy to one between bride and groom, but without any acknowledgment whatever.

"Just as well," said Maglocunus, grinning. "Old Nonius reads Ausonius, and he wouldn't be amused if he found ex-pupils being frivolous with the sainted Vergil."

But one episode on that trip deserves recounting in full, for it was a portent of the future. We talked to the Count. We could not talk to the Governor, currently a colourless individual, who was ill. But Victorinus the Deputy Prefect, whom we had not met before -- he was a different Victorinus from the one who had been Sanctus' interpreter -- was on a visitation to the province, and when he heard we were in Corinium he invited the five of us to dinner. He was an urbane Gaul in his fifties and he knew all about us, or almost all. Over the meal we talked generally about the state of the province, of the Irish federates, and of Viroconium; but once the servants had withdrawn he asked if he might put some personal questions.

"You are pagans, I believe? So am I. And am I right, Bran and Docco, in guessing that you are partners? Yes? I rather thought so. And you young men, how do you fit into the family? Because family is what you seem to be."

"That's right," Maglocunus replied. "We are a family. Docco and Bran were my guardians until I came of age and Dumnorix so to speak swam into my life."

"And I," added Cunorix, "have evolved from an Irish hostage into one of the family too. But unlike the others I'm a husband and a father."

"Ah, I see. I'm envious of you all. I'm unmarried myself, and without family. Having no personal stake in the future adds to the uneasy sense I sometimes feel of only brushing past this earth. But my reason for asking is not mere envy or curiosity. I am perhaps closer than you to the centre of power and what is emanating from it. And because I appreciate hugely what you're doing for the province, I want give you what help I can. Not just in furthering your sterling work -- that goes without saying -- but in giving you timely warning of threats to your freedom of belief and of, ah, personal behaviour. Times are changing faster than ever. May I put you in the picture, so long as you keep my interpretation of it to yourselves?"

He was very serious. Disturbed, we told him to go ahead.

"Some of this you may know, some you probably don't. It's only eighty years since the first Constantine decreed that anyone could follow his own belief without hindrance. We've moved a long way from that. Backwards, one might say. And much of it is down to our present emperor. Theodosius is a great man, and we owe him a lot. For the most part he's just and humane. But he has a ferocious temper. He acts first and regrets later. A dozen years ago, when a serious illness threatened his life, he was baptised. The moment he recovered, he proclaimed that only those -- it doesn't matter if you're not up in the jargon -- who professed the consubstantiality of the Trinity could be considered catholic. Catholic is a new term, by the way, meaning orthodox. In effect, he was declaring that Arians were heretics, and there are still a great many Arians around. He expelled all their bishops from the cities of the east and gave their churches to their catholic rivals. It caused enormous resentment. There was an attempt to assassinate him. There were riots, any number of them. In Constantinople the mobs burnt the bishop's palace. In Antioch they overturned the imperial statues and the local authorities over-reacted with a massacre. Catholics reacted in turn by torching Jewish synagogues and non-catholic churches and pagan temples."

"And Theodosius put up with it?"

"At first. And like his predecessors he was pretty tolerant of pagan practices. All right, there were occasional laws against them, but they had no bite. Nobody bothered, as long as there was nothing that smacked of treason against the emperor, and Theodosius positively saw temples as useful public buildings and pagan statues as works of art. At first. Then he began to get impatient, but Ambrose compelled him to remain tolerant."

"From all we hear, Ambrose sounds a feisty man."

"He is. I'd call him another great man. I admire him deeply, if grudgingly. He was governor of north Italy when he solved a bitter local dispute between the Arians and the orthodox, and on the strength of that he was persuaded to become Bishop of Mediolanum. He gave his entire fortune to the poor and lives an ascetic life. And, more than any lay person does, he shapes the climate of the empire because he's become, in effect, Theodosius' conscience."

"Even though Theodosius is in Constantinople?"

"He is now. But after he'd crushed Maximus he stayed on in Mediolanum for three years, closely under Ambrose's influence. And a couple of years ago he came to a turning point. In Thessalonica there was a handsome and popular charioteer who was pursuing a beautiful young boy. Nothing unusual about that, you'll say. The trouble was that this boy was a servant of Butheric, who was the Gothic commander of the local troops, and Butheric had the charioteer arrested. That was a very unpopular move, because the people there are mad on racing and this man was one of their stars. They're also more pagan than Christian, and see nothing wrong in men bedding men. Probably they saw the charioteer's imprisonment as yet another attempt by the Christians to impose their morbid morals on the entire population. They demanded his release, and Butheric refused. It turned into a riot, They stormed the gaol and rescued their charioteer. For good measure they killed Butheric and several of his guard and dragged their bodies through the streets.

"And when Theodosius heard, he was furious. It was a direct affront to his imperial power, and Butheric had been a personal friend as well as an able commander. After all the riots elsewhere, he decided to make an example of Thessalonica, and ordered the troops to show it no mercy. Ambrose pleaded with him not to take vengeance on the many for the crimes of a few, and before long Theodosius changed his mind and countermanded the order. But it was too late. The troops had already struck. When the stadium was full for the races, they closed the exits, swarmed in, and launched into a massacre. A couple of hours later seven thousand people were dead. Men, women and children."

"Oh, gods!"

"Yes. That's disturbing enough. The aftermath is even more so, in a way. Ambrose refused to meet Theodosius. He excommunicated him until he did public penance for his crime. And Theodosius gave in. He turned up at the cathedral bareheaded and in sackcloth, and remained in penance for months. It's the first time an emperor has ever submitted to judgment and punishment by an authority he recognises as higher than his own. And he used his time in penance to review his other -- what shall we call them? -- failings, including his toleration of paganism and all that goes with it. The last two years have seen three major steps."

"Steps backwards, again, for people like us?"

"That's right. You see, there are more and more Christians in his administration. Their private agenda is more and more militant, and it's rubbing off on the emperor. He's talking of banning the Olympic Games. Last year he forbade all non-Christian ceremonies in Rome and Egypt, and his officials manoeuvred him into ordering the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria, which was the most famous temple in the east. Christians have long been destroying temples off their own bat, of course -- there's virtually none left here in Corinium -- but this was the first time it was done by imperial decree. Which only encourages destruction by private enterprise. Then a few months ago he outlawed every form of pagan worship, which means that even visiting temples is illegal. Even worshipping at a household shrine is illegal. He justifies it by saying that it's not personal persecution, that he's banning only practices, not beliefs. Pagans don't have to recant."

"If that's not persecution, I don't know what is."

"Agreed. And the other outcome is equally disturbing. Two years ago Theodosius issued a law making it a capital offence for men -- as its mealy-mouthed language puts it -- 'to dispose their male body in female fashion and to debase it with the passivity of the opposite sex.'"

"But isn't there already a law to that effect?" I asked, remembering what Lucius had told me. "Fifty years old or so?"

"True. This new one reinvigorates it. And unlike the earlier laws, these new ones are meant to bite. But everything depends, of course, on who's in charge. So long as I'm here, and the governor is here, they won't be enforced in Britain. And in fact recent events in the west have given us a breathing space."

"You mean Eugenius? What's the latest situation?"

"Well, last May, as you'll know, young Valentinian sacked his Count of Gaul -- Arbogast -- and a few days later was found dead, at the age of twenty-one. Suicide or murder? Nobody knows. Arbogast's a Frank and can't be emperor himself. But he could be king-maker, and he declared his henchman Eugenius emperor instead, in Gaul and therefore in Britain. I think he'll soon get control of Italy too. So we're cut off from Theodosius again, and from his laws. Arbogast's a pagan, and though Eugenius is a Christian of a sort he's entirely tolerant of pagans. He's unlikely to replace me.

"But I'll probably be the last pagan in this post. Eugenius is only a puppet. He's got less chance even than Maximus had. When he falls,Theodosius will replace me with a Christian. So let me give you some advice. Use great caution when you go to temples. Hide your household shrine behind cupboard doors. Be very careful in your, ah, private life. Don't wait until Eugenius goes, or I go. Start now. Theodosius' laws may not be enforceable at this moment. But as soon as they are, I wouldn't be surprised if informers start popping out of the woodwork."