The screaming multiplied, and within seconds the stadium had erupted into pandemonium, a roar of competing cries and oaths, indistinguishable one from the other. The Syrian stood motionless in the sand, staring patiently up at the Emperor, while the defeated Gaul lay prone and helpless, his right foot twitching uncontrollably from the excruciating pain of the severed tendons.
Julian held his arm straight out before him, his fingers curled in a fist, the thumb pointing sideways, neither up nor down, as he stared down at the warriors, silently deliberating. 'What could he possibly be thinking?' I wondered. 'Is there any doubt that they both fought bravely and are both champions?'
Still he stood motionless, and the crowd became almost frenzied in its impatience for judgment. Objects began flying through the air — baskets and bottles. There was a danger of riot, whichever way Julian decided.
'Please, Julian,' I implored, though my voice could not have been heard over the crowd. I stood up. 'Please, my lord,' I shouted, 'the Gaul, too, is a champion.'
But it was as if he did not hear or see me, for he stared straight ahead with his mad gleam, his eyes on those of the victorious Leo, his lips mumbling words which only he himself knew, drowned as they were in the roar of the crowd. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his fist thumb down. With a trace of a smile, Leo plunged the sword deep into the sand beneath Vercingetorix and with a quick, sawing motion of the blade, sliced through his neck. As the head rolled to the side, ragged stump-end facing up, the right foot stopped twitching and the crowd settled into a sustained, less frantic cheer.
I sank back into my seat, horrified, as Leo, suddenly released from his effort, seemed to totter on his own knees. Letting go the sword, which remained standing upright and swaying slowly back and forth in the sand, the Syrian performed a shaky victory lap around the arena, weakly waving the heavy shield which he dare not remove for fear of bleeding to death. An attendant dressed as Charon, the conveyor of the dead, trotted out to Vercingetorix, removed the sword, and laboriously rolled the huge body over onto its back. He ostentatiously performed a short, stylized little dance of glee over his new customer, and then waved to his assistants to drag the body out of the arena by the feet, leaving a long, bloody trail as a wake. Additional attendants then ran into the ring and began hastily raking over the stained sand in preparation for the next bout.
The Christian was dead; Rome had prevailed over the barbarian, old over young, East over West. The vast trunk lies headless, without a name, in a pauper's grave on a foreign shore. I found a pretext to return to the palace before the next round of fighting began, and it was only much later that Julian himself followed suit.
III
Julian had made every effort to eradicate some of the most egregious examples of waste and excess in the court he had inherited from Constantius. The palace and its dependencies at Constantinople contained literally thousands of cooks, barbers, and cupbearers, and I do not mean thousands in total, Brother, but rather thousands of each. There were as many different wardrobe slaves as there were types of clothing: slaves responsible for the Emperor's palace garments and others for his city clothes, slaves charged with his military field uniforms and others his full-dress-parade uniforms, slaves responsible solely for his lavish theater garments. There were slaves employed only in polishing eating vessels, while others touched only drinking vessels, and amongst these there were subspecialists who focused on gold polishing, silver polishing, and crystal polishing. The slaves who cared for the jewels dared not tread on the authority of the slaves who monitored the pearls, and the bath slaves ceded ground to the masseur slaves, who in turn deferred to the hairdressers and barbers. At meals the usher slaves supervised the dining room attendants, who in turn lorded it over the waiters who carried in the dishes, and the different waiters who carried them back out. The cupbearers were organized into a complex hierarchy depending upon whether they held the flagon or presented the cup, while the most revered, though often most short-lived, slaves of all were the tasters, whose duty was to ensure the harmlessness of the Emperor's food and drink, and who were hoped to fulfill this task with more meticulousness than those employed by Claudius and Britannicus in generations past.
The numbers of eunuchs with no clear function whatsoever cannot possibly be underestimated, for they swarmed through the salons and corridors like flies in a latrine, though truth be told, there were precious few of the latter because of the vast squadrons of eunuchs employed in the palace toilets to keep them out. The excesses had spread even to the palace guard he inherited, who, though ostensibly soldiers, minced like dandies, to the vast amusement of Julian's rough-hewn Gauls. Rather than the traditional coarse soldier chants, the troops practiced effeminate music-hall songs; instead of sleeping on stone ledges, they demanded feather mattresses. Julian complained that while in the old days a Spartan soldier could be put to death for even daring to appear under a roof while in service, the palace guards in Constantinople drank from jewel-encrusted cups even heavier than their swords, and were more skilled at appraising the purity of a gold coin than at assaying the thickness of an enemy's shield. Rank cowards they were, who, as the comic poet says, considered it superfluous to use art in their thievery, so they plundered openly. Julian longed for the days of the common soldier he had once heard of, who was said to have stolen a Parthian jewel case laden with pearls while sacking a Persian fort, but who threw away the contents, not recognizing their value, preferring instead to keep the box because of his delight at its polished leather covering.
He dismissed all the palatini, the palace parasites, cutting a deep swath through the court's employment rolls, eliminating thousands of positions overnight, to the fury and desperation of the holders of such sinecures. By a single decree he reduced Constantius' palace to an enormous desert, wiping out entire departments of slaves and dependents, allowing no exceptions for age, length of service, or circumstances, even for faithful and honest retainers of the imperial family.
The immediate reaction of the people and the noble classes, however, which was one of outrage and even anxiety for the Emperor's sanity, was soon softened by his innate humbleness and simple common sense. The fiscal and judicial reforms for which he was well known in Gaul were immediately analyzed for applicability here, on the larger scale of the Empire's mightiest city, and their implementation was ordered, to the delight of the common people, who had long been overburdened by the taxes levied to sustain Constantius' excesses. So too did Julian immediately win over Constantinople's Senate, by granting it a number of heretofore unprecedented privileges and points of authority. In a gesture of perhaps even greater symbolic value, he reversed the previous Emperor's custom of summoning the senators to his presence and forcing them to stand uncomfortably before him while he listened to their deliberations. Rather, he humbly went to the Senate chambers himself, sitting at a vacant place in the assembly hall to take part in the debates as a mere one among many, and insisted that all those in attendance remain seated while in his presence.
Despite Julian's extensive reforms of the palace and the fiscal and judiciary systems, however, he somehow neglected to look closely into the workings of the palace kitchens. This was perhaps because, despite the proximity of his tiny pantry office, it was only during rare, mandatory occasions of state that he even sampled the extent of its services. Naturally, he had forbidden the staff from serving him dainty delicacies, such as the peacock tongues and sow's udders that Constantius had so adored; more often than not, he simply sent a steward to bring him a plate of fruit for his repasts, even then sometimes neglecting to eat or indifferent to what he did consume. It was for this reason, perhaps — his very indifference to food — that he allowed the dining facilities and budget to remain untouched and forgotten.