Ballista pointed to the imperial images. 'Which? Stones or daemons?'
The youth snorted his contempt. 'I wish to be with Christ!'
Ballista smiled a savage smile. 'I will send you to him directly.'
Laughter rang round the court. Ballista felt a strong wave of disgust; at the obstinate zealotry of the Christians, at the cruel, sycophantic laughter of the courtiers, at his own role in all this. 'Enough,' he shouted. 'Take him away!'
XVII
The palace of the Proconsul had the best site in Ephesus: facing west, high on the central mount, perched above the theatre. If the view did not inspire you, there was something wrong with your soul. To the left, the neighbouring mountain range curled round towards the sea, slanting down before rearing up in a last, solitary peak topped with a bastion. The red-tiled roofs of close-packed houses climbed the lower slopes; above, the hard, grey limestone poked through the brush. Ahead, your eye soared down dizzily over the steep bank of the theatre to the wide, column-lined road that ran ruler-straight to the curved harbour with its toy-sized ships and on to the glittering Aegean beyond. Off to the right meandered the mud-coloured Caystros, through the broad, flat plain the river's own silt had created, and, beyond, usually blue with distance, were more mountains.
The best site in the city but, Ballista thought, everything comes at a price. The path down was steep. A close-laid buttress wall to the left, a vertiginous drop to the right; to start, the path ran above the theatre. Gesturing at the tiered seating, the northerner said that, long ago, a Christian holy man and wonder worker had been tried there. Despite being both an ex-tax collector and a notorious troublemaker, somehow the man had got off. His name was Paul, Saul… or something like that.
Demetrius snorted with derision. For his own good, Ballista thought, I must give him his freedom soon, or rein him in.
'Christians to the lion,' said the Greek youth. 'A real holy man performed a genuine miracle there. No Christian trickery. There was plague in the town. The Ephesians begged Apollonius of Tyana to come to them and be the physician of their infirmity. He led them into the theatre. There was an old blind beggar sat there, squalid, clad in rags, a wallet with a scrap of bread by his side. Apollonius spoke to the men of Ephesus: "Pick up as many stones as you can and hurl them at this enemy of the gods." The Ephesians were shocked at the idea of murdering a stranger. The beggar was praying and pleading for mercy. But the man of Tyana urged them on. He was implacable. He cast the first stone himself. Soon, stones were flying. As the first ones hit, the beggar glared at them, his blindness gone. There was fire in his eyes. Then they recognized him for what he was – a daemon. He turned this way and that, but there was no escape. The stones flew thick and fast – so many they heaped a cairn over him. Apollonius told the Ephesians to remove the stones. With trembling hands, they did. And there lay a huge hound. It had the shape of a Molossian hunting mastiff, but it was the size of a lion. Pounded to a pulp, it was vomiting foam, as mad dogs do. The plague-bringer was no more.'
'Great stuff,' said Ballista. 'Although I do not remember the holy man casting the first stone in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius.'
'My rhetoric may have overcome me,' admitted Demetrius.
'I do not believe it,' said Maximus, 'a Greek getting carried away with his own words.'
'You know how it is.' Demetrius grinned.
'Me? Gods below, never in life,' the Hibernian answered.
As it neared the main thoroughfare, the path became so steep that it was cut into steps. The three men walked carefully, in single file. As they emerged on to the Embolos, the sacred way, Ballista looked to the left, towards the civic centre and the scene of his distasteful judicial duties of the day before. By one of those quirks that can happen even in the most populous of cities, there was not a soul in sight. Between its columns and honorific statues, the road ran away up the slope, broad and white, beneath a sky of intense blue.
Turning to the right to face downhill, Ballista now saw the people. Above their bobbing heads, just beyond where the Embolos appears to end but actually turns sharp right, was the library of Celsus. He and the others walked down to it and stopped in the square in front.
The library was not just a memorial to Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, benefactor of Ephesus, magnate of nearby Sardis, consul of distant Rome, it was also his final resting place. His son, Aquila, had had it designed so that Celsus could be buried somewhere beneath it.
Ballista had never really studied it before. Now, between yesterday's unsettling task and the one he would soon have to undertake, he paused and studied the library-tomb. On either side of the steps were statues of Celsus on horseback. In one he was dressed as a Greek, in the other as a Roman. There were four standing statues on each level of the two-storey facade. Ballista moved closer and read the inscriptions on the lower ones. Sophia, Arete, Ennoia and Episteme – female personifications of wisdom, virtue, good sense and knowledge – all most suitable qualities for a member of the Greek elite. Craning his head back, Ballista looked at the upper storey. Up there were three more versions of Celsus, clad as a Roman general, a Roman magistrate and a Greek civic dignitary. The final statue was the dutiful son Aquila, also in the guise of a senior Roman military commander.
It was odd, thought Ballista, how these rich Greeks who prospered under Roman rule clung to their Greekness. Even those such as Celsus, who entered into the heart of the imperium, commanding Roman armies, holding the highest Roman offices, being counted a friend of emperors, wished to be remembered as much as a Greek as a Roman. Read in a certain way, the facade almost seemed to say that all the Roman worldly success of Celsus was underpinned by his possession of distinctively Greek attributes. Ballista smiled as he thought how all of them, Greeks and Romans alike, would have him forget his own northern roots – except, of course, when they wished to despise him for them.
At a right angle to the library was the southern gate of the agora, its stones light pink in the sunshine. Again, Ballista read the prominent inscriptions. They proudly boasted that the agora had been built by two freedmen of the imperial family of the first Roman emperor Augustus. They had been called Mazeus and Mithridates. Ballista wondered how the local Greek worthies would have reacted to its construction. Here was the new order in stone. Right in the heart of an ancient Greek city was a monument dedicated to the glory of the house of the Roman autocrat, paid for by two ex-slaves, whose very names revealed their eastern origins. Being Greek under Rome seemed always to involve many, necessary compromises.
A thought struck Ballista. He turned round. There, on the other side of the square, was a grandiose monument to a Roman victory over Parthia, the eastern power that had preceded the Sassanid Persians. The Parthians were sculpted to look suitably barbaric, the Roman warriors rather like Greeks. Perhaps if you were Greek, there were always ways to make yourself feel better about reality.
Ballista walked through the gate. They followed the course of the sun round the agora, walking in the cool of the shady porticos. Everything you could imagine appeared to be available for hard currency. Apart from the usual foods, oil and wine, both essential and luxurious, the Ephesian agora seemed to specialize in colourful clothing transported from Hierapolis and Laodikeia and locally produced perfumes and silverware.
As they passed a line of shops, each with a silversmith on a stool outside industriously tapping out souvenirs of Great Artemis of the Ephesians, Ballista thought he recognized another shopper. The man – his clothes proclaimed him a local notable – took one look at Ballista and hurried off diagonally across the agora. In moments he was lost from view behind the equestrian statue of the emperor Claudius which stood in the middle of the open space.