After some nine miles, the Sacred Way had dipped down to the sea at Panormos. There was no settlement there. But, in better times, boats would have been tied up to the jetties, disembarking pilgrims bound for the oracle at Didyma. There would have been a bustle of guides and hucksters vying for their money. Panormos had been deserted.
Ballista and the others had sat their horses, high on a bluff. The wind had tugged at their clothes, the smell of the sea in their nostrils. They had gazed out into the Aegean. Sure enough, across the shimmering surface, hazy, but at no great distance to the north, had been the distinctive double-prowed shapes. The Gothic longboats were no more than an hour behind.
They had ridden the last two and a bit miles south-east flanked by seated gods and priests in marble, by great crouching lions. The weathered faces of the statues, man-like and bestial, expressed the complete indifference of antiquity.
At Didyma, there was an arch with a gate across the Sacred Way. But there were no walls. The holy site was delineated merely by boundary stones. The god had not protected it from Persians or Gauls: Ballista doubted he would make a better fist of it with the Goths.
A strange deputation was waiting under the arch; a mix of robed priests and locals with makeshift weapons.
‘Health and great joy.’ The leader wore a wreath of bay leaves bound with white cloth. He carried a wand.
‘Health and great joy.’ Ballista dismounted, handed the reins to his slave. ‘I am Marcus Clodius Ballista, and I have come with my amici and these soldiers to help you against the Goths.’
The priest beamed – an unusual reaction for a civilian encountering soldiers, a certain sign of the terrible fear abroad. ‘Welcome, Marcus Clodius Ballista. Welcome indeed.’ Perhaps he was partly reassured by Ballista’s equestrian gold ring and his excellent Attic Greek, or it could be simply that a small party of Roman soldiers was indeed welcome in the face of a large horde of barbarian warriors.
‘I am the prophetes of the Lord Apollo at Didyma. My name is Selandros, son of Hermias, of the Euangelidai.’ The annual high priest was from one of the oldest and most prestigious families of Miletus. ‘This is the hydrophor of Artemis, my daughter, Alexandra.’ The virgin priestess was not veiled, but she kept her eyes demurely down. She was beautiful. Well, thought Ballista, the prophetes will fight – his worst fear would be a gang of hairy barbarians taking turns on top of his daughter. Pausanias’s description of the Gauls sacking Delphi came into Ballista’s mind. Worse even than the Persians, they had raped women, girls and boys to death. In one of those very rare flashes of total insight, Ballista knew that Selandros had read the same passage, that it had been in his thoughts also – poor bastard. Ballista felt a sudden quickening, his mind running back to his youth and the girl in the village of the Rugii when he was in his father’s war band, back a couple of years to Roxanne, the Persian king’s concubine at Soli. He savagely suppressed the atavistic urge. Years before, in Arelate, he had known a woman, a Corinthian whore, who had claimed that all men were rapists. He had thought her mad; now he was not so sure. Possibly the Greeks and Romans were not totally wrong endlessly to preach self-control. Ballista knew he had done bad things, had condoned many others, but a man can change. He was not tied to his nature or his fate like a dog to a cart.
‘And this is the hypochrestes, and the paraphylax.’ The former, Selandros’s aide, smiled ingratiatingly. He was nothing but a frightened boy. The latter, the head of the temple guards, was older. He looked at Ballista as if he had been expecting someone else, someone better. Ballista instantly dismissed him as of no account.
‘Unfortunately, the tamias could not come. He has much to do.’ There was no surprise there, thought Ballista. The treasurer, who actually ran Didyma, would have his work cut out preparing the defence, if these were the other men of position at the sanctuary.
‘The Goths will not be long,’ said Ballista. ‘We should go.’
Beyond the gate, there were buildings on both sides of the Sacred Way: minor temples, baths, porticos, shops and houses – all empty. Although only a village under the rule of Miletus, the settlement was of some extent. It stretched off to the right.
After a distance, the road doglegged to the east. The buildings on the right gave way to a grove of bay trees, which curved around the western end of the main temple.
The first sight of the temple of Apollo at Didyma was overwhelming: a towering phalanx of columns, a fitting home for one of the Olympians. Many had held it should have ranked as one of the seven wonders of the world.
The horses were led away, and Selandros conducted Ballista around the temple. Set in a hollow but standing on a high, stepped podium, the building was an enormous rectangle, surrounded by a double line of columns. There was only one entrance, from the east. Selandros explained how, at the first news of the Goths at Ephesus, the tamias had ordered the Sacred Boys – the temple slaves – to build an extra wall to narrow access.
It was a strong site. Just the one way in. There was open ground on all sides. Admittedly, if they got close, attackers would be sheltered by the partially finished roof over the columns, but the walls were at least sixty feet high and far too thick to breach except by prolonged siege works, and men in the eaves could drop tiles and stones, which would turn the space into a killing zone. The Goths might try to burn the defenders out of the temple, but that would probably destroy the plunder they were after, and the great stone building did not look particularly combustible. All in all, Ballista was relieved; it was much as Macarius had described it back in Miletus.
Before going into the temple, Ballista studied the emergency wall. It was made of well-cut blocks of stone, presumably dismantled from some nearby building. The construction looked solid enough. It closed eight gaps between columns at the previously open eastern end of the temple. The one opening still remaining was only three or four long paces wide. At the top of fourteen steep stone steps, it should be possible to hold it with four determined men in close order, maybe with just two in open order, if they had the skills. Ballista posted six of the soldiers there.
The first area inside was a forest of massive, fluted columns. Set in the inside wall was a strange big window or door, its base five or six feet off the ground. Selandros explained that it was from there that the prophetes gave the responses to those who consulted the oracle. ‘Come.’ The priest smiled. ‘We will follow the pilgrim way.’
The temple was laid out like none Ballista had seen before. Selandros led them to a narrow passage against the right-hand wall. It was vaulted, dark and steep. At the far end, they emerged from the gloom into dazzling sunshine. There was a great square, open to the sky.
At the further end was a small temple. Through its open doors could be seen Apollo in bronze, naked, a stag in one hand, a bow in the other. The priestess and the sacred spring whose waters inspired her must be inside as well. The deity and his shelter were dwarfed by the huge walls around them.
Everywhere in the open were other statues: emperors, kings, priests, officials, men of honour. Hanging on the walls were innumerable desiccated wreaths of bay and, arranged below, other offerings: bowls, vases, censers, cups, pots, tripods, wine coolers – all manner of vessels cunningly wrought in precious metals. But what took Ballista aback, almost stultified his senses, were the people: men, women and children – hundreds of them – sitting, standing, a multitude of refugees, all silent and dejected.
Selandros gestured to the square. ‘Usually only the servants of the temple set foot on the holy ground but, with the barbarians coming, the Lord Apollo in his love of mankind said to welcome the suppliants into his adyton. In settled times, those seeking divine guidance stand here and put their questions to the prophetes and he then consults the inspired priestess in the inner temple. Those wanting answers return the way we have come and wait at the front below the window. It is my honour to relay the divine words.’