The Amber Road by Harry Sidebottom Read Free Book Online Page A

suitable to their calling. One Diophanes, however, despite his rough cloak and untrimmed beard, appeared far from indifferent to their charms.
    On the couch next to Gallienus, the elderly senator Tacitus was utterly unmoved by either the pulchritude on display or the food and drink. Solemnly he nibbled at a piece of dry bread, which from time to time he dipped in a little olive oil. The only other items on his plate were a morsel of cold pheasant and some leaves of lettuce. He had drunk just enough watered wine to be polite. He had unbent no more than loosening his sword belt.
    Gallienus knew all about Tacitus’s austere domestic regime. The Danubian subscribed to the belief that lettuce cooled the desires of the flesh – he was very opposed to the desires of the flesh. Likewise, Gallienus knew why Tacitus had journeyed from his estate at Interamna and requested permission to be one of the imperial comites today. Naturally a figure of such seniority and influence – a powerful military man from the Danube risen to the rank of consul – was watched by the frumentarii . The imperial spy in Tacitus’s household had given ample forewarning of the request and its reason.
    Platonopolis had aroused vehement antagonism. Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans, Peripatetics and, of course, latter-day Neo-Pythagoreans had united with Megareans and Cyreneans and followers of doctrines of yet greater obscurity to denounce the whole concept. No sect wanted to see another singled out in imperial favour. They had all been most unphilosophic in their complaints.
    More telling opposition had come from within the military. Some years before, struck by the sworn-bands of the northern barbarians who would not leave the field alive if their chief fell, and thinking a little of the companions around Alexander the Great and his successors, Gallienus had instituted the protectores . Part bodyguard, part senior officer, a protector took a personal oath on a naked blade to fight to the death for the emperor. Their oath brought the right to bear arms in the imperial presence.
    The protectores had appeared united in their hostility to Platonopolis. Their loyalty gave them a certain latitude. Aureolus, the Prefect of Cavalry, had used smooth words for one raised as a shepherd among the semi-barbarian Getae. Domitianus had argued in the sonorous tones of a man who claimed descent from an emperor. However, others had gone further. The Praetorian Prefect Volusianus had spoken as the blunt ex-trooper he was. Camsisoleus had waved his hands about, as excited as might be expected of an Egyptian. Aurelian – the one they called Hand-to-Steel – had even raised his voice in the imperial consilium ; to the horror of the silentarii . Tacitus was one of their number, and he was the last throw of the protectores.
    Gallienus had decided to grant the petition of Plotinus. An emperor’s reign demanded monuments. The architects had produced nothing but problems, delays and additional expense with the new colossus of Gallienus on the Esquiline. No more than its gigantic feet existed. And future generations might mistake its size for something hubristic. A city dedicated to paideia , to Plato, could never incur that charge.
    Yet Gallienus would give Tacitus a hearing. A civilis princeps did not act on a whim, on personal inclination, like an oriental despot. A good emperor consulted his friends, let his amici speak their minds. Free speech should be allowed in formal council, and also away from the consilium at a rustic meal in the foothills of the Apennines.
    ‘ Dominus .’ Tacitus obviously thought the moment auspicious.
    Graciously, Gallienus said his friend should speak what was on his mind. Tacitus’s lined face, never a canvas of levity, took on a cast of deep profundity, and he launched into his considered discourse.
    No one, Gallienus thought, with the exception of an intellectual at the Alexandrian Museum or an habitué of the schools of philosophers or sophists,