The Wizard and his Niece
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It is good for a man not to touch a woman. I
say therefore to the unmarried and the widows, it is good for them if
they abide as they are.
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I Corinthians 7:1
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to
Dawn
I once assisted to an
archaeological dig in former Yugoslavia, not very far away from the
residence
of the Roman emperor Diocletian. In
his days Emperor Diocletian (244 –
311 AD) had the
reputation of a real life sorcerer, a character that could have stepped
out of
J.K. Rowling’s novel.
Diocletian was
born as the son of slaves on a farm in modern Croatia. The estate
belonged to Senator Anulinus. For whatever
reason,
the master took a
shine to the boy, set him free and gave him an education. Diocletian
then
enlisted in the Roman army and steadily rose through the ranks. He
joined the
cult of Mithras, the ancient equivalent of the Free Masons, and endured
savage
beatings before been left for dead in the snow as part of the ritual,
awaiting
the reunion with his animal-spirit and the return from the netherworld
to the
living. The cult pervaded all senior and many of the subaltern
positions in the
army. While stationed in France, the young officer associated with
druids and a
real life witch. The old woman prophesied that he should assume the
purple when
he “kills the boar.” As it so
happened, the ruling emperor was struck by lightning and the troops set
up an elaborate
election with canvassing and poll booths. During the proceedings,
Diocletian
noticed the Praetorian Prefect “Aper” (the
name means “the Boar").
The man was waiting
his turn at the commander’s dais, to defend himself against charges of
murder
and sodomy. With the assembled army watching, Diocletian killed the man
with
his own hand, using a hunter’s javelin. He later said the killing was
an act of
compassion with this utterly depraved individual. Diocletian was duly
acclaimed
emperor and set out to change the world.
Himself holding
the senior position, he established a junta of four co-rulers, the
tetrarchs,
and introduced a constitutional reform that required voluntary
abdication after
twenty years of rule. The idea was to have the abdicated emperors
assisting the
incumbent rulers as a council of elder statesmen. The vicious cycle of
assassinations and mutinies that had shaken the empire for more than
fifty
years came to an end. We know that by now Diocletian also held the
highest position
in the cult of Mithras; he was the “papa,”
the pope. He married the sister of the “sorcerer in Rome,” Pope Caius (283 – 296 AD). The emperor had strong religious feelings. The preamble to
his legislation on marriage, from 295 AD, is a long sermon on marriage
as a
hallowed sacrament; the law against the Manicheans, from 296 AD,
breathes the
spirit of a zealot. If this had raised the hopes of the Christian
communities, there
was a harsh awakening: in 303 AD, fearing a plot by his Christian
courtiers,
Diocletian unleashed the last and most severe of all anti-Christian
persecutions, noticeable not so much for the number of actual deaths,
but for uncounted
deportations and the systematic destruction of Christian literature.
Traditionally,
Roman emperors used to keep it simple and popular, but this man was
different.
Diocletian kept tight security and petitioners approached his sacred
person
only in an elaborate ceremonial of genuflections and obeisance,
virtually seeing nothing of him but his jewel studded boots. It would
have been difficult to thrust a dagger when crawling on your belly.
Yet even without
the spectacle, his personality inspired superstitious awe. When one of
the junior
colleagues failed to perform, the angered Diocletian made him run
beside his
chariot in full regalia for more than two miles, with the troops
standing by,
watching. Diocletian was the first and only Roman emperor to
voluntarily
abdicate, as required in the new constitution. After twenty years of
rule, the
“dominus et pater noster,” laid down
his ceremonial garb: the white turban with the glittering crest of Sun
and Moon
and the flowing silk robe embroidered with the symbols of the Zodiac
and of the
four elements. The son of a slave had come a long way. During the
ceremony the
soldiers stood to attention and many wept. Diocletian said he had found
true happiness
in sprinkling his cabbage patch and people knowing him almost believed
it. The
patch was located in the courtyard of the most magnificent palace of
the period.
Fortified and
well defended, the western wall with massive turrets waded in the
Adriatic with
a small pier giving access from the sea. At the center rose the immense
columns
of an octagonal temple of Jupiter. The location was chosen because it
enclosed
the plot where Diocletian’s parents had worked their master’s land.
Later the
medieval town of Split was built into the walls of this enormous
compound, with
space to spare. Today this structure is the best-preserved example of
the
period’s architecture and a UNESCO heritage site.
Every day, the
imperial pensioner was his own augur and haruspex, studying the livers
of
sacrificed sheep and chickens; the villagers in the neighborhood
whispered of
human sacrifices. Three years later, in 308 AD, a hooded figure with a
walking
staff stepped out of the palace, the first time Diocletian was seen in
public
after his abdication. He had sent orders to his squabbling successors
to attend
a conference at Carnuntum (Bad
Altenburg in Austria).
Alone and protected by nothing but his name and his rank in the Masonic
hierarchy of Mithras – Bad Altenburg is the place of the most elaborate
chapel of Mithras ever excavated – he demoted none less than
Constantine
the Great from his premature assumption of the highest rank. A setback
Constantine swore not to forget and perhaps the real reason why he
later
favored the Christians. But for now he swallowed the insult and
obliged. Diocletian
returned to his clairvoyant chickens; it seems, he knew the exact time
of his
death in advance.
On
the appointed day in 311 AD, he went to bed to die, leaving wife and
daughter
to the mercy of his successors. The portents were foreboding and
Diocletian
gave orders to evacuate his family from the palace, although knowing it
would
not save them. He was the last of the Gentile emperors to receive the
posthumous
apotheosis from the senate in Rome.
We
still
write
the
year
308
AD,
the
day
when
the
old
man’s
barge
waited
at
the
west-entrance
of
the
palace
to
bring
him
to
Trieste
where a
cavalry detachment was waiting to accompany him to the conference at
Bad
Altenburg. At the end of the lined-up guards and retainers stood three
women
waiting to bid him farewell, his wife, his daughter and an adopted
niece, the
apple of his eye in old age. The girl had a wide-open face but the lips
were
somewhat thin and often froze in a kind of Mona Lisa smile. She didn’t
like to
show her teeth; they were uneven, like little white rabbits peeking out
from
their low burrow. Diocletian touched her cheek with a teasing finger
before he
boarded the barge. The vessel slipped moorings, two lateen sails
unfurled, the
women waved and the niece was the last to leave the pier and return to
the
palace. She had a plan.
The
girl
was
in
a
habit
of
going
for
a
daily
swim
in
the
Adriatic.
The
road
to
the
beach
passed
through
a
fishing
village.
One of the local hunks
held the status of a celebrity there, after he had won a price at the
Olympic games. One morning, the young man was mending his fishing nets,
when Diocletian’s niece went past his shack for her swim. She turned
her head and looked at him. One blink of her narrowing eyes floored the
champion: "eight, nine, ten" and still counting. The neighbors nudged
and winked when they saw the girl and the man together.
Marriage
seemed
out
of
the
question;
her
uncle
would
never
let
her
go.
So
she
didn’t
even
ask.
On
the
morning
after
Diocletian’s
departure,
the
guards
nudged each other when they saw the girl walking
past
them with a rolled up bathing towel under her arm. She headed for her
usual
place, a remote inlet shielded by rocks from the leering eyes on the
watchtower. She undressed and stuffed it all into a waterproof bag she
had held
hidden in the towel. She loved to swim, whether fully dressed or naked,
it
didn’t matter to her. But she also loved the sunshine, and dressed in
nothing
but her jewelry, the expensive jewelry of a rich girl, she lay down and
exposed
as much skin as possible for a deep tan. The girl was a bit of a nutter; she even spread her fingers to offer
more surfaces
to the sun. Feeling hot she suddenly rose and rushed into the water,
taking the
bag with her. Nobody ever saw her again, on his return her uncle
mourned her
death – that is until he sacrificed a ram and scrutinized the liver. To
the astonishment of his retainers he visibly cheered up and attended to
his
cabbages as if nothing had happened, yet he would never again mention
his niece
by name. By sheer coincidence the Olympic champion had disappeared,
too, on the
same day as Diocletian’s niece; an accident with his fishing-craft the
people
said. A week later, the locals in a fishing town in the island of Crete
celebrated the wedding of two newcomers from the Dalmatian mainland.
That’s
where
bad
stories
end
with
a
“happily
ever
after.”
Good
stories
are
just
beginning.
The
two
had
together
three
sons,
but
then
gravity
and
the
pregnancies
began
tugging
at
the
woman’s
breasts,
countless
hours
of
mirth
and
sorrows
had
deepened
the
crow-feet in the corners of her eyes, now and
then she
asked her husband to pull out a strand of grey hair. In other words,
the
Olympic hunk lost interest and left her. He was a known womanizer. But
this
time it didn’t do him any good. His wife had always taken care of the
money;
the demands of the slut he now was living with first lost him his
vessel to the
bailiff and then left him homeless in the street. No longer the
charismatic
beau of his earlier days he lingered at the harbor for handouts and the
odd
job. None of the merchant vessels was willing to take him, not even as
a
deckhand. His
wife took a torch from the wall and burned to the ground
what once had been their home.
She
moved
to
Heraclion,
the
island’s
capital,
opened
her
jewelry
box,
and
with
the
help
of
her
sons
became
a
successful
merchant
in
textiles.
She
imported
the
latest
silk-ware from Syria,
with
patterns printed on it, and sold it on to the rich ladies in Dalmatia
and Italy
with a profit. Her growing wealth made her a respectable matron in
town, she
dressed as a widow and nobody said a word when she gave birth to a baby
daughter. She enjoyed life. At least she thought she would, but there
were the
long evenings on the flat roof of her home, overseeing the whine-dark
sea. The silhouette of a fishing-craft under the setting Sun made her
choking on a knot in her throat. She heard the domestics laughing in
the kitchen downstairs and peered over the parapet into the street
smiling to see her little girl playing with the kids of the neighbors.
She was still upstairs, going through the
ledger, when
the little silver bell in the shop below announced a customer. Her
oldest son
dug his head through the bead curtain and told her that he needed her
assistance. “What is it?” she asked,
he was the man in the house and she trusted his business sense. “A tent-maker from Anatolia thinks he could
use some of your fabrics, mother.” – “A tent-maker,”
she
said,
and
rose
from
her
seat.
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The
late
arrival
had
a
way
with
words
and
introduced himself
with all the old fashioned charm of a man of the world – a bygone
world,
that is. He chose samples from her store of fabrics and asked her
permission to
show these to his clients in Italy. Twelve months later he returned
from a
successful business trip, the two seemed to enjoy each other’s company
and he
proposed boldly to marry her. She reflected on the proposal. This was
not
exactly love on first sight, not even on second sight, but lately the
oats
didn’t grow that wild anymore, her steps were falling heavier, and she
liked to
think it would be kind of neat to associate with a hardworking man of
the
trade. From the window she watched him walking up the street: not much
of a
looker he was, but visibly virile: short and bald, yet with long thumbs
and
piercing eyes under bushy eyebrows grown together. The disappointment
came in
the first night of their honeymoon. He began speaking of “spiritual
marriage”
as if it was the most normal thing in the world that married people lie
together and don’t soil the sheets. Not that he was limp; she could
feel it as
he fended off her hand. This went on for weeks. She began suspecting
another woman; this man traveled extensively, for all she knew, he
could have had a woman waiting for him in every other town. She did
what she never had done before; she listened to rumors and gossip.
Brush in hand she sat before the mirror without combing her
hair. She
studied her face. “Grey, grey, grey,”
she said to the mirror, and didn’t mean her complexion. The next
morning she
went to the magistrate and sued for the annulment of her marriage.
Since her
word was that of a person of standing in town, it was a mere formality.
Coming
home from a calamari and retsina breakfast
with his
new friends in the tavern, the tent-maker found the door locked, his
belongings
lying in the street. He looked up to the window, shouting her name.
Every eye in
the neighborhood was turning. Uneasy, he looked up again; there was no
motion
behind the window, only a gentle breeze buffeting the curtains. He
considered
calling again, but then thought the better of it. Stumbling backward,
almost
falling, never taking his eyes off the window, the tent-maker began
collecting his things and after some hesitation asked the toothless
mason from the house next door whether he could borrow his wheelbarrow.
The
old
man
was
hard
of
hearing
and
the
tent-maker
had
to
raise
his
voice.
He
piled
his
things
onto
the
wheelbarrow
and
vanished
into
thin air. An
hour
later a little boy received a copper for returning the wheelbarrow. The
matron, meanwhile, had a hot bath with something smelling real good in
the water, keeping her shoe ready as a missile, should somebody butt
his head through the curtain. There was no rush. Finally she rose from
the tub, calling in the maid to hand her the towel. “Still
having a thing with
my son” she said, waving off the answer. Ready to slip into a new
dress the
matron looked into the mirror at her naked body: “I could
still pull the crumbs from a sailor’s hairy chest,
lying under him screaming and
banging the headboard,” she said. The maid
suppressed a giggle.
The
matron tilted her head, inspecting the hair. She decided to color it. “Red,” she said. “It should be red."
© – 3/3/2009 – by michael
sympson, 2,600 words,
all rights reserved
