Res Gestae
Autumn 362 CE/AD, the city of Antioch, eastern edge of the Roman Empire
Indistinct memories from a dream. A dark-haired woman, her arms covered in amber bracelets. “Lay with me,” she beckoned. But he could never quite do so, since whenever he tried, she fell further and further away, no longer on the bed, no longer there.
Aurelius Adacius awoke. The courtyard was almost silent, and a light dew covered everything. He felt his head throb. His neck, too, ached. He was relieved that none of the others had seen him wake up at the table in such a fashion, not with his rank. “Never wine again”, he thought. “Gaulish beer — that I miss.”
“What was it all about?” he asked himself. “Something about the bread ration, perhaps.” Not to let them out of my sight. Be the last one to sleep. That’s right.
He reckoned it was an hour or two until dawn. At least he could get a semblance of sleep, perhaps… oh yes, the wagon. He removed himself from the table. Another soldier, asleep, grumbled in response under his breath.
The few other soldiers around him were still sleeping, most with their heads propped up against the stone steps, some against the table legs. Most used hay to cushion their bottoms. Some were wrapped in their cloaks, but the majority had nothing to cover themselves with. Autumn was already upon them, although here in the east it did not bring the foreboding weather as it did in the west.
Aurelius knelt and then lay beside the wagon, of which a messy bed of damp straw covered, overflowing out and onto the ground. And so as he laid upon it — this straw loaf of a bed, he used his cloak as bedding, tucking himself under it. He spread out his limbs to try and get comfortable, overflowing like a spider. “Rather silly,” he thought. As he looked around him in the yard, he could see a few faint orange glows, the orange light reflecting upon soldiers’ faces. One or two lamps were still burning. In his pursuit of comfort, his mind began to wander.
“Irresponsible for the boy to not have put them out, even with the damp,” he thought. “So much straw around. A smack with the staff will do.” He would berate the boy standard-bearer in such a way — making it short, stern, and direct. Earlier, the boy’s punishment had been a demotion to tesserarius, that is, the inglorious duty of tending to the lamps, checking watchwords, and, although not usually part of such duty, emptying the centurions’ shit bucket.
The reason for this punishment? A momentary display, a hesitancy… a simple stutter really. When asked to replace the labarum bearing the Chi-Rho with that of the older Mars and Victory statuettes, he didn’t immediately follow through. He must have been confused, not knowing what to do. All he knew was the standard as it had been now for decades, since the Emperor Constantine’s conversion. To change it seemed egregiously foreign.
It wasn’t even that the boy, all of seventeen years old, was a devout Christian who had refused on religious grounds… no. That is what had in fact happened to the two other standard-bearers. Older, although not by much. Those two soldiers had been beheaded. Unceremoniously. And as such, demoralizing. Demoralizing for the troops. Infuriating the local populace. Sure, these men had outright refused to lower the Christian standard, directly contradicting the Emperor. But the boy? If hesitancy was a crime, then there should be an equal crime for being so full of bravado and carelessness, as it seemed the new Augustus was being.
“The boy would actually be safer with this demotion,” Aurelius thought. The standard-bearers were always made early targets on the battlefield.
The Emperor wanted to show determination and strength, in his own way, Aurelius supposed, and here in this eastern metropolis of Antioch he had an audience. That being said, it was probably the worst place in the empire for him to make such a spectacle. The population had taken such a dislike to their new ruler. There were many Christians here, and cosmopolitan, rich ones, at that.
The Emperor of course held on to mutual antagonism. Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus. He had written a treatise, or was it a commentary?… Something about his beard of which the locals made fun of. Anyway, it was making the rounds amongst the educated. Aurelius could usually count himself among said educated since he knew how to read and write in Latin, but here in the East they spoke Greek, of which he knew little. Regardless, it was said that the Emperor was making a fool of himself on purpose in his writing, in order to ingratiate himself to the people while at the same time showing them that he wasn’t afraid of them. He was their new emperor, the one to bring back the old gods, and to respect things as they were and as they should be. It was all a mess, really. “Is this truly our predicament?” Aurelius thought. “A man at war with the heart of his own people.”
Situated upon the eastern edge of the empire, Antioch was a mix of Christians, Jews, and pagans. Aurelius found the bustling nature of the city agreeable, but up to a point. It’s not that he disliked the movements and people. Rather, it was that he felt out of control: the incense filled streets, the myriad of singers bellowing up and down the narrow streets with their chants, and of course the temptations of the flesh for both him and his men. It was of utmost concern for him to minimize the distracting impact that this city seemed to be having on his men. Their war-readiness was evaporating. He could see it, feel it. The men were becoming sluggish, prone to trivial bits of banter, sometimes breaking out into brawls (as had happened the night previous). As tribunus militum, Aurelius was responsible for almost five hundred men, and in so far as they had been going, on the long road from Gaul, they had in fact displayed prudent patience and discipline. But here and now, in this Syrian metropolis, they were beginning to become undisciplined.
Drinking and carousing with the local women was to their way of relieving the tension. They all felt it. He understood, sure, but he did not approve.
But if I clamp down too hard now, Aurelius thought, I’ll break them before we ever see the Persians. Marching off into the desert to fight the eastern archenemy would give anyone pause, no matter their perceived weakness at this time.
On the other hand, instead of seeing the situation for what it truly was, the Emperor was becoming more and more obsessed with his pagan rituals… reading “the signs” everywhere: flights of birds and lamb intestines, scattered grains and somnia (the Emperor’s dreams always meant something), sending his priests every which way to conduct their divination.
What the Emperor and his purple entourage neglected to realize was that a very real consternation amongst the people and his men was brewing. Simply put, the soldiers were overstaying their welcome. The food consumed within the city alone was pressing an already hard-strapped and overtaxed populace, where local elites and business interests had bled the population dry for decades. The people were understandably upset. And of course the Emperor had no tact or nuance in this regard. Declarations made to sacrifice, sometimes in the middle of the night. His actions were juvenile.
There were even those who called him the ‘bearded goat’. Some whispered it, but others did not bother to whisper at all. Discontent was in the air. And everywhere it stank of stagnation.
“All this stench, and none of it from the stables,” Aurelius thought. “It’s from men’s mouths.”
All of a sudden, a man croaked from around the corner, rascally, but with a low pitch.
“There’s no wine left,” said the man. Aurelius immediately recognized the voice, and turned round to meet it. There was Iksander, a centurion from Illyria with whom he has served since Gaul. Obnoxious, yes, but he would trust him with his life.
“Impossible.” Aurelius responded. “Also, it’s almost morning, and I should get at least one more hour of sleep.”
“What of it? I’m thirsty.” Iksander responded, casually flipping over canisters to check for the liquid, not bothering with the sounds he was making in the process. “Barely a week in the city and we’ve run out of wine.”
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“Maybe the locals are hiding it from us for all the trouble we have caused them.” The clanking sounds became a little distant as Iksander searched elsewhere. A few deep breaths, and as such Aurelius’s eyes started to close again. Glimpses of the woman from his dreams. Yes, he could see her now. Her skin golden, her thighs folded back against her calves, laying on her side. He ran the backsides of his fingers against the back of her legs. As he did, she turned around to reach him…
— CLANK — Aurelius was taken back to his reality. The damp, the dimly lit court yard, and Iksander.
He began again: “Yes… Nicaea… old men in robes.”
— CLANK —
“Will you not quiet down man?” asked Aurelius. Iksander began tapping his sword hilt against the various vases lying about — hollow sounds, hollow hopes. “Those priests wander and preach, here and there. But they can’t agree themselves on what it all means. Is Jesus the son of God, or he God, or he both?” Iksander chuckled, feeling quite proud of his assessment of it all.
“I want to punch this man,” Aurelius thought. Iksander loved to include mocking intonations about the Christian faith whenever he cared to frustrate his friend. He would do so, for example, by evoking the endless councils that had split the Christians apart and had pitted them against each other. He could also make the point that the Christians were more cruel to each other than they ever were to pagans. And he had a point.
Iksander continued his careless search for wine, unfazed by the lack of response by Aurelius, although he did lower his voice somewhat. “The flight of the crows east this morning, was that not a sign from the gods?” He looked expectedly at Aurelius Adacius, knowing that the Arian Christian would (might) have a response.
However, Aurelius did not take the bait. He simply smiled. “They flew east. That means something good. Or was it west that was good? I too have lost track of such things…” He paused for a moment. “And I have forgiven… forgiven you for keeping me up.” He reflected but for a moment, Does God send signs, like those the pagans believe?
As he began again to close his eyes, he tried to conjure up the image of the woman from his dreams, but as he tried, she felt farther away than she had ever been, and farther with each passing second.
“Ah, here!” Iksander gave a quick shout.
One of the sleeping soldiers closest to them stopped snoring and grunted. He mumbled something under his breath.
A cat meowed in the corner. The very first birds were beginning to make sounds.
Perhaps it’s time, Aurelius thought.
He opened his eyes, this time for good. He would not be going back to sleep after all. Time to start his day…
He could still hear Iksander clanking against ceramic vases as he rustled against the straw in the darkness.
As Aurelius stood up and prepared himself for the day ahead, he tried to grasp one more time the woman in his mind’s eye.
“Return to me tomorrow,” he hoped she would say to him. “I will be here.”
The Chi Rho symbol on a Roman Standard, drawing, Paul Shawkat, 2026
From Wikipedia —> Gold Coin (Solidus) of Julian issued at Ravenna in 361, during his war with Constantius. The reverse reads virtus exerc(itus) gall(icarum), ‘virtue of the Gallic army’, celebrating Julian’s legions from Gaul which acclaimed him as emperor…
Sources
- Freeman, Philip. Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor. Yale University Press, 2023.
- Hoffmann, R. Joseph, editor and translator. Julian’s Against the Galileans. Prometheus Books, 2004.
- Jia, Chengyu. “A Textual Analysis of the Causes, Process and Consequences of Julian’s Persian Expedition.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, vol. 664, Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022), Atlantis Press, 2022, pp. 1501 — 1506
- “Julian II, AV solidus, Ravenna mint.” Wikimedia Commons, Classical Numismatic Group, 30 Aug. 2020, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Juliancng10700866.jpg
AI-Disclaimer: Editing for grammatical errors; historical and naming discrepancies, slight rephrasing here and there for to help with flow, as well as assistance in formatting sources for MLA format; Perplexity AI assistant. All ideas are original, formed and written on paper before being typed and expanded. Any remaining historical errors are my own.
