The Princess and the Pirates(47)

“We’ve done rather well with it,” I said, with some complacency. “We control most of the world and are quickly expanding into the rest of it. Our system may lack the orderliness of a monarchy with a king and a hereditary nobility, but it spares us the government of pedigreed imbeciles. In Rome any man of great will and ability can shape the destiny of the world.”

My confident words were purely for her benefit. The sad fact was that our rickety old Republic was fast coming apart. It was being destroyed by self-seeking megalomaniacs like Caesar, Pompey, and Gabinius, and, I hate to admit, by reactionary, aristocratic families like my own. We thought ourselves conservative because we steered a moderate course between the would-be Alexanders, but our maneuverings always had the goal of expanding our own clientage, holdings, and influence.

“Rome may be master of the world,” she said, “but soon one of your great men must make himself master of Rome. There can be no other outcome.”

The coming years were to prove her words prophetic.



THAT NIGHT A DREAM CAME TO ME. MOST people make far too much of dreams, attaching vast import to the most banal reflections of everyday cares, woes, and ambitions. I do not believe that the gods often put themselves to the trouble of sending prophetic visions to individuals, and it is usually a mark of vanity to believe oneself the frequent recipient of such divine messages. When the gods wish to communicate with us, they speak to the entire community; and they do so through the medium of thunder and lightning, the flights of birds, and signs put in the heavens. We have officials and priests whose task it is to interpret such omens.

Personally, I have never believed that the entrails of sacrificial animals have anything to do with it. That is mere Etruscan superstition.

Nevertheless, upon very special occasions, I experience a dream vision so remarkable that I think it must be sent by some divine agency, although perhaps not by a true Olympian. My vanity is not that great. Each of us, man or woman, is born with an attendant genius. These spirits watch over us and inspire us throughout life. It may be that they are in contact with other, equally supernatural beings and are able, at times of great import in our lives, to pass on messages from a world invisible to us.

However, it is the custom of the immortals to speak in signs, riddles, and conundrums when communicating with mortals; and so it was this time. For what it is worth, this was my dream.

I opened my eyes as from a deep sleep and discovered myself to be surrounded by clouds. In an instant I broke free of the clouds and saw below me a mass of brown and green surrounded by a deep blue-green. At first I could make no sense of what I was seeing. Then it came to me that I was gazing upon a great island lying in the sea. This, I understood, must be how the world looks to a soaring eagle. In the manner of dreams the great height at which I hovered did not alarm me, nor did it occur to me to wonder how I could be flying in the first place. Dreams take place in another world in which there is no past leading to the events we experience there.

I flew down toward the island (somehow I knew how to do this) and began to see details that had been invisible from higher up: ships upon the sea looking like children’s toys, jewel-like towns with white walls and red roofs, and cattle no larger than ants grazing the hillsides.

I began to circle the island and, as I did, saw a disturbance in the wine dark sea perhaps a legionary mile offshore (distances are hard to judge when one is flying). There arose a great boiling and foaming, as if a volcano were erupting far below. The foam rose into a tower and began to take human shape. Soon there stood, larger than the greatest colossus, the form of a beautiful woman. She was, of course, the goddess Venus (well, Aphrodite, to be precise). She was still composed of semitransparent foam, for which I was grateful. To behold a real goddess would have blasted me to vapor even in my dream state. Such sights are not for mortals. I felt no fear but rather experienced awe of a purity I have seldom known in my long life.

Like a great cloud in motion, she strode across the waves, her feet indenting the water as if she walked upon a blue-green mantle thrown across a bed filled with the finest down. When she reached the coast, I expected to see great activity from the tiny towns: people rushing to see, songs of praise ringing out, a great stoking of altar fires. But I detected no reaction from the minute inhabitants of this place. They did not see her.

With a graceful gesture the goddess beckoned to me, and I followed her. Along the coastline of the island we went, passing many small coves, some of them lively with small fishing craft, some deserted. I was no longer at eagle-soaring height, though I was well above the tallest trees on the shore. I felt now more like a cruising gull, but that was because I was over water. As an attendant of Aphrodite, I suppose I was a dove, that bird being sacred to her.