Free Roma Eterna by Robert Silverberg

But that’s over now.”
    â€œWhat is it, then?”
    â€œThinking. A pernicious pastime, which I regret.” Faustus swirled his cup about and peered glumly into its depths. “Here we are,” he said, “down in the bowels of the city, this weird dirty place. I have always thought that everything seems unreal here, that it is all a kind of stage show. And yet right now it seems to me that it’s far more real than anything up above. Down here, at least, there are no pretenses. It’s every man for himself amidst the fantasies and grotesqueries, and no one has any illusions. We know why we are here and what we must do.” Then, pointing toward the world above them: “Up there, though, folly reigns supreme. We delude ourself into thinking that it is the world of stern reality, the world of Imperial power and Roman commercial might, but no one actually behaves as though any of it has to be taken seriously. Our heads are in the sand, like that great African bird’s. The barbarians are coming, but we’re doing nothing to stop them. And thistime the barbarians will swallow us. They’ll go roaring at last through the marble city that’s sitting up there above us, looting and torching, and afterward nothing will remain of Roma but this, this dark, dank, hidden, eternally mysterious Underworld of strange gods and ghastly monstrosities. Which I suppose is the true Roma, the eternal city of the shadows.”
    â€œYou’re drunk,” Maximilianus said.
    â€œAm I?”
    â€œThis place down here is a mere fantasy world, Faustus, as you are well aware. It’s a place without meaning.” The prince pointed upward as Faustus just had done. “The true Roma that you speak of is up there. Always was, always will be. The palaces, the temples, the Capitol, the walls. Solid, indestructible, imperishable. The eternal city, yes. And the barbarians will never swallow it. Never. Never. ”
    That was a tone of voice Faustus had never heard the prince use before, either. The second unfamiliar one in less than an hour, this one hard, clear, passionate. There was, again, an odd new intensity in his eyes. Faustus had seen that strange intensity the day before, too, when the prince had spoken of Emperors as freaks and monsters. It was as though something new was trying to burst free inside the Caesar these two days past, Faustus realized. And it must be getting very close to the surface now. What will happen to us all, he wondered, when it breaks loose?
    He closed his own eyes a moment, nodded, smiled. Let what will come come, he thought. Whatsoever it may be.
    They ended their day in the Underworld soon afterward. Maximilianus’s savage outburst in the hall of the soothsayers seemed to have placed a damper on everything, even Menandros’s previously insatiable desire to explore the infinite crannies of the underground caverns.
    It was near sundown when Faustus reached his chambers, having promised Menandros that he would dine with him later at the ambassador’s lodgings in the Severan Palace. A surprise was waiting for him. Prince Heracliushad indeed gone to his hunting lodge, not to the frontier, and the message that Faustus had sent to him there had actually reached him. The prince was even now on his way back to Roma, arriving this very evening, and wished to meet with the emissary from Justinianus as soon as possible.
    Hurriedly Faustus bathed and dressed in formal costume. The Numidian girl was ready and waiting, but Faustus dismissed her, and told his equerry that he would not require her services later in the evening, either.
    â€œA curious day,” Menandros said, when Faustus arrived.
    â€œIt was, yes,” said Faustus.
    â€œYour friend the Caesar was greatly distressed by that man’s talk of his becoming Emperor some day. Is the idea so distasteful to him?”
    â€œIt’s not something he gives any thought to at all, becoming Emperor.