by Ken Parejko
When I arrived back in Rome from Belgium, Vespasian made time to meet me, and we decided to meet in the new forum. I showed up early to give myself time to look around. The forum's paths were crowded with the city's commoners – its workers, teachers, craftsmen, servants and small businessmen. Vespasian recognized how badly the common folk wanted to rebuild their war-weary spirits, and meant to provide them the public spaces to relax in and feel good again about themselves and the nation. Meanwhile they could hardly believe their good fortune at having replaced Nero’s madness with Vespasian’s common sense. While just a few years ago a man could literally lose his head for saying the wrong thing, now they could argue their hearts out – something they love to do – with impunity. I could see it in their faces, their new-found spontaneity and happiness, as though they'd just come up from cold murky water and could draw a deep communal breath. I joined the crowd moving around the forum's portico, where the city’s best masons and sculptors had put beautiful stone from the far corners of the empire to exquisite use. The columns of the portico were radiant red Grecian marble, echoing the columns in Augustus’ forum. I stopped to admire the nearest. It was easy to lose oneself in the patterns which the great artist Nature had drawn, white on deep red, through the stone. The pedestals were Egyptian granite, a warm white stone peppered with black and charcoal. Behind the columns the portico's walls were veneered with striped Tunisian alabaster, its gently undulating streaks of different hues and depths of red working across a quiet pink background. Beautiful stone worked by fine craftsmen together had created a temple of light, which glowed as though the stones were alive and sang with a brilliant and varied coloratura.
I was asked to help decide what books would be deposited in the Temple's new library. I made sure Polybius was there, along with Theophrastus and other natural philosophers. I'd heard that Josephus donated his first copy of the Judean Wars to the forum's dedication ceremony. I looked forward to the day when a copy of my Natural History would find a home here.
Two evenings ago I’d brought Caecilius to hear Quintillian lecture on the primacy of oratory over philosophy in one of the Temple's lecture rooms. Vespasian has asked me to speak here in the coming days too, and suggested I talk about Italy’s native flora, the complex structure of the heavens, or perhaps a survey of plants from Germany to Egypt. I slipped into one of the rooms, sheltered from the heat of the day. Rows of white marble seats rose gracefully away from the lectern. While I sat and enjoyed the peace of the moment I decided my talk would be about the natural and unnatural history of silphium.
Vespasian’s forum was designed as a clear statement of an earth-change in official policy which turned the attention of the government away from the ruling classes and towards the working class. Vespasian's gift to the city was not just a lovely temple building, certainly one of the most beautiful in the world, but a public garden too, where nature’s bounty and creativity could be seen and admired. Tapping what I'd learned from Castor and my own studies of the flora of Italy, I'd drawn up a list of plants to put in the Temple’s gardens. Most would be native plants and not the exotics the upper classes used in their private gardens to show off their wealth. In my Natural History I'd written: “Let us not deprive things of their credit and authority, because they are common and not costly."Though I insisted that nature's wonders should be at the heart of the new Forum mankind was part of nature too, so mankind’s creations had their place here too. Hung on the library’s and lecture rooms' walls, set on pedestals within the garden and along the portico were the treasures we’d brought back from Jerusalem. Vespasian had risked his own and his favorite son’s lives on that war and it was victory in that war which had brought them to the pinnacle of power, so the spoils of the war would be shown to the public here.
One of Vespasian’s first actions was to dismantle much of Nero's Domus Aureus to make room for his amphitheater. He moved Nero's collection of paintings and sculptures from what had been a private collection, open only to those who genuflected before Nero's monomania, into the Temple of Peace, and declared it all public property. Somehow I’d made a reputation as an art critic, so Vespasian consulted me on which works to display. The most important, I said, and considered by many the finest sculpture in the world, was Praxitele's Coan Venus. So Vespasian had the statue restored and set on a pediment in the Temple. Opposite it he brought in a large statue of the Nile with her sixteen children, one for each cubit of the river's flooding, a reminder that it was in Egypt that his rule had begun. As for paintings I recommended a Scylla by Nichomachus and Timanthe’s Hero. One of Protogene's works which I insisted he have had a nice story behind it. In the lower corner Protogene had painted, among a crowd of people, a cute little dog. Protogenes tried various ways to make the foam which dripped from the dog's mouth more realistic. Finally in frustration he picked up a sponge and dabbed at the still-wet paint. The effect was perfect, and said to be the first use of a sponge in a painting.
Vespasian and I’d planned the Temple together. Now together we could enjoy it in all its beauty.
As I sat watching the crowd admiring the art someone came up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t need to turn to know who it was.
“So good to see you, Polybius,” he joked.
“Ave, Scipio!” I responded. Vespasian sat and for a few moments we quietly enjoyed each others' company.
We'd greeted each other with this little private joke between us. I’d made no secret of my admiration of the historian Polybius, who was an adviser to Scipio the Younger, son of the Scipio who'd defeated Hannibal. To the younger Scipio fell the glory of conquering Carthage and at last burying Hannibal's ghost. It was Scipio who brought Hispania Tarraconensis, where I’d not long ago served, under Roman rule. A lover of poetry, philosophy, and the other arts, Scipio surrounded himself with the best Rome had to offer, not the least among them Polybius.
We sat admiring the flowers, watching the slow flow of the crowd around the forum. “So, what new Hannibals are you facing today?” I asked.
“Too many,” Vespasian answered. “Too many to trouble you with. But the worst, it seems to me, is the grotesque wealth of Leviathan,” he sighed. “Nowadays it seems every house, every villa and garden are built to out-compete all others in opulence. Everyone must own a Praxiteles or a Phidias, and their wives must load themselves with gems enough to buy a villa in Gaul. It’s a disease I tell you. Why, just one of our banquets could feed an entire Sabine village a month. My fear is the peace and prosperity I’ve brought will only contribute to this addiction to luxury.”
"The Athenians used progressive taxation to subdue that monster," I offered. “The more they flaunted their wealth the more they were taxed.”
"Well, yes, but it didn’t work did it?” Vespasian pointed out. “Athen’s wealthiest did an end-run on it by building modest houses, instead flaunting their wealth with expensive parties.”
“So, tax the parties.”
Vespasian grunted his reply.
“Here,” I said, reaching into my purse to change the subject. “I’ve brought you something.”
The night before while ransacking my journals for information about skirret, a plant I'd first seen in Germany, I’d unearthed the drawing Lucius had made of the grain harvester we’d seen on Fredericus’ villa. The drawing showed the harvester pushed by two horses, cutting the grain and dropping it in little rows. I’d realized there was enough detail in the drawing that we could reconstruct the machine.
While Roman farmers still cut their grain by hand, bending, tying each sheath, and stacking them, Gallic farmers had the advantage of a mechanical harvester. The small land-holding farmer who was historically the base of Roman society was rapidly giving over to large farms owned by wealthy landlords, and operated with slave-labor. Slaves were cheap, but the slave-trade depended on all the machinery of imperialism -- our army, navies, middle-level administrators, and so on -- to furnish a steady stream of slaves, who would in time wear out, get
sick or die. Without the wars which harvested the slaves, it appeared likely we would become increasingly dependent on foreign grain. Vespasian wanted peace and independence. Increasing the domestic grain harvest was critical to both.
An old mule-dealer, he knew farming first hand. He took the sketch from me and studied it for a while. “So, tell me how it works,” he said.
I described the operation of the machine as best I could remember it. "Two animals and two men can cut five, maybe ten times as much as two with knives," I said.
Vespasian looked beyond the drawing toward the brilliant white columns of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus shining down from the Capitol, where sacrifices burned during times of war, for it was on Jupiter Best and Strongest that our armies most depended. Now since Vespasian ordered its doors locked smoke no longer rose Jupiter’s way from his great Temple. We’d entered a time of peace, not war. But peace was a fragile thing, which seemed almost alien to the human condition.
"Thank you,” he said. “This harvesting machine or apparatus, whatever you call it, it’s very interesting. But now let’s walk a bit. If I let these old legs take root here I’ll have trouble pulling them up again.”
We strolled side by side through the forum, the people we encountered bowing and deferring to the emperor, delighted he would come among them.
“Rome,” he mused, “at its birth was no more than a clutter of huts on the hillside.” He nodded in the direction of the Palatine. “Eight centuries later it’s become a city of light, home to a proud people who live and walk every day through the finest buildings, art and libraries in the world. These are all signs of progress, aren't they?” he asked.
“According to most, yes,” I admitted. “But somehow I have the feeling you’re going to differ.”
Vespasian smiled, touched my arm. “When our country was young, her men and women were from the land, strong, independent, self-sufficient. We were a rural people, then, like my Sabines. Two things have changed this, both an unforeseen result of our successes.”
“Tenant farms,” I offered.
"Yes, of course,” Vespasian agreed. “Now our farmers don’t work their own land, but are tenants on the land of the wealthy. And the other?”
"Well, I suppose slavery,” I said.
“Bravo. Slaves are even cheaper than tenant-farmers and can be worked even harder, worked to death in fact. So the wealthy landowners, who now control the Senate, urge us into imperial wars. Meanwhile the tenant-farmers and their families, replaced by the slaves and with no work for them on the farms, stream into Rome by the thousands looking for work." Vespasian shook his head. “Sometimes when I lie awake at night I seem to hear them, the shuffling of their feet and the feet of their wives and children, like a gigantic army of locusts marching toward Rome.”
"But there’s nothing for them here," I observed.
"No. So we buy them off with cheap or free food grown in Africa and Egypt, not on our own farms. You and I,” Vespasian said, stopping for a moment, “we’re both fairly bright. But in a hundred days of working at it, could we design a more irrational system than that?”
I smiled. “Diogenes must be laughing up there behind the clouds, who said: Virtue is the only good and its essence lies in self-control and independence.”
Vespasian smiled. “Laughing, or crying. Self-control is mullet-rare, and just as great a treasure. How can anyone be independent in the middle of a great city where no one knows how to milk a goat or grow their own food? If it weren't for our legions and the carters and merchant marine and stevedores and wholesalers we’d all starve, myself included. It’s a complex and tenuous system, my friend, only kept from collapsing by a clumsy, rickety political structure. From the very top of that structure I can feel its every little shift and settling. I spend most of my time and energy just keeping everything below me from falling apart.”
"So if we could get the farms back into the hands of the farmers,” I suggested, “then perhaps Diogenes' virtue would flourish, rather than wither.”
A crow flew across the forum in front of us, left to right. If we’d believed in such things, we would’ve seen it as an auspicious omen.
“Why do I have the feeling,” Vespasian said, “that you’re about to unearth yet another monster for me to wrestle with?”
“Isn’t it what friends are for?”
We sat again, in the shade this time, beside another lovely garden where the tinkling of a fountain cooled the air with its sound. “Okay. I’m ready, he said. “Go ahead.”
“Well don’t you see, we should be promoting our own rather than foreign agriculture. We need men and women who’ve not forgotten what it means to wake in the morning to the cock's crow and the lowing of the cow. To work the soil, and be kept alive in the arms of Nature rather than some distant grain-dealer.”
Vespasian was silent a moment, then his face, as it so often did, took on the tight, inscrutable look of someone concentrating very hard. “Well you know we’ve just been talking about minting a new coin. Titus and I will be on the obverse, over Roma resurgens. There’s a bit of a brawl over what goes on the reverse. Why not a rustic scene of some kind, to remind the people of their roots. How about...a rooster?”
"No," I thought aloud. “Not a rooster. That could be misread. No, something more functional, and strong. Oxen.”
“Yes!” Vespasian, normally self-possessed, exploded. He waved the drawing of the Gallic grain harvester in the air. “Oxen, and a plowman! Pliny, you're a genius.”
“But it was your idea.”
“Together then, we are a genius. And so Rome shall be. Have one of these things made,” he effused. “Damned if I'll let the Gauls out-harvest us! We'll make them ourselves, and better than theirs. With the help of this whatever-you-call-it our farmers will be able to produce enough grain for themselves and us urban parasites, too. We’ll throw the monsters of slavery and reliance on foreign grain off our backs, at last.”
So we’d found time to spend together. That was good in itself. We’d discussed, and decided on, a course of action to ameliorate a significant social problem. It had been a good day. We both had plenty else to do. Without the need to say it, we knew it was time to part.
“What do you think of it?” Vespasian asked, hopefully, glancing at the Templum Pacis.
“I think,” I said, “in all honesty it is one of the world’s loveliest buildings.”
Vespasian gleamed, embraced me, and set off up toward the Curia, where he was to meet with some senators regarding a tedious judicial matter. I watched my good friend head up the hill, then turned and started toward my apartment.
I’d taken only a few steps when I heard Vespasian’s shout.
“Pliny! Wait!” The old general came half-running towards me. “I almost forgot! How would you like to command a fleet?”
I wondered if my friend had lost his mind in the hot sun. “A fleet? Put me on a boat and my guts erupt.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Vespasian said, panting and holding my arm. “You’d be admiral, not a ship captain. It’s an administrative job.”
“Where?”
“Misenum. The position’s just opened. The minute I heard, I thought of you. It’s a plum, my friend. The admiralty’s a lovely villa on the Cape, fine sea breeze, great view of the mountain across the Bay, why, I’d rather live there myself any day than here in stuffy old Rome. What do you think?”
I had no particular plans for my future.
“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time for your silly little book.”
“Little?” I pretended to be insulted. “Silly!”
“Okay, okay,” Vespasian said. “Well?”
How could I pass it up? Whenever I visited the Bay of Naples I had a hard time leaving. I knew I was a skillful administrator. It would the kind of challenge I loved to rise to. And the Campanian countryside, why there were entire chapters full of plants and animals to be discovered, cataloged and described. I didn’t need to think about it.
“When do I start?”
Vespasian smiled broadly. “Soon as you can. The admiralty’s been cleared out. I’ll have an aide fill you in on the state of the fleet, the finances of the navy and so on, and knowing you, you’ll be up to speed in no time. It’s a deal?”
I nodded. “It’s a deal.”
“I’m glad,” Vespasian said. “I was hoping you’d take it. Now it's to work for both of us.”
As I headed towards my apartment, second thoughts arose. I felt older, with less energy, and here I was taking on a whole new set of responsibilities. Could I really find time, as admiral of the fleet, to finish the Natural History?
But though I’d traveled much of the empire, nowhere on earth besides my home on Lake Larius was I so comfortable as in Campania. I’d just have to make it work. If necessary I’d give my writing second-place again, do it in off-hours and deep into the night. There was a price to everything, and that was a price worth paying.
When I entered our apartment and announced my new position as praefectus classicus praetoriae Misenensis to Lucius, who hadn’t let a day go by in Belgium without grumbling about the cold, damp and uncivilized surroundings, then here back in Rome took up grumbling again about the fetid heat, the old man smiled broadly.
Chapter 18
Puteoli, on the Bay of Naples
78 C.E.
What, finally is an equite, a freeman,
a slave? They are but names
born of ambition and violence.
One can leap to the sky
from any little corner of the universe.
Seneca, Epistulae 31.11
Yes, I felt I’d leapt high enough from my little corner of the universe, or climbed the ladder my father had started for me as praefectus equitum, then on to Spain as subprocurator, procurator in Cyrenaica, and now praefectus Classicus, admiral of Misenum’s fleet. I could, if I'd wanted, go for a consulship or even the Senate; but my career rose almost against my deepest aspirations, which are scholarly and neither ambitious nor political. Yet I believe along the way I’ve applied my talents to the country’s good, and my career has left me time for my other interests. I’ve published my Natural History, which I dedicated to Titus, and of course suffered first the expected post-publication depression then the worries over how it would be received. But it was very well-received, and I was especially pleased with Titus’ and Vespasian’s praise. Now I’ve given my time over to caring for the fleet, while I toss around for another project.
