by Ken Parejko
“I suppose it’s time for our generation to take our parting, follow Vespasian off stage. Hand it over to the next generation.”
“Don’t be silly,” Plinia objected. “The country needs you. What does the younger generation know about governing?”
I turned to Caecilius, who was quietly listening. “Well, son. What do you know about governing?”
Caecilius set his cup down. His brow furrowed, and he frowned almost comically. “Well, uncle, with regard to whether the country needs you or not, I'm reminded of Cicero’s letter in which he compares the men governing the ship of state to the sailors on a ship at sea.”
“Yes, ” I said. “Go on.”
“He says, as I recall, that perhaps in old age a man may not be able to climb the sails, but who better to have at the rudder?”
“Very good, Caecilius. But now, I didn’t ask you what Cicero said about governing. I asked you what you know about it.”
“It seems a most difficult business to me,” Caecilius admitted.
“How’s that?”
“It seems to require a thorough knowledge of the past, a detailed and working understanding of the needs of the people of all classes at the moment, and a better grasp of the future than anyone could be expected to have. It seems really quite impossible to me.”
“And perhaps it is, a new Zeno’s paradox.” I smiled. Caecilius nodded. “Has anyone ever succeeded at it?”
“Well, Augustus, of course. Claudius, perhaps. And Vespasian, certainly.”
“Certainly,” I agreed.
“Vespasian was the right man to steer the ship because he was a man of wisdom and experience,” Caecilius added. “But we were doubly fortunate in that he granted Titus equal powers, and after Vespasian Titus has brought the energy of his youth.”
“We’ve just completed,” I interrupted, “a most remarkable journey in the history of the country. Now we’ll see how much Titus has learned from his father.” I picked at my offella, the little flat bread spread with oil and herbs, which I liked all too well. “And now we’ll see how much you’ve learned from Theophrastus. Honor us, if you will, with your translation of the little piece your mother gave you this morning.”
Caecilius, ready for just this moment, lifted a small papyrus from off the table. He read in a clear, careful voice. I'd memorized the original, and was astonished how well he rendered Theophrastus’ Greek into Latin. In fact in a phrase or two the boy had found a word more apt than I myself had thought of. When he was done I complimented him, which of course greatly pleased him. I set very high standards for myself and for others and was not prodigal with my compliments.
“Now,” I challenged him, “I’ll ask you again, what do you think.”
“About animals, uncle, or about Theophrastus?”
“Well, both. About Theophrastus’ view of animals.”
Again, Caecilius had come prepared. I made a habit of always asking him not only to translate, but to tell me the meaning as he understood it of these exercises.
“I would take a middle road,” Caecilius said, “steering the ship between both Aristotle and Theophrastus. Aristotle errs, I think, in allowing animals too little reasoning power. Mother, do you remember father’s favorite hound, Raven?”
“Yes, of course,” Plinia said. Her husband had loved the little Gallic hound, who was not only jet-black like a raven, but whose bark resembled that of the big birds who nested on the hills along the lake. Caecilius and Raven had hunted rabbits together many times.
“And how when father would leave for the day Raven would sleep under the table in the reception room, all day long, and then at the end of the day, before father returned, he would sit up and watch the doorway, as though he knew what time father was coming back?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, that was something itself. But father told me that Raven knew rabbits so well he knew which way they’d run and hurry ahead to cut them off. And sheepdogs, we all know how well they herd sheep, as though they can enter the very minds of the animals they are asked to chase.”
“All right. Let’s say I grant you that Aristotle does not give animal minds their full due,” I agreed. “Though I would suggest that using dogs, in your argument, to represent all animals is not fair. Could you say the same of pigs? Or sheep? Anyway, go on. How about Theophrastus?”
“This is harder, uncle,” Caecilius suggested. “Because he grants to the animal abilities it is hard to disprove. It is easier to prove something than to disprove it.”
“For example?” I agreed, and was pleased my nephew had come this far in his understanding of natural philosophy.
Caecilius thought a moment. “Well,” he said, “I could claim that Juno appeared to me this morning, and told me I was to eat six apples for lunch. Could you disprove me?”
I smiled. “Well, how many apples did you have for lunch?”
“I didn’t have any apples,” Caecilius answered seriously. “How many apples I've eaten neither proves nor disproves my claim. But let’s say I did eat six apples for lunch. Would that prove me right?”
“You’re right about one thing,” I granted him, “and the mages and priests of every different sect make good use of it to snare the gullible. Disproving a claim is harder than proving one. So, back to Theophrastus, please”
“I think his claim that animals have minds similar to ours, and emotions and reasoning abilities, deserves consideration. But I’m not convinced.”
“Very good, son.”
“He’s learning from you well,” his mother said. “You’re a good teacher.”
“Rather, he’s a good student,” I rejoined. “But I’m afraid it’s time to retire. I have those dratted diplomas to award tomorrow.”
In the morning sailors who’d survived the twenty-six years to full retirement would receive their diplomas and be mustered out. The attrition rate in the navy was high. Most men died of disease, in battle or accidental drowning long before then. Scarcely over a hundred out of the entire fleet would be granted retirement this year, with its coveted monthly salary and full citizenship. As admiral it was my duty to bestow the honors. I had some writing I still wanted to do, and some plant specimens yet to classify. It was quite dark already, with the oil lamps along the wall struggling to keep back the darkness creeping in from outside.
“Until tomorrow, then,” I said. “Do you need something to work on in the morning?” I asked Caecilius. The work of rising from my couch seemed as much as I could manage. My bones ached, I breathed hard just from getting up.
“Thank you, uncle, but I’ve a handball game at the palaestra, first thing. Care to join us?” He was joking, of course. The game of pila, in which a pig-bladder inflated with air and covered with green-painted leather was batted off the wall of a small court, was for me in the distant past.
“Right,” I replied, before shuffling out of the room. “Skin me, inflate me, and bat me around like a pig-bladder. What fun.”
Chapter 21
Pompeii
August 8, 79 C.E.
Fishmongers!
Three times they scurried past, brushed me aside, baskets full of wriggling wares. One small wrasse, in a final futile gesture towards life, had flung itself free and landed at my feet, flipped and flopped and found itself wedged between paving stones, presenting me with a small ethical dilemma. The poor guy’s opercula, gasping for watery air, reminded me of my own trouble breathing. A part of me wanted to help, deliver it back down the Via Porta Marina to the sea from which it had come. But that wasn’t so easy. One hike up that hill was enough. Instead I leaned over, plucked the fish by its tail and threw it lightly off to the side where in no time one of the young boys scrounging along the walkways would find it and the fish would end up as someone's treasured dinner.
I stopped to catch my breath. The street around me streamed with merchants, grain-dealers, clerks, bankers, bureaucrats, beggars and busy shoppers. Today, a market day, Pompeii was busily strutting its s
tuff. Doubly-busy actually, because the Augustali, the week-long festival honoring Augustus’ birthday, would begin in just a few days. A full slate of plays, concerts and athletics were being put together. The city's forum, still only partially repaired after the earthquake seventeen years ago, was being spruced up. Portable stalls were being erected all over the city for craft- and gewgaw-hawkers. Stages were being put up for performances high- and low-brow.
A wide pine plank on its way to one of the nascent stages hurried past, its breeze kissing my cheek as it swung uncomfortably close. I let the boisterous stream pick me up and carry me into the city, past the many shops along the city walls, where religious statuary, jewelry, cloth and small breads were hawked by noisy vendors infected with perennial early-morning optimism. I noticed a half-legion images of Isis, whose popularity seemed boundless. I found them interesting, these rustic statues of wood and clay, and I’d have liked to pause and look them over. But the crowd carried me on. And after all I was in Pompeii on official business.
We hadn't heard from Valerius Pollo, the grain-jobber, for more than two weeks. It was my strict policy to have at least a two-month’s supply of the fleet's grain on hand. It was time to make crystal clear to Pollo that selling us grain was a privilege, not a right. A personal visit from the admiral was in order. I’d sent him a note, telling him when he could expect to see me. There'd been no response.
Pollo did give us the best prices, and his grain was never moldy or full of sand. But he was a moody sort of Greek and there were plenty of other jobbers willing to bribe me for the fleet's business, if I’d been so inclined. The first ships bringing the year’s grain harvest from Alexandria were due in Puteoli any day. It was time to find out what the hell was going on.
The basilica, where I was to meet Pollo, was crowded. At the grain-merchants’ booth I learned that Pollo had just slipped out, was not expected back til mid-morning, and no one seemed to know where he’d gone. Maybe the baths? Or try the Lupercalian brothels. I wasn’t about to chase all over town looking for him. I left a note that it was essential we talk, and that I’d be back in an hour or so.
I wasn’t fond of crowds. The noisy bustle inside the basilica made me giddy. I slipped out into the open forum, busy too but at least open to the sky, and quieter. I stopped a moment to catch my breath. Several of the forum’s columns still lay scattered as though a giant hand had knocked them over, not yet resurrected after the quake. Beyond the forum rose the calm mount of Vesuvius, a lovely background to this bustling city on the Bay. How many mornings had I stepped out of the admiralty and rested my eyes on the mountain’s symmetrical crown, rising high across the Bay’s placid waters. I'd sometimes try to imagine the landscape without the mountain; but it would be like taking the head off Praxitele’s Apollo. So I'd grown to feel a certain affection for Vesuvius, and it had become a kind of talisman for me, this checking each morning that it was still there. Of all the lands I’d seen, from Spain to Cyrenaica, Egypt and Antioch, the narrow gorges of the upper Rhine and alpine Lake Larius, I’d come to love Campania most, for the vast variety of its landscape, its splashing streams, cedar-strewn hillsides, the marvels of the volcanic cauldrons and mud-pots of the Phlegrean fields, and the beautiful Bay itself. And above them all Vesuvius, now nicely framed by the colonnaded forum, itself anthill-busy with morning merchants.
I was directly in front of the forum's largest building, built by the wool-maker’s guild. On every few acres Campanians kept their little herds from which shearings made their way here to be washed, fulled, carded, and woven into cloth. One of the city's more prestigious families, the Eumachians, had made their fortune selling tile for houses and villas all up and down the coast, thousands upon thousands of amphorae which carried oil and wine to and from far corners of the empire, and good Falernian wine. In time the family branched out into the wool business. Because she was a priestess of Venus the widow Eumachia could own property, and it was she was the current owner of the family’s enterprises. The sprawling home of the city’s wool-makers, in which the woolen cloth was cleaned, fulled and dyed, was a large and elegant monument to her family’s wealth, damaged but quickly repaired after the earthquake. Cartloads of raw wool flowed into its back doors while cleaned and carded wool, rich with oily lanolin and soft to the touch, and woven woolen cloth of many colors and qualities flowed out the front and into the nearby basilica to be wholesaled.
Women spun and fulled the wool. We'd inherited so much from Greece; had, other than our military power and genius for technology and organization, little we could really call our own. In Greece prostitutes who needed extra money often worked at spinning: or perhaps it was that spinners, needing extra money, worked the brothels. It was said that in Athen’s hundreds of little spinning-shops one could always find a woman who with the exchange of a few coins would set aside her spindle and distaff and the growing mass of yarn, wipe the oil from her fingers and follow you out back to earn a quicker wage than spinning could offer. It was still true, partly. But for us brothels were now a specialized industry, in a different part of town, and it was one of Eumachia’s proudest accomplishments that by paying her workers adequately she’d separated the fulling process from the prostitute’s trade.
I stepped down the marble steps out of the basilica and crossed toward the entrance to the fuller’s building, a wide, tall and elegant doorway, around it a narrow band of intricately-carved marble which had fallen off during the earthquake but been reset since my last time here. It deserved a look.
I made my way across the current of pedestrians and stood before the entrance and its impressive frieze through which merchants, workers, and woven wool passed. On either side of the doorway were nice small statues of Romulus and Aeneas. But it was the frieze that interested me, whose fine scroll-work reminded me of the reliefs set around the doorways of Vespasian’s Temple of Peace, where Vespasian and I'd spent so many happy hours. The scroll-work was dominated by a delicately-curved line of acanthus leaves. It seemed impossible that such fine detail could be worked into hard stone. Here I believe our craftsmen had surpassed the Greek. I remembered that Theophrastus was the son of a fuller, and had written in detail about the acanthus. But I knew the plant first-hand, as a vine grown in the capitol's finest gardens, luxuriously covering the pergolas shading calm ornamental pools. I knew two kinds of acanthus: the smooth-leaved modeled here, and a less-common thorny variety. The root of the smooth I’d written about in my Natural History, as a poultice for burns. And though it was said that boiled in a barley-wine ptisan it would alleviate respiratory problems, I had little success with it. A month ago I’d encountered acanthus hung outside Vespasian’s house to alert strangers that a corpse lay inside, and strewn over Vespasian’s casket as a symbol of birth into a new life. The marble acanthus I faced was done so delicately I couldn’t help but reach out to touch it, almost expecting to feel the soft, rubbery texture of the leaves. And the short columnar florets of the plant’s tiny blossoms conjured in my mind their delicate earthy odor.
Partially-hidden among the weaving acanthus vines was a menagerie of birds, insects and sea-creatures so well-carved I almost expected them to move and hop around. A small hawk was busy eating a snake, a sparrow lunching on a grasshopper. There a linnet and a peacock, and there a screech-owl, whose name I so liked, the ulula, mascot of fullers. I discovered among the leaves a small snail. They were a favorite delicacy, especially sea-snails boiled then grilled on a hot fire and dipped in garum with a nice wine to wash them down, and said to be a cure for stomach problems, most effective if eaten in odd numbers. One was never enough, of course, nor were three. So I would eat five; no matter how delicious they were, seven were too many. The best I’d ever had were the fresh Balearic snails I’d found in Spanish marketplaces. What interesting creatures they were, slow, steady, slimy little travelers with their portmanteau on their backs. Animals, like us. But so unlike us. I doubt even Theophrastus could convince me they could reason.
I found another g
rasshopper, which seemed to be staring out at me begging me to release it from its stone cage. Grasshoppers were eaten too, though I’d never tried them. It was said, and I reported it in my book, that grasshoppers were the only living creatures without a mouth or an anus. I’d come in recent months to regret writing that as a fact, since I now doubted it was true. Well, there was no telling from the marble grasshoppers in front of me. I'd have to find a live specimen and have a look. But how could I be expected to check every little thing I’d put into my book? If I’d taken time to verify each, the book would never have been published. My Flora of Campania on the other hand was based on my own careful study of the region’s plants, and I could proudly say I'd only put into it that which I could vouch for myself.
The frieze I stood before was not only a lovely work of art, it was also a small natural history set in stone. It pleased me greatly that each animal and plant I located on it had one way or another made its way into my Natural History, and it pleased me too that I could remember so much about each of them. Every creature, large or small, ugly or beautiful, was a doorway into a sprawling landscape carved out of the local natural community, human history, and medicinal and other uses. I sighed. With deforestation and the rapid spread of alien species soon the flora of my childhood home at Lake Larius, of the Sabine hills and that of Campania will all be the same.
My eyes followed the acanthus up to the door’s lintel where I discovered yet more birds and insects. Was that tiny leaflet along the top really silphium? I stepped back to get a better view, craned my neck upward. Backing up, I bumped into a young man hurrying past, who blessed me with a curse. I saw now that people were staring at me as I gazed upward, rotund island in a stream of pedestrians begrudgingly splitting around me. My eyes weren't so good as they used to be, and I couldn’t tell if it was in fact silphium carved into the lintel.
Though my neck was sore, and I was clearly an impediment to the clear flow of pedestrians, I couldn't take my eyes off the frieze. But another crisis had arisen; from out of the tiny sea washing inside me came a quiet message: Time for a pee, time for a pee it sang, like a bird singing to its mate. Hey, listen up, it said, time for a pee! The years were catching up with me: my little sea sang that song more often than it used to.
