by Peake, R. W.
“It reminds me of home,” he sighed. “Whenever I miss Campania, I'll just come here and sit and drink it all in, then I feel better.”
“If you miss Italia, surely you have done enough to go home, have you not?”
Miriam never ceased to surprise me, for underneath her meek exterior and seeming submission there was a soul that seemed to be unafraid of asking someone from any station any question. I marveled at how graceful she was in doing so, never arousing anyone’s ire or making them uncomfortable. Uncle Tiberius gave her an appreciative smile, clearly enjoying being asked something other than polite questions.
“I have, I have indeed, young lady!” He heaved a sigh, affecting an air of melancholy that was so theatrical that it made all of us laugh. “But you see, I talk a great deal, as you undoubtedly have learned by now, about all manner of things that I never do, because ultimately I'm perfectly happy here. It’s just bad form not to profess to miss your homeland, particularly if you're a Roman, so I whine and wring my hands and shed a tear for dear old home.”
Moving through the atrium back into the first wing of the house, he took us into the triclinium, where a massive low table inlaid with citrus wood arranged in a series of geometric patterns was lined with couches covered in some sort of rich fabric and was the central feature of the room. Completing this wing of the house was the oecium, where Uncle Tiberius entertained other rich merchants, and where we had first met our benevolent host and his wife. Moving back through the atrium, he ushered us into the main bedroom, and I had to suppress a gasp of astonishment. The walls were plastered in frescoes of an erotic nature, where satyrs were cavorting about doing all manner of sexual things with nymphs in woodland settings, while in others Bacchus was holding court at what was obviously an orgy. Located in each corner of the room were statues of men and women coupling in a variety of positions, the floor decorated with a colorful mosaic of a surprisingly detailed scene of the sun rising over the seven hills of Rome. Prominent landmarks like Pompey’s Theater and the Forum Julii were plainly visible, along with the Circus Maximus. As I studied it more closely, it did not appear that the creator of the mosaic had ever been to Rome, or perhaps he just had to stick the landmarks in places where they would appear. Against one wall was the largest bed I had ever seen and Miriam was standing by it, which I reached out to touch with a hesitant finger.
“It’s not straw,” she marveled. “I have been sleeping on it now for several days and I still do not know exactly what it is made of.”
She turned to Uncle Tiberius with a questioning glance.
“Straw! Straw? Well goodness no, my dear! There’s nothing better than goose feathers. I trust you and the Primus Pilus will no doubt put this to good use, neh?”
He turned to give me a lewd wink, but his manner was so jovial that it was impossible to take any offense, and I found myself laughing. Even Miriam, whose people do not have the same open attitudes about sexual relations as we do, was smiling shyly, shooting me a glance through lowered lashes that told me that Uncle Tiberius was correct in his prediction. On each side of the bed, there were carpets of the type that abounded here in Syria, with deep, rich reds and golds, so striking that even I, who never took notice of such things, had to stop to admire the handiwork, recognizing that they were smaller versions of the much larger one on the floor of the oecium. There were two wooden chests, while on top of each were a set of cupboards where our clothes and personal items would be stored, and I assumed Miriam’s were already in one of them. Adjoining the bedroom through a short passageway was the bathing area, where a steaming bath was already ready for us, complete with a set of slaves to attend to our needs. There were a number of smaller bedrooms arranged around the bath, each with their own access. This was where Diocles would stay instead of the servants' quarters, which was in a separate building, though I did not tell him that yet. Uncle Tiberius led us back out past the atrium to the far side of the house, where we passed through another hallway and into the kitchen area and storerooms. There were perhaps a half-dozen people, men and women, bustling about obviously preparing a meal.
“I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of having the cooks prepare a dinner that I hope you will allow Pompeia and me to attend before we leave you two to make yourselves at home.”
Even if I were inclined to disagree, I did not see how I could refuse without appearing to be completely ungrateful, so I naturally said that we would be absolutely delighted, which had the added benefit of being the truth. In the short time I had known the man, I had grown to like him immensely, and I could tell that Miriam felt the same way, as did Gaius and Diocles. With the tour of the house complete, we returned to the oecium to sit on the couches, as I fumbled with the words I wanted to say. Despite being extremely grateful for the kindness being shown to us, there was still a nagging buzzing inside my brain that told me that such things just did not happen; rich people are not kind to poorer people as a general rule, so I struggled to find a way to properly frame the question I wanted to ask. Fortunately, Uncle Tiberius was an astute judge of character, or at least was able to divine what was on a man’s mind, because he turned serious.
“So, Titus Pullus, hero of the 10th Legion. You're sitting there trying to come up with a polite way to ask me why in the name of Hades am I doing you and your lady this kindness, neh?”
I had to laugh as I nodded. “Yes, Uncle Tiberius, that's exactly what's going through my head right now. I mean no disrespect…..”
He waved me to silence, shaking his head as he said, “I would be more concerned if you didn't have doubt about my motives. But please allow me to defer answering your question until dinner. Is that acceptable?”
I of course agreed, whereupon Uncle Tiberius and Pompeia excused themselves, saying that they needed to go to their home to take care of some things, all of us agreeing to have our dinner in two parts of a watch.
Uncle Tiberius turned to Miriam, telling her, “Prepare yourself for a truly Roman banquet, dear lady. The wine will be unwatered, and there will be more food than you have ever seen in your life.”
“I am looking forward to it,” she replied, and I could see that she was truly excited.
After the older couple left, I turned to see all three of the conspirators beaming at me with smiles from ear to ear.
“I told you that you'd be surprised,” Gaius said smugly, and I had to laugh in agreement.
I sent Diocles back to camp to arrange the transfer of my baggage while I enjoyed a bath, trying to fight the feeling of unreality as I let the hot water soak my doubts away. Miriam and Gaius were off somewhere exploring the grounds, as I had been forced to promise Miriam that Gaius could attend the dinner before returning to camp for the night. When the time came for the dinner to be served, I went to find Miriam and my nephew. With a man on each arm, she was as beautiful as any of the highborn women I had seen in Rome, at least in my eyes. Our manner of women’s dress showed off what I had learned to be an exquisite figure, the upswept hair emphasizing the long line of her neck, slender and graceful. I could not have been prouder if it was Cleopatra on my arm. Uncle Tiberius and Pompeia were already there, reclining side by side in the second position, leaving the Lectus Summus vacant. Remembering the occasion of my one previous formal Roman upper class experience, I guided Miriam to the middle of the couch to my right, pointing Gaius to the third couch. Then, I turned to Diocles, who was hovering just outside the dining room, again pointing to the third couch. One would have thought I had let out a tremendous fart, as everyone in the room froze, even the two slaves bringing in the food. In retrospect, I suppose that it is unusual for a master to insist that a slave recline at a table with freeborn company, yet I had stopped thinking of Diocles as a slave so many years before that it just seemed a natural thing to do. Diocles looked horrified; even Uncle Tiberius looked uncomfortable, while Gaius sat there surveying the dishes being laid on the table, almost drooling and paying no attention to what was going on around him. Then I
saw Miriam out of the corner of my eye, smiling up at me proudly, so any thought I had of reversing myself vanished like smoke before a strong wind. I pointed again, and Diocles, visibly gulping in nervousness, came in to lie gingerly on the couch, as if expecting the thing to suddenly sprout wings and fly away.
I refused to make any comment about Diocles’ place at the table, turning instead to Uncle Tiberius and saying, “So Uncle Tiberius, you promised to tell us what was behind your extraordinary act of kindness.” Before he could answer, I continued, “But first I would like to raise my glass in a toast to you, Tiberius Flavius Laevina, and to your lovely wife Pompeia. Thank you for making my life here much easier, in more ways than you can imagine.”
I grinned as I shot a sidelong glance at Miriam, who blushed prettily. As I lifted the vessel into which a slave had poured the wine, I saw that it was indeed a glass, an incredibly fragile thing that I was afraid I would crush in my rough hand. I had only seen such finery once before, not surprisingly in Egypt and I had been twice as petrified then that I would break something. Holding it carefully, I lifted the glass then drained it, as did the others, Miriam and Gaius looking similarly apprehensive as they tentatively touched the rim of the glass to their lips. Fortunately for everyone, nothing bad happened, then with the toast finished, I turned back to Uncle Tiberius, who was smacking his lips, his glass already empty and already reaching for the pitcher. Sensing eyes on him, he looked up guiltily, giving a chuckle as he shrugged.
“I do like my wine, yes I do. What was your question, Pullus? May I call you ‘Pullus,’ or do you prefer to be referred to by your rank as well?”
“Seeing as we're practically family, you can call me ‘Titus,’ or ‘Pullus’ if you prefer and I don’t require being addressed as ‘Primus Pilus.’”
“Except when we’re around other men,” Gaius mumbled, his mouth full of the tiny shrimps that had been soaked in brine from the taste of them.
“That’s different and you know it, Nephew, or do I have to send you home early without supper?”
“Sorry, Uncle.” He sounded anything but as he continued munching, while Diocles was trying to hide his own grin without much success.
“Very well, ‘Titus’ it is. Well, Titus, my boy, I wasn't always the picture of the successful merchant that you see before you now.” He shot his wife a sly grin, which she returned in kind. “In fact, you and I have much more in common than you would think. You see, when I was much, much younger, and much spryer, I marched under the standard, as you do now.”
I had been reclining partially on my stomach, but I pulled myself to more of a sitting position to stare at the older man.
“I know, I know; hard to believe looking at me now, but a bit more than 50 years ago, I was a Hastatus in the 3rd Legion of Lucius Cornelius Sulla when we defeated Mithridates at Chaeronea.”
Now he had everyone’s attention, for the name of Sulla was almost as well known throughout the world as that of Caesar, albeit for far different reasons. His reign of terror was both bloody and had lasted much longer than the brief reign of Gaius Marius after he went insane during his last Consulship. It was Sulla who started the practice of proscriptions, offering rewards for the heads of proscribed citizens. I looked at Uncle Tiberius through new eyes then, not as a smiling, somewhat silly old man, but a veteran and I raised my glass to him again in a salute, which he returned with his own glass. Gaius had stopped eating altogether, and I suspect his reaction was much the same as mine, as I saw him staring at the old man with undisguised interest.
“So, was Sulla as terrifying as they say?”
I distinctly remember when I had been a tiro, the older men had spoken of Sulla as we sat around the fire, and they still shuddered at the mere mention of his name.
“Oh, he wasn’t so bad, as long as you stayed on his good side, if you know what I mean.” He gave me a wink. “In fact, you could say that it was the Dictator, that’s what he wanted to be called, you know, who staked me when I left the Legion and started out on my own, though it was in a, shall we say, a roundabout fashion.”
He chuckled at his own wit, but I felt a shiver run up my spine, the full import of what he had just said hitting me. The veterans had always claimed that there were men who had gotten rich from informing on men who were proscribed, and here was a man sitting next to me essentially saying that he was one of those men, at least if I read him correctly.
“He had a fearsome temper, that's true,” he continued. “But it was more of an icy, controlled kind of thing that I can see men finding absolutely terrifying, though I never worried about it much. I just did what he wanted me to do and I never felt his wrath. But you marched with Gaius Julius Caesar, and the gods know that he had his own temper, didn’t he? I've heard tales of it.”
While I had suddenly become reluctant to share much with Uncle Tiberius I saw no harm in speaking of my dead general, chiding myself for being so suspicious, but immediately I countered that with the reminder that these were suspicious times, where it was impossible to know who to trust.
Still, I was not willing to be rude, so I answered honestly. “He did have quite a temper,” I acknowledged. “But he never lost it without cause. And he wasn't one to be vindictive.”
“That's certainly true,” Uncle Tiberius countered. “Much to his detriment, I would add. He showed mercy to his enemies, and look where it got him. Sulla, on the other hand, never forgot a wrong done him and would always exact vengeance, even if he had to wait 20 years to do it.”
“Where it got him,” I said quietly, feeling the first flickering of anger at what I took to be a criticism of my general, “was to be considered a god by his people, and what Rome got was more new territory and people at one time than it's ever conquered before. Your general,” I pointed out, “was so full of putrescence that the gods wouldn’t accept his body being purified in fire when he died.”
Oh, that made him angry; I could see the flashing in his eyes as his liver-colored lips thinned. Yet, after the space of a breath, he gave a harsh chuckle, and as quickly as it had fled, the jolly old man came rushing back.
“Pax, Titus Pullus, pax. I didn't mean to offend the memory of your general, as I hold it in the greatest respect. It’s just that no matter how noble Caesar’s motives may have been in staying his hand and exacting retribution against his enemies, the end result was exactly the same as it was under Sulla, and that was civil war.”
I could not disagree with him on that, as the end result of Caesar’s clemency, which I privately had always thought was a mistake, was more than ten years of civil war in which thousands of Romans lost their lives. There were times when I thought of all the Legions of men that were lost with whom we could have subdued the Parthians several times over, but that was smoke that had blown away many years before, so there was no point in dwelling on it. The main course of the meal had come, the next few moments occupied with the dishing out and consumption of the food, allowing tempers to cool so that when the conversation resumed, the tension had eased considerably.
“Titus, tell me as one old soldier to the other, what happened in Parthia?”
Uncle Tiberius asked this question between smacks as he chomped noisily on his leg of chicken, the grease running down his chin.
“I wouldn’t know,” I answered evasively, “since we never made it to Parthia.”
He laughed, nodding in salute at my attempt to avoid the question, but he was not so easily put off.
“Very well, Media was it? What happened in Media?”
“Bad luck mostly,” I answered, pausing as I thought about it. “Of course, looking back you can always see the mistakes, but in the moment it’s not so easy. Leaving the baggage train was a mistake, and ultimately it cost us the campaign, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think we left too late. We got to Zeugma later than we should have, then we stayed there almost three weeks. I think if I were to trace the cause of our setback,” I refused to use the word “failure,” “it would be there.
”
“Ah yes, the Queen of Egypt that holds our Triumvir’s heart captive,” Uncle Tiberius chortled. I should not have been surprised that he knew, but I was, and he must have caught the look on my face. “I heard about him mooning about her in the camp for weeks. Pregnant, wasn’t she?” He gave a look of surprise that I suspect was completely feigned. “What? You don’t believe that this is a secret do you, Titus? The spell that Cleopatra has put on Antonius is all people in these parts talk about, and I can assure you that if what I read from my correspondents in Italia is accurate, it's the subject of much of the talk in Italia in general, and Rome in particular. Octavian is using Antonius’ behavior against him, I can assure you of that, and he's whipping up the mob by portraying Cleopatra as an evil temptress who's duped your general.”
While his description of Antonius as my general was technically accurate, I still did not like hearing it put so baldly.
“Cleopatra is many things, but I don't believe she is evil.” I tried to keep my tone cool and dispassionate, yet I could feel Miriam’s eyes turn on me.
When I glanced over, I saw her giving me an appraising look, something Uncle Tiberius did not miss.
“Oh my boy, you have stepped in it now,” he chuckled, but he turned the conversation back to the subject. “She may not be evil, but I can assure you that she has some sort of hold on Marcus Antonius, and Octavian is using that to his advantage.”
I could only shrug at that, having no reason to doubt what he was saying was true. “Whatever the cause, I think that delay is what cost us dearly. Losing the baggage train was the second mortal blow, and the third was not turning back sooner, before the weather turned bad. We lost most of our men due to weather and not battle.”
I looked over at Gaius. Just like I suspected, his eyes had taken on a faraway look as he relived his ordeal in the snow trying to save Vulso. I wish I could have told him that those memories would go away, but all they do is fade and never completely disappear, while you find yourself almost paralyzed by them at the oddest times.
