The Death of Marcellus

by Dan Armstrong

  “How has Sempronia taken it?”

  Portia came back across the room. “Not well. It may mean she’ll never be married. And it might cost me my friendship with Fulvia.”

  “Now that she’s not a Vestal, has there been any mention of her returning to the tutoring?”

  “It was Marcus’ request. It seems there’s no need now. Why do you ask?”

  “She enjoyed the lessons. The tutoring might be a good distraction for her.”

  Portia heard it in my voice. She smiled. “You might be right.” She looked into my eyes, searching for the feelings and thoughts behind. “It would give you some income.”

  “Yes. That would be good. I’m not sure what’s next for me.”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange.” Portia smiled gently and touched me on the shoulder, then walked out toward the garden.

  That afternoon I rode Balius to the Claudian farm. Mostly I wanted to get out of Rome and give Balius some exercise, but I also wanted to see Edeco.

  The stable was empty when I arrived. I brushed Balius and gave him some water and a bucket of oats. I went into the house. Meda was picking flowers in the peristyle. She barely acknowledged me. I asked her about Edeco. She said he was in the olive orchard.

  The olive orchard contained several hundred trees. I wound in and out of them before spotting Edeco inspecting the fruit. I called to him. “Are they ripe yet?”

  Edeco smiled as I approached. He wore loose-fitting brown trousers and no shirt. “In another month if the weather remains as warm as it’s been.”

  His smile washed away when I got close. “Did he die with courage?” Marcellus had always shown the greatest respect for Edeco.

  I nodded. “I was beside him when he was struck by a spear. It happened very quickly.”

  Edeco didn’t ask for details. To him, death in war was not tragic if you died with courage, something he would likely be denied. “How is Marcus?” he asked.

  “Busy with funeral preparations.”

  “When will it be?”

  “Next week.”

  Edeco reached for an olive branch and delicately removed an olive with his long fingers. He handed the unripe fruit to me.

  I put it in my mouth and used my tongue and teeth to separate the pit from the meat. “At least another month,” I said spitting out the pit.

  Edeco moved through the orchard to another tree. I walked along with him. The sun sat off to the west. Threads of white clouds strung across the horizon.

  “Marcus and his father were not on the best of terms at the end,” I said. “The timing was not good in that way.”

  “I saw it here on the farm. Sons of powerful men are often at odds with their fathers.”

  “And Marcus wanted to be just like him.”

  Edeco picked two olives. He put one in his mouth and gave the other to me.

  “Marcus told me of an incident with a man by the name of Capitolinus. You must know of it.”

  Edeco spit out the olive pit as though it were poison. “I asked for permission to kill the man.”

  “Instead Marcellus confronted him in the Senate.”

  Edeco shook his head. “Even if it had cost me my life, it would have been better had I killed the man.”

  “Because of the public humiliation?”

  The king-made-slave nodded. “And the way it put Portia between Marcellus and his son.”

  “She wanted to protect Marcus?”

  “The household was never the same.”

  “Will Marcus be better off because of his father’s death?” I asked.

  “All sons are better off after their father’s death.”

  I thought of my own father’s death. “You mean, if they are warriors?”

  “If they are to become men.”

  I continued through the orchard with Edeco. Little else was said. The entire afternoon and into the next day I thought about Edeco’s comment about a father’s death. It may have been true for Marcus, and a tribal king in Spain, but I could not convince myself that it was true for me.

  CHAPTER 96

  At dawn the day of Marcellus’ funeral, the family gathered with Ithius, Laelia, Edeco, Meda, and me around the hearth at the back of the house in Rome. A black figure urn on the table adjacent to the hearth contained what was left of Marcellus. Portia began the ceremony with a prayer to the penates.

  “We beg your forgiveness for dousing the sacred flame.” She used an amphora of wine to put out the fire in the hearth. “The master of the house, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, is leaving for the last time. We will ask your approval to relight the flame following the master’s funeral.”

  Edeco held a wooden box that he had brought from the farm. When the last ember went out, he opened the box and withdrew five wax masks cast from the five most illustrious men in the Claudian clan going back some two hundred years. Five actors, hired by Marcus, stood in the atrium. One was attired like a soldier. The other four wore magisterial robes. One by one they came into the kitchen and selected a mask to hold over their faces.

  Marcus lifted his father’s urn from the table and led all of us, including the actors, to the front of the house. Ten flute players, ten trumpet players, and Asellus with seven of Marcellus’ clients carrying a bier waited outside. Ordinarily the bier would contain the body of the deceased. In this case, Marcus placed the urn there.

  When the musicians lifted their instruments to play, we formed a line and began to walk. The actors, representing the Claudian ancestry, were at the front of the procession, one riding a chariot, another on Marcellus’ white charger, the others on foot. The flute players walked behind them, followed by the trumpet players, then the bier containing the urn. The family was next, with me and the slaves at the rear. We walked slowly around the base of the Aventine Hill, along the south side of Circus Maximus, through the cattle market to the forum. As we walked, Marcellus’ friends, members of the Senate, and a growing swell of citizens fell in behind.

  No citizen in Rome had been as beloved as Marcellus. Yes, Scipio was their darling now, but historically, Marcellus was a military hero of the highest stature, nearly equaling Mars himself.

  The entire population of Rome had turned out for the ceremony. Men and women filled the forum, the adjoining streets, and the surrounding hills. It compared to the spectacle of Marcellus’ ovation, except tears of grief replaced the cheers of jubilation.

  Suddenly the flutes and trumpets became silent. Marcus separated himself from the procession and stood up to the rostra overlooking the comitium and the rest of the forum. The hubbub of the crowd quieted. Marcus surveyed the audience, tens of thousands of people waiting for his eulogy to console their aching hearts.

  “We are here today to honor Marcus Claudius Marcellus,” said Marcus, projecting his voice over the crowd. “Named for the God of War, Marcellus was elected to the office of consul five times and the office of praetor more times than one can count. He served twenty-five years in the Senate and ten years in the College of Augurs. He placed the welfare of Rome above all else in life. Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the slayer of Britomartus, conqueror of Syracuse, and Rome’s most celebrated general, to whom two triumphs and one ovation were given, is gone from this Earth. I have lost a beloved father. Rome has lost a great leader. If we are to remember this man in the way he would want, I ask you, please dry your tears and quell your grief, so we Romans can focus all of our efforts on this war my father gave his life to win.

  “Ten years ago, a Carthaginian army invaded Italy from the north. Ten years ago, their general unleashed a campaign of terror upon our homeland, destroying one Roman army after another through subterfuge and ruse. These years have proven to be the hardest Romans have ever known. Great men, Cornelius Scipio at Ticinius, Tiberius Sempronius at Trebia, Gaius Flaminius at Lake Trasimene, Quintus Minucius at Geronium, Aemilius Paullus at Cannae, Fulvius Flaccus at Herdonea, all courageous Roman generals, were so thoroughly deceived by Hannibal Barca’s maneuvers that for the first time in R
ome’s history our central military tactic was to avoid battle.

  “No man felt the bridle of this strategy with more frustration than my father. No man felt the urge to engage this Carthaginian, who to this day fills the underworld with our dead, more strongly than he did. This became the heartbeat behind his every breath. And yet for seven years, he contained his Roman rage to abide by the orders of our Senate.

  “Then, as the long years in Italy began to wear on our foe, the wisest of our military minds, Quintus Fabius, opened the door for battle. When the time came to name a man to chase down Rome’s gravest adversary, he chose my father.

  “For three campaigns he hounded the Carthaginian. For three campaigns it was the brazen Hannibal who turned down battle and sought delay. On three occasions, out of some twenty opportunities, Hannibal took my father’s challenge. And while no other Roman general could come away from battle against this man with anything but Roman dead, my father fought the invincible Carthaginian to a stalemate three times, and to his final day yearned for yet another opportunity to defeat him.

  “It was nearly a month ago that we encountered Hannibal’s army in the wooded hills and green valleys of Apulia. Never had our fortunes seemed so well-fated. Never had we caught the Carthaginian in so ill-suited a location for him to defend.

  “Warmed by the summer sun, a contingent led by my father and his co-consul Quinctius Crispinus ventured to the top of a small hill to better view the opponent’s camp. But once again, the duplicitous Carthaginian had planned a party of death. Hidden in the green forest, as invisible as the air, as false as Punic faith, Numidian javenlineers rose up around Rome’s heroes. My father, clad in purple, attracted the majority of their darts.

  Marcus paused, bowed his head, then faced his audience again. “By nature’s law both the cowardly and the brave must die. Who is so privileged as my father to die a worthy death. There is no shame to reflect upon. There is no tragedy to reclaim. There is no sadness to forget.

  “A soldier’s death brings luster, like the rays of the sun, to his progeny. The light from my father bathes me now. I close my ears to my mother’s wails and cast away my mourning clothes.” He dramatically unwound the soiled toga from his body, revealing his polished bronze cuirass and a war-pocked gladius at his hip. “We still have a war to fight, a demon to defeat, an army to destroy.” He glared out at the populace of Rome—those directly before him, those in the hills to his left, those in the hills to his right, those in the hills behind him—then concluded with a challenge. “If Roman blood runs through your veins, then I beseech you, have the courage to let the whim of battle reveal it—for there can be no victory without the loss of Roman blood.”

  It was a call for determination more than a eulogy of Marcellus. Marcus stepped down from the rostra to a huge outpouring of cheers. Individuals called out Marcellus’ name. The procession of actors and family reformed, crossed the forum, and headed east, following the base of the Palatine Hill. We paraded out Porta Querquetulana to Via Tusculana, followed by thousands of citizens.

  Three miles outside the city we stopped at the tomb of the Claudii. Marcus removed the urn from the bier and placed it on a shelf in the mausoleum where a dedication had already been inscribed: Marcus Claudius Marcellus applied himself to the highest ideals of a Roman. He secured a line of descent. He achieved victories in three wars and added to the glory of his ancestors. To those family members who survive him, he leaves a history of valor to delight in.

  Marcus sacrificed an ox at the altar outside the mausoleum. Fabius read the entrails, telling the people amassed around the tomb that the gods had received Marcellus. A huge feast followed. The ox was cooked and added to a luxurious spread of food that had been bought and arranged for by Marcus. According to the custom of mourning, none of the family ate at the feast.

  CHAPTER 97

  Public mourning for the family lasted another eight days. On the ninth day, Marcus performed a second sacrifice and provided for another, though considerably smaller, feast at the tomb. This time the family ate with the other mourners.

  Marcus received his orders the next day. He had been promoted to general and was being sent to Venusia to take over his father’s two legions. He and I would leave for Venusia in two weeks. We also received word that Crispinus had died from his wounds.

  In the days following the second feast, Portia told me she had spoken with Fulvia. She said the tension between them had eased and that she had inquired about the tutoring. Fulvia said that Sempronia wanted to resume the lessons. I would have time for one lesson before leaving for Venusia.

  Portia accompanied me across Rome to Sempronia’s home three days later. Edeco served as our escort. Dora answered the door. Fulvia hardly seemed to notice me and immediately whisked Portia away to the atrium to talk. Dora led me to the peristyle.

  My heart rose into my throat as we entered the manicured garden. Sempronia sat on a bench in the sunlight, another four months older. She was nearly fifteen now. Her hair was collected in a bun on top of her head and covered with a pale green scarf. I had never seen her more lovely.

  While Dora pretended to be busy in the garden, I sat down beside Sempronia with my wax pad and bronze stylus, expecting to suddenly wake up from what could only be a dream. Sempronia flashed her eyes up to mine. Our eyes met briefly, then darted away.

  We proceeded through some simple proofs for similar triangles: side-angle-side, side-side-side, angle-side-angle. We handed the wax pad back and forth, trading impish grins. I wanted to talk to her about anything but geometry, but the presence of Dora across the room prevented it. The next time I smoothed the wax pad, I scratched a question in Latin into the wax instead of the hypothesis for a proof. Are you terribly sad that your wedding has been canceled? I hoped I wasn’t presuming too much familiarity.

  Sempronia read the question, then faced me straight on. After a moment she wiped away my question and wrote her answer. I never met the man I was promised to. I cannot be broken-hearted for someone I didn’t know.

  I smoothed the wax and wrote, I was so afraid you’d be devastated.

  She gave me a sad smile, then wrote, It has been awkward. My mother was furious. But I am very glad not to be a Vestal. I never wanted that.

  I nodded my understanding, then took the pad and wrote, It would have been the end of these geometry lessons. What could have been worse than that?

  Nothing! she wrote back. How long will you be gone?

  Two months. We leave in six days.

  I will miss you, she etched in the wax. When she looked up at me, we both knew. We gazed into each other like we never had before.

  At this point Dora stood and came across the peristyle. I quickly smeared the writing from the pad and drew a triangle. Sempronia began to giggle.

  “What’s going on here?” Dora demanded. “You don’t seem serious enough to be studying?”

  “Oh yes, we are,” said Sempronia. “I enjoy the geometry. It’s like a game.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” said Sempronia. “And it contains the most important piece of knowledge in the whole world.”

  “And what might that be?” queried the skeptical slave.

  “A squared plus B squared equals C squared,” squawked Ajax from his cage even though it was covered.

  Both Sempronia and I burst into laughter, but Ajax hadn’t convinced Dora. She sat down on the bench beside Sempronia to chaperone. This quickly ended our written conversation, and I returned to the laws of similar triangles.

  Before long, Fulvia and Portia, clearly having made up since the cancelation of the wedding, came out to the peristyle, announcing that my time with Sempronia was over. Our most emotional good-bye was with our eyes.

  When I returned to the Claudian residence that day, I sought out Ithius. I stopped by the stable to check on Balius before going into the house. Rullo called my name from the loft.

  “What do you know, Rullo?”

  “Everything,” he snapped. “Marcu
s Claudius has freed my mother. We are no longer slaves!”

  “Wonderful.”

  Julia appeared behind her brother. She held up her hand. Lifting one finger at a time, she counted, “One, two, three, four, five.”

  I didn’t even know she could talk.

  “So along with gaining your freedom, Rullo, you’ve become a tutor.”

  “Better than that. I’m teaching her to throw dice.”

  I found Ithius in the peristyle watering plants. He smiled as I approached. He was as sad as anyone about Marcellus’ death. He asked me a few questions about the incident. I said I was within five feet of Marcellus when the spear pierced him.

  “Did he suffer?” asked Ithius.

  “Only from the humiliation of being tricked by Hannibal,” I said. “He died almost immediately after being struck, but it wasn’t the way he would have wanted it.”

  “You were lucky to have survived, Timon.”

  “I’ve thought about that every day since it happened. The difference of a foot or two and that spear would have pierced me.”

  Neither of us said anything for a while. Ithius, like myself, I’m sure, was thinking of his time with Marcellus.

  “Ithius, what is the purpose of our science?” After Marcellus’ death, my guilt for not using the lenses had grown. This question had run through my thoughts constantly. “What’s it to be used for?”

  “What do you mean, used for?”

  “Was it correct for Archimedes to use geometry and mathematics to make weapons of war? He didn’t think it was.”

  Ithius stroked his chin, thought for a moment, then said, “This sounds like a recasting of the story of Prometheus and the theft of fire from the gods. Some say it came with a curse. I would say it came with a responsibility.” He thought a moment before continuing. “I believe we are supposed to use the knowledge we acquire, whether it’s philosophy to help us make decisions about our life, or science to make machines to ease our physical burdens. But it must be used wisely and with an understanding of the risks.