In the early days, I was so fearful of criticism I worked into the black of night poring over every detail of every task. If the post was temporary, there was no long-term need to replace myself as teacher, nor any desire, so that was one task I let slip. The result was a workload that more than doubled. I managed, though I admit my success was insured in part by Crassus himself. Friction from almost any problem was easily greased with his ever-expanding coffers and willingness to enlarge my budget whenever the need arose. It arose almost daily.
Mind you, there was nothing in his manner that made my promotion seem anything but temporary. He would pass me on his way out the door and waggle a finger at me. “I’m on my way to another interview,” he’d say. Or, “Still looking.” Or, “You’re just too young.” I swear on one occasion I heard him chuckling as I raced off to do better, be faster, panic deeper. I was eating little and sleeping less. I believe it was five or six months after I began this purgatory that Crassus finally took pity on me, or more likely that Tertulla convinced him to decide one way or the other and stop torturing me.
I remember it was a fine summer’s day. A cardinal as red as a yew berry was singing his redundant yet not unpleasant song in one of the peristyle’s fig trees. I was hurrying to the kitchen to confer with cook. Crassus came out from his study. I tried to nod a quick greeting but my body interpreted the signals from my brain as an order to cringe. As we passed each other, he reached out and grabbed the sleeve of my tunic. A poked frog could not have performed better. When I had settled back to earth he leaned in and spoke softly to me. “The post is yours.” He smiled and continued on his way. Later that evening he announced his decision to the entire familia; I found the voice to thank him then, but at the time my pounding heart had stuffed itself in my mouth, choking all communication.
Now that Sulla was gone and the populares were trying their damndest to pry back the cold fingers of the dictator’s legislative legacy, Crassus’ true genius had time and opportunity to flourish. His influence in the senate grew with every oration. He would hear almost any grievance, especially from plebian businessmen shunned by elitist optimates but granted a voice and advocacy by Crassus. He would argue on their behalf, breaking the legal barricades to their success with no other weapon than the ballista of his gifted tongue. The more he spoke, the more senators crowded to his side of the curia, for it was no small trick for a patrician to earn the trust of the equestrian class and the popular support of the people. Less persuasive legislators began to “cling to his toga,” as the saying goes. While publically he performed these acts for the good of the people of Rome, privately he was gracious in his acceptance of both fees and percentages of future profits.
In his march on Rome, Sulla had been generous to the one legate of whom it could be said: without him the city would not have fallen. And so our master was given the house in which we lived, but also many others of lesser value taken from proscribed supporters of Marius and Cinna. These Crassus repaired, embellished and sold at multiples of their original worth. The cash was never idle, for Crassus used it either to buy more property or loan without interest to those senators who might some day need prodding to reassess their positions and vote with him. When I first became atriensis, my master’s worth totaled three hundred talents, a vast sum about which the average citizen could only dream. By the time we left for Parthia, his wealth had grown twenty-five times as large.
We had been settled for less than a year in the house given to Crassus by general Sulla when he began building an estate to match his aspirations. It sprawled over a tenth of the entire Palatine, dwarfing our existing home. Some senators, led by Sulla himself, accused my master of displaying five million sesterces worth of ostentation, but Crassus had a simple theory: people respect wealth. Make your home a hovel and be treated like a pauper. Live in a palace and be treated like a king. I had a theory, too: an estate such as this would be all the revenge left to a man who had lost his family, his possessions and been forced to live as an outlaw. For Crassus, this meal of aggrandizement could never be anything but unsatisfying, but the building and sustaining of it would feed many mouths.
The site was to the northeast of the old domus, gathered from the razed homes of three proscribed senators, now dead, whose property Crassus had purchased from the state for a pittance. The new home took two years to build and was the marvel of the city. Its forest of columns, fields of terra cotta roofs and moons of not one but three domed baths looked directly down upon the forum. And every time the populace looked up at the top of Rome’s first hill, the man they thought of was Crassus. He was only thirty-nine years old.
Within this opulent warren of fountains, formal gardens, heroic statues, tranquil pools and entertainment rooms that grew from intimate alcoves to the grand atrium, sequestered in the middle of it all Crassus had given to me a tablinum worthy of an elder patrician. There were two tables, several cushioned chairs, a lectus should I feel the need for a snack or a nap, and storage along two walls for hundreds of scrolls. A rolling cart contained writing utensils, cups, goblets and a small amphora of wine tucked neatly in the middle. At my disposal were rivers of parchment, forests of stili and fountains of ink. On overcast days, I need only look up at the groined vault of the ceiling to admire a painted blue sky cradling clouds of yellow and rose, lit from beneath by a rising sun. Double sconces on all four wall corners dispersed any gloom. The eastern exit led out into a peristyle so monumental that on a hazy day I could barely see the columns at the far end. Beyond the opposite curtains lay a small, verdant atrium open to the sky which I learned was my private refuge for contemplation and study. My office, I discovered with abashed pride, was adjacent to the one belonging to Crassus.
This bounty of space and privacy was more than matched by my private quarters. Though I would spend far too little time here, the miracle of this room was not its wall paintings or its size or the exceptional feature of a small window that opened onto my study’s atrium. It was the location of my cubiculum that set my mind spinning between joy and bitterness, elation and shame. The room where I was to take my rest was not in the servants’ wing. Just down the hall lay the family’s quarters; no relay of runners need answer the call of the dominus to fetch me. The master himself could summon me by barely raising his voice.
When Crassus, giddy as a child with a new toy, first led me to my room, I was beset by a confusion of guilt and hubris. I thought of the cart full of captives that had carried me to this place. What had become of those innocents? How did they fare? Were they even alive? Even as my heart reached out to them, I confess a part of me did not care. I had survived the ordeal, and this was my reward. I deserved it, I thought, then reviled myself for even thinking such a thing for even an instant. What was so special about me, after all? I had suffered no more than they.
Crassus saw my consternation and said, “Come now, Alexander. Do not spoil this moment. Wait until tomorrow to do what you do best: think too much. For now, just accept your good fortune.”
“I am grateful, dominus, yet I cannot help but think of those less fortunate than I.”
“You are in Rome, man. You had better start thinking of yourself.”
“But why,” I asked him, “am I worthy of such magnificent lodging when in the old house even Pío slept under guard with the rest of the servants.”
Crassus replied, “By Jupiter, I swear Daedalus himself could have engineered the labyrinth that is your mind. Satisfy yourself with this: Servi aut nascuntur, aut fiunt. Slaves are either born or made. Pío slid from between his mother’s legs a newborn slave. His entire life could be distilled down to a single choice: obey or disobey. For almost all his years, till love found him, he was a good man – he obeyed. But you, you question, you argue, you think. In the end, of course, you too, must obey. But you make me think, a feat none such as Pío could perform. Study Alexander, learn all you can; teach me, challenge me, and do not cower like the rest. The more you know, the more valuable you will be to me. You are no
t like Pío; you have been made a slave, but damn it, man, it is just a word. Serve me, and I will fulfill every dream that that young Athenian philosopher ever had. This life is a greater life than any you could have imagined. Learn to trust me if you can, and I shall do likewise. Can you do this?”
“Until you decide otherwise, dominus, I am your servant.”
Crassus laughed. “Yes, Alexander, you are. I hear the undercurrent of insolence in your tone and I relish it. You will not disappoint me.” He walked to the doorway and turned. “Enjoy your quarters. You’ll earn them.”
***
This was the humble start of many cerebral wrestling matches between us. I did not intend to lose. Of course, it fell to me to populate this self-contained village on the Palatine with furniture, landscaping, and ... people. So many people, in fact, that a separate, two-story barracks would be built near the main house. The irony was not lost on Crassus; he may have thought me capable, but there must have been an element of mirth in watching me squirm from on high. How would I handle conducting the purchase of my fellow man to serve this house? Would I bridle? Balk? Refuse? Any of these would have given him great pleasure and opportunity for discourse, let alone chastisement.
I decided that Crassus would be disappointed.
***
In the first days of my promotion, I would find little time for rest, but when I could, I took it in a small copse toward the western edge of the estate, unique for its wild woods and lack of landscaping. As the new estate grew up around us, its crushed marble walkways and formal gardens, as breathtaking as they were, began to weigh heavily upon me. There was something claustrophobic in perfection.
Several foot trails tunneled through this forgotten forest’s leafy shade, and while the place wasn’t the hilly farmland of home, it did spark memories which I was not quite ready to surrender. At first Crassus wanted the architects to raze the site to make way for a shrine to Bellona, the war goddess whose hand had helped Sulla to victory and Crassus to staggering wealth. I talked him out of it with the truth: it was the only place I had seen in Rome that reminded me of Aristotle’s Lyceum, and perhaps each of us might stroll there, separately or together, to collect ourselves and contemplate whatever inspiration the woods lent us.
It was after I realized I would soon be hiring servants of my own that I withdrew to this sanctuary to reflect upon the man I had become. I walked the dirt paths, listened to birdsong, inhaled the scents of spring and marveled at nature’s unsculpted bounty.
I know I am cursed with a mind that will not remain quiet; it will ruminate and fret till rough rocks of ideas have been tumbled into smooth stones of logic, either that or into dust. As I walked, I considered my condition. Was it better to be born a slave rather than a free man reduced to bondage? Better to exist in a perpetual fog of blessed ignorance, or to have tasted sweet self-determination, even for a little while? I say the latter, even though it is the way of pain. But why talk of choice when that commodity, once foolishly taken for granted, had become precious by its absence? The way of pain was my way. And since I have just stated that as my preference, I should have been content.
Even Aristotle believed in the natural condition where one man could be owned by another. “For he is a slave by nature who is capable of belonging to another – which is also why he belongs to another.” If you are one, you deserve to be one. However, if you have the ability to reason, he argued, as someone might if he were, say, a student captured in the destruction of Athens, then the victorious society should hold out freedom as a reward. I wonder how Aristotle might have revised his philosophy had he himself been taken as a trophy of war. You see, I did not question the system so much as rail that I had fallen victim to it.
You, reader, live in a world where power and wealth are controlled by a tiny, fractional elite, men who claim to use their wealth and armies to serve and protect you. Your government is controlled by these same men who allow your senators to live unfettered by the rules they themselves legislate. You receive only so much grain for your bread and oil for your lamps. Your sweat and toil builds great homes and palaces; those who live within tell you how proud you should be of your glorious, gleaming accomplishment. But you are barred from setting foot inside. You may rise only so high as your rulers allow, for there is only so much wealth, and it has long ago been claimed by others. These few men let slip a coin here, an entertainment there, and this they know will feed the inertia that keeps you from making the effort to claim a larger share. This is what you call freedom, but are you certain of your claim upon it?
Crassus knew what I had at first failed to recognize; his error lay in not understanding that after four years in his service, I could at last see it as clearly as he. I was a slave. Yes, I could say the word at last. Do not tax your eyesight scanning back through these scrolls, I promise you it isn’t worth the effort – nowhere in this manuscript until this very moment have I myself used it.
My owner was right: whatever place I had hoped to earn in the world, this is where fate had delivered me. I was a slave, but even slaves are given a single, awful choice: rebel, or rise as high as nature may permit within this unnatural state. My frail nature, even in my prime, was hardly rebellious. I was no Spartacus.
And so, the further freedom slipped from my grasp, the stronger my determination to become a paragon of slaves, a slave with money and power, as fine as any Rome had ever seen.
It was of significant help, I admit, that I belonged to the richest man in the city.
Chapter XV
76 BCE - Spring, Rome
Year of the consulship of
Gnaeus Octavius and Gaius Scribonius Curio
I should mention that in the spring of this very year, Melyaket, my brave-hearted companion and steadfast friend (I shall claim senility should he ever lay eyes upon these words), was born in a ravine at the base of the Sinjar mountains, a lonely range at the northwestern border of the Parthian Empire. To hear him tell it, on that day nothing less than the intervention of the gods saved him from a very short life span, not to mention a grisly and horrific death. Well, if the immortals did truly take such singular interest in him, then let them tell his tale. I do not have the time.
***
In matters of the heart, I have observed that it is difficult to learn from our mistakes. On the contrary, we seem quite adept in making the same blunders over and over again. So when Sabina told me soon after we became friends, that she had had her fill of men and wanted nothing more to do with them, I had my doubts. Seeing my eyebrows elevate, she attempted to convince me by claiming the fault lay not with men, but in her own character. It was flawed, cracked, she said. How could she make such a monumental blunder in her choice of husband and trust herself to choose wisely ever again? Her logic made me falter in my skepticism, till I realized logic had very little to do with the mystical chemistry of the heart.
When it comes to love, we are the great architects of artifice. We construct elaborate stages, festooned with intricate sets, costumed brightly, aglow with candles incapable of illuminating any flaw, upon which we play our most convincing acts of self-deception. What convoluted excuses we spin to justify behavior we would find ludicrous in others. What pretty lies we tell ourselves.
You would think that Sabina was not the kind of woman to make the same mistake twice. That is unkind, for indeed, while the cause was redundant, the man was new. In three of the four years I had known her, she swore she would have nothing more to do with men. Her work, she claimed, captivated and satisfied her as no man’s attention ever could. The gods know I am no expert, but surely there are certain thirsts which no occupation can slake. Sure enough, the siren call of these more physical requisites grew louder this past year, but unlike Odysseus, Sabina was not securely bound to any mast. The man waiting for her upon that dangerous shore? Steadfast, sturdy Ludovicus.
Who could blame her, honestly? Allow me to illustrate. I trust that by now you have a clear idea of my own physical shortcomings: too
tall, too clumsy, too thin, too evocative of the aloof professor. Now imagine the opposite and there stands Ludovicus. Brawn to his fingertips, shaven pate, prominent brow over pale eyes, large, tan hands made for strangling, thrusting a sword or other such manly pursuits. Mind you, he was not unkind or malicious or indecent. In the end, however, he was just a man.
Maybe she only thought of him as a dalliance. I blush to say it, but once the needs of the body have been sated, does not the heart often command a strategic withdrawal. Not so with Sabina: she was an emotional lover; her attraction to any man needed to be more than physical right from the start. Otherwise her Lysistratan resolve would have prevailed and she would have had nothing to do with Ludovicus. She had had her eye on him for some time, but had been content to let the pressure build without action. Which is to say the moment he entered her clinic with a wrenched back she allowed her temple of abstinence to be ransacked.
Being in the room next door with nothing to do but work on lesson preparation or eavesdrop, I chose the latter. Sabina asked Ludovicus to lie on the examination table on his stomach, sounding completely professional and curt, her voice devoid of any of her usual compassion; by which I mean to say, she was a little flustered. He said he’d have to strip down to his subligatum. She told him to get on with it; I could almost hear the rolling of her eyes. There was a pause without sound, but the smell of pungent Egyptian eucalyptus informed me that liniment was being applied.
Ludovicus made some insouciant remark about how good her hands felt on his back, then added, “What would you say if I told you there was nothing wrong with me.”
The Bow of Heaven - Book I: The Other Alexander Page 12
