Children of Tiber and Nile

by Deborah Davitt

  “I’ll never forget seeing Mars’ face,” Tiberius remarked from just to the right of Selene, looking down into his cup now. “As I said then, it . . . made all the battles seem worthwhile. Not just for the sake of gloria, for the chance to add to the dignitas of my family. To match my ancestors’ deeds. But for the men beside me in battle.”

  “It’s strange,” Antyllus offered, into the silence that followed. “But I’ve noticed that of those of us who were there that day, some of us seemed to see Mars’ face more clearly, and some of us saw Venus more strongly.” He chuckled into his cup.

  “And which did you see more clearly?” Tiberius asked, over Selene’s hair. Her head kept swinging back and forth between them as they spoke, and if she’d eaten, Antyllus had yet to see it.

  “Venus. I’m not sure if my father, who’s clearly honored both in his long life, would be pleased by that fact or not,” Antyllus replied with cheerful aplomb, once again garnering the laughter of those around him.

  Tiberius regarded him, still over Selene’s head. “You’ve been in the legions and with the auxiliaries for nine years,” the young man said, sounding surprised. “And you didn’t see Mars Gravidus more clearly?”

  “One more year till I can stand for legate in my own right,” Antyllus agreed calmly. “Not just take over in an emergency.” He nodded towards Caesarion in respect for having appointed both him and Tiberius as legates in Hispania, if temporarily. “I suppose it’s because while the military is the best road to a public life—and what use is a man if he’s not involved in the life of the Empire?—it’s not the only road I see ahead of me.”

  At this point, the servants brought out the next course—this time meat, after the light bread and cheese offered first—settling a whole baked swan on the main table, with a choice of coriander-encrusted fish and steamed mussels, and an egg-and-asparagus dish called a patina, made with liquamen fish sauce and enough herbs to make Antyllus’ mouth water even at a distance. Enough to sate all nine guests, but as always at Eurydice’s table, while the food was superb, it wasn’t presented fussily. The swan hadn’t been dressed in its own feathers. The fish wasn’t alive when brought to the table to demonstrate its freshness, or killed before the guests and cooked there, too. And quickly sitting up to take a little of everything for his own trencher, Antyllus settled back down, frowning when he saw that Selene still hadn’t taken anything to eat. He offered her one of the mussels from his own plate, cooked as it had been with liquamen and sweet raisin-wine. He held it temptingly before her lips, murmuring, “You haven’t had so much as a bite. Try something, won’t you?”

  Her dark eyes flicked up towards his, and for a moment, he saw so much misery there that he was deeply taken aback. Then her shoulders slumped and, rather than allowing him to slide the morsel between her lips, she reached out and took it from him with her fingers, eating it silently.

  Well, as banquets intended for people to get to know each other go, this one’s going swimmingly, isn’t it?

  In spite of everything, Antyllus liked what he saw when he looked at Selene. She was slightly taller than her mother, being just past five feet in height—perfectly average for a Roman woman. He was slightly above average in that regard himself, being eight inches past five feet in height. If she ever let him lean down to kiss her lips, he wouldn’t have to strain his neck overly. Unlike Octavia or Sulpicia, her hair hadn’t been dyed or bleached to a fashionable Hellene red-gold, but rather retained its natural black hue. Only a trace of kohl around her eyes, which accentuated the red-rimmed state. And while Eurydice wore deep scarlet tonight, Selene had opted for a stola in undyed wool—as if trying for invisibility among the brighter tones worn by everyone around the tables.

  From the right, as everyone ate, Caesarion cleared his throat, and asked, mildly, “If you don’t see the military as the only road before you, what else is there, Antyllus? Magistrate? Offering cases before the courts, like Cicero?”

  Antyllus chuckled. “Oh, gods no. I’ve given three speeches before the Senate, and prayed to the gods each time that I wouldn’t embarrass myself or my family. No. I have, eh, six years before I can be considered as a quaestor.” Inside of Rome, a quaestor oversaw public games and financial issues; outside the city, they were paymasters for the legions, or adjuncts to provincial governors. “I’ve thought of traveling. I would very much like to see more of the provinces, other than when we’re actively pacifying them.”

  Caesarion’s eyebrows rose. “You’d like to be a propraetor peregrinus, then?” A judge or magistrate who dealt with foreigners who committed crimes inside Rome was a praetor peregrinus; a propraetor had similar powers, but outside the city itself.

  “If I should live so long,” Antyllus said, looking at the ceiling. “I’d have to be thirty-nine to qualify as a candidate for praetor, though.” He shrugged. “An ambassador. A governor—not one who’s just there to milk taxes into his own coffers, mind you, and not just someone who’s there not just to enforce the peace with the threat of bloody reprisal. Someone who’s there to . . . .” He struggled for the words. “Promote understanding between people,” he finally offered. Then a wry note entered his voice. “I already speak one dialect of Gallic, and grew up with a Gallic king’s son as a hostage in my father’s house. I learned a lot from the retainer who’d accompanied Tincomarus to Rome to ensure that he’d actually speak Gallic when he went home to rule.” He paused. “Quite a few people of this city turn up their noses at the barbarians, but I think there are things we could learn from them.”

  “Such as?” Sulpicia asked, smiling.

  Antyllus noticed Tiberius offering Selene a little of the asparagus dish, coaxing her to eat much in the same way he had. With slightly more success. He shrugged, taking a bite of his own food now. “My bow,” he said, once his mouth had been cleared. “It’s Scythian. I say that to any other group of people in Rome, and the first thing I’m apt to hear is how the Scythians are illiterate, dirty herdsmen. Illiterate, dirty herdsmen who build warbows with a draw-weight of over a hundred and sixty librae.” He popped a mussel in his mouth, chewing for a moment. “It’s shorter than the bows used by the Cretans, which is what allows those dirty, illiterate herdsman to use those bows on horseback. And the arrows I fire from it penetrate our best armor. I want to see those bows in Roman hands, or at least, in the hands of our auxiliaries.”

  Caesarion’s head lifted. “How are your men feeling about that citizenship laws?” he asked Antyllus directly.

  Antyllus grinned. “What, serve for twenty years, the way they would have anyway, and on retirement, they become full Roman citizens? Dominus, they love you for it. They see it as the best way forward for their sons. Something to work towards that can’t be taken away from them, the way land or a pension can be.”

  “There are those in this city who hate that law,” Tiberius said tightly. “Who fear what will happen when many people who weren’t born Roman, may suddenly call themselves that.” He lifted his eyes, his gray eyes cool and distant. “I’m not one of them.”

  Antyllus smiled back, toasting the patrician man with his cup. “And we all thank the gods for it,” he told Tiberius lightly, then glanced down at Selene again. I have never met anyone better at being invisible in public, he thought, and made an effort to get out of the main conversation, pointedly asking her, “So, will you be going with your sister to Egypt, then?” as if he weren’t here to court her at all.

  A startled look, and Selene made her first reply of the meal. “She’s offered to take me there, yes.”

  “Hark, you do have a voice,” Antyllus told her with gentle mock-astonishment. “And a pleasant one, too.” He smiled, sighing internally as she looked away rapidly. If I did not know better, I would be asking Caesarion who it was who has beaten his sister. “So, do you want to go?” he pressed lightly. “I’ve dreamed of going there since my father told me of it when I was a child.”

  She shook her head faintly. “I’ve . . . rarely thought about it,”
Selene admitted softly. “I’ve only left Rome once before. For the camps outside Brundisium.”

  “A very deft way you have of dodging questions,” Antyllus scolded lightly. “I asked if you wanted to go, not if you’ve ever thought about it before.”

  Her eyes flicked up, met his for an instant, and then flickered across the room, as if looking for someone to provide the answer for her. No help in sight, Selene finally, haltingly, managed to reply on her own, “My mother and your father will be making the trip as well. I would . . . prefer not to accompany—I mean, I love my mother, of course—“

  A distinct snort from Tiberius, and Antyllus did his best not to laugh, as well, as Selene’s cheeks flamed. “Your mother is not the easiest of women,” Tiberius noted dryly. “There’s no shame in admitting that. Neither is mine, you’ll recall.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t—I wouldn’t—“

  Antyllus chuckled. “You’re both fortunate, in that you’ve only had one mother each,” he told them cheerfully. “My father’s married four times. The first, well, she wasn’t my mother. And everyone knows the sorry tale of how Dolabella seduced her.” That fact had made his father intemperate in his response when Dolabella had tried to have a debt forgiveness law enacted by force. In a fit of injured pride and anger, Antony had unleashed troops on the crowds who’d risen in support of a law that Caesar wouldn’t have supported as written—but which would have benefitted thousands of Caesar’s veterans.

  That incident had been one of the underlying reasons for the ongoing strain between Caesar and Antony over the years, though they’d patched the relationship later. “Then, of course there was my mother.” He shook his head. “She died when I was seven, but the thing I remember most about her? You could hear her halfway across a castra when she was in a temper.”

  “And what did you do to provoke that temper?” Alexander asked from across the tables.

  “Brought her a gift of several frogs from a stream outside the castra once,” Antyllus replied promptly. “I think we were bogged down in Hellas at the time. I wasn’t supposed to go outside the walls, but one of my father’s centurions saw how bored I was, and took me fishing. I caught nothing but the frogs. As she demanded, in full voice, where I had been the whole afternoon and why my tunic was covered in mud, I presented her with her tribute.” He nodded sagely, and then turned to Selene, adding, “They knocked over several priceless bottles of perfume with their hopping. I was all of five at the time, mind. I think they could hear her in Sparta by the time she was done shouting.”

  Everyone at the tables around him convulsed with laughter. Even Tiberius and Selene were forced to cover their faces. After a moment or two, Eurydice recovered enough to ask, “And Octavia?”

  Antyllus’ smile faded. “Father married her just after my mother died.” He sighed. “If my mother was strident, Octavia was . . . chilly.” He shrugged. Not chilly. Cold. Rigid. Obsessed with observing the manners of the patrician class to which her father had been raised, and to which my father, by right of his political ascent, was entitled, but has never really aped.

  “That characteristic ran in the family,” Tiberius commented tightly.

  “So I hear,” Antyllus returned, and both men drank from their cups at the same moment. After a moment, Antyllus added, “Not to speak ill of the dead, but there are reasons I haven’t been in a rush to find myself a wife.” My father’s repeated injunctions to mention it to Caesarion aside. Which, each time, I have passed along like a dutiful son. Flirting with Eurydice a few years ago was mostly in fun. Watching her bewildered expression made dinner go by that much more quickly. He turned back towards Selene now, adding more quietly, “I’m actually rather grateful to your mother, you know. My father’s in better health and humor since he married her, than he was for years before.”

  Selene looked down and away, but said nothing in reply. Damnation. Her mother is a sore spot, it would appear.

  At that point, Tiberius leaned in, and asked Selene, quite politely, “I heard you practicing your kithara the other day when I visited. It’s considered the virtuoso’s instrument, isn’t it? Anyone can play the lyre, but it takes someone with real talent to play the kithara.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t. . . I mean, it is more difficult, and I don’t think I’ve mastered it,” she replied hastily, looking down.

  “Do you like it better than the lyre?” Tiberius asked, and Antyllus just listened for the moment, watching the way she tilted her head towards Tiberius, while keeping her eyes fixed . . . anywhere but on him, apparently.

  “The lyre’s much easier,” Selene replied softly after a moment. “But you can do so many more things with the kithara. I like it very much.”

  “Sometimes Eurydice has you play for guests. Do you feel like favoring us with a song or two?” Tiberius asked, his tone surprisingly gentle.

  Her eyes actually flicked up to meet Tiberius’ for a moment. “Not if my sister has other entertainment planned—“ her head swiveled towards Eurydice, who was laughing at something Caesarion had just whispered in her ear. But Selene didn’t interrupt. Didn’t call out for her sister’s attention. Just bit her lip and waited.

  At which point Tiberius called over, “Domina! Do you mind if Selene plays for us tonight? While the conversation’s lovely, we’re lacking in music. And hearing her fingers on the strings is always the best end to a long day.”

  Selene flushed red, as Eurydice shook her head. “Of course I don’t mind. Let me send someone for your kithara, Selene—“

  “No, no, I’ll fetch it myself,” Selene said hastily, scrabbling off the couch before the second course could be cleared. “I’ll be right back.” And off she went.

  In the wake of her passage, Antyllus glanced over at Tiberius, and then leaned across the warm spot left by Selene’s now-absent form. “So, you’re the other suitor, then?”

  Tiberius sighed. “So much for my subtlety.”

  Antyllus deftly caught a pitcher of wine from the table, not allowing the servants to pour it, and refilled his cup and Tiberius’, his gaze flicking across the room to where Alexander sat with Octavia and Sulpicia, laughing at something the poetess had just said. “You’ve known her a long time. Lived in the same house.” A shrug. “You have the clear advantage over me.”

  “You say that, but as of today, I’m not sure I know her at all.” Tiberius shook his head, a shadow flickering through his eyes, then toasted Antyllus lightly with the cup that Antony’s son had just filled. “Friends?”

  “You ask this, when the Tenth saved my Cretans’ asses last year? Of course we’re friends.”

  “If memory serves, you and your damned Cretans saved our asses the year before that.”

  Antyllus chuckled. “Doesn’t do to brag. That’s why you buy the services of a poet to do it for you.” He glanced back across at Alexander once more; Octavia looked aggrieved as Sulpicia and Alexander once more laughed at some mutual joke. Well, that’s a thing of interest.

  ______________

  Selene tumbled back into the room, her kithara clutched in her hands. It was impossible to recline while playing, but the seating in the triclinium was limited, so she still had to perch on the edge of the same couch as Antyllus and Tiberius. She wished she dared say something sharp to Eurydice for placing her right in between the two men; Antyllus was an archer, and as such, had arms almost as wide as Selene’s legs—and while it was winter, he’d opted for a sleeveless tunic, probably because of the weight of the woolen toga he wore to this formal dinner. While he surely hadn’t meant to be intrusive, he simply took up so much space on his side of the couch that his arms constantly brushed against her, making her jump every time he did.

  And Tiberius who had spent just as much time carrying a sword, shield, and armor, was just as solidly built, which meant that in order to avoid touching either of them inadvertently, Selene had been forced to hold as still as . . . as still as the mouse my mother called me, she thought, looking down as she took to the very edge of the c
ouch. She caught flashes of what looked like genuine enjoyment on both men’s faces as she settled in, touching her fingers to the strings.

  But the humiliation of the discussion earlier in the day still hung over her. The anger that had prompted her tears had burned out, leaving nothing but a hollow, ashy pit in her midsection, and a constant feeling of coldness through her whole body. Her eyes burned as if she hadn’t slept in a week, and she felt no impetus to play at all. Her fingers drifted aimlessly, and then she stumbled into the darker-toned notes of a piece she’d been practicing, in an elegiac Hellene mode. She didn’t merely strum the instrument using a plectrum, as poets did in between their recited passages; she plucked and strummed the strings from both sides of the instrument. Stilled the strings, dampening the sound with her fingertips.

  And as she played, the music became her whole world, as it always did. Let her forget that there were people listening, or watching. The intricacies were what fascinated her, extending some notes into tremulous sighs, like wind whispering through tree limbs, while the steady progression of notes through the main harmony, to her, sounded like rain weeping from the leaves of those same trees.

  She was startled when that first song finished, to hear the others clapping lightly; it had happened before at her sister’s dinners, but it broke her out of the almost meditative state, and forced her to remember where she was—and that there were others present. “Beautiful as always,” Tiberius told her, giving her that rare half-smile.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking away. “Does anyone wish to hear anything else before I put it away?”

  “Something cheerful!” Sulpicia interposed, smiling. “It will go better with the fruits and honey.”