Roma

by Steven Saylor

  A majority of the senators sprang to their feet, applauding and shouting accolades. Seeing that Claudius had decisively carried the day, those who had argued for appeasing Pyrrhus begrudgingly joined the ovation. The war against Pyrrhus would continue.

  Even as he was leaving the Senate House, assisted by a slave to guide him on the steps, Claudius was thinking ahead to his next oration. Unable any longer to read or write, he had become adept at composing and memorizing long passages in his head. The topic would be Roma’s relationship with Carthage, the great seaport on the coast of Africa founded by Phoenicians at about the same time Romulus founded his city, whose rise to prominence in many ways mirrored that of Roma. The Senate had just signed a treaty of friendship with Carthage, and the incursion of Pyrrhus into their mutual sphere of interest had made Roma and Carthage allies—but for how long? Once Pyrrhus was expelled, Claudius believed that a natural rivalry between Roma and Carthage for domination of Sicily, southern Italy, and the sea lanes of the western Mediterranean was certain to come to the fore.

  “Of course, once again, those fools the Fabii can’t see the obvious,” he muttered to himself. “They still think Roma should expand her reach northward to the Alps and beyond, and pursue a policy of moderation toward Carthage. But southward and seaward lies our destiny. A clash with Carthage is inevitable!”

  The slave remained silent. He was used to hearing his master talk to himself. Sometimes Claudius carried on elaborate arguments with himself that lasted for hours, changing voices as he shifted points of view.

  Now in the twilight of his life, frail and nearly blind, a lesser man than Claudius might have succumbed to bitterness. His radical attempts at reform had failed; a few years after his censorship, Quintus Fabius had seized control of the office and had ruthlessly undone almost all of Claudius’s populist enactments. Quintus Fabius was repeatedly elected consul, and his supporters dubbed him Maximus. Appius Claudius became the Blind, while Quintus Fabius became the Greatest! Claudius had been forced to realize that true popular government would never take root in Roma. But his physical monuments would endure. The Appian Aqueduct remained a marvel of engineering, and each year another stretch of the Appian Way was paved with stone that would last for the ages. After a lifetime of victories and defeats, Appius Claudius Caecus was more passionate than ever about the destiny of Roma.

  Crossing the Forum, clinging to the arm of his guide, Claudius heard a voice call out, “Senator! May I have a word with you?”

  Claudius stopped abruptly, almost certain that he recognized the voice—and yet, it was impossible! That voice, beloved to his memory, belonged to his one-time protégé, Kaeso Fabius Dorso. But Kaeso was no longer among mortals. He had died many months ago in a battle against Pyrrhus. Although they had drifted apart over the years, Claudius had followed Kaeso’s career at a distance. His youthful interest in building had eventually been eclipsed by his excellence at soldiering; like a typical Fabius, Kaeso was born to become a warrior. Claudius grieved when he learned of his death. Hearing his voice now brought back a flood of memories.

  Claudius gripped the arm of his guide. “Who speaks to me? What do you see, slave? Is it a man, or only the shade of a man?”

  “I assure you, Senator, I am not a shade,” said the voice that sounded so familiar. “My name is Kaeso Fabius Dorso.”

  “Ah! You must be the son of my old friend.”

  “You remember my father, then?”

  “I certainly do. My condolences to you on his death.”

  “He died honorably, fighting for Roma. I also fought in that battle, under his command. I saw him fall. Afterward, I tended to his body.”

  “You can be very proud of him.”

  “I am. He was a fearsome warrior. Men say he killed more of the enemy in that campaign than any other soldier in the legion. My father took a fierce delight in bringing death to the invaders.”

  “Bloodlust has its place on the field of battle,” declared Claudius. “Your father’s joy in killing redounded to the glory of Roma and the honor of our gods.”

  Kaeso reached up to touch the talisman at his neck—the golden fascinum he had retrieved it from his father’s corpse on the battlefield. The amulet had failed to protect its wearer against the spear that killed him, but it was a cherished heirloom nonetheless. Kaeso wore it in memory of his father.

  “Tell me, Kaeso, how old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “And your father, when he died?”

  “He was fifty.”

  “Can so many years have passed, so swiftly?” Claudius shook his head. “But what’s that, young man? Do I hear you weep?”

  “Only a little. I’m very honored, sir, to hear my father praised by a man so renowned for noble speech.”

  “Indeed?” Claudius beamed.

  His slave eyed Kaeso suspiciously and spoke into Claudius’s ear. “Master! The fellow is a Fabius.”

  “So he is. But his father was different from the rest of them. Perhaps the son takes after the father. He seems respectful enough.”

  “I assure you, Senator, I hold your achievements in the highest regard. That’s why I approached you today. I was hoping you might honor a request.”

  “Perhaps, young man, though I’m very busy. Speak.”

  “My father was always quoting your aphorisms. Sometimes it seemed that half his sentences began, ‘As Appius Claudius so wisely put it…’ I was hoping, in honor of my father, that you might assist me to make a collection of those sayings. I know many of them by heart, of course, but I should hate to get a single word wrong, and there must be some I’ve forgotten, and some I’ve never heard. I was thinking that you could dictate them to me, and I could write them down, and we could group them according to subject. We might even attempt a translation of the Latin into Greek.”

  “You know Greek?”

  “Well enough to have served as my father’s translator, for the messages we intercepted from Pyrrhus’s couriers.”

  “The son of Kaeso not only has a literary bent, but has mastered Greek! Truly, each generation improves upon the last.”

  “I can never hope to be the man-killer my father was,” said Kaeso humbly.

  “Come, walk with me. The day is mild and I need the exercise. We shall walk up to the Capitoline, and you shall describe to me the recent adornments which, alas, I am unable to see with my failing eyes.”

  They ambled up the winding path to the summit, where in recent years the city had indulged its fervor for grand public works. The barren hilltop where once Romulus had set up his asylum for outcasts had become a place of lavish temples and magnificent bronze statues.

  “This new statue of Hercules,” said Claudius. “Is it as impressive as men say? I’ve touched the thing, but it’s so big I can do no more than grasp its ankles.”

  To Kaeso the statue hardly seemed new—it had been there since he was a boy—but perhaps time was measured differently by the much older Claudius. “Well, of course, my family is descended from Hercules—”

  “Ah! You Fabii never miss a chance to remind us of that claim.”

  “So I have a tendency to favor any image of the god, and the bigger the better. Actually, the bronze workmanship is quite good. Hercules wears the cowl of the Nemean lion and carries a club. His expression is quite fierce. Should the Gauls ever dare to come back, I think his image alone might scare them away from the Capitoline.”

  “How does it compare to the colossal statue of Jupiter, over by the temple?”

  “Oh, the Jupiter is much taller than the Hercules, as I suppose the father should be. People can see it all the way from Mount Alba, ten miles down the Appian Way!”

  “You know the story of the statue’s creation?”

  “Yes. After Spurius Carvilius crushed the Samnites, he melted their breastplates, greaves, and helmets to make the statue. The god’s enormous size represents, literally, the magnitude of our victory over our old enemy. Out of the bronze filings left over, the consu
l made the life-sized statue of himself that stands at the feet of the Jupiter.”

  “You need not describe that to me. I remember quite clearly how ugly Carvilius is! And atop the Temple of Jupiter—is the quadriga as magnificent as they say? It used to be made of terra cotta, you know, an expressive but rather delicate material. It was repaired from time to time, but some parts were as old as the temple, and probably made by the hand of the artist Vulca himself. But now the terra cotta has been taken down and replaced with an exact duplicate, done entirely in bronze.”

  “I remember the original terra cotta,” said Kaeso. “Believe me, the bronze is much more impressive. The details of Jupiter’s face, the flaring nostrils of the steeds, the decoration of the chariot, are all remarkable.”

  “Alas, if only I still had eyes to see! The bronze replacement for the quadriga was done by my dear colleagues Gnaeus and Quintus Ogulnius, you know. It heartens me to see men of a younger generation take up the populist banner. In the year both Ogulnius brothers served as curule aediles, they put the worst of the rich moneylenders on trial and convicted them. Out of the confiscated property, the Ogulnii paid for that new bronze quadriga. They also paid for that new statue of Romulus and Remus over on the Palatine, which has become such a shrine for the common people of the city.”

  “Do you know, I’ve never seen it.”

  “Really? Neither have I, but blindness is my excuse. How your cousin Quintus must detest the Ogulnii and their politics!”

  “We call my venerable cousin ‘Maximus’ nowadays,” said Kaeso.

  “I suppose he’s deliberately kept all the Fabii from paying homage to the Ogulnii’s great monument. We must go at once, so that you can finally see it.”

  They descended the Capitoline, crossed the Forum, and ascended the Stairs of Cacus. The slave barely needed to assist Claudius, who knew the way by heart. At the foot of the fig tree not far from the Hut of Romulus, the statue of the Twins had been erected upon a pedestal. It was not colossal in size, but the image was striking: Beneath a standing she-wolf, two naked babies squatted and turned up their faces to suckle the animal’s teats.

  “Well, what do you think, young man?”

  “It’s remarkable. Very powerful. Very beautiful.”

  “Do you suppose the founder of the city and his unfortunate brother were literally raised by a wolf?”

  “So legends tell us.”

  “And do you never question legends? Some believe the she wolf to be a metaphor, or perhaps a too-literal interpretation of a tale passed down by word of mouth. The same word, after all, can refer to a woman of the she-wolf variety—a prostitute. Is it not more likely that the Twins were raised by such a woman, rather than by a wild animal?”

  Claudius was unable see the younger man’s expression, but from the silence that ensued he could tell that Kaeso was taken aback. Claudius laughed good-naturedly. “Forgive my outspokenness. Obviously, such ideas are not spoken in the staid households of the Fabii!”

  “Some of your ideas…are novel to me,” admitted Kaeso. “My father said you often challenged his ways of thinking, but that you also inspired him. Thank you for showing me the statue of the Twins and the she wolf.”

  Claudius smiled. “We’re not far from my house. Would you like to see my library? It’s grown considerably since the days when I tried to teach your father Greek. New scrolls arrive every month. I can’t read them myself, of course. Someone must read them aloud to me. You have a very pleasant voice, Kaeso.”

  “Senator, I would be honored to read aloud to you.”

  The slave led them homeward.

  “We’ll take some refreshment,” said Claudius, walking through the vestibule. “Then perhaps we can get to work on that collection of aphorisms you propose.”

  Kaeso nodded happily, then frowned. “There was one of your sayings that my father found particularly inspiring. Something to do with architecture, and fortune…”

  “‘Each man is the architect of his own fortune.’”

  “Exactly! My father lived by those words.”

  “I’m sure that no man ever put those words into practice more faithfully than did Kaeso Fabius Dorso!”

  SCIPIO’S SHADOW

  216 B.C.

  “We brought these accursed Carthaginians to their knees once. We shall do it again!” So declared Quintus Fabius Maximus, wearing an expression stern enough to have pleased his great-grandfather, who had been the first to take the name Maximus almost ninety years earlier. With one hand he held a cup of wine. With the other he tapped his upper lip, a nervous habit that called attention to a very prominent wart. For this distinguishing feature on an otherwise homely face, his friends had playfully given him an additional name, Verrucosus.

  From across the dining room, young Kaeso stole glances at his host—a man he found quite intimidating—and wished that his own physical imperfections were limited to an ugly wart or two.

  One of Kaeso’s legs was shorter than the other. One of his forearms had a strange bend in it and its muscles were not always entirely under his control. He walked with a slight limp and had never been able to ride a horse. He was also subject to the falling disease. The fluttering in his head occurred at the most inopportune times. At its worst it caused him to lose consciousness completely.

  Despite these imperfections, Kaeso’s mother had always assured him that he was nonetheless beautiful. At twenty, Kaeso was old enough to look at himself critically in a mirror and see that this was not a mother’s flattery or wishful thinking, but the truth. His eyes were a rare shade of blue. His lustrous hair was the color of sunlight in honey. His face might serve as a model for a Greek sculptor. But what use was a handsome face if a man’s body was unsuited to riding, or marching, or fighting, as the times demanded? Far better to have a strong body and a wart on his lip the size of a chickpea, like his great and powerful cousin Maximus—who had just caught Kaeso staring and stared back at him, scowling.

  Kaeso lowered his eyes and nervously tapped at the gold fascinum at this neck, a precious heirloom that he had put on especially for this very important occasion.

  The other two guests at the dinner were the same age as Kaeso. His cousin Quintus was the son of Maximus; Publius Cornelius Scipio was their mutual friend. The occasion was a somber one. Come morning, Quintus and Scipio would be going off to war. How Kaeso wished he was going with them!

  Seventy years had passed since Appius Claudius the Blind had delivered his stirring speech in the Senate against the Greek invader Pyrrhus. The final retreat of Pyrrhus from Italy was now a distant memory, but there were still old fighters alive who could remember the even greater war that followed, with Carthage. As Appius Claudius had predicted, after their mutual enemy Pyrrhus was defeated, Roma’s maritime rival had become her military foe. For over twenty years, in Sicily and Africa, on land and sea, the Romans and Carthaginians waged a bloody war. The peace that followed, on terms to Roma’s advantage, had lasted for a generation, but now the two cities were at war again, and Carthage, led by a general named Hannibal, had brought the war to Italy.

  “As you ride off into battle,” said Maximus, addressing his son and Scipio but pointedly ignoring Kaeso, “never forget: It wasn’t Roma that broke the peace. It was that mad schemer Hannibal, when he dared to attack our allies in Spain. The man has no shame, no scruples, and no honor. A curse on his mongrel army of Libyans, Numidians, Spaniards, and Gauls! May their elephants go mad and stamp them into the dirt!”

  “Here, here!” said Quintus, raising his cup. Like his father, he was homely, and he displayed the same earnest scowl, which looked more like a pout on his youthful face.

  Scipio raised his cup and joined the toast. Like Kaeso, Scipio had been blessed by the gods with striking looks, though his hair was darker and his features of a more rugged cast. He wore his hair long and swept back from his face—like Alexander, people said—and he was powerfully built. As a student, he had quickly matched and then exceeded the erudition of his tutors
. As an athlete, he had excelled above all others. As a soldier, he had already made a name for himself. He was known for his sure, quick stride and his strong grip. Scipio made a powerful impression on everyone he met.

  Kaeso belatedly raised his cup as well. Only Scipio seemed to take notice of him, tipping his cup in Kaeso’s direction and shooting him a quick smile.

  “As you say, Maximus, the Carthaginians are most certainly in the wrong,” said Scipio. His deep voice was strong but mellow. People often remarked that he would make a fine orator when he was old enough to run for office. “But surely you misspeak when you say that Hannibal is mad. Obsessed, perhaps; we all know the tale of how his father, bitter at his own humiliation and the concessions made by Carthage after the last war, made the boy Hannibal swear undying hatred of Roma and all things Roman. Clearly, Hannibal took the oath to heart. No one can accuse him of shirking his filial duty! He deliberately broke the truce when he attacked our allies in Spain. Then, they say, he had a dream of the future: A god placed him on the back of a gigantic snake, and he rode the snake across the earth, uprooting trees and boulders and causing utter destruction. Hannibal took this dream to mean that he was destined to lay waste to all of Italy.”

  “So he told his soldiers.” Quintus smirked. “He probably made up that dream to spur them on.”

  “True or not, he set out from Spain and crossed the southern coast of Gaul. Everyone said the Alps would keep him out of Italy; no one thought he could cross the mountains with his army and his elephants intact. But he found a pass, and swept down upon us like a firestorm! One drubbing after another he’s given us. I was there with my father at the river Ticinus, in the first engagement of the war, when the day went so badly for us—”