“You will never be satisfied,” Julius had said.
Marcus turned to him and studied him acutely. “Nor will you, dear young friend. Your desires are the highway to death.”
Julius was very superstitious. He shivered, made the sign of averting the evil eye. He did not like the glow between Marcus’ lashes. He said, insolently, “And are your desires the kind that lead to an honored old age and death in a peaceful bed?”
“I am a lawyer, Julius. I will never seek to control men.”
“You are also virtuous, and when did a virtuous man ever die tranquilly?”
It was such exchanges, mysterious to Quintus, that paradoxically nourished the real affection between Marcus and Julius.
Tonight, he proudly exhibited a small ivory and silver rod which Julius had sent to the house on the Carinae for Marcus to hold when he addressed the Senate. It was a rod of authority, lent to Marcus for the occasion. Marcus examined it with admiration and amusement. “It is very like Julius,” he said. Quintus was puzzled. “It does not resemble Julius in the least,” he said, baffled. Marcus laughed. “He could have presented this to me as a gift, and not as a loan. Was he consciously subtle in this, or unconsciously so?”
Quintus abandoned this unfruitful discussion. “A slave from the house of Joel ben Solomon brought a gift wrapped in white silk for you. It is in your cubiculum. There is also a letter from Noë.”
Marcus took a lamp from the atrium and carried it into his cubiculum. He opened the sealed letter. Noë had written: “Rejoice with us, dearest of friends! Scaevola is indeed powerful. When I reached home my father had already been delivered from prison! The Senate, on occasion, can act with dispatch. I will be present tomorrow to watch my friend, and bless him. You have my prayers.”
Marcus closed his eyes and thanked his patroness, Pallas Athene, for her mercy. Quintus had followed him and was inquisitive about the contents of the parcel. “Ask our mother to come here,” said Marcus. Quintus ran off to summon Helvia, who returned with her younger son. She was thirty-seven years old now, but there was only an occasional thread of gray in her abundant black curls, she was as calm, as plump and composed as ever and always, forever, an “old” Roman matron whom life could never overcome.
When Marcus unrolled the parcel she could not restrain her admiration for the pure white toga contained therein, the armlets, the shoes and the ring. She looked at Marcus proudly. She threw the toga over his coarse long tunic. She clasped the armlets on his arms and put the dazzling ring on his finger. She stood back to admire him. Quintus was overwhelmed with pleasure and pride. He showed his mother the delicate rod of authority which Julius had lent Marcus. “Marcus says it is very like Julius,” said Quintus, frowning in renewed bafflement.
Helvia laughed, understanding. With the intuition of a mother she knew that something had freshly unnerved her son. She said, watching him, “You have no fear that you will forget portions of your address?”
Marcus removed the ring of Noë from his finger, then held it in his hand and stared at it emptily as it shone and glittered in the lamplight. “No,” he said at last. “I am not going to give that address. What I say will be entirely different.”
She waited. But Marcus only silently refolded the toga and neatly covered it with the silk.
“Then,” she said, “you will write it tonight and memorize it. You must have quiet.”
“I shall let myself be moved by the power of Athene,” he said.
Helvia frowned. She considered that most imprudent, and very dangerous and uncertain. The gods did not always come when summoned, not even at the imploring of their most devoted servants.
“You think that wise, Marcus?”
He suddenly spread out his hands helplessly. “I do not know,” he confessed. He opened his small chest of treasures and took from it the round amulet Aurelia Caesar had given him so many years ago, and he hung it about his neck. Helvia thought, so, it is very serious, and he will not tell me.
That night Marcus followed his father into Tullius’ cubiculum. Tullius was both overjoyed and amazed, for it had been a very long time since Marcus had freely sought him out. Tullius sat in his plain chair, but Marcus stood before him.
Marcus said, in a low voice, “I have learned much today. I knew from the discourses of my grandfather, and yours, my father, that Rome had fallen far from her original innocence and republican glory and virtues. But not with all my flesh and blood and understanding; not with all my knowledge and my mind and acceptance. Today, I learned it all.”
“Tell me,” urged Tullius. But Marcus shook his head. “I cannot repeat the infamy. But this I can say: My address to the Senate tomorrow will be another than the one I wrote. However, I must have a starting point.” He sat down on the wooden stool near his father and looked into Tullius’ gentle brown eyes.
“You wish me to give you a starting point, Marcus?” asked the father, flushing with pride and pleasure. “You are to defend an honest farmer who cannot pay his taxes. The government has seized his small farm, has imprisoned him, and will sell his property and force him and his family into slavery.” Tullius shuddered. “You have already told me this.”
“What shall I say?” muttered Marcus in despair. “The Senate represents my country.”
“No!” cried Tullius, with sudden vehemence. “A government rarely represents the people! Love of country is often confused in simple minds with love of one’s government. They are rarely one; they are not synonymous. Yet,” he added, mournfully, “the evil men in government are compelled to show a public face of sympathy for the oppressed and must pretend, at all times, to be one with them, seeking to rectify the very wrong they have secretly committed.”
Marcus stood up so suddenly that the stool fell over. He cried out, “I have my starting point!”
He moved toward the curtain. Tullius said, wretchedly, “I have not helped you, though you are my son.”
Marcus came back to him, his eyes shining, and he bent and kissed his father’s cheek like a child. “You do not know how much you have helped me, dear Father!”
Tullius was dumfounded. But he placed his hands on Marcus’ shoulders and returned his kiss, with humility.
Helvia knelt before her son and tried to drape the toga majestically. “I am no handmaiden,” she said, wielding the ivory instrument with some clumsiness. “When I was a girl a man’s success did not wait on the way his toga was folded and arranged; it did not wait on foolish externals. If Cincinnatus appeared today before the Senate, as once he did, in his dusty rough tunic, with bare legs, his bare feet brown from the fields, the Senate would be outraged and would call for the guard to throw him out. He had, the Senate would declare, offended their august dignity. But now a man must dress like an actor and decorate himself like a woman with jewels, before he dares plead a simple case.”
“In those days,” said Marcus, “Senators represented the people. If they offended the people, they were removed or exiled. They did not inherit their seats. Nor did the retention of their seats depend upon base creatures and the passions of low and greedy men.”
Helvia nodded. She sat back on her plump heels to regard the toga. She also glanced up through her lashes at her son’s face. It was still very pale. But now the misery was less upon it. She was satisfied. She said, “Quintus’ great friend, that antic Julius, has procured a place for him to hear you. He will bring back the news. I wish we had a litter to carry you to the Forum. But we now have not even a simple chariot.” She studied Marcus again. “That ring is very theatrical. It does not become you.”
“It will become me today,” said Marcus, with some grimness.
“I have no doubt,” said Helvia.
But one of the few slaves left in the household now appeared in the doorway of the cubiculum, to announce, with proud excitement, that a rich litter was awaiting the noble Cicero, carried by four magnificent slaves wonderfully dressed. Marcus, forgetting that he was noble, and Helvia forgetting that she was a digni
fied matron, ran into the atrium and then to the strong oaken doors, which stood open to the hot late summer air. There, almost on the threshold, waited a litter, the curtains of fine blue wool embroidered in silver, the carriers arrayed like minor princes, their black faces shining like polished ebony.
“Noë!” exclaimed Marcus. The curtains parted and showed the smiling face of Noë ben Joel. Noë lifted himself out of the litter and came to embrace his friend and bow over the hand of Helvia. “Did you expect to walk to the Forum, like a peasant?” asked Noë, grasping Marcus’ arms in another embrace.
“Cincinnatus walked all the way to the Senate,” said Helvia, but she smiled.
“These are not the happy days of Cincinnatus, Lady,” said Noë. He looked at Marcus. “My father sends you his blessing, and his blessings are not to be despised, for he is a good man.”
When the young men were in the litter Noë said, taking his friend’s arm, “My father owes his life and reputation to you.” His voice trembled. “It was an impulse from God which sent me in search of you yesterday.”
“Your father owes me nothing,” said Marcus, with amazement. “It was Scaevola, and he alone, to whom you must direct your gratitude.”
Noë shook his head. “Who is my father? A banker, a broker, a man of no importance to such as Scaevola. To such a patrician my father is nothing. You will remember his metaphor about the use of a keen sword. He would not have used it for my father—but for you.”
“I?” cried Marcus. “He dislikes me only a little less than he does the other young lawyers.”
“You are wrong,” said Noë. “He loves you like a father, or a grandfather. It hurts, not offends, him that you are unworldly and have defenseless virtue and still believe that man is ultimately good. He fears for your peace of mind, your ultimate reason, your future, your fate. He would have you protect yourself with knowledge; he would have you close your open gates. Or, he fears, you will be destroyed.”
“No,” said Marcus, after a little thought. “He is a roaring bull from Spain, but he loves justice.”
“He knows it does not exist in Rome.”
Marcus said, “Tell me of your father. Did he suffer greatly?”
Noë replied: “He said that when he was in prison he prayed for God’s justice, but above all, that His will should be done.”
“So it was,” said Marcus, with some uneasiness.
“Without intention,” said Noë. Marcus looked at him sharply. Noë was frequently irreverent concerning the God of his fathers, and confessed to an enormous measure of doubt. He moved as if throwing a burden from his shoulders. He lifted aside a curtain to gaze with full light upon his friend. “You are marvelous,” he said. “When you stood on the threshold of your door you were like a hero, a statue, come to life. But, I was not surprised. What is this curious rod you hold so tightly?”
Marcus told him. Noë took it in his hand and examined it. “Julius Caesar,” he said, thoughtfully. “But I have no affairs with those who live on the Palatine.”
“You will hear of that young man in the future,” said Marcus. “I have come to believe it, for Rome today is his perfect environment.”
He pulled aside the curtain and stared out at the vehement faces and the press of bodies that surrounded the litter, at the many-colored tunics, at the violent hot sunlight on the sides of red and yellow and lemon-hued buildings, at the pylons with their winged heroes or gods or goddesses, at the surging stairways that went up and down, at the crowded porticoes of temples, at the throngs already hurrying to the theatres and the circuses. He was accustomed now to the uproar of the titanic city, the thunder of chariots, the screaming of multitudes of children, the shouts and whistles and oaths, and the shrill cries of pigeons. But now the noise appeared too acute to him. Had he been alone he would have covered his ears. He looked at the fierce blue of the sky, at the distant glitter of the Tiber, at the bridges massed with hurrying people. He smelled the pervasive stink of the giantess on her seven hills.
Noë looked at his pale profile and thought, My friend is greatly disturbed today, even more than he was yesterday.
Noë tried to divert him. “I have some gossip for you,” he said.
Marcus tried to smile. “You remind me of my young friend, Julius, who has every man’s name on his lips, and knows every man’s most vicious secret.”
Noë laughed. He said, “You will remember your famous duel with Catilina. I have heard he is with Sulla, in Asia.”
Marcus said with slow quietness, “I had hoped he was dead.”
“Unfortunately, no. The spear and the sword do not impale themselves in such as he. This frequently urges me to believe in the old Jewish story of Lucifer, who protects his own, a method I highly recommend to the Almighty, Who seems less conscientious in these matters. I understand that Catilina is one of Sulla’s favorite officers. If Sulla ever returns to Rome—and he cannot be worse than this Cinna who afflicts us now—the Catilina will be in a fine position under his general. It is unfortunate.”
“I have wished to kill him many times,” said Marcus. “There are moments that I regret that I did not.”
His white face flushed with hatred.
“But you spared him, and so acquired a reputation, which is not to be disdained. It is believed, as you know, that you could not bring yourself to kill an unarmed man, or that you spared him out of magnanimity. Either is excellent for a reputation.”
“His—wife?” asked Marcus.
“She is certainly not with her husband on maneuvers in Asia! So, she must be in Rome.”
“Then she is in Rome,” said Marcus, and all at once his sense of futility and exhaustion lessened. He knew that there was no hope for him, that Livia was forever lost. But the thought that she looked upon this very sky on which he looked, that he might even see her face in some temple, lifted his heart. He wanted to know that all was well with her.
The litter descended toward the Forum. Here the crowds were thicker and noisier. Litters carrying other lawyers moved rapidly toward the Basilica of Justice. Marcus’ breath came faster, and his hand gripped that lent rod of authority. He fumbled for the amulet under his tunic. The kingly ring on his finger flashed with a thousand lights.
Now they were in the Forum, entering down the steep slope of the Sacred Way. It was all familiar to Marcus, but he looked on it today with new eyes as though he had never seen it before. For today he was part of the Forum, and it was his arena of ordeal.
Here was all vast and colorful and uproarious confusion under the brilliant sky. Markets, temples, basilicas, porticoes, government buildings, and arches crowded together in the urban structures of red and citron and brown and pale yellow and white and gray; walls of brick and mortar and stone crushed furiously on each side of the road as if wishing to surge upon it and inundate it. Banks and brokerage houses teemed together in arches, shouldering one or two small theatres whose porticoes were even now seething with those in search of entertainment. As the great Forum lay in a hollow, the air sweltered with the stink of latrines, oil, incense, human sweat, animal offal, perfumes, dust, and heated stone. The markets were a clamor; bureaucrats with grave faces strove for an air of menacing dignity in their togas, but were often thrown from their feet by the sheer excited mass of fellow Romans, bent on business in the offices or counting houses or Senate or temples or shops. Chariots churned and lunged amidst a turmoil of litters and people on foot; horses screamed, wheels hammered, whips cracked, guards, attempting to control the turbulent traffic, waved wands or staffs, and strove to keep on foot. At times, they had to leap for a spot on the branching stairways, to avoid being kicked by a horse or trampled by the throngs.
Romans, having lost Republican simplicity, now tried to outdo each other in the violence of the color of their tunics, long and short. There was not a color nor a tint nor a hue which did not flare in the seering sunlight, from scarlet and crimson and blue to yellow and white and rose and green and orange. It was like a thousand rainbows gone ma
d and whirling and hurrying and rushing and leaping on the road and in the alleys between buildings. And above it all spread the hills of Rome, glaring in the light, jumbled with the high broken mass of multitudinous buildings, and all streaming with countless people. The incredible noise stunned the ear, drowned out an individual voice and the dim patter of indolent fountains before the temples.
Noë eyed the impassable mob dubiously. The Senate stood at a distance, tall, severe, straight-lined, of yellowish brick. It was as high as it was long, with thin windows of clear Alexandrian glass. It was fronted by several white stone steps leading to four stone pillars guarding the entrance. More than any other building in the Forum the Senate Chamber informed the eye that here was a nation not of poets and artists, but engineers, scientists and businessmen and soldiers, vigorously materialistic and bustling and energetic and ambitious. It was a nation of people alleged to grow rapturous over Grecian art and beauty and philosophy, but in its soul it regarded these things as somewhat effeminate and best left to elegant gentlemen whose thoughts did not encompass large and precise designs for a world order, precisely governed, and realistic in all its plans.
While only lawyers and advocates and those necessary for the conduct of law were permitted within the Senate Chamber, it was usual for lawyers who had tried cases previously that day, or were about to try cases, to stand near or within the entrance of the chamber surrounded by clients and well-wishers and paid applauders and friends. A few, but very few, like the famous pontifex maximus, Scaevola, could even bring their own chairs on which to sit, basking in the midst of their entourages, uttering witticisms or wisdoms, sometimes enjoying sweetmeats from little silver boxes. Those who could not get inside sat in their chairs with small awnings against the sun held over their heads by slaves. Therefore, the noise outside was far greater than within the dignified precincts of the Senate Chamber itself.
A Pillar of Iron Page 23
