Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  'Cicero is an old family name. They say it comes from an ancestor who had an ugly bump on the tip of his nose, defied down the middle, something like a chick-pea. You're right, it does sound odd, though I'm so used to it I hardly think of it. Some of my master's friends say he should drop the name if he means to go into politics or law, but he won't hear of it. Cicero says that if his family saw fit to adopt such a peculiar name, then the man who first bore that name must have been quite extraordinary, even if no one remembers why. He says he intends to make all Rome know the name of Cicero and respect it.'

  'Proud, as I said. But of course that would apply to virtually any Roman family and certainly to any Roman lawyer. That he lives in Rome I took for granted. That his family roots are to the south I assumed from the name Tullius. I remember having encountered it more than once on the road to Pompeii — perhaps in Aquinum, Interamna, Arpinum—'

  'Exactly,' Tiro nodded. 'Cicero has relatives all through that region. He himself was born in Arpinum.'

  'But he did not live there past the age of, oh, nine or ten.'

  'Yes — he was eight when his family moved to Rome. But how do you know that?'

  Bast, having given up on catching dragonflies, was rubbing herself against my ankles. 'Think, Tiro. Ten is the age for a citizen's formal education to begin, and I suspect, given his knowledge of philosophy and your own erudition, that your master was not educated in a sleepy little town off the road to Pompeii. As for the family not having been in Rome for more than a generation, I assumed that from the very fact that the name Cicero is unfamiliar to me. Had they been here from the time I was young, I would surely have at least heard of them — and I wouldn't forget a name like that. As for

  Cicero's age and wealth and his interest in oratory and philosophy, all that is evident simply from observing you, Tiro.' 'Me?'

  'A slave is the mirror of his master. Your unfamiliarity with the dangers of wine, your modesty with Bethesda, these indicate that you serve in a household where restraint and decorum are of utmost concern. Such a tone can only be set by the master himself. Cicero is clearly a man of rigorous morals. This can be indicative of purely Roman virtues, but your comment about moderation in all things indicates an appreciation of Greek virtue and Greek philosophy. There is also a great emphasis on rhetoric, grammar, and oratory in the house of Cicero. I doubt that you yourself have ever received a single formal lesson in these fields, but a slave can absorb much from regular exposure to the arts. It shows in your speech and manner, in the polished tones of your voice. Clearly, Cicero has studied long and hard in the schools of language.

  'All of which, taken together, can mean only one thing: that he wishes to be an advocate and present legal cases before the Rostra. I would have assumed so at any rate, from the very feet that you came to ask for my services. Most of my clients — at least the respectable ones — are either politicians or lawyers or both.'

  Tiro nodded. 'But you also knew that Cicero was young and just beginning in his career.'

  'Yes. Well, if he were an established advocate, I would have heard of him already. How many cases has he presented?'

  'Only one,' Tiro acknowledged, 'and nothing you would have heard about — a simple partnership case.'

  'Which further confirms his youth and inexperience. As does the feet that he sent you at all. Would it be fair to say that you're Cicero's most trusted slave? His favourite servant?'

  'His personal secretary. I've been with him all my life.'

  'Carried his books to classes, drilled him in grammar, prepared his notes for his first case before the Rostra?'

  'Exactly.'

  'Then you are not the sort of slave that most advocates send when they wish to call upon Gordianus the Finder. Only a fledgling advocate, embarrassingly ignorant of common custom, would bother to send his right hand to my door. I'm flattered, even though I know the flattery is unintentional. To show my gratitude, I promise not to spread the word that Marcus Tullius Cicero made an ass of himself by sending his best slave to fetch that wretched Gordianus, explorer of dung heaps and infiltrator of hornet's nests. They'd get a bigger laugh out of that than they ever will out of Cicero's name.'

  Tiro wrinkled his brow. The tip of my sandal caught on a willow root beside the stream. I stubbed my toe and stifled a curse.

  ‘You're right,' Tiro said quietly, sounding very earnest. 'He's quite young, just as I am. He doesn't yet know all these little tricks of the legal profession, the silly gestures and empty formalities. But he does know what he believes in, which is more than you can say for most advocates.'

  I gazed down at my toe, surprised to see that it wasn't bleeding. There are gods in my garden, rustic and wild and unkempt like the garden itself. They had punished me for teasing a naive young slave. I deserved it. 'Loyalty becomes you, Tiro. Just how old is your master?'

  'Cicero is twenty-six.'

  'And you?'

  'Twenty-three.'

  'A bit older than I would have guessed, both of you. Then I'm not ten years older than you, Tiro, but only seven. Still, seven years can make a great difference,' I said, contemplating the passion of young men out to change the world. A wave of nostalgia passed through me as gently as the faint breeze that rustled through the willow above our heads. I glanced down into the pond and saw the two of us reflected in a patch of dear water sparkling in the sunlight. I was taller than Tiro, broader in the shoulders and heavier in the middle; my jaw was more prominent, my nose flatter and more hooked, and my eyes, far from being lavender, were a staid Roman brown. All we seemed to have in common were the same unruly black curls; mine were beginning to show strands of grey.

  'You mentioned Quintus Hortensius,' Tiro said. 'How did you know that it was he who recommended you to Cicero?'

  I laughed softly. 'I didn't know. Not for certain. That was a guess, but a good one. The look of amazement on your face immediately confirmed that I was right. Once I knew for a fact that Hortensius was involved, everything became clear to me.

  'Let me explain. One of Hortensius's men was here, perhaps ten days ago, sounding me out about a case. The one who always comes to me when Hortensius needs my help — just thinking of the creature makes me shudder. Where do men like Hortensius find such abominable specimens? Why do they all end up in Rome, cutting one another's throats? But of course you wouldn't know about that side of the legal profession. Not yet.

  'At any rate, this man from Hortensius comes to my door. Asks me all sorts of unrelated questions, tells me nothing-lots of mystery, lots of posing, the sort of wheedling these types engage in when they want to know if the opposition has already approached you about a case. They always think the enemy has got to you first, that you'll go along and pretend to help them anyway, then stab them in the back at the last moment. I suppose it's what they themselves would do in my place.

  'Finally he goes his way, leaving a smell in the foyer that Bethesda can't eradicate with three days' scrubbing, along with only two clues as to what he was talking about: the name Roscius, and the town of Ameria — did I know the one, had I ever been to the other? Roscius is the name of a famous comedian, of course, one of Sulla's favourites, everybody knows that. But that's not whom he meant. Ameria is a little town up in the Umbrian hill country, fifty miles or so north of Rome. Not much reason to go there, unless you want to take up farming. So my answer was no, and no again.

  'A day or two passed. Hortensius's handyman didn't come back. I was intrigued. A few questions here and there — it didn't take much checking to uncover what it was all about: the parricide case upcoming at the Rostra. Sextus Roscius of the town of Ameria stands accused of plotting the murder of his own father here in Rome. Odd — no one seems to know much about the matter, but everyone tells me I'm better off staying clear of it. An ugly crime, they say, certain to be an ugly trial. I kept expecting Hortensius to contact me again, but his creature never reappeared. Two days ago I heard that Hortensius had withdrawn from the defence.'

  I gave Tiro a side
long glance. He kept his eyes on the ground as we walked, hardly looking at me, yet I could almost feel the intensity of his concentration. He was an excellent listener. Had he been other than a slave, what a fine pupil he would have made, I thought; and perhaps, in another life, in another world, I might have made a fine teacher of young men.

  I shook my head. 'Hortensius and his creature and this mysterious trial — I had put it out of my thoughts completely. Then you showed up at my door, telling me I'd been "recommended" By whom? Possibly, I thought, by Hortensius, who seems to have thought it wiser to pass along the parricide case to someone else. To a younger advocate, probably, someone less experienced. A beginning lawyer who would be excited at the prospect of a major case, or at least a case with such a harrowing penalty. An advocate who wouldn't know any better — who wouldn't be in a position to know whatever it is that Hortensius knows. Once you confirmed that it was Hortensius who'd recommended me, it was simple to proceed to the final pronouncement, steered along at every turn by the reactions on your face — which, by the way, is as clear and easy to read as Cato's Latin.' I shrugged. 'To some extent, logic. To some extent, a hunch. I've learned to use both in my line of work.'

  We walked along in silence for a moment. Then Tiro smiled and laughed. 'So you do know why I've come. And you know what I was to ask you. I hardly have to say a word. You make it very easy.'

  I shrugged and spread my hands in a typical Roman gesture of false modesty.

  Tiro furrowed his brow. 'Now if only I could read your thoughts — but I'm afraid that will take some practice. Or does the fact that you've treated me so well already mean that you agree — that you'll lend your services as Cicero needs them? He understands from Hortensius how you work, the fees you'll expect. Will you do it?'

  'Do what? I'm afraid my mind reading stops here. You'll have to be more specific'

  ‘Will you come?'

  'Where?'

  'To Cicero's house.' Seeing the blank expression on my face, Tiro searched for a clearer explanation. 'To meet him. To discuss the case.'

  This stopped me so abruptly that my scraping sandals actually raised a small cloud of dust. 'Your master truly is ignorant of decorum, isn't he? He asks me to his house. Asks me, Gordianus the Finder? As a guest? How strange. Yes, I think I very much want to meet this Marcus Tullius Cicero. Heaven knows he needs my help. What a strange one he must be. Yes, of course I'll come. Just allow me to change into something more appropriate. My toga, I suppose. And shoes, then, not sandals. It will only take a moment. Bethesda! Bethesda!

  2

  The journey from my house on the Esquiline Hill to that of Cicero, close by the Capitoline, would take more than an hour of steady walking. It had probably taken Tiro half that time to reach my door, but Tiro had set out at dawn. We left at the busiest hour of the morning, when the streets of Rome are flooded with humanity, all stirred into wakefulness by the perpetual engines of hunger, obedience, and greed.

  One sees more household slaves on the streets at that hour than at any other time of day. They scurry about the city on a million morning errands, conveying messages, carrying packages, fetching sundries, shopping from market to market. They carry with them the heavy scent of bread, baked fresh in a thousand stone ovens round the city, each oven sending up its slender tendril of smoke like a daily offering to the gods. They carry the scent of fish, freshwater varieties captured nearby in the Tiber, or else more exotic species transported overnight upriver from the port at Ostia — mud-caked molluscs and great fish of the sea, slithering octopi and squid. They carry the scent of blood that oozes from the severed limbs and breasts and carefully extracted organs of cattle, chicken, pigs, and sheep, wrapped in cloth and slung over their shoulders, destined for their masters' tables and their masters' already bloated bellies.

  No other city I know can match the sheer vitality of Rome at the hour just before mid-morning. Rome wakes with a self-satisfied stretching of the limbs and a deep inhalation, stimulating the lungs, quickening the pulse. Rome wakes with a smile, roused from

  pleasant dreams, for every night Rome goes to sleep dreaming a dream of empire. In the morning Rome opens her eyes, ready to go about the business of making that dream come true in broad daylight. Other cities cling to sleep — Alexandria and Athens to warm dreams of the past, Pergamum and Antioch to a coverlet of Oriental splendour, little Pompeii and Herculaneum to the luxury of napping till noon. Rome is happy to shake off sleep and begin her agenda for the day. Rome has work to do. Rome is an early riser.

  Rome is multiple cities in one. On any given hour's journey across it, one will see at least several of its guises. To the eyes of those who look at a city and see faces, it is first and foremost a city of slaves, for the slaves far outnumber citizens and freedmen. Slaves are everywhere, as ubiquitous and as vital to the life of the city as the waters of the Tiber or the light of the sun. Slaves are the lifeblood of Rome.

  They are of every race and condition. Some spring from a stock indistinguishable from their masters. They walk the streets better dressed and more finely groomed than many a free man; they may lack the toga of a citizen, but their tunics are made of material just as fine. Others are unimaginably wretched, like the pockmarked, half-idiot labourers one sees winding through the streets in ragged files, naked except for a cloth to cover then-sex, joined by chains at the ankles and bearing heavy weights, kept in line by bullies with long whips and further tormented by the clouds of flies that follow wherever they go. They hurry to the mines, or to galleys, or to dig the deep foundations of a rich man's house on their way to an early grave.

  To those who look at a city and see not humanity but stone, Rome is overwhelmingly a city of worship. Rome has always been a pious place, sacrificing abundantly (if not always sincerely) to any and every god and hero who might become an ally in the dream of empire. Rome worships the gods; Rome gives adoration to the dead. Temples, altars, shrines, and statues abound. Incense may abruptly waft from any corner. One may step down a narrow winding street in a neighbourhood known since childhood and suddenly come upon a landmark never noticed before — a tiny, crude statue of some forgotten Etruscan god set in a niche and concealed behind a wild fennel bush, a secret known only to the children who play in the alley and the inhabitants of the house, who worship the forsaken and impotent god as a household deity. Or one may come upon an entire temple, unimaginably ancient, so old it is made not of bricks and marble but of worm-eaten wood, its dim interior long ago stripped of all clues of the divinity that once resided there, but still held sacred for reasons no one living can remember.

  Other sights are more specialized to their region. Consider my own neighbourhood, with its odd mixture of death and desire. My home sits partway up the Esquiline Hill. Above me is the quarter of the morgue workers, those who tend the flesh of the dead — embalmers, perfume rubbers, stokers of the flame. Day and night a massive column of smoke rises from the summit, thicker and blacker than any other in this city of smoke, and carrying that strangely appealing odour of seared flesh otherwise found only on battlefields. Below my house, at the foot of the hill, is the notorious Subura, the greatest concentration of taverns, gaming houses, and brothels west of Alexandria. The proximity of such disparate neighbours — purveyors of death on one hand and of life's basest pleasures on the other — can lead to strange juxtapositions.

  Tiro and I descended the paved footpath that dropped steeply from my front door, passing the blank plaster walls of my neighbours. 'Be careful here,' I told him, pointing out the spot where I knew a fresh load of excrement would be waiting, slopped over the wall by the inhabitants of the house on the left. Tiro skipped to his right, barely avoiding the pile, and wrinkled his nose.

  'That wasn't there when I came up the steps,' he laughed.

  'No, it looks quite fresh. The mistress of the house,' I explained with a sigh, 'comes from some backward little town in Samnium. A million times I've explained to her how the public sewers work, but she only answers: "This is t
he way we did it in Pluto's Hole," or whatever her stinking little town is called. It never stays long; sometime during the day the man who lives behind the wall on the right has one of his slaves collect the stuff and cart it off. I don't know why; the path leads only to my door — I'm the only one who has to look at it, and the only one likely to step in it. Maybe the smell offends him. Maybe he steals it to fertilize his gardens. I only know it's one of life's predictable routines — the lady from Pluto's Hole will throw her family's shit over the wall every morning; the man across the way will carry it off before nightfall.' I gave Tiro my warmest smile. 'I explain this to anyone who's likely to visit me between sunrise and sunset. Otherwise you're likely to ruin a perfectly good pair of shoes.'

  The pathway broadened. The houses became smaller and drew closer together. At last we reached the foot of the Esquiline and stepped into the wide avenue of the Subura Way. A group of gladiators, heads shaved except for barbaric topknots, came staggering out of the Lair of Venus. The Lair is notorious for cheating its customers, especially visitors to Rome, but natives as well, which is one of the reasons I've never patronized it, despite its convenient proximity to my house. Cheated or not, the gladiators seemed satisfied. They staggered into the street grasping one another's shoulders for support and bellowing out a song that had as many tunes as there were voices to sing it, still drunk after what must have been a very long night of debauchery.

  At the edge of the street a group of young trigon players broke and scattered to get out of the gladiators' way, then reformed to begin a fresh round, each taking his turn at the points of a triangle drawn in the dust. They slapped the leather ball back and forth, laughing loudly. They were hardly more than boys, but I'd seen them going in and out of the side entrance to the Lair often enough to know that they were employed there. It was a testament to the energy of youth that they should be up and playing so early, after a long night's work in the brothel.