The Seven Hills

by John Maddox Roberts

  "Those look like dangerous men," Jzates said, his habitual mockery subdued for once. "They don't have to strut like bullies. They radiate menace as the sun radiates light."

  "Very true," Zeno said. He had seen soldiers in many lands, but none like these, who seemed to have been whelped by the very dam of war itself. Something caused the soldiers to laugh, and the sound made both men start slightly.

  If the human voice, can sound like swords clashing against shields, Zeno thought, it is in this Roman laugh.

  The next morning they set off along the Via Appia, leading a donkey laden with their belongings and provisions. The countryside was beautiful and they passed through well-cultivated fields where sheep and cattle grazed amid a landscape that seemed taken from a pastoral poem. Most impressive, though, was the road itself. Although built more than a hundred years before, it was as solid and perfect as upon the day of its completion. The pavement was of cut stone subtly sloped to drain water. It was perfectly straight and level, with bridges over gorges, viaducts over marshy ground and, every few miles, way stations where travelers could rest and messengers could get fresh mounts. These latter were in the process of restoration and remanning by the Romans.

  "What a marvelous road!" Zeno said after they had been on it for most of the morning. "There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. Everywhere else roads are just laid atop the ground if they are paved at all. This is more like the top of a buried wall."

  "They learned the art from the Etruscans," Izates said.

  Once they had to step off the road as a military detachment marched past, every man in step as if the army were a single animal. Each man carried his own equipment and the army seemed to have only a minimum of noncombatant slaves to manage its heavy gear and animals. Even the slaves wore uniform and marched under military discipline.

  "We should have stayed at sea," Izates groused when they stopped at noon. "We could have set ashore within a few miles of Rome instead of walking half the length of Italy."

  "That would have meant sailing between Italy and Sicily. Those waters are dangerous now that Rome and Carthage are fighting over the island."

  "An unsafe voyage is quicker and easier than this trudging, no matter how fine the road."

  Zeno grinned at him. "It is beneath a philosopher's dignity to notice such things."

  Izates made another of his rude noises. "I'm a Cynic, not a Stoic."

  They could see that the countryside had been arranged in the common Carthaginian style, cut into huge plantations with few farmhouses but many slave barracks. Now, though, numerous surveying teams were at work, apparently dividing the huge tracts into smaller plots.

  "Do you think they intend to restore peasant cultivation?" Zeno said.

  "If they do, they've a job ahead of them," Izates observed. "There will be endless squabbling over who owns what. And what about the people who own the land now? It won't just be dispossessed Carthaginians."

  "We shall see if their lawyers are as formidable as their soldiers."

  The road took them first to Tarentum, only two days' travel from Brundisium, a journey that would have taken them at least four on the goat-path roads of Greece. Tarentum had been the Carthaginian capital, heavily fortified, its citadel located on a spit of land jutting into the harbor. Yet the Romans had taken it bloodlessly, moving so swiftly that the lethargic authorities scarcely knew that they had arrived.

  Here the Romans had shown they had craft and guile as well as iron discipline, for they had spoken mildly of trade and diplomatic relations while their legions poured through the mountain passes. They had agreed to hire out as mercenaries (they had insisted on calling themselves allies) for Hamilcar's Egyptian war and thus had insinuated their soldiers into the city. Soon they were in control of the gates and the city was theirs.

  Interesting as this was, the two paused only long enough to speak with some citizens and take notes, then they proceeded north. The next major town was Vehusia, then Beneventum, then splendid Capua, once capital of beautiful Campania. Here they rested for a few days and admired the graceful town. Campania had the richest farmland in Italy and it swarmed with Roman merchants and officials overseeing the change of ownership. Here they hired a freedman fluent in both Greek and Latin to teach them the rudiments of the Roman language.

  Zeno found the language far easier to learn than Persian, its many cognate words proving it to be related to Greek, unlike Syrian or Egyptian or Phoenician. Predictably, Izates grumbled at learning a "barbarian" language, but he learned anyway. A man who grew up on Aramaic and Hebrew, he said, should find a simple-minded language like Latin to be child's play.

  The freedman was named Gorgas, and he proved to have an adventurous past. As a boy he had served a Greek merchant who traded in Noricum. In that land he was sold to a Roman family, with whom he lived for a number of years, employed as a clerk. His master, a military tribune, had taken him along on the trek to Italy. The tribune had fallen sick of the. illness common to the marshy parts of Italy and had freed Gorgas in his will.

  "My legal name is now Marcus Fulvius Bambalio, same as my former master's," he had explained, "but that's for legal documents and my tombstone. I still go by Gorgas."

  They engaged Gorgas to accompany them to Rome and teach them along the way. For the much-traveled former slave this was a mere outing. Along the way Zeno questioned him about Noricum, but the man could not tell him much.

  "I worked on a big estate. What I heard was mostly slave gossip. The master's family were important, but not of the highest rank. They were what the Romans call equites. That means they were rich but none of them had ever held office as high as praetor."

  "Equites," Zeno said. "The word means 'horseman,' doesn't it?"

  "Exactly. Once, it meant someone wealthy enough to bring his own horse and serve in the cavalry when the army was called up. Now it's just a property assessment. But near as I understand it, the equites are as important as the senators in a lot of ways. My master's family served in the lower offices, what they call quaestors and other things. They aren't judges but they form the juries, and a lot of the junior officers in the legions are equites."

  "Some of the Greek cities had similar arrangements," Zeno observed to Izates.

  "Why does that not surprise me?" Izates said.

  "Your manumission," Zeno said, "is that common among Romans?"

  "Very. What happened to me is what they call a 'testamentary manumission.' That means being freed in a will. Important Romans will free hundreds of slaves in a will, just to show off how important they are. But Romans free slaves all the time. In fact, only really stupid and unskilled people stay slaves for life. And when we're freed, we have almost full citizenship rights. We just can't hold public office. But our sons can, as long as they weren't born while we were in service."

  "Amazing," Zeno said.

  Izates cleared his throat. "Actually, my own people have such a custom. Bond servitude is for only seven years. After that, the slave must be freed unless he chooses to remain in bondage."

  "I'll bet your freed bondservants don't have full citizen rights," Gorgas said.

  Izates shrugged. "Few have that anyway."

  "Tell me about Roman citizenship," Zeno said.

  In this way they passed their journey from Capua to Rome.

  The city lay in a bend of the river Tiber. It was not a great river, and the city itself would not have been impressive had it not been for the frenetic level of activity to be seen everywhere. On a field northwest of the city walls troops drilled to the snarl of trumpets. The sounds of hammer, saw and chisel could be heard in all directions. Outside the walls large farmhouses were under construction. Slave gangs worked on roads, bridges and aqueducts.

  From miles away the travelers could see the roofs of the temples on the hill called the Capitol. Their fresh gilding gleamed in the sunlight,, and as the men drew nearer they saw that the temples had all been newly painted and their stonework restored. The road was lined with
tombs, and these, too, had been carefully restored and planted all around with new trees and shrubs.

  "They restored the temples and the tombs first," Zeno noted. "The Romans were a famously pious people."

  "It's not much of a town," Izates said.

  "Your Alexandria sets a high standard. In Athens, only the Acropolis is truly beautiful. So it is here. It looks as if they took pains to embellish their public places and let the rest of the city sprawl in all directions with no planning. But look at the walls."

  "What about them?"

  "They have been restored; you can see the new stonework. But they have made no effort to strengthen them further. They haven't been raised; there are no new defensive towers, no protective ditch dug, nothing."

  "An odd oversight for people who can expect a Carthaginian offensive at any moment. The army Hamilcar sent to Egypt is said to be huge, and it must be on its way to Italy by now."

  "I don't think it was an oversight," Zeno said. "I heard that their capital in Noricum has no wall at all. Like the Spartans, the Romans believed that a wall would breed a cautious, defensive attitude. They preferred to entrust their safety to the perfection of their legions. They've restored this wall because it is ancient and was built by one of their kings before Rome became a republic."

  "Like these Romans, the old Spartans were arrogant. Where are the Spartans now? The city is nothing and the men are the hirelings of others because they know no art save soldiering."

  "Gorgas," Zeno said, "did you spend much time in Rome after you came south?"

  "Just a few days. They were still dredging out the Forum. It had reverted to the marsh it once was. There is a vast drain under there, the Cloaca Maxima. It was built by another old king. They were getting it unplugged when my master took me down to Tarentum. Half the city was still in ruins. Old Hannibal's men did a thorough job of wrecking the place and after that the people who moved in grazed their cattle and sheep in the public places."

  "Who moved in?" Zeno asked.

  "After the Romans were exiled there were still plenty of Italians who had never really reconciled themselves to Roman rule: Campanians, Lucanians, Samnites, Etruscans and so forth. They brought their livestock and cut up the old estates into small farms. The big plantations are mainly to the south of here."

  "Where are those people now?" Izates wanted to know.

  Gorgas shrugged. "Pushed out. Some have hired on as labor. Some will probably be tenant farmers for the big Roman landlords. The Romans don't think the descendants of the people who wouldn't go north with the exile to be worthy of citizenship. There is talk that some will be drafted into the navy Rome is going to build. That way they may in time earn at least partial citizenship."

  They entered the city through a gate whose stonework was ancient, but its wooden doors were so new that the timbers still oozed sap and their ironwork was still bright. Traffic in and out was brisk, but there were no guards to accost them or demand their business.

  "This is the Capena Gate," Gorgas told them.

  They passed beneath two. aqueducts that ran parallel to the city wall and thence into a district of low houses. Within a few minutes they came to a valley dominated by an immense structure from which came the sound of intense hammering. The end they came to was rounded and the rest of it stretched straight northwest for an unbelievable distance.

  "No need to tell us what this is," Zeno said. "This has to be the Great Circus." The histories he had read all mentioned the Romans' passion for chariot races and the unprecedentedly huge structure they had erected for the purpose. It was built primarily of wood, and wagonload after wagonload of lumber stretched in a. chain from the nearby river wharfs. Slaves were busily painting away with brushes the size of brooms.

  "The Romans have a taste for the gaudy and garish," Izates said. "When this monstrosity is finished, it will serve as a new standard for tastelessness."

  "Considering the many oversized monuments of Alexandria," Zeno said, "that seems unwarranted."

  "I confess that my native city is addicted to grotesque grandiosity. The successors of Alexander sought to cover their backwoods origins with a surfeit of marble and gilding. But at least they had the decency to employ Greek artists and architects who possessed a modicum of restraint."

  Zeno had visited Alexandria more than once and had been able to detect no sense of restraint in the place, but he let it pass. He was more impressed by the Romans' energy than by their taste, anyway.

  The city was built upon a series of low, rolling hills so that it was difficult to get much sense of it. No sight line extended more than a few hundred yards, and even that was rare. It did not help that the streets were for the most part twisting and narrow. Apparently, the plan for rebuilding Rome did not include improving its layout. The Romans seemed determined to restore their city precisely to its state before Hannibal destroyed it.

  The travelers made their way up one of the better streets, stepping aside for wagons of building material and tool-bearing slave gangs the whole way, until they entered a long, broad public space full of monuments and surrounded by buildings of considerable dignity. Its northern extremity ended at the base of the highest hill, which was topped by the splendid Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest.

  "This is their agora, obviously," Izates said, looking the place over for signs of vulgarity. "It's rather dignified, really," he said, disappointed.

  "This is the Forum," Gorgas said. "I see they've cleared away the last of the swamp and cleaned the pavement. Those biggest buildings are what the Romans call basilicas. They're law courts, mainly. The little round temple is sacred to Vesta, goddess of the hearth. That one partway up the hill is Saturn's. The big one to Jupiter you already know and that other big one on the lower peak of the hill is Juno's. The little temples surrounding them I'm not sure about. The Romans have more gods and more temples than you can imagine. They even build temples and altars to the virtues: discipline, concord, peace—"

  "Peace?" Izates said dryly. "The Romans esteem peace so highly that they have erected an altar to it?"

  "I think we can assume that it's peace on Roman terms," Zeno said. "This seems to be the center of government and communal activity. Let's find an inn close by. It will be convenient since this will be where we will be spending most of our time."

  They learned that, except for public areas like the Forum, Rome had no sort of districting. Houses, shops, temples, slums, parks, gardens and the town houses of the rich were jumbled together, often so closely that only one-way foot traffic was possible between them. Thus they had no trouble finding an inn no more than a few steps from the Forum, and nearby a stable to take care of their donkey.

  "One thing to be said for a rebuilt city like this," Izates said, surveying the room they had engaged. "Even the inns are too new to have gotten shabby and acquire vermin."

  The room was spacious, freshly painted and even featured a small balcony with potted plants, overlooking the Via Nova, one of the few streets in Rome wide enough for two-way wheeled traffic.

  Zeno walked out onto the balcony, leaned on the handrail and surveyed the street below. "Do you know what is missing?" he said.

  "What?" Izates asked. "I mean, what besides culture, beauty and learning?"

  "Everywhere we've gone since we arrived in Italy there have been soldiers. I've seen none since we entered Rome."

  "Armed soldiers are forbidden to enter the city," Gorgas informed them. "Even a general in command of troops has to stay outside the city walls. When the Senate must confer with the military, they have to meet in one of the temples outside the walls."

  "That is a wise policy," Izates conceded. "I suppose that even the Romans must have good ideas upon occasion."

  "I noticed some fairly grand temples standing just without the city walls," Zeno said. "Most cities have their finest temples in prominent places."

  "It's another Roman thing," Gorgas said. "Certain of their gods are what the Romans call 'extramural.' That means they have
all their temples and shrines outside the walls. Mars is one of them. He's their war god, sort of like Ares, except he's also an agricultural deity. His great festival is called the Martialis and it's actually a harvest festival, having nothing to do with battle."

  "I can see that Roman religion must be a study that will require its own volume," Zeno said.

  "Why bother?" Izates asked.

  After a leisurely meal they walked out to see the sights. Just off the northernmost corner of the Forum they came to a rather modest brick building. The only thing fine about it was a handsome marble stair and portico with pillars in the severe Doric style. They might have passed it by without another glance, but Gorgas informed them that this was one of the most important landmarks in Rome.

  "It's the Curia, where the Senate meets."

  "There!" Zeno said, gesturing toward the unassuming facade. "Does that satisfy you? This is where the Romans have held their most important, most solemn debates. This is where their consuls have been entrusted with the powers of war, where policies of diplomacy and foreign relations have been fashioned, yet it is as plain as a Spartan barracks."

  "Not what one would have expected," Izates admitted. "Let's take a closer look."

  They walked toward the Curia and as they did Zeno declaimed, "A visitor once described the Roman Senate as an 'assembly of kings.' Their dignity and assurance was famed the world over. It is the quality the Romans called gravitas, meaning a great and profound seriousness. I will—" As they drew nearer, his words tapered off.

  "That's more like it," Izates said, grinning at the sounds coming from within the Curia. They carried no impression of the solemn debate of an assembly of kings.

  It sounded like there was a street brawl going on inside.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Scipio is a traitor!" shouted a red-faced senator. "He directed the defense of Alexandria when a Roman force was a part of the army besieging the city! He must be recalled and tried for treason!"