The Seven Hills

by John Maddox Roberts

  The elder Norbanus informed his son that there had been great anger and bitterness when he arrived to take over command. Scaeva and his principal officers were outraged that, after securing Sicily for Rome, they were to be shunted aside in favor of a proconsul just sent out from Rome with his own clique of senior officers. The old family officers, headed by the Cornelia Scipiones, were his enemies to a man. Had they not been Romans, he wrote, and sticklers for subordination to Senate orders, there would have been mutiny.

  The legionaries grumbled a bit but there had been no serious insubordination. With the huge expansion of the legions, the bulk of them were new family men, most of them just a generation or two removed from their Gallic and German tribal origins. They might admire the officers who had led them to victory, but they resented the aristocratic airs of too many of them to allow a takeover by a Norbanus to upset them.

  The Senate communications he scanned briefly and set aside. A pack of fretting old women, he thought, afraid now because they've just realized that practically every Roman soldier is away from.Italy. They were sending him several cohorts of the newly raised auxiliary forces, mostly Italian natives and many of them freshly retired from their vocation as bandits. He looked forward to trying them out. They might prove useful and would certainly be expendable. Highly trained Roman legionaries were never expendable.

  "One other thing we've brought you," said the Greek named Zeno. "It's a gift from Quee—that is, the Princess Regent Selene." He produced a beautiful wooden box inlaid with shell and ivory. It was about a cubit long. He slipped its delicate latch and opened the lid. Inside was what looked like a tube of dark wood, both ends ringed with bronze chased with a Greek key fret. From one end protruded a circle of ivory shaped like a shallow cup.

  "What is it?" Norbanus asked, intrigued despite himself. The thing looked valuable.

  "Another product of the Archimedean school." Zeno took the thing from the box. First he showed Norbanus and the others the end lacking the ivory finial. It was covered with a cap of thin bronze, which he removed, displaying a large piece of glass that seemed to be slightly convex. Then he reversed it and showed the ivory end. In its center was a much smaller piece of glass. He grasped the ivory circle and tugged at it. A tube of bronze slid from inside the wooden cylinder.

  "This is a device for making distant objects seem nearer. You gaze through the small lens in the ivory eyepiece"—he put the thing to his own eye—"and you aim the larger lens toward the object you wish to examine." He turned and pointed the instrument toward the tent entrance, which faced the landward gate of Massilia. "If the object appears fuzzy, you adjust the length of the instrument until it becomes clear." He showed how minute adjustments could be made to the sliding tube. He handed it to Norbanus. The general put the ivory piece to his eye and aimed the thing toward the gate.

  "Can't see a thing. Just a little dot of light that comes and goes away."

  "It takes a bit of practice," Zeno told him. "Keep trying and you will get that little dot of light under control. It will open up and then you need merely adjust the length as I demonstrated."

  Norbanus played with the thing and was about to give it up when suddenly the light filled the vision of his right eye. Slowly, he worked the tube in and out and, abruptly, the gate of Massilia leapt into stark clarity, seeming a hundred paces closer. He gasped. "It's magic!"

  His other officers clamored to try it next and he handed it to Niger. "So they've come up with something useful at last. Please convey the princess my thanks, when you return."

  "I shall certainly do so," Zeno said. "And allow me to say that your great feat in marching your army from Egypt all the way back to Italy, and now to Gaul, is the talk of Alexandria: of the whole world, if truth be known."

  "So I am told," Norbanus said, nodding. "But I have far more to accomplish before I take my place in the Senate."

  "And that is another thing much spoken of," Izates said. "It seems that most Romans receive such great trust only after a lengthy tenure in the Senate."

  "Our general is not like most Romans," Cato said. "And times are not what they were. Rome must adapt to a new world."

  Food was brought in and the wine flowed. The Romans asked for information and gossip from Sicily and Italy, and the two Greeks obliged. There was little discussion of military matters, certainly not of any future prospects for Massilia. Zeno assumed that they guarded their words in the presence of men who could relay them to rivals and enemies.

  "I understand, General," said Izates, "that you have astrologers among your retinue."

  "I have," Norbanus said, frowning slightly.

  "If you will grant me a favor, I would like to consult with them." At Norbanus's deepening frown, he added: "I understand that they are women of your household, and I would never suggest anything improper. It is just that, in the course of my studies, I spoke with a number of astrologers in Alexandria, most of them claiming to be Chaldeans of some sort, and I found almost every one of them to be utterly fraudulent. Yet it seems that these Judean princesses of yours—they are true princesses, I understand?—give you the most reliable advice. I would very much like to speak with practitioners of the true art."

  Norbanus nodded. "I think it can be arranged," he said, thinking: Those two bitches do pretty much as they please anyway, so why not?

  "I am most grateful," Izates said.

  After dinner the Greeks took their leave and Norbanus put an officers tent at their disposal for the length of their stay. When they were gone, he picked up the message from Marcus Scipio and read it. Once he had its gist, he read it aloud to his officers.

  "Just like him," Niger grumbled. "He doesn't command a single legionary, but he wants to keep tabs on us."

  "Still," said Cato, "the idea makes sense. Militarily, I mean. Close communication between the armies and navies can be important in a war as big as this one, and it looks like these new boats will do the job better than the older type. Not," he added hastily, "that I'd ever trust a traitor like Marcus Scipio."

  Norbanus nodded. "My own thoughts. Well, there's an answer to this: I want my shipmasters and shipwrights to study that little vessel while it's here, learn how to sail it, then build me a flotilla of them. That way I can keep in control of my own flow of information, without everything going through Alexandria and Scipio's hands."

  Everyone agreed that this was a brilliant idea.

  Outside, the Greeks strolled through the legionary camp, admiring the superb discipline of the soldiers. Norbanus's veterans were easily distinguishable from the men of the new legions recently added to his army. The former were more weather-beaten, and their motley equipment gave them a raffish distinction. The newer legions were made up of mostly younger men, and their arms and clothing were turned out by the new fabricae to standardized patterns. It gave them a uniformity of appearance that was odd to the eyes of men accustomed to armies made up of soldiers who were expected to supply their own panoply, usually whatever they had at home or could afford to purchase.

  "They're a fierce-looking lot," Izates said, nodding toward a unit of the veterans. A centurion had found some fault with a legionary and was beating him mercilessly with the vitis: a stick carried by all centurions for just this purpose. The man being beaten did not betray pain or distress by the slightest change of expression. His comrades, clearly the recipients of many such beatings, looked on with amusement.

  "There hasn't been anything like them since the great days of Sparta," Zeno agreed. "I've seen citizen militias of the sort most Greek cities produce, and Macedonian professional phalangists, and mercenaries of the sort hired by Egypt and Carthage. But I've never before seen a nation of men who are professional soldiers from the cradle. Did you know that some Roman officers don't consider men truly reliable until they reach their forties? It's an age when most soldiers give up war for good."

  "Our friend Marcus Scipio's one-eyed grandfather still serves in arms. I think old Gabinius would pick up his sword if he wasn
't so arthritic."

  For a while the Greeks admired the colors of the sunset, then Zeno said: "We could be playing a dangerous game, dealing with these Judean women."

  "I've found that I have a taste for dangerous games," Izates said. "We were a pair of penniless, itinerant scholars, and by pure chance we were thrust into the regions of power. Perhaps the gods had a hand in it; perhaps it was blind chance. Whichever, I find that it has a powerful attraction. It's a game where one throws the knucklebones not merely for wealth, not even for life and death. The stakes are lordship and immortal fame. It gives life a flavor that scholarship lacks."

  Zeno laughed. "What would Diogenes think of you? A Cynic is supposed to scorn all such things as mere vanity."

  "Diogenes was never presented with such an opportunity." He brooded for a while. "I once thought philosophy held the answer to everything. Now I see that far too often it is a turning away from the world. One has no power, therefore one despises power. One has no wealth, so one scorns wealth. It is the old fable of the fox and the grapes, and if that is not vanity, what is?"

  "Surely you are not giving up philosophy? It is your whole life."

  "Certainly not. But I now know that philosophy as it has come to us has taken some incorrect turns. In the days of Heraclitus, philosophy took all of existence as its subject, and nothing in the cosmos was deemed unworthy of study. But then it came under the domination of Plato and the Academics. Plato was a great philosopher, but he had an aristocratic blindness and taught that the material world was unworthy of a philosopher's attention.

  "Chilo and the philosophers of the Archimedean school are very different. They are engaged in the world. They do things! They accomplish wonders. True, they sometimes build mere toys for the vulgar mob to marvel at, and they have to please the patron of the Museum, but this enables them to do serious work. I suppose I will always be a questioning Cynic, but I now perceive the world through different eyes. And I confess that playing this game gives me a thrill that even the greatest intellectual accomplishment lacks. I think it must be akin to the exaltation of battle."

  "But Marcus Scipio was against suborning these astrologers," Zeno pointed out.

  "Marcus Scipio is a remarkable man," Izates said judiciously. "He is a true visionary. But still, he is too much the man of action. He wants to use the Archimedean school and the wealth of Egypt to achieve his ends, whatever those may be. Flaccus, now, he is different. He is more deep-minded, more subtle, more farsighted. He is the least Roman of any Roman we have met thus far. He could almost be a Greek.

  "And he wants us to undermine Norbanus through the Judean women. In this instance, far from Alexandria, we are well employed in doing his will, rather than Scipio's."

  "And how do you propose to approach these women?" Zeno asked. "Bribery seems the usual method, but with what does one tempt women who have attached themselves to a man who is already outrageously wealthy and successful, and who bids fair to become master of the world?"

  "A good question, and one that will require some thought. I must meet them, sound them out and find out their weaknesses and desires. We need to know what they want. Perhaps most of all, we need to know what they fear."

  The next morning, a delegation of the leading men of Massilia emerged from the city. Led by a pair of white-robed heralds wearing wreaths of laurel and bearing staffs, they walked to the great awning stretched before the command tent of Titus Norbanus. The general sat enthroned upon his dais, seated in a curule chair, enfolded in his purple robe. Behind him stood his principal officers, looking stern.

  "Great General Norbanus," said the senior of the heralds, "here before you stand the governors of the Assembly of Massilia." He introduced them, beginning with Socrates, elder of the council. "They come to you under the protection of Apollo, guardian of envoys. Any harm that comes to them in this place must be regarded as sacrilege, and will surely be punished by the immortals."

  "Rome yields to none in observance of divine law," announced Lentulus Niger. "These dignitaries are under Rome's protection for the duration of their visit among us. What shall become of them after their return to their city shall be the subject of these negotiations."

  "Socrates, son of Archilochus," Norbanus said, addressing the leader of the council, "you have heard already the terms laid down by me: surrender of your city to me, or utter extermination. How have you decided?"

  It escaped no one that Norbanus laid down terms and demanded surrender in his own name, not in that of Rome.

  Socrates came forward. He was a white-bearded, dignified man who had the look of one who had already accepted his own death. "Great General Norbanus, the ancient and independent city of Massilia is proud, but we Massiliotes understand overwhelming power when we see it. As once we yielded to Carthage, paying tribute and sending our young men to serve in her armies, so we must now bow our necks to Rome. Your army invests our walls and your navy occupies our harbor. Only fools could ignore this, and we are not fools. I know that it is customary for a conqueror to execute the leading men of a surrendered city and to take hostages of the wealthiest houses to ensure loyalty. We ask only that you spare our city and our people."

  "You have chosen wisely," Norbanus told the old man. "And I am perfectly within my rights to kill you all, and to sack your town and leave the bulk of the population with nothing but their lives." He paused as if in deep thought. "However, it is also within my power to grant clemency, and in this case, since there has been no fighting and no Roman lives have been lost, I choose to be clement. The lives, houses and treasures of Massilia shall not be harmed. Your young men will now serve with my army and your harbor will shelter my fleet."

  Socrates and the rest of the councillors looked stunned. "This is most generous."

  "I am generous and just. But you must swear an oath."

  "That of course is understood."

  "You will swear eternal friendship with Rome. And you will swear yourselves, your city and your descendants to be my clients, and the clients of my family and descendants. You are familiar with the Roman system of clientage?"

  "It is similar to that observed by many civilized peoples, is it not? As your clients we vow to support and aid you in all your endeavors. You become our protector in all our dealings with Rome. Massilia and the House of Norbanus will henceforth enjoy a special relationship, beyond that which we will have with Rome."

  "That is the case. How do you choose?"

  Socrates looked toward his peers, and one by one, in order of rank, they nodded. He turned to Norbanus and bowed. "Most merciful general, let the sacrifices be made. Upon our altars and upon yours, we will take your oath, to bind us everlastingly in the eyes of the gods."

  That evening, while a great feast was prepared to celebrate the new relationship between Massilia, Rome and the glorious Titus Norbanus, the two Greeks met with Roxana and Glaphyra. They spoke in the open, within plain view of all, so that the proprieties should be observed. A space of ground near the general's tent had been carpeted and set with chairs and with a broad table to hold the charts and instruments of the women's craft. Slaves stood discreetly by to attend to their needs.

  To the cosmopolitan eyes of the Greeks, the women were not particularly exotic. In deference to their master they had adopted Roman dress, which for women was about as modest as their native Judean. They wore far heavier cosmetics than any respectable Roman woman would, but nothing out of the ordinary by Alexandrian standards. But they were twins, always a strange circumstance, and they had a singular attitude that put both men ill at ease. They were like one creature with two bodies, and that creature was not quite human. Something about their speech and movements was not quite right, and both men wondered whether this might be the result of nature or of calculation.

  The women told them of the zodiac, and of the nature of birth signs and of the calculation of fortunes therefrom. They learned of the influence of the planets and of the significance of kometes, those "bearded stars" that appeared in th
e heavens from time to time, marking the advent of momentous events, the death of kings and the coming of great conquerors. Some of this they already knew, for astrologers abounded in Egypt and in other lands as well, but these women truly seemed to possess a far deeper knowledge of the subject than others and claimed access to certain Babylonian texts long thought to be lost.

  The men in their turn entertained them with tales of the lands they had visited, of the wonders they had seen, of volcanoes and whales and lands where frankincense was traded by the shipload, where feathers of the giant rukh came in bales, and chests filled with the aphrodisiac horn of the unicorn. Slowly, they steered the conversation toward their city of residence.

  "You have come all the way from Alexandria," Glaphyra said. "We have heard so much of Alexandria, and have longed to see it."

  "The great palace of the Ptolemys," Roxana said, "the Museum and Library, the Paneum and the Sarapeion and the tomb of Alexander! It must be a place of wonders."

  "Jerusalem is such a backwater," Glaphyra said, pouring wine for all of them. "Yet to hear the priests sing of it, it is the wonder of the world."

  "Is it not the holiest of your cities, and the residing place of your god?" Zeno asked.

  The women shrugged in unison. "Our god is a god of the mountain and desert," Roxana said. "Cities do not seem to be of great concern to him. The prophets of old railed against the wickedness of cities."

  "Our faith has a long and unfortunate tradition of unwashed holy men from the wilderness," Glaphyra added. "Thus the values of ragged desert dwellers are exalted as the shining ideal of the cosmos. Anything sophisticated or beautiful, anything pleasurable or artistic—all are condemned as ungodly."

  "I quite agree," Izates told them. "I, too, was born in your faith, in the Jewish Quarter of Alexandria. In our quarter there were many reactionary rabbis who condemned the Gentile world as you describe. Fortunately for me, there were also many enlightened, Hellenized Jews, open to the wonders of learning and philosophy. They understood that clinging to the ancient world of our ancestors is futile. At an early age I took up lectures and studies in the Museum and understood the narrowness of our old ways."