Brude felt nervous being so close to the first really refined Roman he had met at close quarters but he managed to answer, “Yes, sir. He said you were looking for someone to train your son how to fight.”
Aquila gave a slight nod. “That is correct. I am sure you understand that this is rather an unusual arrangement. Gladiators are not normally welcomed in polite society, as I am sure you have learned.”
Brude gave a rueful smile. “Yes, sir.” He interpreted Aquila’s words to mean that the nobleman did not regard his former slave, Trimalchio, as belonging to polite society.
“My son is destined for the military and then, hopefully, to a senatorial career. I have already lost one son and I wish to give Lucius the best possible chance of surviving whatever dangers he may face in the army, so that he returns home, a hero of Rome, able to begin his way through the career of honour.” The career of honour was the political path for the elite in Roman society. If selected, a Roman would hold a succession of magisterial posts, each one with more responsibility, culminating in the position of consul, the highest position a Roman could have, short of being emperor. Before he could start his political career, though, Lucius would need to demonstrate his capability as a soldier. Aquila went on, “Trimalchio speaks very highly of you but, more importantly, so does Lollius Curtius. He claims you are more than just a simple gladiator. What were his words, Cleon?”
“He said that Marcus Septimius Brutus is a thinker, sir,” said Cleon. “A man who tends to make the right choices.”
Brude was surprised that Aquila had spoken to Curtius. The old lanista was hardly the sort to frequent the same social circles. Then again, Aquila seemed like a man who would check things before making any decision. Probably, Brude thought, it was the freedman Cleon who had actually spoken to Curtius. Aquila nodded. “A thinker. He also says you are from Caledonia?”
“Yes, sir.” Brude knew that Romans had only a vague idea of places outside their empire. The Caledonii were just one of the tribes of the Pritani who lived north of the Wall but few Romans had ever heard of the Boresti, so Brude let the distinction pass.
“And your father was an important man?”
“He was the head man of our village,” said Brude, impressed at how much checking Aquila had done. “One of the leading men of our tribe.” And even if Broch Tava was only a small village, thought Brude, he was still important to me.
“So, a noble background,” said Aquila, his bright eyes still examining Brude. “And now a Roman citizen, freed by the emperor himself. I was at the Secular Games that day. You were rather lucky to win, were you not?”
Brude hesitated before answering. He saw Cleon watching him intently, waiting to see how he would answer. Aquila stared at him as well. He sensed that his answer to this question would decide what would happen next. “Everyone needs a bit of luck,” he agreed, “and yes, I had my share that day. But a man who relies on luck will not survive long in the arena. Hard work, and a lot of practice, helps outweigh bad luck. I took some risks and they paid off, for Fortune smiled on me.”
Aquila nodded thoughtfully. He turned to Cleon, raising a questioning eyebrow. The balding man nodded and Aquila said to Brude, “You will have your own room and will become part of my family. I will pay you fifty sesterces a month over and above your food and board. You will train my son every day for at least two hours. I may have other duties for you, such as accompanying members of the family when they leave the house. Other than that, your time will be your own.” He looked hard at Brude. “Are these terms acceptable?”
Brude did not have to think about it very long. He still intended to leave for Britannia in a couple of months but there was no point in telling Aquila that. This was a way to escape Trimalchio’s suffocating clutches. Becoming a member of Aquila’s family was only a technical issue. All members of the household were members of the family, including the slaves, and the master of the house controlled their lives. Under Roman law he had the power of life and death over each and every one of them, although few men ever actually exercised that power in practice. It was a strange concept for Brude to understand but it did not affect his decision. “Thank you, sir. I agree.”
Aquila’s thin lips twitched in what might have been a smile. “Excellent. Cleon has the contract already drawn up, so let us sign it. Then I will let Cleon show you around. You can begin training Lucius tomorrow.”
Cleon unwrapped a scroll, passing it to Aquila who carefully scratched his name with an ink-tipped, goose-feather quill. He passed the quill to Brude, who took it clumsily, making his mark beside, and just beneath, Aquila’s signature.
“You cannot read or write?” Aquila asked him.
“No, sir.”
“Yet you sign it anyway?” He seemed amused.
Brude looked him in the eyes. “I trust you, sir. Among my people, the spoken word is as binding as anything written in Rome.”
“Then welcome to the house of Vipsanius Aquila.”
Brude had intended to stay for two months but, somehow, he never quite managed to make the break and the two months stretched into two years.
He had his own room with a small window overlooking the street; the work he had to do was relatively easy, the food was good and Cleon quickly became his guide, mentor and friend. It was the happiest time he had experienced since leaving Broch Tava.
Cleon was a Greek, retained by Aquila as a tutor for his two sons but who had also acted as a personal secretary and book-keeper to Aquila since Trimalchio’s departure. Brude learned more about Rome from Cleon in six months than he had learned in eight years of slavery. As a Greek, Cleon had a healthy disdain for Roman culture, yet at the same he revelled in life in the imperial city. He would often walk through the streets with Brude, showing him the sights, explaining what the various buildings were and which emperor or other important person had built them.
Brude loved strolling through the forum of Augustus or the Campus Martius, outside the city walls on the banks of the Tiber. There, Augustus, the first emperor, had his magnificent mausoleum. He had also erected a huge Egyptian obelisk which acted as a sundial, casting its shadow on marks carved into the paved square around it. It was a simple concept yet, like so many things in Rome, the scale of it was stunning. Brude also spent hours walking round the gleaming white marble of the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace, another monument erected by Augustus. “He must have been a great man, this Augustus,” he said to Cleon one day.
“The Romans hold him up as the exemplar of what a good emperor should be,” Cleon agreed. Then, in his mocking way, he added, “Mind you, he only became emperor in the first place after he had slaughtered or murdered anyone who opposed him.”
Brude shrugged. Such was the way in Rome, as he was rapidly learning. The empire was at peace but the threat of violence was always there for anyone who stepped out of line. Emperors often came to power through violence and had no qualms about using more violence to hold on to that power once they had achieved it. Cleon told him that, years before, there had been one year when the empire had had no fewer than four emperors, three of whom had met violent deaths.
Brude also began to understand more about how Rome operated and why Aquila had hired him. Aquila was an eques, a knight, wealthy enough to become a senator but barred from doing so because he had made his money through commerce, and still did. He owned several ships which plied the sea between the port at Ostia and various parts of the empire around the Mediterranean Sea, carrying pottery and iron tools on the outward trip and bringing back olive oil or other, more exotic, foodstuffs on the return journey. Rome’s demand for olive oil was insatiable and while the imperial fleet carried huge quantities of it, there was always room for private enterprise to bring more. Aquila would have liked to have become involved in the transport of the grain that Rome needed to feed its citizens, but the imperial fleet had the monopoly on that; the emperor would take no chances that someone else could control the food supply for the citizens of Rome. Aquila also tra
ded in precious goods throughout Italy and owned country estatin the hills of Latium where his family usually spent the hot summer months. He had high hopes for his son, Lucius, whose full name was Lucius Vipsanius Festus because he had been born on the day of the Saturnalia festival. Lucius, Aquila hoped, would one day become a senator, the first in the family to reach the rank. After a successful spell in the military, he would progress through the career of honour, perhaps even becoming a consul, after which fame and wealth beckoned if he could be appointed as governor of an imperial province. Under Cleon’s instruction, Lucius was being taught oratory as well as studying the works of Rome’s famous poets, and learning Greek, the second language of the empire, so that he could read Homer’s classic tales in their native tongue. These were all essential skills for a Roman senator. All he had to do was survive to inherit his father’s wealth, which was why Aquila wanted Brude to teach him how to fight.
Brude liked Lucius. He was a serious boy, of average build but with a quick mind. He spoke well and Cleon always praised his oratorical skills. He reckoned the boy had the makings of a fine senator. As a fighter, though, he was no better than average although he tried hard and listened carefully to Brude’s advice, doing his best to put the tips into practice.
Brude went back to Lentulus’ school to buy some wooden swords from Curtius. The old lanista was pleased to see him, as was Kallikrates, but something in the relationship had changed so Brude did not stay long. While he was there, though, he learned that Pollio had been killed. His leg had never properly healed and had slowed him enough to allow a Retiarius to snare him. “The crowd were in a bloody mood that day,” Curtius complained, “and the emperor’s son, who was hosting the games, wanted to please them, so he let Pollio die. Bastard!”
Before leaving, Brude went to see Tygaeus. He obtained the name of a pharmacist who imported the various herbs and oils that the physician used. Brude found the man in a narrow side street in the city and spent a portion of his wages stocking up on some basics. He wasn’t sure why he did that but his time working with Tygaeus had sparked an interest in healing and he felt a strange impulse to keep a supply of medicines handy.
Lucius was delighted with the wooden swords. He trained hard with Brude, using the peristyle garden as their training ground. Brude could not use the brutal training methods of the gladiatorial school and he rarely worked with Lucius for more than two hours each day, but the boy was slowly improving his speed and anticipation and was working at building up his muscles. They practised every day, often with Aquila looking on, as well as other family members who would lean out of the windows from the rooms overlooking the garden. The slave who tended the garden was not pleased at the treatment it suffered but did not complain at the occasional damage done to his plants, at least not out loud.
f his wagher family members Brude came to know were Agrippina, Aquila’s second wife, and Vipsania, his youngest child. He had two daughters, and both, in the Roman fashion, were called Vipsania. Being female, they did not warrant proper names themselves. To tell them apart, they were simply called Vipsania Prima and Vipsania Secunda; the first and second daughters of the family of Vipsanius. Brude thought that incredibly odd. For such a civilised race, the Romans treated their women like second-class citizens, a point of view quite alien to one of the Pritani. To Romans, of course, the fact that the Pritani traced their lineage through the female line, and even sometimes had women rulers, was simply a sign of their barbarism. Even Cleon struggled to follow Brude’s explanations. “You mean your kings are not the sons of kings, but the sons of the sisters of kings? How strange!”
“At least our women are not treated like breeding cows,” Brude retorted. “They are equals to men in most things.”
“Equals to men?” Cleon was aghast. “My dear Brutus, women can never be the equal of men. As well as being physically weaker, their brains are smaller so they cannot possibly have the same mental capacity as men. This is a well known scientific fact.”
Brude knew better than to argue with Cleon when he got onto science. Cleon was very proud of the Greek traditions of science and mathematics. “The Romans may be great engineers,” he would frequently say, “but their philosophy is entirely borrowed from Greece and there is not a single Roman mathematician to match Pythagoras, let alone Archimedes. The Greeks are unmatched when it comes to science.”
Now that Cleon had pronounced his verdict on women, Brude knew he would never win an argument about it. He supposed his friend must be right, but he could not help wondering whether Cleon would dare voice his opinion of women’s abilities in front of some of the women of the Boresti that Brude had known. His mother, for one, would have had a few words to say about it.
As for the women of Aquila’s family, Vipsania Prima was a year older than Lucius and had been married to the second son of a senator, only two months before Brude had joined the household. It was a good marriage and Aquila was delighted at the match, even though he had had to pay a large dowry.
Vipsania Secunda was only thirteen years old. She was quiet and pretty, saying little but with eyes that suggested a quick and alert mind, whatever Cleon thought about the limitations of the female brain. Brude learned that Aquila’s wife had died when Vipsania Secunda was born. He had remarried several years later, his new wife Agrippina being more than twenty years younger than him, and still only in her early thirties. A strikingly attractive woman, she was a typically demure Roman wife who ran the household with quiet efficiency and who obeyed her husband’s every word. Brude soon learned that Vipsania Secunda hated her.
“One day my father will find out what she’s really like,” the young girl said to Brude as she brought him a drink, after he and Lucius had finished a hard workout which had brought gushing praise from the boy’s step-mother. Brude had looked at Vipsania questioningly but she would say no more so he did not pursue the matter. Family squabbles were best avoided.
Cleon decided that Brude should learn to read and write, so he set out to teach him. Brude was delighted when he could start to make out what the various signs and engravings on statues and buildings actually meant, not to mention the graffiti scrawled on walls. He mastered the basics quickly and Cleon soon had him reading Virgil’s great work, the Aeneid. This was harder going but Brude’s mastery of the skill improved, as did his Latin vocabulary. He was forever asking Cleon what a particular word meant and Cleon always explained patiently and with good humour. It took Brude nearly four months to finish the book but Cleon was impressed. “For a beginner, that was quick and you understood it well. If only you could read Greek, then you’d be able to read Homer.”
“You could teach me,” suggested Brude enthusiastically. Cleon laughed, saying he would see, which meant that he would. Greek was the second official language of the empire anyway and was often heard, even in Rome. At first Brude thought he would never master the tongue for the alphabet the Greeks used was entirely different from that of the Romans, but he was determined to try so he spent hours each day learning the sounds and the grammar. In many ways the language was similar to Latin in its structure and the more he learned the more Cleon urged him on. “It will take you a few years to learn it all,” Cleon told him, but when they were together, they often spoke in Greek to help Brude learn and he picked it up quickly. “You have a better ear for languages than most Romans I’ve taught,” Cleon told him. Brude was delighted at the praise but Cleon then grinned and said, “Of course, you should learn it more quickly because you are a lot older than the boys I usually teach.” His eyes twinkled with good humour as he spoke.
Brude laughed. “Maybe I should teach you my native tongue,” he suggested.
“What on earth for?” Cleon said in mock horror. “I have no intention of ever going anywhere near your homeland with its mists and rain and savage tribes. It’s bad enough putting up with the Romans, who are at least partially civilised.”
Brude had to admit that he enjoyed life in Rome, at least in the circles Aquila moved in
. Visits to the baths were virtually a daily occurrence and Aquila usually took Lucius, Cleon and Brude along with him, as well as several slaves. Brude learned that there were nearly two hundred bathhouses in the city, ranging from the small ones, like the one Curtius had first taken him to, up to enormous complexes with huge pools, glass windows, libraries, gardens and spaces for playing ball or exercising. Brude never tired of visiting the baths but he quickly found that they were more than just places where every Roman could mingle in apparent equality. Aquila usually had several clients with him, men who worked for him or whose interests he looked after. They were obliged to him for assistance, either through him mentioning them to other friends, who might need something done, or through donations of cash to support them. In turn, these clients were expected to support Aquila when he asked them to. Aquila’s house was always busy as his clients paid him daily visits, meeting every morning in one of the rooms off his atrium to discuss business. Trimalchio, as one of Aquila’s former slaves, was, technically, his client but Brude noticed that the two men rarely met. When they did, there was a coolness from Aquila, which Trimalchio seemed oblivious to, but which was all too obvious to everyone else. Aquila was always polite, of course, but never friendly towards his erstwhile slave.
The complex web of patronage worked the other way as well, for Aquila himself had a wealthy patron, a senator named Gaius Ampulius Varro. Sometimes Aquila would meet with Varro at the baths, leaving Cleon and Brude to their own devices. “Rome is built on patronage,” Cleon told Brude one day as they relaxed in the hot steam of the Neronian baths. “It’s not just about how rich you are. It’s about who you know. Of course, if you back the wrong man, it can all go horribly wrong for you if he falls from favour, but Aquila wants Lucius to get a good, safe posting in the army and he’s keeping in with Varro because he thinks he can put in a good word with those who are close to the emperor.”
In the Shadow of the Wall Page 21
