A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

by Taylor Caldwell

  Marcus returned to his mother, more than a little happier. She smiled without surprise. “Without the help of Eunice,” she said, “it would be impossible for me alone to clothe this family. I judged that Archias would do as he has done.”

  “We must still peel to the meat, as a knife peels through the skin of a turnip,” said Marcus, seating himself beside her again.

  “I have a plan,” said Helvia. “We must arrange for your betrothal to a girl who will bring you an excellent dowry. I have a girl in mind—Terentia.”

  For the first time since his grandfather’s death Marcus permitted himself to think of Livia Curius. Her memory had lain in his distraught mind like a dull ache; now it flamed into fire. “No!” he exclaimed.

  “Why not?” asked his mother with tranquillity. “She is twelve, and of an age to be betrothed. She is not of a very handsome countenance, but she is the only daughter of her family, though she has a half-sister of no importance. The very rumor of your betrothal to her, after you assume your manly robe, will bring us good fortune. The marriage can take place in two years.”

  “No!” cried Marcus, again.

  His mother eyed him strangely. “There is no necessity for such vehemence. Is it possible you are still thinking of Livia Curius? I have been informed by Aurelia Caesar that her marriage to Lucius Catilina is to take place this summer. He has returned from Greece. He returned to assist his country—so he said.”

  Marcus felt acutely, sick. He clenched his hands upon his knees and stared blankly before him.

  “It does not matter,” he said at last in a low voice. “No matter if she marries another I shall never forget her, nor marry anyone else.”

  Helvia shrugged. “We shall see,” she said. She bit her lip thoughtfully. “You cannot go to Greece, as you had planned, Marcus. Nor have you any military gifts; the army is not for you. I have arranged for you to study law with old Scaevola, the augur and pontifex. This is an extraordinary privilege, and you owe this honor to my father, who is his friend. However, he is a dicer, also. Do not let him entice your allowance from you!” She smiled again.

  But Marcus, though suddenly excited by the thought of studying with Scaevola, the famous old lawyer, could not be induced to smile at his mother’s sally.

  “I cannot forget,” he muttered. “Before Zeus, I cannot forget.”

  “You can endure,” said Helvia. “More than that, even the gods cannot do.”

  Quintus was joyful at the news that he was to be released from school, though he regretted the gossip of which he would be deprived. Now it was the spring of the year, and he would not be engaged in the sports of the school, and this was his only dismay. “And the fencing?” he said to Marcus.

  Marcus would gladly have dispensed with the fencing. He was an excellent fencer, for he felt it was his duty to be so. Helvia said, “We must continue the fencing school. What is a man if he has no means of self-defense? Moreover, to withdraw from all things will cause unpleasant rumors.”

  Soft airs blew from the Campagna now, and the swallows were cheeping even in the most crowded streets, and the little red poppies were appearing on every spot of unused ground. Helvia worked with Eunice very industriously in her small garden, for food was expensive in the war-stricken city. She bought a goat for its milk, and its incipient young. Marcus often saw his mother in the garden, her stola draped high over her sturdy legs, her bare feet in the warm earth, a hoe in her hand. The golden-haired Eunice labored with her. An old slave assisted them, twittering like a swallow himself.

  Helvia would not let Marcus help her. He must study his law. She did not speak of her husband, immured again with his books, and now also with his grief. But Quintus, after his lessons, happily wheeled manure to the vegetable plot and dug with zest. Archias condescended to plant onions. “What is a dish without a savor?” he asked, squatting on his haunches, his lean dark face sharp in the sunlight.

  Helvia drew from her own secret account to provide Marcus with the proper ceremonies of his adolescence, though he protested at the expense. “I have saved a little money,” said Helvia. “We cannot celebrate as we wish, because of the war, but we must do what we can. How otherwise shall we retain our honor?”

  So Marcus, to please her, pretended interest in the ceremonies. His father came from his library and his cubiculum, wan and lifeless, to greet the guests, and to drink to his son’s future. Once Marcus thought, It is unmanly to withdraw from life and its responsibilities. He was at once grieved and horrified at this disloyalty to his beloved father. And then he knew, with fresh misery, that he had been impatient with Tullius since the death of his grandfather, for was it not the father’s place to be a rock of refuge and comfort to his family? Not once had Tullius asked about the family’s affairs. He had always consigned them to his father and his wife. He appeared not to wonder how the family was faring, though once he complained of the inferiority of the wine. Helvia had said without perturbation, “We are fortunate even to have this.”

  “Ah, the war,” sighed Tullius. He promptly forgot the war. It did not interest him. He envied his father who was finished with living.

  Marcus had now assumed the manly robe. It lay on his shoulders like a weight of iron. There is much of my father in me, he thought with some ruefulness, and was again miserable.

  But his studies were beginning to absorb him. He was gone from sunrise to sunset. Even his pain concerning Livia diminished in the midst of his duties and his arduous books.

  Then one day in the temple of Venus he saw Livia.

  *From De Republica.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Years later Marcus wrote of the Caesares: “They will be remembered as great, yet no one will be completely certain in what their greatness lies. I believe I have solved the riddle: They loved no one but themselves. At no time did they forget their duty to themselves, or their own advantage. By this magic they convinced every man that the Caesares were uncommon men, indeed, and deserved honor and love.”*

  To the powerful, the Caesares were flattering, deferential, sincerely devoted, self-sacrificing, loyal, eagerly serving. To their equals they were kind and considerate, but faintly aloof; always, they were agreeable and entertained well, rarely engaging in argument, agreeing even when they secretly disagreed, gracious, hypocritical, not opinionated in speech, dishonest, charming, totally insincere but flexible, open to gossip which they could turn to their advantage, but speaking admiringly of friends and neighbors. To their inferiors—who loved them most—they were cold and demanding and arrogant, impressing upon them the mighty superiority of the family, making each man believe that a mere condescending word from the Caesares was a favor equal to a favor for the gods, themselves. The powerful, then, advanced the fortunes of the family, for the powerful love sycophants; the equals wished to reward them for their kindness; the inferiors wished only to serve ones so noble and so above ordinary mankind.

  “It was an art they practiced,” Marcus wrote with some ruefulness. “It is not an art I admire.”

  Helvia, too, was not deceived by the Caesares. Her family was superior to Aurelia’s. She ignored the male members. She was unimpressed by their weighty impressiveness, and laughed at their charm. Consequently Aurelia was her great friend. Even when the family moved to the Palatine Hill Aurelia visited Helvia for the pure relief of not being compelled to be charming, gracious, insincere, agreeable, and on guard.

  Aurelia, who had a heavy hand on the young Julius Caesar, did not trust him out of her sight, so she invariably brought him with her when visiting the Ciceroni, saying that her son remembered his old playmates with affection. Marcus found young Julius, now twelve years old, irritatingly amusing. Quintus thought him affected, which he was. In the art of sports Quintus was superior. Julius spoke of the military with enthusiasm and declared he would be an officer of importance. But he displayed a great care for his person and preferred strategy to tests of strength. He was nimble and graceful, and was always able to evade Quintus’ suggestions
for wrestling and boxing. “I am no gladiator,” he would say.

  Young Julius was a fascinating conversationalist, but even the simple Quintus suspected that many of the tales he told of his encounters were gay lies. Nevertheless, Quintus liked to hear them out of sheer enjoyment. “You are a Homer, Julius,” he once said. “But, speak on.” Julius did not take offense or protest that he was speaking the truth. Truth, to Julius, was a most confining thing and frequently dull. His lively and imaginative mind, his genius for invention, made him leap over truth as one leaps over a stolid boulder in one’s path.

  He, however, had as sincere an affection for Marcus as he was capable of, and preferred his company to that of Quintus’. For Julius, at twelve, had the mind of a man, a subtle and devious mind. He did not believe in Marcus’ protestations that he disliked gossip. What was more interesting than a malicious tale of others’ defections, faults, and sins? There was no rumor of any shocking proportions in the city that Julius did not know, and he loved to annoy Marcus by recounting them. He also invented. So when Julius spoke of Livia Curius’ approaching marriage to Lucius Sergius Catilina and Lucius’ behavior among the more complaisant young ladies of Roman society, Marcus discounted the tales of Lucius’ prowess. Was not Livia enough for any man? Julius thought him naïve. Then he observed Marcus’ sudden pallor with the shrewdness and intuition for which the Caesares were famous.

  “You have seen the maiden?” he asked.

  “Twice,” said Marcus, shortly.

  Julius sighed. “Were I older,” he said, “I should challenge Lucius, whom I now despise, for all he is a captain. I should challenge him for Livia, who is virtuous as well as beautiful. But she is very strange. He is strange, himself. They share the same blood.”

  Marcus had not known this. He was horrified to learn that Livia was related to Lucius. “How is this?” he demanded.

  “It is not a close relationship,” said Julius, pleased at Marcus’ sudden attention. “I believe they are third cousins.”

  Marcus remembered, now, the extraordinary blue of Lucius’ eyes, a color that appeared to fill all its socket. So were Livia’s eyes. But he said to himself, “It is only the color and the shape. The expression is not the same.”

  Nevertheless, he was disturbed. It was evil enough to think of the approaching marriage; it was even worse to think that those two shared a blood relationship however remote. To Marcus, it were as if a profane hand had dared to lay itself upon the flesh of a Vestal Virgin. Remembering that Julius was a liar, Marcus asked his mother for the truth. She thought, then nodded. “It is true, Marcus. I did not think of it before, or I should have told you. You would then have forgotten the maiden sooner, for the Catilinii have evil blood.”

  But there is nothing of the Catilinii in Livia, thought Marcus with the stubbornness which was characteristic of him. He now knew the date of the wedding. It was in less than four weeks. He had tried to resign himself, had engrossed himself in his duties to his family and in his studies. There had been hours when he had not remembered Livia at all. Now the agony returned.

  Early summer heat had come upon the tremendous city, and great storms blew over it, reflecting the storm of war. Never had the crowded streets been so impassable with bodies and so pervaded by the stench of sweat. All colors appeared too vivid, from the smoldering blue of the sky to the reds and saffrons and yellows and ochres of the steep buildings, from the teeming plazas to the temples, from the hills to the Forum. Sunlight glittered from the soldiers’ armor and helmets. Chariots stood motionless for many minutes in their passage, wheel to wheel, while the drivers cursed furiously and wiped their running faces. Banners hung limply from standards. There was no alley in which to pause, no empty doorway. Sometimes Marcus, heavy with his books, stood panting and immobile in the press of the throngs, deafened by the uproar of clamorous voices and curses, his eyes blinded by the hot sunlight. He could not lift his arms or move his feet. It was as if the whole world had moved to Rome. There was not a spot of refuge from humanity. Slaves shouted for the passage of the litters of their masters; the throngs heaped imprecations upon them; the curtains remained discreetly closed. Tribunes and Consuls on horseback waited with false smiles of patience, their horses snorting. Then the ranks of litters, chariots, soldiers, horses, and people would move along again, to be stopped at the next intersection.

  Those who had villas in the suburbs, or farms, could not now go to them because of the war. They added to the crowded conditions, as did the endless streams of refugees and soldiers. It was intolerable. Roman tempers, never very tolerant, seethed. The sewers, always stinking in the summer, stank worse these days. Rome was one vast stench of sweat, humanity, and offal. Marcus thought of Arpinum with acute longing and pain.

  He had ceased, since his grandfather’s death, his visits with doves to the temple of Venus, for his hope for Livia was gone, and he was too harassed. One day, as his sweltering legs moved obediently along with thousands of other legs on the street—when the traffic could flow again—he saw the cool dark entrance to the lovely, pillared temple. It was a refuge from the heat and smell and press, and he darted within. He took a long free breath. The temple was not empty; in peaceful days it would have appeared crowded. But compared with the street without it was silent and the worshipers were few. Marcus leaned against a white marble column, and wiped the sweat from his face and shifted the books on his arm, and shook out his wetly clinging tunic. The coolness of the marble invaded his grateful back; the scent of incense was delightful to his nostrils. The marble under his feet eased his hot soles. He looked at the goddess on her altar, and her great calm beauty assuaged his wretchedness. Candles burned before her like silvery stars. There was an odor of flowers.

  Many girls, approaching marriage, or in love, stood or knelt before Venus, offering up their prayers. They were like young flowers, themselves. Doves fluttered in their hands. Their varicolored hair streamed down their backs, held with ribbons of different hues. Their small breasts heaved under their chitons. Their chaperones stood beside them, severe in their mantles. It suddenly occurred to Marcus that there were always more women and maidens in the temple of Venus than there were men and youths. He thought, with sudden cynicism, that this was because men did not confuse concupiscence with love, as women did. War, money, ambition, power, glory, conflict: these were the realities of men. Love, or, lust, was only their dalliance.

  It was then that he saw Livia among the other maidens, offering up her doves.

  He had seen her so often in his dreams and in his waking imaginings that he thought this only delusion. The candlelight flickered on her pale cheek and exquisite profile, in the pools of blue which were her eyes, on her ruddy hair flowing under its white veil, on her high young breast under its yellow covering, on the white ribbons which bound her waist, on the sparkling bracelets on her long white arms, on the glittering betrothal ring on her finger. She seemed absorbed by the face of Venus. She held the doves close to her breast, her chin uplifted over the wings. Behind her stood a very elderly lady soberly but richly clad.

  It seemed to Marcus that he froze like a statue, himself. But he heard a thick pounding in his ears. Joy, like a light, burst over him. Then he began to tremble and to breathe quickly, as if he had been running. All the past dreary months fell from him like dried mud; his barren life rushed into scent and greenness. Promise and hope bloomed again on the stark mountains of his existence. He thought he heard music. He had endured; he saw how empty and desperate had been that endurance. He thought he had almost forgotten; he knew that he had only smothered his thoughts of Livia. He saw himself like a turbulent river, rushing toward the girl, pouring over her, swirling her to himself.

  The priests moved among the worshipers with baskets in which they gathered the doves. A faint sound of lutes filled the temple, and the softest of singing voices. The girls and women rose from their knees and prepared to leave. Marcus, shaking as if with fever, removed himself to the portico, and awaited Livia and her gua
rdian. A musical storm of female voices burst about him; his eyes probed the ranks of young and old females. Then Livia and her guardian appeared. The girl’s face was aloof and grave.

  “Livia,” said Marcus. She did not hear him. He spoke her name again as she was within hand’s reach. She started and glanced up. Immediately her face became scarlet; her lips trembled and her eyes brightened. She hesitated. He narrowed the distance between them and said urgently, “Livia?”

  He saw her struggle. He knew she wished not to speak to him, but to pass him in silence. So he stretched out his hand and touched hers. She shivered, then stood mute, not looking at him.

  “Who is this impudent person?” asked her guardian in a harsh voice. The older woman’s eyes swept over Marcus’ modest tunic, his plain sandals, and noted his lack of jewelry. “Who is this slave?” asked the woman.

  “He is my friend,” said Livia, in the lowest of voices. The guardian stared, then cupped her ear, under its white hair, with her hand.

  “Eh?” she said in her parrot voice.

  “My aunt, Melina, is deaf,” Livia said to Marcus. But still she would not look at him. She put her red lips to her aunt’s ear and almost shouted, “My friend! Marcus Tullius Cicero!”

  Those passing gazed at them curiously and circled about them.

  “I know no Cicero!” shouted the aunt. “Cicero! Chick-pea! What is this, my girl?”

  Livia said to Marcus in a quiet and rapid voice, “I am sorry that your grandfather died. I am sorry—” She drew a quick breath, and now her blue eyes were full of pain. “Do not delay us, Marcus. Do not touch me. We must go.”

  “Livia,” he pleaded.

  “What is it that you wish of me?” the girl cried, despairingly. “What can you say to me? There is nothing, Marcus.”

  “I cannot forget you. I live only by the thought of you,” said Marcus. The aunt was tugging at the maiden’s arm. Her old eyes fixed themselves angrily on the interloper.