Tiberius attempted to move past the pontiff and continue on his way. Publius put his hand on Tiberius’ shoulder. Those around them in the forum sensed the tension and backed away creating a ring around the two men. Tiberius was not intimidated. Instead of forcefully taking the man’s hand from his shoulder, he embraced the pontiff, and whispered into his ear, “Let’s save this for after I’m elected, cousin. Then we can have our discussion properly on the floor of the Senate.”
Tiberius then released the pontiff and continued on through the crowd, leaving Publius Nasica frustrated by how easily his cousin had diffused the situation. By this time I had caught up with Tiberius. As soon as he walked away from the confrontation, I pushed the hood off my head and called out to him. “Well done, brother.” I came up alongside of him, trying my best to keep up.
“Sempronia! You heard me! Thank you for making the effort.” He slowed his pace seeing that I was having trouble.
“I saw you with our cousin. I think he was looking for something more than an embrace.”
Tiberius laughed. “My task will not be easy. Publius is just one of many who will have strong objections. But with the promise of land, I will have solid support from the populace. You were watching. You saw their response. It needs to happen.”
I smiled at him. “You don’t need to convince me. I understood the wisdom of land reform from the beginning. But even men like my husband are unsettled by the idea of giving up anything they feel they have earned.”
“You’ve spoken more with Aemilianus?”
I nodded. “He’s knows the difficulties you’re going to face. I think he’s worried about you—and his property.”
Tiberius took a deep breath. “I need him on my side. Can you help him understand that?”
“My opinion doesn’t count for much, Tiberius. You listen to me, but Aemilianus doesn’t.”
“You seem to be in pain, Sempronia. Are you all right?”
“I can manage. It’s fine.”
“You’re not fine,” he said, then waved to a man leading an empty carriage and paid him to take me back to my house. When I got home, I could barely make it from the carriage to the front door. I went to my bedroom to look at my ankle. It was badly swollen and beginning to turn in on itself, much as it had when I was an infant.
Nadia heated some water and put it in a bucket for me. Aemilianus had returned from Numantia a few weeks earlier, so I soaked my ankle until the time I expected him to come home. Then I wrapped the ankle with linen bandages for support and strapped on my sandal.
CHAPTER 9
After announcing that he would run for tribune, Tiberius began posting tracts that described his platform throughout Rome and the nearby villages. Aemilianus entered the house one night with one of them gripped in his hand. He stormed through the atrium and cursed to Jupiter at my “foolhardy” brother. The sound of his arrival brought me from the peristyle to the atrium.
“Did you see this?” He held out the poster and shook it in his hand. “Tiberius seems to have lost all the sense I once thought he had. He’s going to end up dragging me into this mess. I should have let them send him back to Numantia with Mancinus.”
I knew about the posters, but I had not read one yet. Aemilianus threw the balled up piece of papyrus at me. It landed at my feet on the tile floor. I had to bend over to pick it up. My awkwardness and pain were obvious. Aemilianus glared at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
Up to this point I had disguised the extreme difficulty I was having. When he had first commented on my limping, I told him I had turned my ankle. Now as I stood and regained my composure he was staring at me. “I turned it again, Aemilianus. It’s still very sore.”
He waged his head in frustration and stomped off to the library. I could not tell what infuriated him more, me or Tiberius’ platform.
Aemilianus came to my bed the next morning at sunrise. I had yet to bear him a child, and despite my repeated failures, he was determined to keep trying. It was obligatory on his part and cold duty on mine. I had lost all affection for the man long ago. Our marriage had never been good. After eighteen years I rejoiced in his absence and cowered in his presence.
His visits to my bedroom were never announced. He would pull back the blankets and mount me from behind with little ceremony or outward pleasure. There had been a time when we gave sacrifices to Venus and prayed to the lares—the little figurines in our household that protected the family. Now it was a seed deposit, nothing more, often awkward, and always difficult at the beginning.
When Aemilianus entered the bedroom on this morning, he wore a tunic with nothing beneath. I could see from his profile that he was already erect, meaning there would no foreplay. I quickly spit on my fingers and slipped my hand between my legs to lubricate myself somewhat before he set himself to the task.
He ripped the covers from the bed, taking no heed of what I was doing. He had seen it before and made no comment, but he chanced to see my bare ankle in the dim morning light. He gawked at it as though disgusted. “This isn’t some accidental twist of your ankle.” He made a terrible face. “It looks like some kind of deformity.”
“It’s just a bad day, Aemilianus. My ankle’s been troublesome of late.”
He glared at me. “Perhaps we’ve been lucky you’re barren. What kind of child would we get from the likes of you? I have no desire for such offspring.” He turned away from me as though I was a leper and left the room angry. I rolled over and burst into tears.
CHAPTER 10
My marriage to Aemilianus had never been more than an arrangement between families, but at seventeen, I had been excited to marry this handsome military officer, fifteen years my senior. I had known him my entire life and had even lived at his home with my brothers and Cornelia in the first year after my father’s death.
Aemilianus’ career took off six years after our marriage. Rome’s third war with Carthage was going badly, and there was a groundswell for Aemilianus to take command of the war. Some of this was because of his heritage and some because of his early showing as an officer. Although not yet forty years old and too young by law to be a consul, such was the uproar, the Senate made an exception. Aemilianus was elected to his first consulship and went to Africa where he promptly turned the war around and ultimately besieged and destroyed Carthage. He returned the most popular man in Rome.
Despite my troubles with him, Aemilianus was not a bad man and was known for his populist leanings. He appreciated the fact that I was educated, and though we were never close, he treated me well enough during the early years of the marriage. But my inability to produce a child and Aemilianus’ growing concern that he might not have a son put a huge strain on our relationship, and as time went by I became more a piece furniture in our home—that he occasionally used—than a favored wife. I was fortunate that as things grew more difficult at home Aemilianus spent more time on military campaigns. When he was in Rome, I found reasons to visit my mother.
For all the public’s admiration of Cornelia for her intellect and her once seemingly perfect marriage to one of Rome’s most respected and virtuous statesmen, she was also recognized as a role model for Roman mothers. And when things were the most difficult, that is how I saw her, someone who was always there for me, someone I could open my heart and cry to if need be.
A few days after Aemilianus’ tirade about Tiberius’ posters, I spent an afternoon with Cornelia, who lived just a few blocks from my home on the Palatine Hill. We sat in the peristyle at the back of her villa where she maintained a formal garden. Three colonnades of stark white limestone defined the space. Cornelia loved flowers and did all the work in her garden. We shared an alabaster bench that faced her favorite bed of roses, and though it was winter, the sun was out and the sky was a brilliant blue. I wore a bleached wool mantle around my shoulders. Cornelia wore a white linen stola over a wool tunic and had wrapped herself in a lavender palla.
“I noticed when you came in, Sempronia, that you’re limping again
. How is your ankle?”
“I’m having a lot of trouble with it, Mother. Every few days I misstep and it folds over on me.” I lifted the hem of my stola to show her.
She gasped at the sight of my swollen ankle wound up in the straps of my sandal. “I’m surprised you can walk at all.” She was fifty-five, but still very beautiful, just a radiant woman, with subtlety and intelligence in every glance of her eyes—which were blue like mine. “Have you seen a physician?”
“I haven’t. As long as I don’t do too much and take the time to get off my feet, it’s all right.” I let my stola fall back over my ankle.
“You need to see someone, Sempronia. I’ll arrange it for you.”
“I don’t think there’s much that can be done.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” she assured me. “I’ll talk to my friend Asclepius.”
I agreed to see her doctor, then changed the subject. “I was at the forum when Tiberius gave his first speech.”
“I hear he speaks well.”
“He learned it from you, Mother.”
“And Diophanes.”
“But it was mostly from being around you.” I put my hand on hers. “What do you think of his platform?”
Cornelia looked off momentarily as though thinking, then faced me. “I think it’s good. What he wants to do is right and in the best interest of the Republic. He will get some resistance.” She tipped her head. “I believe that’s already begun.”
“Aemilianus thinks he’s making a big mistake.”
“Because he’s shaking up the aristocracy?”
“The whole thing seems to embarrass him. Have you seen the posters Tiberius is putting up?”
“Yes, he asked me to read one before he started spreading them around. It all makes a lot of sense. I’m proud of him.”
“Aemilianus brought one home balled up in a wad. He was furious. I’m not sure if he’s worried he’ll have to give up some of his land or if he’s just disappointed it’s his cousin that’s behind it. You know how much he used to brag about Tiberius.”
“But he’s really upset about this? I was hoping Tiberius might get some support from Aemilianus.”
“He said he should have let the Senate send him back to Numantia with Mancinus. He was very angry at the time. Maybe he didn’t mean it. But that was how upset he was.”
Cornelia could not disguise how much this troubled her. “Maybe I should talk to Aemilianus. He might listen to me.”
“Please do. You know he doesn’t listen to me.”
“What has he said about your ankle?”
I had not wanted to bring this up. My relationship with Aemilianus was not something I talked about. Few Roman women talked openly about their husbands. But his words that one morning had hurt me. I blurted out what I should have kept to myself. “He called it a deformity. He said it was fortunate I was barren. He wouldn’t want children from a cripple.” I hung my head and tried not to cry. “He hasn’t come to my bed since.” I lifted my head. “Not that I want him there.”
Cornelia put an arm around me and drew me close. “Sempronia, I’m sorry. I thought we had beaten that ankle long ago.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
She knew I was not and looked at me so sadly I regretted saying anything at all. “I feel badly that Aemilianus has not been the kind of husband I wanted for you. I was the one responsible for making the match. I’m to blame.” She shook her head. “At the time I was certain he would make a good husband. Though he never knew my father, Aemilianus always spoke highly of him and wanted to hear stories about his life and military exploits, many of which related to Africanus’ regard for the integrity of women.”
Someone entered the house. We heard footsteps coming from the atrium. It was Gaius. He smiled immediately upon seeing us and strode out to where we were sitting. He had the same build as his older brother, but with more width and less height. Like Aemilianus he was back from eight months in Spain. It had been his first campaign, and he proudly wore his military tunic with a wide leather belt but no armor or weapon.
Cornelia and I both stood to accept his embrace. When he released her, he turned to me. “Sempronia, it’s been a long time.”
“Almost a year.” This was my baby brother. Now a soldier. I put my cheek against his. “I like your beard.”
I was sixteen when he was born and had helped my mother with him throughout the first two years of his life. Tiberius was a fine brother. We had been tutored together, and we were good friends. But Gaius was my favorite. He was the only child I had nurtured and seen grow from an infant into an adult.
He self-consciously stroked the downy hair on his face. “I let it grow in Spain. How are you? With child?”
Cornelia gave him a look and shook her head.
“No,” I said quietly. I knew he was not trying to be cruel. It was a legitimate question for any woman in Rome, but me. I deliberately changed the subject. “Have you spoken to Tiberius?”
“Yes, he told me he wants to be a tribune. I told him he was crazy.”
“Why’s that?” asked Cornelia.
“Politics, Mother. I prefer the clarity of a soldier’s life. None of this dickering and backstabbing. Politics is ugly business.”
“With that I agree, Gaius. But what do you think of his idea of land reform?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t given it much thought.”
“You should,” she said like a mother to her youngest.
He laughed, then lunged forward on one foot, extending his right arm to stab an imaginary enemy. “Technique and practice, Mother. That’s all I have time for.”
She shook her head in mock anger. “What about between your ears? I hope some of that education I gave you is still bouncing around in that head of yours.” She said this in Greek.
He responded in the same by quoting Socrates. “I know nothing but the fact of my ignorance.”
We all laughed, Cornelia the loudest. I loved being in my mother’s home and seeing my brothers.
Cornelia became serious. “You’ve been back from Spain a few weeks now. Have you set up a time to visit Licinia?” Arranged marriages are always closely managed in the months prior to the wedding. The couple is introduced when the future bride reaches thirteen years or older. Then a year or so is given for the bride and groom to get to know each other. Licinia, Publius Crassus’ daughter, had recently turned thirteen. It was time for Gaius to meet her. They would marry in a little over a year. The first meeting always took place at the bride’s home.
Sometimes these arrangements worked out. My mother and father had always felt fortunate to be paired. The same was true for Tiberius. He was uncommonly thoughtful and made a good husband. Claudia had given him a son and a daughter—Tiberius and Sempronia. They were happy together and had a loving marriage. You already know how mine worked out.
“I haven’t set anything up yet,” said Gaius. He was an outgoing and energetic young man, but he had been reluctant to begin this part of his life. I knew his bride-to-be and thought highly of her. I expected them to get along, but how couples engage is not a science I can pretend to know.
“I’ve saved you the trouble,” said Cornelia, watching Gaius twist and turn before her. “Go to Crassus’ villa two days after the elections. You will spend the afternoon with Licinia and her mother.”
It was the last thing in the world Gaius wanted to do. He made a face at me like he might vomit. He had that kind of animal humor common to younger brothers.
Cornelia shook her head at him. “Be there at midday, Gaius.”
“I will. Thank you for arranging the visit. I might never have done it.”
Cornelia reached into the overfold in her stola. “Give Licinia this ring.” She handed Gaius an iron ring. She watched him inspect it. “It seals your engagement.”
Gaius glanced up at her.
“I look forward to talking to you afterward.” She slipped me a wink.
Gaius kicked one foot with the oth
er. “I can barely wait.”
“Nor I,” she replied.
CHAPTER 11
Cornelia came over the next morning with Asclepius, a Greek physician whom she trusted. He inspected my ankle with the usual sad head shaking. He squeezed it and turned it this way and that.
“Your ankle will steadily deteriorate, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Eventually you will not be able to walk on it at all. Until then I recommend massages, soaking it in warm water, and when the pain is too great, a cup of wine. I also suggest you have a supportive shoe made. I know a cobbler who can help you with that. His name is Sutorius. You can find him in the forum.”
The following day I had my litter bearers carry me to the marketplace on the south side of the forum. Tarus, our male house slave, a tall, sinewy Sardinian, walked alongside. Both Aemilianus and I used Tarus as a bodyguard when out in the streets of Rome. He was a sullen, scary-looking man with a pockmarked face, whose age was difficult to tell. He had been a pirate and had his tongue cut out when he and his comrades were captured by a Roman warship. He could not enunciate at all and communicated with his hands. He was no one’s favorite, but he was trustworthy and served a purpose.
The market was crowded and loud. I did not like being there, even in a curtained litter. I held the curtain aside just enough to watch the shops go by. When we reached the part of the market dedicated to cobblers, my litter, the sign of a wealthy woman, drew the attention of all of the shoemakers. I asked the first cobbler we encountered if he knew Sutorius. The man pointed him out. Tarus brought the shoemaker up to the side of the litter. I opened the curtain all the way. Sutorius was a stooped, older man with a kind eye, no beard, deep lines in his face, and a shaggy head of gray hair. His eyes met mine. I liked his confidence right away.
“You were recommended to me by the Greek physician Asclepius. I’m looking for a custom sandal. I will pay extra if you will come to my home to do the fitting.”
Cornelia- the First Woman of Rome Page 5
