Etruscan Blood
Page 67
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Egerius convinces Tanaquil she should trust Manius
Tarquinius still doesn't... give him responsibility, he says, you'll see he'll use it properly
on the saltings - he knew he was being watched, he told me
but Tarquinius unhappy at the way Tanaquil lets Manius visit her when she's en deshabille - suspecting an affair.
Her response that it's none of his business
his feeling that a Roman must be able to trust his wife
a split here...
she's minded to seduce Manius just to spite him...and knows she has Manius under control, just like a greyhound
Faustus talking against it... Etruscan take-over...
typical Roman bluntness, no finesse
Egerius thinking you shouldn't say that, Faustus, Tarquinius is not your friend
but only if I can take my household with me... striking a bargain - wants to take Gaius
talking about Faustus; Egerius impressed by his work at the battle
Tarquinius sounds less certain, won't praise him - very cool
Egerius wondering if it is only becaue Faustus spoke out at first against him as king; yet since the election, Faustus has been loyal
his idea of diplomacy not in the Etruscan tradition... says Tarquinius
but effective, none the less, said Egerius. Remember how he drew a circle in the dust round the Cornutum ambassador with his spear?
As if he were conjuring a demon or a god.
And said; there is safety within it, and if you step out of it, there is only death that waits for you and your men.
So?
the ambassador could see the men standing with Faustus, each one with his spear in his hand. He looked at the dust. And he did not step out.
Not subtle though - a binary choice.... the Greeks are more subtle.
True.
Egerius eventually gives it up; a lost cause?
Egerius sighing as he realises he'll have to cancel his poetic symposium -
egerius and manius - to be trusted?
Tarquinius
It didn't really matter what Egerius was doing. Collatia's revenues would help pay for the next war; but it was the next war that was important. Latium was subdued, though the Latins glowered like feral cats and rebellion had always to be watched for and suppressed; and to fill garrisons enough to put down thoughts of revolt, Tarquinius needed fresh wealth coming into Rome, fresh men and supplies that could be funded only by further conquest.
He'd been innocent, back when he was in charge of the saltings, he thought. He'd really believed Ancus Marcius' idea that Rome could grow by commerce alone. Well, if that had ever worked, how had Greece or Phoenicia not conquered the world by now?
(It was strange how often, now, he thought of his father. Had his father ever looked back, as he was doing now, and felt trapped by his life? Had his father, beneath that omnipotent façade that every father shows to his children, ever wondered if things could have been different? He remembered his father's stories of Greek poverty; the tiny farms that kept going on the edge of ruin, scratching shallow furrows in dry soil, the farms where younger sons eked out precarious livings. It made him wonder, sometimes, whether his father had really been the exiled aristocrat he'd held himself to be, or just another chancer running away from a Greece to poor to stay alive in. And what did that make him, Tarquinius?)
So with Latium pinned down - in order to keep it pinned down - he needed new targets. The nearer Etruscan cities; or rather, those that were both nearer and weaker. If he needed it, he had good reason; there had been Etruscans fighting with the Latins at Nomentum, at Corniculum, at Ameriola. He had no evidence that their cities had sent them, of course; but that need not matter, if he struck a deal with the stronger Etruscan cities for their support.
"And then..." he said, drawing a line with the condensation his winecup had left on the tabletop.
"And then what?" Manius asked.
He hadn't meant to speak; but his thoughts pushed him onwards, with the inevitability of history, or of drunkenness.
"And then. When we've mopped up all the small cities, the weak ones. The ones where the ruling family has no alliances, no relatives among the kings of the greater powers. The ones without much trade..."
"And then?"
"And then we strike at the Federation itself."
"Mmm-hmm," Manius said, as if it was obvious. But Tarquinius had seen his eyebrows flicker in surprise. To be honest, the thought had even surprised him; but it was obvious. Once he'd cut off the smaller cities, once the Federation had been deprived of its little agricultural feeder-states and artisan cities; once he'd chopped the links that still bound the ruling families across Etruria, the intermarriages and cousinships and fosterages, he'd have weakened the Federation without their even realising that he was doing it. And then even striking at Tarchna would be possible.
"But for now," Manius was asking, "the deal with Tarchna holds?"