by C C Taylor
Now as I tell you this, young ‘un, you must remember that I knew your old whatever pretty well, and one thing I do know about him is this; what Skip says and what actually happens are very often two different things, but I must say he did seem to be quite wealthy, to judge from the look of him when I last saw him. And according to his own story, he was quite the toast of the town just then. This may be true, but one does allow for ’inflation’, of course…
However, it cannot be denied…the man, through his own ingenuity and…er, flute-playing…had risen from being a lost traveller under a false name with no connections, sputtering Greek in the lowly taverns to strutting around the great theatres of Athens on a regular basis
As for the owls, well he came across them in Athens right enough. There they are venerated and bring good luck in battle. Maybe that’s why we Romans fear them so much, since good luck for the Greeks normally means bad luck for us…and when an owl hoots…as one did just before Caesar was stabbed…an owl hooting in the day…it is always a bad sign.
But I don’t speak of the birds he used as his first innocent cover story (that quickly got supplanted), but of the human owls who throng about the acropolis. There are more sages there than could fill the Augean Stables, and about as full of horseshit too, if what Skip had to say is true…though he seemed to have quite some admiration for their garbled ways of speaking…
‘To be honest, ’brother’, he even said to me at one point, ‘getting kidnapped was the best thing that ever happened to me!’ Yes, he said that to me when he popped in…he was on the way to Tárraco I said, didn’t I? But I didn’t tell you why…well, he was on his way to a gig. A long way to go for a gig, you might think, but what he was going to earn from it was going to set him up for life and maybe even buy him a farm or some stables to play with. We’ll get to that in due course.
Skip, being alone, had to start from the very beginning. Which is pretty much where the idea of acting began in the first place…from the old bards who recited the poems. You see, ‘acting’ was invented by a Greek chap called Thepsis in the great antiquity…he was the one who decided not only to recite the epic poems, but use different voices for each character, like your uncle does so well, and even use different masks… Then, Aeschylus came along and decided to use another person to represent the other person! A genius… So why not have all the characters played by different people? As, even today, no more than three are permitted on the skene at one time? Here I shrug my shoulders Marcus, but that is the law…and why do you think every time someone’s killed or tortured, they do it out of sight and then come back on with the dead or mutilated body? They say it’s so as not to offend our sensibilities. I say it’s to save money on effects and props, same as the three-actors rule, but anyway…the theatre’s been a big thing in Athens since as long as we can remember. Hegelochus even made a name for himself without knowing Greek perfectly, due to a misplaced accent he once said ‘weasel’ instead of ’calm sea’, thus bringing the house down, and then Araros, Aristophanes, who thankfully carried on the comedy tradition when tragedy was about to become the only show in town…and then Metrobius…his memory was still fresh. Him and his chums, Roscius and Sorex, lounging around on divans all day eating grapes. Metrobius had made his name by dressing, walking and talking like a woman. He was very popular, if you can imagine such a thing, and ended up fucking or being fucked by…one never knows in these cases… Lucius Cornelius Sulla…that’s right! Sulla! The dictator! Anyway, as you can imagine, it was a long way from the world that Skip was used to.
But this was the world he stepped into. Now that I think of it, Scipio’s own life had been the history of Greek theatre in reverse! From large groups, to duet, to solo…and now he simply scaled the ladder again from the bottom. Soon, he had worked with and got to know his companions, Hilarion and Philokretes, they both came with him when he passed through Rome…and on the way back to Athens again…
Perhaps, I should tell you the story of great uncle Skip’s worst ever gig in the way he told it to me when we went out together, the four of us.
Vale. Let’s do it that way, because everything you’ve heard so far comes from what I learned over those couple of days, only all jumbled up. Let’s start from the evening Skip actually makes it back home and take it from there.
So…here’s one you might like… (Ha ha ha). No, this is true, now, this is true… So I’m bringing some goat’s milk home from market one evening, when I hear this ‘Pssshhhh!!!’ from behind a column… I turn round and see a hand beckoning me over to a shaded part behind the colonnades.
Well I wasn’t born yesterday, so I took no notice. Simeon had his throat cut near here not that long ago, then the voice goes ‘Marco!’ so I stop and hiss back, “What?”
“It’s Scipio,” he says.
Well you could have raped me in the mouth…Scipio! After all these years…
That was the first thing I thought. The second thing was, how to tell him about me and Metella. I should tell you, young grandson that there was a respectable time between Skip’s disappearance and your mother’s first pregnancy, but…I don’t know…he’ll ask soon enough, I thought, but his first thought was for the tavern where he introduced me to Philokretes and Hilarion, who were sitting at a table waiting for us, as drunk as a couple of Bacchus’ little helpers. Typical effeminate Athenians they looked to me, his new buddies, but nice enough and fond enough of the wine too.
And straight away he was off… He’d let as much of a beard grow as he could, he said, his name was Gratianus Laurentius Cassius now and he’d been called that for over a decade. Under no account was I to call him by his real name. He was only here for the night and as much as he could of the following day (which is why we didn’t sleep). All the time he was shitting bricks that one of the old Roman guard would recognise him, as if there’d be one or two left straggling here fifteen years after the battle of Tapsus, or whatever it was… (Of course, it was the first I’d heard of it! He quickly garbled something about being conscripted by force into the army ‘and that was how it all started’…then hurried me on out of the market square).
“I doubt any of them will still be…” I started to say.
“No, no,” he hissed at me. “I’ve already seen one of them… Titus Statilius Taurus.”
At the mention of the name, I noted how his Athenian friends both rolled their eyes. They would have had many a story about Skip’s old enemy on their long journey to Rome, though probably reinvented as an old trainer from his military service days.
“…That cunt with the eye-patch, you know the one I mean… I’m sure it was him…by the watermelon stand…”
Well, Skip was being overly nervous, I thought. Most of Caesar’s lot had gone off to Parthia or Thrace or Hispania or wherever, or hopped over to join Brutus and Cassius, and had the shit kicked out of them…or were miles from Rome tending those fucking runner beans they seem so anxious to end up growing. And in any case, not many soldiers made it past the age of thirty. I calculated that that particular one-fingered, head-scratcher would be sixty by now and even if he was still here we’d be a match for him.
In any case, as the evening wore on and the kraters of wine went down, our protagonist began to care less and less about who overheard him…he was even acting out the parts I’ve told you…arriving in Africa, the battle, all that…his friends were lapping it up too, though they’d seen it before. It was ‘quite a new style’ they said, and they were ‘incorporating it into their work’. It’s another world, young lad, the way they speak… (“You should have seen his Miles Gloriosus at the Palladium, dear…it was divine!”) but I nodded and laughed in the right places.
He asked about your grandmother, of course. I told him. And about you…and your brother, and your sister Julia and your other sister Julia…and your other sister, what is her name? I’m joking… He didn’t ask to see any of them. Eventually, of course, intrigued by both the secrecy and his very presence, I had to ask…
; “So, what brings you here? You’ve clearly not been conscripted into the army a second time.”
“I’m on my way to a gig,” he said.
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. Last time I was in this tavern we were celebrating peace after the end of war and the war continued. Then I got stolen away to a distant war in Africa. Now I go to celebrate peace after the end of yet another war. But I expect it will continue.”
‘He created a desert and called it peace’, I quoted.
“Well, I don’t understand that.”
“It’s what people were saying back here about Caesar.”
“Ungrateful I call that,” he said and tossed his head back in his new owlish all-knowing manner. “They won’t get an emperor that fights in the front line with them again.”
“Ah, but in the end,” I began…and told him briefly about the power going to JC’s head, but I could see that it was true what they said about the Newly-made God. Once you served under him, you were always under his spell. Even an unwilling conscript who’d stumbled his way through a couple of clumsy encounters didn’t like to hear ill spoken of him.
“Well, what’s done is done. Destiny is destiny. Apparently mine has something to do with ketae…what do you make of that?”
“It means sea creature.”
“I know that. I wasn’t fifteen years in Greece without picking up the lingo. I worked that one out straight away, obviously (then he told me about the boat trip over to Greece and his stop off at Delphi en route to working the suburbs of Athens)…so what do you think?”
“Stay away from the sea,” I said.
“Good,” he replied, “that’s what I take it to mean. My journey takes me overland to the Pyrenaei and down the coast of what was recently part of Carthage’s lands. A bit too close to the sea for my liking, but… They still have a ‘Carthage’ there, I’m told. It was where Hannibal was born.”
“My, you have been educating yourself,” I said. He was always clever, your uncle, like quick-witted, but now he had a sort of world-weariness about him that came from a widely-lived life and brought out an intelligence I hadn’t seen before.
“I was only schooled till I ran away,” he reminded me. “Since when I have been a conscript, a slave – without knowing it – a runaway, a dealer in bangue and an actor of renown. I have at last had some kind of education, I would say.”
“Enough to know what it means that the doors of the Temple of Janus were shut,” I said. “No one can remember the last time that happened.”
“Indeed. Peace. Official peace. Only a few Hispanic barbarians are left to quell, I’m told, in the west where I’m going. They don’t even count as a worthy enemy, it would seem – the same stuff we’ve been hearing for the last ten years, in other words – It’s only a matter of time until they are crushed, etcetera… No, but this time it’s safe apparently as they’re trapped north of the big river. I have this on ‘military intelligence’,” he said and broke into a large grin, then a cackle…“It doesn’t matter. Let’s forget their service record on intel. All I know is, I’m to head south to Tarraco. And I have to be there before the Ides. I’m performing at a birthday party. It happens to coincide with the vinalia rustica, so they’re putting on a special show. For the special guest.”
I must have cocked my head to one side on receiving this information.
“Who…” I asked, “In all the Empire, can afford to pay for three clowns to be carried across the known world, just to fall over and tell dick jokes for an hour?”
Skip said nothing, simply looked at me then exchanged glances with his workmates.
“No!” I said.
“Yes…” he said. “God Himself.”
“Of course,” I said. “He’s been in Hispania for some time now. We won’t forget him in a hurry. All the treasure of Egypt was paraded before us when he first got to spend some time here.”
“Tell me about it! He came hobnobbing round Greece on his way home three years ago. I didn’t even dare to get close up…not that that would have been easy; there were crowds everywhere he went. He bought a raven off a man, because it could talk. ‘Hail Caesar, Hail Caesar!’ and such. Five thousand denarii…but he has to split it with his partner when he brought the other parrot out of the shop…this one squawked, ‘Hail Marc Antony’. The little fuckers had hedged their bets. Lucky for them, Caesar was on a smile-and-look-nice tour, the conquering hero, so he decided not to get offended.”
“Well, he hasn’t been here in Rome for a while now,” I tell him. “He set off to quell some Gauls a few years ago, and has ended up having to go down and fight off the Cantabrii for a lot longer than he thought. As usual, the Big Man himself always seems to just miss the heat of the battle due to some illness or other. That’s why he’s at Tarraco now. ‘Recovering’.”
“And none of this has stopped him sending Gallus out east on more sacking expeditions…and Crassus fucking over the Bastarnae in Macedonia…it’s a fine Peace we’re celebrating.”
“Oh, you and I are old enough to know that all politics is hogwash, why should it surprise us anymore?”
“Ay. Octavian’s no different.”
“We’re to call him Augustus, remember…thanks to that prick who painted himself blue and did the fish dance for Antony and Cleopatra… I think he’s everything now, isn’t he? Emperor, princeps, divi filius, the Golden Shield of Virtues, defender of Rome…”
“Who was the fish dancer?”
“Oh, I can’t remember. He’s probably been executed for something by now; for the fish dance, if it was anything like it sounds. Tough life, the entertainer’s, eh? Trying to please everybody.”
“It’s a life of scrabbling around in the dirt. On the off chance, you might occasionally perform well on the big skene, to the stamping of boots and the laughter of children, old women and soldiers. Those moments compensate the rest.”
“From what I gather, you’re on your way to entertain him at his country villa. Fine. I’m just surprised he wants to see clowns.”
“Comedians, please,” Hilarion corrected me, “he is a man of culture.”
“Yes,” Philoktetes added. “You seem to have only unkind words for your emperor, but in our land his presence has not been oppressive. At least not to lovers of the arts. It was Octavian who had the statues brought in from the Greek countryside to the city…”
“…where people can actually fucking see them,” Hilarion completed, demonstrating a surprising familiarity with the Roman vernacular.
“And he lets hairies into office, I hear,” said Phil
“That’s true,” I said. “We have Gauls in the Senate now. Any old northern peasant can change his rags for a toga and ask directions these days.”
“But it makes some of the old corpses tear their hair out,” added Harry.
“Which is amusing…” (Phil) “…and he commissions poetry, he added, then.”Love conquers all; let Love then smile at our Defeat!"
Well these people might be Catullus-readers but by Neptune’s tripartite cock, they’re up to date on Roman Politics and can quote our very own Publius’ honeyed words, I thought…but you won’t be interested in that, son.
The exact reason they were making their way to Tarraco was as follows: some weeks previously, they’d been doing a performance of ‘The Mother-in-Law’ in front of a large crowd on a feast day…and among this crowd was one Sextus Apullaeius. The Big Fish, also ‘trained’ by Titus Statilius Taurus himself – that’s our Skip’s friend with the whip from his army days, remember? One-eyed Tito the boy-beater? – and this Sextus happened to be stopping off at Athens while visiting Delphi and Corinth, before reporting back for duty in Rome, from where he would set off for Hispania to take up his consulship again.
But one thing was bothering him. Pretty soon he’d be reporting back for duty, just when The Divine One was celebrating his thirty-fourth birthday. And there was no way to avoid going to the celebration, as he was due to be back where he was stationed, not many
miles away by Roman marching standards. Furthermore, he had no idea what gift to bring a God. It’s not an everyday concern. What can you give a god? Something polished from Parthia? Something precious from Persia? (This is what spending time with pesky poets does to you, son. I’ve caught Alliteration)… So there he was at the arena, turning this over in his mind, when he saw Skip do his turn and he knew in an instant what his gift would be… A comedy act…the hottest new thing from Athens…no one else would bring anything remotely like it – the usual columns of porphyry, Numidian marble, belly-dancers from the east – he must be bored sick of all that. This would be perfect, something to cheer the weary man up and take his mind off illness and war. So, straight after the performance, he approached the three actors and offered them fifteen thousand denarii (Skip thought he’d misheard)…each! (Misheard again?) Plus their expenses. Well…the actors were already dreaming of their farmsteads and their pretty wives, and rows of runner beans and vines even before they said yes, and they wouldn’t even have to do the whole play, just the comic parts.
Now I don’t want to sound rude, but I wouldn’t have paid too many quincunx for what your great whatever uncle used to do. Sure, he made you laugh, but then doesn’t the old drunk in the corner make you laugh? It’s not exactly an art form in my opinion. So I wondered what someone might pay three years’ wages to see. I suppose some people just have a lot of money’ I was thinking… Go on then, Skip…give us a show…
And he did. Just so I could see what the Great Augustus was buying, your uncle gave us a little bit of his Leno from the ‘Mother-in-Law’ while we were getting bladdered on krater after krater in the tavern. I was already drunk and would have pissed myself at anything by then, but the guy was quite a turn… He doubled up as the parasitus too, and that was pretty funny. I could see why Sextus had commandeered him. On their cue, the two Greeks came mincing on to do their lines and the chorus bit. There was some very well synchronised larking about with an amphora and a cork, where one time you thought it was empty, then it was full…then a serious homily at the end. Yes, very good. I clapped. Despite being in a rundown tavern in the early dawn to an audience of one (and five or six sleeping drunks), it was a very good gig.