Tribune of the People

by Dan Wallace

  Tiberius nodded at the priest and walked back toward the front door. Cornelia stood in his way.

  “Never speak of this again,” he said, and moved past her.

  She looked at him as he went back into his office, then back outside at the priest, who frantically waved his smoking stalk in a wide half circle tracing the silhouette of the house. He quickly scurried away.

  Despite constant, plaintive questioning, Tiberius refused to discuss what had occurred in the office. It was clear to Cornelia that the two snakes had slipped into the house to find warmth, a natural impulse. But something more had happened in that office than the surprise of the snakes. She had to know what, but her imprecations failed to move him.

  Tiberius became distracted. He smiled and played with the children, met with his clients, and went off to the Senate. But something was missing, something seemed to be slipping away from him. His smiles for her appeared incomplete, as if a niggling problem inside kept him from beaming that glory of his wide-open joy at seeing her. After some weeks of this, she could wait no longer.

  Polydius, Tiberius Tertius’s new tutor, accompanied her to the Temple of Juno Sospita. There she found the priest who had come to their home. He blanched again when he saw her, and at first refused to speak to her. She dangled a large pouch in front of him, shaking it so he could hear the clink of the coins. More likely, though, the look in her dark eyes was the true incentive for him to talk.

  They had found the two snakes, one of each sex, in the day bed where Tiberius sometimes napped, a male and a female. Tiberius asked the priest to divine the meaning. The priest prayed, and Juno revealed to him that not both snakes were to be killed, but only one. If he killed the male snake, Tiberius would die. If he killed the female snake, his wife would die.

  The priest dropped his head into his robes when he uttered the last, using the faintest of voices.

  “You fool!” she cried. “Why did you open your mouth?”

  “Juno Sospita spoke to me!” he whined.

  Cornelia hit him in the face with the bag of coins. He fell amid the shower of gold that spilled from the split leather.

  “Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut, or make something up? Hades, if anything happens to him, I swear I’ll force feed you to the snake that survived!”

  It was too late, though. She tried to cajole Tiberius out of his funk, but he wouldn’t have it. A fever came on him, and he wasted away. She brought the children in to cheer him, and at seeing them, he would light up for a short time. But the fever grew worse. The surgeons bled him and purged him. Even the crazy Egyptians couldn’t cure him with their outlandish, foul-smelling poultices. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was dying.

  In his final moments, each catching breath a struggle, she clung to him, curling up against his racked frame. At last, in the dawn of a winter day, with snow again on the ground, the darkness drew over him, and he breathed his last.

  Cornelia closed his eyes and stood by the bed for a time. She cried, then stopped. Tearless, she left the room and crossed the vestibulum to the boys’ chambers. There, she roused Tiberius Tertius and led him into the bed chamber. As the boy looked down on his dead father, she grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him to face her.

  “You are no longer Tiberius Tertius. Now, you are Tiberius Sempronious Gracchus, master of this house. Prepare to honor your father with your life.”

  Philea came silently into the atrium with a cup of heated water flavored by squeezed lemon. Without a word she handed it to her mistress, bowing her head as she did. She’s as grey as I am, thought Cornelia, and just as bony. Her weathering had been earned through hard work though, and worry. She worried about her demanding, oft-times cruel mistress, whom still she treated with respect, and love. Love unearned, Cornelia thought, pressing her lips in silent self-rebuke. She had written the manumission document but forgotten where she put it. She should dig it up and give it to her. Not that she really believed that Philea would want to leave. Where would she go after all these years? And if she were to leave, what would her harsh mistress do?

  Philea withdrew, and Cornelia sipped.

  Young Tiberius did his best, but his father was dead. Gone with him was her own heart. Now, she made no sound even when by herself in the cold loneliness of the night. Night after night she lay awake, listening, hearing nothing. No birds calling, no cats rutting, nothing. She never slept, and she was never tired from fatigue, just of being awake, alone. Philea cared for the children because her mistress never got out of bed. They would come to see her, cry for her to get up, but she wouldn’t. Instead, she was intent on missing the man who had been and still was her life. The last time she left her bed chamber was for his funeral.

  They built the pyre outside of the city walls at the Carmenta Gate opposite the old Temple of Apollo. They chose the site not for religious reasons, but to accommodate the enormous crowd expected to mourn one of the greatest heroes of the Republic, struck down too soon even though his years were long. Cornelia herself couldn’t complain, for her Tiberius was an Apollo himself.

  All of Rome surrounded the bier, with Tiberius’s body swaddled at its top. Farmers, vintners, olive oil sellers, butchers, potters, horse traders, textile dealers, candle makers, iron smiths, goldsmiths, jewelers, and thousands of veterans, his legions, tears striking scars wherever they were. Indeed, years later it was said that all but one dog left the city to wail at the loss of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. The dog remained behind, so the story went, because it was deaf, blind, and dying itself.

  The senators, adiles, tribunes, praetors, consuls, and censors sat according to station in a stand built across from the pyre in front of the gate. The equitii sat with other wealthy merchants in lower stands situated around the pyre stage. Soldiers ringed the pyre to keep the mournful crowd at bay, their circular cordon waving and ebbing with the back and forth rippling surge of the grieving crowd. Within, standing on the slightly raised platform supporting the bier, the hooded priests burned incense and hummed their arcane prayers to the gods.

  Dignitaries from around the world had traveled to pay their respects, Masinissa from Numidia, Deemtrios I Soter from Antioch, Mithridates IV Philopator from Pontus, and Menandros of Bkatria, though his counterpart Agathokleia remained at home to keep the recently won peace. Even the Egyptian Pharoah, Ptolemy VI Philometer, known as “Mother-Friend,” had sent his high priest to preside for himself and his queen, Cleopatra II. Of course, his brother Ptolemy VIII Euergetes Physcon of Cyrenaica attended personally to push his claim on Cyprus. The various luminaries were seated in two stands on opposite sides of the main Roman contingent, divided to keep separate any parties embroiled in territorial disputes that could disturb the service. Hence, Ptolemy Physcon sat nowhere near the high priest sent by his brother Ptolemy Philometer.

  Cornelia and the children sat in the middle of the Roman stand, with Scipio Amelianus to her right, and Appius to her left. Publius Scipio and his family sat afar, including his petulant stringbean son Nasica. All the other notable families, both patrician and plebeian, radiated out and around the surviving Sempronii, who clung together in their dark, torn robes of mourning.

  Cornelia sat dry-eyed. Tiberius had been dead for a month, his corpse in the temple awaiting the arrival of the foreign state officials, though the farmers and old retired soldiers who had traveled here would have pleased him more. She missed him still, like a deep stab wound had been opened in her breast, aching always without a lethal flow of blood. She had no more tears, either, she was cried out. Within, she wept as the sky embraced the rising ashes of her lovely hero, weeping, as the love of her life disappeared into the clouds forever, with the knowledge that she would cry silently this way every day for the rest of her life.

  Meanwhile, the fickle gods laughed at her, the girl who had refused to believe in them because of her willful ways. Coming down from the stand, with tiny, soft feathers of ash still wafting around their heads, Cornelia ushered her confused little children in front
of her while young Tiberius did his best to help, despite his own stunned countenance.

  A huge, black mass suddenly blocked their way. Startled, she looked up. Ptolemy VIII Euergetes Psychon stood before her―Ptolemy Potbelly, Ptolemy Bladder, Ptolemy Sausage―the other Pharaoh, but not of all Egypt, though he looked as though he’d eaten his way through half the land of the Nile. The fragrance of his perfumes staggered her as much as his glorious, gold-threaded, ruby-hued raiments. His beard looked like a dark honey confection twisted into filigrees that no Ramses had ever seen, punctuated with a tiny pearl in every curlicue. Without looking, Psychon reached back to a slave who handed him a short linen square that he used to wipe his mouth and his hands. Apparently, he’d been eating during the funeral.

  “Mistress Cornelia Scipionis Africanus,” he said, “please accept my deepest condolences. Your late husband was a great man, a hero worthy to sit next to the Olympic gods.”

  “Thank you,” she said evenly.

  “And these must be your beautiful children, gloriously transcendent like their mother, famous throughout the world for her otherworldly magnificence. You must be very proud of them, I’m sure.”

  She nodded and tried to move around him, but he spread himself so that they couldn’t pass.

  “As you know,” he continued, “I have been occupied as of late in asserting my rights to the throne of the two Kingdoms of Egypt.”

  “I understand this to be true,” she replied, hiding her impatience as best as she could.

  “Indeed. Of course, I traveled all of this way to pay honor to Rome’s greatest citizen, but also took this opportunity to present my case to the august Roman Senate.”

  “Yes, I heard,” she replied, Gaius whining and tugging at her robe. The other children started crying, too. Her eyes flashing, she said, “Yes, Cyprus is the chicken bone of your contention, is it not?”

  Psychon brushed off the remark. “It was, but that has been settled. The Senate has agreed to support my claim again. All it took was the baring of the scars from my wicked brother’s assassination attempts. Would you like to see them?”

  “No.”

  “In any case, my venture has been a success, a silver lining to this sad day, wouldn’t you say? And I hope to make it even less sad by bringing joy to you, your fine children, and to me, all in one Jupiter-like stroke of lightning. Cornelia Scipio Africanus, would you do the honor of becoming Queen of the next Pharoah of Egypt? Will you be my wife?”

  Cornelia clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from shrieking. She kept it there to stem the hysterical laughter welling up inside her body. With inhuman control, she lowered her hand to her side and spoke, completely composed.

  “Thank you, Ptolemy Euergetes, you are truly well-named, your beneficence knows no bounds. But I must reject your most generous proposal, for I have just lost the father of my children. And, in his memory, I am obligated to raise them to honor their father and to strive to add to the distinction of his name. Only this keeps me from accepting, and I vow you this, that I will never marry again.”

  Ptolemy VIII Euergetes Psychon grunted, “Huh. Very well, if that is your decision, unwise though it is. I shall easily find another wife while you spend your life drifting away with the memory of your dead husband, and your loss of one equal in magnificence.”

  Pyschon wheeled his enormous heft around and marched off toward the Carmenta Gate. Cornelia barked a laugh, the only one since Tiberius had died, and the last one for a long, long time.

  She laughed now. Old Ptolemy Potbelly did rule Egypt after all, for a short time. But he was long dead and gone, forgotten now after all these years, except by a few stuffy historians. Meanwhile, the name Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus lives on, still evoking cheers from the Roman people. Of course, she had worked diligently to ensure that, using her own considerable fortune to attach him to many a holiday celebration gifted to the masses. Nothing that he wouldn’t have done himself, of course.

  Yes, the gods had played her for a fool and made her laugh at the same time, at the hardest time. Then, before the laughter had stopped echoing in her mind, they showed their cruel black hearts. Servius came down with it first, his nose running, coughing, accompanied by a horrible, spreading rash. Servilia soon followed. While trying to comfort them, Cornelia saw that they were finding it more and more difficult to breathe. Gradually, Servius closed his eyes. She watched him, his black threadlike lashes drooping down, until she realized that he was unconscious. She blanched white and shouted for Philea to run for the physicians, and the priests.

  “Bring them all, promise them anything!” she screamed.

  She didn’t wait for Philea to return. Frantically, she ordered Tiberius to strip. She inspected her embarrassed son closely: no rash. She followed with Sempronia, who cried while she went over the girl’s body. She was clean, too. Then, she examined Gaius.

  Cold rippled through her back, down her arms. Gaius had traces of the rash. Of course, she thought, he shared the old nursery with the other children. As the oldest, Tiberius and Sempronia both had their own rooms. But little Gaius was infected.

  She called Polydius to the atrium.

  “Pack clothes for Tiberius and Sempronia and take them to the pig farm. Stay there until I summon you back.”

  Despite their tears, she pushed the children out of the house and into the cart, seeing them off before Philea had brought the physicians and priests back to the house. The oldest, a grizzled Greek with a grey beard and little hair, carefully looked at all her little ones, Tiberius’s last gifts to her.

  After examining each one in turn, he motioned Cornelia to the hallway.

  “They have Morbilli,” he said, “the fevers, exuding noses, coughing, red eyes, and, of course, the rash. You can comfort them, hope for the best, but there is very little that you can do at this point.”

  She nearly collapsed, held up by Philea.

  “Nothing? Nothing?”

  The old Greek shrugged. “It might pass. Keep anyone who shows no sign of the disease away from the afflicted, including yourself. If you stay within their reach, the bad humors could infest you.”

  “But they are my children, the last I shall ever bear!”

  Again, the Greek lifted and dropped his shoulders. “You have other children that you sent away, no? Send in your slaves to care for these. Don’t risk orphaning the ones still healthy by succumbing to the malady yourself, then bringing it to them. Live for those who will live; bury and mourn those who cannot survive.”

  Cornelia’s lips curled. “Philea,” she said, “pay the physician.”

  Once Philea had handed the old Greek his gold, Cornelia spat the words, “Get out!”

  He left, followed by his lesser colleagues. Cornelia then turned to the priests and said, “Pray. Pray to the gods that they save my little ones, because if they don’t, you will have to pray twice as hard to save your own skins!”

  She turned to go back to her children, held up by Philea’s hand on her arm.

  “Mistress, you can’t! The physician’s warning! I’ll go in and tend to them. But you must be here when Tiberius and Sempronia return.”

  Cornelia shrugged off Philea’s arm, “You must be mad. These are my babies. I will take care of them no matter what that sniveling necrophiliac says.”

  Then, her fierce expression turning into utter bewilderment, she gazed at Philea and said, “You think I would let you go in there? You are mad. I’m not as heartless as that hack, or the gods. They are my children, live or die.”

  Philea displayed sharp anger in her eyes. “They are my children, too, the only ones I have!”

  Cornelia seemed startled for a moment. Then, she turned and walked into the sick room, calling back scornfully as she entered, “Suit yourself. What’s one more death, more or less?”

  She slipped off her nightgown and examined her bony frame. Age steals all beauty, she could see. The reflection in the polished bronze told her that the green eyes were still there, and some of
the symmetry of the face. But the rest was gone. She folded the gown and put it into the ornate wooden chest at the foot of the bed, extracting at the same time one of her ever-ready brown robes, forever in mourning. She pulled it over her shoulders. Of course, as expected, they died, all but Gaius. The rash developed, but somehow, he’d proven immune to the lethal part of the illness. He carried a fever, but nothing like the others. She buried her twins, her little boy and her tiny little girl. The priests ceremonially burned out the house, after they had removed the irreplaceable, of course, the ancestral masks. Tiberius and Sempronia came back, and the crying-wailing display started all over again.

  The house became so empty after that, so lonely. It lasted for decades, worse when Tiberius went off to Carthage to fight with Scipio. Things only improved after he married Claudia, something of a mouse, skinny, too. But a good wife and mother, nonetheless. Soon, the old place was crowded again with grandchildren and the new slave Lysis, and Polydius returning to teach a new generation. But her life remained the same, her morning ritual of waking and remembering as she forced herself to rise for prayer before the Lares and the visage of her only love, in waxen death. She sighed.

  Muffled voices sounded outside her room. Someone banged on her door.

  “Cornelia! Cornelia? Open the door, it’s me, Appius. Open quickly, please! I have news, news of Tiberius!”

  Cornelia leaped to her feet and moved to the door.

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, gods, the cruel gods!” Appius said, wringing the edges of his toga, his face contorted with worry and fear.