“It’s simple, Marcus Aurelius,” he said.
“If it is, then I’m too close to see,” said Marcus Cotta. “Enlighten me, Ulysses!”
Rutilius Rufus smiled. “No, I can’t see the point of making a song and dance about it, the way Ulysses did,” he said. “This is modern Rome, not ancient Greece. We can’t slaughter a horse, cut it up into four pieces, and make all Aurelia’s suitors stand on it to swear an oath of fealty to you, Marcus Aurelius.”
“Especially not before they know who the lucky winner is!” said Cotta, laughing. “What romantics those old Greeks were! No, Publius Rutilius, I fear what we have to deal with is a collection of litigious-minded, hairsplitting Romans.”
“Pre-cisely,” said Rutilius Rufus.
“Come, brother, put us out of our misery and tell us,” urged Rutilia.
“As I said, my dear Rutilia, simple. Let the girl pick her own husband.”
Cotta and his wife stared.
“Do you really think that’s wise?” asked Cotta.
“In this situation, wisdom fails, so what have you got to lose?” asked Rutilius Rufus. “You don’t need her to marry a rich man, and there aren’t any notorious fortune hunters on your list of suitors, so limit her choice to your list. Nor are the Aurelians, the Julians, or the Cornelians likely to attract social climbers. Besides which, Aurelia is full of common sense, not a scrap sentimental, and certainly not a romantic. She won’t let you down, not my girl!”
“You’re right,” said Cotta, nodding. “I don’t think there’s a man alive could turn Aurelia’s head.”
So the next day Cotta and Rutilia summoned Aurelia to her mother’s sitting room, with the intention of telling her what had been decided about her future.
She walked in; she didn’t drift, undulate, stride, mince. Aurelia was a good plain walker, moved briskly and competently, disciplined hips and bottom to a neat economy, kept shoulders back, chin tucked in, head up. Perhaps her figure erred on the spare side, for she was tall and inclined to be flat-chested, but she wore her draperies with immaculate neatness, did not affect high cork heels, and scorned jewelry. Thick and straight, her palest-icy-brown hair was dragged severely back into a tight bun positioned right where it could not be seen from the front full face, giving her no softening frame of hair. Cosmetics had never sullied her dense and milky skin, without a blemish, faintly pinked across her incredible cheekbones and deepening to a soft rose within the hollows below. As straight and high-bridged as if Praxiteles had chiseled it, her nose was too long to incur animadversions about Celtic blood, and therefore could be forgiven its lack of character—in other words, its lack of truly Roman humps and bumps. Lushly crimsoned, deliciously creased at its corners, her mouth had that folded quality which drove men mad to kiss it into blooming. And in all this wonderful heart-shaped face, with its dented chin and its broad high forehead and its widow’s peak, there dwelled an enormous pair of eyes everyone insisted were not dark blue, but purple, framed in long and thick black lashes, and surmounted by thin, arched, feathery black brows.
Many were the debates at men’s dinner parties (for it could confidently be predicted that among the guests would be two or three of her gazetted suitors) as to what exactly constituted Aurelia’s appeal. Some said it all lay in those thoughtful, detached purple eyes; some insisted it was the remarkable purity of her skin; others plumped for the carved starkness of her facial planes; a few muttered passionately about her mouth, or her dented chin, or her exquisite hands and feet.
“It’s none of those things and yet it’s all of those things,” growled Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator. “Fools! She’s a Vestal Virgin on the loose—she’s Diana, not Venus! Unattainable. And therein lies her fascination,”
“No, it’s those purple eyes,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus’s young son, another Marcus like his father. “Purple is the color! Noble! She’s a living, breathing omen.”
But when the living, breathing omen walked into her mother’s sitting room looking as sedate and immaculate as always, there entered no atmosphere of high drama with her; indeed, the character of Aurelia did not encourage high drama.
“Sit down, daughter,” said Rutilia, smiling.
Aurelia sat and folded her hands in her lap.
“We want to talk to you about your marriage,” said Cotta, and cleared his throat, hoping she would say something to help him elucidate.
He got no help at all; Aurelia just looked at him with a kind of remote interest, nothing more.
“How do you feel about it?” Rutilia asked.
Aurelia pursed her lips, shrugged. “I suppose I just hope you’ll pick someone I like,” she said.
“Well, yes, we hope that too,” said Cotta.
“Who don’t you like?” asked Rutilia.
“Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Junior,” Aurelia said without any hesitation, giving him his whole name.
Cotta saw the justice of that. “Anyone else?” he asked.
“Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Junior.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” cried Rutilia. “I think he’s very nice, I really do.”
“I agree, he’s very nice,” said Aurelia, “but he’s timid.”
Cotta didn’t even try to conceal his grin. “Wouldn’t you like a timid husband, Aurelia? You could rule the roost!”
“A good Roman wife does not rule the roost.”
“So much for Scaurus. Our Aurelia has spoken.” Cotta waggled head and shoulders back and forth. “Anyone else you don’t fancy?”
“Lucius Licinius.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s fat.” The pursed mouth pursed tighter.
“Unappealing, eh?”
“It indicates a lack of self-discipline, Father.” There were times when Aurelia called Cotta Father, other times when he was Uncle, but her choice was never illogical; when their discourse revealed that he was acting in a paternal role, he was Father, and when he was acting in an avuncular role, he was Uncle.
“You’re right, it does,” said Cotta.
“Is there anyone you would prefer to marry above all the others?” asked Rutilia, trying the opposite tack.
The pursed mouth relaxed. “No, Mother, not really. I’m quite happy to leave the decision to you and Father.”
“What do you hope for in marriage?” asked Cotta.
“A husband befitting my rank who adores his... several fine children.”
“A textbook answer!” said Cotta. “Go to the top of the class, Aurelia.”
Rutilia glanced at her husband, only the faintest shadow of amusement in her eyes. “Tell her, Marcus Aurelius, do!”
Cotta cleared his throat again. “Well, Aurelia, you’re causing us a bit of a problem,” he said. “At last count I have had thirty-seven formal applications for your hand in marriage. Not one of these hopeful suitors can be dismissed as ineligible. Some of them are of rank far higher than ours, some of fortune far greater than ours—and some even have rank and fortune far in excess of ours! Which puts us in a quandary. If we choose your husband, we are going to make a lot of enemies, which may not worry us unduly, but will make life hard for your brothers later on. I’m sure you can see that.”
“I do, Father,” said Aurelia seriously.
“Anyway, your Uncle Publius came up with the only feasible answer. You will choose your husband, my daughter.”
And for once she was thrown off-balance. She gaped. “I?”
“You.”
Her hands went up to press at her reddened cheeks; she stared at Cotta in horror. “But I can’t do that!” she cried. “It isn’t—it isn’t Roman!”
“I agree,” said Cotta. “Not Roman. Rutilian.”
“We needed a Ulysses to tell us the way, and luckily we have one right in the family,” said Rutilia.
“Oh!” Aurelia wriggled, twisted. “Oh, oh!”
“What is it, Aurelia? Can’t you see your way clear to a decision?” asked Rutilia.
“No, it’
s not that,” said Aurelia, her color fading to normal, then fading beyond it, and leaving her white-faced. “It’s just—oh, well!” She shrugged, got up. “May I go?”
“Indeed you may.”
At the door she turned to regard Cotta and Rutilia very gravely. “How long do I have to make up my mind?” she asked.
“Oh, there’s no real hurry,” said Cotta easily. “You’re eighteen at the end of January, but there’s nothing to say you have to marry, the moment you come of age. Take your time.”
“Thank you,” she said, and went out of the room.
Her own little room was one of the cubicles which opened off the atrium, and so was windowless and dark; in such a careful and caring family bosom, the only daughter would not have been permitted to sleep anywhere less protected. However, being the only daughter amid such a collection of boys, she was also much indulged, and could easily have grown into a very spoiled young lady did she have the germ of such a flaw in her. Luckily she did not. The consensus of family opinion was that it was utterly impossible to spoil Aurelia, for she had not an avaricious or envious atom in her. Which didn’t make her sweet-natured, or even lovable; in fact, it was a lot easier to admire and respect Aurelia than it was to love her, for she did not give of herself. As a child she would listen impassively to the vainglorious posturing of her older brother or one of her first two younger brothers, then when she had had enough, she would thump him across the ear so hard his head rang, and walk away without a word.
Because as the only girl she needed, her parents felt, a domain of her own marked off-limits to all the boys, she had been given a modestly large and brilliantly sunny room off the peristyle-garden for her own, and a maidservant of her own, the Gallic girl Cardixa, who was a gem. When Aurelia married, Cardixa would go with her to her new husband’s home.
*
One quick glance at Aurelia’s face when she walked into her workroom told Cardixa that something of importance had just occurred; but she said nothing, nor did she expect to be told what it was, for the kind and comfortable relationship between mistress and maidservant contained no girlish confidences. Aurelia clearly needed to be alone, so Cardixa departed.
The tastes of its owner were emblazoned on the room, most of the walls of which were solidly pigeonholed and held many rolls of books; a desk held scrolls of blank paper, reed pens, wax tablets, a quaint bone stylus for inscribing the wax, cakes of compressed sepia ink waiting to be dissolved in water, a covered inkwell, a full shaker of fine sand for blotting work in progress, and an abacus.
In one corner was a full-sized Patavian loom, the walls behind it pegged to hold dozens of long hanks of woolen thread in a myriad of thicknesses and colors—reds and purples, blues and greens, pinks and creams, yellows and oranges—for Aurelia wove the fabric for all her clothes, and loved brilliant hues. On the loom was a wide expanse of misty-thin flame-colored textile woven from wool spun hair-fine; Aurelia’s wedding veil, a real challenge. The saffron material for her wedding dress was already completed, and lay folded upon a shelf until the time came to make it up; it was unlucky to start cutting and sewing the dress until the groom was fully contractually committed.
Having a talent for such work, Cardixa was halfway through making a carved fretwork folding screen out of some striking African cabinet-wood; the pieces of polished sard, jasper, carnelian, and onyx with which she intended to inlay it in a pattern of leaves and flowers were all carefully wrapped within a carved wooden box, an earlier example of her skill.
Aurelia went along the room’s exposed side closing the shutters, the grilles of which she left open to let in fresh air and a muted light; the very fact that the shutters were closed was signal enough that she did not wish to be disturbed by anyone, little brother or servant. Then she sat down at her desk, greatly troubled and bewildered, folded her hands on its top, and thought.
What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi do?
That was Aurelia’s criterion for everything. What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi do? What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi think? How would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi feel? For Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi was Aurelia’s idol, her exemplar, her ready-reckoner of conduct in speech and deed.
Among the books lining the walls of her workroom were all of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi’s published letters and essays, as well as any work by anyone else which so much as mentioned the name Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi.
And who was she, this Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi? Everything a Roman noblewoman ought to be, from the moment of her birth to the moment of her death. That was who.
The younger daughter of Scipio Africanus—who rolled up Hannibal and conquered Carthage—she had been married to the great nobleman Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in her nineteenth year, which was his forty-fifth year; her mother, Aemilia Paulla, was the sister of the great Aemilius Paullus, which made Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi patrician on both sides.
Her conduct while wife to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was unimpeachable, and patiently over the almost twenty years of their marriage, she bore him twelve children. Gaius Julius Caesar would probably have maintained that it was the endlessly intermarried bloodlines of two very old families—Cornelius and Aemilius—that rendered her babies sickly, for sickly they all were. But, indefatigable, she persisted, and cared for each child with scrupulous attention and great love; and actually succeeded in rearing three of them. The first child who lived to be grown up was a girl, Sempronia; the second was a boy, who inherited his father’s name, Tiberius; and the third was another boy, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus.
Exquisitely educated and a worthy child of her father, who adored everything Greek as the pinnacle of world culture, she herself tutored all three of her children (and those among the nine dead who lived long enough to need tutoring) and oversaw every aspect of their upbringing. When her husband died, she was left with the fifteen-year-old Sempronia, the twelve-year-old Tiberius Gracchus, and the two-year-old Gaius Gracchus, as well as several among the nine dead who had survived infancy.
Everyone lined up to marry the widow, for she had proven her fertility with amazing regularity, and she was still fertile; she was also the daughter of Africanus, the niece of Paullus, and the relict of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus; and she was fabulously wealthy.
Among her suitors was none other than King Ptolemy Euergetes Gross Belly—at that moment in time, late King of Egypt, current King of Cyrenaica—who was a regular visitor to Rome in the years between his deposition in Egypt and his reinstatement as its sole ruler nine years after the death of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. He would turn up to bleat incessantly in the Senate’s weary ear, and agitate and bribe to be let climb back upon the Egyptian throne.
At the time of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus’s death, King Ptolemy Euergetes Gross Belly was eight years younger than the thirty-six-year-old Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi—and considerably thinner in his middle regions than he would be later, when Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi’s first cousin and son-in-law, Scipio Aemilianus, boasted that he had made the indecently clad, hideously fat King of Egypt walk! He sued as persistently and incessantly for her hand in marriage as he did for reinstatement on the Egyptian throne, but with as little success. Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi could not be had by a mere foreign king, no matter how incredibly rich or powerful.
In fact, Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi had resolved that a true Roman noblewoman married to a great Roman nobleman for nearly twenty years had no business remarrying at all. So suitor after suitor was refused with gracious courtesy; the widow struggled on alone to rear her children.
When Tiberius Gracchus was murdered during his tribunate of the plebs, she carried on living with head unbowed, holding herself steadfastly aloof from all the innuendo about her first cousin Scipio Aemilianus’s implication in the murder; and held herself just as steadfastly aloof from the marital hideousnesses which existed between Scipio Aemilianus a
nd his wife, her own daughter, Sempronia. Then when Scipio Aemilianus was found mysteriously dead and it was rumored that he too had been murdered—by his wife, no less, her own daughter—still she held herself steadfastly aloof. After all, she was left with one living son to nurture and encourage in his blossoming public career, her dear Gaius Gracchus.
Gaius Gracchus died with great violence about the time she turned seventy years of age, and everyone assumed that here at last was the blow strong enough to break Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. But no. Head unbowed, she carried on living, widowed, minus her splendid sons, her only surviving child the embittered and barren Sempronia.
“I have my dear little Sempronia to bring up,” she said, referring to Gaius Gracchus’s daughter, a tiny babe.
But she did retire from Rome, though never from life or from the pursuit of it. She went to live permanently in her huge villa at Misenum, it no less than her a monument to everything of taste and refinement and splendor Rome could offer the world. There she collected her letters and essays and graciously permitted old Sosius of the Argiletum to publish them, after her friends beseeched her not to let them go unknown to posterity. Like their author, they were sprightly, full of grace and charm and wit, yet very strong and deep; in Misenum they were added to, for Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi never lost intellect or erudition or interest as she piled up the total of her years.
When Aurelia was sixteen and Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi eighty-three, Marcus Aurelius Cotta and his wife, Rutilia, paid a duty call—no duty call really, it was an event eagerly looked forward to—upon Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi as they were passing through Misenum. With them they had the full tribe of children, even including the lofty Lucius Aurelius Cotta, who naturally at twenty-six did not consider himself a true member of the tribe. Everyone was issued orders to be quiet as mice, demure as Vestals, still as cats before the pounce—no fidgeting, no jiggling, no kicking the chair legs—under pain of death by indescribably agonizing torture.
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