‘We have a little over an hour until the play begins,’ Scipio replied. ‘You wanted to tell me something too?’
Polybius turned to gaze at Julia and Scipio, and Fabius saw something else in his eyes, a faltering look, even a sadness. ‘This day is a chance for you to be together without others watching you, or knowing where you are. I wanted to tell you that the doors of my little house below the Palatine are open, and my slave girl Fabina knows you may be coming. You do not know when you may have the chance again. As for me, I’m off. Ave atque vale. And remember what I said. Seize the day.’
6
The courtyard of the house of Terentius Lucanus on the Esquiline Hill had been designed in the Greek fashion, with a colonnaded peristyle surrounding a garden and a pool in the centre. One end had been built up into a stage for performances and the garden had been partly boarded over to provide seating for a small audience. Fabius had followed Scipio and Julia in from the atrium of the house, and sat down with them among the two dozen or so others who had come to see the play. An hour earlier he had left Scipio and Julia at the entrance to Polybius’ house below the Palatine, and had quickly made his way back through the Forum to find Eudoxia, leading her to a hidden garden he knew on the far side of the Circus Maximus. They had met up again in time for Julia to walk visibly through the Forum on their way to the Esquiline, ensuring that word would pass back to her mother and the Vestals that she had not somehow absconded. On the way they had passed Metellus and a group of his friends, all of them the worse for wear, staggering between the temporary stalls along the Sacred Way that were serving wine without restriction now that the procession was over. Metellus had looked darkly at Scipio, swaying slightly with a wine pitcher in his hand, and had followed them with his friends, shouting and jeering, until he was diverted by a favourite tavern near the Mamertine Prison. Fabius knew that the more drunk Metellus got, the more he would want to claim Julia, as his wife to be, and that there would be nothing Scipio could do to stop him without causing a furore within the gentes. Fabius could only hope that the house of Terentius Lucanus was sufficiently far from the taverns to deter Metellus from making an entrance here, and that he and Scipio could spirit Julia away after the play and return her to the house of the Caesares before Metellus could get his hands on her.
As they sat down, a lithe man with the dark skin of an African saw them from the stage and came bounding over, smiling broadly. ‘Julia, Scipio Aemilianus, Fabius. Welcome, my friends. I’m glad you’ve come. We’re waiting for the arrival of my patron and the owner of this house, Terentius Lucanus, who is making a sacrifice in the Temple of Castor and Pollux, praying, I trust, for the success of my play.’
Scipio looked around. ‘A delightful venue, though small and a good way off the beaten track tonight, I fear.’
Terence sighed. ‘I sent plans to the Senate for the construction of a Greek-style theatre in Rome, but they were rejected by the aedile in charge of public works on the grounds that a theatre with seating would turn Romans into effeminate Greeks.’
Scipio grinned. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said he was right, Roman backsides weren’t yet tough enough for stone seats.’
‘You really know how to please them, Terence. I’m amazed you haven’t been hounded out of Rome by now.’
Terence shook his head glumly. ‘As a playwright, you can’t win. I’d wanted to present works of my own, plays in a gritty, realistic style, suited to Roman taste. But no, those who finance my productions insist on pastiches of well-known Greek plays, because they say that’s what the people want. In fact, it’s what my backers want, not what my fans want. My backers want the old, but my fans want the new. My backers want repeats of the same tired old plays that have brought in pots of denarii in the past, and so, they surmise, will do so again. These people are here today only because they are clients of Terentius and are obliged to him. They’ll be talking to themselves all the way through the play, hardly noticing it. The theatre’s been reduced to a place for meeting friends and exchanging gossip, before going off to the real fun in the taverns.’
Scipio was still carrying the scroll he had had with him on the podium while they watched the procession, and Terence pointed to it. ‘It looks as if you’ve brought something else to entertain you as well. What’s the book?’
‘My father allowed me to take what I liked from the Macedonian Royal Library. It’s a copy of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, the life of Cyrus the Great of Persia. I thought I might have a chance to discuss it with Polybius during a lull in the proceedings, but that was before I knew I’d be able to spend so much time this evening with Julia.’
‘You read for education, not for pleasure?’
Scipio looked serious. ‘I want to know how to live a good life, Terence. Xenophon was a student of Socrates. But it’s true that my interest in learning lies in its practical application, something Polybius has taught me. Xenophon has a practical take on the problems of war. And Cyrus the Great is someone who intrigues me; in some ways he was the ideal ruler, a benign despot. I want to know what it is that makes people willingly follow some rulers, but not others.’
Julia nudged him, grinning. ‘If you’re planning to become the next Alexander the Great, you can’t learn it; either you have it in you, or you don’t.’
‘That’s true enough. But Alexander could have learned a thing or two about the management of empire. We’re still clearing up his mess.’
‘He had no precedent,’ Terence said. ‘But you do, in him. You must take care that the memory of your achievements does not survive only in fragments, like the falling leaves of autumn, dry and brittle and in danger of crumbling into dust.’
‘You assume there will be a life worthy of recording.’
‘Oh, there will be, Scipio. It doesn’t take the words of an oracle to know that.’
‘Well, Polybius will see to my memory. He’s already completed his Histories of the First and Second Punic Wars, though he’s stalling publication of the second volume until he can visit Zama in North Africa and see the battlefield for himself. It’s not often that a soldier has a close friend who is the greatest historian of the day, a man who shares not only my fascination with military organization but also a practical take on strategy and tactics.’
‘Then let’s hope that when he comes to complete his biography of Scipio Aemilianus he doesn’t stall it like that other volume. Histories left unpublished on the death of an author have a nasty habit of being fiddled by the subject’s enemies, or of disappearing entirely.’
Julia spoke up. ‘I will write a history of Scipio Aemilianus, if Polybius does not. I will follow his life as if I were with him every moment of it, even if from afar.’
Fabius looked at Scipio, and saw a shadow flicker over his face. They all knew that time for him and Julia was running short. Terence leaned over and tapped the scroll. ‘I have heard Polybius speak, in this very house after dinner. Beware of monarchical government, he said. Rome has become great because it threw out its kings three centuries ago.’
‘Are not the consuls kings?’ Scipio exclaimed, his unhappiness fuelling his passion, throwing caution to the wind and not caring who overheard him. ‘And the Pontifex Maximus, and the princeps of the Senate, and the tribunes of the people? Are we not ruled by a committee of kings?’
‘If so, they are elected kings.’
Scipio snorted. ‘Kings elected for only one year, who have no time for great deeds, no time for reform, no time to develop proper administration for the provinces, whose tenure of office is dominated by legal pleading and social obligations, the life I spurned when I went to the academy.’
‘A course that your adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus chose for you.’
‘I wish I had been old enough to talk to him. I wish he had told me that he saw something in me. I grew up feeling an outsider, looked down upon even by the Scipiones for having no interest in playing the political game, as if I were not up to it.’
‘Pe
rhaps that was his design,’ Terence said. ‘He knew it would do a small boy no good to be told that his destiny was greater than those around him. He knew that to achieve greatness you had to be an outsider. He knew that by struggling against adverse opinion, by sometimes feeling inadequate, you would become a stronger person, and that once you recognized your strengths you would develop a burning ambition to compensate for those feelings you had as a child, an ambition that would allow you to rise above them all.’
Julia turned to Scipio. ‘And yet he knew that your ambition would need to be curbed, to be controlled. So your father appointed Polybius to be your mentor. My father Sextus Julius Caesar says there’s no greater check on a man’s ego than to be taught by a good historian who can show how men risen to greatness can so easily fall into obscurity.’
There was a commotion at the door, and Fabius’ heart sank. Metellus came staggering into the peristyle, followed by a cluster of his friends. He looked around, and then spied them, waving a flagon in their direction. ‘Why don’t you come carousing with us, Scipio? Afraid of the prostibulae in the brothels? Maybe you’ve forgotten what to do, spending too long in the company of those Greek eunuchs.’
Fabius saw Scipio’s knuckles whiten as he clutched the edge of the seat, and he gripped Scipio’s wrist. ‘Keep your cool,’ he whispered to him. ‘He’s goading you, but these are just words. If he draws a blade, then that’s another matter.’
‘If he mentions Polybius, I’ll rip his throat out,’ Scipio growled.
‘He’s too clever to do that,’ Julia murmured. ‘He may deride the Greeks, but he knows how much Polybius is respected for his military expertise in the Senate. He knows how to play the game, and he’s not as drunk as he looks.’
Metellus had swayed onto the stage, and took another flagon from one of his companions. ‘Or maybe you can’t afford it,’ Metellus jeered, raising the flagon to the audience and then taking a deep swig. ‘Maybe Scipio Aemilianus has given away all of his money to women, because he’s incapable of giving them any other favours.’
‘That’s my mother he’s talking about, and my sisters, whom I’ve helped to support with my inheritance from Africanus,’ Scipio muttered, his teeth clenched with anger. ‘I’m still a richer man than he is, even so. And he’d better not mention my father’s generosity.’
Julia shook her head. ‘He won’t do it today, at your father’s triumph. He’ll do it when the name of Paullus has faded from memory and he can deride him among his friends for returning from Pydna without a thought for his own pocket. He will use that against you, to show a weakness of character within your gens.’
‘It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength,’ Scipio growled.
Julia turned to him. ‘You gave your adoptive grandmother Aemilia’s fortune to your mother Papira. You paid off the dowries of your adoptive sisters. And when we were together this evening you told me that when the time comes you will give your share of your father’s estate to your brother, and pay half the cost of the funeral games that by rights as eldest son should be his alone to bear; and then when your mother Papira dies you will pass on the fortune that you gave her from Aemilia to your own blood sisters.’
‘I will do those things,’ Scipio said quietly, watching Metellus as he pushed the actors aside and danced around the stage himself, parodying their performance, and then smashed his flagon on the floor and guffawed at his companions, turning back and bowing low to the audience in derision.
‘You’ve been generous to others, Scipio,’ Julia said quickly, as if knowing that her time was nearly up. ‘You’ve made a virtue of being magnanimous, and Polybius and others can hold you up as an example. But be careful. Rome is suspicious of too much generosity, and it will work against you. Metellus will say that you have used your wealth to compensate for the criticisms that others have made against your character, and that it just shows more clearly the weaknesses that he wants to find in you. It’s time you were generous to yourself, Scipio. You must forget the opinion of others and look to your own future.’
‘Julia!’ Metellus’ thick voice bawled from the stage, and he waved a hand in their direction. ‘It’s you I’ve come here for. It’s time I had a taste of my marriage rights. I’ve denied myself the prostibulae this evening so I can show you what I’m worth. This theatre can go to the dogs. We’re leaving now.’
Scipio suddenly leapt out of his seat, bounded across the peristyle and pounced on Metellus, pushing him hard against the wall of the stage and pinning him by his chest. He whipped out the knife he carried on his belt and pressed it against Metellus’ neck, forcing his head upwards. For a few moments Scipio held the position, his face snarling, while everyone watched in stunned silence. Metellus strained his head sideways, staring down at the blade. ‘Go on, Scipio,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Too squeamish for the sight of blood? It’s all that hunting you do. It’s softened you. You should try killing men one day.’
Fabius came up behind Scipio and grasped his wrist with an iron grip, pulling the hand with the knife away and dragging him back, while several of Metellus’ companions did the same for him. He shook them away, straightening himself up, and then marched across to Julia, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into his group. ‘I’ll remember this, Scipio Aemilianus. You should watch your back.’
Fabius continued to hold Scipio as the group staggered off. Terence sat slumped in the corner with his head in his hands, and the audience began to get up and leave. Scipio seemed stunned by what had happened, unaccustomed to losing control, as if his rage against Metellus had been triggered to displace his feelings of impotence over Julia’s departure. Now that she was gone he seemed paralysed by disbelief. Fabius could feel him shaking, and the blood pounding through his veins. Julia glanced back one last time as they rounded the corner, and then they were gone. Fabius released Scipio, took the knife from him and resheathed it, and then led him by the shoulder out of the house and on to the street, facing back in the direction of the Forum. ‘Where to now?’ he said.
Scipio stared grimly ahead, to where the stragglers from Metellus’ group could still be seen, one of them throwing up in a doorway. ‘To the shrine in my house on the Palatine, to honour the memory of my adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus. And then we go to Macedonia, to hunt. I need to be far from men, and far from Rome. We leave tonight.’
Fabius watched Scipio reach up and touch the silver phalera disc on his breastplate that he had been awarded for valour at Pydna. He could guess what Scipio was thinking. The disc was the gift of a father to a son who by rights should not have been there, a year too young to have been appointed to the rank of military tribune. Only Fabius knew that he had truly earned the decoration, that the phalera was not a sign of favouritism, that Scipio had run alone at the phalanx and cleaved his way through the ranks of the enemy until he was dripping with Macedonian blood. But Scipio knew perfectly well that there were others who would not see it that way: detractors and enemies of his father and grandfather, those who would scorn his achievements at Pydna as exaggeration and even use the award of the phalera against him. In the fickle world of Rome, the patronage of his father that had got him to Pydna and put him on the first rung of the military ladder could also be his undoing, allowing his detractors to claim that he had always had an easy ride of it and had hung on the togas of a father and a grandfather he could never hope to emulate.
Fabius knew him well enough to read his thoughts. Scipio loved Rome, and he hated Rome. He loved Rome for giving him the path to military glory, but he hated Rome for taking Julia from him. He remembered what Scipio had said that night when they had shared a flagon of wine staring at the stars from the Circus Maximus. One day he would return here wearing a breastplate of his own, more magnificent than this one, made of gold and silver taken in his own conquests, decorated not with images of past wars but with those of his own greatest victory, a burning citadel with a general standing astride the vanquished leader of Rome’s greatest enemy. He would r
eturn to celebrate the greatest triumph that Rome had ever seen. He would wait until he had received the adulation of the Senate, but then would turn his back on it and discard the ways that had been destined to bring him such unhappiness today, the day of his father’s triumph, also the appointed day of Julia’s betrothal. He would leave the Senate impotent, powerless, because he would take with him the people, the legionaries and the centurions, and together they would forge the greatest army the world had ever seen – one that would break free from the shackles of Rome and sweep all before it, led by a general whose conquests would make those of Alexander the Great seem paltry by comparison.
The last of the men ahead of them staggered away, shouting slurred words of contempt, one of them hurtling a half-full flagon of wine that smashed and left a red smear across the road. Already the glow from the huge fires on the Field of Mars could be seen, the signal that the evening’s bloodletting was well underway.
Fabius turned to Scipio, who was still staring ahead. He remembered when they had fought alongside each other in the backstreets of Rome almost ten years before, beating off the gang that had been pursing them, and afterwards Fabius had lifted him up and dusted him off. Scipio had laughed with pleasure at finding a new friend and sparring partner, at the freedom he had discovered on the streets outside the stifling conventions of his aristocratic background, conventions that had now taken Julia from him. But Fabius also remembered the hardness he had seen in those eyes, a hardness that others around him saw and feared, a fear that led the boys who were now those drunken young men to deride him for not being one of them. Fabius would have to see to it that the hardness remained, that Scipio would ride out this storm as he had ridden out the derision of others, that he did not fall into bitterness and self-destruction. He knew what they had to do.
Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage Page 11