Roma

by Steven Saylor

  To reward his bravest warriors and most steadfast supporters, he established an elite body called the Senate. To its one hundred members he granted special privileges and delegated special duties. Potitius was among the first senators. So was Pinarius.

  Romulus altered and added to the calendar of festivals. The Palilia had been celebrated every spring since a time beyond memory; because of the holiday’s proximity to the groundbreaking ceremony for Roma, the Palilia had also become the occasion to celebrate the birth of the city. Only old men in their fifties, like Potitius, could remember a time when the Palilia had been a festival unto itself, with no connection to the founding of Roma.

  The running of the wolflings had also become an annual event, which greatly amused Potitius. How his late father, in his dotage, had railed against this development! Each winter, on the anniversary of the occasion when Romulus, Remus, and Potitius had run naked around the Seven Hills, the Romans celebrated the Lupercalia, a festival in honor of Lupercus, god of flocks. A goat was sacrificed. The young sons of senators caroused naked, but instead of adorning themselves with wolf skins and brandishing wolf-hide straps, they carried strips of hide from the sacrificed goat. Young women offered their wrists to be slapped, believing that contact with the sacred fleece enhanced their fertility; to be sure, a great many babies were born nine months after the Lupercalia. The ritual which began as a celebration of predators now celebrated the flock, as befitted a civilized people who lived within a protective enclosure under the rule of a king.

  Other traditions remained intact and unchanged throughout the king’s long reign. The Feast of Hercules was still performed at the Ara Maxima each year exactly as it had been for generations, with the Pinarii pretending to arrive late for the feast and the Potitii claiming the exclusive privilege of eating of the entrails offered to the god.

  For the fifty-fourth time in his life—and, though he did not know it, the last time—Potitius had taken part in the Feast of Hercules. His eldest grandson, for the first time, had joined in the ritual, waving the sacred oxtail whisk to keep flies away from the Ara Maxima. The boy had done a good job. Potitius was proud of him, and had been in a good mood all day, despite the heat, and despite the unavoidable, annual unpleasantness of having to deal with his fellow priest and cousin Pinarius.

  Now the feast was over. Potitius had retired to his hut on the Palatine and was lying down for a nap. Valeria, his wife of many years, lay beside him, her eyes closed. She had eaten her fill at the feast and was also sleepy.

  Potitius gazed at his wife and felt a great swelling of love and tenderness. Her hair was almost as gray and her face as wrinkled as his own, but he still found pleasure in looking at her. She had been a loyal wife, a wise and patient mother, and a good partner. If nothing else, life had given him Valeria. Or, to give proper credit: If nothing else, Romulus had given him Valeria.

  In a few days, the people of Roma would celebrate the great midsummer festival, the Consualia. Potitius could not think of Valeria without thinking of the Consualia; he could not think of the Consualia without thinking of Valeria, and remembering…

  The very first Consualia—though the festival would only later receive its name—had been celebrated by Romulus early in his reign. He had decreed a festival of athletic contests to be held in the long valley between the Palatine and the Aventine—foot races, somersaulting, demonstrations of daring on horseback, and stone-hurling competitions. To join in friendly competition with the youths of Roma, Romulus invited some of the city’s neighbors—members of a tribe called the Sabines who had settled on the most northern of the Seven Hills. The Sabines called this hill the Quirinal, after their chief god, Quirinus.

  The ostensible purpose of that first Consualia had been athletic competitions; but Romulus had a surprise in store for the unsuspecting visitors.

  Potitius, when he had been made aware of Romulus’s secret plan, had strongly protested. Hospitality to visitors was a law decreed by the gods. Every priest in every land agreed: A traveler with honest intentions must always be welcomed, and it was the duty of his host to keep him safe. What Romulus was plotting—encouraged, Potitius had no doubt, by his counselor, Pinarius—went against every law of hospitality.

  Potitius tried to dissuade him, but the king was adamant. “There are too many men in Roma, and not enough women, and more men arrive every day,” he insisted. “The Sabines on the Quirinal have a surplus of young women. I’ve made overtures to their leader, Titus Tatius, inviting him to send brides for my men, but he refuses; their mothers complain that the Romans are too uncouth. They want their daughters to marry other Sabines, even if it means they must leave the Quirinal to go live with the tribes in the mountains. This is nonsense! My men deserve wives. Are they not good enough for the Sabine women? As for impiety, I have prayed to the god Consus for guidance on this matter.”

  “The god of secret counsels?”

  “Yes. And by various signs he has shown his favor.”

  Romulus had carried out his design. The Sabine youths arrived to take part in the competitions. The Sabine elders and women came to watch; it was easy to tell which of the women were unmarried, for the matrons stayed in one group and the virgins in another. All the Sabines arrived unarmed, as befitted invited guests. The contests proceeded. The Sabine youths exerted themselves to the utmost, exhausting themselves, while the Romans held back and saved their strength. At a signal from Romulus, some of the Romans seized the unmarried Sabine women and carried them off, into the fortified city, while others took up arms. The Sabine men, unarmed and exhausted, were easily driven off.

  That had not been the end of the matter. Titus Tatius, at first determined to take back the women, called upon his relatives among the Sabine tribes to help him, but he could not muster enough manpower to seriously lay siege to Roma. Many a skirmish and ambush followed; meanwhile, Romulus encouraged his men to court the captive women and win them over without force. Many of the women eventually married their suitors, willingly, and gave birth to children; even those who were unhappy in Roma began to realize that they could not return to their homes on the Quirinal, for the other Sabines would consider them compromised and unfit for marriage. Eventually, Titus Tatius decided to make the best of a bad situation and to end the dispute by negotiation. Romulus made a settlement of goods to the families of the seized women, and in return the Sabines recognized the marriages and agreed to resume peaceful relations. Some hard feelings lingered, but in the end, the intermarriage of the two groups drew them closer together, and Romulus and Titus Tatius formed a long-lasting alliance.

  Potitius had never stopped protesting the plan to seize the Sabine women—until the moment he laid eyes on Valeria. She had been among the other Sabine virgins being held against her will in the walled courtyard of the king’s house. Looking frightened and miserable, she had not been the most beautiful of the Sabines, but some quality about her attracted Potitius’s gaze, and he could not look away. Pinarius saw him staring and whispered in his ear, “Do you want her, cousin? Take her—or else I will!” As the two men approached her, Valeria cowered at the predatory gleam in Pinarius’s eyes, but when she saw Potitius, who looked as miserable as herself, a very different emotion lit her face. In that moment, a bond was forged between them that was to last a lifetime. Of all the Sabine women, Valeria had been the very first to marry one of the captors willingly. Their child had been the first to be born to a Roman and a Sabine.

  Romulus himself married one of the Sabines, Hersilia. Their marriage was happy, but barren. Potitius, who had many children, wondered if the gods had cursed Romulus to remain childless because he had so flagrantly violated the sacred laws of hospitality to capture the Sabine women. If the king himself harbored such thoughts, he never spoke them aloud.

  Romulus did, however, develop strong ideas about marriage and family life. As king, he made his ideas into law. No marriage could ever be dissolved, although a husband had the right to put his wife to death if she committed adul
tery or drank wine (because drinking wine, Romulus believed, led women to adultery). Over his children and their children, a father wielded absolute control during his entire life; he could hire them out to others as laborers, imprison them, beat them, or even put them to death. No son ever outgrew the legal authority of his father. This was the law of the paterfamilias—the supreme head of the household—and it was to remain absolute and unquestioned in Roma for centuries to come.

  These things Potitius remembered and pondered, thinking of Valeria, and the first Consualia, and the so-called rape of the Sabine women. If nothing else, Romulus had given him Valeria…

  Beside him, Valeria slept. Potitius could tell, because she was gently snoring. Studying her face, remembering all their years together, he decided that their marriage would have been a successful one with or without the stern laws of Romulus, just as their children would have grown up to be respectful and obedient whether or not the king had decreed the law of paterfamilias. Potitius’s own father had often disapproved of his decisions, but would never have invoked a law to punish him or to break his will. What did Romulus—who had no sons or daughters, who claimed to have no human father—know about raising children or respecting a father? And yet, the world that came after Romulus would be different from the world that came before him, because of the laws he imposed on the families of Roma.

  There was a rapping at the door to his hut. Moving quickly but carefully so as not to wake Valeria, Potitius went to answer the door. The afternoon sunlight dazzled his eyes and made a silhouette of his visitor, and Potitius did not recognize him until he spoke.

  “Good afternoon, cousin.”

  “Pinarius! What are you doing here? The feast is over. I thought I wouldn’t have to see your face again for at least a year!”

  “Unkind words, cousin. Will you not invite me in?”

  “What do we have to say to one another?”

  “Invite me in, and find out.”

  Potitius frowned, but stepped aside to let Pinarius enter. He shut the door. “Keep your voice low. Valeria is asleep.” From behind the wicker screen that hid their bed, he could hear her quiet snoring.

  “I took a good look at her at the feast today,” said Pinarius. “She’s still a handsome woman. If only I had moved a bit faster than you, all those years ago—”

  “Why are you here?”

  Pinarius lowered his voice even more. “A change is coming, cousin. Some of us will survive it. Others will not.”

  “Speak plainly.”

  “You’ve always had differences with the king. Over and over you’ve opposed him, since the very beginning of his reign. If I were to tell you that his reign will soon be over, would you shed a tear?”

  “Nonsense! Romulus is as fit as a man half his age. He still leads his warriors into battle and fights in the front rank. He’ll live to be a hundred.”

  Pinarius sighed and shook his head. “You really have no idea of what’s going on, do you, cousin?”

  This was how Pinarius always spoke to him—in riddles, with a mixture of pity and scorn. But Potitius realized that his cousin was serious, and speaking of something very grave. “Tell me, then. What’s going on behind the king’s back?”

  “The senators grumble that the king has become too arrogant, that he’s reigned too long, that he takes his power for granted and abuses it. You’ve seen how he strides across the Palatine in his scarlet tunic and purple-bordered robe, surrounded by his coterie of surly young warriors. Lictors, he calls them, using the Etruscan word for a royal bodyguard—yet another of his affectations. The other day, when he deigned to attend a meeting of the Senate, he sat on his plush throne and gazed down on us, not even paying attention; he laughed and joked with his lictors instead. His ears perked up only when some wastrel, a lazy swineherd, appeared before him with a trumped-up complaint against a respectable man of property. And how did Romulus rule? For the swineherd and against the senator! While we were still gaping at that outrage, he announced that he would divvy up a newly conquered parcel of prime farmland among his soldiers, without consulting us—or giving us a share. What’s next? Will the king start throwing his old comrades out of the Senate and replacing us with swineherds and nobodies who arrived in Roma yesterday?”

  Potitius laughed. “Romulus loves the common people, and they love him. And why not? He was raised by a swineherd! He may live in a palace, but his heart is in the pigsty. He loves his soldiers, too, and they love him. He was born to be a troublemaker and a rabble-rouser. Pity the poor senators who’ve grown too greedy and too fat to keep the king’s love! You complain that he’s arrogant, but what do you care if Romulus parades about in a purple robe? You care only about protecting your own privileges against newcomers and common folk who don’t know their place.”

  Pinarius thrust out his jaw. “Maybe so, cousin, but things cannot go on as they are. A day of reckoning approaches, a day marked in the calendar of the heavens.”

  Potitius grunted. “There have always been plots against Romulus—and Romulus has always put a stop to them. Are you here to tell me that another plot is being hatched? Are you asking me to take part?”

  “Cousin, you always see though me!” Pinarius smiled. “To you I never tell the truth—yet from you I have no secrets.”

  Potitius shook his head. “I’ll have nothing to do with any plot to harm the king.” Behind the screen, Valeria sighed and turned in her sleep. “I’ll hear no more of this. You should go.”

  “You’re a fool, Potitius. You always have been.”

  “Maybe so. But I won’t be a traitor as well.”

  “Then at least keep your distance from the king, if you want to keep your head. What’s the Etruscan saying? ‘When the scythe cuts the weed, the grass is cropped as well.’ You’ll know the time of reckoning has arrived when the light of the sun fails, and day turns to night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your Etruscans taught you much about divination, Potitius, but they taught you nothing about celestial phenomena. That study was left to me. Years ago, Romulus charged me with finding wise men who could predict the movements of the sun and moon and stars, so that we could better chart the seasons and fix the days of the festivals. There are ways of knowing in advance when certain rare events will occur. A day is coming when, for a brief while, the light of the sun will go out, and the gods will withdraw their favor from the king. Romulus will leave this earth, along with anyone who stands too close to him. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that you’re even madder than I thought!”

  “You’ve been warned, cousin. I’ve done my best to save you. But if you breathe a word of this to anyone, the lovely Valeria will become a widow before she needs to.”

  “Get out of my home, cousin!”

  Without another word, Pinarius departed.

  After his visit from Pinarius, Potitius suffered sleepless nights. He had no doubt that his cousin’s knowledge of a plot against the king was genuine; nor did he doubt that Pinarius’s parting threat was sincere. Should he warn Romulus? Over and over in his mind Potitius imagined doing so, yet he could not find the will to act. Was it because he feared Pinarius? Or was it because, despite his protestations of loyalty, his relations with the king had grown as strained as those of the other senators?

  Pinarius had left him with the impression that an attack on Romulus was imminent. Only a few days later, Roma celebrated the festival of Consualia, with rituals and competitions to commemorate the first athletic games and the taking of the Sabine women. Potitius’s duties as a haruspex required his attendance on the king, and he spent the day of the Consualia in an agony of suspense. First, a sacrifice was made to Consus, the god of secret deliberations, to whom Romulus had prayed when formulating his plan to seize the Sabine women, and to whom Romulus had erected an altar after his success. The Altar of Consus was kept buried during the rest of the year and uncovered only for the Consualia, when the king asked for the god’s continued bl
essing for his covert schemes. What more appropriate day could there be for an attack on Romulus, plotted in secret? Pinarius, too, attended the king, and Potitius watched him closely; but Pinarius showed no signs of strain or high emotion. The sacrifice to Consus was propitious, the games were blessed with splendid weather, and the day passed without incident.

  More days came and went with no attack on Romulus, yet Potitius felt no respite from the anxiety that spoiled his sleep. He found himself watching the king and the senators with fresh eyes. Everything Pinarius had said was true. The king had grown arrogant and careless; he blatantly favored young warriors and newcomers, and just as blatantly showed contempt to his old comrades. The senators concealed their anger in the king’s presence, but after he and his young lictors passed by, hatred erupted on their faces and they fell to whispering among themselves—whispers that ceased the moment Potitius drew close enough to hear.

  716 B.C.

  Summer passed to fall, fall to winter, and winter to spring. Another summer approached, and still the senators did not act. The reign of the king seemed as unshakable as ever. Had the conspirators changed their minds? Had the celestial phenomenon predicted by Pinarius failed to occur? Or had his cousin’s overture to join the plot, and Potitius’s refusal, been reason enough for its cancellation? Potitius had no way of knowing, for the other senators barred him from their counsels. He had forfeited any chance to warn the king by waiting too long; how could he explain to Romulus his procrastination in the face of such a threat? Potitius found himself friendless and alone.

  He told himself that the plot against Romulus, like every previous plot, had come to nothing. Nevertheless, a feeling of impending doom settled over him. He could not shake its grip.