Roma

by Steven Saylor

  Again Titus gazed out the window. For most of his life, work on the temple had been progressing. With the huge columns and massive pediment finally in place, its final form was becoming more evident with each passing month. Even men who had traveled far beyond Roma, to the great cities of Greece and Egypt, said they had never seen a building so grand. “No wonder they call him Tarquinius the Proud,” murmured Titus.

  The old man stiffened. “What did you say?”

  “Tarquinius the Proud—that’s what I’ve heard men call the king.”

  “What men? Where?”

  Titus shrugged. “Strangers. Shopkeepers. People passing in the Forum or on the street.”

  “Don’t listen to them. And don’t repeat what they say!”

  “But why not?”

  “Just do as I say!”

  Titus bowed his head. His grandfather was the eldest of the Potitii, the paterfamilias. His will within the family was law, and it was not Titus’s place ever to question him.

  The old man sighed. “I will explain, but only once. When men use that word about the king, they do not mean it as a compliment. Quite the opposite; they mean that he is arrogant, stubborn, and vain. So do not say such a thing aloud, not even to me. Words can be dangerous, especially words meant to wound a king.”

  Titus nodded gravely, then frowned. “One thing puzzles me, grandfather. You say the monarchy is not hereditary, but the present King Tarquinius’s father was also king.”

  “Yes, but the crown did not pass directly from father to son.”

  “I know; Servius Tullius came between. But didn’t Tarquinius kill him, and that’s how he became king?”

  The old man drew a quick breath, but did not reply. Titus was old enough to be taught the list of kings and their principal achievements, but not yet old enough to be taught about the political machinations that had brought each king to the throne and the scandals that had attended each reign. To a young man who could not yet understand the importance of discretion, one hesitated to speak ill even of kings long dead; one certainly did not speak ill of a living king. About Tarquinius and the murders that had brought him to the throne, and all the murders that had followed, there was little to say that was fit for the boy’s ears.

  Ambitious to become a king like his father, Tarquinius had married one of the two daughters of his father’s successor, Servius Tullius, but when she proved to be more loyal to her father than to Tarquinius, he decided he preferred her more ruthless sister. When Tarquinius’s wife conveniently died, as did the husband of his sister-in-law, and the two bereaved spouses married one another, the word “poison” was whispered all over Roma. In short order, Tarquinius and his new wife murdered her father, and Tarquinius declared himself king, dispensing with the formalities of election by the people and confirmation by the Senate.

  Having seized the throne by force, Tarquinius ruled by fear. Previous kings had consulted the Senate on important matters and called upon them to act as jurors. Tarquinius showed only contempt for the Senate. He claimed sole authority to judge capital cases, and used that authority to punish innocent men with death or exile; he confiscated his victims’ property to pay for his grand schemes, including the new temple. The Senate had grown to include three hundred members, but its numbers diminished as the king destroyed one after another of its wealthiest, most prominent men. His sons grew to be as arrogant as their father, and there were rumors that Tarquinius planned to name one of them as his heir, abolishing outright the ancient rules of nonhereditary succession and election by the people.

  The old man sighed and changed the subject. “Fetch your stylus and wax tablet. You shall practice your writing skills.”

  Titus dutifully took the instruments from a special box in which they were kept. The tablet was a framed piece of flat wood upon which a thick coating of wax had been laid down. The stylus was a heavy iron rod with a sharpened tip, of a circumference to comfortably fit a boy’s hand. The wax had been written on only a few times, then rubbed flat afterward for the next lesson.

  “Write the name of the seven kings, in order,” said his grandfather. Writing was a skill the Romans had learned from the Etruscans; the Etruscans had learned it from the people of Magna Graecia—Greeks who in recent generations had colonized southern Italy, bringing with them the advantages of a culture more advanced and refined than those of the native Italians. Writing, especially, had proven to be of great value. Records and lists could be kept, royal proclamations and laws could be written down, corrections and additions could be made to the calendar, and messages could be sent from one place to another. To master the skill required great diligence, and it was best learned at an early age. As a hereditary priest of Hercules, and as a member of the patrician class—a descendent of one of Roma’s founding families—with the prospect of someday becoming a senator like his grandfather, it was very much to young Titus’s advantage to learn to read and to write.

  Usually, Titus was very conscientious about forming letters, but on this day he seemed unable to concentrate. He kept making mistakes, rubbing them clear, then starting over. Repeatedly, he looked toward the window. His grandfather smiled. To capture a boy’s imagination, the making of letters in wax could not hope to compete with the construction of the new temple. Titus’s fascination with the project was perhaps not a bad thing; a knowledge of how such a building was made might serve him well someday.

  He waited until Titus had painstakingly written the “s” at the end of Tarquinius, then patted him on the head. “Good enough,” he said. “Your lessons are over for today. You may go now.”

  Titus looked up at him in surprise.

  “Did I not tell you to go?” said his grandfather. “I’m a bit tired today. Being compared to that head discovered on the Capitoline has made me feel my age! Smooth the wax, put away your stylus, and then be off. And say hello to that fellow Vulca for me!”

  The afternoon was warm and sunny, with hours of daylight left. Titus ran all the way from his family’s house on the Palatine down to the Forum, then uphill again to the top of the Capitoline. He didn’t stop until he reached the Tarpeian Rock, the sheer summit from which traitors were hurled to their death. The rock also provided a panoramic view of the city below. His friend Gnaeus Marcius loved to play with miniature wooden soldiers, pretending to be their commander; Titus preferred to gaze down at the city of Roma as if its buildings were toys, and to imagine rearranging them and constructing new ones.

  Roma had changed much since the days of Romulus. Where once the Seven Hills had been covered by forests and pastures, and the settlements had been small and scattered, now there were buildings everywhere one looked, built close together with dirt and gravel streets running between them. Some citizens still lived in thatched huts and kept animals in pens, but many homes were now made of wood, some rising to two stories, and the houses of wealthy families—such as the Potitii—were grand affairs made of brick and stone with shuttered windows, interior courtyards, terraces, and tile roofs. The Forum had become the civic center of Roma, with a paved street called the Sacred Way running through it; it was the site of numerous temples and shrines and also of the Senate House. The marketplace beside the river was now called the Forum Bovarium, from the word bovinus, referring to its ancient and continuing role as a cattle market; it had become the great emporium of central Italy. The original settlement at the foot of the Capitoline, including the ancestral hut of the Potitii, had long ago been cleared away and built over to make room for the expanding marketplace. At the heart of the Forum Bovarium stood the ancient Ara Maxima, where once a year Titus and his family, along with the Pinarii, celebrated the Feast of Hercules.

  Roma under the kings had prospered and grown. Now the grandest sign of the city’s progress was rising on the summit of the Capitoline. Turning his back on the panoramic view, Titus gazed up at the magnificent project which each day drew nearer to completion. Since his last visit to the site, a new section of scaffolding had gone up along the front o
f the temple. The workers on the top tier were applying plaster to the recessed surface of the pediment.

  “Titus, my friend! I haven’t you seen for a while.” The speaker was a tall man with strands of gray in his beard, about the age of Titus’s father. There was plaster dust on his blue tunic. He carried a stylus and a small wax tablet for making sketches.

  “Vulca! I’ve been very busy with my studies lately. But my grandfather let me go early today.”

  “Excellent! I have something very special to show you.” The man smiled and gestured for him to follow.

  Vulca was an Etruscan, famous all over Italy as an architect and artist. King Tarquinius had employed him not only to oversee construction of the temple, but to decorate it inside and out. The building was made of common materials—wood, brick, and plaster—but when Vulca was done painting, it would be dazzling: yellow, black, and white for the walls and columns, red for the capitals and the bases of the columns, more red to trim the pediment, and many shades of green and blue to highlight the small architectural details.

  But the most impressive of Vulca’s creations would be the statues of the gods. Properly speaking, the statues were not ornaments; they would not decorate the temple, but rather, the temple would exist to house the sacred statues. Vulca had described his intentions to Titus many times, and had drawn sketches on his wax tablet to illustrate, but Titus had not yet seen them; the terra-cotta statues were being made in great secrecy in a concealed workshop on the Capitoline, to which only Vulca and his most skilled artisans had access. Titus was greatly surprised when the artist led him though a makeshift doorway into a walled-off area beside the temple, and even more surprised when they rounded a corner and a statue of Jupiter confronted them.

  Titus gasped. The statue was of red terra-cotta, not yet painted, but the impression that the god was physically present was nonetheless overwhelming. Seated on a throne, the bearded, powerfully built father of gods looked down on him with a serene countenance. Jupiter was dressed in a toga, much like the royal garment the king wore, and in his right hand, instead of a scepter, he held a thunderbolt.

  “The toga will be painted purple, with a border of gold foil,” Vulca explained. “The thunderbolt will be gold, as well. The king balked when he learned the expense of the gold foil, until I pointed out what a thunderbolt made from solid gold would cost him.”

  Titus was awed. “Magnificent!” he whispered. “I never imagined…I mean, you’ve described to me what the statue would look like, but in my imagination I could never really…it’s so…so much more…” His shook his head. Words failed him.

  “Of course, no one will ever see the god this close. Jupiter will be positioned on a suitably ornate pedestal at the back of the main chamber, so as to gaze down on everyone who enters. The other two will be placed in their own, smaller chambers, Juno to the right and Minerva to the left.”

  Tearing his eyes from the Jupiter, Titus saw the other two figures beyond. These were not as far advanced. The Juno had not yet been given a head. The Minerva was little more than an armature that suggested the shape to come.

  Then his eyes fell on a sight even more fantastic than the Jupiter. His gasp of astonishment was so loud that Vulca laughed.

  The piece was huge, and so complex that it boggled Titus’s imagination. It was a larger-than-life-size statue of Jupiter in a quadriga—a chariot pulled by four horses. The standing Jupiter, holding his thunderbolt aloft, was even more impressive than the Jupiter enthroned. The four horses, each different, were sculpted with remarkable detail, from the flashing eyes and flaring nostrils to the muscular limbs and magnificent tails. The chariot was made of wood and bronze, like a real vehicle, but of giant size, with extravagant designs and decorations on every surface.

  “It all comes apart, of course, so that it can be reassembled atop the pediment,” explained Vulca. “The horses will be painted white—four magnificent, snow-white steeds worthy of the king of the gods. The attachment of this sculpture to the pediment will be the final step in the construction. Once Jupiter and the quadriga are firmly in place and fully painted, the temple will be ready to be dedicated.”

  Titus gaped. “Vulca, I can’t believe you’re showing me this. Who else has seen it?”

  “Only my workmen. And the king, of course, since he’s paying for it.”

  “But why are you showing me?”

  Vulca said something in Etruscan, then translated it into Latin: “If the flea hangs around long enough, sooner or later he’ll see the dog’s balls.” When Titus looked at him blankly, Vulca laughed. “That’s a very old, very vulgar Etruscan saying, young man, of which your staid grandfather would doubtless disapprove. How many times did I see you skulking about the work site before I called you over and asked your name? And how many times have you been back since then? And how many questions have you asked me about the tools and the materials and all the processes? I don’t think I can count that high! I daresay there’s not a man in all Roma, outside myself, who knows this building better than you do, Titus Potitius. If I were to die tomorrow, you could tell the workmen what remains to be done.”

  “But you won’t die, Vulca! Jupiter would never allow it!”

  “Nor would the king, not until I’m done with his temple.”

  Titus walked up to one of the horses and dared to touch it. “I never imagined they would be so big, and so beautiful. This will be the greatest temple ever built, anywhere.”

  “I’d like to think so,” said Vulca.

  Abruptly, Titus gave a yelp. He reached up to rub the spot where a pebble had struck his head. He caught a glimpse of another stone descending on him from the sky and jumped aside.

  From beyond the wall which hid the works in progress came the sound of boyish giggling.

  Vulca raised an eyebrow. “I believe that must be your two friends, Titus. I’m afraid they are not invited to see the statues, so if you want to join them, you’ll have to step outside.”

  “Titus!” called one of the boys outside, in a loud whisper. “What are you doing in there? Is that crazy old Etruscan molesting you?” There was more giggling.

  Titus blushed. Vulca tousled the boy’s blond hair and smiled. “Don’t worry, Titus. I long ago stopped taking offense at schoolboy taunts. Run along now, and see what those two want from you.”

  Reluctantly, Titus took his leave of Vulca and made his way out of the enclosure. From behind a stack of bricks, his friends Publius Pinarius and Gnaeus Marcius staged a playful ambush, one of them grabbing his arms while the other tickled him. Titus broke free. The others chased him all the way to the Tarpeian Rock, where they all came to an abrupt halt, laughing hard and gasping for breath.

  “What was the Etruscan showing you in there?” demanded Gnaeus.

  “I think they were playing a game,” said Publius. “The Etruscan said, ‘I’ll show you my measuring rod, if you’ll show me your Fascinus.’” He flicked his finger against the amulet at Titus’s neck.

  “Not much of a game,” said Gnaeus. “Anyone can see Titus’s Fascinus!”

  Titus made a face and tucked the amulet inside his tunic, out of sight. “You two aren’t worthy to look on the god, anyway.”

  “I am!” protested Publius. “Am I not your fellow priest of Hercules? And am I not as much a patrician as you? Last February, did I not run beside you in the Lupercalia? Whereas our friend Gnaeus here…”

  Gnaeus shot him an angry look. Publius had touched on a subject about which Gnaeus was increasingly sensitive. Publius and Titus were both of the patrician class, descendents of the first senators whom Romulus had called the fathers, or patres, of Roma. The patricians jealously guarded the ancient privileges of their class. The rest of the citizenry, rich and poor alike, were simply the common people, or plebeians. Plebeians could attain wealth through commerce and distinction on the battlefield. They could even attain great power—Gnaeus’s distant relative, Ancus Marcius, had become king—but they could never claim the prestige which attached t
o the patricians.

  To be sure, Gnaeus’s mother was a patrician; Veturia came from a family almost as old as the Potitii and the Pinarii. But his deceased father had been a plebeian, and, following the law of paterfamilias, a son was assigned to the class of the father. To Titus and Publius, their friend’s plebeian status was of little consequence; Gnaeus was the best athlete, the most skilled equestrian, and the handsomest and smartest boy they knew. But to Gnaeus, class mattered a great deal. His father had died in battle when he was quite young, and he identified more closely with his mother and her family. Veturia had raised him to be as proud as any patrician, and it vexed him greatly that a patrician was the one thing he could never be. Perversely, he had no sympathy with plebeians who argued that class distinctions should be erased; Gnaeus always took the patrician side and showed nothing but contempt for what he called “upstart plebs.”

  Gnaeus usually carried himself with aloof self-confidence, a trait which Titus greatly admired; his demeanor matched his haughty good looks. But the irony of his class loyalty was the flaw in his armor; Publius, who enjoyed getting a rise from him, could not resist alluding now and then to Gnaeus’s plebeian status. On this occasion, Gnaeus hardly blinked. He fixed the other boy with a steely gaze.

  “Very soon, Publius Pinarius, we three shall be of fighting age. Every Roman fights; it is the highest duty that Roma demands of her citizens, that they train every spring and go forth every summer in search of fresh booty. But not every Roman achieves the same degree of glory. The poorer plebs, with their rusty swords and ramshackle armor, who must fight on foot because they cannot afford a horse, have a hard time of it; we can only pity them, and expect little glory from their bloodshed. But from men of property, like ourselves, who can afford the very best weapons and armor, who have time to train and opportunity to master the fine art of horsemanship, Roma expects much more. Glory is what matters in this world. Only the greatest warrior attains the highest glory. That is what I intend to become, if only to make my mother proud of me: the greatest warrior that Roma has ever seen. For now, Publius, you can taunt me all you want, because as yet we’re still only boys, without glory. But soon we will be men. Then the gods will see which of us can more proudly call himself a Roman.”