Roma

by Steven Saylor

  “The gods are surely smiling upon me, that I should rescue this child, and receive such a pledge from you, in the space of two days! But…”

  “What is it, Pennatus? Speak!”

  “If you truly wish to reward a humble slave for his service on the Capitoline, I have a different request to make. Not so much for myself—for what am I except a broken thread in the great tapestry woven by of the Fates?—but for the sake of this helpless, innocent child.”

  Dorso pursed his lips. “Go on.”

  “What use is freedom to me? On my own, in such a devastated city, a dull fellow like me would probably starve. I would much prefer that you purchase me outright and keep me as your slave. I promise that I shall strive every day to prove my worthiness to be your trusted servant. I shall be honored to be the slave of the bravest descendent of the bravest of all Roman houses, the Fabii. And if someday, after my years of service, you should see fit to manumit me, I will proudly bear a freedman’s name that honors my former master: Gaius Fabius Dorso Pennatus.”

  Dorso was not immune to flattery, even from a slave. “I see your point. I will be glad to honor this request. You shall be the most senior of the slaves in my household, and my trusted friend.”

  “And also—though I know this is an extraordinary request, still I feel compelled to make it—I ask that you adopt this foundling, and raise him as your own son.” Seeing the look of surprise on Dorso’s face, Pennatus pressed on. “Is there not an ancient precedent for such an act? Romulus and Remus were foundlings, the flotsam left behind by a great flood; so, too, this child was left behind when the Gauls at last receded. Faustulus adopted the Twins and never had cause to regret it, for the gods meant him to do so, and surely you shall not regret it if you adopt this foundling.”

  Dorso raised an eyebrow. Why was Pennatus so interested in the child? He claimed to see the newborn as an omen, but seeing omens and bowing to the will of the gods was not in character for Pennatus, unless his captivity on the Capitoline had truly transformed him. Was it not more likely that Pennatus’s concern for the newborn sprang from a more personal reason? In his head, Dorso had already done some simple arithmetic. The occupation and siege had lasted seven months; a normal pregnancy lasted about nine months. It was not hard to imagine that Pennatus had enjoyed a dalliance shortly before the arrival of the Gauls, and then, during the occupation, had became separated from his lover—probably a slave girl, but possibly a free woman, perhaps even high-born, for such things did happen. Now Pennatus had descended from the Capitoline to discover that he was the father of a newborn. Whether slave or free, the mother felt obliged to relinquish the child rather than keep it—and now the wily slave sought, by this gambit, to make his own bastard the son of a Fabius!

  Dorso felt an impulse to call Pennatus’s bluff and demand the truth from him. And yet…the gods worked their will in mysterious ways, using doubters and disbelievers and even slaves as their unwitting vessels. Pennatus might think he was getting the better of his new master; but in fact, it might be that the gods were guiding both men to do exactly what the gods desired.

  Dorso recalled the long walk from the Capitoline to the Quirinal, with Pennatus following behind him. In retrospect, the mad boldness of the act took his breath away, yet it had proved to be the best thing he had ever done, or probably ever would do. That action had made him a famous man; his name would be spoken and revered long after he died. On that day, Dorso had become immortal—and Pennatus had been there with him, every step of the way, helping him keep up his courage simply by showing no fear. Pennatus had done no less than Dorso, yet he would be forgotten by posterity. Did Dorso not owe a debt to Pennatus—a debt so great that it demanded a repayment as bold as the walk to the Quirinal itself?

  Dorso nodded gravely. “Very well, Pennatus. I will adopt your…I will adopt the child. He shall be my son.” He took the baby in his arms and smiled at the tiny infant, then laughed aloud at the look of wonderment on Pennatus’s face. “Did you not expect that I would say yes?”

  “I hoped…I dreamed…I prayed…” Pennatus dropped to his knees, clutched Dorso’s hand, and kissed it. “May the gods bless you, master!” Reflexively, he reached to clutch the talisman of Fascinus at his breast, but his fingers touched only his own bare flesh.

  The scattered exiles returned to Roma. Little by little, order was reestablished in the devastated city. The Senate reassembled. The magistrates resumed their offices.

  Almost at once, the Veii Question was raised again. Camillus was determined to settle the matter, once and for all.

  A few of the most radical of the tribunes of the plebs argued that the city was so ruined, and its sacred places so polluted by the Gauls, that Roma should be abandoned altogether. They proposed that the entire population should move at once to Veii, where many of the exiles had taken shelter during the occupation and had begun to feel at home. Ignoring all other possibilities, Camillus seized on this argument and decided to frame the debate as an all-or-nothing proposition: Would the citizens completely abandon Roma and move to Veii, or would they pull down every building in Veii for materials to rebuild Roma?

  With the Senate united behind him, Camillus came before the people assembled in the Forum. He mounted the speaker’s platform to address them.

  “Fellow citizens, so painful to me are these controversies stirred up by the tribunes of the plebs, that in all the time I lived in bitter exile my one consolation was that I was far removed from this unending squabbling! To contend with this nonsense, I would never have returned even if you recalled me by a thousand senatorial decrees. But now I have returned, because my city needed me—and now needs me again, to fight an even more desperate battle, for her very existence! Why did we suffer and shed our blood to deliver her from our enemies, if now we mean to desert her? While the Gauls held the city, a small band of brave men held out atop the Capitoline, refusing to abandon Roma. Now the tribunes would do what the Gaul could not—they would force those brave Romans, as well as the rest of us, to leave the city. Is this a victory, to lose the thing dearest to us?

  “Above every other concern, the will of the gods must be considered. When we follow divine guidance, all goes well. When we neglect it, the result is disaster! A voice from the heavens announced the coming of the Gauls to Marcus Caedicius—a clear warning to mind ourselves—and yet, soon after, one of our ambassadors to the Gauls flagrantly violated sacred law and took up arms against them. Instead of being chastised by the people, the offender was rewarded. Soon after, the gods punished us by allowing the Gauls to take our beloved Roma.

  “But during the occupation, acts of such great piety occurred that the favor of the gods was restored to us. Against impossible odds, Gaius Fabius Dorso performed a miraculous feat. To honor the divine founder of the city, he left the safety of the Capitoline and walked to the Quirinal, unarmed and oblivious to danger. So overwhelming was the aura of sanctity that shielded him that he returned unscathed! And though the defenders of the Capitoline suffered terribly from hunger, they left the sacred geese of Juno unmolested—an act of piety that resulted in their salvation.

  “How lucky we are to possess a city that was founded by Romulus with divine approval. Those who followed filled it with temples and altars, so that gods dwell in every corner of the city. Some fools will say, ‘But surely the gods can be worshiped just as well at Veii as here in Roma.’ Nonsense! Blasphemy! If the gods wished to live in Veii, they would never have allowed it to be conquered. If they did not wish to dwell in Roma, they would never have allowed us to retake the city. The divine favor of a place is not something you can pack in a trunk and take with you!

  “Yes, Roma is in ruins, and for a time we must endure discomfort. But even if we must all live in huts again, what of it? Romulus lived in a hut! Our ancestors were swineherds and refugees, yet they built a city in a few years, out of nothing but forests and swamps. We shall look to their example and rebuild the city better than it was before.

  “T
his disaster of the Gauls is no more than a brief episode. Roma has a great destiny. Her story has only just begun. Have you forgotten how the Capitoline received its name? A human head was exhumed there, which the priests declared to be a mighty omen: In this place would reside one day the head and supreme sovereign power of the world. That day has not yet come—but it will! Abandon Roma, and you abandon your destiny; you consign your descendents to oblivion.

  “Look to your hearts, Romans! This is your heartland. Let me tell you, from my own experience, nothing is worse than to pine with homesickness. In my exile, I never ceased to dream of these hills and valleys, the winding Tiber, the views from the summits, the endless sky beneath which I was born and raised. Here I belong. Here you belong. Here, and nowhere else, now and forever!”

  The crowd was deeply moved, but remained undecided. They responded to Camillus’s final words with a prolonged, uneasy silence.

  Just at that moment, a company of soldiers returning from guard duty arrived at the far end of the Forum. The soldiers scheduled to relieve the company were late. The exasperated commander ordered his men to halt. “No point going elsewhere,” he said. “We might as well settle right here.”

  The acoustics of the Forum were such that his words rang out loud and clear to Camillus’s listeners, almost as if they came from the sky. People looked at one another in wonder. There was nervous laughter and cries of amazement.

  “It’s an omen!” someone shouted, “an omen from the gods! The voice spoke to Marcus Caedicius before this whole affair began. Now the voice speaks to us again! ‘We might as well settle right here.’”

  “Settle right here!” the people chanted. “Settle right here! Settle right here!”

  The crowd broke into an uproar of cheering, laughter, and tears of joy. Camillus, who could see to the far side of the Forum and knew exactly where the voice came from, was acutely chagrinned. For all his eloquence and passion, it was a chance remark from an anonymous soldier that tipped the scales.

  Standing in a place of honor, maintaining their composure despite the uproar of the crowd, were the Vestals. The Virgo Maxima stood stiffly upright, allowing herself a faint smile. Foslia, more smitten than ever by Camillus, gazed raptly at the dictator. Her hand sought Pinaria’s and squeezed it tightly.

  “Oh, Pinaria!” she whispered. “We’ve been through so much—you, more than any of us. And yet, all shall be well again. Vesta never ceased to watch over us, and now her servant Camillus will guide us back to virtue!”

  Pinaria did not answer. The loss of her baby and her parting with Pennatus had plunged her into deep sorrow. The resumption of her day-today duties as a Vestal brought her no comfort. Her contemplation of the sacred hearthfire only filled her with doubt. During its hiatus from Roma—so the other Vestals assured her—the fire had never wavered in the least, but burned as steadily as ever. How could that be, when Pinaria had repeatedly broken her vow of chastity? Her transgressions should have extinguished the flame altogether!

  What did it mean, that Pinaria had sinned and yet no consequence had followed? Was the goddess oblivious, or forgiving, or did she simply not exist? If a sin had been committed, Pinaria should be dead. If there had been no sin, then she should never have been separated from her baby!

  Foslia squeezed her hand and gave her a commiserating smile; poor Pinaria had suffered so much in captivity, it was no wonder that she should weep! When Pinaria bowed her head and clutched her breast, Foslia thought her sister Vestal was suffering a pain in her chest, not knowing of the talisman that was hidden beneath Pinaria’s vestments.

  373 B.C.

  The citizens voted to demolish Veii and to rebuild Roma. In celebration, a temple was built on the spot where Marcus Caedicius had received the divine warning. It was dedicated to a new deity called Aius Locutius, the Announcing Speaker.

  Camillus also decreed an annual ceremony to honor the geese for saving the Romans on the Capitoline. A solemn procession would be led by a sacred goose of Juno perched in state upon a coverlet in a litter to be followed by a dog impaled on a stake.

  The city was rebuilt in hurried and often haphazard fashion. Neighbors built across each other’s property lines. New construction often encroached on the public right-of-way, pinching streets into narrow alleys or blocking them altogether. Disputes over property would continue for generations, as would complaints that sewer lines that originally ran under public streets now ran directly under private houses. For centuries to come, visitors to Roma would remark that the general layout of the city more closely resembled a squatters’ settlement than a properly planned city, like those of the Greeks.

  The son of Pinaria and Pennatus—who unknowingly carried the patrician bloodlines of both the Pinarii and the Potitii—was duly adopted into the almost equally ancient family of the Fabii. Dorso named the boy Kaeso, and raised him as lovingly as if he had sprung from his own loins. If anything, young Kaeso received greater favor than his siblings, for he was a constant reminder to Dorso of the best days of his own youth. No other time of his life would ever be as special to Dorso as those months of captivity atop the Capitoline, when nothing seemed impossible and every day of survival was a gift from the gods.

  Pennatus lived out his life as the loyal slave of Gaius Fabius Dorso. His cleverness and discretion got his master out of many scrapes over the years, often without Dorso ever knowing. Pennatus especially looked after young Kaeso. Friends of the family ascribed Pennatus’s special affection for his young charge to the fact that he had discovered and rescued the foundling. To see the two of them walking across the Palatine, Pennatus doting on the boy and the boy gazing up at the slave with complete trust, was a touching sight.

  Pinaria remained a Vestal all her life, though she was plagued by doubts that she kept secret and expressed to no one. Not so secretly, she cherished the gift Pennatus had given her, from which she carefully removed the lead, restoring its golden luster, and which she wore openly after Postumia died and Foslia was made Virgo Maxima. When the other Vestals expressed curiosity, she explained the antiquity of Fascinus without revealing its origin.

  Foslia was especially intrigued by the protective qualities of Fascinus. As Virgo Maxima she introduced the practice of incorporating Fascinus into triumphal processions. She had a copy made of Pinaria’s original and placed it out of sight under the chariot of a victorious general, where it served to avert any evil that might be cast by envious eyes. The placement beneath the chariot of this object, called a fascinum, became a traditional duty of the Vestals from that time forward. Similar amulets made of base metals quickly spread into common use. In time, almost every pregnant women in Roma wore her own fascinum to protect her and her baby from malicious spells. Some had wings, but most did not.

  Pinaria had become very fond of Dorso during their captivity on the Capitoline. Afterward, she was careful to keep a respectable distance from him, lest their friendship arouse unsavory suspicions. Nevertheless, at public ceremonies their paths frequently crossed. On those occasions, Pinaria sometimes caught glimpses of Pennatus. She avoided looking into his eyes and never spoke to him.

  These occasions also allowed Pinaria to see her son at various stages as he grew up. When Kaeso attained his majority and celebrated his sixteenth birthday by donning a man’s toga, no one, including Kaeso, thought it odd that Pinaria should be invited to the celebration. Everyone knew that the Vestal had witnessed his father’s famous walk beyond the barricades, and that his father held her in special esteem.

  But young Kaeso was a little surprised when Pinaria asked him to join her alone in the garden. He was still more surprised at the gift she gave him. It was a gold chain upon which hung a gleaming golden amulet of the sort called a fascinum.

  Kaeso smiled. With his unruly, straw-colored hair and his bright blue eyes, he still looked like a child to Pinaria. “But I’m not a baby. And I’m certainly not a pregnant woman! I’m a man. That’s the whole point of this day!”

  “Even so, I w
ant you to have this. I believe that a primal force—a power older than the gods—accompanied your father and protected him on his famous walk. That force resides in this very amulet.”

  “Are you saying that my father wore this when he walked among the Gauls?”

  “No, but it was very close to him, nonetheless. Very close! This is no common fascinum, of the sort that anyone can buy in the market for a few coins. This is the first of all such amulets, the original. This is Fascinus, who dwelled in Roma before any other god, even before Jupiter or Hercules.”

  Kaeso was a little taken aback. These were odd words, coming from a Vestal. An image of the masculine generator of life was an odd gift to receive from a sacred virgin. Nonetheless, he obediently put the necklace over his head. He examined the amulet. Its edges were worn from time. “It does look very old.”

  “It’s ancient—as old as the divine power it represents.”

  “But it’s too precious! I can’t accept it from you.”

  “You can. You must!” She took his hands and held them tightly. “On this, your sixteenth birthday, I, the Vestal Pinaria, make a gift of Fascinus to you, Kaeso Fabius Dorso. I ask you to wear it on special occasions, and to pass it on, in time, to your own son. Will you do that for me, Kaeso?”

  “Of course I will, Vestal. You honor me.”

  Both heard a slight noise, and turned to see that the slave Pennatus was watching them from the portico. There was a look on his face such as Kaeso, who had known the slave all his life, had never seen before, an extraordinary expression of mingled sorrow and joy, fulfillment and regret. Confused, Kaeso looked again at the Vestal, and was astounded to see the very same expression on her face.