“And your cousin Quintus?”
“I haven’t discussed it with him. But I don’t need his approval. I am—”
“Yes, I know: You are your own man.” Claudius drummed his fingers on his knees for a while, then nodded and smiled. “Very well, Kaeso Fabius Dorso. I shall find a suitable place for you on one of my projects.”
“Thank you, Censor!”
“And in the meantime, to please me, perhaps you will consider changing the ‘K’ in your name to a ‘C’.”
“Well—if you really think it’s necessary…”
“Kaeso, I’m only joking—alas!”
At dawn the next day, following the instructions of Appius Claudius, Kaeso set out from his home on the Palatine. He walked past the ancient Hut of Romulus and the fig tree called the ruminalis, a descendent of the tree which shaded Acca Larentia when she suckled Romulus and Remus. He descended the winding walkway known as the Stairs of Cacus.
He walked through the Forum Boarium (originally Bovarium, as Appius Claudius had informed him, but the letter ‘V’ had long ago been dropped by common usage). The workers in the shops and markets were just beginning their day. He passed the ancient Ara Maxima, where long ago his ancestors the Pinarii and the Potitii had inaugurated the worship of Hercules. The Potitii still made a sacrifice at the altar each year, but a long decline in the family’s fortunes had reduced their annual feast to a paltry affair. Even with his supposed connection to Hercules through the Fabii, Kaeso was only vaguely aware of the Feast of Hercules that took place at the Ara Maxima each summer, and had no idea that it was the oldest such observance in the city. Of his descent from the Pinarii and the Potitii, he knew nothing.
His destination was a work site at the foot of the Aventine Hill, between the Temple of Ceres and the north end of the Circus Maximus. He knew he had reached the place when he saw the great piles of earth and the network of ramparts that had been built around the excavation. A small army of workers, made up of freedmen and freeborn citizens, had gathered. They milled about, joking and complaining about having to wake up so early.
The sky, growing lighter every moment, was dotted with small clouds, and there was a breeze from the east. “Looks to be an excellent day for working outdoors,” said one of the men. “Too bad we’ll be stuck underground!”
A foremen appeared. The men formed a queue. One by one they were issued shovels and spades, then disappeared into a cave-like hole at the base of the hill.
Kaeso waited until the foreman had a spare moment, then approached him and introduced himself, as Claudius had instructed him to do.
The man was tall and slender, but wiry with muscle. His tunic was spotless, but there was dirt under his fingernails. “So you’re the young Fabius, here to learn about the aqueduct. My name is Albinius. I’m in charge of all aqueduct operations within the city walls, the most interesting part of the project from an engineering standpoint. Do you know where the city gets its water, currently?”
“From the Tiber, I suppose, and from springs here and there inside the city. And some people collect rainwater.”
“That’s right. And so it’s been from the beginning. But the water from the Tiber’s not always as clean as you might like, and some of the springs have dried up, and you can’t always depend on rain. And the bigger Roma grows, the more water her people need. Water for drinking and cooking, of course, and for irrigating crops outside the city, but also for bathing. Most people like to wash a bit of themselves every day, and a lot of people want to wash from head to foot every few days. That requires a lot of water! The demand has grown so great, we’ve reached a point where the city can’t accommodate more people unless we can somehow get more water.
“What to do? ‘We’ll simply bring the water we need from elsewhere,’ said Appius Claudius. ‘What, carry it by the wagonload?’ said the skeptics. ‘No, you fools!’ said Claudius. ‘We shall make the water flow here of its own accord, through the channel I shall build.’ And thus, thanks to the genius of the censor, the aqueduct was born—first of its kind anywhere on earth, and soon to be the envy of every thirsty city on earth. Right here is where the aqueduct will end, with the water pouring into a big public fountain. Do you know where the aqueduct begins?”
“Ten miles west of the city, at the springs near Gabii,” said Kaeso.
“That’s right. The fresh water from those springs will pour into an underground channel lined with stones and mortar. Because it’s downhill from there to here, that channel will carry the water all the way to the city walls, to a point near the Capena Gate. The underground channel is impressive in itself, if only for the amount of labor involved. Ten miles requires a lot of digging! And it’s hardly a straight line; it twists and turns to follow the contours of the landscape and keep the water flowing downhill. But what happens when the water reaches the city will be even more impressive.
“Claudius wants the water to come here, to the place where we’re standing. The natural way to do it—to let the water follow the lay of the land and run downhill—would mean digging a channel straight down the spine of the horseracing track in the Circus Maximus. That would be too disruptive. Instead, Claudius wants the water to make a detour around the Circus Maximus. To accomplish that, we’re tunneling through the Aventine. The channel disappears into one side of the hill and will come out the other, right here. Amazing, no? But that’s still not the most impressive part. Follow me.”
They walked along the foot of the Aventine, crossing the open area to the south of the racing track. As they approached the city wall and the Capena Gate, Claudius’s novel solution for transporting the water loomed before them. To bridge the space between the high ground to the left of the gate and the high ground to the right, a channel was being built atop a series of arches constructed of brick and mortar. The road leading to the gate ran directly under one of these arches.
“To bring the water to Roma, Claudius will not only make it run underground—he’ll make it flow above our heads!” said Albinius. “This elevated part of the aqueduct runs for only a few hundred feet, out of a total distance of many miles. But it’s a brilliant solution—a river in the sky! There’s no reason this kind of construction can’t be repeated elsewhere, and no reason that such an elevated aqueduct can’t be built on an even larger scale, running mile after mile. Water can now be carried from any high point to any low point. All that’s required is to dig and tunnel and, where necessary, to run the channel over a series of arches, as we’ve done here. Since the beginning of the world, men have had to build cities where there was adequate water. Now a city can be built anywhere men wish, and the water can be brought to them. Such a possibility never existed before. The aqueduct will change not just Roma, but the whole world!”
The foreman’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Kaeso was impressed. He would have liked to spend the rest of the day at the man’s side, but, following Claudius’s instructions, he took his leave of Albinius.
Walking under the immense arch of the aqueduct, Kaeso passed though the Capena Gate and beyond the city walls. A brisk walk brought him to the censor’s other great construction project.
The site swarmed with workers busily digging, mixing mortar, and pushing barrows filled with gravel. Kaeso asked for the foreman, a man named Decius, and was taken to the biggest, brawniest man in sight.
“So, you’re here to learn about road building, are you?” said Decius. “Well, I’ve been at it all my life. Learned a thing or two in my forty-odd years. But, thanks to Appius Claudius, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a road planned ahead of time with so much care and precision. The whole course has been laid out, all the proper materials have been acquired, and the best team of workers in Roma has been assembled—never mind that the boys working on the aqueduct might wish to dispute that claim! This is going to be a job we can all be proud of. Your descendents a thousand years from now will walk on this road and say, ‘By Jupiter, what an outstanding job old Appius Claudius and his boys did whe
n they laid down this road!’”
“This road will still be here a thousand years from now?”
“It most certainly will!”
Kaeso assumed the big man was exaggerating, but as Decius took him through the steps of laying down the road, he began to think the claim might have some merit.
“Your first roads were hardly more than footpaths,” said Decius, “beaten into the ground by so many men passing by—or by animals, since they make trails, too, and can usually figure out the best way to get over a pass or around a rough spot. When men started using wagons, the wheels wore ruts in the ground, and that made wider roads. Finally, some unknown genius decided it was time to make a road to fit the purpose, instead of just letting it come about on its own, and so the art of road building was born.
“The road we’re building follows a very old trail that’s been here for centuries; Appius Claudius says it dates back to the days of the old salt traders and metal traders, before Roma existed. Here you see some workers performing the first step in the process. See how they’re digging two shallow trenches parallel to each other? The trenches mark the breadth of the road. This road is fifteen feet wide, the sum of three men lying head to toe. Roman men, that is; it takes only two and a half Gauls to cover that width. They say a Gaul cut in half is the best kind, especially if it’s the half without a head!”
Decius laughed heartily at his own joke, and slapped Kaeso on the back as if he could jar him into doing the same. “Now, if you’ll follow me, up ahead you can see that they’ve moved on to the second stage. They’ve dug out the loose earth between the trenches, and excavated down until they’ve reached a solid foundation for the materials to rest on. How far down you have to dig depends on the terrain. Sometimes, if the ground’s swampy or the soil’s peculiar, you have to drive piles into the earth. Fortunately, that’s not the case here. A strong digger can reach solid roadbed without breaking his back. These fellows hardly even break a sweat. Isn’t that right, men?”
The diggers looked up at Decius and grinned. Kaeso could see that they liked the foreman.
“Keep walking. I’ll show you the next stage. See there, up ahead, those big piles of stones? Those are for laying the first course of the road. These stones have been sorted for size; these are what we call hand-sized, no larger and no smaller than will fit in a man’s hand. They make up the first stratum. On top of those, we lay down a mass of broken stones about nine inches deep, rammed down hard and cemented with lime—that’s called rubble-work. Above that, we lay the road-core, about half a foot deep, which is made up of bits and pieces of bricks and pottery, smaller bits than the stones in the rubble-work, and cemented with lime. You can see a section where the core’s been finished, up ahead.”
“It’s a bit higher in the middle than at the edges, isn’t it?” said Kaeso.
“Very observant. We do that on purpose, to let the water run off. For now, to finish the road, we’re laying down a layer of gravel. That’s usually the end of the job. But on this project, the gravel layer is to be only temporary. As time and money permit, the plan is to scrape away the gravel and lay down blocks of the hardest stone we can find. Around Roma, that usually means basaltic lava. The stones aren’t uniform, like bricks; they’re broken and cut into all sorts of random shapes—polygonal, we call them—but skilled workmen can pick and choose among those stones and fit them together until the surface is so perfectly even and smooth, you’d be hard-pressed to find the tiniest gap, even with your fingertip. I’ve seen walls built that way, and there’s no reason it can’t be done on a road, as well. Up ahead, we’ve completed a small section of the road with a finished stone layer, just as a showpiece for now. Here it is. Have a look. Walk on it. Jump on it! Stoop down and run your hands over it. So flat and smooth and perfect, wouldn’t you swear it was made of one solid stone that just happens to have a few seams running through it?”
“It’s amazing!” said Kaeso. “And beautiful.”
“And likely to last for more lifetimes than those of all your ancestors put together.”
“Do you really think the entire road can be finished this finely, all the way to Capua?”
“I believe that roads this fine will some day run all up and down Italy, and far beyond—as far as any Roman dares to travel. From the Pillars of Hercules to the banks of the Euxine Sea, people will say, ‘Here runs a Roman road!’” Decius laughed. “You know what Appius Claudius once said to me? ‘Alexander conquered half the world with his army, but can you imagine what he might have done, if only the Greeks knew how to build a Roman road?’”
“And just how long has this been going on?” demanded Quintus Fabius, scowling.
“A month or so. Since the day after my toga day,” said Kaeso.
“Just as I thought. This relationship with Appius Claudius won’t do, young man. It simply won’t do!”
Quintus had asked his younger cousin to pay him a visit, but he did not receive him in the garden; instead, he met him in the vestibule. Not only was Kaeso being kept from the heart of the house, like a merchant paying an unwelcome call, and being made to stand rather than sit, but here in the vestibule, following patrician custom, the wax busts of Quintus’s ancestors were placed in niches in the walls, from which they stared unblinking at all who came and went. It seemed that not only Quintus was scowling at Kaeso and judging him; so were several generations of dour-looking Fabii.
“Cousin, I am aware of your disagreements with Appius Claudius—”
“The man is degenerate! He’s polluted his mind with so-called Greek learning. Given half a chance, he’ll pollute your mind as well.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” said Kaeso. So far, Claudius’s efforts to teach him Greek had been fruitless. Happily, Kaeso’s aptitude for engineering exceeded even his own hopes, and Claudius had been quite impressed with his new protégé’s intelligence and enthusiasm. “I sought out Appius Claudius only because of his construction projects. I’m learning a great deal about road-building, and also about the new aqueduct—”
“All you need to know about those wasteful and inefficient projects, you could have found out by asking me, young man. They are the result of a gross abuse of the censor’s office. Somehow, Claudius managed to circumvent the Senate and plunder the treasury to finance his illegal schemes.”
“But those schemes, as you call them, are surely for the benefit of all Roma.”
“They are for the benefit of Claudius, a means to extend his political patronage! By giving them jobs, he buys the loyalty of the thousands of citizens he employs. No doubt he is also enriching himself!”
Kaeso frowned. “Are you accusing him of embezzling public funds?”
Quintus grunted. “I wouldn’t put it past him! You’re young, Kaeso. You haven’t yet seen enough of the world to judge a man’s character. Believe me, Claudius is not the sort of man with whom our sort should associate.”
“But surely he’s as patrician as you or I,” said Kaeso.
Did Quintus hesitate before replying? Was he thinking of Kaeso’s origin by adoption, and his uncertain bloodline? He shook his head. “The Claudii have always been vain and self-important, but at least in the old days they were rock solid in their support of patrician privilege. Appius Claudius has done an about-face and made himself a champion of the lower classes. Oh, he pays lip service to patrician ideals—the glory of the ancestors and the founders of the Republic—but at heart the man is a demagogue. He panders to the rabble. He flirts with dangerous democratic ideas, which he probably picked up from reading those wretched Greek philosophers he admires. He should never have been given control of the citizen rolls.”
“But as censor, that’s his duty.”
“To update the rolls, yes, but not to tinker with them, and in a most irresponsible fashion. Oh, he’ll tell you he’s simply reorganizing the voting blocks to make them more efficient, but his scheme is to make elections more democratic and less weighted to the blocks dominated by
patricians—a very dangerous idea! The founders, in their wisdom, designed the electoral process deliberately to give more influence to those families whose achievements long ago earned them a special place in the state. Nothing must be done to erode that system. It has served Roma well since the birth of the Republic. It will serve us just as well for another two hundred years.
“Even worse, young man, is Claudius’s abuse of the censor’s right to fill vacancies in the Senate. Every vacancy is filled with a man loyal to Claudius—and some of those new senators are the sons of freedmen! Such a degradation of the Senate would have been unthinkable in my grandfather’s day. What have we come to?”
“Times change, cousin,” said Kaeso.
“And seldom for the better! Once a radical idea takes root, no one can predict how fast or how far it will spread. Consider the consulship. For a very long time, only patricians were able to get themselves elected to the highest office, shutting out the plebeians. The patricians’ exclusive claim on the consulship became a tradition, which eventually took on the force of law. But the so-called reformers objected, and fifty-five years ago, they managed to pass a law that allowed one of the two consuls to be a plebeian. A matter of fairness, said the reformers; if a plebeian is clever enough to get himself elected consul, then why not? But that was only the beginning. Thirty years ago, the reformers passed another law, and this one mandated that one of the consuls must be a plebeian! Where will it end? Such changes are always due to rabble-rousers like Appius Claudius, traitors to their patrician blood. Claudius is a dangerous man. You should steer clear of him.”
Kaeso sighed. “Cousin Quintus, please understand. I share your political views. How could I not? They’re the ideas my father imparted to me while I was growing up. But just as I convinced my father to allow me to work under Claudius, so I hope that I can convince you to lift your objections. I have no intention of aiding or abetting Appius Claudius in any rabble-rousing schemes. But the aqueduct and the new road are being built, no matter what objections you may have, and I want to have a hand in them. If such projects yield political benefits, then why should Claudius be the sole beneficiary? Why should there not be a Fabius involved in the projects, learning how the process works? In years to come, more roads and aqueducts will be built, and when that happens, I want it to be a Fabius who takes the credit and reaps the benefits.”
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