Roma

by Steven Saylor

  “It’s Carthaginian flattery, don’t you see?” said Scipio. “Devious and indirect. But…I was flattered nonetheless.” He sighed. “Someday, I have no doubt, Hannibal will be assassinated, or else driven to suicide. Not by me, of course, but by those who come after me.”

  Kaeso shook his head. “There’ll never be another man big enough to take your place.”

  Scipio laughed, a little sadly and a little bitterly. “Sweet words, my friend, but alas, I grow smaller every day, and the space I occupy becomes easier to fill. I feel my influence waning. The world has grown tired of me, just as the world has grown tired of Hannibal. When people hear his name, they no longer tremble. They smirk. They hear my name, and they shrug. My political enemies circle me like wolves, waiting for the chance to bring me down on some trumped-up charge. The same small-minded men who will murder Hannibal will sooner or later drive me into exile, if they can.”

  Kaeso was distressed. “No! I don’t believe you. Surely you’re at the peak of your power. You were chosen to accept the black stone of Cybele. A magnificent arch is being built in your honor, to serve as the gateway to the Capitoline Hill. The Arch of Scipio Africanus will stand forever as a monument to your glory.”

  “Perhaps. Monuments last. Men don’t. As for glory…” Scipio shook his head. “When we met for the first time, before the battle of Zama, Hannibal said something I’ve never forgotten: ‘The greater a man’s success, the less it may be trusted to endure.’ We shall both be swept aside, Hannibal and I, swallowed by the rush of time. Do you want to see the future? Look there.”

  He pointed to a senator in the audience, a man in his forties, perhaps a little younger than Scipio. His slender face, seen in profile, was dominated by a beaklike nose. He was leaning forward with a tense posture and scanning the crowd with a predatory, birdlike gaze.

  “My nemesis: Marcus Porcius Cato,” said Scipio. “A so-called New Man, first of his family to hold elected office,” he added, with some disdain. “But his neophyte status doesn’t stop him from slandering me at every opportunity, and muttering behind my back about ‘finishing’ the war with Carthage—as if we had any reason to attack a crippled seaport that’s been stripped of her champion, her navy, and her colonies. He says my handling of the settlement after Zama was ‘lackluster, bordering on incompetent’; says I accomplished nothing in the long run because I failed to have Hannibal beheaded and burn Carthage to the ground. He slanders me on personal grounds as well; says I’ve ‘gone Greek’ because I happen to like the baths and the theater. Given Cato’s loathing for all things not Roman, I’m rather surprised to see him in the audience today. What in Hades is he doing here?”

  As if on cue, Cato rose from his seat. “Citizens! Citizens! Listen to me!” he cried, in such a powerful, strident voice that in short order he had the attention of everyone in the audience.

  “Citizens, you know me well. I am Marcus Porcius Cato. I began my service to Roma when I enlisted at the age of seventeen, back when that scoundrel Hannibal was having his run of luck, setting Italy on fire. Since that time, I have devoted my entire life to the salvation of this city and the preservation of the Roman way of life. Four years ago, you honored me by electing me consul and sending me to Spain; subsequently I received a triumph for pacifying the revolt there. If further unrest broke out again after my departure, I think we can safely say that was the fault of my successor.”

  Under his breath, Scipio muttered an obscenity. It was Scipio who had taken control of Spain after Cato.

  “In terms of holding high office, some call me a ‘New Man,’” said Cato. “But in terms of the bravery and prowess of my ancestors, I assure you that I am as old as any man here! So, I hope you will lend me your ears for a few moments, and consider what I have to say.

  “Citizens! What are you doing here today? What is this decadent spectacle in which you have chosen to take part? Think of it: Here you are, gathered to watch a play based on a Greek original, performed in honor of an Asiatic goddess imported from a land ruled by a king, all to make a group of foreign eunuchs feel welcomed! To all of this, I say: no, no, no!

  “How can such an abomination have come about? I’ll tell you how. Wealth and all the vices that spring from wealth—greed, love of luxury, crass opportunism—are leading you astray from the upright virtues of your forefathers. I look about me, and everywhere I see loose morals, loose living, and loose thinking. Now it comes to this: We are deliberately polluting the purity of our religious worship, diluting and demeaning our reverence for the ancient gods who have preserved us for centuries!

  “Things go from bad to worse. Importing a priesthood of eunuchs is bad enough, but one hears of even stranger and more insidious foreign cults spreading among the populace. The play to which you shall be subjected today will, I daresay, be bad enough—yet another revolting compendium of Greek obscenities—but recently some senators, who should know better, have spoken of erecting a permanent theater in Roma, built of stone. Are we Romans to become as idle and pleasure-loving as the Greeks?

  “You, there, Marcus Junius Brutus!” Cato pointed to the praetor who was sponsoring the games. “What would your heroic ancestor say, he who revenged the rape of Lucretia and brought down the last king, Tarquinius, if he could see this sorry sight? Has our beloved Roma risen to unparalleled heights of glory only to fall into an abyss of shame?

  “Citizens, I beseech you! If my words have ignited even the tiniest spark of patriotism in your heart, do as I now do, and leave this place at once!”

  Cato ostentatiously gathered the folds of his toga. After a few steps he halted and turned back. “Oh, and one more thing: Carthage must be destroyed!” With that, he stalked out of the theater, followed by a substantial entourage.

  A handful of people scattered throughout the audience did likewise, but a greater number began to boo Cato, who disappeared through the exit without looking back. People shifted uneasily in their seats. A murmur spread through the audience.

  Scipio rose from his seat. He said nothing to call for the crowd’s attention, but gradually all eyes came to rest on him. The audience fell silent.

  “Citizens! If the senator who just imposed on our patience by marring the joyous nature of this occasion had not seen fit to attack me personally—something he appears to do compulsively, like a man with an uncontrollable twitch—I would not presume to try your patience further by addressing you myself. However, I feel obliged, first, to say this: A man who leaves a mess behind him has no business casting aspersions on the man who comes after him. Just as I had to clean up the mess left behind by Hannibal’s elephants,’ so I had to clean up the mess that Cato left behind in Spain.”

  The audience burst into laughter. The tension left in Cato’s wake was dispersed in an instant.

  “Second: If, after all my years of service to the Roman people, I have any claim to speak on their behalf, allow me to apologize to our guests of honor, the priests of the goddess Cybele, for the aspersions cast upon them by the senator. I assure you, not all Romans are so boorish and inhospitable.”

  The galli, who had sat stone-faced through Cato’s harangue, smiled and nodded to acknowledge Scipio’s courtesy.

  “Likewise, allow me to apologize for the uncouth words that my colleague addressed to you, Marcus Junius Brutus, generous sponsor of these festivities. Instead of citing your great ancestor to make a dubious rhetorical point, let him use the example of one of his own famous ancestors. Oh, but I’m forgetting—Cato has no famous ancestors.”

  Brutus laughed and called out, “Here, here! Well said, Africanus!”

  “As for all the other drivel that spilled from the senator’s mouth, I will say only this.” Scipio gestured to Plautus. “In the terrible year of Cannae, all the might of Hannibal could not stop the performance of this playwright’s work. Surely a temper tantrum by Cato will not stop it today. The show must go on!”

  Laughing and applauding, the audience leaped to their feet and gave Scipio a joyous ovatio
n.

  The crowd’s response reassured Kaeso. Here was proof, he thought, that Scipio’s gloomy fears about the future were unfounded. But what a burden his friend had to bear, enduring the abuse of men like Cato! Whatever Kaeso’s own petty problems, at least he did not have to worry about ruthless rivals plotting his downfall. Perhaps there was something to be said for leading an insignificant life. He thought of Hannibal’s words to Scipio, but reversed their meaning. He muttered aloud, “The smaller a man’s success, the more it may be trusted to endure.”

  “What did you say?” asked Plautus, as the ovation began to die down.

  “Nothing,” said Kaeso. “Nothing at all.”

  The play was a rollicking success.

  After it was over, Kaeso declined an invitation to celebrate at Plautus’s house. Limping slightly, he set off alone. The day’s official festivities were over, but there were still a great many people out and about. Kaeso was jostled by the crowd. More than once he had to sidestep a pool of vomit left by someone who had celebrated too much. He only vaguely noticed these irritations; as always after seeing Scipio, he was restless and unsettled, preoccupied by thoughts of how his life might have turned out had he been a different man with a different destiny, a man like Scipio, or else a man who could have been Scipio’s comrade-in-arms, worthy to share his adventures, his glory, his tent…

  As he drew nearer to his destination, a house on the Aventine Hill, the crowds thinned. The streets were almost empty. He sighed with relief, glad to be out of the crush and knowing that the place where he was headed would offer relief from all his earthly cares.

  On a respectable street in a respectable neighborhood, he came to a house where all the windows were shuttered. He rapped at the door. The peephole slid open. For a moment, he forgot the pass phrase, but then it came back to him: “Upon Mount Falernus in Campania grow the grapes from which Falernian wine is made.” The phrase was changed often, but always had something to do with wine, because wine was Bacchus’s gift to mankind, and essential to his worship.

  The door opened, then was quickly shut after Kaeso stepped inside. The garden at the center of the house had been closed off, and all the windows had been shuttered, with heavy hangings pulled across them to keep sounds from reaching the neighbors. As a result, the interior was quite dark except for the soft illumination cast by lamps, and the sounds from within were strangely muffled.

  Those sounds included exotic music played upon tambourines and pipes. The tune was by turns languorous and dreamy, then fast and frenzied. Familiar faces, male and female, emerged from the shadows. They smiled and bowed their heads in deference to him. “Welcome, high priest,” they said in unison.

  One of them whispered in his ear, “A new acolyte is within, awaiting initiation.”

  Kaeso raised his arms from his sides until they were parallel with the floor. The men and women undressed him, then anointed his naked body from head to foot with sweet-smelling oil. A cup filled with wine was pressed to his lips. He threw back his head and swallowed. Wine overflowed his mouth and trickled down onto his chest, where greedy tongues lapped it up. Hands glided over his shoulders and chest and hips and buttocks, caressing him, fondling him, exciting him.

  He was taken by both hands and guided into a room that smelled of sweat and incense. Here the music was louder, and he could now discern the murmur of a low, insistent chant in which the name of Bacchus was invoked. The room was hazy with incense, and crowded with warm, naked bodies pressed close together. Presiding above the crowd, upon a high pedestal, was a statue of the god—Bacchus, deity of wine and euphoria, with grape leaves in his air and a smile of bliss upon his bearded face.

  Kaeso gazed up at the god with reverence and gratitude. The coming of the cult to Roma had marked the beginning of a new epoch in his life. In the warm, secret embrace of the god, Kaeso had at last found a purpose to his existence.

  Kaeso abruptly experienced a fluttering in his head, of the sort that sometimes preceded one of his falling spells, but he felt no anxiety. The priests and priestesses of Bacchus had explained to him that his affliction was not a curse but a mark of special favor from the god. Just as Scipio had always enjoyed a special relationship with Jupiter, so Kaeso had at last discovered his own special link to the god Bacchus.

  The fluttering in his head subsided. On this occasion, the god had seen fit merely to pass through him without striking him senseless.

  Someone whispered in his ear, “High priest, the initiate is ready for the ritual.”

  His rigid sex was firmly grasped, and in his other ear a voice whispered, “And you appear to be ready for the initiate!”

  Kaeso touched the fascinum that lay upon his bare breast. He tightly closed his eyes. Step by step, the acolytes guided him forward until his sex was met by a circle of resistance, then swallowed by a convulsive embrace. He heard the muffled cry of the initiate, followed by a whimper and a groan. Kaeso surrendered to a state of bliss.

  Who was the initiate before him? Male or female, young or old? He did not know. Behind his closed eyes it was Scipio he envisioned, Scipio when his hair was still long and not a single battle scar had yet marred his perfect beauty. It was Scipio into whom he thrust all the love and longing inside him.

  Even in the throes of ecstasy, he knew that his vision of Scipio was only a fantasy. But the bliss he felt was genuine. When all was said and done, only these brief moments of release were real. All else was illusion. Earthly glory was meaningless; Scipio himself had admitted as much. Scipio had reached a pinnacle of so-called greatness unknown to other men, but had Scipio ever attained the unspeakable delights that Kaeso had experienced since he joined the Cult of Bacchus?

  183 B.C.

  Kaeso ran his fingers through the mop of graying hair on his head and closed his eyes to rest them for a moment. How weak his vision had grown in recent years! When he was younger, even well into his forties, he had been able to read without effort all those poems by Ennius and plays by Plautus, no matter how tiny the letters. Now, squint as he might, it was almost impossible for him to read any of the documents spread before him. Reading was his secretary’s job, of course, but Kaeso wanted to make sure that no mistakes were made.

  He had decided to liquidate all his assets. A group of buyers had been found to purchase his theatrical troupe, and his staff of scribes was being sold piecemeal. He was going over his will, as well, though the terms were simple enough; his entire estate would be left in trust to his granddaughter, Menenia.

  Kaeso opened his eyes and gazed about his study, at all the pigeonhole bookcases stuffed with scrolls. Over the years he had accumulated a considerable library, anticipating long years of retirement in which he would require many books to keep him company.

  Amid the bookcases, there was a small shrine, a little stone altar upon which stood a miniature statue of Bacchus. Kaeso gazed into the god’s smiling eyes for a long moment, then looked away.

  “I think our work is done. You may go now,” he said to the secretary. “Send in Cletus.”

  The secretary withdrew. A few moments later a handsome young slave with broad shoulders and long hair stepped into the room.

  “Cletus, I wish to go for a walk today.”

  “Of course, master. The weather is quite fine.” The slave offered a thickly muscled forearm for Kaeso to lean upon. Kaeso did not really need the support, but he enjoyed clinging to Cletus’s arm anyway.

  Together, they took a long stroll around the city.

  First, Kaeso visited the arch which had been built to commemorate Scipio’s victories, conspicuously located on the the path that led to the top of the Capitoline. The relief carvings depicting the triumphs of Africanus were as magnificent as he remembered. It was a worthy monument to his friend.

  Next, he ventured to the necropolis outside the Esquiline Gate, where he placed flowers upon the humble funeral monument of Plautus. This day was the first anniversary of the playwright’s death. How Kaeso missed him—his keen insight
s, his piercing wit, his unflagging loyalty to his friends. At least the scores of plays that Plautus had written would live on; Kaeso had kept copies of them all.

  Leaning upon Cletus’s arm—for he was genuinely growing a little weary—Kaeso headed toward the Aventine Hill for the final destination of his excursion. In the vicinity of the Circus Maximus, he noticed a highly animated group of men. From the way they were all talking at once, they appeared to be discussing some highly significant bit of news. Was the news dreadful or joyous? Kaeso could not tell from their expressions.

  Among the men, he recognized an old acquaintance, Lucius Pinarius, and sent Cletus to ask him over.

  “What’s going on, Lucius?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Would I be asking, if I had?”

  “Hannibal is dead.”

  Kaeso drew a sharp breath. As simple as that: Hannibal is dead. It was like hearing that the sea had dried up, or the moon had fallen from the sky. And yet it must be true. What could be simpler, or more inevitable? Hannibal was dead.

  “How?”

  “Suicide. Sixty-four years old, and still plotting against us, trying to stir up trouble in Greece and Asia. The Senate finally had enough of his treachery and sent a military force to extradite him. I suppose he couldn’t face the humiliation of being tried and executed. He took poison. But before he died, he dictated his last words to a scribe: ‘Let us now put an end to the great anxiety of the Romans, who have thought it too long and too heavy a task to wait for a hated old man to die.’”

  “A bitter end.”

  “And long overdue. Scipio Africanus—”

  “Yes, I know: Scipio should have killed him when he had the chance, and burned Carthage to the ground. But I’ll not hear a word spoken against the memory of my dear departed friend, certainly not on this day!”

  Kaeso turned away from Pinarius. He called for Cletus to lend him his arm so they could proceed.