CHAPTER 96
Marcellus had always admired the Greek thinkers. Though he was no true student of their work, he was familiar with the most notable Greek writers and many of the plays. He didn’t know the mathematics, but he respected it. He had seen first-hand what the application of geometry could do. He also knew what the death of Archimedes meant to science. I saw it in his face that day: Marcellus had taken Syracuse, but he had lost its greatest prize.
After I had shown him how the burning glass worked, Marcellus realized I knew quite a bit about Archimedes’ work. I don’t think he fully understood the implications of what I told him about the motion of the planets, but he knew it was important. And he trusted that it was a truth, passed down to me by Archimedes, and that it could be proven by the cipher of numbers. The mystery of this attracted him. He wanted to know more about Archimedes and his science, and he knew that I could tell him some of it. Instead of casting me out as plunder for the soldiers, he took me to the palatial home in Neapolis that served as both his quarters and the center of military operations in Syracuse.
I was given a clean tunic and a chance to wash up. I cried over the washbasin. I had just seen Hektor and Archimedes killed in cold blood. I had watched a soldier with lust in his eyes rip off Eurydice’s clothing. And deeper down, I grappled with the likelihood that I would never see Moira again.
Marcellus was not a man of excess. Although he was a wealthy man and accustomed to the good life, when he was with his men, he refrained from luxury. That evening, however, celebrating the end of the siege, Marcellus had a private dinner with his son Marcus, who was then a centurion in the Roman army. I was both surprised and humbled that Marcellus invited me to join them.
I crossed a starlit courtyard to the dining room. They were lying on couches when I came in. Two oil lamps lit a table full of food—roast lamb, potatoes, Sicilian sweet onions, goat cheese, chestnuts, rye bread, and an amphora of wine from Apulia—all quite extravagant for someone who had been eating little more than barley for two months.
Marcellus lay at the head of the table with Marcus on his right. Both were casually dressed in linen tunics. Marcellus’ was decorated with purple embroidery on the sleeves and hem. I bowed as I approached the table. Marcellus introduced me to Marcus only by my name. I sensed that Marcellus had already told his son of the circumstances under which he had found me. I took the divan at the end of the table opposite Marcellus and busied myself with eating, and listening to a father and son from one of the most important plebeian families in Rome talk about the siege.
Marcellus was fifty-five years old at the time. A lifetime of war had given his face a deep, troubled seriousness. The lamp light exaggerated the deep lines and creases. He was not so much handsome as imposing.
Marcus was a young man, twenty-four years old. He was extremely handsome and had a gallant presence of his own. I would later learn he was a formidable soldier, with a body not quite as thick as his father’s, nor as seemingly indestructible. He was of finer material with a lively, rather than ponderous intellect. If his father was polished bronze, Marcus was all silver and gold.
Marcus shared his father’s manners and was cordial to me immediately. Neither of them showed the slightest concern that I was a mere slave dining with Roman gods. Despite several opportunities to be drawn into their discourse, I was determined to show my respect by keeping quiet. When everyone had eaten their fill and the amphora passed freely, Marcellus addressed me directly. “Where did you receive your education, Timon?”
“From my father, sir. He was a teacher at the Pythagorean School in Croton.”
“How did you come to be a slave in Syracuse?”
I related the story of my father’s death and my mother’s enslavement. It was the first time I was able to do this without getting caught up in my emotions.
Marcellus merely nodded and took a sip from his cup of wine. There would be few times in the next five years when I would see him so relaxed. “How would you judge your abilities in mathematics, Timon?”
“Prior to my time in Syracuse, my father would have called me very capable. After the three years I spent with Archimedes”—I saw that moment again when the soldier plunged his gladius into the frail old man—“I believe I can address some problems that even my father couldn’t. I have been very fortunate.”
“What is your age?”
“Sixteen years, sir.”
“Do you feel that you are qualified for tutoring?”
I had never given a thought to teaching. As far as I was concerned, I was still learning, but now as I looked at Marcellus and then Marcus, I realized that the entire meal had been leading up to this question. “Yes,” I said, my confidence fortified by drink.
“Would you consider becoming a tutor for Marcus?” Marcellus asked.
“I would be honored.”
Marcellus took another drink from his cup. “I need a scribe for the second cohort in the Eighteenth Legion. I want someone who can speak and write both Latin and Greek.”
I nodded. “I am proficient in both.”
“What would you think of joining the Roman army as a secretary? And in your spare time tutoring my son Marcus in mathematics and geometry? You will earn the pay of a regular solider and be a free man.”
“To be free would be enough, sir.”
Marcus lifted the amphora of wine and refilled each of our cups. Marcellus raised his, as did Marcus. “To the second cohort’s new secretary,” he toasted. “And a free man.”
I raised my cup, hardly believing what had just occurred, and took a long swallow.
“I’m also interested in these sciences, Timon,” said Marcellus. “I’m certain they could be helpful to a field marshal. If you were to give Marcus a lesson tonight, how would you begin?”
I loved the question. It revealed the depth and curiosity of the man, and reminded me of that fortuitous day when Laius purchased me for Archimedes. “Geometry relies on a few basic axioms upon which everything else is built.” I took a piece of bread and smeared it across my plate, spreading an even layer of brown gravy over the ceramic surface. “You start with a point,” I said, making a dot in the gravy with the tip of my finger. “Two points make a line.” I made a second dot with my finger and drew my finger through the gravy to the first dot. I looked at the two men.
Marcellus nodded. Marcus smiled and did the same.
“A point and a line.” I made a third dot and connected it to the ends of the line to form a triangle. “Define a plane.” Their looks were of uncertainty. “A plane,” I repeated, gliding my open palm over the surface of the table, “is a flat surface like a table top. Or the floor.” I tapped my foot.
“Go on,” said Marcellus. Marcus nodded.
“Now if we have two planes.” I got up and walked over to one of the room’s walls. “Like the floor and this wall, we define a space. A three-dimensional space. A width, a length”—I pointed to the ceiling—“and a height.”
“A space,” said Marcus.
“Yes. A plane has area like a piece of cloth.” I came back to the table. “But a space has volume like an amphora.” I lifted the decanter. “So the essential parts of geometry are a point, a line, a plane, and a space. Does that make sense?”
Both men nodded.
I knew from experience that this was not as easy to understand as it sounded. I didn’t want to confuse them, but I decided to try one more concept. I used the bread to sweep the plate clean of my previous marks. “There are several different shapes in geometry.” I drew a circle and a square and a triangle.
“I thought that was a plane?” Marcellus asked.
“Well, yes. My first example of a plane was three-sided, but really any flat shape—like all of these….”
“Defines a plane,” finished Marcus.
Marcellus looked at his son. “You’re following this?”
Suddenly I wondered if I had just failed my first test, and if my freedom would be lost as quickly as it had been won.
Marcus burst into laughter, probably at the expression on my face. “More than that, Father. I find it interesting. Have some more wine. You too, Timon.” He topped off my cup. Marcellus put a hand over his.
I took a sip, and when I put my cup down, more than slightly loosened by the wine, I asked my first question of the evening. “Sir, what will become of the man who killed Archimedes?”
Marcellus’ face stiffened. He paused long enough to make me wonder if I should have asked. He would later tell me no moment in his career had saddened him as greatly as the sight of the famous mathematician dead on the floor that day.
“I haven’t decided,” he finally said. “He disobeyed orders and then lied to me about what had happened. He’s in irons now.” He glanced briefly at his son. “I’m also strongly against older men forcing themselves on younger ones—slaves or otherwise.”
I looked down at the gravy smeared plate. The memory of the soldier’s groin pressed into my face—the smell, the repulsion—rose up in my mind. I swallowed to keep my meal down. When I looked up, I saw that Marcus had lowered his head also.
Marcellus stood. “I have things I must attend to. Timon, you will stay in these quarters tonight. Marcus will introduce you to the quartermaster tomorrow. You’re part of the Roman army now. There is an honor to uphold.”
I nodded, wondering about the commitment I had just made.
Marcellus reached into the pocket of his tunic. He withdrew the crystal lens. “I believe this is yours,” he said, handing it to me.
I nearly gasped at seeing it again. I thanked him.
Marcellus touched his son on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to get acquainted with your tutor.” He walked out of the room.
I looked at Marcus. “Was I out of order, asking about the soldier?”
Marcus gave me his most serious look of the evening. “Under other circumstances, perhaps. Tonight, in this setting, no. My father is in a particularly good mood. His hesitation was something else. It had to do with me.”
I already liked Marcus and felt confident he would not be uncomfortable with a tutor nearly ten years his junior. He would also prove to be a man of unusual candor.
“When I was your age, there was a situation,” he said, “between a particularly brutal and licentious tribune by the name of Gaius Scantinius Capitolinus and me. He sought me out several times in the public baths and made comments about my beauty.” Marcus turned his face out of the light. “I believe it was as much to insult my father as to intimidate me.” Marcus paused to take a sip from his cup. “One afternoon Capitolinus did to me what no man should force upon another. My father learned of it, but not from me. He was so angry he called Capitolinus out in the Senate and announced what he had done.
“Capitolinus was a cunning man,” Marcus continued. “He laughed at the accusation. In a crude and demeaning way, he denied the charges and with his wit nearly convinced the Senate that my father had made the story up for political gain. Just as it seemed Capitolinus would go unpunished for his acts and my father would be ridiculed for thinking this could happen to his son, one senator requested that the victim be questioned.
“A herald was sent to get me. I wasn’t told why the summons was so urgent. I went to the Senate chambers, unaware that my father knew what had happened. I was asked before the entire Senate to verify or deny the charges against Capitolinus. I was so humiliated by the question I couldn’t admit what had happened. I couldn’t say a word at all. But my silence, it seems, was so profound and my emotions so evident, that my saying nothing was stronger proof of the crime than any words I might have uttered. Capitolinus was publicly reprimanded and stripped of his rank. Since then there is nothing that displeases my father more than the abuse of a youth by a soldier.” His eyes lowered. “It was a very unpleasant time for me. I have always wished my father had never brought it up in public.”
I didn’t know what to say. Marcus was quite different than his father. He could talk freely about himself and his feelings. Marcellus, on the other hand, was a man of action and resolve. Over the course of Marcellus’ long career, he would attain the position of consul five times—an incredible honor. His son Marcus would hold the position twice.
When I look back, it still impresses me that Marcus told me this story during our first meeting. He might have been trying to offer me consolation for what I had been subjected to earlier in the day. I don’t know. But Marcus’ honesty and openness that evening set the tone for what would be a long friendship between us.
CHAPTER 97
During the next week, I accompanied Marcellus to take notes and write shipping orders, accounting for everything that would be taken from the city in the name of Rome. In all that I saw, Marcellus was always fair and just, and for the most part his soldiers respected the conditions he had established for their plunder. Anyone remotely linked to the betrayal of Syracuse’s alliance with Rome was put to death, and nothing was safe from the pillaging. Syracuse would never be the same. The temples were taken apart for the stone. The Greek statues and the paintings collected by Hiero from all over the world were packed for shipment to Rome. Hiero’s treasure would be used to pay for the siege and to continue Rome’s war with Carthage. It was not a pretty sight to someone who had seen Syracuse in her finest hour. Marcellus was making Syracuse pay for her error in judgment.
Marcellus held a funeral for Archimedes the following week. Marcellus invited the remaining aristocracy of Syracuse and ordered the attendance of all his soldiers who were not on duty.
The body was taken to the royal family’s ancestral tomb outside the city and buried beneath a memorial stone, which would later be inscribed with a sphere inside a cylinder, as called for in Archimedes’ will. I made a special request to attend the ceremony.
To my surprise, I met Laius Aufidius at the funeral. We spoke briefly. He had returned to Syracuse when he heard of Marcellus’ success. I told him how Archimedes had died and that I was now a scribe in the Roman army.
“I don’t intend to stay in Syracuse, Timon,” he said. “I came back to see what was left of our city. It’s worse than I expected. In a few days, I will return to Corinth to rejoin my family.” On parting, he told me I was lucky to be alive.
I thanked him for giving me to Archimedes.
All through the funeral I thought about my father and the gift of geometry that he had given me. I thought about all that I had learned from Archimedes and how it would have made my father proud. But most of all, I had to keep reminding myself that I was no longer a slave.
But as I would soon learn, being in the army did not mean I was entirely free. As a military scribe, I slept in the barracks and ate with the soldiers. My experience working with the kitchen staff made the transition to the army easier than it might have been. I was good at keeping my mouth shut.
For six weeks I worked morning to night with the quaestor, preparing a preliminary inventory of the spoils and the army’s resources. Once that was completed, I did have a small amount of time each day to myself.
My first free afternoon, I went to look for Moira. Five months had passed since the Festival of Artemis and the most memorable night of my life. It was highly unlikely she had survived the invasion, but I needed some kind of closure with Moira—no matter what it was.
My barracks were on the plateau between Fort Euryalus and the Tyche district and only a short walk from the site of the tent city. Torn canvas, broken carts, and debris were all that remained. What had been one of the most active districts in Syracuse was now a wasteland—no market, no slave auctions, no Moira.
I gave a beggar a copper coin. He said that the tent city had suffered badly the first night of the Roman invasion and that the vendors who weren’t killed had returned to their farms.
I walked from the Tyche district to Neapolis. I went straight to the laurel bush in the center of the park. I crawled into the little hiding space. I sat inside a while, thinking about Moira. I remembered her pointing out her grandfather’s farm from the
Temple of Zeus. For the time being Roman soldiers were on strict orders to stay within the city limits. When that changed, I would go out to the farmland. Instead I cut across Neapolis to where Adeon had lived.
The plundering soldiers had left Neapolis in ruins. When I reached the home of the man with the birthmark, I knocked on the front door.
I waited on the doorstep for some time before I heard someone coming. I stood back as the door swung open. Adeon’s master glared out at me.
“What do you want?”
“Do you remember I came here during the summer looking for Adeon?” Behind him, I could see that the front room was bare, stripped of furniture and artwork. “Is she here?”
“Why would you care?” he snarled. “She was taken by the soldiers along with everything else I owned. Who knows where she is now?”
“I just wanted to—”
Before I could finish, he slammed the door in my face.
CHAPTER 98
Although Syracuse had fallen to the Romans, Epicydes was still in Agrigentum with a force of several thousand mercenaries. During the winter he was joined by the Carthaginian general Hanno and several thousand more soldiers. In early spring, Hannibal sent a charismatic young Phoenician officer, Muttines, to Agrigentum with six hundred Numidian cavalry. Hanno gathered his forces and led an army of eight thousand out of Agrigentum, sacking whatever small towns he encountered, determined to maintain a Carthaginian foothold in Sicily. By the time Marcellus got word of this, Hanno was camped on the Himera River.
Not long after my visit to the evacuated refugee camp, Marcellus left Syracuse with one legion, headed south to confront this latest contingent of Carthaginians.
Because the second cohort was not part of this campaign, both Marcus and I remained in Syracuse. I hadn’t given much thought to what I would be doing or where I would be going when I agreed to take the position of scribe. When Marcellus left the city, I felt fortunate to stay behind. My duties lessened, and I had a bit more free time.
The Siege of Syracuse Page 38