Текст книги "Roma.The novel of ancient Rome"

Автор книги: Steven Saylor

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

“To do all that, I must win today’s election. And to win the election, first and foremost, I must stay alive. The threat from our enemies is very real. At any place and at any time, I might be assaulted. I don’t fear a fight; I’ve done my share of fighting! I was the first to scale the walls of Carthage, and was awarded the mural crown. I also fought in Spain, alongside many of you brave men. But here in Roma, I am no longer a soldier, but a private citizen. I carry no weapons. You must be my guardians. Without your protection, I am defenseless.”

“We’ll defend you!” cried a man in the front of the crowd. “If we have to, we’ll die for you, Tiberius Gracchus!” He was joined by many others.

“It will never come to that, I pray to Jupiter. But if I should perceive an immediate threat, and require a ring of brave men around me, I may not be able to cry out to you. My voice is hoarse, and the din may be too great. So, this will be my signal.” Tiberius raised both arms skyward, then bent his elbows so that he pointed at his head with both hands. The sign was unmistakable: rally to the head.

The crowd began to clap and chant his name. Tiberius gripped Blossius’s arm with one hand and waved with the other. He walked forward, trying not to wince at the pain. “Perhaps it’s a good thing, that I stumbled,” he whispered to Blossius. “The auspices indicated a bad start. Now the bad start is behind me!”

Limping slightly despite Blossius’s support, Tiberius set out for the Capitoline, where the voting would take place. As he descended the Palatine, more supporters joined his retinue. Many more were waiting in the Forum. They opened a path for him, cheering and reaching out to touch him as he passed by, then joined the throng that followed behind him.

On the steps leading up to the Capitoline, Tiberius paused before the Arch of Scipio Africanus. The monument was decorated with images of his grandfather’s triumphs in both Africa and Asia. Scipio had survived the battle of Cannae and shamed his fellow officers by his fortitude, had lost the father whose life he had saved in battle, and had matched wits with Hannibal and beaten him. Tiberius laughed aloud at the absurdity that a stubbed toe should give him a moment’s pause. He made a silent vow to ascend to the voting place without limping or leaning on Blossius, and to show no sign of pain.

He had passed under the arch and proceeded a short distance when he heard a noise from above. Screeching and beating their wings, two ravens were fighting on the roof of a building next to the pathway, to his left. Their altercation dislodged a roof tile. The tile fell directly in front of Tiberius and shattered with a loud noise. Tiberius flinched.

“The augury, the stumble…and now this!” he whispered. “One bad omen after another-”

“Nonsense!” said Blossius in his ear. “Chickens behave like chickens. People stub their toes every day. Ravens squabble. Tiberius, if you start to see omens in every accident and happenstance, you will indeed be putting on the airs of a king; only a tyrant imagines the universe revolves around himself. A raven dislodged a loose bit of tile-nothing more!”

Tiberius nodded, straightened his toga, and continued the ascent.

The large open space before the Temple of Jupiter was already crowded when Tiberius arrived with his retinue. Only plebeians could vote for the tribunes, and they did so by first gathering into voting blocks called tribes. Even on the most peaceful of election days, the polling officials were hard-pressed to maintain order; for their own protection and to hold back the unruly crowd they were allowed to carry spear-shafts without metal points. News of Tiberius’s arrival was met with a tremendous uproar of mingled acclamation and jeering. Jostled this way and that, some in the crowd retaliated by shoving back. Fistfights broke out. The election officials scrambled to maintain order by brandishing their shafts.

Over the centuries, the assembly area had become so congested with shrines and statues, and the number of voters had so increased, that the simple procedure of assembling into tribes had become a logistical challenge. Elections could be won or lost depending on whether a candidate’s supporters were able to assemble when called on. Tiberius’s supporters had arrived early and in great numbers to claim the best spots for addressing the crowd and to maintain open pathways. If the supporters of opposition candidates could be kept at the periphery of the voting area or excluded altogether, Tiberius’s chances would be increased.

With Blossius at his side and surrounded by a cadre of his most ardent supporters, Tiberius was ushered through the crowd and escorted onto the steps of the Temple of Jupiter. At the sight of him, more cheering erupted from the center of the crowd and catcalls from the edges.

He had hoped to address the crowd, but the unceasing din made doing so impossible. He had never seen such a raucous election assembly. The participants seemed to be in continuous motion, shouting and gesturing. Scattered here and there, especially around the periphery or in the tight spots where a statue or shrine made movement difficult, skirmishes appeared to be taking place. It was not unlike watching a battlefield.

Some of the election officials, growing exasperated, were banging their shafts against the ground, calling for order and demanding that the gathering of the tribes begin. The voters were either unwilling to cooperate, or unable to hear them. The scene was chaotic.

A pathway opened in the crowd and one of Tiberius’s supporters in the Senate, Fulvius Flaccus, rushed toward him, breathless with alarm.

“Tiberius, I’ve just come from an emergency meeting of the Senate. All morning your enemies have been demanding that the consul Scaevola declare today’s election an illegal assembly-”

“Illegal? The people have the right to elect tribunes-”

“They claim the disorder is too great, a menace to public safety-or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Your cousin Scipio Nasica says you’re mustering a mob to bring down the state. After you massacre your opponents in the Senate, you’ll declare yourself king-”

“Nasica!” Tiberius spat the word. The two cousins, both heirs to the bloodline of Africanus, despised each other. There was no greater reactionary in the Senate than Nasica. While Tiberius had made himself the champion of the common people, Nasica made no secret of despising them. Even when he campaigned for their votes, he could not resist insulting them. “I know better than you lot what is good for the state,” he had once shouted at an unruly crowd; opponents joked that this was his idea of a campaign slogan. And once, shaking the horny palm of a farm laborer, Nasica had snidely commented, “How does one get such calluses? Do you walk on your hands?”

Blossius spoke up. “The consul Scaevola is a good man.”

“Indeed he is,” said Flaccus. “He’s refused to sanction any attempt to cancel the election. But that hasn’t stopped Nasica. ‘If the consul won’t act to save the state, then private citizens must do so’-that’s what Nasica said. He and a number of other senators gathered outside, and then they were joined by a gang of cutthroats-the roughest sort of men you can imagine, armed with clubs.”

“They planned this ahead of time,” said Blossius.

“Obviously!” said Flaccus. “And now they’re coming this way, with Nasica leading them. They mean to kill you, Tiberius! They think they’re on a sacred mission-the senators have wrapped the red hem of their togas across their foreheads, like priests about to carry out a sacrifice!”

Tiberius’s blood ran cold. He stared at the unsuspecting crowd.

“The signal!” cried Blossius. “Give the signal!”

Tiberius raised his arms in the air. The movement drew the attention of the crowd. With all eyes on him, Tiberius pointed to his head.

His supporters understood at once. They seized the shafts carried by the election officials, broke them in pieces, and passed the fragments among themselves; the longer sections could serve as cudgels and the splintered ends as daggers. There were a number of benches throughout the assembly area. They began to smash these as well, to use the fragments as weapons.

Tiberius’s opponents in the crowd took the signal to mean something else. “He points at his head-he’s demanding a crown!” men cried. “Look at his followers, gathering weapons-they mean to take the Capitoline by force. They’ll declare Tiberius king!”

Amid the mounting chaos, there was an even greater commotion at the entry to the assembly area. Nasica and his fellow senators, with their gang of cutthroats, had arrived.

A violent free-for-all followed. On the Palatine and down in the Forum, and even on the far side of the Tiber men could hear the sounds of combat atop the Capitoline.

Several of Tiberius’s supporters ran to his side and offered him their weapons, but he refused to take them. Instead he turned his back on the melee, faced the Temple of Jupiter, and raised his arms in prayer.

“Jupiter, greatest of gods, protector of my grandfather in battle-”

Blossius seized the folds of his toga and shouted at him. “Go inside the temple! Run! When they come for you, claim Jupiter’s protection-”

Blossius was struck across the belly by a club. With the breath knocked out of him, he fell to his knees.

Hands converged on Tiberius. They grabbed his toga and pulled it off him. Wearing only his under-tunic, Tiberius bolted up the steps of the temple, limping because of his injured toe; he tripped on a step and fell forward. Before he could get to his feet, a cudgel struck his head and sent him reeling. He blindly struggled to his feet and stood swaying for a moment. Another club, swung with tremendous force, struck his head and shattered his skull with a sickening crack.

Blossius had just managed to get to his feet. Red gore and pale bits of brain spattered his robes. He stood aghast and gaping at the bloody remains that lay crumpled on the steps.

One of the killers recognized him. “It’s the Greek philosopher-the would-be king’s adviser!”

“Toss him from the Tarpeian Rock!”

Whooping and laughing, they seized Blossius by his hands and feet and carried him down the steps. They headed toward the rock, dodging clubs and hopping over corpses that littered the way.

They reached the precipice, but instead of shoving him over, they made sport of swinging him back and forth, back and forth, gaining momentum.

“On the count of three: one…two…three!”

They released him and sent him hurtling into space.

For a brief moment, Blossius appeared to defy the earth’s pull. He soared skyward. Then, with a sickening twist in his gut, he began to fall.

They had thrown him clear of the precipice. Under normal circumstances, his downward plummet would have ended at the foot of the Capitoline. But many men had been pushed from the Tarpeian Rock before him. A few of these men had managed to grab hold of the rock face and cling to the sheer cliff. Flailing frantically, Blossius grabbed the garments of one of these men and broke his fall. Almost at once he lost his grip and fell upon the next man down. In such a manner, grasping at one desperate man after another, repeatedly breaking his fall and then falling again, he descended the cliff. More than once, a man above him lost his grip and plummeted past him, screaming.

At last, drained of the last vestige of will, overwhelmed with terror, with nothing left to grasp, Blossius fell in earnest.

He landed not upon hard earth, but upon a pile of bodies. More bodies fell around him, like hail dropping from the sky.

As night descended, the killers gathered the bodies of the dead, loaded them onto carts, and wheeled them across the Forum Boarium to dump them in the Tiber.

Blossius gradually woke. At first he imagined that he had been buried alive, but the confining mass surrounding him was not earth, but dead flesh. The cart jerked and bumped beneath him, sending a great throbbing soreness through every part of his body. He would have groaned, but he had no air in his lungs. The pressure against his chest would not allow him to draw a breath.

From somewhere he heard muffled sounds-women sobbing and shrieking. A woman cried out, “Let me have my husband’s body! At least give me his body!” A harsh masculine voice ordered her back.

The cart came to a halt. The world began to tilt. The mass of flesh all around him shifted and gave way, like a cliff disintegrating in a landslide. He tumbled helplessly forward.

He was suddenly underwater. The shock wrenched him to full consciousness. Sputtering, flailing his arms, he found the surface and sucked in a lungful of air.

The sky above was dark and full of stars. The swiftly flowing current was littered with bodies. In his dazed state, he somehow sensed which was the farther shore and swam toward it. Again and again, he collided with floating corpses. One of them seemed to wrap its arms around him. In a panic, he struggled to free himself. The man could not possibly be alive; that was obvious from his smashed skull.

As Blossius pulled free, he glimpsed the dead man’s face.

It was Tiberius.

Impulsively, he reached for the body, but it slipped away on the current, its torso spinning, its limbs bobbing, as lifeless as a floating branch.

Weary beyond hope and wracked with sobbing, Blossius pulled himself onto the riverbank and collapsed into oblivion.

“If I had followed your advice, dear mother-if I had tied my fortunes to those of Tiberius-just imagine the consequences!” Lucius Pinarius nervously paced the garden. “Now youmust follow myadvice. Drive this dangerous fool from our house!”

He pointed at Blossius, who sat stripped to the waist, patiently allowing Menenia to tend to his many wounds with ointment and fresh bandages. Three days had passed since his brush with death, but he was still badly shaken.

The entire city was reeling from the shock of the massacre on the Capitoline. At least three hundred men had been killed. No man alive could remember anything like it; for the first time since the fall of Tarquinius and the precarious early years of the Republic, political strife had erupted in mass bloodshed, with Romans killing Romans. The careless desecration of the bodies was grossly offensive even to many who opposed Tiberius, and had caused widespread anger and resentment. But the senatorial faction that had put an end to Tiberius, led by Scipio Nasica, was unrepentant. Having gained the upper hand, they had proceeded to order the arrest, interrogation, and execution, without trial, of anyone involved in what they called the “Gracchan sedition.” New names were constantly added to the list of suspects; those arrested were tortured until they implicated others. Rumor and panic ruled the city. The Tiber was jammed with vessels taking men to Ostia, where they hoped to board ships to take them away from Italy, into exile.

Blossius winced as Menenia dabbed the stinging ointment onto a cut across his shoulder, then he took her hand and kissed it. “Your son is right,” he said. “I escaped the massacre on the Capitoline, and somehow, so far, Nasica’s henchmen have overlooked me. But very soon, they’ll come for me.”

There was a banging at the door. Blossius stiffened, then stood and covered himself.

A troop of armed lictors came striding into the garden. The senior of the lictors spared only a glance for Lucius and his mother, then glared at Blossius. “Here you are, philosopher! We went looking for you at the would-be king’s house first. Isn’t that your official address here in Roma, where you sponge off the daughter of Africanus? Did you think you could escape us by hiding here? Or is this how you philosophers make a living, going from the house of one lonely Roman widow to another, sucking up their wine and spilling your seed in their beds?”

Lucius bolted forward angrily, but the lictor raised his club, and Lucius stepped back. His mother was less timid. She dabbed her fingertips in the jar of ointment, then flicked them in the lictor’s face. The man dropped his club and wiped the stinging unguent from his eyes.

“Bitch!” he shouted. “If you were anything but a woman, that would count as an act of sedition, and I’d see you stripped naked and flogged for it!”

The man bent to retrieve his club. Rising up, he struck Blossius hard across the belly. Blossius bent double in pain. A pair of lictors seized his arms and roughly escorted him from the garden.

Menenia covered her face and began to weep. The lictor leered at her. “Are you going to miss the old Stoic that much? He looks a bit decrepit for stud service. You’re still a handsome enough mare. Surely you could find a strong young Roman to mount you!”

The man looked sidelong at Lucius; the insult was aimed as much at him as at his mother, daring him to strike back. Lucius clenched his fists and bowed his head, seething with outrage and shame.

As soon as the lictors had departed, Menenia gripped his arm. “Follow them,” she pleaded. “Do whatever you can for Blossius!”

“Mother, there’s nothing anyone can do.”

“Then at least see where they take him and what they do to him. I won’t be able to stand it, if he simply vanishes and I never know what happened. Please, Lucius, I beg you!”

Unable to stand her sobbing, Lucius ran from the house. His heart pounding, he followed the lictors at a safe distance and watched as they entered house after house on the Palatine, arresting one man after another. The prisoners were tied together and herded in single file down a winding path to the Forum.

Following the captives, Lucius witnessed a sight that seemed more appropriate to a nightmare than to the Forum in broad daylight. While a circle of well-dressed men, some of them senators, looked on and jeered, lictors forced a man in tattered, bloody garments into a wooden box that was scarcely big enough to contain him. Before they closed the lid, they emptied a jar full of writhing vipers inside. Even muffled by the box, the man’s screams echoed across the Forum. The circle of watchers banged on the box with sticks and laughed.

The captives were dragged before an open-air tribunal. Lucius joined the crowd of spectators, standing toward the back and trying not to draw attention.

The judges on the platform included Scipio Nasica, who led the questioning. Blossius was the first prisoner to be interrogated.

“You are Blossius of Cumae, the Stoic philosopher?” said Nasica.

“You know I am.”

“Simply answer the question. There is one protocol for questioning citizens, and another for foreigners. Are you Blossius of Cumae?”

“I am. You call me a foreigner, but I’m a native-born Italian.”

“Italy is not Roma.”

“Nonetheless, I am of noble Campanian blood.”

Nasica raised an eyebrow. “Yes, the tribunal is well aware of your ancestors among the Blossii who betrayed Roma and induced their fellow Campanians to take up arms with Hannibal.”

Blossius sighed. “That was a very long time ago.”

“Perhaps. You come from Cumae, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“As I said, Italy is not Roma-and Cumae can scarcely be considered part of Italy. Cumaeans speak Greek. They practice Greek vices. They send philosophers to spread polluted Greek ideas here in Roma.”

“When Tiberius Gracchus was a boy, I taught him virtue, not vice. When he became a man, I offered him counsel and guidance-”

“The tribunal has no interest in your dubious career. We are investigating a very real sedition, not your imaginary philosophy. We are chiefly interested in learning what you know about the activities of the would-be king, Tiberius Gracchus, and his recent attempt to overthrow the state.”

“This is absurd! There was no such attempt.”

“Were you present when Tiberius Gracchus met with the Pergamene ambassador who delivered the royal testament of the late King Attalus?”

“I was.”

“And did you witness Tiberius Gracchus receive the diadem and purple cloak of the king?”

“Yes. But-”

“Did he not put the diadem his head?”

“Perhaps, briefly, as a sort of joke-”

“Did you not, at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus, draw up a ledger for disbursing the treasure bequeathed to Roma by King Attalus?”

“That ledger was purely hypothetical and contingent upon-”

“I realize, Blossius, that you are not used to answering questions with a simple yes or no. How you philosophers love to hear yourselves speak! Perhaps, to expedite this testimony, I should order your tongue to be removed. Then you can answer by tapping your foot on the ground-once for yes, twice for no.”

Blossius turned pale. The spectators erupted in laughter. Standing among them, Lucius cringed and longed to make himself invisible.

As the interrogation continued, it became clear that Nasica’s purpose was not so much to incriminate Blossius as to bolster his own rationale for taking action against Tiberius. To one leading question after another, he compelled Blossius to answer yes or no.

“From your answers, I believe the tribunal must conclude that any and all crimes you committed against the Roman state were carried out at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus. Is that correct?”

Blossius sighed. “How can I answer such a question?”

“I shall restate it. Any action you undertook affecting the Roman state, you undertook at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. One final question: What if Tiberius Gracchus had ordered you to set fire to the Capitoline? Would you have done so?”

“This is madness! Tiberius would never have given such an order.”

“Answer the question!”

Blossius gritted his teeth. “If Tiberius had ordered such a thing, then it would have been the right thing to do, because Tiberius never gave an order that was not in the best interest of the people!”

Nasica sat back and crossed his arms, making a great show of his disgust. “There you have it-the philosopher speaks, and we can see just how corrupt and insidious his ideas truly are! My questioning is done. Is there any man present who wishes to offer testimony on behalf of the accused?” He gazed at the spectators. Lucius lowered his face and hid himself in the crowd.

The judges on the platform conferred briefly, then Nasica rose and addressed the spectators. “We declare that Blossius of Cumae has testified freely and truthfully regarding the recent sedition perpetrated by Tiberius Gracchus. We further declare that Blossius has, by his own words, discredited himself, his teachings, and anyone who was ever his pupil. If he were a citizen, he would be put to death for treason, but since he is merely a foreigner, he will be exiled from the city for life. He is free to depart from this tribunal. He must leave Roma before sunrise, or else face immediate execution. Bring forth the next prisoner!”

“Not a single question about my beliefs! Not a single accusation having anything to do with Stoicism, or the values I taught Tiberius! The arrogance of those men! I, Blossius of Cumae, am too insignificant even to bother executing!”

Blossius had packed his belongings at the house of Cornelia. He had come to Menenia’s house to say good-bye.

“I should go with you. There’s nothing for me here.” Menenia’s voice was dull and lifeless. The terror of Blossius’s arrest, the relief that he had been set free, and then the cruel news of his exile had utterly worn her out.

“Nonsense,” said Blossius. “Your son is here. Did we not conclude, once upon a time, that a woman’s greatest role is to be a mother?”

“That was Cornelia’s conclusion, not mine.”

“Cornelia needs your friendship more than ever. The loss of Tiberius has devastated her.”

Menenia shook her head. “I should go with you.”

“No, beloved. Exile is not for you.”

Lucius stood nearby, saying nothing. He had been right, and here was the proof-Tiberius’s radical politics had ended in disaster for himself and all those associated with him. But being right gave Lucius no satisfaction. He felt only shame and bitterness.

“Where will you go, Blossius?” asked Menenia.

“First, I’ll take a boat downriver to Ostia-”

“In the dead of night?”

Blossius grunted. “That’s when traffic on the river is busiest these days. I won’t be the only man fleeing the city! At Ostia, I’ll board the first ship heading east. There must be some monarch, somewhere in Greece or Asia, who’ll offer me asylum-a man who’s sympathetic to Stoic teachings…a man who’s unafraid of Roma…”

A fool, you mean-like you,thought Lucius. But he bit his tongue and said nothing.

129 B.C.

Lucius Pinarius took the letter from his mother’s trembling hand. It was written in Greek, on parchment of the highest quality. Lucius read slowly, paying careful attention to every word.

From Blossius to Menenia, greetings and deepest affections:

What a comfort your letters are to me, like salve on a wound!

Any day that a messenger arrives with a missive from you is a day of celebration for me.

I am glad to hear that you and Lucius are both in good health. I am glad that your son’s business prospers. There must be much money to be made as a state contractor, especially in the building trade.

Thank you for sending news of Cornelia. That she remains in mourning, three years after the death of Tiberius, is, in my opinion, entirely fitting. The nature of her son’s death, the desecration of his body, and the outrageous aftermath all justify a longer period of mourning than is customarily considered seemly.

But Tiberius’s brother, you say, no longer wears black. Well,

Gaius is a young man and must get on with his life. I have mixed feelings about his apparent decision to withdraw completely from political life, and to devote himself (like Lucius) entirely to money-making. In some ways, Gaius’s potential as a leader actually surpassed that of his brother. What a waste, that he should forgo the Course of Honor! But after seeing what was done to Tiberius, who can blame him for pursuing a different destiny?

I wonder, though, whether Gaius will not eventually find himself drawn back to public life. The lure of politics is so strong in his blood!

As for my career, I am proud to report that King Aristonicus takes me deeper into his confidence every day. Yes, I proudly call him King, though the Romans refuse to recognize his status and brand him a rebel. The will of the late King Attalus was rendered null and void when General Aristonicus claimed the throne of Pergamum by both force of arms andmoral authority. How peeved the Roman senators must be, to see their dreams of laying hands on the treasury of Pergamum dashed; their greed for that treasure was one of their reasons for murdering Tiberius.

King Aristonicus is a remarkable man. I have every confidence that, with my counsel, he will attain the Stoic ideal of a just king. We speak often of the new capitol he dreams of founding-we will call it Heliopolis, City of the Sun-in which all men of all classes, including slaves, shall be free.

Aristonicus is also a military genius, thank the gods! He will boldly defend his claim to the throne of Pergamum against Roman arms. When he is seen to prevail, there is hope that other leaders across Asia and Greece will rise up and break the grip of Roma and its corrupt republic. The only hope for the rest of the world is to resist Roma’s domination at every turn.

But here I am, rattling on about politics! Forgive me, my love. Without you beside me, I have little else to think about. My life is out of balance; the part of me that is most essentially alive-a corporeal man capable of love, desire, tears, and laughter-is shriveled and withered, like a once sturdy vine ripped from the rich, moist earth. How I miss you! Your words, your face, the music of your voice, the warmth of your body! Perhaps, someday-in Heliopolis? – we shall be together again. But that time is not yet, alas!

As always, I urge you to destroy this letter immediately after you read it. Resist any temptation to save my letters for sentimental reasons. Burn them! I do the same with every letter I receive from you, though afterward my tears fall among the ashes. This is for your safety, not mine. We have seen, to our sorrow, just how ruthless the enemies of virtue have become, and how they can turn the words of the virtuous against them.

All my love to you….

Lucius lowered the parchment with a shudder. He was not sure which offended him most-the Stoic’s snide, backhanded compliment on Lucius’s money-making pursuits, his typically self-satisfied fawning over the upstart Aristonicus, or his salacious metaphors regarding himself and Menenia. A sturdy vine ripped from the rich, moist earth, indeed!

“Promise me, Mother, that you’ve done exactly as he’s instructed you-that you’ve destroyed every letter he’s ever sent you.”

Menenia looked up at him with tears in her eyes. She drew her eyebrows together. She shrugged with one shoulder.

“By Hercules and Hades! You didn’tburn them, did you? You’ve kept them.”

“Not all! Only a few,” whispered Menenia. “Only the most…personal. There was nothing in any of the letters I’ve saved that could possibly-”

“ Anyletter from Blossius is dangerous, mother. Don’t you understand? We must destroy anything that establishes a continuing link between him and us since he left Roma, and especially since he joined with Aristonicus. The content doesn’t matter-although this latest letter could hardly be more damning! Where are the letters you saved? Fetch them! Now! Do it yourself-don’t send a slave. Bring them here at once. I’ll stoke the fire in the brazier.”

Left alone in the garden for a moment, Lucius bowed his head and allowed his arms to drop to his side. His knees turned to water; for a moment, he thought he might collapse. For his mother’s sake, he had put on a mask, showing only anger, concealing the panic that had been welling up inside him ever since he crossed the Forum that morning and heard the news from Pergamum.

Aristonicus the Pretender had been captured. His forces were annihilated. The kingdom of the late Attalus and its immense treasury had been secured at last by Roman arms. The Roman commander Marcus Perperna was already boasting of the triumph he would enjoy when he would parade Aristonicus naked through Roma, publicly whip him till he begged to die, then strangle him in the dank prison cell of the Tullianum.