The River Through Rome, page 17
“I’ll tell you the worst thing about all this, this handing out grain and water to everybody, willy-nilly. It’s making them all expect to be taken care of. As if every clod and shit-slinger deserves to suck from the public teat. Where does that lead to? Can you tell me that, dear Quintus?”
“I’m not sure. Isn’t it the state’s interest to keep its people healthy?”
“Strong, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean healthy. Healthy is just another way of saying complacent. Comfortable. Did the legions at Zama not have their share of pimples and flat-feet? Was Caesar ever a healthy man? Where is it written that only hale and hearty men may attain their share of honors?”
“Nowhere.”
“In fact, I would assert the opposite: it is only the hungry man, the insecure man, who has the proper motive to strive. If you build up the body too much you destroy the spirit. You render it entitled. And when those luxuries are withdrawn, you produce a man who will think only of his lost privileges. You make a useless man, incapable of fending for himself, fit only for grumbling over what the state owes him.”
“So you really believed what you said to Agrippa, about the water supply?”
“I always believe what I say, the moment I say it.”
“Even as you complain about your dry taps?”
“As Lucius Calpurnius Frugi said, if the Gracchi are determined to hand grain out to the rabble, men of quality at least deserve their cut.”
“Lucius the praetor or Lucius the consul?”
“The consul.”
“So Agrippa is Gaius Gracchus in this story?”
“Really Quintus, I find this line of questioning oddly astute for you! Are you in danger of caring about something?”
“I resent the accusation, and move it be stricken from the record.”
“So agreed!”
They shared a chuckle, and took a swig of wine from Solitus’ flask as the sun abruptly detached from the clouds. For all the disrespect they had suffered, the creeping sense of their insignificance, they still knew that they and their families were the hinges upon which everything turned. And as if to avouch their mastery, the boar broke cover less than forty feet from them, stepped into full view, and turned.
It was a handsome animal—big as a man, with tusks as bright as Pentelic marble. It stood its ground, huffed, tossed its muzzle as if daring them to come on. Quintus believed it must have been the most magnificent boar left in the depleted vicinity of Rome. Worthy perhaps to serve as a model for a statue in bronze by some old Etruscan master, not from the business end of a roasting spit.
He grasped the shaft of his spear, looked to Solitus, who looked back, questioning. They could hear the beaters approaching through the bush; in a moment they would either scare the animal away or see that their masters hesitated to charge.
Quintus kicked his horse, but only to make him turn toward the boar. Cocking his throwing arm, he hurled the spear in the general direction of their quarry. It landed well short, with a planking thud. The boar sniffed at it, turned up its snout, and slipped away.
IV.
Gaius Aquilius Gallus lived on the western limb of the Palatine, near the Temple of the Great Mother, close enough to the valley to glimpse the Circus through the trees. He showed off this fine vantage by building a terrace on the slope, a few steps down from a peristyle court. The patio was fringed with excellent copies of Attic statues—caryatids from the Porch of the Erechtheion—that together made a fine and noble frame for the races below. To Nonius’ delight, the patio was cleverly serviced by a basement corridor leading direct from the kitchens.
“I see we’ve uncovered the engineer among us!” Gallus remarked as he observed Nonius’ reaction.
“Magnificent position.”
“Close enough to hear the songs of the factions on event days.”
“And get your dinner plates still hot from the oven…”
“I must apologize for my son,” said Sabina Decima. “He has never learned that open admiration is rude.”
“Don’t think of it,” said Gallus with a toss of his head. “If anyone turned the evil eye on us, it would be for something worse than architecture.” He grabbed his right thumb.
Though Gallus held renown from an eventful tribunate and as a jurisconsult, Nonius had never seen a bust of him. He turned out to be a mild-looking septuagenarian, with a long, bald head hedged by rolls of cottony white hair. There seemed to be a permanent amusement in his eyes, as if he had seen it all, survived, and was beyond taking anything else seriously that might befall him.
“So this I take it is the body in question,” he said, turning to Amaris. “And do I offend, young lady, if I call you lovely?”
Not charmed, Amaris tendered a smile.
“I wrote without expecting you to take much interest in such trivial matters,” declared Sabina Decima to Gallus. “except that you are known to lend your talents to all kinds of lost causes.”
“Indeed I have! But true beauty is never a trivial thing.”
“It is not a lost cause. It is a matter of justice,” said Nonius.
“I see that,” Gallus nodded at the remains of Nonius’ arm. “What happened in the Forum is all over the city. I confess the rumors made me more than a little curious about your mother’s invitation…”
Wine was served, which they enjoyed as the larks swooped and the sun buried itself among the pines on the Janiculum. And when the small-talk was exhausted, Gallus leaned forward, put his cup on the tray, and engaged his professional mode.
“Now then, tell me how I might be of service to you.”
Nonius laid out the facts as he knew them. He attributed no motives to the Lucceii or Amaris’ parents that he couldn’t substantiate; he left out any mention of his personal feelings. As he listened, Gallus’ brows mounted steadily higher, as if indicating his capacity for further information. Rising levity in his eyes reflected his general relish for tales of human folly. But whether he thought the folly was on Nonius’ part or elsewhere his face did not reveal.
“I see,” he finally said. “So the senator is aware that the girl is sheltered in your house?”
“Most definitely.”
“And yet, he has not resorted to the courts?”
“Not yet.”
“And you, Amaris—does this account accord with your experience?”
“My experience,” she replied, “is much more than facts.”
Gallus nodded, face darkening.
“I have heard of similar cases of children alienated under questionable circumstances. Questionable in terms of law, if not in view of basic decency. But if we proceed, the issue will be raised of your standing in this situation, Nonius. How do your interests, in particular, suffer on account of her servitude? If you initiate any action, the praetor will certainly pose that question before any trial.”
“My standing…is that of one betrothed.”
Sabina Decima frowned. Amaris blanched, looked away to the Aventine.
“You intend to marry her…” Gallus said with a hint of incredulity. “Well then, that certainly gives you an interest. So did you offer to purchase her?”
“No. One does not purchase a free-born Roman citizen.”
Gallus sat back, steepled his fingers.
“Nonius, don’t mistake my questions for reluctance. I tell you frankly that I am moved by your devotion, and impressed by your evident willingness to strive for a just outcome. I wish my own sons had as much passion for justice! However, if you are determined to turn this matter over to the courts, we must be very clear about what we are asking them to decide. We need to frame a case. Your ultimate aim is clearly to dispute the girl’s legal status…”
“Her illegal status…”
“…as I understand. Though they know you are in possession of what they regard as their property, the Lucceii have not filed suit to force her return, nor for restitution for their loss. I assume they expect to accomplish that by other means…”
“As they have already attempted.”
“Correct. But lacking such a claim on their part, there is no loss, at least in the eyes of the state. If you can manage to keep her, she is yours simply by right of possession.”
“Yes. But I would prefer a more permanent solution. Amaris cannot live as a prisoner in our house forever.”
“Well, if you want to prove she was never a slave in the first place, that is a much more formidable task. In that case, she would be the plaintiff, asserting that her person was illegally alienated. Quintus Lucceius Hirrius would be the defendant. It would be a sitting senator against a person—a woman—not of legal majority, who depends on a sponsor who is not even a member of her family. It would be a contest between two very unequal parties, in a matter where the judge will likely be forced to decide based on her word against his.”
“I understand that and accept it.”
“But let me propose a better way, though a bit more indirect. What if, instead, you made the claim against them, based on your injury? You charge that agents of the defendant assaulted you in the streets for no just reason, causing dismemberment that will afflict you for the rest of your life.”
Nonius was not sure how to answer.
“Though you are not of senatorial rank, you, as a man with public duties, would be a much more plausible opponent,” Gallus continued. “Moreover, that would be a far easier case to prove. The injury is obvious. Witnesses are plentiful. The defendant’s only possible defense would be that he was attempting to recover his stolen property. But if she was never his property to begin with…”
“Then the assault lacked justification,” followed Sabina Decima.
“Exactly. You would be entitled to damages commensurate with your loss. And, in via, we would have proved he has no legal claim to her.”
Nonius’s gaze slipped into the distance. Though he saw a certain logic in what Gallus proposed, it was not the fight he had imagined. But he also would be first to admit he knew next to nothing about the law.
He glanced to Amaris. Her eyes held no trace of green now, but turned a freezing blue. It struck him as strange, considering what they were risking on her behalf. It occurred to him that she was simply uncomfortable being the center of attention.
Gallus rose, put a hand on Nonius’ shoulder. “I realize this is perhaps not the approach you expected. But if you chose to engage me, honesty is what my duty requires. Why don’t you go home, think about it? I would expect nothing less.”
He was escorting them to the door when it occurred to Nonius that he had not proposed his fee.
“Think nothing of it, engineer! For the honor of bringing justice to a lovely creature so clearly wronged, I would not think of it…”
He leaned in and added in confidential fashion: “…it is, in fact, forbidden for me to take payment. If you wish to discuss what little favors I might accept—purely on a voluntary basis, of course!—we may discuss it. But after.”
Then, to everyone: “I am blessed by the gods. I have become wealthy in friends!”
The three of them walked in silence for the whole way home. But when the front door closed, Sabina Decima rounded on him:
“Why did you make him wait for an answer? Do you understand how lucky we are he even took an interest in us?”
Nonius, who was suffering both from his hip and his missing limb, slumped in his chair. “I seem to remember him saying we should take some time to consider.”
“He was furious at the insult.”
“If you believed that, you might have told me at the time.”
His mother threw up her hands. “The boy is how old, and he still needs his mother to explain the obvious!”
Later, when Amaris was helping him change his dressings, he meant to be affectionate by laying her hand on her forearm. But her response was only to pause her wrapping. He felt her skin cool to his touch.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said—not because it was nothing, but because there was no use in talking about it. He seemed to think of the visit with Gallus as productive, as a thing that had been accomplished on the way to some worthwhile goal. The word that occurred to her—that befitted his vocation— was “scaffolding”. Diligently, he was preparing the site for the labor that would lead to his construction. For that, he expected her gratitude.
But she was not in a gratified frame of mind. While the ordeal of sitting by as others planned her fate, like a horse or some kind of object , was not a new experience, that she would feel it with her allies, with him, lacerated her. The legal strategy they hit upon—to make the case about his injury, his honor— was infuriating. She was a person “without legal majority”, the man said. She was not a “plausible opponent”, of whose sufferings the world neither could nor would take notice. Like a mule whipped in a field, without the power to speak its hurt. Or a fancy pot in a cabinet, painted and appraised at considerable value, but ultimately just a vessel, to pass from Quintus’ pleasure to Nonius’. She wanted to pitch the pompous jurisconsult off his tessellated terrace. She wanted to seize the melon-baller from the platter and gouge out Nonius’ doting eyes with it.
Instead she just sat there, smiling when she was told she was pretty.
Nonius winced as she wrapped the dressings too tightly. “Pardon,” she said, and made them looser. Then she undressed for bed, and the duty he expected her to perform.
V.
Calixta knew Nonius was lying the moment he told her the girl was not in his house, because he was not a good liar. In fact, it was one of the things that attracted her, his combination of haplessness and diligence, the feeling that he didn’t belong to a world where prevarication was as essential as breathing.
He meant nothing to her. He could not, by the nature of their circumstances. If a well-born Roman husband dallied with a prostitute or slave, the act might be seen as intemperate or déclassé, but didn’t count as adultery. But she, as a well-born Roman matron, enjoyed no so such objective advantages. She had learned early that she could only be as as superior to her playthings as she maintained, inwardly. This boundary was as essential to her peace as any of the inner boundaries that disciplined civic life.
And yet, as she walked away from Nonius’ door, she suffered a certain heaviness of heart, and regretted that she hadn’t become conscious of that feeling until it was too late. As much as she valued Amaris as a household asset, she could almost write her off—if it meant he would still come to see her.
As it was, she was forced to get used to not having him around. The earnestness of him, the air of constructive purpose, was not easily found elsewhere. His childish awkwardness was charmingly rare in the circles she moved. In place of her lover’s limp, of the smell of dirt on him, of the straightness of his gaze as they fucked, she had to find other distractions.
Not her husband, of course—that sham had run its course. When she approached Quintus now, he looked at her with a shudder and an expression that declared you must be joking. She was long past accepting it; like other matrons of her class, she was married for the sake of convenience only. Quintus now had his young playthings to dress up and march around the streets. He didn’t seem to miss her, and she was never one to intrude where she wasn’t wanted.
She was content to stay away when the man who replaced Nonius came to discuss resuming the work. He was a Greek. Stinking of new money, he was clad in a fine new tunic, hair recently coiffed, with beard so freshly shaven the razor bumps still stood on his neck. When her husband disappeared into the tablinum, Calixta positioned herself to listen. Quintus was quiet at first, as the man, who introduced himself as Byzantus, apologized for the inconvenience the project had cost him. He hoped new leadership would help them turn the scroll to a new page— “…if I might be so bold,” he said. He “regretted" the collapse of the shop, and the sordid business of the stolen girl. By way of recompense, he was empowered to promise a generous allowance of public water for the house, free and in perpetuity, with compliments from Agrippa.
From where Calixta stood, Quintus showed this Greek a courtesy well beyond required, given the disparity in their station. Any delay in construction, he replied, was due entirely to the outrage done upon him, redress of which indefinitely put off their departure for the country. The “business” of Amaris’ abduction now exceeded the value of the girl herself; a freedman had been killed in the street, one very close to the family. The sanctity of his patronage, and of his property, was threatened. Members of his family no longer felt safe in their own house, where they could not even count upon the attendance of their slaves. That all this could be made right by a few quinaria of free water verged on piling another insult upon all the others he had endured, starting the day that accursed pipeline was forced upon him.
In the end, nothing was agreed nor refused. Quintus would not let the work proceed under his premises, but didn’t rule it out in the future. The Greek departed in a pall of uncertainty. Quintus came out, and saw her lurking there, asked “Why do you skulk around when you don’t have to?”
“How can I know that until after the fact?”
“And?”
“You will have to give in eventually. You might as well do it when you can still pretend it is a choice.”
Quintus laughed. “Women’s logic!”
Byzantus wasn’t the last visitor that day. After the sixth hour Calixta received a mother and daughter who had come up from Ostia. The former was a Corsican, and had that dark, severe aspect she had seen in others from that island; the daughter, however, showed great potential, with fair hair and limbs awkward but shapely, like a fawn’s. Quintus looked in, and signaled his approval, and Calixta settled the terms of the transfer, which was set for the Kalends of January.
The last visitor showed up after sunset. This one was just a messenger, who insisted on putting a piece of paper into Quintus’ own hands.
Upon examining the seal, he said, “It’s from the city praetor.” Then he broke it, read a bit, and smiled.
“What is it?”
