Roma - Saylor Steven - Страница 105
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He reached for a decanter and poured a cup of wine—a fine Falernian—and into the wine he stirred a powder. Holding the cup, he knelt before the shrine of Bacchus. He kissed the statue of the god, and waited.
It was not long before he heard a loud banging at the front door. A few moments later, Cletus came running into the study.
“Armed men, master. They’re demanding entrance.”
“Yes, I’ve been expecting them.”
“Master?” The color drained from Cletus’s face.
“Isn’t this the hour at which you told them to come? I overheard you talking to that fellow in the Forum yesterday, Cletus. Why did you betray me?”
There was the sound of a commotion from the vestibule. The lictors were no longer waiting at the door. Cletus looked away, unable to hide his guilt.
Quickly, Kaeso drank the poison. He would die with the taste of the god’s favorite vintage on his lips.
FRIEND OF THE GRACCHI
146 B.C.
“Daughter, mother, wife, widow…”
As she enunciated each word, Cornelia brought together a fingertip from each opposing hand—an orator’s gesture she had seen her father perform. Cornelia had been quite young when Scipio died, but he had made an immense impression on her nonetheless, and many of his gestures and facial expressions, and even some of his turns of phrase, lived on in her. She had also inherited her father’s famous beauty. Now in her late thirties, Cornelia was a strikingly handsome woman. Her chestnut hair gleamed red and gold as it reflected the bright, dappled sunlight of the garden.
“Daughter, mother, wife, widow,” she repeated. “Which is a woman’s greatest role in life? What do you think, Menenia?”
“I think…” Her friend smiled a bit shyly. Menenia was the same age as Cornelia, and like Cornelia, a widow. Though not as beautiful, she comported herself with such grace that heads were as likely to turn in her direction as in Cornelia’s when the two entered a room together. “I think, Cornelia, that you have left out a category.”
“What would that be?”
“Lover.” With one hand, Menenia touched the talisman that hung from her neck, an ancient fascinum inherited from her grandfather. With her other hand, she gently touched the arm of the man who sat next to her, and the two exchanged a long, meaningful look.
Blossius was a philosopher, an Italian born in Cumae. With his long, graying hair and neatly trimmed beard, he exuded an air of dignity to match Menenia’s. Cornelia was moved by the special spark between her dearest friend and the tutor of her children. Here were two mature adults, long past the age of heady romance, who had nonetheless found in each other not just a companion but a soul mate.
“What prompts you to pose this question?” asked Blossius. As a pedagogue of the Stoic school, he tended to question a question rather than answer it.
Cornelia shut her eyes and lifted her face to the warm sunlight. It was a quiet day on the Palatine; she heard the music of birdsong from the rooftops. “Idle musings. I was thinking that Menenia and I both lost our fathers at an early age. And we’re both widows, having married, and buried, husbands considerably older than ourselves. After my father’s death, relatives arranged for me to wed dear old Tiberius Gracchus. And you were the second wife of Lucius Pinarius, were you not?”
“Third, actually,” said Menenia. “The old dear was looking more for a caretaker than a broodmare.”
“Yet he gave you a wonderful son, young Lucius.”
“Yes. And Tiberius gave you many children.”
“Twelve, to be exact. Each was precious to me. Alas, that only three survived!”
“But what remarkable children those three are,” said Menenia, “thanks in no small part to their instruction from Blossius.” She squeezed her lover’s arm. “Your daughter Sempronia is already happily married, and the world expects great things of your sons Tiberius and Gaius.”
Cornelia nodded. “I think we’ve answered the question I posed, at least regarding myself. Since I no longer have a living father or husband—and no time for a lover!—motherhood is my highest role. My achievement will be my sons. I intend for them to do such great things that when my life is over, people will say not that I was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, but the mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.”
Blossius pursed his lips. “A noble aspiration. But must a woman exist only through the men in her life—fathers, husbands, sons…lovers?” He cast an affectionate look at Menenia. “Stoicism teaches that each man is valuable in and of himself, whatever his station in life. Citizen or slave, consul or foot soldier—all contain a unique spark of the divine essence. But what of women? Do they not also possess intrinsic value, above and beyond whatever role they play in relationship to the men in their lives?”
Cornelia laughed. “Dear Blossius, only a Stoic would dare to utter such a radical notion! A generation ago, you might have been exiled merely for proposing such an idea.”
“Perhaps,” said Blossius. “But a generation ago, it’s unlikely that two women would have been allowed to sit alone and unchaperoned in a garden discussing ideas with a philosopher.”
“Even nowadays, many an old-fashioned Roman would be appalled to overhear this conversation,” said Menenia. “Yet here we sit. The world changes.”
“The world is always changing,” agreed Blossius. “Sometimes for the worse.”
“Then it will be up to our children to change it for the better,” declared Cornelia.
Menenia smiled. “And which of your sons will do more to change the world?”
“Hard to say. They’re so different. Tiberius is so serious, so earnest for an eighteen-year-old, mature beyond his years. Now that he’s a soldier, off fighting those poor Carthaginians, or what’s left of them, I hope his outlook doesn’t become even more somber. Little Gaius is only nine, but what a different fellow he is! I fear he may be rather too impulsive and hot-tempered.”
“But very sure of himself,” said Blossius, “especially for a boy his age. As their tutor, I can say that both brothers are remarkably self-confident—a trait I attribute to their mother.”
“While I attribute it to their grandfather, though he was dead long before either was born. How I wish the boys could have known him, and that I could have known him longer than I did. Still, I’ve done all I can to instill in the boys a deep respect for their grandfather’s accomplishments. They bear the name Gracchus proudly, and rightly so, but they are also obliged to live up to the standards of Scipio Africanus.”
Menenia sighed. “Well, as for my Lucius, I only hope he comes back alive and unharmed from Cato’s war.” This was the name which many in Roma had given to the renewed campaign against Carthage. Cato himself had not lived to see the outbreak of the war, but he had never ceased to agitate for it. For years, no matter what the subject—road building, military commands, sewer repairs—he ended every speech in the Senate with the same phrase: “And in conclusion…Carthage must be destroyed!” Men laughed at his dogged obsession, but in the end, from beyond the grave, Cato had prevailed. It now seemed that his dream would be realized. According to the most recent dispatches from Africa, Roman forces were laying siege to Carthage, whose defenders could not hope to resist them for long.
Cornelia blinked and shaded her eyes. The garden had suddenly grown too hot and the sunlight too bright. The singing birds had fallen silent. “They say it’s no longer a question of if Carthage is destroyed—”
“But when,” said Blossius.
“And when that happens—”
“Carthage shall be the second city in a matter of months to suffer such a fate at Roma’s hands.” The philosopher resided in Cornelia’s house, and the two saw each other almost daily; their thoughts often ran side by side, like horses hitched together. “When General Mummius captured Corinth, there was rejoicing in the streets of Roma.”
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