Roma - Saylor Steven - Страница 114
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“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—”
“Any letter 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.
Hearing the news, Lucius rushed home, brusquely told his mother that Aristonicus was defeated, and demanded to see any scraps of correspondence from Blossius. He had not told her the news about Blossius. So far, either because she was too shocked or too frightened to ask, his mother had not inquired. How Lucius dreaded the moment!
Menenia returned with a few pieces of parchment. From their much-handled condition, Lucius could see that she had reread them countless times. Sighing, he took the letters from her.
“You’re certain these are all the letters, every one?”
“Yes, Lucius.”
“We must pray to the gods that Blossius did as he told you, and burned every one of your letters to him as well.” One by one, Lucius laid the letters upon the flames. He and his mother watched them ignite and then crumple into ashes.
“All his letters…all his words…gone,” Menenia whispered. She braced herself. “And Blossius?”
“Blossius is dead, mother. He did the wise thing, the dignified thing. If they had captured him…” Lucius quailed at uttering the words aloud: torture, humiliation, lingering death. He cleared his throat. “Rather than face capture, he killed himself. He died like a Roman.”
“He died like a Stoic.” Menenia closed her eyes. The heat given off by the burning letters—the last vestige of Blossius’s existence on earth—warmed the tears on her cheeks.
Lucius gazed at his mother. Whatever he had thought of Blossius, he was moved by her grief. As on the day Blossius left, Lucius felt no sense of vindication, only deep shame and sorrow.
124 B.C.
“When I was a boy,” said Gaius Gracchus, smiling at his listeners, “my old tutor Blossius made me read every line of Euripides. Dear old Blossius! Not much of Euripides has stayed with me, I’m sorry to say, except a few lines from his play The Bacchae:
The gods have many guises. The gods bring crises to climax while man surmises. The end anticipated has not been consummated. But god has found a way for what no man expected. So ends the play.
Well, my dear friends, ‘the play’ is far from over. It’s just beginning! But already, the gods have found a way ‘for what no man expected.’ Nine years ago, when my brother Tiberius died, who among us could possibly have foreseen this day?”
Gaius paused to allow these words to sink in. Silently, he counted to ten. The deliberate, well-timed pause was an orator’s technique that Tiberius had taught him: You go too fast, little brother. Stop now and then, especially after you’ve said something clever or thoughtful. Catch a breath—count to ten—allow your listeners to think and feel for a moment…
Gaius was not in the Forum, haranguing a motley crowd of citizens, but in the lamplit garden of his mother’s house on the Palatine, addressing an intimate gathering of his most ardent supporters. This was a victory celebration. Gaius Gracchus, who had sworn off politics forever after his brother’s death, had just been elected tribune of the plebs, following in Tiberius’s footsteps.
“Well, maybe my mother could have foreseen it.” Gaius nodded to Cornelia, who reclined on a couch nearby. “Not a day of my childhood passed when I was not exhorted to live up to the example of my grandfather. And yet, it’s my mother’s example that most inspires me, that sets the greatest challenge for me. Was there ever a mortal of either sex who possessed such fortitude and courage? All of you, join me in saluting her—Cornelia, daughter of Africanus, wife of Tiberius Gracchus who was twice consul and whose statue stands in the Forum, mother of Tiberius the people’s martyr!”
Cornelia smiled, so graciously that an observer might have thought she had never heard such words before. In fact, she had appeared alongside Gaius countless times during the campaign, all over Roma and up and down the countryside, playing the proud mother and beaming recipient of her son’s extravagant tributes. Gaius’s supporters adored Cornelia; they adored Gaius for adoring her.
In the final days of the campaign, the crowds who came to hear Gaius had increased beyond all expectations. Even Tiberius at the peak of his popularity had never mustered such multitudes. When election day arrived, such a throng poured into Roma to vote that the inns could not accommodate them. Men slept in trees, by the roadside, and on rooftops.
One result of the Gracchan massacre had been a relocation of the voting area. Elections were no longer held atop the cramped Capitoline, but on the Field of Mars outside the city walls, where there was plenty of room for the tribes to assemble. Structures resembling sheepfolds were built so that voters could pass through, one at a time, to cast their votes. But even these new accommodations proved inadequate for the number of voters who turned out to support Gaius. More than once, the crush had threatened to erupt in a riot, but in the end the voting was concluded without bloodshed. Gaius had emerged a clear victor with a mandate to carry out a platform of reforms even more radical than those of his brother.
After saluting Cornelia, Gaius turned his gaze to another who sat nearby. “And let us not forget my dear friend Lucius Pinarius. Not even he foresaw my return to politics. Yet, when I decided to run for tribune, this man devoted himself and his considerable fortune completely to my campaign. Lucius represents a powerful new force in this city: the class of men we call Equestrians, after our forefather’s tradition of rewarding their finest warriors with a charger at public expense. These days, men are admitted to the Equestrian ranks by the censor, and their distinction is not horsemanship or valor, but the accumulation of wealth; they are men of means who have chosen to forgo the Course of Honor, and so they form an elite class distinct from the Senate. So fine a businessman is Lucius Pinarius that I swear commerce must be in his blood, just as politics is in mine. The Equestrians of Roma, who work hard and risk their fortunes to make this a more prosperous city, are the future. The idle senators who consume more wealth than they create—and who look down their noses at the rest of us—represent the dead past.
“Lucius is a builder, responsible for construction projects throughout the city. He has a devoted wife and a young son, and all the worldly success a man could wish for. We’ve been business partners for many years, Lucius and I. We know each other so well that we—”
“Finish each other’s sentences?” quipped Lucius.
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