Roma - Saylor Steven - Страница 133
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The men began to sing, loudly and badly out of tune. They were obviously drunk. One of them spotted the two figures in the shadows of the doorway and stepped closer, peering at them.
“Numa’s balls! If it isn’t the spawn of Venus himself—our beloved dictator!”
“Who?” shouted one of his companions.
“Gaius Julius Caesar!”
“You liar!”
“No, I swear! Come see for yourselves.”
The men crowded around the doorway. Recognizing Caesar, they were briefly awed, then began a buffoonish mime of bowing and prostrating themselves. “King Caesar!” they cried. “All hail the king!”
Caesar showed no fear. He smiled and graciously acknowledged their gestures with a nod.
One of them staggered back and flung out his arms, miming a crucifixion. “Look at me! I’m a pirate! Oh, great Caesar, have mercy on me!”
Another pulled his tunic up to hide his head. “Look at me! I’m Pompeius after he landed in Egypt! Merciful Caesar, give me back my head!”
“And I’m the Queen of the Nile!” said another, mincing about and putting his fists inside his tunic to mime enormous breasts. “Ravish me, great Caesar! Our baby will be the next king of Egypt!”
They continued with their buffoonery for a while, then seemed to forget what they were doing. Waving good-bye, they moved on and broke into another song. Only when they were out of sight did Caesar relax his grip on Lucius’s arm.
Lucius looked at his great-uncle’s face in the moonlight. Caesar’s eyes glittered with a peculiar excitement. However briefly, Caesar had felt a moment of genuine fear. Its passing seemed to have left him neither angry nor shaken, but exhilarated.
The next day was the Ides of Martius.
Lucius awoke drenched with sweat. His room was dark. The faint blue light that precedes the dawn silhouetted the shutters drawn across his window. Somewhere in the distance a cock was crowing.
He had been experiencing one of those strange dreams in which the dreamer is both participant and observer, aware that he is dreaming and yet unable to stop the dream. In it, Caesar had died. A great multitude had gathered to hear the reading of his will. On the steps of a temple, a Vestal virgin produced a scroll and handed it to Marcus Antonius. Antonius unrolled the document and proceeded to read. Lucius stood at the front of the crowd, but strain as he might, he could not hear the names being read. The roar of the crowd was too great. He wanted to tell the others to be quiet, but he could not open his mouth to speak. He could not move at all. Antonius continued to read, but Lucius could not hear, speak, or move.
The dream was not exactly a nightmare, yet he awoke feeling shaken and covered with sweat. He staggered from his bed and opened the shutters. The cock crowed again. The view from his window showed a jumble of rooftops, the irregular spires of cypress trees, and a glimpse of the Temple of Jupiter atop the Capitoline, rebuilt since its destruction by fire in Sulla’s time. All was bathed in soft light; the world might have been made of ancient, weathered marble, without color or sharp edges.
Lucius filled his lungs with cool, bracing air. The glaze of sweat evaporated from his flesh and left him covered with goosebumps. The dream had been oppressive and disturbing, but now he was awake. The world was just as he had left it, and the first glimmer of sunlight across the rooftops marked the beginning of a day like any other.
And yet, in a matter of hours, Caesar would receive the Senate’s command to begin the conquest of Parthia. He would be declared king of all provinces beyond Italy. The age of the Republic would end, and a new age would begin.
Anxious to leave his room and his uneasy dream behind, Lucius quickly dressed. He put on his best tunic, which was bright blue with a yellow hem, and strapped on his best pair of shoes. When the people began cheering Caesar’s decision to wage war against Parthia, it would not do for Caesar’s young kinsman to be seen wearing his second-best.
He left the house and wandered aimlessly for a while, watching the city awaken. At the great houses on the Palatine, slaves opened front doors to air the vestibules, extinguished the lamps that had burned all night, and swept the thresholds. Between two houses, Lucius caught a distant view of the Forum Boarium and the Tiber waterfront. Down in the marketplace, merchants were setting up shop. Many had special displays of baskets stuffed with food. Customers were already lining up to buy the baskets. Lucius had forgotten that this was the feast day of Anna Perenna, a holiday celebrated only by the plebeians.
Anna Perenna was the crone goddess, always portrayed with gray hair, a wrinkled face, and a stooped back; she wore a traveling cloak and carried baskets stuffed with food. Her legend dated to the early days of the Republic, when the plebeians staged their first so-called secession, withdrawing en masse from the city to protest the special privileges of the patricians and to demand tribunes for their protection. When the plebeians ran low on provisions, an old woman calling herself Anna Perenna appeared among them with baskets of food. No matter how much food people took from the baskets, the baskets remained miraculously full, and so the plebs never went hungry.
After the secession, Anna Perenna vanished, never to be seen again. On the day sacred to her, the Ides of Martius, plebeian families left the city to picnic on the banks of the Tiber. They gathered their own baskets of food, or bought ready-made baskets at the market. They pitched small tents and laid out blankets. Children played games with balls and sticks in the grass. Young couples courted in leafy bowers. Everyone ate and drank their fill, then dozed on the banks of the river. At sundown, the plebeian families would stream back into the city in an informal procession, singing songs of praise to Anna Perenna.
The holiday meant little to Lucius. Being a patrician, he had never taken part. Still, strolling across the Forum, passing families on their way to the river carrying food baskets, blankets, and toys, he found their festive mood infectious. It further amused him to think that among all these carefree revelers, he alone knew what a momentous and memorable day this would turn out to be, thanks to the special requests that Caesar would put before the Senate.
Thinking of Caesar, Lucius walked to the area directly north of the ancient Forum, where a large tract of land had in recent years been cleared and rebuilt by his great-uncle and named after him. The Julian Forum was surrounded by a vast rectangular portico of gleaming marble columns. At one end stood the new temple dedicated to Venus, constructed of solid marble, the fulfillment of a vow Caesar had made to the goddess before his victory at Pharsalus. In front of the temple was a fountain adorned with nymphs. Dominating the open square was a magnificent statue of Caesar armored for battle and sitting atop a white charger.
Work on the forum was not finished. When it was done, the portico would open onto courtrooms and legal offices. The comings and goings of scribes, secretaries, judges, and advocates would make the Julian Forum one of the busiest spots in Roma. As it was, on this morning, Lucius was the only person present. He walked under the statue of Caesar, amused to see the very grave look on his great-uncle’s face, then past the fountain, which was full of water but not splashing. Its still face reflected the perfect proportions and dazzling marble facade of the Temple of Venus.
Lucius mounted the steps. A temple slave dozing beside the doorway stirred at his approach. Recognizing Lucius—the dictator’s kinsmen were frequent visitors to the temple of their ancestress—the slave hastily opened the doors for him.
In Lucius’s opinion, the inside of the temple was the most beautiful interior space in all of Roma, perhaps in all the world. The floors, walls, ceiling, and columns were made of solid marble in a staggering array of colors, and newly finished, so that every surface gleamed with a mirror-like polish. The facing walls of the short vestibule were decorated by two of the most famous paintings in the world, the Ajax and the Medea by the renowned artist Timomachus. Within the sanctuary, displayed in six cabinets, were the extraordinary collections of jewels and gemstones which Caesar had acquired in his travels. To Lucius, the most fascinating item was a savage-looking breastplate strung with tiny pearls from the island of Britannia.
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