blankets!’ to Festo’s footsteps. ‘Flavius, we must get you a surgeon. Ligurius, arrange it, will you?’
‘Who?’
‘Um, a head wound. Anything else, Flavius?’
‘No. At least I don’t think so.’
‘Then Arimastis – you know, the Chian. No, on second thoughts get Archagathos of Kos. His surgery’s over by the––’
‘Yes, the Acilius crossroads. I know it. I’ll be right back.’
‘Good.’
Ligurius walked out into the night, just as Festo came back with a burning brazier and some white blankets. I thought how dirty they would get, and asked myself if it mattered.
My father resumed. ‘Then, Flavius, you’d better tell me quickly. What happened?’
Geometry is dependable, too. Make a circle. Place one point of your compasses on the circumference. Describe an arc. It will always divide perfectly into six. Or take a piece of string and tie twelve, equidistant knots along it. You can always make a perfect right-angled triangle.
Of all the books here, the one I enjoy most is Scipio’s precious copy of Euclid’s Stoixeia, his Elements. Here is clarity, safety. ‘A point is that which has no parts, or which has no magnitude. A line is length without breadth. A solid is that which has length, breadth and thickness …’
Of course, there are problems. Take Euclid’s statement that ‘the extremities of a line are points’. This is merely a proposition. It has, it seems to me, either to be proved – in which case it is a theorem – or to be taken for granted – in which case it is an axiom.
But this is a matter of thought. Numbers are, as I said, dependable. They reward the purest thought. But they are also mysterious. Consider the number seven. All the even numbers, of course, are divisible. Of the odd numbers, one is indivisible, three is the first stable number – a tripod will not easily fall over – and five a fistful. But seven is free. Nine is just an inflated three, but seven is so stubborn, so impractical, that it must have been made with mystery in mind, for a purpose beyond our understanding. Why, for example, are there only seven – or should I say as many as seven? – sacred substances, frankincense, galbanum, stacte, nard, myrrh, spice and costum? Why seven? I don’t know.
There is a deeper mystery to numbers. How do we know that they are? Because, I think Euclid would say, they are self-evident. The earliest men must have seen, say, the fingers on their hand and made words for one to five. One stylus plus another stylus, patently, makes two. So arithmetical truths become truths about objects. But objects of what kind?
I could count for the rest of my life and not run out of numbers. I shan’t, of course, but the thought comforts me. The problem is that there cannot be enough physical or mental objects for me to count. Well, there might be, but no brain could grasp them. And, even if it could, objects must be finite, but numbers are infinite. Even if that were not so, I cannot imagine or bring into my mind, for example, 3,476,212 objects. But I could easily count to that number, given enough time.
So are numbers abstract entities, that just are? If so, I cannot understand how we can know them.
Well, there are many things I do not understand. Life would be dull without them. I am lucky to be able to move from farm accounts to such questions – and, fortunately for Macro and Scipio, back again. I must return to my past; and Scipio’s.
Flavius and three others, I learnt as I stood and listened, had been sent by the Senate on an embassy to Illyria. They were to arrange peace, to stop the Illyrian pirate ships preying on our trade with Greece and slaughtering our merchants.
They were met amicably enough, and taken on horseback straight to the tented city from which ruled Teuta, the Illyrian queen. Her tent was cavernous and dark, hung with rich tapestries and cloths, thick with the smoke of incense.
‘We could barely see her,’ Flavius said, his voice stronger now.
‘“So, Romans. I presume you have come with a message,” she said. “What is it?”’
‘We had agreed that Julius was to be our spokesman. “Peace, Queen Teuta, between Illyria and Rome.”
‘“Ah, peace.” She drawled out the word. “So simple?” She sat back in her chair. We couldn’t see her face at all. “Well, a simple proposition deserves a simple answer, does it not?”’
‘She clapped her hands. A huge Moor stepped forwards from the shadows to stand in front of us. He bowed, out of respect, I thought, for our rank and station as ambassadors of Rome––’
‘And as was only proper, indeed,’ my father interrupted.
Flavius raised a hand in irritation. ‘But as he straightened, it all happened so quickly, I saw too late a dagger flash in his right hand. We hadn’t seen it in the folds of his cloak. He stabbed Julius in the heart. As Julius fell, men seized the other three of us from behind. I broke free, to go to him – of course we weren’t armed – and took this sword-cut for my pains.’
I could just see my mother all this time. I’m surprised my father hadn’t sent her away. She listened impassively. Perhaps she was used to hearing such things. I always meant to ask her. I never did.
My father stood up. He walked out of my sight, but I heard him. ‘So, it is war.’
‘And the command, Scipio, is yours,’ Flavius said.
‘It is, Flavius, it is. But don’t worry. Julius will be avenged. I’ll go straight to the Senate in the morning. Now, where is Archagathos?’
I heard the beating, drumming, on the road long before I saw them. I knew before they came what they would be. Cavalry. A turma, a squadron at least, coming from behind me at the gallop. I wondered whether to leave the road and hide. Where? The countryside was flat plain, grass. A culvert? I could see none. Well, I would walk on. My fate, it seemed, would overtake me.
I did walk, or rather hobble, on for a bit. But I needed something. I had one comfort left, so I stopped and sat on the kerb by the side of the road as I heard the cavalry come closer. I opened my satchel, and felt in a little side pocket. One last small piece of bdellium, of gum. Until the pedlar came to Hannibal’s last camp at Crotona, I hadn’t had any for months. It is an indulgence of mine, still; there are many worse. I had bought all he had, and now it was all but gone. It seemed appropriate to mark what was about to happen by chewing my last piece of gum.
Of course, they might not have stopped. But then, I tried to think like a Roman cavalry commander. A single man on the Via Appia without horse, carriage or wares agricultural or otherwise would have to be (a) a deserter, (b) a vagrant or (c) a discharged veteran. If (a) or (b), arrest. If (c), stop to show respect. Of course (a) or (b) would hardly sit around in broad daylight when all but the very deaf or insane could tell that a squadron of cavalry was coming. But that thought would not occur to a Roman cavalry commander. Or so I reasoned.
They
