if only others were like him, there would be less trouble ahead. Too many patrician Romans exploit their land. They increase rents; they terrorise their tenants and neither know nor care whether their farms are growing millet or maize – so long as it pays.
Scipio is different. He is very interested in agriculture and, when he returns, always tells me what’s going on. ‘Stone-clearing in the Quintucia fields today, Bostar,’ or ‘The wheat’s lodged in the night. There must have been heavy rain, but I didn’t hear it,’ or ‘The cowherd Stultus is down with a fever. I’ll send Aurio to him.’ And then, with these mundanities around us and behind us, knowing that the rhythm of the land goes on, unchanging, Scipio sits down in the chair where he is now and, in time, begins.
I sit at this table behind him. I always have at least ten tablets ready, and spare styluses. I have perfected a system of shorthand of which I am proud. I call it tachygraphy, but Scipio thinks I should re-name it brachygraphy from the Greek brachus for short, as opposed to tachus for swift: that’s the sort of word-game we enjoy. Anyway, whatever it’s called it allows me to record Scipio at the same speed as he speaks. I must write an account of my system. Soon, soon.
For a while, we each sit alone with our thoughts. Aurio brings marjoram tea, sweetened with a little honey from the beehives on the hills where the wild thyme grows. Then for two hours or more, without interruption until the midday meal, Scipio dictates and I record, record the life of Scipio.
In the afternoons, I transcribe my notes. Later, not from notes but from my memory, I add what I have known and, at times, I record the present, not just the past. The two are one and form, of course, our future. This is an account, then, of two lives in one, two pasts, two presents. I shall let the two merge and mingle, like the shifting sea.
I can see the sea here in Liternum. I have always loved to look at the sea. Perhaps it was my childhood, the winter storms breaking on our door and walls. And I would get up, shivering in my blanket, and slip out and stand and watch and feel and hear the crashing of the waves’ undying beating on the beach. In the sea are all the colours, green and blue and black and red and grey. I have seen in it vermilion, ochre, jade. In it are all emotions, the rising and the settled and the spent. I have heard the sea whisper like lovers and roar like lions, caress the land, attack. In the sea all these things are one as they have been at times, I thought, in Hannibal. I can see the sea again now. As boy, so old man, one who has served two men who tried to change the world and found the world to have a balance of its own.
And so I move now to my memories. I shall begin with those of things that happened long before I first met Scipio, or served him. When I can, I shall continue them. In recording Scipio’s life, I shall perhaps account also for mine.
I stood until I saw his ship slip out of sight, until my arm, raised, palm held out in valediction, benefaction, ached and shook and I could hold it up no more. And then I sat where I had stood upon a beach in Italy and looked out to the sea bearing Hannibal home. Still, he will go on searching until he learns, I thought. Then he will make the final journey and he will ask of the gods a judgment. Who knows what they will say?
I had joined Hannibal as a mapmaker in Celtiberia, before he crossed the Alps and invaded Italy, almost twenty years ago. Until the hatred in his heart consumed him, I was by his side. Now he had sailed back to Carthage because, unable ever to defeat him in Italy, the Romans had invaded Africa. At last, Hannibal heard from Carthage. They called him home. But where he was going, I knew I could not help him. Only the dead ever see the end of a war. Hannibal had left Italy. I stayed, alone.
Darkness gathered about me where I sat like a hen with folded wings. There is nothing more gentle than the slow coming of the dark. Man rests. The earth rests. Much renews. Wrapped in my cloak, I lay back and waited for sleep, my thoughts filling with the swelling of the sea. My dreams were of him, as they so often are. That night I dreamed that Hannibal was a meteor, brilliant, coruscating, flaming, not a dull and distant star.
On the dew of golden morning I walked away, inland, north. I had only my satchel with my maps and some few things inside, and the clothes I wore.
* * *
Can you imagine what it is to be born a Roman and a Scipio? It is to assume greatness, to learn with your wet-nurse’s milk that, though you have rights, you have responsibilities. Take our name. It means ‘staff’. My great-great-great-great-grandfather was blind. His son Cornelius acted as his staff – patrem pro baculo regebat, as our history records – and we have borne the name Scipio with pride since then. We have been Rome’s staff. Our family tomb, at the Capena gate in Rome, contains the bones of many, many Scipios who have died in her service.
But yes. I see already that this might seem didactic. I am already giving form to things that are assumed. That is the case with great people. They are the stuff of great events, ones that reverberate through time. And yet, for the most part, they were responding. How many saw, and made? How many created history, before it overtook them? I have, I know in my bones, been one who did. Rome is something I made. I own her, I owe her. She has been and may yet be what I meant her to be. Rome is mine. And so I allow myself the luxury of being didactic. I shall set down what I think it is to be a Roman. This pride is a fault. There are worse. Bostar, you may edit it accordingly. But something has been made that before me was unmade. So it is mine, and I shall try to account for it.
I was born in my father’s house, which is now mine, though I no longer go there. Its shutters are barred. Its hearths are cold. Only the old porter, Rurio, is there, as he has been for sixty years. He is meant to deter burglars, but is now almost completely deaf. The city Watch keep an eye on the place, though. I arranged that they should. I still have some friends in Rome. When Rurio dies, I shall sell the house. Not for the money, which I do not need, but for the peace.
I have learnt to let go of things. I care for all the beauty I have gathered about me here, my rugs, my sculpture, my vases. I have carvings from Nineveh, silver jewellery from Cappadocia, alabaster, myrrh, amber, ebony and ivory, emeralds and diamonds, glossopetri fallen from the moon, and I have gold. Yes, I have many precious things. I touch this silver brooch, for example, griffin-faced, the one holding the folds of my tunic. It is Etruscan, from Praeneste, three or four hundred years old, priceless. Its back bears the inscription Manios med fhefhaked Numasioi, proto-Latin for Manius me fecit Numerio, Manius made me for Numerius.
I look at this many times each week, for as many reasons. Even our language has Greek origins. Bostar thinks this inscription is Chalcedonian, a Greek alphabet adopted by the early Latins, perhaps by way of the Etruscans of – where, Bostar?
Cumae.
Yes, Cumae. I knew, but I had forgotten. An interesting thought, that. Isn’t it strange that we can say, ‘I do know, but I have forgotten’? How can knowledge be knowledge if it can be forgotten? Plato deals with this question in one of his dialogues, the Meno, I think. I must look at it after supper. Remind me, please, Bostar.
This brooch is compelling for other reasons. Who was Manius, and who Numerius? How did they live, how die? I feel this brooch is alive with the life of the man who made it. It is always warm in the hand. And yet now the Etruscans are only a name. We eradicated them. We should spare a defeated people, not destroy them. I fear for Carthage. I fear that I have failed. Yes, we have achieved much. Have we destroyed even more?
I am turning my
