of my right. I always do this when I am troubled. I am always troubled when I think of Carthage. Its fate is not far removed from that of this ring.
I heard that, Bostar. You always give that low cough when you think I digress. But what you don’t know is how hard I had to fight in the Senate for the simple right to wear a ring, let alone for Carthage to continue to exist. Cato went on and on about how the Spartans forbade anything but iron rings. ‘If we must be Greek,’ he said contemptuously in the debate, looking of course at me, ‘let us be Spartan!’
My grandfather went to Sparta once, on an embassy. He dined in their famous public mess. He was asked about that when he came back. ‘It’s no wonder,’ he said, ‘that Spartan soldiers don’t fear death.’ Sparta produced no art, no literature, no philosophy. It was a state built on slaves. And Cato wants us to be like that.
Well, Cato wanted us to pass one of his innumerable sumptuary laws banning rings made of anything but iron. I beat him on that, at least. I’m quite proud of my ius annuli aurei, under which I and many others may wear our signet rings of gold. But I would gladly give up that right to know that Carthage is safe.
I was talking of possessions. Theogenes, my art dealer, comes here from Rome each month with more. But these things do not own me. The house where I was born, though, is too big for me to let go of while it is still mine – though they may take it from me when they reach a verdict. That house is my last tie to Rome, and Rome has been my life.
I smelled the woodsmoke first, and then I heard the yapping of the dogs. I can still remember that first village I came to, and its name, Secunium. It sat in a defile. A stream ran through it. Its midden stank and steamed as I looked down from the hill above. Its huts were mean, their thatch unkempt, their gardens overgrown. I almost turned away, but hunger drove me on. When had I eaten last?
Only dogs, mangy, curl-tailed curs, met me at the bottom of the hill. Italian peasants eat dog. I never have: I think the meat unclean. I hoped for bread, perhaps, or cheese, or a melon would have done.
I shooed the dogs away, walked on. A young boy, filthy, his hair greasy, his face blotchy, stared at me from the doorway of the first hut. As I drew near, I stopped. ‘Salve,’ I said. He darted in. A curtain of cowhide swung after him. I walked on. The curtain of each hut swung shut as I approached, and then I was at the end.
My stomach growled. Where there were people, there must be food – though not for the dogs, if the limping, grey bitch, a yard to my left, one eye oozing pus, her ribs protruding, teats hanging, right flank festering with sores, was anything to judge by. I turned, walked back to the middle of the village where the dogs, uninterested now, lay and scratched and sniffed.
‘Viator sum,’ I shouted. ‘I am a traveller. I come only in peace. Give me some food, and I’ll go.’ Silence. Only the buzzing of flies, and the sun, hot on my head. I thought how still Italy is, now Hannibal has gone. I tried again. ‘I only want some food.’ I waited. Nothing. I saw a hawk high overhead. Perhaps I, too, would have to hunt. ‘Then I’ll go, and spit on your shrine as I leave.’
Each Italian village, however mean, has its own shrine, usually to parochial gods or spirits known only to those who live there. Hannibal destroyed each one he found. He meant to break the Roman mind. He failed. In fact, I think he hardened their resolve. To insult a people’s gods and superstitions is to push too far. The Romans always let a conquered people keep their gods – so long as Rome’s collector of taxes is paid.
I had passed this village’s shrine as I came in – a half-dome of clay and wattles, hip-high. In it stood a wooden statuette, a priapus, rough-carved. I had seen many like it before. Most had a small bowl of water and a barley cake before the image of the god. This had neither. All around it, though, dry or drying on the grass and ground, was blood.
This, as I saw from the bones, was the blood of an ass. The Italians seem to think the ass the embodiment of lust. I cannot understand that. To all the other peoples I know, the ass is the symbol of stupidity. Stubborn, but stupid. Perhaps that is appropriate for Rome.
I adjusted the straps of my satchel and started walking towards the shrine. ‘Hic!’ came a voice from behind me, an old man’s voice, weary, worn, ‘Stranger, over here!’
* * *
Light. What I remember most of that house in Rome is light. My great-grandfather, Lucius Scipio Barbatus, built the house on the Palatine Hill. His death-mask stands there still, in one of the recesses, the left, I think, off the central court, the atrium. Or is he in the right-hand recess? There are so many masks and busts – my family has borne the ius imaginum, the right to have oneself represented in painting or statuary, for hundreds of years. But I haven’t seen the busts properly since I was a child. There was never time. Now I have the time, I do not have the will.
Scipio Barbatus was, like four of my ancestors before him, consul. Only a Roman can understand what that means. Or can you, Bostar? Can you? No, I did not think you would be distracted from your brachygraphy. Anyway, you probably do understand.
Our two consuls are the supreme military and civil magistrates of Rome. Their office is fundamental to the Republic, which replaced monarchy as the government of Rome three hundred years ago. Tarquin the Proud, an Etruscan, was king then, but the people rose up against him, expelled him, and the Roman Republic was born.
The consuls’ authority is complete. My grandfather, a war hero who had himself been a consul, once came to talk to his son, my father, who was then consul. My father was watching a military parade on horseback, surrounded by his lictors, or officers. My grandfather didn’t dismount when he rode up. My father was furious, and told one of his lictors to command my grandfather to do so, even though he knew my grandfather was rheumatic and found mounting and dismounting very difficult. As he climbed down, my grandfather called out, ‘I congratulate you, Publius Scipio. It is good to see the respect due a consul upheld.’
Rome’s consuls are elected, not appointed, and their calling is to serve the state, subject to the rule of law. I say ‘the state’ advisedly. The state, not the people. It is greater than the Senate or the people. It is the sum of all its parts. The people have their representatives, the tribunes, who are also elected. They and the consuls and the aediles and the censors and the praetors, these together run the state. It is a matter of balance – or was.
What, you may say, has this to do with the house where I was born and its light? Well, there was always a sense of lightness, a calm serenity in the house of a family that had for so long served Rome. There was order, peace. Each morning, in clean togas, my father’s clients came to greet him, each awaiting in the atrium his turn. All of them, like the servants and the members of the household, knew their proper place.
I can see it now. When I turned eight I was allowed for the first time to stand behind my father in the main reception room, the tablinum, as, one by one, his clients came forward to greet him in his chair. Only the buildings further up the hill prevented the whole room from being bathed in morning light. As the last of the clients turned to leave, I moved forwards to my father’s side. ‘Father,’ I asked, ‘why is our house here?’
‘Why here, Publius? I don’t understand. Where else should it be?’
‘Further up the hill, Father. Then the houses above us would not block the light.’
My father smiled. He
