a boy, what a boy,’ he chuckled.
His smile faded. ‘Come and stand in front of me, Publius.’ I did of course, back straight, arms at my sides, as I had been taught since I could stand, heels together. ‘You are right. The houses above do block some of our light. But you are wrong. Why might that be, Publius?’
‘I don’t know, Father.’ I held his gaze. His eyes were brown, like mine, but the whites of his eyes were very, very white.
‘My grandfather built this house only halfway up the hill for a reason: so that the people should never think the Scipios too far above them. Others are free to build as high as they want to. But no Scipio will ever rise above his station.’
He coughed, got up, paced across the room. Then he turned sharply and looked across at me. ‘This is important, Publius. Are you listening?’
‘Of course, Father.’
‘We may live on the Palatine, and the plebs opposite us on the Aventine, but we are the same people, equal before the gods and the law. Remember that, Publius.’ With a nod, he dismissed me.
I have never forgotten. I have only ever sought to serve the people.
As a child, I learnt to enjoy such light as we did have, the light pouring in at midday through the unroofed atrium, diffusing into the rooms ranged round it, the bedrooms, storerooms, my father’s offices. But it was the light beyond that. Past the atrium, on through the tablinum, beyond its cedar doors and out into the peristyle, our colonnaded garden, once again unroofed – there was the light I loved.
The floor of the cloister round the garden was of porphyry, quarried in Egypt, and green marble. I have always got up early. One spring morning – was I eight, nine? – the household sleeping, I walked, shivering in the cold, through to the garden. Beyond the peristyle, slanting light flowed. The porphyry glowed, deep reds and incandescent ambers. The world was alive with light.
I stopped, turned. I saw him. He was small, stooped, standing in the doorway of the last hut I had passed. His hair was lank and matted, grey. His shirt was patched and filthy, his trousers torn, his feet bare. He gestured to me to come. I took the ten steps or so towards him.
‘Salve, senex. Greetings, old man.’ He didn’t reply, but nodded in acknowledgement. He stared. He screwed up his nose. ‘Armatus?’ he muttered. ‘Are you armed?’
I held out my arms. ‘No. I come in peace. I want only a little food, and then I’ll go.’
‘I know, I know. I heard you, I heard.’ With surprising speed, he darted into the hut. I heard him speak, a woman’s muttered reply. He came back out with a small stool in each hand. Kicking a sleeping cur so that, whimpering, it moved away, he put the stools down by the door. ‘Sit, stranger, sit.’
He put his hands on his knees. Both, I saw, were missing their thumbs. I had heard of Italians chopping off their thumbs to avoid conscription as, in the desperate days after Cannae, the Roman press-gangs scoured the land for anyone who could hold a pilum and a shield. ‘Why?’ I asked him, pointing at his hands. ‘Surely you were too old to be conscripted?’
He hawked and spat and grinned a toothless, sour grin. ‘Older than me were taken! Anyone who could stand was marched away to fight against that Hannibal!’ and he made the sign against the evil eye. I simply nodded, feeling my way. ‘But I am no coward!’ he went on. ‘I fought in Sicilia for Rome, in the last war against Carthage. I was a decurion, in the legion of the Vettulanti––’
‘Then why did you avoid service this time?’
‘Don’t judge me, stranger!’ he said sharply, and he looked at me fully for the first time. I saw strength, purpose, in his haggard eyes. ‘Because there is more to life than war. This is my village. I am its headman. I have a wife here. I had children. My two boys fought at Cannae. We waited for months’ – his voice tailed away – ‘before we realised they’ – he screwed his eyes shut, swallowed – ‘before we realised they would not be coming home.’ Cannae. Hannibal’s great victory over Rome when the dead, it was said, were too many to count and the River Aufidus ran red to the sea. That, by the way, is true. I know. I was there.
Silence settled. Flies buzzed, and I heard the sounds of goat-bells on the hill and, from inside the hut, of someone stirring.
‘Yes, I have paid my debt to Rome,’ he said softly. ‘But you, stranger, what brings you here? Are you a pedlar? By your looks you come from the east.’
‘Yes, I was not born in Italy, though I have been here for a long time. Sixt––’ I almost told him. Had Hannibal been sixteen years in Italy? Had he really gone? ‘Yes, for a long time,’ I said instead. ‘But no, I’m not a pedlar. I am’ – I had prepared for this – ‘a teacher. My name is Bostar. What’s yours?’
‘Sosius,’ he said. ‘A teacher? What do you teach?’
‘What I can: languages, astronomy, geography––’
‘Pah!’ spat Sosius. ‘We have no need of learning here!’ He scratched his groin. ‘Can you work a hoe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Then, Teacher, you can stay. Food, you said. Woman!’
‘Ready!’ came a muffled reply. I followed Sosius inside.
Light and shade, deep shadow and dazzling light. These I remember from the house where I was born. My bedroom, the tablinum and my schoolroom were always dark. The panes of selenite over the small windows let in little light. But then the atrium and peristyle would be ablaze with light. I thought both light and shadow private, just for me.
That seems risible now. But our house was private, inward-looking, its walls closed to the world, its windows small, all its doors opening inwards, its rooms giving on to each other. The one door was guarded night and day by a porter and salivating bull mastiffs. As a Roman home, so a Roman family. That is how I was reared.
We Romans are bound together by many things: our laws, our sense of destiny. We are a people hardened by the many wars which gave us painful birth. But we are a people formed within our families.
Consider, for example, our names. Barbarians mock these. They should instead consider the strength that they impart. ‘Publius’ is my personal name. ‘Cornelius’ is my cognomen, which defines a branch within my gens or clan, and that of course is ‘Scipio’. ‘Africanus’ you can discount. It is an honorific name, for the conqueror of Africa. Some still call me by that name. I don’t object to that, but I have had my fill of honours. Perhaps the Senate, if they do nothing else, will take them away.
Roman clans are tied by more than blood. The clans Pinarii and Potitii, for example, looked after the rites of Hercules at the ancient altar in Rome’s cattle-market. When, a hundred years ago, the Potitii betrayed the secrets of that ritual, all died within a month, twelve whole families of them, so it is said. I have seen enough to know such things are possible.
I value being a Scipio more than I value
