He seemed to remember every name. ‘And how is your aunt? I hear she’s been unwell.’ Or, to someone else, ‘And the new warehouse? Is it finished?’ It was a long walk. I was tired, and did not understand.
The iron gate into the mausoleum creaked on its hinges. The silence was sudden, after the noise of the Forum, the markets and streets. The tomb was huge, I thought. All round it figures were carved. They frightened me. Below the figures were inscriptions. My father knelt. I did the same. He was silent for a long time. Ants crawled up my shins. I wanted to scratch. I didn’t think I should.
Still kneeling, ‘These are your ancestors, Scipio. Revere and learn from them,’ my father said. ‘Now stand up and read me the inscription nearest you.’
I didn’t stumble much. When I did, my father helped me. ‘I increased the merit of my race by my upright standards,’ the inscription ran. ‘I begat children. I followed the exploits of my ancestors so that they rejoiced I had been born to them. Honour ennobled my stock.’
‘Good, Publius, good. That was written for your grandfather. You should be content if, when you die, it could be written for you – as I would be. Don’t forget it.’
I never have.
His memory is prodigious. One day I must ask him when or where he learnt that skill. Nature gives some men better memories than others, but memories like Scipio’s are formed by use and art. Someone has written a treatise on The Art of Memory. A Greek, of course. Aristotle? I must look in the library tonight.
‘No, no, no!’ Sosius screamed, shaking his stick at me. ‘Not so deep, not so deep!’ Well, it was a long time since I’d held a hoe. After sixteen years travelling with an army, the man I had served being now in Africa, here I was on a smallholding in Bruttium, hoeing beans.
Sosius came up. ‘If you hoe so deep, you’ll let the sun too far into the ground. The roots will dry out, and then, and then …’ He tailed off, looked down, looked back up at me. ‘Then, Bostar, we’ll have no beans!’
We both laughed. We had eaten beans, I gratefully, Sosius with a grumble. ‘Beans again, woman?’ But I had four helpings, and as many barley cakes. At least it isn’t dog, I thought.
An interesting vegetable, the bean. Pythagoras banned it. Perhaps he believed that if his adherents ate it they’d fart when they were about to metempsychose into a priest or a holy man and end up instead as a dog. But then I’ve always been suspicious of that story. The Greeks used beans for casting votes. I wonder if, in prohibiting the humble bean, Pythagoras wasn’t telling his followers to stay out of politics. If he was, he was a wise man indeed. But the first interpretation is certainly more interesting.
I learnt from Sosius of ravaged Italy. It was astounding that Rome had fought on. Sosius said his village was typical. There were no men left there over fourteen or under sixty – well, no whole men, anyway. There was one in his twenties, called Ostio, I think, but he had lost both legs to the surgeon’s saw after Trasimenus.
That was one of Hannibal’s most effective ploys. The Romans were used to the straight sword-thrust, trying to push past the shield and through the breastplate. Either that, or the hacking swing down to the neck and the space between breastplate and helmet. In Celtiberia, for hour after hour Hannibal had his men practise both those cuts on dummies filled with straw. But then he introduced a third.
I remember the evening. We were sitting round the fire, eating. Castello, one of Hannibal’s lieutenants, had been saying we must move camp, because where we were seemed to be the centre of the world’s flea population. We all had them. ‘Yes, yes, Castello,’ Hannibal said, distracted, pushing the stew round and round in his bowl.
Then he leapt up, and we watched him as he strode across to the exercise ground and the dummies. In the weakening light, we saw him take off his greaves and strap them to a dummy’s legs. He stepped back, concentrated, still.
‘What’s he doing?’ Castello said. ‘His supper’s going––’ I remember how quickly Hannibal drew his sword. I’ve never known anyone who could do it faster. The blade shone in the last of the light as it swung, back and down and then sweeping up to cut off the dummy’s leg at the thigh.
Hannibal was smiling when he ran back. ‘There. I’ve got it,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Castello, tomorrow a new drill. Everyone. It’s an awkward stroke, but we’ll learn. If Achilles had been a Roman, I’d have found his heel! Now, where’s that stew?’
Hannibal taught his men well. The stroke needed more room than most, but there are many one-legged Romans living who can show how well it worked.
Ostio sat all day in his hut, morose and alone. I saw him only once or twice, swinging himself along on his hands to the latrine.
‘What does he live on?’ I asked Sosius.
‘His grief, Bostar, his grief.’
The only other younger man had his legs, but no hands. He was the village’s goatherd, rarely seen. The first time I saw him was when he came to the spring and Sosius’ wife filled his water-gourd, held between his stumps. I was turning hay nearby with Sosius. ‘And him?’ I asked.
Sosius didn’t even look up. ‘Deserter.’
‘But I thought the Romans crucified deserters.’
‘They do, when they have time. It would have been better for him if they had.’
Sosius was an intelligent man. I learnt from him something I had not understood before. Because only Capua had joined Hannibal, I had assumed that the whole of Italy was loyal to Rome. ‘Never,’ said Sosius as we talked one night. ‘I am a Bruttian, not a Roman.’
‘Then why did you serve Rome?’
‘Because until the Carthaginian came, curse him, Rome brought us peace. There was that pirate Pyrrhus, but they soon saw him off. Our roads were safe from brigands, our seas from pirates. We could trade. The year I returned from Sicilia, this village sold twelve wagon-loads of barley. Twelve, even after we had paid to Rome the decuma, the tithe of a tenth of our grain! Come and see, Teacher.’
Putting down his hoe, Sosius walked off. I followed, across the ford, up the rise, north. We walked in silence to the top. ‘Now look.’
On the plain below, stretching into the distance, were fields. Or, rather, what had been fields. Their walls were crumbling, their irrigation channels blocked. I saw the odd stalk of barley, but the crop of these fields was weeds. ‘Now we can barely feed ourselves,’ Sosius said.
‘But this can be put right,’ I replied.
‘It could be, but won’t be in my lifetime. Our whole country is laid waste, teacher. Our young men are dead or maimed. Our––’ Sosius’ voice cracked. ‘Let’s go back to our beans.’
