Читать книгу Scipio - Ross Leckie - Страница 6

Nostra autem res publica non unius esset ingenio, sed multorum, nec una hominis vita, sed aliquot constituta saeculis et aetatibus.

But our state was founded on the genius not of

one man, but of many; not in one generation,

but through long years and many lives.

CICERO, De republica, 11, 1.2

The leaves are turning now. I see from where I sit how the season, cold, is blighting their veins sere and yellow, passing soon to brown. And so it is with me. I feel age upon me; the ache of damp, of wounds, of long days and short nights, of too much turning in my mind. I feel the weight of memories, calling me from far away. And as I wait for the judgment of the Senate and the people, I feel old and cold and weary.

The moon grows and dies and comes again, the sun, the grass. Does man grow and die and never come again? I wonder what I have made. Or Hannibal. He forced me to perfect what he meant to destroy. It is said that he’s alive still, in Bithynia. They will send for him; Cato will see to that. But Hannibal will not come. I think only of how much love he must have lost to hate so much.

Hannibal hated. I have loved. Loved Rome, loved life, loved the beauty to be found in proportion. These thoughts and things console me. Consider, for example, this chair in which I sit. Consider from this the manner of man I Scipio, I Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, am.

This is no ordinary chair. It is not a simple, unadorned frame of beech from Andalucia. It came from the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicilia, one of the fruits of the sack of that city by my cousin Claudius Marcellus twenty-eight years ago. I was in Celtiberia then. That I missed the siege is one of the few things I regret. They killed Archimedes then, you know. Some damn fool legionary just chopped his head off. He was drawing, apparently, in the sand, and wouldn’t be arrested until he had finished the theorem he was working on.

What we could have made of that man! For two years he defied Marcellus with his ingenious machines. ‘Give me a firm place to stand on and I will move the earth,’ he said. Well, at Syracuse he invented a huge crane. From behind the city walls, it plucked Marcellus’ galleys from the water. His catapults sank many others. Each time Marcellus moved his ships back, Archimedes adjusted his catapults to throw further.

Although a mathematician – I have several of his works in my library here – he perfected the science of mechanics. We Romans may take pride in ourselves as mechanics and engineers, but the truth is that this too we learnt from the Greeks.

My accusers, especially Cato, say that such observations prove me to be a Hellenist, and not a true Roman. That’s nonsense. It should be no insult to be philhellene. At the same time as I acknowledge our debts, I observe that only a people such as ours could have formed of them that which we have made. Yes, our craftsmen could not have made a chair such as this on which I sit, its feet of lions’ heads, its back carved with winged sphinxes, its seat of inlaid ivory and lapis lazuli. But only we have the power, through war, to make a peace. And it is in peace, not war, that painters paint and weavers weave, that poets polish.

To get this chair to its perfect position I had to move it perhaps two inches forwards before I sat down. I used to remonstrate with Aurio, my body-slave, as I still think of him, though I gave him his freedom many years ago. Each time he cleans this room – I let only him and Bostar come in here – he moves this chair and never puts it back on the right spot.

‘Aurio, Aurio, no, no!’ I always used to say to him. ‘Come and sit here yourself.’ And he would come shuffling forward, his eyes fixed on the ground.

‘Sit down.’ As usual, he hesitated. ‘Go on! Now, sit the way I do. Yes, back straight. That’s it. Now, look out of the window.’ I always had to move aside for that. Aurio would not look up if, in doing so, he could see me. ‘Aurio, what do you see?’

‘I see your garden, master.’

‘Yes, yes, but what else? Can you see the quince trees?’

‘Yes, I can.’

And each time, so many times, I asked him, ‘And how many can you see?’

‘Three, master, three.’

‘No, Aurio, no!’

And Aurio would stand up and move away, sandals shuffling, shuffling across the face of Minerva, the mosaic on the floor. And I would move the chair forwards and sit in it and see. Five quince trees forming a quincunx, where Aurio, the chair too far back, his view blocked by the window-sill, saw only three.

I gave up this game perhaps a year ago. There are some things that cannot be changed. Now I move my chair myself.

The quince has always been my favourite tree. Stock from Cydon in Crete, I planted these before me now to mark my fiftieth year. They first flowered three years ago, and soon each day I will see their bursting flowers, creamy white and richly red, through the greyness of the winter’s cold. And then as well there is their fruit, astringent, aromatic, strong. I love a little added to the apple pies that Mulca, my cook here, makes so well. All this from a tree so small. Few men give forth both flower and fruit, and some neither.

So here it is I sit and look upon my quincunx. I think and dream and I remember. And I dictate to Bostar.

I love this man. I loved him in his prime and now I love him in his twilight, in his pain and anger, in his shame. Of course I have never told him, never will. Saying something gives it life and death. Besides, love is polymorphic, and language not. Not Latin, anyway. Would ‘amo, I love’ be a description or a definition? Greek has six words for ‘love’. Perhaps I could use the right one, and tell him in Greek. But he would understand.

I have served Scipio for almost twenty years. I will serve no one else now. I am as old boots, formed to his feet, and I will fit no more. We have lived here at Liternum for two years. In that time, we have been to Rome only for the trial, since which we have resumed our ordered life. Mulca serves breakfast early, warm milk and pastries, fresh bread, cheese and, in season, fruit. She must get up very early, even if she leaves the dough rising as we sleep. I like that thought, of dough rising in the house of Scipio each night as we sleep.

Until mid-morning, Scipio is with his bailiff, Macro, seeing to the land and often working on it too. I know what he’s going to do when I see what he’s got on. To ride round the estate, he wears a blue cotton shirt, white Gaulish trousers and knee-length doeskin boots. ‘The herms are fine, Bostar,’ he says to me when he gets back from such an outing. Yes, herms, Greek herms. He had them placed, crude statues of strange country gods, at regular intervals round the boundary of the estate.

We often discuss boundaries. ‘I mark them when and where I can,’ he told me once. ‘That is why I mark my boundaries here. So much cannot be bound.’

‘But why place boundaries, Scipio? Everyone knows what’s your land. And your life has hardly known boundaries.’

‘Ah, but it has. You must understand, Bostar, that I have only been able to break boundaries when I have known where they were.’

But he does not only check his herms. He rides round his land to ensure he knows what is going on: which stream is dry, which pastures are green, which orchards need manure. He is keen on manure, Scipio, especially at this time of year. He likes to see the land lying through the winter covered in manure. He threatens to write a treatise on dung. I can think of other subjects more worthy of his pen. Anyway, will he have time? We may hear the judgment any day.

But 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 signet ring round and round on the little finger of my left hand, twisting it with the thumb and first two fingers 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 had a very gentle smile, spreading softly from the corners of his mouth. And when he smiled the wrinkles round his eyes showed. They were small and fine and tender. Strange, I always wanted to touch them. I never did. ‘What 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 my life. Almost as soon as I could read at all – was I four, five? – my father took me out. I remember the heat, the crowds. He kept stopping, his toga white in a sea of brown, to greet or to be greeted. 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.’

How had Rome fought on?

A Roman’s gens, his clan, is not all. Consider how our families are bound together even by our language. Familia means not just immediate family but the entire extended household, including slaves: the word comes from famulus, slave. A paternal uncle, patruus, is only pater, father, with a different suffix. Our words ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandchild’ are almost the same as those for maternal uncle and niece. I knew my paternal uncle’s wife, Julia, as ‘amita’, the same kind of word as ‘mummy’ or ‘nanny’. My mother’s sister, Antonia, I knew as ‘matertera’, in effect ‘mother’. All my maternal cousins were – and some still are – sobrini or consobrini, obviously connected with soror, sister––

All right, Bostar, I heard that. The cough again. You think I should be dictating my memoir, not a treatise on linguistics. What is my point? That Hannibal was fighting not individuals but members of a gens and then, too, members of a familia. In killing one member, he drew on himself the vengeance of the rest. Hannibal would not have won so long as one Roman remained alive. It was through ties of blood that Rome fought on. This point may be over-didactic. But it is true.

Not only that. There is an extraordinary stubbornness about these people – but that is not the word. It is more than that, the quality I mean. It is a capacity to endure, always to go on. Any other people would have surrendered after Cannae. But when news of the disaster reached the Roman Senate, the praetor mounted the rostra in the Forum to tell the people and ‘Pugna magna victi sumus’ was all he said. ‘We have been defeated in a great battle’ – that and nothing more.

There cannot have been in all of Italy someone who had not lost a father, husband, cousin, friend. Yet the Senate declared a prohibition on mourning – which was, of course, obeyed – and raised new legions. When we heard they were made up of slaves, Hannibal laughed. What we didn’t understand was that, as Scipio has just observed (actually, my cough this time was genuine), these were not slaves as Carthaginians know them. These were all members of a familia. They may not have been free, but they belonged. They didn’t fight for their freedom, granted. That didn’t matter. They fought for Rome. Those who were not slaves were men like Sosius.

He and I were hoeing, again. He worked hard, despite his lack of thumbs. He had been telling me, matter-of-fact, of all that he and his village had suffered in the war. ‘But why did you put up with all this?’ I asked him. ‘Why didn’t you just give up and go away?’

Sosius straightened, squinted in the sun. With the back of his hand, he wiped the sweat off his forehead. ‘Teacher, we are born to this, born to fight for Rome. My father fought in the first war against Carthage. My uncle was killed in the battle of Ausculum, trampled by one of Pyrrhus’ elephants. His people almost starved.’ Sosius kicked a clod of earth. Disturbed, the ants underneath it scurried away.

‘My father’s favourite story, Teacher, was about a Bruttian peasant, much like him or me. His wife died in childbirth. His sons were killed in Gaul. His crops were ruined by a freak hail storm. Then, to crown it all, his hut caught fire and burned to the ground. When he saw the smouldering remains, he fell to his knees and raised his eyes to heaven. “Jupiter, Jupiter, why me?” he called out. “Why me?”

‘Well, there was a flash of lightning and Jupiter appeared from a cloud. He looked down on the terrified man and said, “Because I’ve never really liked you.”

‘I suppose, Teacher, that’s why we’ve kept on.’ He looked up at the sun. ‘Come on, another hour to go.’

Underpinning all, we Romans have the law, under which even I have just been tried. Plebeian or patrician, we are all equal before the law and for us the law lies in the Twelve Tables. Inscribed on sheets of bronze, they stand in the Forum, where everyone can see them. When Rome was burnt by the Gauls two hundred years ago, the first thing the Senate did was replace the Twelve Tables. They are Rome’s soul.

Like every Roman child, I had when I was eight to learn them by heart. ‘I am your fabrus, your blacksmith,’ my father told me, ‘and the first thing I want you to understand is the law.’

I found the learning easy. ‘Si in ius vocat ito, ni it antestamino, igitur em capito: if a man calls another to court, he must go; if he does not, call him as witness, and thus seize him. If a patron commits fraud on a client, let him be sacer – sacred, accused, outside the law …’ The laws, after all, seemed to me to be common sense. But then I suppose one of my grandmother’s favourite sayings is right: ‘There’s one thing about common sense, it just isn’t common.’

I heard the drumming of the horses’ hooves, pulsing through the earth. I was awake and up and out. In the half-light, I saw them come, nine horsemen, bearded, wrapped in furs and armed. Mine was the nearest hut. I stood outside.

A pilum thudded into the ground at my feet. ‘Stay where you are!’ came a voice, and the first of them was upon me, his bay stallion rearing, phlegm from its snorting landing on my chest. The rider was tall. He wore a Gaulish helmet and, under his furs, a leather jerkin. He carried a sword and a battle-axe. His cheekbones were pocked. I can still remember his rank, sweat-soaked smell.

The nine formed round me in a semi-circle. ‘Move and you’re dead,’ the tall one growled. ‘How many of you are there here?’ I couldn’t place his accent. Ligurian?

‘Perhaps thirty,’ I said clearly.

‘Any women?’

‘Some, but …’ The tall one gestured with his head. Three of them turned their horses. I heard them canter down the street.

‘But, bastard? But what?’ and suddenly his horse was forward, his sword-point at my neck.

‘But they’re old,’ I said very slowly.

He guffawed. ‘We’ll see if they’re too old for us!’ The other five joined in their leader’s laugh.

A jab with the sword. ‘Any gold, silver?’

‘No. This is a poor place. See for yourselves.’

The sword was dropped. The leader turned. In the growing light, he surveyed Secunium, its shabby huts, its dozy, skulking dogs.

‘It may or may not be poor, but it sure stinks.’ Another gesture of the head. Three more rode off. I stood still. The man to the leader’s left, swarthy, dark-skinned, took out a flagon, drank, belched and passed it on.

It wasn’t long before the first three came back. Stumbling up the street in front of them were Sosius’ wife, Sulcipia, and five other old crones. ‘Is that the lot?’ the leader asked.

‘’Fraid so,’ one of the three replied.

‘Not even any girls?’

‘No.’

‘Damn. I like ’em young. And we haven’t had a virgin for bloody ages. Oh well, we’ll see what we’ve got, eh, lads!’ Again, that barking guffaw. ‘Right, you lot,’ he said to the women, ‘Strip!’ Sulcipia wailed. ‘Shut up, bitch!’ the leader shouted. ‘Strip!’

The sun had just come over the hill above Secunium. In that clear, soft light, the six old women took off their clothes before us, crying and snivelling in shame.

So, our families, our laws. Then, third, we Romans are bound by our gods. It’s hard for me to know what to say on this subject, because I no longer know what I believe. Bostar and I were discussing the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, Xenophanes of Colophon, a night or two ago after dinner.

‘If donkeys had gods, they would conceive of them as donkeys,’ Bostar said.

How right he is. Jupiter is merely a manifestation of anthropocentrism. Perhaps I am with Xenophanes a monist. I probably think that there are no gods. Is there, instead, a single, self-sufficient and eternal consciousness? And, if so, does that consciousness not govern through thought the universe, with which it is itself identical?

But I wouldn’t try this on Cato. It is for such beliefs, and others, that I have been tried. Cato and others of the reactionary brigade – I wish I could say old, but they are mostly young – really do, I think, believe in the Pantheon, in Mars and Mercury and Juno and Diana and all that lot. I remember the last opening of the Saturnalia I attended. Cato was doing the invocations on the Senate’s behalf. He went droning on, ‘per Iovem, per divos, per astra, agimus vobis gratias, quantas possumus maximas …’ as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it does. I remember thinking how hot it was, and wishing he’d get it over with.

Well, our Pantheon is simply the Greek one, however hard we try to pretend we’ve made it ours. It’s the one aspect of Greece that leaves me cold. I can’t accept those stories in Homer of the gods coming down to earth every ten minutes and meddling. A battle’s going on, and suddenly Athena or Ares or even Poseidon or someone’s right in the thick of it. Preposterous. At times, Homer even has the gods fighting each other. Greek gods are simply men with bells on.

No, by our gods I suppose I mean our religion. Our word religio means, after all, a non-material bond or restraint. I have no quarrel with such things. They are one of the glues that hold Romans together. The patricians like Cato may think themselves close to Olympus. But the gods and the religion of the people are much closer to home. Their gods lie in their hearths and hearts. Their gods are the Penates and the Lares, Vesta and the Manes. Such I understand.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed my chin down on my chest. I had seen the rape of Similce, Hannibal’s wife. I could bear to see no more. That memory engulfed me. I felt sick.

I heard the man dismount, smelt him come: sweat, garlic, wine. The pain when he jerked my head back by the hair was sharp. The dagger at my throat was cold. ‘Open your eyes, dickhead, or die.’ The leader’s voice was soft. I had seen and done enough with death. I wanted life. Or did I? Was a part of me willing to see more of the madness that can be man?

I opened my eyes slowly to the light. Of the six naked women standing in a huddle, some had crossed their arms to cover their breasts. The two at the front had their hands across their privates. Their breasts were shrivelled, flabby, old. All the women but Sulcipia were sobbing quietly with lowered heads.

‘Bring the rest of the village here too,’ the leader shouted.

Prodded by pila and swords, Sosius and the others, old men and young boys, soon formed another huddle near the women.

‘Right, lads, who’s first? Not exactly virgins, but a hole’s a hole, boys, a hole’s a hole!’

The six men who had dismounted shifted uneasily on their feet. The two on horseback looked at each other. Flies buzzed. No one moved. A small, blond-haired man with an enormous nose and a long, red scar across his forehead spoke. ‘After you, Tertio.’

Tertio took his dagger from my throat. ‘All right, matey. Come and hold this one. Make him watch.’ Scarface’s dagger was at my back.

Tertio moved forward, dropping his fur, then unbuckling his belt as he went.

Every Roman household, plebeian or patrician, has its shrines to the Penates and the Lares. The first are the guardian spirits of the family larder. Their name comes from penus for store-cupboard. In our house in Rome, their shrine was in an alcove down the passage leading to the kitchens. Its lamp never went out. The votive barley cakes were renewed each day.

That eternal light has never left me. In later life it stayed with me, burning on. Often as a child when I could not sleep I slipped out of bed, through the sleeping house and sat down in the passage before the shrine. The flickering lamplight cast shadows and gleams on the figures of the gods, two men crudely carved in ebony. I used to wonder why their wood was black. I came to see a balance in it, in the light and dark––

Yes, Aurio? What is it?

Lunch, master.

Goodness! Can it be that time already? Tell Mulca we’re on our way.

Shuffle, shuffle, then the softly closing door. I am fortunate in my servants, although I suppose by comparison with some masters they are fortunate in me. Cato, for example, prides himself on treating his slaves like dirt. As soon as they can no longer work, he kicks them out. So do many others. I don’t. I support my old slaves until they die.

I have been praised for this, and criticised. I am indifferent to both. Such kindness comes from my nature, and my upbringing. I was ten, perhaps eleven. School had been hard. I was tired, hungry. I was to dine with my father, who had important guests. He had sent his own body-slave, Festo, to help me dress. I was fidgety. When he slipped the pin of the brooch I was to wear through the fabric on my chest, he went too deep and pierced my skin. I howled and, without thinking, slapped Festo in the face. He ran from my room.

The dinner guests arrived. I was called. I remember long and heated conversations about things I didn’t understand. After the last course, before the wine was brought, my father looked across the room, caught my eye and nodded. I went to bed.

He woke me early in the morning. He held a strap in his hand. ‘I am going to beat you, Publius,’ he said quietly. ‘You must never, ever, strike a slave or servant. It demeans not only you, but also them. But before you learn your lesson, I want you to understand. Sit up and listen.’

I sat up, drew a blanket over my shoulders. My father sat on the end of my bed. Its leather thongs creaked. ‘You know, Publius, about the building of the Athenian Parthenon, and how every citizen of Athens contributed as best he could?’

‘Yes, Father,’ I said rather weakly, unsure where this was leading. But of course I remembered the stories of the building of the Parthenon. Only last year Rome had sent an embassy to Athens to see how it had been done.

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘when the building was finished, do you know what the Athenians did? They turned loose the mules that had worked the hardest. They declared them exempt from further service, and put them out to grass for the rest of their lives at public expense.’

‘Remember that, Publius, when next you’re angry with any living creature. Now, get up, and bend over the end of the bed.’

I did as I was told, and I have always remembered.

I never knew the name of the woman Tertio grabbed and threw down on the ground. He knelt on top of her, forcing her legs apart with his knees and hands. She moaned and mewled. The only other noise was Tertio’s grunts.

Suddenly he pushed himself up. ‘Shit!’ he shouted. ‘Even with my eyes shut, I can’t keep it up.’ He kicked the woman sharply in the side. ‘Get up, you filthy slag. The rest of you, get dressed.’

His legs were pale and hairy. He buckled his belt, looking at his men. ‘No silver, gold, lads? Nothing?’

‘Nothing, boss,’ Scarface said. ‘We looked in all the usual places. But hang on.’

The pain was so unexpected, so sudden and so intense I can recall it now and wince. Scarface wrenched the silver earring from my left ear, the earring I’d been given when–– That does not matter now. But my left ear lacks its lobe.

I felt the sting, the blood trickling down my neck. Scarface held up the earring. ‘At least there’s this!’ he chortled.

‘Keep that bauble if you like,’ Tertio said. ‘Let’s get out of this dump. It stinks.’

And they were gone as suddenly as they had come.

I was working in the fields this morning, clearing irrigation channels. Macro, my bailiff, many years ago gave up trying to stop me working with the men. He knows by my dress what I intend, and simply accepts it. Yesterday it was my patched brown woollen tunic, my old straw hat and boots. That meant work, manual work.

First we had to mend the water wheel. I loved wading out to it in the middle of the dam, cool water in the softness of the morning when the larks and finches sing.

The water wheel was my idea. We use it to move water uphill to a feeder tank. From there, the water has enough head to flow right through the fields – if the channels are clear. Before we built the wheel, the lower fields were dry and yielded much less.

But it is, I accept, a fiddly thing, constantly going wrong. This time, it had slewed on its axle, so its buckets were picking up hardly any water. I unhitched the mule that turned the wheel and gave its bridle to Macro.

‘We need to grease it more often, Macro, at least once a week. Have you enough tallow?’

‘Yes, Scipio.’

‘Well, give me some.’ Holding a jug of tallow I waded to the wheel. ‘The wedges have split,’ I shouted to Macro. ‘They got too dry. Bring me some more, will you?’

‘How many?’

‘Four should do – oh, and a mallet, please.’

I fixed the wheel, and waded back as the dragonflies darted on the water. I stood on the bank, watching the wheel turn and the drops of water dance. I thought of my trial, of the judgment. When will it come? Dragonflies, I thought, will dance. Water will be wet, regardless.

For days afterwards, Secunium was silent. I saw people when I went to the well, the latrines, but no one spoke. I worked, hoeing and irrigating beans. There is a peace that comes from the life of the body, not the mind. When a man can think no more and feel no more, all he can do is be silent, and let his well of life refill.

As it must be all over the world, the life of peasants is governed by the rhythm of the earth. Awake at first light, eat, work, eat, sleep a little during the hottest hours, work, eat, sleep when the sun goes – where does it go? – down.

I had never lived like this before. I have not since. I felt the sun beat on my back as the hawks wheeled overhead and the flies buzzed round my bloody ear.

I worked alone. Even Sosius kept to his hut; until I saw him walking towards me in the field on the fourth day, or was it the fifth?

I stopped, put down my hoe, looked up and wiped the sweat from my forehead. Sosius came nearer, stooped, I saw, his step not neat but shambling. I have seen men walk like that when drunk. As he came closer, I saw his shirt was torn across the chest. It and his face were covered in soot. I did not understand.

‘Come with me, Teacher’ was all he said, in a weak and faltering voice.

‘But what––’

‘Just come.’

I followed him back across the field where the soil I had just watered was beginning to steam in the strengthening sun. Back on to the path that wandered through the acacia bushes, the brambles and the thorns and opened out back at the well. From there we walked in silence up the street that was Secunium, shabby, dirty, poor. From such as these, I thought again, Rome’s greatness comes. She is the sum of many parts, lives lost, hearts broken, pains borne.

There were, I saw, no fires burning. Even the dogs were still. Sosius passed his hut, then went on past mine up to the end of the village where the abandoned huts were, roofless and forlorn.

He stopped outside one of them. He didn’t look at me, just said, ‘In there, Teacher, in there.’

I went in. Sulcipia’s body was still swinging, very slightly, on the rope across the beam from which she had hanged herself. Her head lolled forward, her limbs were slack. She seemed a puppet, or a doll.

I have seen many, many dead. None has moved me like Sulcipia, whom I hardly knew. Aristotle says of Oedipus that his tragedy is so powerful because first you fear for Oedipus, and then you fear for yourself. This old woman, who had nothing, had, it seemed, her pride. To any passing soldier, pedlar, merchant, Sulcipia’s would seem a life not worth living. But she had her heart, I thought. Simple, no doubt, ignorant, uncomplicated, but still hers, still free somewhere beyond the drudgery of her days. Those men who came had broken it. Since it was all she had, that she could not bear.

She was a small woman. Her belly swung almost level with my shoulders. I took the knife from my belt. I put my left arm round her thighs and, reaching up, I cut her down.

I blinked as I came from the darkness of the hut to the blinding light, dead Sulcipia in my arms. Sosius was standing where I had left him. He still did not look up.

‘Will you …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Will you bury her for me?’

‘Of course, but …’

‘We cannot bury a’ – he could not manage the word ‘suicide’ – ‘those who have taken their own life.’

‘I understand.’

Sosius looked up. ‘Now I am truly alone.’ He was crying, I saw, silently. ‘It was the shame, the shame. She could not bear the shame.’ He turned, and walked away.

I was the rest of the day burying her. I chose a place high above Secunium, a shelf on the hillside. The ground was hard and stony, yet I had to dig deep to keep her from the dogs.

As I dug, I thought what I might do to mark her passing, what I might want for mine. When I stood up to rest my aching back, I saw the vultures, already wheeling high overhead. How do they do it? I wondered. Does death so soon have such a smell, or is death a sense? Perhaps it is just sight. They say that vultures can see clearly over many miles. Could one chance-passing seeker after carrion have seen Sulcipia’s body lying beside me on the ground? There are many things man does not understand.

When I had finished, I climbed further up the hill. There was a glade there of birches, and the little spring that fed them made the grass green all around. I saw a sapling that was straight and healthy. I dug it up with care, carried it down and planted it in the stony earth above Sulcipia. Then I went up and back several times to refill my water-gourd and soaked the birch’s roots. They would have good feeding in time.

I left Secunium the next morning, at first light. I remember well what I had with me: those things with which I had come. The clothes I stood in, boots, black cotton trousers under my leather leggings, a simple cotton shirt and over that my light summer cloak. In my satchel were my winter cloak, a pair of sandals, four maps of Italy, two unused wax tablets and three styluses. Hanging from my belt were my knife and water-gourd. The only things I left with that I had not brought were calluses and an even heavier heart.

I walked north, up and through the ruined fields where Sosius had first taken me. Did I know where I was going? Not entirely. Away. Secunium’s life was not mine. I have seen so many men in trouble for living a life that was not theirs, for never living their own – though it seems much easier so. When people realise their mistake, it is usually too late to change. Sometimes, as when I left Secunium, let alone left Hannibal, I did so because I had to find my own way.

‘The wettest thing is water,’ says Xenophanes, ‘the brightest thing is light, the hottest thing is fire, the softest is air. But the hardest is to know yourself.’ As I think does Scipio, I grow old learning something of that every day.

I was about to pass an olive tree, old and big but wizened, burnt. I stopped to look at it. Olives are strong. This one was already sprouting new shoots and leaves from its blackened bark. It seemed to me a symbol of hope for Secunium, a symbol, too, of the strength of Rome. You can burn an olive, and destroy a year’s crop, even three, but it will fruit again. The vine is the same, with the vigour of a weed. Olive and vine must be uprooted to be killed. Hannibal thought that by burning he would do enough. As this tree and many showed, he was wrong.

Sosius stepped into my path from behind the tree. I stopped again. He looked at me openly this time. ‘Go well, Teacher. Perhaps you don’t know it, but you have taught while you’ve been here.’

‘Taught, Sosius? I don’t know about that. But I do know I have learnt.’

‘Here, take this,’ he said, pressing a bag against my chest. ‘I don’t need it now. Vale. Farewell.’

I watched him until he disappeared over the brow of the hill back into his village of, or so it seemed, the damned. Perhaps they would know peace again, and thrive and farm.

When he had gone, I thought it would be easier to carry one bag, not two. So I opened Sosius’. There were four barley cakes in it, two cheeses, and a little leather pouch, shut with a thong.

I squatted down, tugged the thong of the pouch and tipped it up. Gold fell to the ground, gold pieces. I picked one up. It had clay on it. So Sosius had had gold buried underground. Where? The shrine, probably. No one would think or want to look there. I scraped off the clay. ‘Senatus populusque Romanus,’ I made out. Roman gold. I laughed out loud as I remembered. Hannibal had paid me each month, as he paid everyone who served him – when he could – although most served for love, not gold. But I had never taken the money, just asked him to keep it for me. It never occurred to me to ask for it when I stayed behind. Hannibal had paid me in a different kind.

* * *

My childhood. That is what made me, and I have made Rome, so I must give a true account. And be consistent. Chronology, then, Bostar. I shall use the order of time, and not totter about like a new-born colt. Though I am hardly that. An old warhorse, perhaps, now put out to grass. But I shall chew my grazing carefully, and dream.

He seemed immensely tall, a fair giant, my first teacher, Rufustinus. He was also very thin. My nanny, Quinta, was the opposite, dark and small and round. We were all astonished to learn, years later in Celtiberia, that they were to marry – no, Bostar, I shall not forget that I am to be Thucydidean, or try to.

Rufustinus was my litterator, employed to teach me to read and write when I was four. We Romans have a clear and tested system of education. A litterator teaches letters to an abecedarius, someone learning a-b-c, and that then was me. In lesser families, the father acts as litterator, but my father did not have the time and did, presumably, have the money to pay someone else to do it. I had a class with Rufustinus each morning for two hours in a room at the far end of the courtyard.

He came from near Verona in the north. His mother was a Celt, and that explained his fair hair and blue eyes. Of course, Rufustinus didn’t tell me this. I would never have dared ask him. He kept strictly to work. I learnt what little I knew from Festo, who used to help me dress. Yes, I know, Bostar. I’ve already mentioned him. Anyway, Festo told me that Rufustinus had been a clerk to one of the state priests, or pontiffs, and that’s why he was so clever. That meant little to me. Other things did.

‘And why, Festo, is he so tall?’ I once asked.

‘Also because, young master, he is a Celt. Theirs is a land of many rivers and mountains. The people there need to be big to cross and to climb. Why, some of them are taller than the Aventine. They march at great speed round their country, catching animals to eat.’

‘What kind of animals?’

‘Huge shaggy ones called aurochs, and others called bison, ten times bigger than the biggest cow. They kill them with clubs bigger than I am, and then’ – and Festo whispered in my ear – ‘then they eat them raw.’

I remember this conversation because it made me curious. A little scared too, I suppose, but above all curious. Perhaps that was when I developed a love of travel I have never lost. For weeks I dreamed of giant Celts with clubs in wild and wasted lands. But it did me good. I certainly worked harder after that, and never did anything that might annoy Rufustinus.

I thought about what Festo had told me. When Rufustinus wasn’t watching, I looked at him hard. Yes, he was tall, but not all that tall, I decided. So the next time Festo was sent to help me dress, I challenged him. ‘Festo, you said the Celts are very, very tall, and Rufustinus is, certainly. But he’s not all that tall, only two or three hands more than you.’

‘Granted, young master. He was obviously the runt of his litter. Now, your sandals …’ Well, I have known many Celts since then and travelled through their lands. I have never seen a giant. Perhaps I will one day, in my dreams.

Runt or not, I found Rufustinus’ Latin strange at first, guttural and harsh. But he had an excellent reputation – otherwise, of course, my father would not have employed him – and he taught me well. Or, rather, I think he must have done, because I learnt to read and write sooner than was expected of me.

But the truth is that I cannot remember how he taught me. I remember words written down on tablets and placed on or beside the objects they described. Mensa on a table, cathedra on a chair, lucerna by a lamp and so on. In time, I think, Rufustinus began to place the letters in order for me in the alphabet. They came to make a pattern in my head, like a song, and I can sing it still.

I wonder, before battle, before the killing-frenzy comes, when men know they may be about to die, or lose an arm, a leg, an eye, a hand, how many sing under their breath a rhyme they learnt at their mother’s knee or, perhaps, if they are educated, the alphabet. It is not the words that ease their fear, but being safe deep down with sounds, back in themselves at a time when the world was as simple as a-b-c. But no road leads back to that place.

One morning – I must have been five – I opened the door to the schoolroom. Rufustinus was standing by the window. Beside him was my father. I can still see his white toga next to Rufustinus’ brown.

‘Good morning, Publius.’

‘Good morning, Father.’ I didn’t know what to do. This hadn’t happened before.

‘Well, don’t stand there gawking! Sit down!’ my father said.

When I had, he began to walk across the room between my desk and Rufustinus’ table. ‘You are doing well, Rufustinus tells me. Good, good. So well, in fact, that we think you are now ready.’ He smiled at me.

I was puzzled. ‘Ready, Father, for what?’

‘For a new language, Publius. Today you will begin to learn Greek. You will need Greek for the life you will lead.’

‘What life is that, Father?’

He laughed, said, ‘You will find out soon enough,’ patted me on the shoulder and left the room.

I remember feeling scared. Greek? I remember the sweat on my hands. We had a few Greek slaves in the house, but they spoke Latin to us. I overheard them sometimes speaking Greek, and thought it was some kind of music that they played, running like a stream. Yet that day began the best journey I have ever made. Like all such, like true marriage or friendship, it is one that has no end.

* * *

I walked steadily on, north and east. At least there was no shortage of places to sleep, or shelter from the midday sun. There was always a hut or shepherd’s cottage. Bruttium was a green desert, its fields untended, its villages burnt or deserted, testaments of war. I saw no one, only goats roaming wild without a goatherd. This was how Rome had fought on after Cannae, by stripping her larder bare.

Yet I was never hungry. I found enough fruit trees, corn. Early on, when I left the path I was following and went into the bushes to relieve myself, I came upon a rabbit snare. It had caught a rabbit, long ago, and now held only bones, stripped by ants and bleached by sun. I added it to my satchel’s contents, and was to eat much rabbit in the weeks ahead. Bread I missed. I have a weakness for it. But when, I thought, I had it again, I would enjoy it all the more.

Strange eyes in the dark, an amber gleaming. I was half awake. Or was I dreaming? Then I heard the sound, a rapid panting, and the knowledge came. Dogs. Wild dogs. I had gone to sleep in a half-ruined bothy, once a woodman’s, judging by the shavings on which I had made my bed.

I had roasted a rabbit that evening. That must have brought them. I sat up. I heard a menacing growl, saw teeth white in the half-light. I cleared my throat. ‘Go,’ I said quietly. ‘Go on your way. Leave me to mine.’

I lay back, turned on my side and went back to sleep. But in the morning, they were still there, across the clearing, just in the shelter of the trees. I threw the rabbit carcass to them, shouldered my satchel and walked on. There were many wanderers in Italy then.

From the start, Greek was fascinating. First, Rufustinus taught me the alphabet. I loved the look of the letters, the strange shapes of ξ and θ, ι and μ. I practised them alone. He began to teach me Latin and Greek simultaneously. I would translate simple sentences from one into the other. I found the differences between the two languages helped me to learn both. It was all the easier to learn the Greek optative, for example, because Latin did not have one. It seemed less hard to learn the principal parts of Greek irregular verbs when I had mastered some Latin ones – although τίθημι still tricks me, even after fifty years. Words are the most fickle – and fascinating – of things. Like clouds, they change. Like earth, they endure. When a word is said or written, there is nothing you can do to take it back again.

Well, perhaps it was all harder, took much longer. These memories are far away. Some stand out, tall trees in a forest, but most have merged and muddled in my mind.

It was winter, cold and raining. We were going over the imperfects of amo and λύω. I recited them well enough.

‘Now, write them down,’ Rufustinus instructed from high above, handing me a tablet and stylus. He was like a stork, leaning down. His cheeks always seemed puffy and full. I had a chilblain on my index finger. The wax was stiff. I made a mess of λύω. I knew it.

Rufustinus glanced at the tablet, and wiped it clean with his ruler. ‘Again.’

From his third rejection came the only time I crossed him. ‘But that’s the best I can do,’ I whined, looking at my feet, wishing the lesson was over.

‘Publius Cornelius Scipio, I am not interested in your best. Can you build a house without bricks, or a road without stones? No, of course not. That, by the way, was a rhetorical question.’ And Rufustinus then said something I have never forgotten. ‘Never forget, young Publius, potest quia posse videtur – you can because you think you can. Now, try and try again.’

I did not know it, but I was building the foundations of what I am. They have proved deep and strong.

Scipio has been in bed now for two days. He has a mild fever and, while he had anything in his stomach, kept being sick. Aurio and I take turns to sit with him. He dozes. We talk, though not about the trial. We read him the historian Herodotus, although this morning he asked for the comedian Aristophanes – he must be getting better. Mulca brings him her special teas. When you are ill, it is good to be among friends.

I am better, though weak. I always think when I am ill how much more, because of it, I enjoy being well. I see my quince flowers, for example, with a new eye. Several have opened since I took to my bed. I will send for Macro. I want to know what else is going on. I hope the water wheel is still working. And I can go to the latrine. I do hate chamberpots. They are so demeaning, but a necessary evil for the ill, I suppose – and the old.

The dogs followed me for days. I never thought they would attack. I did not send them any sense of fear – not because I was controlling it, but simply because I had none. I was brought up with animals. I was put when I was very small into a den of wolves. Or have I imagined that? A wet licking, a nuzzling in the night. We are not only what we are, but what we wish we might have been and hope, perhaps, yet to be – and I must practise what I preach.

From following well behind, the dogs suddenly rushed yelping towards me as a pack. The hairs on my neck stood up and my penis stiffened in fear and I held my muscles hard. ‘Calm, Bostar, calm!’ I said to myself, taking the deep breath of peace.

The dogs veered off to my right, bursting through the undergrowth and shrubs. Probably a pig, I thought. They need to eat. Let them.

I was in high and lonely hills, cut with sharp defiles, difficult to cross. The rich red earth crumbled as I scrambled up, often sending me slipping down. My arms and face were badly scratched from pushing through thorns. Many of the cuts were septic, and I could not find the herbs I needed as unguents. My progress was slowing. It was time to turn east, to an easier way.

Preparations had been long and patient, hushed. My life was unchanged, but I smelt and sensed the bustle in the kitchens, saw the greenery put up to beautify our house. I was put to bed early the night before. Quinta tucked me in, and said, ‘Now remember, don’t wait up for him. He only comes to children who are asleep.’

‘Who, Quinta? Who comes?’

‘You’ll find out in the morning – if you go to sleep.’ She kissed me on the forehead, said, ‘Good night,’ crossed the room and softly closed the door. Her smell, of lavender and laundry, stayed behind.

I fought to stay awake. From far below us in the Forum, I heard the drums that marked the passing of the hours. I forced my eyes wide open. I clenched my teeth, held my arms rigid. I pinched myself, sat upright, pushed off my blankets to be cold – but I fell asleep.

I woke with a start. What had I done wrong? Yes, fallen asleep. I jumped up, rushed to the window and tugged the curtain open. I could hear people stirring in the house. It was not fully light, but enough for me to see, as I turned, an unfamiliar little table by the end of my bed. On it were boxes. I was running to the table when the door opened and my father and mother came in. I checked myself.

‘Good morning, Father. Good morning, M––’

‘Oh, go on!’ my mother laughed. ‘Happy Saturnalia. Open them!’ She was fat about the middle, fatter than when I had last seen her.

How long had it been since Quinta had told me? Six months, five? I still didn’t understand.

She had been putting me to bed. I was spitting into the bowl she held, having cleaned my teeth with the usual stem of arrowroot and my dentiscalpium, my toothpick, when she said, ‘And by the by, young master, you soon won’t be alone.’

‘What do you mean, Quinta? I’m not alone. I have you, and Festo, and my father, and––’

‘I mean a brother or a sister. You’re going to have a brother or a sister or maybe, who knows, two of each.’ Her kind face smiled, and the crows’ feet round her eyes became like a spider’s web and as she nodded enthusiastically her double chins wobbled.

‘Two of each?’

‘Or even one of each,’ she said, sounding hopeful.

I looked hard at her. Slowly, I put my right thumb in my mouth. For once, she didn’t pull it out. I still remember sucking hard. I don’t think I did it again until I saw the carnage at Cannae and then, yes, I sucked my thumb.

Sorry, Bostar. Cannae is some way off, I admit. But the extent to which past, present and future are the same baffles me. What is an action? By asking that very question, I am presuming my past – from which I acquired the capacity to ask it – my present – in which I ask it – and my future, without which it would lose its force.

An action, any action, is surely the result of someone doing something intentionally. That intention is formed, in large part at least, by that person’s past and presupposes the consequences of the future. But say I moved this chair to the door to have a different view. Say Aurio then came in to clean when we had gone to bed and, in the dark, tripped over the chair because it wasn’t where he expected it to be. My action would have had consequences, yet no one could say they were intentional. Perhaps, then, we need a new word for that kind of action.

But back to Quinta.

‘I don’t understand. I’m going to have a brother, or a sister, or two of them, or one of each?’ I asked.

Quinta tutted. I have not known since a sound so sure, unless it be the thud of a pilum lodged in flesh. ‘It’s past your bed-time,’ she marched on in her brusquest manner. ‘What I mean is that your mother is going to have a baby,’ she said, tucking in my sheets.

‘What, tomorrow?’

‘No, Publius, not tomorrow.’ She was suddenly gentle. She sat down on the edge of my bed.

‘Well, when?’

‘When, when … when the baby is ready. When the baby is ready, Publius, you will have a brother or a sister. Or both.’ She chuckled. I saw the creases in her rosy cheeks. ‘Now, you must sleep.’ She leant forward across me, about to blow out the candle, and her soft bosom against my chest made me feel safe.

‘Quinta?’ I said softly, slipping round on my side to face her.

‘Yes?’

‘Have you got babies?’

Suddenly, she crossed and clenched her hands beside me. ‘No, young master, no, I haven’t. Except …’ And the thing I still remember is the cheeks of my nanny, Quinta, in soft candlelight, wet with tears. I hope I have not failed her.

When they came back, three were limping. Two others had great gashes in their sides. ‘So, not a pig, a boar,’ I said out loud. I had begun talking to myself, as men do when they are long alone. But they all had full bellies. They had killed.

The land was opening out. Early some mornings, if the breeze was right, I could smell the sea from the Mare Adriaticum, over to the east. The dogs fell further and further behind, although I always left out for them any hare or rabbit I could spare. But those were just scraps. They must have been hungry, as by then was I. It had been eight weeks, nine, since I left Secunium. As I left Bruttium, forage became increasingly rare. I saw villages, inhabited, but I stayed away. I did once come upon an olive store. I ate as many as I could and took as many as I could carry. I left behind a gold piece in the almost empty jar. I chuckled as I thought how I must, thereby, have added to the local lore of sprites and fairies.

The world needs more of those. I once asked my father how it was that trees grew upside down. I meant, of course, how they went up so high. You couldn’t, for example, throw a javelin that high.

He scoffed, and told me not to be so silly. But I still don’t know the answer.

I had reached the brow of a small but steep hill, rich in brambles and wild rose. I paused to catch my breath and look around. Below me, on the little plain, was the pack of dogs, tongues lolling in the heat. The lead dog, a big, grizzled grey mastiff, moved forward and stretched out his neck, it seemed, towards me. He gave out a long ululating howl, then barked, once, twice, turned and trotted back the way he had come. The others followed. I don’t know why, but I thought this was an omen, and I thought the omen good.

They both came and sat on my bed. They were holding hands. I had rarely seen them together before, let alone like this. ‘What are they?’ I asked, pointing to the boxes.

‘Presents, Publius, presents,’ my father said with a smile.

‘What kind of presents?’

‘How should we know?’

‘Aren’t they from you?’

‘No,’ my mother replied. ‘They come from Saturnus, a god. Today is his birthday. He brought you, and all other good children, these presents in the night.’

‘But if it’s his birthday, shouldn’t we be giving him presents?’

My father slapped his knee at this. ‘Maybe, Pomponia, we have bred a son for the courts and not the field!’ Then, turning to me, ‘We shall give him presents, Publius, you’ll see. But come on, open what Saturnus has given you.’

I opened the biggest box first. In it were dolls, two of cloth and two of clay. I put them carefully on the table, in a row.

‘These are symbols from Saturnus of your childhood, Publius,’ my father said.

‘Oh, I see’ – not that I did, well, not really. In the next box were little jars, one containing water, the other earth, and a dagger. I looked at them, perplexed.

‘These symbolise what Saturnus gives us, Italy and Rome. These are our right, Publius, but they are also our responsibility. That is why he gives you this as well.’

I unwrapped it slowly from its calfskin, bound with a thong. It glinted in the light. A dagger, steel shining, its heft of some blackwood inlaid with precious stones. I looked up at my father enquiringly.

‘Saturnus gives you this for a purpose,’ he said. ‘Never use it in anger, but never sheathe it when what you have been given is under threat.’

I was as puzzled by the earnestness of my father’s voice as I was by the strange gifts. Well, strange then. Not now. When I was a soldier, the dagger of my first Saturnalia was unsheathed for many years.

‘Don’t look so serious, Publius,’ my father said in a lighter voice, getting up. ‘Ouch, your bed is hard,’ he went on, rubbing his bottom. ‘We must get him a softer one, Pomponia.’

‘All right, I’ll tell Festo,’ she replied with a smile.

‘Now, we must be quick or we’ll keep the servants waiting. Open the last two boxes,’ my father told me, kneeling down beside me, his arm round me. His soft beard brushed my face.

I gasped when I opened the first of the two left. It was full of gold coins. ‘Goodness, I am rich!’

‘No, not quite, Publius. These are for you to give away, as Saturnus gives to us.’

‘To g-give away?’ I stammered.

‘Yes. You’ll see. And now the last.’

The first layers were of the softest wool. Under them, I found a ring. I held it out on my palm to the light. The red stone glanced and glowed. ‘It is, it is … alive. Alive with light,’ I whispered.

My father held out his right hand. He slipped a ring from his little finger and, as he put it in my hand beside the other one, he said, ‘This was my grandfather’s. That one is yours. Wear it, in time, with pride and with the blessing of Saturnus.’

‘And in the meantime,’ my mother said, coming over to us, ‘wear it with this.’

She held out a simple leather thong. My father took it, looped it through the ring. I knew. I bent my head. He passed it over my neck. Still kneeling, he hugged me, then stood up. ‘Now, quickly, Publius, get dressed.’ I was in my nightshirt. ‘We’ll wait for you in the atrium.’

Blisters. Well, one, to be exact. A tiny stone must have slipped into my left boot. By the time I noticed, it was too late. I felt the swelling only when I stopped to eat my lunch. I remember the grove of oaks where I did that, softly whispering in the breeze. I relieved myself under one of them, adding my steaming urine to the must. But I remember those oaks not because they were fine oaks, which they were, but because of my left foot.

Of course I felt relief when I saw the road. It would take me where I wanted to go. But more than that, I felt a sense of awe. I had crossed the Via Appia with Hannibal. Then there had been much else on my mind. But from where I stood this time, in the rolling hills above a town I took to be Venusia, I stood and looked and saw and was amazed. Straight as a ruler, a vast Roman highway stretched on, far out of my sight.

I have seen nothing like these Roman roads. They are the product of refined, meticulous engineering, of course. But more than that, they are the product of the Roman mind. Ten Hannibals with twenty armies might, in time, destroy the Via Appia. But, as Hannibal found out, you cannot destroy the Roman mind.

The sheer thoroughness of it. The short stretch I could see crossed some marshes, then a river. Most people would have avoided the first and used ferries for the second. Not the Romans. They had built a causeway, then a bridge. Even on the bridge, I saw, the road kept its drainage channels, its kerbstones. This road, I thought, is the product of a people devoid of self-doubt. How did they come to be so? The Via Appia makes you feel that it, and those who made it, will never end.

And for a blistered foot it meant easier going. Men have died for want of less.

It is the noise, the colours and the smells that I remember: overwhelming. Cymbals and drums, tympana and flutes, lutes and whistles in a cacophony of sound. All the buildings were decked in bunting, garlands of flowers round doors and windows. Bright flags rippled in the breeze. Dancers in fantastic costumes of vermilion and ochre, brightest blue and crimson, indigo and violet, performed their cartwheels and undulations, oblivious of all around. And then the singing, the talk of many voices, the calls of stall-holders selling hot chestnuts, figs, sweetcakes and cordials, wine. Jesters and buffoons cavorted. Laughter was loud; I still love it, though I hear it less often now. I think we should all laugh, even when we have considered all the facts. Laughter is immense. It is immeasurable.

The Forum was packed. I did not know there could be so many people, Celts and Celtiberians, Ligurians, Lusitanians, Aecians, Hernicians, Cantabrians, Samnites, Bruttians, Volscians, Baliarideans, Dorians, people come from many miles around. Women with masks of flowers wandered at their will, offering kisses for a penny and singing soaring songs that mixed and mingled in the noise.

There were black people, brown, yellow, olive, some as tall and thin as eucalyptus trees, others short and round as melons, babbling in as many dialects and tongues. Preceded by their walkers, as were we to clear a way, rich merchants strolled along in gold and purple, dark-eyed women by their sides, their bosoms bare and heaving and their perfumes languid in the air. Dressed in black and beating heavy drums, priests’ officers pushed their way through the throng, and behind them came the augurs, mincing, nosegays pressed to their nostrils, as beggars pressed their stumps at passing burghers. The world was mad and wonderful, alive.

‘Look, Mother, look!’ I shouted. ‘Father, look at this!’

My parents were talking to some friends. A tumbler was about to cross in front of us. In pants of crimson and a shirt of gold, he was walking on his hands, and on each of his feet there was a red ball. They rolled a little as he moved, but did not slip off his feet. I watched, fascinated, as he passed beyond us into the crowd. Did the balls, I wondered for days afterwards, ever fall, or did they stay on his feet for ever?

It was my first Saturnalia. It gave me a love of festivals I have never lost. And I gave away my gold, but not to the priests of the temples, whose collectors pressed on us at every turn. From my hot and clammy hand I gave my box to a beggar boy sitting alone and quiet under a column of the law courts. He had no nose, I remember, and his clothes were rank and torn. When I knelt down quickly and gave him the gift of Saturnus, he looked astonished. Then he smiled, before I was borne away like flotsam in the sea.

* * *

When I stepped up on to the Via Appia, I felt I had left Hannibal at last. I was on a new road, and this one, unlike Hannibal’s, led to Rome.

Why did he not take Rome? He hardly even tried. So many have asked me. I give the usual answers: lack of siege equipment, of support from Carthage. The truth is that after Cannae he was spent. What he had made in his mind was broken. He had drunk his loss – his father, his son, his wife – to the lees. When that was done, he found that beneath the brilliance and the fury and the anger there was nothing. He found he was only a man.

The road was deserted, reaching on as far as I could see, its far distance shimmering in the sun. Strong and sure, this road’s self-confidence was almost frightening. I sat down on the kerb and drank deep from my water-gourd. I ate some dried figs. I wanted to defecate, but felt exposed, alone. The bowel, unlike the bladder, is a patient friend. I stood up again and walked on.

The first people I met ignored me. They were on a wagon, coming south towards me. Two oxen pulled it, plodding on. A haze of flies buzzed round the beasts. I started to greet them, but their driver stared straight ahead as they passed me. The others, two men and a woman, did the same. The creaking of the wheels was raucous, then again I was alone.

I limped on. I slept that night and others in a culvert, like a fox in his den. Now both my feet were sore from walking on the stones.

Even from my room I heard the banging at the door. Then the noise of voices, people stirring. It was dark and cold. I slipped out of bed and shivered, fumbled for my woollen gown. Still half asleep, I walked into a chair and stumbled as I crossed the room, but I found the door. Torches were blazing in the corridor. I blinked, and rubbed my eyes.

Festo rushed past me, a torch in each hand. I followed, past the Manes and Penates, down the corridor as so often before. There were six men in the atrium, no, seven. Crossing the room in front of them, his hair dishevelled, in a gown, his back to me, his slippers scuffing on the floor, I saw my father. I squeezed against the wall to see round him and gasped – I had never seen blood before.

‘They what!’ my father shouted.

‘I know, it’s outrageous,’ said one of the three men I could see. He and another, younger man were supporting a third, who was slumped but standing, his whole face covered in blood, shining in the torchlight. I could see it ooze, glowing, from a gash across his head. His thick brown hair, there, was black. Who says blood is red? It is, but not for long.

‘Festo, quick. Bandages, hot water. Pomponia, where are the chairs?’ There was a new note to my father’s voice, an urgency I had not heard before.

‘Coming,’ I heard my mother answer, though I couldn’t see her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ my father replied, crossing the tablinum and pulling over a couch.

‘Lay him down there.’

‘But the blood …’ said the younger man.

‘Bugger the blood,’ my father replied. I’m sure he did. It was the first time I had heard anyone swear.

They laid the man down gently. My father knelt down beside him. Festo approached, and reached out with a dripping cloth.

The man waved him away. ‘Later.’ I could barely hear him. He cleared his throat, spoke more strongly. ‘We’ll do this later. The cut’s not deep. They tended to it on board the ship, but we’ve ridden hard to get here. That’s opened the wound up again. Anyway,’ and he looked up at the elder of the men who had carried him in, ‘it’s not outrageous, Ligurius.’

I saw him turn his head towards my father, reach out a hand and take him by the arm. ‘No, it’s not outrageous. Scipio, it is war.’

What I remember of that night is the dirt. There had been none in my childhood until that night. Everything in our house was always clean and ordered. Everyone’s clothes were always the same, not in colour – on the contrary – but in cleanliness, and that crisp, clean laundry smell is one that I still bear with me from my childhood as if I was still there.

We had a laundry room at the back of the courtyard, its copper vessels gleaming, and a laundry maid – what was her name? Caria? Coria? – always with her hair tied back, her apron white and crisp. I used to hide behind a bench and through the open door watch her working and smell that slightly acid smell.

I have a fine laundry here. Mulca supervises it. Even our bed-linen, of fine Egyptian cotton, is white and crisp and clean. Mulca does not know, but often I stand in a recess in the passage outside the laundry and shut my eyes and smell and dream.

I am finding this a trifle dull. But I must let him have his memories. So I have been doing other things, and will allow myself a brief digression. I can always take it out later, when I edit Scipio’s account.

What I have been doing is renewing my love affair these past few days. My love affair with numbers. In the late afternoons, when Scipio is out on the estate again or reading, I have been checking Macro’s accounts. That would be tedious, even to a practised clerk, but not to me. Payments for fencing and lamp oil, receipts for lambs and corn … I haven’t found a mistake yet, and Macro is fastidious. But he asked me as a friend to check. ‘The older I get, Bostar,’ he said, ‘the more the numbers seem to swim before my eyes in the ledger.’

Not so with me, and I do not use an abacus. I have loved numbers since I was very small. They were and are utterly reliable, true, something I can depend on. Two plus two, everywhere and to everybody, is always four. People, by contrast, as Scipio has just demonstrated by breaking off to talk about his laundry here, of all things, do not behave at all like numbers. They are, on the whole, neither dependable nor independent. I am fortunate indeed to have known both numbers and people. The ideal state, I think, would be one that balanced people and numbers. But most embody the virtues of neither and the vices of both.

Two slaves brought the chairs at last. My father sat down beside the wounded man. ‘So, Flavius, tell me. What happened? Where is Julius?’ I had never heard him so intense.

The man called Flavius sat up a little on one elbow. He coughed, long and hacking. ‘W-water …’

‘Of course. Festo! Get some water. Or wine?’

Flavius shook his head vigorously. ‘We need Mars, not Bacchus tonight, Publius. Let me begin.’

I stood transfixed, just outside the tablinum, surrounded by the images of my ancestors. A great part of what being a Scipio meant had been brought home to me, I realised, as I watched the stain of Flavius’ blood spread across the white linen of the couch where he lay.

‘Our journey at least went well,’ Flavius said, ‘no storms, or pirates.’

‘Though we were faster back than going,’ added the older man, Ligurius.

‘You sailed from Ravenna?’ my father asked.

‘No, from Ancona. We were on our way to Ravenna when we heard that one of Paullus’ ships – you remember him, Scipio?’ – my father nodded – ‘that one of his fast merchant ships was bound for Illyria anyway, out of Ancona.’

Flavius paused, and coughed again, and shivered. So did I.

‘Festo, quickly, bring a brazier!’ my father called. ‘And some 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 rode three abreast, their colour streaming, their armour glinting. How many ranks, I couldn’t see. Ten, or eleven. But anyway, far from full strength. As soon as he saw me, the commander raised his hand for Halt.

They stopped perhaps forty paces from me. ‘They probably have a drill for this sort of thing,’ I thought, ‘a manual.’ It was good to be chewing gum. The decurion in command – at least that’s what I assumed he was, since each turma is supposed to have one – waved on the two on either side of him. They walked up, the left-hand horse, a young bay gelding, snorting and confused.

‘Quis estis? Who are you?’ the taller of the two demanded. Under his cap I could see black hair. He was barely a man, almost beardless. What would he be? Fourteen, fifteen? Yes, Rome had dug deep in fighting Hannibal.

They were restless, nervous. Both had their hands on their sword-hilts.

I stood up, and the bay reared. ‘Non armatus sum,’ I said, raising my arms. ‘I’m not armed. I am from the east, a teacher, bound for Rome.’

‘A teacher? Pah.’ The boy spat. I followed the spit’s trajectory and watched the little bubbles fizzle at my feet. He kicked his horse forward to within inches of my face. ‘Marcus,’ he said to the other horseman without looking round, ‘search that,’ and he pointed with his left hand to my satchel on the ground. He drew his sword. The point was at my throat. ‘Teacher, or spy?’

I didn’t see my father again for many months. To be honest, I didn’t even know when he went. My life went on, unchanging, although each time I crossed the tablinum I still saw the faint stain of blood on the floor, a darkening of the white wooden tiles in the mosaic of Zeus and Hera.

Two things happened in that time. One is important, one not. The first is that my mother had her baby. She was called – she is still called – Cornelia. I used to hear her cry or mewl occasionally. That is all. Well, not quite. She did become important to me, but much later, and in ways I still don’t understand. But let me keep to Bostar’s chronology. I will come to Cornelia in time.

The other is quite different. When my father was away fighting what has become known as the first Illyrian war – there has been one more since and will, I prophesy, be more unless we change. But for Bostar’s sake I won’t go into that. When my father was away, I first met the friend who has shared my life.

It was a grey day, cold and wet. The wind whistled through the selenite. Even the fire’s smoke seemed to judder, rising, in that blast. Even Rufustinus seemed cold. I noticed that he kept returning to the brazier, once he’d written on the board. The chalk, I remember, slowly spread on his dark kidskin gloves until it was like a white blaze on a brown filly. Normally, he stayed by the blackboard to elucidate and question. Not that day.

I wasn’t doing well. I remember wishing I’d put on my woollen socks, not my cotton. It doesn’t seem to matter at the time, when you get up fast because you’re late and just put on what’s easiest and nearest. ‘Celerius agens, lentius dolens. Act in haste and repent at leisure,’ goes the proverb. I have found often that is true, and tried to change accordingly. Perhaps the soldier and general in me was formed in a small child wearing the wrong socks. It’s possible. Why else should I remember?

We were covering the Greek genitive of comparison. ‘In Latin, Publius, as you know, we use the ablative for comparison or quam plus the ablative,’ Rufustinus said. I nodded. ‘Greek uses the genitive instead, or ν plus the genitive. So, put into Greek for me,’ and he wrote on the board:

Socrates sapientior quam ceteris.

‘That’s easy,’ I said. It was.

ὁ Ʃωκράτης σοϕeώτερος ν τν ἄλλων. Socrates was wiser than the others.

‘Good, Publius, good. Now, soon we will have a visitor, so just one more exercise.’

‘A visitor? Who?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough. Back to the perfect and aorist tenses. What is the difference between these two sentences?’ And he wrote out in that neat hand of his: ἡ θάλασσα λέλυκε τήν γέϕυραν: ‘The sea has broken the bridge.’ἡ θάλασσα ἔλυσε τὴν γέϕυραν: ‘The sea broke the bridge.’

‘So, explain,’ and in the cold his breath steamed.

‘The perfect, λέλυκε, describes a past action whose effect is still continuing. But the aorist, ἔλυσε, means that on a certain date the sea did break the bridge. It means that was a historical fact.’

‘Very good, Publius.’

It wasn’t, really. I loved the Greek aorist from the start. I still do. The ability to distinguish between the perfect and the aorist seems to me one of Greek’s many superiorities over Latin.

That was as much progress as we made that day.

‘Come in!’ Rufustinus responded quickly to the knock. I turned my head to the door. A boy walked in. About my age and size, he looked uneasy and scared. He had a mop of red, tousled hair, freckles and a turned-up nose. And his ears, I thought, were too big for the rest of him. He stood just inside the door.

‘Well, come in, Gaius Laelius, come in!’ Rufustinus chided. ‘Don’t just stand there. Sit down, over here.’ Rufustinus pointed to a desk on the other side of the room. Laelius took a step forward. ‘Close the door first, boy.’

Laelius sat down. His nose, I saw, was running. Perhaps he had a cold. Or perhaps it was just the cold. Rufustinus picked up his stick and tapped it against the blackboard. ‘Publius, this is Gaius Laelius. He is the son of Priscus Laelius, a client of your father’s. Your father left instructions that I am to teach him with you. He is said to be bright, and well advanced.’

Laelius looked shyly at me. When our eyes met, he quickly turned his away.

‘But let’s see what we’ve got,’ Rufustinus went on, ‘a scholar or a sow. Laelius, what are the principal parts of sperno?’ he barked.

I saw Laelius stiffen. A tough one, sperno. I’d felt Rufustinus’ stick for getting it wrong. ‘Sperno, spernere, sprevi, spretum,’ Laelius gave back, without hesitation. His voice was high, but soft.

‘And tango?’

‘Tango, tangere, te …’ He stumbled. ‘Tetigi, tactum.’

‘Ah hah,’ from Rufustinus. That was high praise. I was rather enjoying this. ‘What’s the supine of lavo?’

‘There are two, sir, lautum and lotum.’

‘Adverbs divide into which classes?’

‘Manner, degree, cause, place, time and … and …’ I didn’t know either. Laelius screwed up his nose, concentrated, went on, ‘And order.’

‘Well, well. Your father has taught you properly, I see. Publius, I do believe that this young man will test you.’

He did. And he still does.

I had expected this, or something similar. ‘I am a teacher, on my way to Rome.’

‘Why Rome?’

‘To find work.’

The boy looked at me, hard. I held his gaze. At last, ‘Wait there,’ he said. He turned his horse, walked back to the squadron. I saw him, though I couldn’t hear, talk to the commander.

He slipped off his horse, a gelding, chestnut brown. I had seen so many horses dead. It was good to see living ones, even on a sullen grey morning, in the cold.

He walked back to me. ‘Anything in the bag, Marcus?’

‘Nope. Just some old scrolls. Maybe he is a teacher. But I did find this.’ He handed over my little pouch of gold.

My interrogator opened it, whistled under his breath. ‘Where did you get this? Did you steal it?’

‘No, it was a gift,’ I said.

‘A gift? Some gift! Who from?’

‘From, from’ – I faltered – ‘from a friend.’

‘Teacher, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. For a start, don’t you know that no one travels without a pass? Don’t you know there’s a war on? For all we know, you might be a spy for that bastard Hannibal. Now, hold out your arms.’

So it was that, tied up and on a Roman horse, I continued my journey.

No one spoke to me. I was relieved, because I’ve never been much of a horseman. I concentrated on staying on my mount as we cantered, with me in the middle of the squadron, up the Via Appia. If I fell off, I knew, with my hands tied I had no way of breaking my fall. And I didn’t want to break my head on stone or on the hooves behind. I needed my head. I had plans for it.

It was Quinta who explained that night, at bed-time. ‘Laelius’ father is a novus homo. A new man, of new money. He made it, they say, supplying corn to the army. His people are farmers in Bruttium. Anyway, your father’s fairly taken to him. Agreed to become his patron, and appointed him one of his tribunes.’

‘Tribunes?’ I asked. ‘What’s a tribune?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough, in the life you’ll lead, young master. But a tribune is a senior staff officer. Anyway, this Priscus Laelius, that’s his full name,’ she sniffed, ‘he hasn’t even got a cognomen, anyway, he and your father are off together in Illyria, and so we have young Laelius with us.’

‘But Quinta, if Laelius’ father is so rich, why doesn’t Laelius have his own litterator?’

‘Because, young master, that wouldn’t go down well. Too showy, when you’re still a mere publicanus. Why, Laelius’ father isn’t even an eques, a knight, yet. Though I dare say he might be if he does what’s expected of him in Illyria.’

‘And what’s that, Quinta?’

‘Well, win for a start. But that’s more your father’s problem than Laelius’, who’s acting as quartermaster.’

‘Quartermaster? What’s that?’

‘Oh there never was such a boy for questions. Last one, then lights out. The quartermaster sees to supplies and––’

‘You mean swords and shields?’

‘Yes, those, but war’s as much about a hot meal and a dry tent …’

A hot meal and a dry tent. I never forgot that. In big ways and small, many contributed to what I was to become.

So Laelius became part of my life. He was neither sullen nor sycophantic. We never fought, but we played; and for that I owe him my childhood. Before school and after school – as time went on he came earlier and left later – we played in the courtyard, hopscotch, marbles, hide and seek. In class, the pace quickened. He started with no Greek, and soon had more than I. He admitted to working each evening.

‘Why do you work so hard, Laelius?’ I asked him one day. We were sitting in the garden, after school, drinking lemon cordial.

‘Why? Because, because my father told me to.’

So simple. Simplicity in life is, I think, the key. Knowing who and why and what you are. Good men admit the complex. Great men absorb it, and make of that something simple.

The next day, Laelius was to be tested on some irregular verbs; I already knew them. Rufustinus had only given Laelius two days to prepare.

He got them right, perfectly, and the lesson went on. I asked him afterwards how he’d done it. ‘It took me two weeks to learn those verbs,’ I said. ‘How can you memorise them so fast?’

‘How? I make them into pictures.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, take a verb like τίθημι. What does it look like to you?’

‘What does it look like? I don’t know. It doesn’t look like anything.’

‘It does to me. It looks like a sneeze.’

‘A sneeze? Are you serious?’

‘Yes! The sound my father makes when he sneezes is like τιθημι. So when I had to learn the principal parts, I just pictured my father sneezing! Like this.’

He stood up and sneezed. ‘A-τίθημι,’ he went, ‘τιθέναι, ἔθηκα θείζ … and,' he said, tears of laughter running down his cheeks, ‘I just think of my father sneezing like that. I see him, hear him making a racket like a winter storm.’

We laughed until our sides ached. But I had learnt a lesson. If you want to remember something, picture it. The more absurd the picture, the better you’ll remember. I’ve been complimented, for example, for remembering people’s names, even if I’ve met them only once or briefly. That’s easy. You merely think of an image when you meet them and associate that with the name.

The Pannonian merchant Timpulus, for example, was amazed that I remembered his name when we met for the second time, after many years, shortly before I left Rome. When I first met him, he was just another merchant on the make, trying to win an army contract; there were hundreds like him. But his mouth. It was almost a perfect circle, small and full. I thought of a goldfish feeding and the sound I imagined, not that I’ve ever heard it, was something like ‘Timp’ as it sucked the morsel in. So I remembered goldfish-face Timpulus. Not that it did me any good.

We were in class. The door opened. No knock. My mother walked in. No, she didn’t walk, she glided. ‘Good morning, Rufustinus.’ I hadn’t seen much of her since my father left. She kept to her rooms most of the time. I knew my sister had been difficult, weak and often sick.

I was amazed how beautiful my mother was. First, the way she held herself. Composure. Grace. Her hair was still raven black, tied up as was proper in a bun. She wore a simple, white woollen shift with a belt of beaten gold on calfskin round her waist. No make-up. No perfume, or none of that horrible stuff whose smell overwhelms the air. I have thought since I was a very small child that strong perfumes, scents and body-oils should be banned. No, I am more temperate now. Not banned, discouraged.

Her figure was perfect, but it was her ugliness that made her beautiful. Her nose was, there is no denying it, crooked. Her eyes were too far apart and her mouth too big. But she unified it all, imbued the imperfect with her peace. How does the perfect come from imperfection?

‘I must borrow the boys, Rufustinus. But they will be back.’ That was typical of her. Absolutely in command, but polite, regal. She turned to us; our desks were now side by side. ‘Publius, Laelius. The war is over. Your fathers are home. Go to the Campus Martius to greet them. Festo will take you. But first go and change. I want you both in the toga praetexta.’ That was formal dress for boys of Laelius’ station and above, a light-coloured toga whose purple border meant we were freeborn. My mother smiled, warmly yet almost imperceptibly, and left the room.

‘But mine’s at home,’ Laelius whispered in my ear.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll lend you one of mine.’

I felt many things, all at once. A child does not yet know how to marshal them; nor do many men. My father’s return was exciting. But the Campus Martius was, I have to admit, a stronger draw, and abandoning Aeschylus a third. I have grown to love his plays. But does anyone understand them?

Yes, Aristotle, that unparalleled, polymath Greek. Alexander the Great was fortunate to have him as a tutor. He understood everything. Aeschylus and, from what I read last night, memory. I found his treatise on the subject, De memoria et reminiscentia. Scipio’s is a fine library.

I shall let myself digress again from my past to the present. I have, after all, as good an excuse as a man can have – Aristotle. ‘It is impossible even to think,’ he writes, ‘without a mental picture.’ Memory, he goes on to say, belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination. It is a collection of pictures in the mind that comes to us from the impressions of our senses.

These mental pictures Aristotle likens to a painted portrait, ‘the lasting state of which we describe as memory’. He thinks of the forming of a mental image as a movement, like a signet ring making a seal on wax. ‘Some men have no memory owing to disease or age, just as if a seal were impressed on flowing water. The imprint makes no impression because it is worn down like old walls in buildings, or because of the hardness of that which is to receive the impression.’

This is exciting. I am almost seventy years old and yet have never before thought of these things. Here I am remembering with Scipio, without until now asking how it is that we can or do remember.

‘Follow me closely, please,’ Festo said. ‘The crowds will be thick, and we mustn’t get separated.’ He was always earnest, Festo. And he looked so odd, thin and stringy like a bean, with dull, lank hair that lay across his forehead like a tent flap, a pinched head and pock-marked skin. But if a worrier, he was a kind and faithful servant.

‘Now, if we do lose each other, let’s meet at your Uncle Cratinus’ house, young master Publius. Ask anyone, but listen, both of you. You go through the Forum, past the temple of Castor and Pollux, turn left, go straight up the street, past the temple of Diana, then turn right, then second left. Before you come to the city gate just by the pond there’s a small flour mill. The drive up to your uncle’s house is just beside it …’

‘Do you honestly think he expected us to remember all that?’ Laelius asked me as soon as we’d set off, Festo well in front.

‘I thought you would. You could make a picture,’ I replied. In the end, far from being separated, the crowds pushed us so close together we couldn’t part. It wasn’t bad at the beginning, as we walked down the Palatine and along the path through the waste ground at its foot.

As we followed it, Laelius asked me, ‘Why does no one build on this ground? In other parts of Rome, you’d find a thousand people living on a space like this.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Why this ground is empty?’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’

‘About a hundred years ago, a general called Vitruvius Vaccus had a huge house here, and a big garden. But he committed treason. He was fighting some northern tribe and was surrounded. He surrendered, on condition that his life be spared.’

‘Which it was?’

‘Which it was. But his men were massacred. When he got back to Rome, the senate had his house here demolished, and decreed that the site should stand empty for ever in memory of his shame. But––’

‘Come on, you two!’ Festo chided from ahead. ‘Keep up, or we’ll be late.’

What I read in Aristotle itself triggered a memory. I hunted for perhaps an hour, until I found it, a passage in Plato’s dialogue the Theaetetus in which Socrates assumes that there is a block of wax in our souls – the quality varies – and this is the ‘gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses’. Whenever we hear or see or think of anything, we hold this wax under the perceptions and thoughts and imprint them on it, ‘just as we make impressions with rings’.

I have been thinking how best to do this. It seems to me that using this villa – or any largish house – is one good way. Say I want to remember the names of the planets. Yes, I could memorise a written list – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. But how much easier simply to place the five planets in five different rooms of this villa. So I stand, in my mind, at the front door. I walk in. I place Mercury in the portico. On the table in the tablinum I place Venus, and so on. When I want to remember the names, I simply walk round the house in my head.

I wonder if this would work with a much longer list? The towns of Italy, for example? I suppose I could use up the outhouses, and the stables. I would just have to formulate a very obvious route for my mental walk. I must try.