Complete Short Stories (49 page)

Alexander leads up Bucephalus, harnessed. As I mount him from a handy barrel, he backs into a pyramid of earthenware pots. Several break. The shopkeeper explodes with rage, schoolchildren shout and cheer; the master rains blows on them indiscriminately. ‘Two sesterces will cover the damage,’ I tell Alexander, dipping into my pocket for the coins. ‘Street vendors display breakable
goods at their own risk.’

My beard is so fair that I can get by with a shave every other day. Oh, what a bore shaving can be, even though my rank allows me to jump the queue! Our street barber happens to be a patient, painless operator, who softens one’s whiskers with warm water, hones his iron razor frequently, and takes at least half an hour over the job; but I’d rather be bored by his gossip
than trust myself to the assistant – a slapdash fellow who shaves four customers to his one, and never apologizes for a gash as he stanches the blood with spiders’ webs and vinegar.

I clatter off to pay my morning duty call on Lucius Vitellius. Some years ago, I served as commissariat officer in Northern Italy under his eldest son, recently Consul. Old Vitellius, a close friend of the Emperor’s,
is a model patron. When Sophron got wrongfully arrested this summer, after a brawl in the Fish Market, Vitellius sprung him at once and had the charge withdrawn. At New Year, he always gives me a handsome present of table silver, or a toga. Last time it was Bucephalus. I try to be a model client, and frequently perform delicate missions for him – sometimes with the help of two ex-gladiators, Arruntius’s
cronies.

Having tethered Bucephalus outside Vitellius’s mansion on the Quirinal Hill, I enter the marble-walled lobby. Clients by the hundred are assembled here, among them a dozen senators. We are admitted in strict order of precedence to the hall, which is flanked by ancestral statues. Old Vitellius has a nod or a joke for each of us. He asks me: ‘How’s the mule, Spaniard?’ ‘Magnificently frisky,
my lord.’ ‘Kicked anyone of importance today?’ ‘No, my lord, we met none of your enemies. He merely pulverized a display of Sicilian glassware. The merchant is claiming fifty denarii damages.’ ‘Then he’ll accept twenty? Very well, my lad. Collect them and, in future, give your steed less food and more exercise.’

Noble Bucephalus! He’s earned me nineteen denarii. I collect from the
steward, who
stands behind his master’s ivory chair, and will soon be dealing out the daily food allowance – six sesterces per man – to all the poorer clients.

Back again. Since Arruntia is still inaccessible, I remove my toga and set off for the Fish Market with Sophron, who shoulders the baskets. Our women are not trusted to do the shopping; in theory, they sit at home and spin. (Imagine Arruntia handling
a spindle!) I try Zeno’s stall, and my luck is in: he offers large red mullets at only half a denarius the pound! We shall be six to dinner; no, seven with Arruntius. I buy accordingly. Thence to the poultry and vegetable markets. A sauce for grilled red mullet, Sophron says, demands rue, mint, green coriander, basil, lovage, fennel – all fresh; also Indian pepper, honey, oil and stock, which we
have in the larder. Agreed. And after the fish, chicken? I insist on Fronto’s recipe: pullets first browned and then braised with stock, oil, dill, leeks, savory and coriander. One each will be enough. I buy seven large pullets at the price of six. The dessert? Let us say pomegranates, quinces stewed in honey, and a couple of melons. At Oppian’s fruit and vegetable stall I pick out all I need, bargain
loudly for a while, and beat Oppian down to nine sesterces – he has asked twelve. ‘Put these in the other basket, away from the fish, Sophron!’

I find Arruntia looking like Messalina, Caesar’s naughty wife, or like some ruinously expensive Greek courtesan from Baiae; and tell her my morning’s adventures. When she grows restless, wondering whether I have forgotten her birthday, I produce a square
silver cosmetic-box engraved with the Judgement of Paris, and underneath:
‘Formosissimae adjudicatur’ –
‘The verdict goes to the most beautiful.’ She kisses me tenderly. The fact is, I can’t yet afford to divorce Arruntia, and her latest lover happens to be an aedile – one of the City magistrates responsible, among other things, for prosecuting breaches of the civil decencies, such as flagrant
immorality, or betting (except on chariot races), or throwing filth into the street from windows. If I cross her, she may easily get him to frame me.

We breakfast together on bread, cheese and grapes. The bread is a tough, flat, wholemeal cake baked in a mould. We rub garlic on our slices and dip them in oil. Arruntia asks after the investments which I manage for her. ‘Remind me about them in
a month’s time, and I’ll have good news,’ I smile. She need not know that I bought the silver box with a bribe given me by the owner of a tile factory: not to foreclose on her mortgage, but let him have another month to find the interest.

‘What are you doing this morning, my beloved?’ ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I have to attend a coming-of-age ceremony across the Tiber. Later, my friend Pyrrha will be
taking me… I forget the street – somewhere in the same district – at any rate, it’s a recital of poems by that boring Marcus What’s-his-name…’ She invites me to join her there. I excuse myself: Arruntius
needs me to examine the shields and weapons for tomorrow’s gladiatorial fight, and make sure that they’ll pass muster. Owing to the shortage of smiths he’s including some second-hand stuff from
the provinces.

Arruntia sends her slave girl round the corner to hire a ‘senatorial’ litter. Evidently she means to create an impression on someone. On whom? That Indian scent she’s wearing was not intended merely to please me, and her aedile lover will be busy in Court all morning. Still, what do I care?

After checking the weapons with Arruntius, who is in a jovial temper, I stroll along the
Subura towards the Forum; and have reached the Temple of Castor and Pollux when sudden shouts go up. ‘Clear the way! Clear the way!’ Lictors come swaggering down the street, six abreast, followed by the Imperial sedan and an escort of Praetorian Guards. Old Claudius reclines inside, head jerking, fingers trembling. The crowd cheer, and laugh. A young Gaul tosses Claudius a petition, which hits him
in the face. He protests angrily: ‘Is this the way to treat a fellow-citizen, my lord? You’ll be throwing paving stones next, I shouldn’t wonder!’ ‘Roses, only roses, never paving stones for the Conqueror of Britain!’, the embarrassed Gaul cries. Claudius smiles indulgently, unrolls the petition, reads a few lines, and hands it to Secretary of State Pallas, who is riding beside him. ‘Petition granted,’
Claudius says. ‘The man looks honest and can write a good clean Latin.’

I visit Sosius’s publishing house, close by in the Forum, at the corner of the Tuscan quarter. The open patio holds some eighty desks, at each of which a scribe sits, bent over a long parchment scroll. A clear-voiced reader delivers the text which these slaves are copying: Claudius’s own learned
History of the Etruscans.
He spells it out, letter by letter, warning them beforehand where each line ends; so that all copies will be uniform and mistakes easily checked. The book is to consist of twenty scrolls, at five denarii a scroll.
¹

At Sosius’s I meet the very man I have been looking for: Afer, just up from Herculaneum, near Naples. ‘Is it true, Afer, that you have a redheaded British slave named Utherus for sale?’
‘Well, maybe… if the price is right.’ ‘Then I’ll be frank. One Glabrio, who wants to marry my sister, bought another of your Britons recently, but can’t get him to work. The fellow spends most of his time weeping, and won’t eat; and all because he’s been separated from his brother Utherus. Glabrio is my neighbour, and I happen to need a porter. It would be a charity…’

Afer considers. ‘What would
you pay?’

‘Twelve hundred. The slave’s strong and healthy?’

‘I’ll guarantee that.’

An hour later we settle for fourteen hundred denarii, and strike hands
on the bargain before witnesses. Glabrio’s slave, let me confess, is not really pining; but has casually told Sophron that Utherus was one of King Caractacus’s most experienced sword-smiths, and that if I could find him a job… I’m pretty sure
I can sell Utherus to my father-in-law, and make a couple of thousand on the deal. Or, failing him, then to his rivals in the Via Impudica. This is a lucky day! I shall buy my pretty mistress Clyme a blue silk scarf.

Home to luncheon a little late. Arruntia is even later. Nobody excuses himself for not being on time in Rome, where only millionaires own water-clocks. We guess at the hours from
sunrise to noon, and then the official timekeeper at the Law Courts shouts: ‘Midday, my lords!’, and his cry is joyfully taken up and carried along all the streets and alleys. Tools are downed, shops shut, pleadings end: for no Romans work in the afternoon, apart from tavern keepers, barbers, policemen and public entertainers. And almost every other day, on one excuse or another, is a public holiday.

Questioned about Marcus What’s-his-name’s recital, Arruntia returns the vaguest possible answers; but I know where she’s been, because I sent Alexander to tail her. Not content with the aedile, she’s started a serious affair with Ascalus, the famous pantomime actor!

Luncheon consists of cold left-overs from last night: spiced Lucanian sausages and mock-anchovy pâté. For want of anchovies, Sophron
took fillets of sea-perch, grilled and minced them, simmered them in stock with eggs, added pepper and a little rue, laid a fresh jellyfish on top to cook in the steam. None of us guessed the ingredients.

While Arruntia takes her siesta, I slip out to give Clyme the new silk scarf. How generously she shows her gratitude!

Later in the afternoon I escort Arruntia to the Hot Baths of Agrippa, beyond
the Forum; her slave girl carrying the silver cosmetic-box, Alexander carrying my gear in a leather satchel. Mixed bathing is the rule there. Only shy young virgins and sour matrons who have lost their figures attend the private establishments reserved for women. At Agrippa’s, neither sex wears a stitch while in the water, but the aediles’ police are present in force to discourage loose behaviour.
Arruntia undresses in the women’s quarters; I in the men’s. Then, clad in short tunics, we skip off to the enormous exercise room. Arruntia and two girl cousins play triangle-catch; she has brought three small balls of kidskin stuffed with feathers. The object is not to drop any of them, while gradually increasing the pace. Experts use both hands and six balls instead of three. The most popular
sport is bladder-ball: anyone may join in and try to keep the bladder off the floor. Personally, I prefer
harpastum:
you grab the heavy pigskin ball, full of sand, and carry it hither and thither until robbed – dodging, feinting, leaping, handing off. But first you oil yourself all over to get slippery. Tripping and low tackling are against the rules.
Today I am in splendid form and twice break
through a group of twenty players, running from wall to wall and back again, before someone jumps on my shoulders, and down I go. By an extraordinary coincidence, both of Arruntia’s lovers have joined the party. I flash Licianus the aedile a pleasant smile, and rob Ascalus of the ball after a long run. Licianus congratulates me on my play; so does Ascalus.

Presently we remove our tunics and go
naked into a duck-boarded sweat-bath, which lies above the main furnace. Sweat flows in rivers, and soon we totter to the warm bathroom. There our slaves sponge us with hot water from the central cauldron, scrape us with silver
strigils,
and rub us down with towels. Clean as cupids, and some five pounds lighter, we make for the cool swimming pool, where we frisk about like dolphins.

Arruntia,
mother-naked, swims up to the rope which divides the sexes. ‘What shall we do?’ she wails. ‘Neither of my brothers can come to dinner, only my dreadful sisters-in-law!’ ‘They’re not too bad,’ I say, ‘when on their own.’ Then one of the gods – perhaps Vulcan the Cuckold – prompts me to add maliciously: ‘I’ll persuade two distinguished friends of mine to fill the vacant couches.’

‘Do you know my
wife Arruntia?’ I ask the aedile as he swims by. ‘This, my dear, is Licianus the Aedile, who has been playing a tough game of
harpastum
with me. May I invite him to dinner?’ Ah, I do it all so innocently; and the aedile accepts so innocently; and Arruntia beams so innocently! To point the joke, my other guest must be Ascalus!

The day approaches its climax. Arruntia hurries away to get her face
fixed up again – she has kept the elaborate tresses well out of the water – and then I take her home. She is unusually silent; and I unusually talkative. At nightfall the guests arrive. We recline around our expensive citrus-wood table. The red mullets are beautifully served, and Sophron has excelled himself with the braised pullets.

At first, Licianus and Ascalus address most of their conversation
to the sisters-in-law or Arruntius, afraid of treating Arruntia too familiarly by mistake. And Arruntia is at pains to flatter me. Soon I produce a jar of the best Falernian. Licianus, our Master of Ceremonies, wearing his purple-bordered toga, insists on mixing it with as little water as is decently allowed – none but thieves and gladiators drink neat wine – and when the usual toping match
begins, at dessert, shows his hand more boldly. He proposes toast after toast, always increasing the number of cups that must be downed for each: hoping, I suspect, to make us all dead drunk, keep a clear head himself, and end up in Arruntia’s arms.

But the old Falernian is mischievous. I heave myself up from the couch and call for silence. ‘Arruntia, dearest wife, listen to me! On my birthday
gift which you admire so much, is engraved a Judgement of Paris. Prince Paris, Homer says, was ordered to present the loveliest of three goddesses with an apple – a choice that needed remarkable tact. Paris chose the
Goddess of Love, and thereby won the favours of Helen. Now, here’s a “Judgement of Helen” for you! Give this pomegranate to the handsomest of us three young men… Pray, my dear, do
not yield to self-interest as Paris did, but make an honest judgement. Consider neither the rank and eminence of Licianus, nor the fame of Ascalus, nor the wifely duty you owe Egnatius, your humble husband. Speak straight from the bottom of your truthful breast! I can count upon my equitable father-in-law to see fair play.’