The Roman (18 page)

137

More likely they wondered what kind of witchcraft I had used to tame the girl so quickly. Of course, they thought I slept with her, but in fact I did not touch the girl, although she was over thirteen years of age. As the icy rain poured down and the even normally wretched roads were transformed into bottomless mud, and the puddles every morning were covered with a crisp layer of ice, life in the garrison became more and more static and monotonous. A couple of young Gauls who had enlisted in the legion to become Roman citizens by serving for thirty years, made a habit of slipping into my wooden hut when I was teaching Lugunda and watching with their mouths open and repeating aloud the Latin words. Before I knew what was happening, I was teaching them both Latin and how to write. Some knowledge of reading and writing is necessary for promotion in the legion, for no war can be waged without wax tablets. It was while I was teaching like this that Vespasian surprised me in my turf-roofed hut when he came to inspect the garrison. As was his habit, he came unexpectedly and did not allow the duty guards to sound the alarm, for he liked to go around and see the camp as it was each day. He considered that in this way a commander had a better picture of the morale of the legion than by a previously arranged tour. I was reading aloud from the tattered Egyptian-Chaldaean book of dreams what it meant if one dreamed about a hippopotamus, and I was pointing out each word in turn while Lugunda and the young Gauls put their heads together and stared at the hook, repeating the Latin words after me. Vespasian laughed so much that he bent double and slapped his knees as the tears poured down his cheeks. We all nearly fainted with fright when he appeared so suddenly behind us. We sprang to attention and Lugunda hid herself behind my back. But from his laughter, I realized that Vespasian was not at all angry. When he had at last collected himself, he looked sternly at us with a heavy frown. The upright posture and clean faces of the youngsters showed him that they were irreproachable soldiers. He said that he was pleased they wanted to learn Latin and to read rather than getting drunk in their spare time. Vespasian even lowered himself to tell us that he had seen a hippopotamus with

138

his own eyes in the amphitheater in Rome at the time of Emperor Gaius, and he described how enormous the animal is. The Gauls naturally thought he was making it up and laughed shyly, but he was not offended and merely ordered them to get their equipment in readiness for inspection. I respectfully asked him to step inside my hut and begged permission to offer him some wine. He assured me he would very much like to rest for a while, for he had finished his inspection and had set people to work everywhere. I found my father�s wooden goblet, which I thought my best drinking vessel, and Vespasian turned it around in his hand curiously. �You�ve the right to wear the gold ring, you know,� he remarked. I explained that I did indeed own a silver goblet, but that I prized the wooden goblet much more highly as I had inherited it from my mother. Vespasian nodded in approval. �You are right to honor the memory of your mother,� he said. �I myself have inherited a battered old silver goblet from my grandmother and I drink from it on all feast days without caring what people think.� He thank the wine thirstily and I willingly gave him more, although I was already so used to the poor life in the legion that I calculated how much he was saving by drinking my wine. This was not out of meanness. I bad simply learned that a legionary, on ten copper pieces or two and a half sesterces a day, had to provide food for himself, keep his clothes in order and put something by in the legion�s fund toward the day when he was ill or wounded. Vespasian slowly shook his large head. �Soon the spring sun will be here,� he said, �and it will dissolve the mists of Britain. Then we may well have a hard time. Aulus Plautius is preparing to go to Rome to celebrate his triumph and lie is taking his most experienced soldiers with the longest service with him. Wise veterans would rather accept gratuities than trek the long way back to Rome for a few days� feasting and drinking. Among the legion commanders, I was the one whose length of service entitled me to the first chance to go with him, because of my conquest of the Isle of Wight, But someone must see to Britain until the Emperor appoints a new commander-in-chief

139

in place of Aulus Plautius. Aulus has promised me a triumph insignia anyhow, if I agree to stay here.� He rubbed his forehead over and over again. �As long as I am in charge,� he went on, �there will be no more plundering and we shall pursue a policy of peace. But that means we�ll have to extract even higher taxes from our allies and subjects to maintain the legions. That�ll make them rebellious again. Admittedly, it will take some time to do, for Aulus Plautius will take the kings, commanders and other important hostages to Rome. There they�ll get used to the comforts of a civilized life and their children will be brought up in the Palatine school, but the only result will be that their own tribes will desert them. On our part, we shall gain a breathing space while the tribes competing for power here settle their differences. But if the Britons move swiftly enough, they�ll have time to get a rebellion going by mid-summer day. That�s their main religious feast day. They usually sacrifice their prisoners on the communal stone altar. It is strange, when otherwise they worship the gods of the underworld and the Goddess of Darkness with the face of an owl. The owl is also the bird of Minerva.� He thought for a moment about this. �In fact we know much too little about Britain and its different tribes and languages and customs and gods,� he went on. �We know something about the roads, the rivers, the fords, the mountains, forests, grazing lands and drinking places, for a good soldier�s first task is to find out about that sort of thing somehow or other. There are successful merchants who travel freely among hostile people, while other merchants are robbed as soon as they set foot outside legion territory. There are civilized Britons who have traveled to Gaul and all the way to Rome and who talk broken Latin, but we�ve not been able to meet them as their rank demands. At a time like this, if someone were to collect the most necessary information on the Britons, their customs and gods, and write a reliable book on Britain, it would be of much more use to Rome than the subjection of a whole people. The god Julius Caesar didn�t know much about the Britons but believed all kinds of loose talk, lust as he exaggerated his victories and forgot his mistakes when he wrote his propaganda book on the war in Gaul.�

140

He drank again from my wooden goblet and became even more animated. �Naturally the Britons must in time adopt Roman customs and Roman culture,� he said, �but I�ve begun to wonder if we couldn�t civilize them more easily by knowing their own customs and prejudices, rather than by killing them. This would be just right at the moment, when we want peace because our own best troops are leaving Britain and we�re waiting for another experienced commander-in-chief. But as you�ve killed a Briton yourself, I suppose you want to take part in Aulus Plautius� triumph, as your descent and your red border give you the right to do. Naturally I�ll give you my recommendation, if you want to go. Then I�d know I had at least one friend in Rome.� The wine was making him melancholy. �I have my son Titus, of course,� he went on, �who is growing up and playing with Britannicus in Palatine and who is getting the same education as he is. I have guaranteed a better future for him than I myself can hope for. Perhaps he will finally give Britain peace.� I told him I had probably seen his son with Britannicus at the riding exercises before the centenary feast. Vespasian said that he had not seen his son for four years and would not be able to this time either. His other son, Domitian, he had not even held on his knee, for the boy was the result of Emperor Claudius� triumph and Vespasian had had to return to Britain immediately after the celebrations. �A lot of noise and not much else;� he said bitterly, �the whole of that triumph. Nothing but a mad waste of money to please the mob in Rome. I don�t deny that I too would like to creep up the Capitoline steps with a laurel wreath on my head. There isn�t a legion commander who hasn�t dreamed of doing so. But one can get drunk in Britain too, and much more cheaply.� I said that if he thought I could be of any use to him, I should be glad to stay in Britain under his command. I had no great desire to take a part in the triumph which I had not earned. Vespasian took this as a great sign of confidence and was obviously moved. �The more I drink from your wooden goblet, the more I like you,� he said with tears in his eyes. �I hope my own son Titus grows up like you. I�ll tell you a secret.�

141

He confessed that he had taken a British sacrificial priest prisoner and was keeping him from Aulus Plautius, just when Aulus was collecting up prisoners for the triumph parade and the battles in the amphitheater. To give the people a special treat, Aulus especially wanted a genuine British priest who would sacrifice prisoners at a performance. �But a real Druid would never agree to do such a thing just to please the Romans,� said Vespasian. �It would be much easier for Aulus to dress up some suitable Briton as a priest. People in Rome would never know the difference. When Plautius had gone, I was going to set the priest free and send him back to his tribe as evidence of my good intentions. If you are brave enough, Minutus, you could go with him and make yourself familiar with the customs of the Britons. With his help you could make ties of friendship with their noble youths, for I have a secret suspicion that our successful merchants have been in the habit of buying safe-conducts at high prices from the Druids, even if they daren�t admit it.� I had no desire whatsoever to get involved in an alien and frightening religion. I wondered what sort of curse it was that seemed to follow me wherever I went, for in Rome I had been forced into an acquaintance with the Christian superstition. But one confidence for another, I thought, and I told Vespasian the real reason why I had ended up in Britain. He was very amused at the thought of the wife of a commander who had gained a triumph being judged by her husband because of a shameful superstition. But to show he was aware of the gossip in Rome, he said, �I know Plautia Paulina personally. As far as I know she went wrong in the head after letting a young philosopher�Seneca, I think his name was�and Julia, Emperor Caesar�s sister, meet in secret at her house. They were exiled because of this and Julia finally lost her life. Plautia Paulina couldn�t stand a charge of procuring, became temporarily insane and, going into mourning, she withdrew into solitude. Naturally a woman like that gets strange ideas.� Lugunda had been sitting all this time crouched in a corner of the hut, watching us intently, smiling when I smiled and looking anxious when I was serious. Vespasian had absentmindedly looked at her occasionally and now surprisingly said, �Generally speaking

142

women do get funny ideas in their heads. A man can never be quite sure what they have in mind. The god Caesar had the wrong idea about British women but he didn�t respect women particularly anyhow. I think that there are good women and bad women, whether barbarians or civilized. For a man there is no greater happiness than the friendship of a good woman. Your wild one here looks like a child, but she can be more useful to you than you think. You probably don�t know that the Iceni tribe has applied to me and offered to buy the girl back. The Britons don�t usually do such things. They usually reckon that members of their tribe who have fallen into the hands of the Romans are lost forever.� He spoke laboriously to the girl in the Iceni language and I understood little of what they said. But Lugunda looked confused and crept nearer to me as if seeking protection. She answered Vespasian shyly at first and then in a more animated way until he shook his head and turned again to me. �This is another hopeless thing about the Britons,� he said. �The people who live on tile south coast talk a different language from the inland tribes, and the northern tribes don�t understand anything of the southerners� dialect. But your Lugunda has been chosen since infancy by her priests to become a hare-priestess. As far as I can gather, the Druids think they can look at a child even in infancy if it suits their purposes and see whether it can he trained for the priesthood. This is necessary, for there are Druids of many different grades and ranks, so they have to study all their lives. With us, a priest�s office is almost a political honor, hut with them the priests are physicians, judges and even poets, insofar as the barbarians can be said to have any poetry.� It seemed to me that Vespasian was by no means as crude and ignorant as he himself liked to make out. He seemed to have adopted this role in order to draw out other people�s self- assurance. It was news to me that Lugunda had been marked as a Druid priestess. I knew she was not able to eat hare flesh without being sick and that she would not tolerate my catching hares with snares, but this I had presumed was some barbaric whim, for different families and tribes in Briton have different sacred animals, in the same way that Diana�s priest in Nemi may not touch or even look at a horse.

143

When Vespasian had once again spoken to Lugunda, he burst out laughing and slapped his knees. �The girl doesn�t want to go home to her tribe;� he cried, �but wants to stay with you. She says you are teaching her magic which even their priests know nothing about. By Hercules, she thinks you are a holy man because you haven�t tried to touch her.� I replied with annoyance that I was certainly no holy man. I was just bound by a certain promise and anyhow, Lugunda was only a child. Vespasian gave me a sly look, rubbed his broad cheeks and remarked that no woman is ever completely a child. �I can�t force her to return to her tribe,� he said, after thinking for a moment. �I think we�ll have to let her ask what her hares think about it.� The following day, Vespasian held the usual inspection in the camp, spoke to the soldiers in his crude way and explained that from now on they must be content with cracking their own skulls and must no longer go out after the Britons. �Do you understand, dolts?� he barked. �Every Briton is your father and your brother, every British hag your mother, and even the most tantalizing maiden your sister. Go out to meet them. Wave your green branches when you see them, give them presents, let them eat and drink. You know only too well that the rules of war punish individual plundering with death at the stake. So see to it that I don�t have to scorch the hides off you. �But,� he continued grimly, glowering at them, �I�ll scorch the hides off you even more if you let any Briton steal as much as a single horse or even a sword from you. Remember they are barbarians. You must civilize them with mildness and teach them your own customs. Teach them to play dice and swear by the Roman gods. That�s the first step to higher culture. If a Briton strikes you on the cheek, then turn the other cheek to him. I have indeed heard of a new superstition which demands that one does that, whether you believe me or not. However, don�t turn the other cheek too often, but settle your differences with Britons by wrestling, steeple-chasing or ball games, in the British way.� I have seldom heard legionaries laugh so much as they did during Vespasian�s speech. The lines swayed with merriment and someone dropped his shield in the mud. To punish him, Vespasian himself flogged him with a stave of rank borrowed from the