Roma - Saylor Steven - Страница 89
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“You know Greek?”
“Well enough to have served as my father’s translator, for the messages we intercepted from Pyrrhus’s couriers.”
“The son of Kaeso not only has a literary bent, but has mastered Greek! Truly, each generation improves upon the last.”
“I can never hope to be the man-killer my father was,” said Kaeso humbly.
“Come, walk with me. The day is mild and I need the exercise. We shall walk up to the Capitoline, and you shall describe to me the recent adornments which, alas, I am unable to see with my failing eyes.”
They ambled up the winding path to the summit, where in recent years the city had indulged its fervor for grand public works. The barren hilltop where once Romulus had set up his asylum for outcasts had become a place of lavish temples and magnificent bronze statues.
“This new statue of Hercules,” said Claudius. “Is it as impressive as men say? I’ve touched the thing, but it’s so big I can do no more than grasp its ankles.”
To Kaeso the statue hardly seemed new—it had been there since he was a boy—but perhaps time was measured differently by the much older Claudius. “Well, of course, my family is descended from Hercules—”
“Ah! You Fabii never miss a chance to remind us of that claim.”
“So I have a tendency to favor any image of the god, and the bigger the better. Actually, the bronze workmanship is quite good. Hercules wears the cowl of the Nemean lion and carries a club. His expression is quite fierce. Should the Gauls ever dare to come back, I think his image alone might scare them away from the Capitoline.”
“How does it compare to the colossal statue of Jupiter, over by the temple?”
“Oh, the Jupiter is much taller than the Hercules, as I suppose the father should be. People can see it all the way from Mount Alba, ten miles down the Appian Way!”
“You know the story of the statue’s creation?”
“Yes. After Spurius Carvilius crushed the Samnites, he melted their breastplates, greaves, and helmets to make the statue. The god’s enormous size represents, literally, the magnitude of our victory over our old enemy. Out of the bronze filings left over, the consul made the life-sized statue of himself that stands at the feet of the Jupiter.”
“You need not describe that to me. I remember quite clearly how ugly Carvilius is! And atop the Temple of Jupiter—is the quadriga as magnificent as they say? It used to be made of terra cotta, you know, an expressive but rather delicate material. It was repaired from time to time, but some parts were as old as the temple, and probably made by the hand of the artist Vulca himself. But now the terra cotta has been taken down and replaced with an exact duplicate, done entirely in bronze.”
“I remember the original terra cotta,” said Kaeso. “Believe me, the bronze is much more impressive. The details of Jupiter’s face, the flaring nostrils of the steeds, the decoration of the chariot, are all remarkable.”
“Alas, if only I still had eyes to see! The bronze replacement for the quadriga was done by my dear colleagues Gnaeus and Quintus Ogulnius, you know. It heartens me to see men of a younger generation take up the populist banner. In the year both Ogulnius brothers served as curule aediles, they put the worst of the rich moneylenders on trial and convicted them. Out of the confiscated property, the Ogulnii paid for that new bronze quadriga. They also paid for that new statue of Romulus and Remus over on the Palatine, which has become such a shrine for the common people of the city.”
“Do you know, I’ve never seen it.”
“Really? Neither have I, but blindness is my excuse. How your cousin Quintus must detest the Ogulnii and their politics!”
“We call my venerable cousin ‘Maximus’ nowadays,” said Kaeso.
“I suppose he’s deliberately kept all the Fabii from paying homage to the Ogulnii’s great monument. We must go at once, so that you can finally see it.”
They descended the Capitoline, crossed the Forum, and ascended the Stairs of Cacus. The slave barely needed to assist Claudius, who knew the way by heart. At the foot of the fig tree not far from the Hut of Romulus, the statue of the Twins had been erected upon a pedestal. It was not colossal in size, but the image was striking: Beneath a standing she-wolf, two naked babies squatted and turned up their faces to suckle the animal’s teats.
“Well, what do you think, young man?”
“It’s remarkable. Very powerful. Very beautiful.”
“Do you suppose the founder of the city and his unfortunate brother were literally raised by a wolf?”
“So legends tell us.”
“And do you never question legends? Some believe the she wolf to be a metaphor, or perhaps a too-literal interpretation of a tale passed down by word of mouth. The same word, after all, can refer to a woman of the she-wolf variety—a prostitute. Is it not more likely that the Twins were raised by such a woman, rather than by a wild animal?”
Claudius was unable see the younger man’s expression, but from the silence that ensued he could tell that Kaeso was taken aback. Claudius laughed good-naturedly. “Forgive my outspokenness. Obviously, such ideas are not spoken in the staid households of the Fabii!”
“Some of your ideas…are novel to me,” admitted Kaeso. “My father said you often challenged his ways of thinking, but that you also inspired him. Thank you for showing me the statue of the Twins and the she wolf.”
Claudius smiled. “We’re not far from my house. Would you like to see my library? It’s grown considerably since the days when I tried to teach your father Greek. New scrolls arrive every month. I can’t read them myself, of course. Someone must read them aloud to me. You have a very pleasant voice, Kaeso.”
“Senator, I would be honored to read aloud to you.”
The slave led them homeward.
“We’ll take some refreshment,” said Claudius, walking through the vestibule. “Then perhaps we can get to work on that collection of aphorisms you propose.”
Kaeso nodded happily, then frowned. “There was one of your sayings that my father found particularly inspiring. Something to do with architecture, and fortune…”
“‘Each man is the architect of his own fortune.’”
“Exactly! My father lived by those words.”
“I’m sure that no man ever put those words into practice more faithfully than did Kaeso Fabius Dorso!”
SCIPIO’S SHADOW
216 B.C.
“We brought these accursed Carthaginians to their knees once. We shall do it again!” So declared Quintus Fabius Maximus, wearing an expression stern enough to have pleased his great-grandfather, who had been the first to take the name Maximus almost ninety years earlier. With one hand he held a cup of wine. With the other he tapped his upper lip, a nervous habit that called attention to a very prominent wart. For this distinguishing feature on an otherwise homely face, his friends had playfully given him an additional name, Verrucosus.
From across the dining room, young Kaeso stole glances at his host—a man he found quite intimidating—and wished that his own physical imperfections were limited to an ugly wart or two.
One of Kaeso’s legs was shorter than the other. One of his forearms had a strange bend in it and its muscles were not always entirely under his control. He walked with a slight limp and had never been able to ride a horse. He was also subject to the falling disease. The fluttering in his head occurred at the most inopportune times. At its worst it caused him to lose consciousness completely.
Despite these imperfections, Kaeso’s mother had always assured him that he was nonetheless beautiful. At twenty, Kaeso was old enough to look at himself critically in a mirror and see that this was not a mother’s flattery or wishful thinking, but the truth. His eyes were a rare shade of blue. His lustrous hair was the color of sunlight in honey. His face might serve as a model for a Greek sculptor. But what use was a handsome face if a man’s body was unsuited to riding, or marching, or fighting, as the times demanded? Far better to have a strong body and a wart on his lip the size of a chickpea, like his great and powerful cousin Maximus—who had just caught Kaeso staring and stared back at him, scowling.
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