Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 103
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“Things go from bad to worse. Importing a priesthood of eunuchs is bad enough, but one hears of even stranger and more insidious foreign cults spreading among the populace. The play to which you shall be subjected today will, I daresay, be bad enough-yet another revolting compendium of Greek obscenities-but recently some senators, who should know better, have spoken of erecting a permanent theater in Roma, built of stone. Are we Romans to become as idle and pleasure-loving as the Greeks?
“You, there, Marcus Junius Brutus!” Cato pointed to the praetor who was sponsoring the games. “What would your heroic ancestor say, he who revenged the rape of Lucretia and brought down the last king, Tarquinius, if he could see this sorry sight? Has our beloved Roma risen to unparalleled heights of glory only to fall into an abyss of shame?
“Citizens, I beseech you! If my words have ignited even the tiniest spark of patriotism in your heart, do as I now do, and leave this place at once!”
Cato ostentatiously gathered the folds of his toga. After a few steps he halted and turned back. “Oh, and one more thing: Carthage must be destroyed!” With that, he stalked out of the theater, followed by a substantial entourage.
A handful of people scattered throughout the audience did likewise, but a greater number began to boo Cato, who disappeared through the exit without looking back. People shifted uneasily in their seats. A murmur spread through the audience.
Scipio rose from his seat. He said nothing to call for the crowd’s attention, but gradually all eyes came to rest on him. The audience fell silent.
“Citizens! If the senator who just imposed on our patience by marring the joyous nature of this occasion had not seen fit to attack me personally-something he appears to do compulsively, like a man with an uncontrollable twitch-I would not presume to try your patience further by addressing you myself. However, I feel obliged, first, to say this: A man who leaves a mess behind him has no business casting aspersions on the man who comes after him. Just as I had to clean up the mess left behind by Hannibal’s elephants,’ so I had to clean up the mess that Cato left behind in Spain.”
The audience burst into laughter. The tension left in Cato’s wake was dispersed in an instant.
“Second: If, after all my years of service to the Roman people, I have any claim to speak on their behalf, allow me to apologize to our guests of honor, the priests of the goddess Cybele, for the aspersions cast upon them by the senator. I assure you, not all Romans are so boorish and inhospitable.”
The galli, who had sat stone-faced through Cato’s harangue, smiled and nodded to acknowledge Scipio’s courtesy.
“Likewise, allow me to apologize for the uncouth words that my colleague addressed to you, Marcus Junius Brutus, generous sponsor of these festivities. Instead of citing your great ancestor to make a dubious rhetorical point, let him use the example of one of his own famous ancestors. Oh, but I’m forgetting-Cato has no famous ancestors.”
Brutus laughed and called out, “Here, here! Well said, Africanus!”
“As for all the other drivel that spilled from the senator’s mouth, I will say only this.” Scipio gestured to Plautus. “In the terrible year of Cannae, all the might of Hannibal could not stop the performance of this playwright’s work. Surely a temper tantrum by Cato will not stop it today. The show must go on!”
Laughing and applauding, the audience leaped to their feet and gave Scipio a joyous ovation.
The crowd’s response reassured Kaeso. Here was proof, he thought, that Scipio’s gloomy fears about the future were unfounded. But what a burden his friend had to bear, enduring the abuse of men like Cato! Whatever Kaeso’s own petty problems, at least he did not have to worry about ruthless rivals plotting his downfall. Perhaps there was something to be said for leading an insignificant life. He thought of Hannibal’s words to Scipio, but reversed their meaning. He muttered aloud, “The smaller a man’s success, the more it may be trusted to endure.”
“What did you say?” asked Plautus, as the ovation began to die down.
“Nothing,” said Kaeso. “Nothing at all.”
The play was a rollicking success.
After it was over, Kaeso declined an invitation to celebrate at Plautus’s house. Limping slightly, he set off alone. The day’s official festivities were over, but there were still a great many people out and about. Kaeso was jostled by the crowd. More than once he had to sidestep a pool of vomit left by someone who had celebrated too much. He only vaguely noticed these irritations; as always after seeing Scipio, he was restless and unsettled, preoccupied by thoughts of how his life might have turned out had he been a different man with a different destiny, a man like Scipio, or else a man who could have been Scipio’s comrade-in-arms, worthy to share his adventures, his glory, his tent…
As he drew nearer to his destination, a house on the Aventine Hill, the crowds thinned. The streets were almost empty. He sighed with relief, glad to be out of the crush and knowing that the place where he was headed would offer relief from all his earthly cares.
On a respectable street in a respectable neighborhood, he came to a house where all the windows were shuttered. He rapped at the door. The peephole slid open. For a moment, he forgot the pass phrase, but then it came back to him: “Upon Mount Falernus in Campania grow the grapes from which Falernian wine is made.” The phrase was changed often, but always had something to do with wine, because wine was Bacchus’s gift to mankind, and essential to his worship.
The door opened, then was quickly shut after Kaeso stepped inside. The garden at the center of the house had been closed off, and all the windows had been shuttered, with heavy hangings pulled across them to keep sounds from reaching the neighbors. As a result, the interior was quite dark except for the soft illumination cast by lamps, and the sounds from within were strangely muffled.
Those sounds included exotic music played upon tambourines and pipes. The tune was by turns languorous and dreamy, then fast and frenzied. Familiar faces, male and female, emerged from the shadows. They smiled and bowed their heads in deference to him. “Welcome, high priest,” they said in unison.
One of them whispered in his ear, “A new acolyte is within, awaiting initiation.”
Kaeso raised his arms from his sides until they were parallel with the floor. The men and women undressed him, then anointed his naked body from head to foot with sweet-smelling oil. A cup filled with wine was pressed to his lips. He threw back his head and swallowed. Wine overflowed his mouth and trickled down onto his chest, where greedy tongues lapped it up. Hands glided over his shoulders and chest and hips and buttocks, caressing him, fondling him, exciting him.
He was taken by both hands and guided into a room that smelled of sweat and incense. Here the music was louder, and he could now discern the murmur of a low, insistent chant in which the name of Bacchus was invoked. The room was hazy with incense, and crowded with warm, naked bodies pressed close together. Presiding above the crowd, upon a high pedestal, was a statue of the god-Bacchus, deity of wine and euphoria, with grape leaves in his air and a smile of bliss upon his bearded face.
Kaeso gazed up at the god with reverence and gratitude. The coming of the cult to Roma had marked the beginning of a new epoch in his life. In the warm, secret embrace of the god, Kaeso had at last found a purpose to his existence.
Kaeso abruptly experienced a fluttering in his head, of the sort that sometimes preceded one of his falling spells, but he felt no anxiety. The priests and priestesses of Bacchus had explained to him that his affliction was not a curse but a mark of special favor from the god. Just as Scipio had always enjoyed a special relationship with Jupiter, so Kaeso had at last discovered his own special link to the god Bacchus.
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