Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 132
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Caesar laughed. “Amusing as that notion may be, I have no intention of moving the capital. I suppose I should make that clear in my address to the senators tomorrow, to allay their worries. The gods themselves decreed that Roma should be the center of the world; so it always shall be. Far from abandoning the city, I have plans to enlarge and enrich it. My engineers are working on a scheme to divert the course of the Tiber and to build breakwaters along the coast, so as to make Ostia as great a harbor as Carthage was. Think what a boon that will be for Roma’s commerce!”
“And speaking of Carthage…,” said Antonius.
Caesar nodded. “Yes, already I’ve begun to build new colonies at Carthage and at Corinth, the two great cities that our forefathers destroyed in a single year. The Greeks will praise the rebirth of Corinth, and the colony at Carthage fulfills the old, thwarted dream of Gaius Gracchus. Yes, great plans are afoot. Great plans…”
The conversation became looser as more wine flowed. Lucius noticed that Caesar imbibed considerably less than the others, and Antonius considerably more.
It was Lepidus who brought up the subject of death.
“We all know how Sulla died, in bed of a horrible disease; but to the very end, he behaved like a cruel tyrant, ordering the death of another. Crassus too met a wretched end. After Pharsalus, Pompeius sailed to Egypt hoping to make a final stand, but the minions of King Ptolemy stabbed him to death before he could set foot on shore, then delivered his head as a trophy to Caesar. After the battle of Thapsus, Cato fell on his sword, but his loyal servants found him and stitched him up; he had to wait until they slept to tear out the stitches with his fingers and finish his own disembowelment.”
“And your point in recounting this grisly catalogue, Lepidus?” asked Antonius.
“Death comes in many forms. If a man could choose, what would be the best death?”
Caesar spoke at once. “Sudden and unexpected, even if bloody and painful. That would be much preferable to a lingering death. Of all the episodes you mention, Lepidus, the death of Pompeius was best. The others all saw the shadow of death long before it reached them, and must have contemplated it with dread, but up to the very last, Pompeius still possessed hope, however fragile, and his end came as a surprise, however shocking. To be sure, his body was defiled, but when I came into possession of his remains I saw to it that they were purified and given the proper rites. His ghost is at peace.”
The dinner drew to an end. The guests took their leave. Caesar declared his intention to walk alone with Lucius to the house of his parents. “There’s a private matter which I should like to discuss with my nephew,” he said, looking at Lucius and then averting his eyes.
“Alone? Just the two of you?” said Antonius.
“Why not?”
“At least a few of us should go with you,” said Antonius. “For your protection. If you need privacy, we can stay a few paces behind.”
Caesar shook his head. “Toward what end has Caesar done so much to please the people of Roma, with great public feasts and entertainments, if not to make it safe for himself to walk across the city without a bodyguard?”
“That’s a fine notion,” said Antonius, “but in reality-”
“No, Antonius. I won’t walk the streets of my city in fear of my life. A man dies only once. The dread of death causes far more misery than the thing itself, and I shall not submit to it. It’s only a short walk from here to the house of Lucius, and an even shorter walk from there to my house. I shall be perfectly safe.”
Antonius began to protest, but Caesar silenced him with a look.
As the two of them crossed the Palatine Hill alone under moonlight, Lucius as always felt a bit uncomfortable in his great-uncle’s presence, and sensed that Caesar felt uneasy, as well. Several times Caesar began to speak, then fell silent. The world’s greatest general and second-greatest orator-for even Caesar ceded the highest place to the eloquent Cicero-seemed unable to express himself.
“To Hades with this!” he finally muttered. “I shall say it as plainly as I can. Lucius, your grandfather…”
“The one they call Unlucky?”
“Yes. He did me a very great favor once. He saved my life.”
“How did he do that, Uncle?”
“This is very difficult to talk about. In fact, I’ve never told this story to anyone. But you deserve to know the truth about your grandparents, Lucius, and the sacrifice they made for my sake. This was during Sulla’s dictatorship, at the height of the proscriptions. I was very young, only a year or so older than you are now. I was in great danger. I was also very ill, suffering from the quartan ague.” He looked up at the moon. By its soft light Lucius caught a glimpse of the youth Caesar once had been. “Maybe that’s why I refuse to fear death now; I had enough of fearing death when I was young. Anyway, I was skulking from house to house, hiding from Sulla’s henchmen, but at the home of your grandparents a fellow named Phagites caught up with me…”
He proceeded to tell Lucius about the bribe that Lucius’s grandfather paid to save his life, and later, in the presence of Sulla himself, the extraordinary sacrifice that was required of Julia and Lucius the Unlucky-the dissolution of their marriage when Caesar refused to divorce his wife at Sulla’s whim.
“Your grandmother was heartbroken, but she adapted swiftly; that was her nature. But your grandfather was never the same. He was a broken man. He had acted honorably, yet he felt dishonored. He saw no way to right the wrong that had been done to him. If he had lived, eventually I might have found some way to make recompense, some means to help him regain his self-respect. But he died while he was still quite young, and before I could make my mark on the world.”
They had been strolling at a slow pace. Caesar abruptly halted. “Do you know how he died?”
“He fell on a patch of ice.”
“Yes. Do you know where?”
Lucius shrugged. “Somewhere here on the Palatine, I think.”
“It was on the very spot where we now stand.”
Under the silver moonlight, it was not hard to imagine the paving stones glazed with ice. Lucius shivered. “By your reckoning, Uncle, his was a good death-swift and without warning. Perhaps the gods granted him an early death as a kind of mercy.”
“Perhaps. But the debt I owed to your grandfather has weighed upon me ever since. Not even the gods can change the past, and the dead are beyond our reach. But I can make certain that you, Lucius, will have every opportunity to earn your own place of honor. I would have done so anyway, because you’re my kin; but I wanted you to know of your grandfather’s sacrifice, so that between the two of us there is an understanding of what came before. I should be gratified to see you attain the dignity that your grandfather believed he had lost.”
Lucius considered this. “Thank you for telling me, Uncle. I’m not sure what else I can say.” Silently, he wondered about the words Caesar had spoken with such gravity. What did “dignity” and “honor” mean now? In a world ruled by a king, the ancient Course of Honor, with each man competing against equals to become first man in the state, had become meaningless.
Caesar seemed to read his thoughts. “In the future, the Course of Honor will not have quite the same significance as it did for our ancestors. But ambitious men will still be able to earn Roma’s gratitude, along with personal wealth and glory, on the battlefield. Shall I confide a secret to you, Lucius? Something I haven’t shared even with Antonius?”
He commenced walking again, in the direction of Lucius’s house. “My military ambitions-my ambitions for Roma-are even greater than Antonius and the others assume. The idea of conquering Parthia greatly excites them, as you saw, but that is as far as their imaginations can reach. Caesar’s plans extend far beyond the conquest of Parthia. My dream is to take Parthia, yes-and then to traverse the far side of the Euxine Sea and circle back, conquer Scythia and Germania and all the lands that border them, cross the channel to Britannia, and then return to Italy by way of Gaul, ending where I began. When Caesar is finished, Roma’s dominion will comprise a true world empire, bounded on every side by ocean.”
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