Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 61
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“Pontifex Maximus, do you know this man?” said Postumia.
“I do. Caedicius used to be a respectable plebeian, a fuller who washed and dyed wool; observe the dark stains behind his fingernails. But some time ago he gave up his shop and became a vagrant. He frequents a particular spot in the street above the Temple of Vesta. Have you not seen him pacing this way and that, muttering to himself? Well, Caecidius, what is this nonsense? What can you be thinking, forcing your way into this sacred dwelling and terrifying the holy virgins! What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Oh, Pontifex Maximus, you must listen to me!”
“I am listening, you fool. Speak!”
“I heard a voice. I was in the street, alone-there wasn’t another mortal in sight, I swear-and a voice spoke to me, as clearly and distinctly as I’m speaking to you now. A voice from nowhere!” Caedicius wrung his hands and chewed his lower lip.
“By Hercules, man, spit it out! Do you think I have nothing better to do? What did this voice say?”
“It said: ‘The Gauls are coming!’ That’s what it said, as clearly as you hear me now: ‘The Gauls are coming!’”
The Pontifex Maximus wrinkled his brow. “The Gauls?”
One of his subordinates drew alongside him. “A tribe of savages who come from a land far to the north, Pontifex Maximus, beyond a great mountain range called the Alps. Some years ago, they discovered a pass across the Alps. Some of them moved into Italy and founded a city called Mediolanum. Poets say it was a craving for wine that drew the Gauls to Italy; in their native land they have nothing like it. Their language is said to be a combination of grunts, very uncouth and grating to the ear.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of these Gauls,” said the Pontifex Maximus. “Why should they come here, Marcus Caedicius, and why should we care?”
Caedicius splashed his hands in the shallow water, close to weeping. “The Gauls are coming! Do you not understand? Their arrival shall be terrible, the most terrible thing that has ever happened! Doom! Death! Destruction! Warn the magistrates! Flee at once, and take the Vestals with you! Pray to the gods for our salvation!”
For quite some time, a rotund little priest in the retinue behind the Pontifex Maximus had been searching through a scroll, rotating the cylinders with both hands and scanning the text. The man gave a sudden jerk, which caught Pinaria’s attention.
Foslia also noticed. She gripped Pinaria’s arm and whispered into her ear. “Do you realize what that priest is holding? It’s one of the Sibylline Books!”
“Surely not,” whispered Pinaria. “Aren’t they kept on the Capitoline, in a vault beneath the Temple of Jupiter?”
“Of course; that’s where the priests study the Greek verses, translate them into Latin, and debate their meaning. That roly-poly little fellow must be one of the priests, and that must be one of the Sibylline Books!”
“I never thought that I should ever actually see one,” said Pinaria, feeling a tremor of dread. The arcane verses were consulted only in times of dire crisis.
The priest gave another jerk and uttered a cry of excitement. “Pontifex Maximus, I’ve found something! I knew I had seen the reference before; at last I’ve located it. The Sibyl herself foresaw this moment. She wrote a verse to guide us.”
“What does it say? Read the oracle aloud.”
The little priest looked up from the scroll. He stared wide-eyed at Marcus Caecidius for a long moment, blinked and cleared his throat, and read:
A man kneels on water and does not sink. He speaks to the wise to make them think. From his warning they must not shrink.
The little priest lowered the scroll. Everyone in the room gazed at the man who knelt in the shallow water, who claimed to have heard a warning from a disembodied voice that proclaimed, “The Gauls are coming!”
Not long after Caedicius delivered his warning, word arrived that a vast army of Gauls had swept down from the north and was laying siege to the city of Clusium, located on a tributary of the Tiber, a hundred miles upriver from Roma.
The city fathers conferred. The prophecy of Caedicius and the words of the Sibyl were debated. It was decided that a delegation should be sent to Clusium to observe the Gauls at first hand. If they were as numerous as rumor asserted, and as menacing as Caedicius believed, then the envoys should attempt to use diplomacy-promises, pacts, or threats-to turn the Gauls back from Clusium, or at the very least to dissuade them from moving further south and setting their sights on Roma.
The Roman ambassadors were three brothers of the distinguished Fabius family. The Gauls received them courteously, for they had heard of Roma and knew the city was a force to be reckoned with. But when the Fabii asked what injury the Clusians had done to the Gauls that they should attack their city, and if making war unjustly was not an offense to the gods, the chieftain of the Gauls merely laughed at them. Brennus was a big-jawed man with a bristling red beard and a shaggy red mane, so massive and ruggedly muscled that he seemed to have been hewn from a block of granite. The Gauls were very nearly a race of giants, and Brennus towered over the Roman ambassadors. Even though he spoke with a kind of rough humor, it seemed to the Romans that he was belittling them.
“How have the Clusians offended us?” Brennus asked. “By having too much, while we have too little! By being so few, while we number so many! As for offending the gods, yours may be different from ours, but the law of nature is the same everywhere: The weak submit to the strong. So it is among gods, beasts, and men alike. From everything I’ve heard about you, you Romans are no different. Haven’t you done your share of taking what belongs to others, making free men into slaves simply because you’re stronger than they are and because it suits you? I thought so! So don’t ask us to pity the Clusians. Instead, maybe we should pity the people you’ve conquered and oppressed. Maybe we should go about setting them free and restoring their goods. How would you like that, Romans? What do you say? Ha!”
Brennus laughed in their faces. The Fabii were greatly insulted, but kept their mouths shut.
The matter might have ended there, but Quintus Fabius, the youngest and most hotheaded of the brothers, was determined to draw some Gallic blood. All races, including the Gauls, recognized the divinely protected status of envoys; it was universally agreed that ambassadors must be afforded hospitality and must not be harmed, and in return must not take up arms against their hosts. Quintus Fabius violated this sacred law. The next day, putting on the armor of a Clusian, he joined the forces of the besieged city and rode into battle against the Gauls. Picking out a Gaul of particularly large stature, he rode straight toward the man and killed him with a single blow of his sword. Wanting a trophy, Quintus Fabius jumped from his horse and set about stripping the dead man of his armor, and in doing so his Clusian helmet fell from his head. Brennus, fighting nearby, saw his face and recognized him at once.
The Gallic chief was outraged. Had he been able to confront Quintus Fabius there on the battlefield, the death of one or the other might have ended the matter, but the press of the battle carried the two men apart, and both ended the day unscathed.
The Fabii headed back to Roma. Brennus, an impulsive, prideful man, brooded all night. In the morning, he announced that the siege of Clusium was ended. For grossly insulting him-first by suggesting that he had offended the gods, then by flagrantly breaking divine law to take up arms against him-the Romans must be punished. Brennus declared that the entire force of the Gauls-more than 40,000 fighting men-would march south at once.
In Roma, the Pontifex Maximus called for the punishment of Quintus Fabius, saying that all guilt should rest on one man so as to exonerate the rest of the citizens and spare them from divine retribution. But popular opinion applauded Quintus Fabius for his recklessness. The people scoffed at retribution from either gods or Gauls; had not Quintus proved how easily a Gaul could be killed, no matter how gigantic, and had not the gods seen him safely home? Election time was at hand, and rather than punishing Quintus Fabius, the people elected him and his brothers military tribunes. Brennus, hearing this, grew even more enraged. His speeches whipped the Gauls into a frenzy. The vast horde rushed down the valley of the Tiber and rapidly drew nearer to Roma.
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