dropping his fur, then unbuckling his belt as he went.
Every Roman household, plebeian or patrician, has its shrines to the Penates and the Lares. The first are the guardian spirits of the family larder. Their name comes from penus for store-cupboard. In our house in Rome, their shrine was in an alcove down the passage leading to the kitchens. Its lamp never went out. The votive barley cakes were renewed each day.
That eternal light has never left me. In later life it stayed with me, burning on. Often as a child when I could not sleep I slipped out of bed, through the sleeping house and sat down in the passage before the shrine. The flickering lamplight cast shadows and gleams on the figures of the gods, two men crudely carved in ebony. I used to wonder why their wood was black. I came to see a balance in it, in the light and dark––
Yes, Aurio? What is it?
Lunch, master.
Goodness! Can it be that time already? Tell Mulca we’re on our way.
Shuffle, shuffle, then the softly closing door. I am fortunate in my servants, although I suppose by comparison with some masters they are fortunate in me. Cato, for example, prides himself on treating his slaves like dirt. As soon as they can no longer work, he kicks them out. So do many others. I don’t. I support my old slaves until they die.
I have been praised for this, and criticised. I am indifferent to both. Such kindness comes from my nature, and my upbringing. I was ten, perhaps eleven. School had been hard. I was tired, hungry. I was to dine with my father, who had important guests. He had sent his own body-slave, Festo, to help me dress. I was fidgety. When he slipped the pin of the brooch I was to wear through the fabric on my chest, he went too deep and pierced my skin. I howled and, without thinking, slapped Festo in the face. He ran from my room.
The dinner guests arrived. I was called. I remember long and heated conversations about things I didn’t understand. After the last course, before the wine was brought, my father looked across the room, caught my eye and nodded. I went to bed.
He woke me early in the morning. He held a strap in his hand. ‘I am going to beat you, Publius,’ he said quietly. ‘You must never, ever, strike a slave or servant. It demeans not only you, but also them. But before you learn your lesson, I want you to understand. Sit up and listen.’
I sat up, drew a blanket over my shoulders. My father sat on the end of my bed. Its leather thongs creaked. ‘You know, Publius, about the building of the Athenian Parthenon, and how every citizen of Athens contributed as best he could?’
‘Yes, Father,’ I said rather weakly, unsure where this was leading. But of course I remembered the stories of the building of the Parthenon. Only last year Rome had sent an embassy to Athens to see how it had been done.
‘Well,’ he went on, ‘when the building was finished, do you know what the Athenians did? They turned loose the mules that had worked the hardest. They declared them exempt from further service, and put them out to grass for the rest of their lives at public expense.’
‘Remember that, Publius, when next you’re angry with any living creature. Now, get up, and bend over the end of the bed.’
I did as I was told, and I have always remembered.
I never knew the name of the woman Tertio grabbed and threw down on the ground. He knelt on top of her, forcing her legs apart with his knees and hands. She moaned and mewled. The only other noise was Tertio’s grunts.
Suddenly he pushed himself up. ‘Shit!’ he shouted. ‘Even with my eyes shut, I can’t keep it up.’ He kicked the woman sharply in the side. ‘Get up, you filthy slag. The rest of you, get dressed.’
His legs were pale and hairy. He buckled his belt, looking at his men. ‘No silver, gold, lads? Nothing?’
‘Nothing, boss,’ Scarface said. ‘We looked in all the usual places. But hang on.’
The pain was so unexpected, so sudden and so intense I can recall it now and wince. Scarface wrenched the silver earring from my left ear, the earring I’d been given when–– That does not matter now. But my left ear lacks its lobe.
I felt the sting, the blood trickling down my neck. Scarface held up the earring. ‘At least there’s this!’ he chortled.
‘Keep that bauble if you like,’ Tertio said. ‘Let’s get out of this dump. It stinks.’
And they were gone as suddenly as they had come.
I was working in the fields this morning, clearing irrigation channels. Macro, my bailiff, many years ago gave up trying to stop me working with the men. He knows by my dress what I intend, and simply accepts it. Yesterday it was my patched brown woollen tunic, my old straw hat and boots. That meant work, manual work.
First we had to mend the water wheel. I loved wading out to it in the middle of the dam, cool water in the softness of the morning when the larks and finches sing.
The water wheel was my idea. We use it to move water uphill to a feeder tank. From there, the water has enough head to flow right through the fields – if the channels are clear. Before we built the wheel, the lower fields were dry and yielded much less.
But it is, I accept, a fiddly thing, constantly going wrong. This time, it had slewed on its axle, so its buckets were picking up hardly any water. I unhitched the mule that turned the wheel and gave its bridle to Macro.
‘We need to grease it more often, Macro, at least once a week. Have you enough tallow?’
‘Yes, Scipio.’
‘Well, give me some.’ Holding a jug of tallow I waded to the wheel. ‘The wedges have split,’ I shouted to Macro. ‘They got too dry. Bring me some more, will you?’
‘How many?’
‘Four should do – oh, and a mallet, please.’
I fixed the wheel, and waded back as the dragonflies darted on the water. I stood on the bank, watching the wheel turn and the drops of water dance. I thought of my trial, of the judgment. When will it come? Dragonflies, I thought, will dance. Water will be wet, regardless.
For days afterwards, Secunium was silent. I saw people when I went to the well, the latrines, but no one spoke. I worked, hoeing and irrigating beans. There is a peace that comes from the life of the body, not the mind. When a man can think no more and feel no more, all he can do is be silent, and let his well of life refill.
As it must be all over the world, the life of peasants is governed by the rhythm of the earth. Awake at first light, eat, work, eat, sleep a little during the hottest hours, work, eat, sleep when the sun goes – where does it go? – down.
I had never lived like this before. I have not since. I felt the sun beat on my back as the hawks wheeled overhead and the flies buzzed round my bloody ear.
I worked alone. Even Sosius kept to his hut; until I saw him walking towards me in the field on the fourth day, or was it the fifth?
I stopped, put down my hoe, looked up and wiped the sweat from my forehead. Sosius came nearer, stooped, I saw, his step not neat but shambling. I have seen men walk like that when drunk. As he came closer, I saw his shirt was torn across the chest. It and his face were covered in soot. I did not understand.
‘Come with me, Teacher’ was all he said, in a weak and faltering voice.
‘But what––’
‘Just come.’
I followed him back across the field where the soil I had just watered was beginning to steam in the strengthening sun. Back on to the path that wandered through the acacia bushes, the brambles and the thorns and opened out back at the well. From there