Of Merchants & Heros Read online

  All this had happened so quickly, and so unexpectedly, that it had taken me by surprise. But now I remembered myself and stepped up in front of Lucius.

  He was a little taller than I, but I was broader. And, now that I had recovered my wits, my anger was rising.

  ‘Leave her,’ I said, stepping up to him. ‘She is my friend and my guest. Leave her alone. You are drunk, Lucius. You will be sorry in the morning.’

  I saw his fists clench and rise. Behind me, Myrtilla caught her breath. ‘Sorry?’ he cried. ‘So you’re suddenly the little gentleman, are you? Will you have her then, eh? If not, then make way for someone who will.’

  He tried to step around me. I stepped to block him. My muscles tensed. But I thought to myself: I will not hit him first, for Titus’s sake. But if he strikes me, he will regret it.

  Then, from the far end of the terrace, a voice barked out.

  Lucius swung round startled. It was Titus.

  ‘That is enough,’ he said, his voice as hard as crystal.

  Lucius paused, bit his lip, hesitated, then uttered a curse and went stumbling off into the shadows of the garden.

  Titus strode up. He looked at me, and then at Myrtilla’s torn dress.

  ‘This will never happen again,’ he said, ‘you have my word.’ Then he stepped briskly down the terrace steps, following his brother.

  There was a silence.

  Myrtilla said under her breath, ‘Who was that?’

  I told her. I crouched down to pick up her brooch.

  She took it from me, and when she did I saw her hand was shaking. ‘Then,’ she said, turning and looking out into the torchlit garden, ‘I owe something to Aphrodite that you were my companion tonight, and not a beast like him.’ She pinned the little dolphin back in place and arranged her clothes. And then, darting her small head forward, she kissed my cheek.

  ‘That is to say thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m glad we met, Marcus. But now, I think, I shall go home.’

  And then she hurried off down the steps. She did not even call the slave to fetch her mantle.

  For some time after this, I was occupied with my stepfather’s affairs.

  With the spring, the sea routes were open once more, and there was much to do at the harbour.

  Fat, self-important Florus had left during the winter. No one told me why. With him gone, Caecilius handed to me Florus’s duties of overseeing the arrival and departure of his trading vessels, negotiating with the ware-housemen, and paying the shippers. He made a good deal of this; but in truth it was simple, dull, repetitive work. Even so, I was glad of it, for it kept me from my own thoughts, which, after the incident with Myrtilla, had started to oppress me.

  One morning, after seeing off a cargo of purple-dyed Tarentine wool bound for Asia, I had an hour to myself and decided to walk up to the akropolis to watch the merchantman as it departed across the bay.

  It was a pleasant spring day. The sky was streaked with high cirrus clouds, and a clean fresh breeze was blowing off the mountains. I stood at the wall, feeling the sun on my back, and watched the ship as it passed through the narrows. It unfurled its blue and white striped sail, and pressed out east, passing the brightly coloured fishing smacks as they returned home from their morning trawl.

  Caecilius would soon be grumbling. It was time I returned.

  But before I left I paused to look at the great temple of Neptune, whom the Greeks call Poseidon. I gazed up at the decorated pediment, where Lord Poseidon stands holding his trident in one hand, spreading the other in a calming gesture out over the sea.

  Stepping back, I knocked into someone and stumbled on the steps. I turned, apologizing, and found myself looking into a face I knew. It was the youth called Menexenos. It was not a face one forgot.

  ‘Forgive me,’ we both said, speaking at once. Then we both laughed. His hair was damp still; he must have come from the palaistra.

  I said, ‘No, it is I who should watch where I am going. I was looking at Poseidon.’

  Beside me he glanced up. ‘Yes,’ he said, considering. ‘It is old work. But there is something in it that touches the soul.’ He smiled, his clear grey eyes studying mine. ‘And the carvings of the horsemen on the east side are better still. Have you seen them—? But forgive me, perhaps you need to be elsewhere.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Then come and look,’ he said, touching my elbow and leading me back up the steps.

  He was right. The sculpture-work was beautiful. A painted frieze, running above the columns: Poseidon in majesty; horses and riders; a sacrifice at an altar. Though, in truth, I had noticed it before, for some reason I did not tell him so.

  As I stood looking, I felt his eyes on me.

  ‘But I have seen you before,’ he said, drawing down his brow.

  ‘You were at the running-track, with the Roman. And you are Roman too, I can tell from your accent.’ He paused, and his expression hardened. Then he asked, ‘Is that man your friend?’

  I thought of the night at Titus’s, and shook my head.

  ‘Not my friend,’ I said. ‘I know him; that is all. He is the praetor’s brother. His name is Lucius.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, frowning.

  ‘You know him then?’

  He shrugged. ‘I have seen him at the palaistra. He stands and watches.’

  I had the sense there was more to be said. But he seemed to think better of it, and instead he turned his head and looked out across the bay.

  He was wearing a simple tunic, held at the waist with a belt of brown leather. He stood a little formally, with his arms at his sides, and his well-shaped feet planted firmly on the ground. But there was nothing self-conscious or affected about him.

  I could see what must have drawn Lucius; no man alive could not.

  He had an austere beauty one wished to reach out and touch. And yet, for all his fine athletic form, it was a beauty that shone from within, like light from a window.

  ‘Well,’ he said, turning back and smiling, ‘I am on my way to meet my friend Eumastas. Why don’t you walk with me?’

  We made our way down the path from the citadel to the town. As we went, he told me he was not from Tarentum, but from Athens, and was here as Eumastas’s guest-friend. Their families, he said, had known each other for generations, and he had travelled to Tarentum on his father’s behalf, partly to visit, partly on a matter between his father and Eumastas’s. Then he said, ‘He owns a horse-farm in the valley . . . or he used to.’

  I knew the valley well. It was pleasant open country, with paddocks and chestnut groves, and vineyards on the terraces. ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘What happened?’ But even before the words were out I realized. I bit my lip, and cursed inwardly at my thoughtlessness.

  Menexenos frowned. I said, ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘No, it was tactless of me to mention it. I forgot, for a moment, who you are. The Romans took his farm, after the siege, and since then his family has fallen on difficult times. That is why my father sent me here, to bring them something to tide them over.’

  I thought of Caecilius and his agents and the slave-driving stewards. ‘I am sorry,’ I said again.

  ‘Well it is not your fault. It is war. But the injustice of it is that Eumastas’s father was one of those who supported Rome all along – it was the city mob who cast their vote for Hannibal. But when the call came to defend the city, he obeyed. He is from an old Tarentine family. It was a matter of honour.’

  We had passed through the market and were almost at the stone gateway of the palaistra. Up ahead I saw a youth waiting at the entrance. He was one of those I had seen with Menexenos before; thickset and dark-haired, with a heavy brow and square jaw; a wrestler, not a runner. He had none of Menexenos’s beauty; but when he looked up and saw his friend, his hard face brightened, and there was affection in his dark eyes.

  He greeted me with perfect manners; but somewhat stiffly. I could hardly blame him.

  Menexenos explained they were on their way to the lyre-t
eacher for a lesson. This was something Titus had told me about. It seemed wellborn Greeks not only trained their bodies, but learnt harmony and music also. He had also told me such an education was thought rather old-fashioned nowadays among Greeks, and was the preserve of the old families, the aristocrats who had once ruled the cities.

  ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ he said.

  I thanked him, but said I ought to be going. It seemed an insult for me to impose myself on Eumastas, who was clearly too well bred to say what he must have thought of me.

  I suppose I must have paused as I was taking my leave. For, even now, somewhere in my heart, I knew I wanted this beautiful youth as my friend. My hesitation could have been no more than a moment, but I sensed that Menexenos noticed it.

  He paused, frowning at the ground, as if considering something.

  Then, looking up, he said, ‘I’ll be here tomorrow, training in the palaistra. Why don’t you stop by, if you have the time—? I’ll look out for you.’

  For an instant then our eyes met, and some other knowledge passed between us; unspoken, like the touch of fire. Perhaps it was a trick of the light sifting through the plane trees, but before he turned to go, I thought I saw his cheeks redden.

  Next day, I made the mistake of mentioning to Caecilius that I wanted to go out. ‘We would all like to go idling round the town, Marcus,’ he said, ‘but this paperwork needs attention, and then you can go down to the harbour-master’s office for me, and see what has happened to that cargo of Egyptian unguents I have been waiting for.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. But returning from the port I took the long route back. Only when I reached the main gate of the palaistra did it come to me that we had not fixed a place to meet.

  He was not in the courtyard by the entrance, with its shading tree and lion-head fountain. I sat there for a while, in the place where Lucius had sat. Then, somewhat hesitantly, I wandered on, through the courts and anterooms and covered walkways.

  I did not know the rules of the place, where one should go or not go, and did not want to fall foul of one of the sharp-voiced trainers, or the gymnasiarch. And, more importantly for me, I did not wish to appear that I was searching. For it had already crossed my mind that Menexenos might not have meant me to come. If a Roman, at home in Praeneste, had said do this or that, he would have meant it and there the matter ended. But with Greeks I was not sure. Perhaps, after all, he had merely intended to be polite.

  After a time of desultory wandering, trying to look casual, I came out at the gardens behind, and sat down on a bench beneath a great spreading cedar. Then I saw him, coming from one of the inner rooms.

  ‘Why, there you are, Marcus!’ he cried, taking my hand. His hair was damp; he smelled of fresh oil, with some hint of pine in it. As if he needed to explain it, he said, ‘Eumastas had to go home. He needs to run some errands for his mother.’

  We walked, and he showed me around the great complex: the ball-courts, jumping-ground, and different running-tracks with their starting-stones and turning-post, engraved with the initials of runners long dead. We looked at the grassy courts behind, where older men played ball, or sat talking under the porticoes. There were meeting-rooms, lecture-halls, rooms for painting, for music, and for washing and changing and massage.

  As we walked, we talked. He said he had been in Tarentum since early spring, and I guessed he could not have been long in the city that day when I had come to the palaistra with Lucius. His father, he said, had a house in Athens, and a farm in the Attic countryside, which had been in the family since before Solon’s day. They grew corn and olives and wine, and kept goats and sheep. He owned a young horse, a grey colt, and had ridden in the mounted javelin contest in the Athenian games. But now, he said, he was training for the pentathlon, which was his father’s wish.

  Something in the way he said this made me glance at him, and he added with a rueful look, ‘Father was a pentathlete himself in his time; and his father before him won the crown. He wants me to do the same. That is his great hope.’

  ‘But not yours?’ I said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘I like the running, and the javelin, and the diskos. But as for wrestling and boxing . . . Well, you can see for yourself what it has become.’

  As we had been talking we had passed under the arch that leads into the wrestling courts. Menexenos stopped at the pillar. ‘You cannot win in the pentathlon without wrestling. And you cannot win in wrestling unless you make yourself like that.’

  He nodded into the sunlight. In the ground ahead the fighters were at their training, grunting and heaving like oxen in the dust.

  ‘They do not serve in the army and protect the city, because their bodies will not stand it. They cannot sit a horse. They can scarcely walk, so bound are they in muscle. From childhood they are torn from their mothers’ breasts and bred for one purpose – to win at the games. It is said they are fed five pounds of meat every day, if you can believe it.’ He shook his head. ‘They cannot play the lyre; they scarcely know how to read. What kind of life is that for a free man? A slave’s destiny is not his own and you can forgive him for what he cannot change. But for a freeman to choose such a life is madness – or worse, it is a deliberate insult to the gods. Yet the common people think these men heroes.’

  I looked at them. I tried to think of something good to say of them, but it just seemed to me ugly and pointless. ‘But how does one compete against such men?’ I asked. ‘What contest is there?’

  He shrugged. ‘Can a man compete with an ox? To match them, one must make oneself like them. Better to go and plough the fields on my father’s farm. At least there is honesty in that.’

  He let out his breath and caught my eye, in case he had talked too much. ‘Well, anyway, we take the world as we find it, I suppose. But it was not thus when my grandfather won his crown. Such things are made by men, and men can change them.’

  Like the first shoot of an oak growing up from an acorn, tender at first, easily broken, but stronger with each day, so our friendship grew. Each time we met, we found some excuse to fix a place to meet again, until it came to be something expected between us.

  It was about a month after this, however, that the thing happened which I had dreaded, for it was then that I ran into Lucius at the palaistra.

  He had been away in Rome, on some business of Titus’s, and had recently returned. I was passing along the colonnade behind the running-track, and had already spotted Menexenos up ahead, standing with Eumastas and a group of other athletes, clustered round the trainer. They had just finished their session, and the trainer was explaining something to them, pointing now and then with his cane at the track as he talked. I was about to step out from the shadow when, up ahead, I caught sight of Lucius.

  He was slouching against one of the columns, half concealed. Just as before, he was watching Menexenos with all his attention. He had not seen me.

  Before he had departed for Rome, I had run into him once or twice at the praetor’s residence. We had been civil to each other, but he had not mentioned the night of Titus’s banquet, either to apologize or for any other reason.

  There are men, it is true, whose greatness of soul causes them to forget petty disagreements, or affect to. Yet I do not think Lucius was such a man. I think he felt he had done nothing to apologize for.

  Either that, or he simply did not remember. Certainly he had been drunk enough.

  Either way, I had enough sense to know it would be best if he did not see me at the palaistra as Menexenos’s friend. I stepped back under the deep shade of the walkway.

  Beside the running-track the trainer had finished whatever it was he was saying. The youths around him began to drift off towards the bath-house.

  As soon as the trainer was gone, Lucius made his move.

  Eumastas was talking to Menexenos. I saw his head go up. Then Menexenos turned.

  Lucius, who normally walked around with an expression of aggressive sullenness on his face, was attempting to
smile. It showed as a nervous, alarming grimace. It was clear, even from where I stood, that he was very tense. Then I noticed that he was clutching something in his hand, some sort of leather pouch. He went up to Menexenos, spoke a few words, then held it up, proffering it.

  Menexenos glanced at this thing, and then at Lucius’s flushed uneasy face. He said something, and then Lucius began fiddling hurriedly with the cord that held the pouch closed, and from it he pulled a pretty silver strigil, and a small pear-shaped flask of oil, tied at the neck with a white ribbon.

  I saw Eumastas’s brows go up. Menexenos spoke, made a polite gesture with his hand, and then, when Lucius answered, he shook his head. He made to turn, but suddenly Lucius caught him back by the arm.

  I do not think, to tell the truth, he had intended to snatch at him.

  But his uneasiness must have made him clumsy.

  Menexenos turned, his expression hardening. He spoke again and shook his head; then he turned away, and he and Eumastas strode off towards the bath-house, leaving Lucius standing on the grass beside the track, pathetically holding the strigil and flask in his hand.

  I saw no more. People were beginning to stare, and this was not a scene I wanted Lucius to know I had witnessed. But a little later, when he had washed and dressed, Menexenos came to me in the gardens, to the place we had appointed. His flint eyes looked troubled. But it was Eumastas who said, ‘Your Roman friend was here again. I thought he had gone away.’

  I said, ‘He did. He was in Rome.’

  ‘Well now he’s back.’

  Menexenos turned. ‘Leave it, Eumastas. I told you, he is of no importance. Let us forget it.’

  Though I had grown up in Praeneste, I was not wholly na ve. I had eyes to see, and I knew that Lucius was not the only suitor in the palaistra. There was a certain ritual to it, and often it was done with style and grace. I had noticed for myself how, in the courts and walkways, beside the running-track, or the wrestling-ground, or the pool, men would stand and watch, seemingly with nothing better to do. There were always lectures going on, and music classes, and games of different sorts; and with all this activity there was a constant traffic of people.