Scipio. Ross Leckie

He forced me to perfect what he meant to destroy. It is said that he’s alive still, in Bithynia. They will send for him; Cato will see to that. But Hannibal will not come. I think only of how much love he must have lost to hate so much.

      Hannibal hated. I have loved. Loved Rome, loved life, loved the beauty to be found in proportion. These thoughts and things console me. Consider, for example, this chair in which I sit. Consider from this the manner of man I Scipio, I Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, am.

      This is no ordinary chair. It is not a simple, unadorned frame of beech from Andalucia. It came from the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicilia, one of the fruits of the sack of that city by my cousin Claudius Marcellus twenty-eight years ago. I was in Celtiberia then. That I missed the siege is one of the few things I regret. They killed Archimedes then, you know. Some damn fool legionary just chopped his head off. He was drawing, apparently, in the sand, and wouldn’t be arrested until he had finished the theorem he was working on.

      What we could have made of that man! For two years he defied Marcellus with his ingenious machines. ‘Give me a firm place to stand on and I will move the earth,’ he said. Well, at Syracuse he invented a huge crane. From behind the city walls, it plucked Marcellus’ galleys from the water. His catapults sank many others. Each time Marcellus moved his ships back, Archimedes adjusted his catapults to throw further.

      Although a mathematician – I have several of his works in my library here – he perfected the science of mechanics. We Romans may take pride in ourselves as mechanics and engineers, but the truth is that this too we learnt from the Greeks.

      My accusers, especially Cato, say that such observations prove me to be a Hellenist, and not a true Roman. That’s nonsense. It should be no insult to be philhellene. At the same time as I acknowledge our debts, I observe that only a people such as ours could have formed of them that which we have made. Yes, our craftsmen could not have made a chair such as this on which I sit, its feet of lions’ heads, its back carved with winged sphinxes, its seat of inlaid ivory and lapis lazuli. But only we have the power, through war, to make a peace. And it is in peace, not war, that painters paint and weavers weave, that poets polish.

      To get this chair to its perfect position I had to move it perhaps two inches forwards before I sat down. I used to remonstrate with Aurio, my body-slave, as I still think of him, though I gave him his freedom many years ago. Each time he cleans this room – I let only him and Bostar come in here – he moves this chair and never puts it back on the right spot.

      ‘Aurio, Aurio, no, no!’ I always used to say to him. ‘Come and sit here yourself.’ And he would come shuffling forward, his eyes fixed on the ground.

      ‘Sit down.’ As usual, he hesitated. ‘Go on! Now, sit the way I do. Yes, back straight. That’s it. Now, look out of the window.’ I always had to move aside for that. Aurio would not look up if, in doing so, he could see me. ‘Aurio, what do you see?’

      ‘I see your garden, master.’

      ‘Yes, yes, but what else? Can you see the quince trees?’

      ‘Yes, I can.’

      And each time, so many times, I asked him, ‘And how many can you see?’

      ‘Three, master, three.’

      ‘No, Aurio, no!’

      And Aurio would stand up and move away, sandals shuffling, shuffling across the face of Minerva, the mosaic on the floor. And I would move the chair forwards and sit in it and see. Five quince trees forming a quincunx, where Aurio, the chair too far back, his view blocked by the window-sill, saw only three.

      I gave up this game perhaps a year ago. There are some things that cannot be changed. Now I move my chair myself.

      The quince has always been my favourite tree. Stock from Cydon in Crete, I planted these before me now to mark my fiftieth year. They first flowered three years ago, and soon each day I will see their bursting flowers, creamy white and richly red, through the greyness of the winter’s cold. And then as well there is their fruit, astringent, aromatic, strong. I love a little added to the apple pies that Mulca, my cook here, makes so well. All this from a tree so small. Few men give forth both flower and fruit, and some neither.

      So here it is I sit and look upon my quincunx. I think and dream and I remember. And I dictate to Bostar.

      I love this man. I loved him in his prime and now I love him in his twilight, in his pain and anger, in his shame. Of course I have never told him, never will. Saying something gives it life and death. Besides, love is polymorphic, and language not. Not Latin, anyway. Would ‘amo, I love’ be a description or a definition? Greek has six words for ‘love’. Perhaps I could use the right one, and tell him in Greek. But he would understand.

      I have served Scipio for almost twenty years. I will serve no one else now. I am as old boots, formed to his feet, and I will fit no more. We have lived here at Liternum for two years. In that time, we have been to Rome only for the trial, since which we have resumed our ordered life. Mulca serves breakfast early, warm milk and pastries, fresh bread, cheese and, in season, fruit. She must get up very early, even if she leaves the dough rising as we sleep. I like that thought, of dough rising in the house of Scipio each night as we sleep.

      Until mid-morning, Scipio is with his bailiff, Macro, seeing to the land and often working on it too. I know what he’s going to do when I see what he’s got on. To ride round the estate, he wears a blue cotton shirt, white Gaulish trousers and knee-length doeskin boots. ‘The herms are fine, Bostar,’ he says to me when he gets back from such an outing. Yes, herms, Greek herms. He had them placed, crude statues of strange country gods, at regular intervals round the boundary of the estate.

      We often discuss boundaries. ‘I mark them when and where I can,’ he told me once. ‘That is why I mark my boundaries here. So much cannot be bound.’

      ‘But why place boundaries, Scipio? Everyone knows what’s your land. And your life has hardly known boundaries.’

      ‘Ah, but it has. You must understand, Bostar, that I have only been able to break boundaries when I have known where they were.’

      But he does not only check his herms. He rides round his land to ensure he knows what is going on: which stream is dry, which pastures are green, which orchards need manure. He is keen on manure, Scipio, especially at this time of year. He likes to see the land lying through the winter covered in manure. He threatens to write a treatise on dung. I can think of other subjects more worthy of his pen. Anyway, will he have time? We may hear the judgment any day.

      But if only others were like him, there would be less trouble ahead. Too many patrician Romans exploit their land. They increase rents; they terrorise their tenants and neither know nor care whether their farms are growing millet or maize – so long as it pays.

      Scipio is different. He is very interested in agriculture and, when he returns, always tells me what’s going on. ‘Stone-clearing in the Quintucia fields today, Bostar,’ or ‘The wheat’s lodged in the night. There must have been heavy rain, but I didn’t hear it,’ or ‘The cowherd Stultus is down with a fever. I’ll send Aurio to him.’ And then, with these mundanities around us and behind us, knowing that the rhythm of the land goes on, unchanging, Scipio sits down in the chair where he is now and, in time, begins.

      I sit at this table behind him. I always have at least ten tablets ready, and spare styluses. I have perfected a system of shorthand of which I am proud. I call it tachygraphy, but Scipio thinks I should re-name it brachygraphy from the Greek brachus for short, as opposed to tachus for swift: that’s the sort of word-game we enjoy. Anyway, whatever it’s called it allows me to record Scipio at the same speed as he speaks. I must write an account of my system. Soon, soon.

      For a while,