Scipio. Ross Leckie

senex. Greetings, old man.’ He didn’t reply, but nodded in acknowledgement. He stared. He screwed up his nose. ‘Armatus?’ he muttered. ‘Are you armed?’

      I held out my arms. ‘No. I come in peace. I want only a little food, and then I’ll go.’

      ‘I know, I know. I heard you, I heard.’ With surprising speed, he darted into the hut. I heard him speak, a woman’s muttered reply. He came back out with a small stool in each hand. Kicking a sleeping cur so that, whimpering, it moved away, he put the stools down by the door. ‘Sit, stranger, sit.’

      He put his hands on his knees. Both, I saw, were missing their thumbs. I had heard of Italians chopping off their thumbs to avoid conscription as, in the desperate days after Cannae, the Roman press-gangs scoured the land for anyone who could hold a pilum and a shield. ‘Why?’ I asked him, pointing at his hands. ‘Surely you were too old to be conscripted?’

      He hawked and spat and grinned a toothless, sour grin. ‘Older than me were taken! Anyone who could stand was marched away to fight against that Hannibal!’ and he made the sign against the evil eye. I simply nodded, feeling my way. ‘But I am no coward!’ he went on. ‘I fought in Sicilia for Rome, in the last war against Carthage. I was a decurion, in the legion of the Vettulanti––’

       ‘Then why did you avoid service this time?’

      ‘Don’t judge me, stranger!’ he said sharply, and he looked at me fully for the first time. I saw strength, purpose, in his haggard eyes. ‘Because there is more to life than war. This is my village. I am its headman. I have a wife here. I had children. My two boys fought at Cannae. We waited for months’ – his voice tailed away – ‘before we realised they’ – he screwed his eyes shut, swallowed – ‘before we realised they would not be coming home.’ Cannae. Hannibal’s great victory over Rome when the dead, it was said, were too many to count and the River Aufidus ran red to the sea. That, by the way, is true. I know. I was there.

      Silence settled. Flies buzzed, and I heard the sounds of goat-bells on the hill and, from inside the hut, of someone stirring.

      ‘Yes, I have paid my debt to Rome,’ he said softly. ‘But you, stranger, what brings you here? Are you a pedlar? By your looks you come from the east.’

      ‘Yes, I was not born in Italy, though I have been here for a long time. Sixt––’ I almost told him. Had Hannibal been sixteen years in Italy? Had he really gone? ‘Yes, for a long time,’ I said instead. ‘But no, I’m not a pedlar. I am’ – I had prepared for this – ‘a teacher. My name is Bostar. What’s yours?’

       ‘Sosius,’ he said. ‘A teacher? What do you teach?’

       ‘What I can: languages, astronomy, geography––’

      ‘Pah!’ spat Sosius. ‘We have no need of learning here!’ He scratched his groin. ‘Can you work a hoe?’

       ‘Yes.’

       ‘Good. Then, Teacher, you can stay. Food, you said. Woman!’

       ‘Ready!’ came a muffled reply. I followed Sosius inside.

      Light and shade, deep shadow and dazzling light. These I remember from the house where I was born. My bedroom, the tablinum and my schoolroom were always dark. The panes of selenite over the small windows let in little light. But then the atrium and peristyle would be ablaze with light. I thought both light and shadow private, just for me.

      That seems risible now. But our house was private, inward-looking, its walls closed to the world, its windows small, all its doors opening inwards, its rooms giving on to each other. The one door was guarded night and day by a porter and salivating bull mastiffs. As a Roman home, so a Roman family. That is how I was reared.

      We Romans are bound together by many things: our laws, our sense of destiny. We are a people hardened by the many wars which gave us painful birth. But we are a people formed within our families.

      Consider, for example, our names. Barbarians mock these. They should instead consider the strength that they impart. ‘Publius’ is my personal name. ‘Cornelius’ is my cognomen, which defines a branch within my gens or clan, and that of course is ‘Scipio’. ‘Africanus’ you can discount. It is an honorific name, for the conqueror of Africa. Some still call me by that name. I don’t object to that, but I have had my fill of honours. Perhaps the Senate, if they do nothing else, will take them away.

      Roman clans are tied by more than blood. The clans Pinarii and Potitii, for example, looked after the rites of Hercules at the ancient altar in Rome’s cattle-market. When, a hundred years ago, the Potitii betrayed the secrets of that ritual, all died within a month, twelve whole families of them, so it is said. I have seen enough to know such things are possible.

      I value being a Scipio more than I value my life. Almost as soon as I could read at all – was I four, five? – my father took me out. I remember the heat, the crowds. He kept stopping, his toga white in a sea of brown, to greet or to be greeted. He seemed to remember every name. ‘And how is your aunt? I hear she’s been unwell.’ Or, to someone else, ‘And the new warehouse? Is it finished?’ It was a long walk. I was tired, and did not understand.

      The iron gate into the mausoleum creaked on its hinges. The silence was sudden, after the noise of the Forum, the markets and streets. The tomb was huge, I thought. All round it figures were carved. They frightened me. Below the figures were inscriptions. My father knelt. I did the same. He was silent for a long time. Ants crawled up my shins. I wanted to scratch. I didn’t think I should.

      Still kneeling, ‘These are your ancestors, Scipio. Revere and learn from them,’ my father said. ‘Now stand up and read me the inscription nearest you.’

      I didn’t stumble much. When I did, my father helped me. ‘I increased the merit of my race by my upright standards,’ the inscription ran. ‘I begat children. I followed the exploits of my ancestors so that they rejoiced I had been born to them. Honour ennobled my stock.’

      ‘Good, Publius, good. That was written for your grandfather. You should be content if, when you die, it could be written for you – as I would be. Don’t forget it.’

      I never have.

      His memory is prodigious. One day I must ask him when or where he learnt that skill. Nature gives some men better memories than others, but memories like Scipio’s are formed by use and art. Someone has written a treatise on The Art of Memory. A Greek, of course. Aristotle? I must look in the library tonight.

      ‘No, no, no!’ Sosius screamed, shaking his stick at me. ‘Not so deep, not so deep!’ Well, it was a long time since I’d held a hoe. After sixteen years travelling with an army, the man I had served being now in Africa, here I was on a smallholding in Bruttium, hoeing beans.

      Sosius came up. ‘If you hoe so deep, you’ll let the sun too far into the ground. The roots will dry out, and then, and then …’ He tailed off, looked down, looked back up at me. ‘Then, Bostar, we’ll have no beans!’

      We both laughed. We had eaten beans, I gratefully, Sosius with a grumble. ‘Beans again, woman?’ But I had four helpings, and as many barley cakes. At least it isn’t dog, I thought.

      An interesting vegetable, the bean. Pythagoras banned it. Perhaps he believed that if his adherents ate it they’d fart when they were about to metempsychose into a priest or a holy man and end up instead as a dog. But then I’ve always been suspicious of that story. The Greeks used beans for casting votes. I wonder if, in prohibiting the humble bean, Pythagoras