2. The Grass Crown Read online

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  On the same day that the new nation of Italia was formed and its most prominent men settled down in the new capital city of Italica to deliberate, the praetor Quintus Servilius of the Augur's family commenced to ride along the Via Salaria from the port city of Firmum Picenum, going in the direction of Rome at last. Since June he had patrolled the lands north of Rome, heading up through the fertile rolling hills of Etruria to the river Arnus, which formed the boundary of Italian Gaul; from there he went east into Umbria, thence south into Picenum, and down the Adriatic coast. He had, he felt, acquitted himself very well. No Italian stone had gone unturned and if he had discovered no deep-laid plots, that was because there were no deep-laid plots, he was sure of it. His progress had been royal in all save name. Dowered with a proconsular imperium, he enjoyed the sumptuous panoply of riding behind twelve crimson-clad, black-and-brass-belted lictors bearing the axes in their bundles of rods. Ambling along on a snow-white palfrey, clad in silver-plated armor with a purple tunic underneath, Quintus Servilius of the Augur's family had unconsciously borrowed from King Tigranes of Armenia by ordering that a slave travel beside him holding a parasol to shade him from the sun. Had Lucius Cornelius Sulla only seen him, that strange man would have laughed himself sick. And probably proceeded to haul Quintus Servilius off his demure little lady's mount and rub his face in the dust. Each day a group of Quintus Servilius's servants rushed ahead of him to find the best accommodation available, usually in some local magnate's or magistrate's villa; that he was indifferent as to how the rest of his entourage fared was typical of him. As well as his lictors and a large party of slaves, he was escorted by twenty heavily armed and beautifully mounted troopers. With him for much-needed company on this leisurely progress he took as his legate one Fonteius, a rich nonentity who had just purchased himself a small share of glory by donating (along with a huge dowry) his daughter, Fonteia, aged seven, to the College of Vestal Virgins. It seemed to Quintus Servilius of the Augur's family that much senatorial fuss had been made about nothing in Rome, but he was disinclined to complain, having seen more of Italy than he had ever thought to see, and under circumstances of unparalleled deliciousness. Wherever he went, he was feted and feasted; his money chest was still more than half full due to the generosity of his hosts and the awesome power of a proconsular imperium, which meant he would finish the year of his praetorship nicely plump in the purse and at the expense of the State. The Via Salaria of course was the Old Salt Road, Rome's original key to prosperity in the days before the kings, when the salt mined from the flats at Ostia had been disseminated along this road by Latin merchant-soldiers. However, in these modern times the Via Salaria had dwindled in importance to the point where its roadbed was not kept up by a negligent State, as Quintus Servilius discovered shortly after he left Firmum Picenum. Washouts due to past flooding plagued him every few miles, there was not a scrap of surface left atop the rounded stones of the foundations and, to cap everything, when he entered the pass to the next town of any importance, Asculum Picentum, he found his passage barred by a landslide. It took his men a day and a half to clear a safe path, time which poor Quintus Servilius was obliged to spend at the site of the landslide in conditions of acute discomfort. The journey from the coast was steeply uphill, for the eastern littoral was narrow, the spine of the Apennines looming close and very tall. Yet inland Asculum Picentum was the largest and most important town in all southern Picenum, surrounded by a daunting circumference of high stone walls which echoed the daunting peaks of the mountains also encircling the city. The river Truentius flowed nearby, little more than a string of waterholes at this time of the year, but the clever Asculans had tapped their water supply from a layer of gravel well below the riverbed. His advance guard of servants had done their work, Quintus Servilius discovered when he reached the main gates of Asculum Picentum at last; there he was welcomed by a small gathering of obviously prosperous merchants who spoke Latin instead of Greek, and all wore the togas of Roman citizenship. Quintus Servilius dismounted from his snow-white lady's horse, hitched his purple cloak across his left shoulder, and received his welcoming committee with gracious condescension. "This isn't a Roman or Latin colony, is it?" he asked vaguely, his knowledge of such things not as good as it ought have been, especially given that he was a Roman praetor traveling Italy. "No, Quintus Servilius, but there are about a hundred of us Roman businessmen living here," said the leader of the deputation, whose name was Publius Fabricius. "Then where are the leading Picentines?" demanded Quintus Servilius indignantly. "I expect to be met by the natives too!" Fabricius looked apologetic. "The Picentines have been avoiding us Romans for months, Quintus Servilius. Why, I don't know! However, they seem to be harboring a lot of ill feeling toward us. And today is a local festival in honor of Picus." "Picus?" Quintus Servilius blinked. "They have a festival in honor of a woodpecker?" They were walking through the gates into a small square festooned with garlands of autumn flowers, its cobbles strewn with rose petals and tiny daisies. "Hereabouts, Picus is a kind of Picentine Mars," said Fabricius. "He was the King of Old Italy, they believe, and he led the Picentes from their original Sabine lands across the mountains to what we call Picenum. When they got here, Picus transformed himself into a woodpecker, and marked out their boundaries by drilling the trees." "Oh," said Quintus Servilius, losing interest. Fabricius conducted Quintus Servilius and his legate Fonteius to his own splendid mansion on the highest point within the city, having arranged that lictors and troopers be quartered nearby in appropriate comfort, and having managed to accommodate the party's slaves within his own slave quarters. Quintus Servilius began to expand under this deferential and luxurious treatment, especially after he saw his room, quite the best in a very nice house. The day was hot, the sun still overhead; the two Romans bathed, then joined their host on the loggia overlooking the city, its impressive walls, and the more impressive mountains beyond, a grander view than most city houses anywhere owned. "If you would like, Quintus Servilius," said Fabricius when his guests appeared, "we could go to the theater this afternoon. They're playing Plautus's Bacchides." "That sounds delightful," said Quintus Servilius, sitting in a shady, cushioned chair. "I haven't been to see a play since I left Rome." He sighed voluptuously. "Flowers everywhere, I noticed, yet hardly a person on the streets. Is that because of this woodpecker's festival?" Fabricius frowned. "No. Apparently it has something to do with a peculiar new policy the Italians have adopted. Fifty Asculan children all Italians were sent off to Sulmo early this morning, and Asculum is waiting to receive fifty of Sulmo's children in place of their own." "How extraordinary! If one didn't know better, one might be excused for presuming they're exchanging hostages," said Quintus Servilius comfortably.'' Are the Picentes thinking of going to war against the Marrucini? That's what it seems like, doesn't it?" "I haven't heard of any rumors of war," said Fabricius. "Well, they've sent fifty Asculan children off to a town of the Marrucini and they're expecting fifty Marrucine children in their place, so it certainly suggests uneasy relations between the Picentes and the Marrucini, to say the least." Quintus Servilius giggled. "Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if they started fighting each other? It would certainly keep their minds off acquiring our citizenship, not so?'' He sipped his wine and looked up, startled. "My dear Publius Fabricius! Chilled wine?" "A nice conceit, isn't it?" asked Fabricius, pleased that he could actually astonish a Roman praetor with a name as old and famous and patrician as Servilius. "I send an expedition to the snows every second day, and have enough snow brought down to chill my wine all through summer and autumn." "Delicious," said Quintus Servilius, leaning back in his chair. "What's your line?" he asked abruptly. "I have an exclusive contract with most of the orchardists hereabouts," said Publius Fabricius. "I buy all their apples and pears and quinces. The best of them I ship straight to Rome for sale as fresh fruit. The rest I make into jam in my little factory, then I send the jam to Rome. I've also got a contract for chick-pea.'' "Oh, very nice!" "Yes, I must say I've done ve
ry well," said Fabricius in tones of distinct self-congratulation. "Mind you, it's typical of the Italians that once they see a man with the Roman citizenship start living better than they are, they begin to carp about monopolies and unfair trade practices and all the rest of that idler's rubbish. The truth is, they don't want to work, and those who do don't have business heads! If it were left to them, their fruit and produce would rot on the ground. I didn't come to this cold and desolate hole to steal their businesses, I came here to establish a business! When I first started, they couldn't do enough for me, they were so grateful. Now, I'm persona non grata with every Italian in Asculum. And my Roman friends here all tell the same story, Quintus Servilius." "It's a story I've heard before, from Saturnia to Ariminum," said the praetor delegated to look into "the Italian question." When the sun was about a third of the way down the western sky and the heat was beginning in that cool mountain air to diminish, Publius Fabricius and his distinguished guests walked to the theater, a temporary wooden structure built against the city wall so that the audience was shaded while the sun still lit up the scaena upon which the play would be performed. Perhaps five thousand Picentines were already installed, though not in the two front rows of the semicircular building; those seats were reserved for the Romans. Fabricius had made some last-minute alterations to the center of the very first row, where he had erected a pleasant dais shaded by a canopy. It contained enough room for the curule chair of Quintus Servilius, a chair for his legate Fonteius, and a third chair for Fabricius himself. That the structure obscured the view of those in the rows immediately behind didn't worry him at all. His guest was a Roman praetor with a proconsular imperium far more important than a lot of Italians. The party entered the auditorium through a tunnel beneath the curving cavea, and emerged on an aisle perhaps twelve rows from the dais, which fronted on to the orchestra, an unoccupied half circle of space between audience and stage. First came the strutting lictors shouldering their axed fasces, then came the praetor and his legate with a beaming Fabricius trotting beside them, and behind came the twenty troopers. Fabricius's wife to whom the Roman visitors had not been introduced sat with her friends to the right of the dais, but in the row behind; the front row was reserved exclusively for Roman citizen men. As the party appeared, a great murmur ran through the rows upon rows of Picentines, who leaned forward, craning their necks to see; the murmur grew to a growl, a roar, a howl, larded with boos and hisses. Though secretly astonished and dismayed at this hostile reception, Quintus Servilius of the Augur's family stalked, nose in air, onto the dais, and placed himself regally in his ivory seat, looking for all the world like the patrician Servilius he was not. Fonteius and Fabricius followed, while the lictors and troopers filed into the front-row seats on either side of and adjacent to the dais, tucking spears and fasces between their bare knees. The play began, one of Plautus's finest and funniest and one of his most delightfully musical. The cast was a strolling one, but good, of mixed origins in that some were Roman, some were Latin, and some were Italian; of Greeks there were none, as this company specialized in Latin comedy theater. The festival of Picus in Asculum Picentum was one of their regular stops each year, but this year the mood was different; the undercurrents of anti-Roman feeling running through the Picentine audience were entirely new. So the actors threw themselves into their routines with redoubled vigor, broadened the funny lines with additional nuances of walk and gesture, and determined that before the performance was over, they would have succeeded in jollying the Picentines out of their ill humor. Unfortunately the ranks were split between the players too; while a pair of Romans acted shamelessly to the men on the dais, the Latins and the Italians concentrated upon the native Asculans. After the prologue came the establishment of the plot, some hilarious exchanges between the major characters, and a pretty duet sung against the warbling of a flute. Then came the first canticum, a glorious tenor aria sung to the accompaniment of a lyre. The singer, an Italian from Samnium as famous for his ability to alter the playwright's lines as for his voice, stepped to the front of the stage and played directly to the dais of honor.