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XV. FARMHOUSE
"Heads up," Darwin says. "This is the place where we have come to find our treasure."
Speaking of bridges, a bridge ahead is jammed because an overloaded wagon of marble dust has collapsed. The front and rear axles are broken, and all four wheels are flat on the ground. It will take a crew of slaves at least two hours to shovel the dust into a pile on the side. Asconius has meanwhile procured you a room at a quaint little farmhouse. Two slaves carry your bags down a long winding path to a farm estate run by Quintus Caius Priscus, while four other slaves light the way with torches. The place doubles as a corporate ranch and a bed and breakfast for the select few. Asconius may be a slave, but he’s friends with Priscillus, the manager’s son. Priscus, a well-off official, doesn’t care to live so close to the crime-ridden and noisy road, but he does know a good thing when he sees it. Howard Johnson wasn’t the first person to have the idea to set up inns along highway exits. Priscus is just much more selective about who gets to hit his hay. You’ve already experienced how dreadful Roman beds are, so without preamble (and minimal lighting of oil lamps) you throw yourself face-first onto your pallet and go to sleep.
In the morning, you step to the window and look out over the slight, rolling hills overlooking miles of cultivated farmland. This is a big moment—your first daylight glimpse. What do you think? It’s a strange impression—not Modern, not Occidental, not Oriental, but Classical, Ancient. For a moment, the people working on the hills could be Medieval serfs on a foggy morning, when the silvery sun casts its first delicate light through the last damp tendrils of night. They could be Breughel peasants enjoying a rare warm day during the Little Ice Age or Maunder Minimum with its dreadfully cold village scenes. In the next moment, you realize these are slaves, and they are working the corporately owned tillage of a latifundium, or huge plantation whose billionaire owners may have dozens of such mega-farms with thousands of cattle and slaves (the difference being that the slaves can tie wheat sheaves, and the cattle give milk; even that isn’t quite true, since many a slave nanny is pressed into service to suckle an owners’ infants). A closer look, a further clarification: these slaves are mostly white people, many of them blond Germans and Slavs who are prized for being particularly large and robust, though they have a tendency to be lazy and, ahem…well, all the usual clichés for whoever happens to be the underclass at the moment.
What buildings you see, aside from this old farmhouse, tend to look like long, corporate warehouses; nothing quaint about the place. Then you notice wayside shrine, sort of a kiosk with a red tile coolie-hat roof, which could be right out of classical China. You feel a sense of dislocation, fueled by many little details, like the simple straw hats worn by slaves and commoners alike. This is the classic petasus, a straw or felt hat with a small rounded top, and a wide, round, floppy brim. Mercury wears one, albeit with wings. The effect of seeing the distant figures bent over the fields in their tunics and petasus hats gives an almost Asian look to the panorama as you rub sleep from your eyes. Fact is, this place and time isn't European nor is it Asian. It is Classical Mediterranean—a lost world.
On a distant road winding through the countryside, you spy an odd figure. He wears a voluminous toga and carries a tall staff. He wears the petasus, which casts his face in shadow, and you recognize the classic pilgrim of ancient times. He wears a good pair of sandals, laced to the knees, and carries a little haversack slung over one shoulder. He comes toward the farmhouse, and looks as though he is on important business (evidently not urgent enough to ride on a horse). You will see more of this mysterious figure.
Darwin joins you, and you ask: "What about that treasure? Is anything happening?"
Darwin laughs. "You must put aside your Modern impatience. Here, time moves more slowly. Nothing gets done instantly. Communication, except as far as you can shout, may take days, weeks, even years." Ever the scholar, he adds: "It's been said that it took Napoleon Bonaparte as long to send a message from Paris to Rome as it might have taken Julius Caesar to do the same, although Paris was then the Roman Lutetia. It's pretty much with the American Civil War in the 1860s that the telegraph begins to change the dynamic of communication. Not to mention balloons for spying on the enemy from above."
You and Darwin spend a relaxing and interesting day at the farmhouse. Priscus lives here with his wife and children and six household slaves. A thousand farm slaves spend their nights locked in long barracks, and their days on the gently rolling hills planting and harvesting wheat. The main wheat crop these days comes from Egypt, but Rome buys all the produce the world can offer, including the fruits of local latifundia. The latifundia system, centuries later, segues into the Feudal fief.
Priscus’ son Priscus (the 'Priscillus' is not a name but a diminutive, but we'll call him that to avoid confusion with his dear old dad) is an old friend of the educated slave Asconius. You don’t even ask—though you are puzzled how a free man and a man owned by some corporation can behave somewhat like equals—as always, that soul of Rome slips out of your grasp just when you thought you were getting a handle on it. Priscillus and Asconius lead you on a horseback tour of the property. Darwin stays at the house, where he reclines on a patio overlooking the fields with their healthful air. He seems to be feeling better, particularly under the care of a nattering, heavy old red-haired and freckled slave mammy in a long tunic. She was brought here as a little orphan girl after slave raids into Pictish territory (Scotland), in which her family perished and her tribe were broken up and sold around the empire. Her hair is now as faded as her bandanna, but you still see traces of red, along with freckles on her nose. The fire of Boudicca is long gone in her, or never was, though her pale blue eyes have a fierce, unreadable quality.
As you ride around the plantation, and the day grows warm and sunny, you sense what modern historians will call an Oriental style about the turrets, walls, roofs, and general shape of the smaller buildings. Oriental and Occidental are references to the sun. Oriens is Latin for ‘rising’ while occidens means ‘setting.’ Europeans during the age of their empires liked to call their bump on the left side of Asia ‘the Occident,’ or Land of the Setting Sun (‘the West,’ in literature and mythology). They referred to the large end of Asia, where most people live, as ‘the Orient,’ or Land of the Rising Sun (‘the East’).
Even as you enjoy the fresh air and warm sun, the unreachable ‘otherness’ of Roman existence haunts you, here and throughout your trip. Sometimes it will be dramatic, as with horrors of the arena, or the casual ubiquity of slavery, or the abandoning (‘exposure’) of unwanted infants. Maybe it’s the way the Roman army punishes cowardice when a unit breaks and runs in battle. They line up all the soldiers, and kill every tenth man (‘decimation,’ from decim, ‘ten’). They may repeat this several times, until the generals are satisfied the soldiers will be more scared of their officers than of the enemy. At other times, the strangeness will be more subtle—opening a hallway cupboard while looking for a spoon, you find a shrine full of tiny votive figurines, or a collection of grim wax death masks black and moldy with age. Always, it will knock you out of your comfort zone. Most jarring, perhaps because most subtle, is what happens in moments when you forget where you are. The air smells fresh, the grass smells grassy, paths are rocky, flowers smell fragrant, bees drone in sunlight. Suddenly, some subtle feature (like an evilly grimacing faun statue in an ivy garden, or, on a pretty garden path, a ragged, emaciated, and dirty slave girl walking ten paces behind her plump and well-fed little mistress, brat, and playmate) reminds you where you are, or when you are. Slavery nags at every fiber of your being like an unwelcome sore. You know that the bratty mistress can put the slave girl’s eyes out, and merely be chided. There will be no eye for an eye here. Yet, the Romans had a very complex relationship with their slaves. The horrific end of 40,000 followers of Spartacus was the definitive end of all such uprisings. Spartacus, a Thracian slave and gladiator, escaped from a ludus (‘game,’ gladiator school) in Capua and terrorized southern Italy from 73-71 B.C. until defeated by Pompey and Crassus. The entire gladiator army were tortured and crucified in a row stretching for a hundred miles or more along the Appian Way. The Romans are experts at inflicting painful death. In crucifixion, they make you stand on a tiny wooden platform just big enough for one foot. You dance around in pain for hours until you lack strength, and begin to sag. That’s when you suffocate in your own lung fluids, while simultaneously dying of thirst. What nice guys.
Here’s an interesting (probably true) story about the teenage Julius Caesar that illustrates Roman thoroughness. Young Julius was captured by pirates and held for ransom. Through charm and promises, he got them to treat him kindly. He had them laughing at his jokes and sharing their best cuts of meat until his wealthy family were able to ransom his release. Charm finished, Caesar brought a fleet of his own, captured them, and had them all crucified. He kept right on joking with them, and even ate lunch in plain view, while they took their time dying a long and horrible death. When he grew up and made himself dictator, this same Julius Caesar did away with his two government and business partners—Pompey and Crassus. Moral of the story: Grab your buttocks with both hands and run while you still can. Is it time to go home yet?
Regarding the slaves, it was a complex part of Roman life and culture. At least one of every three persons was a slave. The Romans lived in fear of their slaves—there were plenty of cases of a slave killing his master and family and running off, only to be captured and—you guessed it—crucified and die a horrible death. Pliny the Younger, in 100 A.D., describes how several slaves caused the death of their cruel master, but before he died he had the satisfaction of seeing them tortured to death, and Pliny exclaims: "There you see the dangers, outrages, and insults to which we are exposed!" Slaves were often treated as very junior and dumb family members, almost like pets. If you treated your dog well, why not your slave? The first might bite you, while the other might stab you. We know from archeological research that most Roman slaves were undernourished, overworked, and treated pretty poorly. A few grew fat and wealthy, and even kept slaves of their own. Roman law afforded some protections to slaves as the centuries rolled by—probably because many influential citizens were themselves freedmen or the sons of freedmen. At the same time, we know from evidence at Pompeii that most slaves were early in their grave. Then again, life was harsh by modern standards for everyone, so it was just a bit harsher for some slaves, and dreadful for many others. Manumission (the freeing ceremony by laying on the hand, or manus, to send, mittere, the slave away) was frequent and gave the slave something to work toward, something to look forward to. Records indicate many who had been treated relatively well thought of themselves as family long after their manumission. They, like many freeborn middle class or poorer men, became ‘clients.’ This was a strange Roman custom whereby the wealthy had freeloaders or hangers-on who would show up every morning for an audience with their master, obtaining gifts, money, jobs—a bit reminiscent of the padrone system you saw in the movie The Godfather. In fact, the wealthy master of such clients was called a patron, from pater, ‘father.’
How did the Romans name their offspring? Free men had three names, like Caius Julius Caesar—a praenomen (e.g., your first name), a cognomen or tribal name (e.g., Julius, from the ancient Julian clan), and a nomen or surname (e.g., your family name). There’s a bit more to it, but those are the bare bones. The Roman attitude toward women is best illustrated by the matter of giving women names. They didn’t. Women didn’t get names of their own. A woman got the name of her father at birth, and later might add the name of her husband, in the possessive form. Thus, Asconius’ friend Priscillus might be the son of Priscus and Germana Prisca (whose father was Germanus). When Priscillus (diminutive of Priscus) marries, his wife (let’s say, Flaminia, daughter of Flaminius) will most likely become Flaminia Priscilla. Their daughters will all be named Priscilla (a diminutive) or even Priscillula (a diminutive of a diminutive), with qualifiers like ‘the elder,’ ‘the younger,’ ‘the third.’ Basically, the simple formula is that women, animals, and slaves get one name, while men get three.
As you enjoy a brisk ride, everywhere around the latifundium, you find shrines and other evidence of religiosity all around you. Religion is a constant of life—not something you go do for an hour one day a week, but a part of your daily life that you hardly ever notice. While the Romans brought their practical genius in commerce, law, engineering, and military genius to the world, they brought home not only plunder, but an enormous pantheon of gods. They brought not only the standard set from the Greek (Zeus, Athena, et al) but all kinds of Celtic and Asian and African deities. In part, that’s because they brought slaves from everywhere. Also, it was probably because the Roman intellectual discourse was driven largely by highly educated Greek slaves, who had a deep philosophical curiosity.
At its root, however, Rome was a much simpler, more austere society whose gods were nameless numina and genii. The Roman wasn’t interested in converting you, or saving you, or adopting your religion—he just wanted you to worship the emperor and support the state religion, thereby protecting the legal, commercial, and Roman order of the universe. To not do so made you an Atheist (‘godless’), which is one of the major beefs they had with Christians. You were free to worship whomever and whatever you wanted. Those atheistic Christians further complicated their own lives by being so simple and straightforward that everyone assumed they had to be hiding something, even if they weren’t. Starting with Nero, they were sporadically persecuted, which sent them underground to worship, which in turn made it look like the slanders of their enemies were all the more true. They were accused of cannibalism at their ritual meal, the Mass (Greek agape), even though many of the accepted mystery cults involved a (to modern Christians, disturbingly) similar meal. Their professions of philadelphia (brotherly love) were interpreted as sexual misconduct or worse—eating infants, incest, what have you—particularly when it was clear that (gasp!) women participated to some extent in this worship.
You notice a temple here and there, from a masterpiece in marble on the Greek model, to a simple round gazebo with a clay roof and spindly supports on a hilltop. You find little shrines and statues hidden in almost every thicket, reminding you of a similar custom in virtually every society in your time except in austere cultures like iconoclastic (ikon, ‘image’ + klast, ‘smasher’) Byzantium, or Europe and America of the Reformation. The average Roman has a sort of mixed intimate yet distant relationship with the gods—including making curse-pacts whereby he or she writes a curse on some object (a leaf, tree bark, paper, a sheet of lead, a clay shard) and throws this into a pond. The curse is in the form of a letter or contract, saying something like "If you, Venus the Beautiful, Patroness of these waters, inflict upon my enemy Marcia Poppaea a severe facial rash that will make her a laughing stock in town, then I, Julia Vera, will each year on the Lupercalia feast throw a silver coin in these waters as a gift of thanks." Signed, dated, etc. There you have it—Roman legalism, formality, cruelty, credulity, pettiness, the whole meat pie. Although the underlying instinct is pure humanity at its pettiest, the practice is utterly alien to you as a modern, who has had it drummed into you that your contact with your monotheistic deity must be utterly good-natured, and don’t be caught dead having this kind of texting or messaging with the Other One, or you fry in hell for all eternity (a concept the Roman wouldn’t understand, at least not until Oriental religions like Christianity and Judaism came along, which borrowed their demons and dualities from Persian sources, and they in turn from the Indus Valley). The modern ‘devil’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘slanderer,’ which seems congruent with the sense of Julia Vera’s hypothetical letter to Venus. ‘Satan’ is from a Middle Eastern word meaning ‘adversary, accuser.’ By the way, ‘demon’ means simply ’divine power’ in its Greek original, in a culture that hadn’t quite discovered the dualism (good and evil, heaven and hell) that came from primordial India via ancient Persia. ‘Angel’ is Greek for ‘messenger.’ All these characters apparently needed new job descriptions as modern times rolled into town. Somewhere (ha!) we have mentioned that little garden sprite, the genius—his identity evolved into the fabled Arabian djinni who appears if you rub a bottle, and grants you three wishes.
Toward evening, as smoke curls from the villa’s chimney, you ride in with your friends. You’ve hunted and caught a rabbit for the stew pot.
Darwin looks wretched and upset. "It's not here," he whispers when he gets you alone.
"What's not here?"
"The books of the Cumaean Sibyl."
"How do you know?"
"You'll see."
After dinner, you’ll discuss religion and philosophy. First, though, Priscillus offers a quick tour of his family’s villa. He tells the story: "The house itself belonged to an ancient Senatorial family, the Decii, who were murdered in the ravages of Caracalla 80 years ago. During the short peace of Alexander Severus, who replaced that monster Heliogabalus on the throne, my great-grandfather was a general in the British government. When he retired 60 years ago, the corporations rewarded him well and he settled here. So my family have held this house in the names of the patricians Manilius and Ulpian for several generations." Leaving your tired horses with stable hands, you follow Priscillus through the gardens. In front of the house is a long, plain portico consisting of two end-halls with a travertine porch in between, on which four elephantine, short columns hold up a flat architrave and clay-tile roof. "This was added by the corporation when the house became their property," Priscillus says.
You, Darwin, and Priscillus walk through the shaded portico, through a heavy wooden door of two wings, and into a plain atrium or entrance hall. "This was destroyed when Caracalla’s cavalry came to kill Lavinius Marcus Decius. This is the new floor, and that the old over here in back." Priscillus walks around on the simple, tiny white tiles that warm on the foreground floor. He walks as if among ghosts, pointing here and there as if the events had just happened minutes ago. "The soldiers ran inside this far. The slaves screamed in fear as they were put to the sword while trying to block the inner doors, over there, where the family were hiding." An uneven tear-line, poorly sealed in mortar, divides the plain new floor from the sumptuous old. "You can see that the old floor was a beautiful set of marine mosaics. There used to be a big image of Neptune with his trident and sea nymphs in the middle, then a circle of sea animals like octopi and fishes and lobsters and crabs, then a wider circle of religious images from the lives of the early heroes of the Republic, and finally a square border at the edges of the room in the form of sandy beaches covered with lions and other animals. Most of that is all gone, destroyed in the fire that the soldiers lit in the villa. Luckily there was a heavy rain storm, which saved the rear half of the building. They left the servants impaled in the trees outside, the women raped and killed in the barns, the children taken away into slavery."
His cloak swirls as he moves through a vestibule corridor with stairs leading up to the bedrooms and another stairway leading into the gardens below the villa. He takes you into the house itself, away from the corporate front added during the time of Alexander Severus. "This is what remains of the original villa, and this is where my family live." He takes you into the main house. "The plaster frescoes are original from the time of Hadrian." You inspect scenes in which youths hunt and fish in some sort of game preserve while gods and nymphs play in grottoes. These are interspersed with rather haunting and mysterious scenes of cult plays in which initiates (primarily women) react with awe and a kind of hypnotic, controlled terror as they step into another world inhabited by ghosts and deities. As in Pompeian frescoes (a fresco, like those you saw in the Sistine Chapel, is painting done directly on ‘fresh’ plaster), you see these female figures draped in wind-blown togas that emphasize the sanctity and otherworldliness of the setting. The implication is that the wind blows in from another world, like the rippling presage of a summer rain storm, or the first cold breath of autumn. A woman raises a hand as if staving off some mysterious spirit, while her eyes are open wide as if she sees something scary, right over your shoulder, but in the painting, so you can never see it. All you see is the profoundly unsettling mirror of whatever it is, in this nameless and long-dead woman’s face. Another woman twists her garment-wrapped body sinuously in a pose you’d almost call ‘Oriental.’ These are figures you could almost imagine, if you squint a bit, seeing on a very ancient Chinese or Japanese scroll. You can almost hear the insistent beat of the sistrum and the haunting echo of the flute or the lyre. Most interestingly, the paintings were done centuries ago and even Priscillus really has no idea what they are about.
Now you enter a central garden overlooked on all sides by a two-story building with porches. He points all around and says: "This is the original villa. The Lord Ulpian and the Corporation have added many wings in which the overseers and artisans live, and beyond those the slave barracks and animal barns. My family and I stay almost entirely in the old home here, and we sleep upstairs." You glimpse the wooden doors of bedrooms all around. You and Darwin will each spend the night in such a small bedroom niche on the ground floor. Each such tiny cell has a shelf for a straw pallet, another shelf for belongings, and maybe a wooden table to pull close to the bed. A grated wall vent lets warmth in from the hypocaust, so that heat circulating through the walls can enter in the cold of night. A small window with a wooden shutter can be opened to frame a lovely garden view. In the center of the garden is a pool with statues and a miniature colonnade bearing flowerpots.
You pass through into gardens into the triclinium or dining room, where you will eat. You spy Priscus’ tablinum (office) in an adjoining wing, along with workshops, a functional library of farm records and books, and a small polytheist chapel reserved for important officials. You notice that the theme of the chapel seems to be a mix of traditional Roman ancestor worship and respect for local numina and genii, overlaid with the more complex and story-like mythologies imported from Greece, and even a few touches of later mystery cults like a niche with grain and wine themes dedicated to Ceres and Bacchus. You will have occasion to remember much about this farmhouse later in your journey, particularly the layering of religion in Priscus’ chapel.
When Darwin gets a moment alone with you, he whispers: "There is some hope. The large stone urn we are after was kept tightly sealed in a wall niche in the impluvium. The soldiers who raided this place took it with them, along with much other loot, but I know where to find it in downtown Rome. We may be saved yet!"
The three of you—Priscillus, Meteor, and Drusus—luxuriate in the corporate baths, where special wings are reserved for elite men and their families. Whereas the larger common baths are built of brick, plastered over, and decorated with simple terracotta god images, the special baths are detailed in many square yards of painstaking mosaic. It’s fundamentally the same swarming white mosaic, with finer panels inset, made of dark green glass and fragments of amber-colored marble, and you realize without being told that this is a wing the Corporation has added where perhaps an earlier structure was destroyed during the raid by Caracalla’s soldiers. The baths follow the familiar pattern. First, you change clothes in a vestibule. Then you enter a tepidarium or warm room to acclimate yourselves for what is to come. You drink watery fruit juice and joke loudly, so that your laughter echoes in the ceiling beams. From here you don wooden clogs to enter the caldarium, or hot room, which reminds you of a sauna. While you chat among each other, slaves rub you down with warm, wet sponges and then gently apply the strigil, a flat wooden stick like a cake scoop, to peel away layers of dirt, sweat, hair, and dead skin cells. Meanwhile, the hot air causes you to sweat profusely, and you continue drinking water as you step gingerly into the hot, steaming pool. It’s a bit like a modern jacuzzi without the whirling waters. The day’s activities catch up with you, and you surrender to the drowsiness and comfort of this vapor-filled room. Soon enough, as you step out, slaves finish rubbing you down. You could have a massage if you want, but a slave comes breathlessly to remind Master Priscillus that the Lord Priscus is getting ready to dine, and the guests are expected to be prompt as dinner begins. You step from the caldarium back through the tepidarium and now into the frigidarium, where the water is just a trifle below room temperature and feels positively chilly. Revitalized, you let the slaves wrap you in plain but clean togas of soft wool, and fresh sandals, and off you go to dinner.
The dinner itself is a happy affair with much laughter. The women sit in a circle of their own near the back windows overlooking the fields. The men, including you whom they know as Caius, or Meteor, sit in a circle of couches and drink wine while courses of fish, crab, and mutton come your way. Fruits and vegetables are abundant. They accept your presence as a gentleman scribe and young assistant to the learned Darwin, but otherwise pay little attention to you. Priscus, a small, trim man with a ring of short gray hair around a gleaming waxy bald head, and incisive eyes that radiate intelligence and business acumen, raises many toasts to the beneficence and good health of the Emperor Carinus, who at the moment is in the east fighting a civil war against the rebellious Caesar Diocles. You and Darwin exchange looks but say nothing, knowing the historically insignificant Carinus will lose somehow. Diocles will become the great Emperor Diocletian, last great persecutor of Christians and savior of Rome under the ancient gods, to be followed (311) by Constantine. "Life is good here," Priscus declares, "while tempests rage across the far provinces."
Priscillus is a cut from the old block. Chewing his cheese and olives matter-of-factly, and swallowing generous draughts of watered Falernian wine, Priscillus says: "The gods smile on Rome, and our blessings are endless. It’s because we are divinely favored, isn’t it? We are the gods' chosen people. The wheat fields out here rarely fail to bring in a good harvest, and our civilization is like a vast fortress that cannot be assaulted by the pitiful horsemen who throw their simple swords and shields against us. We have much reason to give thanks."
Later that evening, as the lights dim, and the older people have all gone to bed, you and Darwin remain in the company of a rather sloshed Priscillus. Asconius lies on his back, snoring at the ceiling, until slaves come to remove him to his bedroom. The windows are open, and the night air blows in. The sky is visible above the Tiber valley, clear and filled with stars. You see the Milky Way in its great wheel full of constellations, and think about the Etruscan and Roman priests in their temples at Rome; they are no doubt at this moment busy studying what the Fates have in store for mankind. You hear the baying of a dog (or is it a wolf?) in the marshes, and you feel a breath or a chill down your back.
"Did you feel that?" Priscillus says with a slurry voice but surprisingly clear eyes and steady hand.
"I thought it was only me," you say with a tremor in your voice.
Priscillus shakes his head dourly. "The numina (spirits) of this place are troubled. The lares and the penates wail in anguish." As he speaks, you hear a distant shout, a rattle of chains, a whip crack, a scream, then silence. A thousand slaves sleep exhaustedly locked in their barracks, some chained, some with festering wounds from their work and from the overseer’s whip or even sword. A thousand horses and cattle, sheep and goats, donkeys and work dogs, add their souls to the heavy presence of spirits in these hills. It naturally would not occur to Priscillus to even think of their fates. He refers to the aristocratic family tragically butchered a few generations ago by a mad emperor. "You hear that?"
You listen, but the chains and cries are silent. You shake your head, and Darwin nods over his wine.
Priscillus says: "I have little time for fancy gods and goddesses or mythological stories, being a practical Roman. I fervently perform the rites honoring the Divine Emperor, who stands at the head of the Roman people before the gods." As he speaks, he tips a small splash of wine on the floor from his cup. "I honor the ancient gods of Rome, and I can tell you, drunk as I am, that the enemies of our people will be drowned in a sea of their own blood." You wonder at the depth of his anger, which is almost rage. His skin glows dark red, and his eyes glitter with hate. "The atheists above all, the Christians who commit incest and, in their tunnels under the ground, eat children left on the hillside— they will learn once again what it means to respect the tip of a Roman sword." He drinks deeply, and you dare not offer any mitigating views on this topic.
Darwin speaks, and Priscillus listens respectfully as to a wise Greek counselor: "My son, you are ravaged with anger. Life is very short, and you must make peace in your heart, as I have done, because I am looking over the wall into the dark world outside this life."
Priscillus laughs. "Old man, what do you see on the other side?"
"Darkness. I see nothing and hear no sounds, but I don’t know if that is because nothing is there, or because we do not begin our new life until we arrive on the other side."
Priscillus shrugs. "That’s why I have no time for such fantasies. Up the sword, fork over the goods, let us see your women, let your king bow his head toward Rome. That is the formula by which we must all live, as it has been for centuries."
"You are smart to know something about history," Darwin says stonily, and you aren’t sure if he is being sarcastic, or just purposely obscure. "At some point, when we learn enough about history, we progress from being smart to actually being wise.""
Priscillus rises to his feet and staggers toward the window. Slaves rush to help him, and he vomits noisily over the side into the gardens below. He accepts a cup of herbally treated water from a slave, wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and staggers a bit dramatically around the room. "Listen, do you hear?"
Again you strain your ears, but all you hear is the wind and that same distant dog. "It’s late at night, and we are the only ones awake," you say as a hint that it’s time to break up the drinking bout. You have no desire that one of the slaves might report your words to the authorities in Rome. Darwin remains silent for the same reason. The spies of Carinus are everywhere.
"Do you hear the ghosts?" Priscillus says with a haunted look in his face. Suddenly you are reminded of the wall frescoes depicting Mysteries, which will be found on the walls of villas in Pompeii and Herculaneum. "The ghosts of the Decii are around at night. Sometimes I can hear the ghosts of their children weeping as they search for their parents." He pauses while a slave refills his wine goblet. "We are a new family. My father is an important man in the Corporation, as I will be, but we are nothing in the city. We have no seat in the Senate, nor will we ever. That suits me just fine, because those are the people the crazy emperors come looking for in their rage, to humiliate and torture and murder. We keep still, and hope to remain unnoticed. At night, you can hear the ancient cupboard gods rummaging in the kitchen." He laughs. "The slaves won’t go there at night. If I awaken hungry, I have to help myself, because not even the threat of a whipping or death will make these superstitious children go near the hearth." You know that the slaves are often treated like bumbling children, almost like pets that never grow up. They aren’t allowed to marry, though they can live in concubinage. They have children, who may be adopted into the household as slaves, or sold. A smart homeowner knows enough not to make his slaves hate him, so he most likely won’t take the short-term profit over the long-term liability. The law increasingly offered protections designed to preserve the rights and benefits of owners, and yet maintain order and decency by creating conditions in which slaves were not driven to sole murder or collective revolt. Priscillus continues: "The Lemures of the Decii haunt the atrium in front, as well as the garden outside, which is why we keep the front locked and nobody will set foot there. I could take you and show you the exact places where each of the Decii children were murdered, and then their mother and nannies."
You murmur words of comfort, seeing the Priscillus is much affected by the dreadful events that took place here, much as he wants to play tough or deny his feelings. Lemures, or Larvae, are the spirits of dead household members (in this case not of his family) who particularly haunt the halls during their festival days in May. By contrast, the Manes are the divine dead including one’s ancestors who are solemnly worshiped during the Parentalia. The Lares are the household gods, whose images are kept in the lararium or household shrine, along with ancestral death masks. These are more serious gods than the penates, or cupboard gods. The world is filled with spirits or numina, and every place has its genius or genius loci. The term genius itself comes from the same root as gens (‘tribe’) and means ‘begetter’ (modern ‘genetics’). These rather undefined and simple spirits form the substratum of Roman religion, to which it inevitably reverts, even as Hellenistic innovations (Fates, Furies, Nymphs, anthropomorphic deities) are added. The Roman state revolves, until Christian times in the last days of the Empire, around performing the correct rituals at each time of year to ensure the harvest and the well-being of the state and its citizens. It seems to you natural then, when the ancient gods are replaced by the Christian cult, that a formal Christianity replaces all the legalism, hierarchic organization, and ritual formalism.
It begins to rain, and thunder growls over the hills. Priscillus falls asleep face down on his couch, and slaves carry him off. You and Darwin join a procession of umbrellas and guttering torches moving through the gardens as slaves hasten to secure the windows and doors. The wind kicks up, and you bolt yourself into your bedroom niche, comforted by the light of three or four tiny oil lamps. The dry heat of the hypocaust, tinged with coal smoke, and the sweeter scent of burning olive oil, quickly lull you to sleep. As your thoughts drift into the realm of Somnus, clouds move in and obscure the starry heavens, much as the Fates often drive a veil over the destiny of men. You find yourself actually beginning to think like a Roman. From ancient times, the Romans learned to place a heavy emphasis on soothsayers and diviners. The Etruscan civilization vanishes, but its haruspices remain honored priests in their own right. They are often called upon to help the Roman state in matters of divination. Aside from the Egyptians and Babylonians, the Romans honor the Etruscans above all for a seemingly bottomless understanding of the dark arts.
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