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XXXV. LOOKING FOR ROMULUS AND REMUS
"That was magnificent," Darwin bellows as you ride along sandy trails amid groves of marshland trees and tall reeds. You are now in the valley between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills and heading into the area of the future Roman Forum. Your horses are powerful, with broad backs--not sleek Arabians, but workhorses that are meant to pull a plow in peacetime, or charge fearlessly into battle, trusting from behind their leather blinders in the wisdom of their rider. You sit on primitive saddles that are little more than thin rugs; your feet sit firmly in leather stirrups, and you feel your own horse’s powerful form between your knees. All the animals are dark except the pale gray on which Amalthea rides.
"How did you do that?" Polybius says in a rare show of utter admiration.
"Where did these horses come from?" Marcellus says wonderingly.
"I’ll tell you later. Right now, let’s get out of here!" She wheels her horse around. "Back this way! Follow me! Quickly!" So saying, she spurs her horse, and you all follow her back out onto the beach. It is a magnificent sight, the woman who resembles a goddess, on a steed that might have jumped from Ilion’s parapets, and four men in pursuit. You ride across the flatlands that will one day be the Circus Maximus. You reach the Alban Road and gallop along a beaten path with sparkling clear water on your left and rising meadows on your right. That lake on your left, which will disappear in Republican times, is Lake Camenarum--an acre or more of fresh spring water whose numina, or the Camenae, are later identified with water nymphs and Muses. Here, Amalthea stops and lets the fevered horses rest. Slowly, snorting, they wander up to their hocks into the water. There, they lap up the pure spring water and nuzzle fresh green shoots.
"Where did you come from?" you ask Amalthea. "We thought Querculus and his crew were holding you."
She lays down her spear and shield. She sweeps back the bronze helmet, so that her dark hair falls over her shoulders. Her dark eyes flash and her teeth glitter with laughter. "Some secrets are best not revealed, but I’ll tell you that they are holding Felix, poor fellow. I managed to regain my true body and chase after you before you could get yourselves in trouble too deep over your heads."
Marcellus is down on one knee. "You are a goddess, aren’t you?"
She taps him lightly on the head. "No more than you are, poor man. Get up and let’s not waste any more time. We have much work to do in the short time we have here." She pauses, and looks at all of you with grave eyes. "I have one thing to say, that I must tell you. One of us will not return alive."
Marcellus covers his eyes with his hands, and only half rises so that he stands twisting left and right in grief.
Amalthea’s eyes well up like the Camenarian Spring itself, and tears flow down both cheeks. "I see doom for three of us." It is as though she is suddenly taken over by another power, and her voice comes out in a deep booming sound. "Only two get out alive, the rest must die because of the treachery of one." Then that hidden power fades as quickly as it rose, and she is Amalthea again, modern woman, American and Italian, crisp and beautiful, filled with self-assurance. "Let’s saddle up, boys. We have some hard riding to do today." Sitting astride her horse, she looks on as the rest of you struggle to follow. "Marcellus, you wanted to look upon the Capitoline, hoping to see signs of your city’s founders." You are all now riding slowly back around the base of the Caelian Hill toward the Forum.
You ask Amalthea: "Why did you turn us back when we were about to ride under the Capitoline?"
"I can’t tell you where my information comes from," she says, "but something told me we were in great danger. For one thing, Larth’s thugs are still angry at us, and they aren’t the type to resist getting even, especially when they might gain swords and jewelry."
Darwin adds: "Particularly when you stole their horses from them."
Amalthea says darkly: "You don’t know, Professor, but these horses are all the property of dead men that they murdered." A chill runs through you as she speaks. "They don’t let everyone cross in peace. The old man is in league with them. They let the traders through, because they know those will be back again and again, glad to pay for protection. Sometimes Larth and his robbers escort them for a fee to the borders of Alba Longa, or to the Etruscans, or east to the Samnite country. This is a border land in which anything is possible, and dark forces govern here. I haven’t told you the worst."
Polybius says: "I can’t imagine that it does get much worse. When do I get to return to the peace and order of my library? Or do I die here in these swamps?"
Amalthea looks at nobody as she replies, but looks straight ahead as the horses pick their way along the path between the Caelian and Palatine Hills (the Palatine becoming the later home of the emperors, from which all rulers henceforth name their mansions ‘palatium, palatia’ or ‘palaces’). "Anyone familiar with magic and prophecy knows the curse that lies on Rome from her founding. It’s one reason why so many disasters befall the city in her earlier years, including the Caudine Forks, where the Samnites humiliate the tribunes and their soldiers, and the ravages of Hannibal."
"A curse?" Polybius says.
"Oh yes, the Forum," Darwin says, brightening suddenly with realization.
Marcellus quavers: "The Forum? What about it?"
Amalthea says: "The land on which the Romans built their original public forum is a burial ground. The Etruscans, whose expertise the Romans always valued above their own, gave many warnings about building structures for the living on top of the burial places of the dead. No matter how much incense the Romans burn there, or prayers they say, or animals they sacrifice in the highest standards of purity, and no matter how the Vestals bring their sacred purity wherever they go, it remains that the Forum Romanum is a places full of ghosts."
"I did not know you were superstitious," you tell her. You can’t help but feel chills run up and down your spine as you picture the avenues of marble, lined with temples on either side, and images of every god and goddess sacred to the ancient city--in the future from where you are now--and then imagine the pale figures that move with stealth and unknown purpose among the shadows there, seen only by cats and owls. Sometimes the cries of the shades can be heard when the moon is in her sickle form, like a cutting blade, hanging in a red evening sky. Then all the portents, from black birds rising all in an arrow shape, to an eagle circling with its kill but dropping it as if it were unclean, and flying swiftly toward the west where the sun has slipped into darkness.
"I am only reporting what I heard," she says in her normal sassy modern voice, and laughs. "Don’t take any of this too seriously," she adds under her breath.
"How did you throw your voice like that?" you ask, feeling a bit sheepish.
She ignores your question and canters ahead, and the rest of you spur your horses to greater energy to keep up. Presently you pass between the Palatine and Caelian Hills and enter a low-lying area of marshes, where crickets chirrup ceaselessly, and herons stalk among the marsh reeds. You smell burning coal, not from the braziers of later temples, but from primitive settlements up in the hills. People here live in a state of truce with each other, and generally keep to themselves. One day soon, the Etruscans will tire of brigands crossing into their fields and stealing gold from their temples. The Etruscans are gathering in strength and vitality, and soon they will begin raiding here. The Tiberine natives will band together in an effort to stop the red lords, but the power of the Etruscans is unchecked. The Etruscans will expand south toward Cumae, place of the Sibylline oracle, farthest northern extent of the Greek properties. In time, the wild blue Gauls will sweep down and cripple both the Greeks and the Etruscans, giving the Latins their opening to start conquering the tribes around them, and in time to own Italy and later much of the world. All that is far in the future as you regard the moody, brooding swamp that will become the Forum Romanum.
Amalthea points north a thousand yards to the Arx, and the Capitoline heights beyond. "That’s where the Pontiffs of Jupiter reign already now. Somewhere in this area, you hope to see a small band of simple men, not unlike Larth and his brigands, drag a plow in a circle and call it Rome."
Marcellus shakes his head. "No, the legends say that Romulus and Remus came from Alba Longa. They are the sons of Rhea Silvia, daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa. What makes the story dreadful is that Rhea Silvia was a Vestal Virgin. You know that the punishment for a Vestal who defiles her purity by the slightest thought, or worse yet violates her virginity, is to be walled up alive and starved to death. She became a Vestal because her father’s throne was stolen by his own brother, Amulius, who made her a Vestal to prevent his brother’s lineage from passing along. However, she becomes pregnant with twins, after being raped by Mars, so Amulius orders the boys to be thrown in the Tiber and drowned. Instead the boys are washed up at the base of the Palatine, not far from where we crossed, and then they are nurtured by a mother wolf, until shepherds find them."
Polybius interrupts several times, commenting in a supercilious tone, for he is a cynic and a philosopher who cares more for logic than muddled emotion. "So shepherds found them. Why not Larth and his dismal friends? Maybe they are part of Larth’s gang. We didn’t ask their names."
"Quiet," Darwin tells the older slave. "Your wisdom really gets the better of your prudence sometimes."
"Really," you toss in your two tetradrachms, "you have a mouth large enough that you could wear it for a hat if you simply look up at the sky more often."
Amalthea says to you: "If they had sleazy television talk shows here, your lame humor would get you an appearance." She says out loud: "We all know the legends. In one of them, Aeneas sails here from Troy and founds the city, but that would be about 500 years ago, and it seems a little out of joint. Another legend says that an Arcadian named Evander came here and liked it so much he set up camp, which became Rome. However, Evander (Greek eu, ‘good’ + andros, ‘man’) is a generic name like Goodguy and most likely it’s another cute little legend." She adds: "A similar thing is in the name Gaeta, not the brother that Caracalla hated and murdered, but the town that one day will exist near Terracina. The locals claim it is named after a woman who is buried nearby--Caieta, the wetnurse of Aeneas. The name Caieta, however, could be taken to mean be still, as in the Spanish caja te, which is what a wetnurse might say to an infant, so maybe it’s just a cute story, or maybe a totally wrong understanding of the name."
She pauses while Marcellus sits on a boulder, looking miserable. She says: "Marcellus, my poor fellow. Look at you and Polybius. The one of you grieves because you cannot find the gods and goddesses who populated your myths. The other is a cynic who never really believed in the myths, but his misery is just as acute because for years he has paid lip service without faith. What if I tell you that the mystery of the spirit is not in things, nor is it in words, but in the spirit itself?"
Polybius offers a cold, defensive laugh. "You begin to sound more like the soothsayers in the Italian Forum as the moments go by. With all of your voice-throwing and other fakery, you are certainly one of the slickest frauds I have ever encountered, and I congratulate you."
Amalthea says: "Where would we be without the sharp scalpel of your wit and philosophy, Librarian?" She turns to the group: "Come, it will get dark before we know it, and in this wilderness we have more to fear from our own kind than from all the demons the imagination can create."
You spend the rest of the afternoon searching for Romulus and Remus, with no luck. All you find are two funeral processions, one near the Tarpeian Rock, the other at the other end of the Roman Forum where the Colosseum will one day rise
"Where to?" Darwin asks, favoring his side. He appears to be in pain, and you worry, because there is no medicine available for miles around, or for thousands of years, if he needs help.
"There is a hut not far from here," Amalthea says. "Let’s walk the horses gently. They have had a hard day, and we have to worry that one of them might throw a shoe. Then we’ll be in real difficulties, unless we find a smith."
You wander along the winding paths, which are choked with thorns and humming loudly with bees and wasps. Flowers bloom in the moist air, though now they are beginning to close, and multitudes of birds warble their evening songs of sleep. Already, the mourning doves coo together in their sad songs, and the hunting owl makes its hooting noise atop the highest cypress’ black shadow.
As darkness starts to gather in this primeval tangle of vines and thorns, you pass by the freshly dug graves of those who put their dead in the ground whole, as well as the holes dug by the beaker people who burn their dead and place the ashes in hut-shaped imitations of their living homes, and then bury those in urns in the ground. A mixture of people and cultures live in the Tiber valley side by side, having come from all points of the compass. It is no lie that someone--perhaps not exactly Aeneas or Euander, but someone much like them--wandered here after the Homeric wars. The Bronze Age ended in cataclysm and disaster. The tribes of the earth were stirred up like hornets, and wandered through the rocky paths around the Mediterranean before starting to settle once again as the Iron Age foreshadowed great new empires. The simple shepherd taking his sheep home now, as the sun sets low over the western horizon of the Tyrrhenian Sea, knows nothing except his concern to be inside when the ghosts of night come out. He knows nothing about the greater world except that it is great, that it is filled with kings and emperors, filled with heroes who slay lions as if they were mice, filled with far places and fabulous cities glittering with gold and silver. At this moment, in this graveyard that will become a world capital, you are much like the shepherd. A cold mist creeps among the graves. The owl flutters her wings and begins to hunt. The nighthawk circles silently, while bats rise in their migrations like souls. The hills on which temples and palaces will rise, and other hills where the villas of the wealthy will overlook the insulae and tenements of the poor, all steep in the same ominous gloom.
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