Of Merchants & Heros (14 page)

‘There will be a rich trade in such things one day, mark my words,’ he told me, peering at his Aphrodite and touching her smooth marble body with his thick fingers.

During that summer, I had begun to reflect on many things I had hitherto taken for granted. I asked myself how a man perceives good, and how he works out for himself what makes one thing, or one man, worse or better than another.

In part, this had come from my conversations with Menexenos, who seemed able to discern, by looking, what was genuine and what was fake. It was not a thing he made much of. But now and then he would pass some comment that would make me look again at a statue, or a sculpture, or a painting, and see some new depth to it.

I wondered where he found such knowledge. It was more than a skill. It seemed to me he saw such things as part of some living whole, and could judge them and how they fitted.

In such small ways as this, over the past weeks, Menexenos had come to fill my thoughts. One day, during this time, Caecilius had complained, ‘What has happened to you lately? You never concentrate on what matters. You grow less like me every day.’ It had made me aware that I was changing.

When I was a boy at home, on days when the sky was clear and cloudless, and as blue as cornflower or a stone of sapphire, I used to go climbing on the mountainside, high up, to the crags where the ash trees clung to the rock and even the nimble goats trod carefully. The climb was hard, and would leave me panting. But then I would turn and stand between earth and sky, looking out to where the river glittered like a thread of silver in the valley far below. And at that moment the world was changed, and my petty cares would fall away, and I would know the effort of the climb had been worthwhile.

So it was with my young soul. In dwelling upon the good things I saw in Menexenos, it seemed I had grown more aware of everything, and of myself in particular. It was hard, just as the climb up the hillside had been hard, because most times it was my own failings that I saw more clearly. But if ever I wondered if it was worth it, I needed only to look at Caecilius. He had been right. Like a ship departing the shore, the distance between us was growing. I was changing; he was not – or not in the same way.

Sometimes, now, there would be not one girl creeping out of the house in the early morning, but two; and not always the same two either. On one such day, appearing at mid-morning with a great purple bite on his neck, and dark shadows under his eyes, he marched into the workroom and declared crossly, ‘You have been out too much of late.’

He was always in a bad mood after these night-time sessions.

That day, I had been up since the dawn, working to clear a heap of pointless work he had assigned to me. I had almost finished, and had planned, later, to meet Menexenos. Now, stung by the injustice of his words, I replied, ‘Is there anything I have left undone, sir?’

‘I daresay there is,’ he huffed, ‘if I bothered myself to look. But I have better things to do.’ He sat down at his desk and began pushing irritably through the tablets and scrolls. ‘But what I wanted to say to you, Marcus, is this. I am planning a gathering at month-end for my friends. I expect you to attend.’

He ran through the names of several of his business associates, adding at the end, ‘It is time I showed them how a man of means can entertain. It is not only the praetor who can hold a banquet. Oh, and there are some female friends of mine who will be there as well.’

I said nothing. Just then the door sounded. It was Telamon, carrying a tray with a cup and flask – my stepfather’s morning wine.

‘Set it there, and leave,’ snapped Caecilius.

Telamon, who knew the danger signs as well as I, hurriedly set down the tray and left, pulling the door shut behind him. There was a tense silence, like the quiet before a storm. The only sounds were the rattle of the wooden writing-tablets as Caecilius shuffled them, and his occasional snorts of displeasure.

Then it came. With a loud crack he slapped the tablets down on the desktop and cried, ‘I suppose you are waiting to take yourself off to the palaistra again, is that it? Do you think I don’t know how you spend your time? Virilis saw you only the other day, loitering there.’

‘Loitering, sir?’ I felt my colour rising. As usual he had found the weak spot in my armour. ‘I make no secret of where I go. You need only ask, if you wish to know. And I do not loiter. I go for exercise, and to meet my friends.’

I was tempted to ask what pallid round-shouldered Virilis was doing at the palaistra, but it did no good to goad him.

‘Exercise!’ he shouted, gesturing so violently that he hit his wine- cup, spilling black wine in an arc across his papers. ‘You are not so young that you do not know the reputation of those places.’

I cursed inwardly, knowing I had reddened to my ears. ‘I have nothing to be ashamed of,’ I said.

‘No? Virilis has seen you there stripped naked, as bare as the day you were born . . . I see you do not even try to deny it.’

‘But sir!’ I cried. ‘Everyone strips. That is how it is.’

‘I dare say. Greeks, after all, are capable of any vice. But remember, boy, you are a Roman, and think of your mother’s honour, even if you forget your own.’

He glared at me, daring me to reply. There was spittle on his lips.

The vein in his temple throbbed, and his face had turned as dark as the wine in the flask.

This, I knew, was a place I did not wish to venture. Somehow – for I was now very angry myself – I managed to collect myself. I told myself this outburst had nothing to do with me, or with the palaistra.

I recalled the two girls I had seen leaving with the dawn: coarse, pale, overpainted, bitter-faced creatures, whispering harshly to each other as they went, clearly dissatisfied. So much, I thought, for my mother’s honour. And as for Caecilius’s paternal guiding hand, I reflected that he was all for discipline, except when it came to himself.

Month-end came, and with it Caecilius’s banquet. It was everything that a symposion of Titus’s was not. It was like the screech of an untuned fiddle after the harmonious lyre. There was a great bonfire in the garden, roaring into the night beside the palms and cypresses. There was raucous, drunken conversation. There were torches of flaring pitch, and piles of seared meat. And later, when the tables were at last cleared, a dancing girl came on, with a painted belly and castanets on her fingers, who cavorted and leered between the couches, and pressed the laughing guests’ faces towards her crotch.

‘Buy in bulk’ was one of my stepfather’s precepts, one of the lessons of trade he said I should learn. This he had done with the girls. They had not been brought to converse, even if they could have made themselves heard. But in any case the noise was a relief; it spared me having to make small talk with my neighbours, whose conversation was limited to shipping costs, the price of slaves, and the prospects for the corn harvest.

Later, when the fire had burned low, one of the girls threw herself on my couch, and without any pretence of talk shoved her hand up under my tunic. I recognized her. She was one of those I had seen creeping through the garden. I pulled her hand away.

‘What?’ she cried indignantly, slurring her words. She smelled of Lydian oil, and female sweat. She snatched down the low front of her dress, exposing a drooping breast. ‘See! There is a feast here. Why don’t you eat?’

She was speaking almost at the top of her voice. From across the courtyard I saw Caecilius’s eyes slew round.

‘I find,’ I answered, as she lolled before me, ‘that I am not hungry.’

She shrugged and went off muttering, leaving her breast exposed, and settled on another couch, where, I saw, she was eagerly welcomed.

In such ways as this the evening passed, as slowly as a sickness.

It left me feeling bleak and empty and without hope.

Indeed, in the days that followed, it began to seem to me that there was corruption everywhere, not just at home. For, just then, Lucius’s advances towards Menexenos had resumed, and were becoming harder to ignore.

I came one day to the palaistra to find a commotion in the inner court, with the boxing-master talking angrily to one of the other trainers, and a group of youths standing about listening with grave faces.

As I approached I saw Eumastas coming my way. I asked him what had happened.

‘What else?’ he said, frowning at me. ‘It’s that Roman again.’ And then he told me.

There were limits, which even the most besotted suitors observed, and one of them was that the youths were left to scrape and sluice down without disturbance. Lucius, ignoring this, had followed Menexenos into the bath-house, and had proceeded to pester him there in front of all the others.

I shook my head. ‘But what did Menexenos do?’

‘He ignored him, of course. He would have handled it. But just then the boxing-master came in, and found the man sidling up to him. He called the slaves to throw him out. You can imagine how it looked.’

I stared at him, appalled.

‘Yes,’ said Eumastas. ‘I know. It was terrible. And it gets worse.

Lucius asked the boxing-master if he realized who he was.

‘ “Yes I do,” answered the master, “and that makes it more shameful still. Now get out, or must I go to the praetor myself?” ’

I blew the air through my teeth, imagining the scene. That Lucius could bear such humiliation was hard to credit.

But it did not end there. Next thing I heard, he had discovered the house where Menexenos was staying with Eumastas.

Though he had lost his farm, Eumastas’s father still kept a house in the city, in a leafy neighbourhood beyond the theatre, with a view out to the sea. I never went calling there. It embarrassed me to impose on his civility, after what had happened to his farm.

But one day, after we had been out walking in the city and were about to part outside the walled doorway of Eumastas’s house, Menexenos said, ‘Come in for a moment. I want to show you something.’

I followed him into the tree-shaded outer courtyard. There on the ledge was a small bronze statue of Zeus carrying off a squirming Ganymede, done in the new style, all soft lines and gross emotion.

‘What do you think?’ asked Menexenos.

‘It’s horrible.’

‘Yes,’ he said, scowling at it. ‘Nasty and overdone. It was delivered this morning, along with this note.’ He showed me a corner of papyrus tied with ribbon, upon which was written, ‘To the beautiful Menexenos, from a secret friend.’

‘I shouldn’t mind,’ he went on, tossing the note aside, ‘if it were just for my own sake. But I am only a guest, and no one here could afford such a piece. It insults my hosts, especially when you think where it comes from.’

‘What will you do?’ I asked.

‘I thought of putting it up for sale, but that would not do. So I am sending it back to the praetor’s residence.’

I nodded, and looked down gravely at the bronze god with the grinning naked child in his arm. Then, looking up again, my eyes met his, and we laughed.

There were other gifts after that. A crown of gold olive-sprays; a belt-clasp set with lapis; a handsome armband of twisted silver, fine Keltic work from Gaul. He sent them all back.

If we had smiled at these follies, there was soon something it was harder to smile at.

Lucius must have been making enquiries. One day, waylaying Eumastas in the street, he told him he could ensure his father’s farm was restored to him. He did not waste his time with hints, but added, with a long, significant look, ‘However, there is something you must deliver to me in return.’

‘In that case,’ replied Eumastas immediately, ‘the price is too high.’ And with that he turned his back on him and walked off.

He related all this to me later, adding at the end, ‘I have not mentioned it to Menexenos, and I don’t intend to. I am telling you, Marcus, only because it is time someone put a stop to this madness.’

‘Yes,’ I said, racked with shame. I had already wondered many times what I could do. Speaking to Lucius was no good. And the idea of going to Titus on such a matter appalled me. Yet Eumastas was right. I was a friend of Titus, and I was a Roman. I, if anyone, should intervene.

I resolved to seek a private meeting with Titus and speak to him.

Before I could do so, however, on a hot afternoon shortly after, when the stormclouds were looming and the air was close and still, the whole business came to a head.

The festival of Poseidon was coming up, which in Tarentum is quite an affair, with concerts and games, and plays in the theatre.

Menexenos had been asked by the trainer to help out at the palaistra, training the young lads who would run in the sacred torch-race.

Not wishing to throw oil on fire, I always did my best to make sure I was absent when Lucius was in sight. But he had not been back to the palaistra since the day he was ejected; and, believing, naturally enough, that he would not come again, I had grown careless.

I was standing with Eumastas and some others at the side of the track, watching Menexenos preparing his troop of boys. Suddenly Lucius strode out from the shadow of the colonnade. He went straight up to where Menexenos was waiting at the starting line, having calculated, no doubt, that he could hardly walk away and leave the boys standing.

I stared, appalled.

‘By God,’ muttered Eumastas beside me. ‘Has he no shame at all? ’

Lucius was speaking. I saw Menexenos glance round once, shake his head, then turn away. At this Lucius went closer, and began whispering into his ear, and plucking at the sleeve of his tunic. The young runners, who were standing about waiting to line up, looked at one another and began to titter.

Suddenly Lucius cried out furiously, so that his voice echoed round the court, ‘Ha! Look at your godlike looks! But beware! Good looks fade, and you will not always eclipse the sun.’

There was a stillness like death. Menexenos looked at him, but said nothing; or not, at least, in words; his expression was eloquent enough. I saw him draw in his breath, and then, turning back to the wide-eyed gaping boys he said, ‘Come on, now, line up, and have your torches ready.’