The Etruscan (43 page)

Such lands and wealth as Tertius Valerius possessed could not have been accumulated by a stupid man. Nor was it ambition, in my opinion, that drove him to yield his sons to the lictors but rather an excessive sense of responsibility as a Roman and a desire to emulate his admired brothers. The Etruscans who were descended from patrician families strove to be even more Roman than the Romans themselves, attempting by their actions to dispel the understandable skepticism of the plebeians. One would have thought that those of Etruscan origin would have desired the return of Etruscan kings to Rome, but they did not. They preferred to rule the city and the people as patricians, senators and state officials.

Because of Arsinoe’s nearness and my simple care, Tertius Valerius quickly recovered from his paralytic stroke and was deeply grateful to us both. When he had emerged from his twilight condition he no longer imagined Arsinoe to be his deceased wife, although he remembered well that he had done so. He believed merely that his wife’s spirit had fleet-ingly transferred herself to Arsinoe’s body so that she might care for him tenderly. He declared himself fortunate to have been able to beg her forgiveness for having disregarded her pleas and sacrificed their sons.

When he was again able to move about, I had a skilled massager manipulate his face carefully so that his eyelid no longer drooped as badly as before. Saliva still trickled from his twisted lip, but Arsinoe wiped his beard like a devoted daughter with a warm linen towel that she kept nearby. She also began to supervise the household, patiently advising the old slaves and servants, so that the old man received better food than formerly. Likewise the rooms were swept every day, the dust was wiped from the Penates and the dishes were kept clean. I hardly recognized her, for she had never before seemed domestic.

As I expressed amazement she said, “How little you know me, Turms. Haven’t I always declared that as a woman I ask for no more than security and four walls and a few servants to command? Now that I have them, thanks to this grateful old man, I can ask for nothing more.”

But I was not pleased when, upon my approaching her in bed, she submitted meekly to my caresses with her thoughts obviously elsewhere. In. a way I should have been content, for when she was restless she created mere disorder, but when it had happened several times I complained bitterly.

“Oh, Turms, doesn’t anything that I do please you?” she exclaimed. “After all, I do show you that I still love you. Forgive me if I can no longer participate wholeheartedly, but your blindness and my own body have already caused me sufficient grief. My terrible life in the Siccanian forest made me realize that any other condition would be more desirable. After all, it was my mad passion for you that plunged me to the level of the lowest barbarian. Now at last I feel myself secure. Security is a woman’s greatest happiness so permit me to retain it.”

Concerning the events in the city, I can relate that the same assembly at which Tertius Valerius had suffered his paralytic stroke impeached the former hero Caius Marcius. Pursuing the fleeing Volscians alone, he had once forced his way into the city of Corioli, set fire to the nearest houses and held open the gate long enough for the cavalry to follow him. For that deed he had been given the privilege of participating in the triumph, standing beside the consul who had led the army and receiving the honorary appellation of Coriolanus from the people. Now the people were impeaching him for despising them and accusing him of secretly harboring designs of autocracy. It is true that he felt bitterness toward the people, for when the plebeians had ascended the holy mountain they had sacked and burned his country house together with the others’, and had marched him under a yoke. His pride had never been able to forgive that humiliation. The plebeians had been pacified with the acquisition of two tribunes, who had the privilege of discontinuing the enforcement of any official edicts which they considered detrimental to the people’s interests. But Coriolanus compelled the tribunes to step aside when they passed, spat before them and jostled them.

Coriolanus knew well that his own kind could not protect him from the wrath of the people during the trial. Fearing for his life, he evaded the lictors guarding his house, escaped over the wall, stole a horse from the barn at his own country house and rode through the night across the border south to the land of the Volsci. It was said that they greeted him with honors, gave him new clothes and permitted him to make sacrifices to the Volscians’ city gods. The Romans were so famous for their military strategy that it is no wonder the Volscians welcomed a Roman commander to train their troops.

That same autumn the seven-day games at the circus had to be repeated because of an error that had occurred during the original celebration. The gods had revealed their displeasure through an unfavorable omen, and so the Senate undertook to repeat the expensive games rather than insult the gods. True, Tertius Valerius observed venomously that the Senate accepted the omen only because it wished to take the people’s mind off other things, but this was merely his opinion.

Through him we obtained seats in the Senate’s stand, and the Circus Maximus was truly something the like of which we had never seen before. Its fame had spread even to the neighboring peoples, so that crowds streamed to it from every direction, even from Veii, which was an incomparably finer city than Rome and only a day’s journey away. A large group of Volscians arrived from Corioli with their families, but hardly had they seated themselves than a disturbance broke out and the people began to scream with one voice that the Volscians were the enemies of Rome and planned to seize the city during the games.

Even the patricians rose from their benches and finally the members of the Senate joined in the demand that the Volscians be ousted not only from the stand but from the entire city to restore order. The consuls ordered the lictors to remove the Volscians from the circus and to see that they immediately went to their lodgings, gathered their things and left the city. A better reason for war could not have been devised.

The Roman circus was completely unlike the Greek athletic games in which free men competed among themselves, but differed little from the Segestan games in which paid athletes and slaves boxed and wrestled. But horse races were the main attraction. The Romans had adopted the spectacle from the Etruscans, but the combats had lost their original significance and retained only their superficial aspects. Although the high priest determined the combatants’ clothes and weapons, such as a trident and net against a sword, according to instructions that had been preserved, he hardly remembered their allegorical purpose.

Why should I describe the circus, which has changed from a worship of the gods to bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed? The Romans were truly wolf people, for each time they bestowed the greatest acclaim on the Kharuns who stepped into the arena with their sledge-hammers to crush the skulls of the vanquished. The combatants were slaves, prisoners of war and criminals, and not voluntary sacrifices to the gods as they had been under the Etruscans. Why shouldn’t the Roman Senate have permitted them to slay one another for public amusement to divert the commoners’ minds from their own problems? The same thing will presumably happen throughout the ages. Thus it is useless for me to describe further the various performances, or even the horse races despite the magnificent teams that had arrived even from the Etruscan cities.

I shall describe only Arsinoe’s enchantment with the scene and her glowing eyes during those late autumn days as she clapped her white hands whenever blood bubbled forth onto the sands of the arena, or the horses plunged by with streaming manes and snorting nostrils. But even in the excitement she did not forget to adjust the blanket on Valerius’ knees or to wipe the saliva from his beard as he cackled with glee at the familiar scenes.

I shall say no more about the laughter and excitement, the horror and cruelty of the circus. They will always remain although the form may change, and I shall not need to be reminded of them. I want only to remember Arsinoe’s face in those days, still youthful and glowing. I want to remember her as she sat on a red cushion in the midst of a screaming crowd of ten thousand. Just so do I want to remember her, because I loved her.

The Romans dedicated the darkest days of the year to the earth god Saturn who was so old and sacred that they hardly dared strengthen the rotted wooden pillars of his temple. He was older even than Jupiter on the Capitoline hill, whose temple their first king, Romulus, had erected. They themselves declared that he was as old as the earth.

They celebrated him with the Saturnalia that lasted for days in which all work ceased and normal life turned upside down. People gave one another gifts even though Romans under ordinary circumstances did not willingly do so. Masters served their slaves and slaves ordered their masters and mistresses about to compensate for the heavy days of the remaining year. The position of slaves was not an easy one in Rome where fear ruled because of the city’s own violence. Thus many had their male slaves castrated, not to protect the chastity of their wives and daughters as was the case in the eastern lands and in Carthage, but to destroy the slaves’ virility and rebelliousness. During the Saturnalia, however, the wine flowed, master and slave exchanged places, patrician and plebeian met as equals, strolling players performed on street corners and no jest was too daring.

Those distorted days changed Roman life completely, abolishing dignity, severity and even frugality. Arsinoe received many presents, and not only the customary clay bread, fruit and domestic animals, but valuable jewelry, perfume, mirrors and wearing apparel. She had attracted much attention despite her modest demeanor as she walked in the streets and market places accompanied by Hanna or one of Valerius’ old slaves. She accepted the gifts with a wistful smile, as though a secret sorrow were preying on her. As return gifts Tertius Valerius bestowed upon the givers, on her behalf, a clay oxen or lamb to remind the recipient of the simplicity of traditional Roman customs.

But Arsinoe declared, “These festivities are nothing new to me. The celebrations in Carthage which honored Baal were much wilder. I can still hear the furious music of the drums and the rattles in the days when I was young and attended the temple school. The youths became so frenzied that they slashed their bodies like the priests, and wealthy merchants presented fortunes, houses and ships to the women who could please them. This primitive festival is really quite tame compared to the festivals of my youth.”

She met my glance and explained hastily, “Not that I long for those days of futile passion. It was passion that plunged me to destruction, causing me to lose for your sake all that I had achieved. But surely I can think of my youth with a sigh now that I am a mature woman who is content with her lot in a secure house and a place in a bed beside a useless man.”

In that manner she reminded me that I was but a guest in Tertius Valerius’ house and even that only through her efforts. But she was so under the spell of the gifts, the festivities and the excitement that she drew me to her in the dark of night. I felt the glow of the goddess in her body and once again she flung back her white arms and breathed her hot breath into my mouth.

But as we lay in the darkness and I felt myself happy once more she began to talk. “Turms, beloved, months have passed and you have done no more than gape about you. Soon Misme will be four years old and it is time for you to become sensible. If you won’t think of me and my future, at least think of your daughter and her future. How does she feel, seeing that her father is a mere idler who is content with crumbs of charity? If you were even a driver of race horses or a skilled horn blower, you would be something. But now you are nothing.”

Her caresses made me so happy that her words did not anger me, nor did I care to remind her that Misme really was not my daughter. I was very fond of the little girl and enjoyed playing with her, while she liked me more than Arsinoe who rarely had time for more than scolding.

I stretched my limbs in the bed, yawned deeply and said in jest, “I trust that you are still satisfied with me as a lover. If you are, that suffices for me.”

She let her palm slide down my bare chest.

“You don’t have to ask that,” she whispered. “No man has ever loved me so divinely as you. You know that.”

Then she raised herself on one elbow, blew into the brazier so that her face was lighted by its reddish glow, and said thoughtfully, “If that is your only skill, Turms, at least take advantage of it. Although Rome is superficially strict in its habits, I doubt whether it actually differs much from other lands. Many a man has risen to high position merely by choosing the right bedchamber.”

Her cold-blooded suggestion made me sit upright. “Arsinoe,” I exclaimed, “do you really mean that you would want me to sleep with a strange woman for the purpose of obtaining political or material benefits from her husband or friends? Don’t you love me any more?”

“Of course I would be slightly jealous,” she hastened to assure me. “But I would forgive you knowing that it happened for the good of our future. Only your body would be involved, not your heart, and thus it would mean nothing.”

She caressed my limbs and laughed lightly. “Truly, your ‘body is so beautifully formed and is so appropriate to its task that I fear it would be wasted if it made only one woman happy.”

“The same is true of your own body, Arsinoe,” I said coldly. “Is your suggestion a threat?”

She raised her hand to her mouth and yawned. “It was so unnecessary for your tone to harden,” she said reproachfully. “You yourself have noticed the change in me. No, Tertius Valerius would not understand and forgive me if he saw that I were wanton. But forget what I have said. I merely spoke what came to my head. Some other man would have considered my words a compliment. Only you are as hard-headed as ever.”

Only a few days later, when the palling after-effects of the festival were still felt throughout the city, and I myself was depressed to think that I was nothing, Arsinoe came to me in great haste. Her face was set in a hard white mask, not beautiful but horrifying as a Gorgon in my eyes.