Render Unto Caesar (48 page)

She laughed hootingly, one hand pressed to her side. “Young men are fools!”

“I won't dispute it. Well, he thinks
you
are very heroic, and wholeheartedly approves of you, so I think he will do very well, once he gets over his disappointment with me.”

She grinned. “He will not be disappointed.”

“Ah, woman, I have to go back to being a quiet well-behaved dignified businessman again. Maybe you will be disappointed, too.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I love you,” he told her. It seemed more natural, and more inevitable, with every repetition.

She gave him a radiant smile.

“My own dear heart. I am waiting to see what you look like without the bruises.”

“I think you'll find an improvement.” He set down his bundle and took out the writing things. “I'm going to write another letter to Myrrhine.”

“Telling her about me?”

“Telling her about you, yes, and that I'm safe and well.”

“So you're beginning to believe that you won.”

He nodded. “I went to the Temple of Isis and … well, I started to believe it.” Another thought struck him. “What gods do you worship?”

She shrugged. “We worshiped gods up on the mountains. We worshipped Bandua and Neton, who were goddess and god of war, and Endovellicus, lord of the Underworld, and Lug, the radiant one. None of them helped us. At the school, most of the gladiators said prayers to Fortune, and to Nemesis, and to Mercury, guide of souls. They didn't help, either. I was surprised when you found that priest of Isis for the funeral. At the gladiatorial school I heard that the worship of Isis was banned at Rome.”

“Apparently it is, but she has worshipers anyway.”

“Maybe I'll worship her, then.”

“You could do worse.” He paused, then whispered again the words of the hymn.

“I broke down the government of tyrants,

I made the Right stronger than gold and silver.

I ordained that the Truth should be thought good.”

“Huh!” said Maerica, impressed. “That is Isis?”

“Yes.” He shook his head ruefully. “It was when the priest sang that that I began to believe I'd won.”

He took out the pen, moistened the ink, and wrote carefully,

MARCUS AELIUS HERMOGENES GREETS HIS DARLING DAUGHTER, AELIA MYRRHINE.

 

My sweetest girl, I think my business in Rome is almost finished, and I will start for home early next month and arrive back in August, if the winds are favorable. It has been very, very hard, much worse than I ever expected. Rufus sent men who attacked us, and poor Phormion was killed. At one point I feared I would be killed as well, but Fate, the gods, and my friends protected me, and now everything is almost settled, and I expect to receive the money in a few days.

One very important thing that has happened is that I have met a woman called Maerica who has become my concubine. She is a barbarian woman, a Cantabrian, from the mountains beyond Iberia. She is brave and clever and honorable, and she saved my life. I am sure that you will like her.

“What have you written?” asked Maerica, frowning at the Greek words.

He interpreted.

“Huh!” Maerica shook her head. “You should never say ‘I am sure you will like her.' It will make her suspect that she won't.”

“Well, too late, I've said it,” he replied.

“Will she be able to read that herself? Or will somebody else in the household read it to her?”

“She can read.”

“Huh! A clever girl, then. Write down what I say to her now.”

He nodded and dipped the pen in the ink.

“Tell her, ‘Maerica says that she loves your father above her life, and that for his sake she would love you whatever you were like.'”

He swallowed and wrote,

Maerica is with me as I write this, and she says to tell you, first, that she loves me very much, and for my sake would love you whatever you were like.

“Now say, ‘But she also believes already that she will like you, because your father talks about you, and says that you are clever, and want to be an acrobat, and she thinks you sound like a girl she will like very much.'”

She says she also believes already that she will like you for your own sake, because when I talk about you I tell her that you're clever and that you want to be an acrobat, and she thinks you sound like the kind of girl she likes very much.
Please don't mention the bit about the acrobatics to Aunt Eukleia!
I fear there may be some trouble with her over this anyway, even without adding that …

“Why have you drawn a line under that bit?” Maerica asked suspiciously.

“I told her not to mention to my aunt the fact that you approve of her acrobatics,” he answered guiltily.

Maerica grinned. “Good. She's sure to like me now.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As usual, I have two reasons to write an epilogue. The first is friendly: to fill in historic details which lie outside the narrative. The second is defensive: to protect myself against the charge of having got it wrong when I say something contrary to popular belief.

The Roman monetary system in the early empire was as follows: there were four quadd rans to an as, four asses to a sestertius, four sestertii to a denarius, and twenty-five denarii to an aureus. Large amounts were usually given in sestertii.

Timekeeping was based on the division of the day and the night each into twelve hours; since the day was reckoned from dawn to dusk, this meant that daylight hours were longer in summer than in winter. In Rome at midsummer, an “hour” lasted roughly one and a quarter hours, and the first hour began at approximately 4:30
A.M
.

The quotation on p. 278 is from
The Odyssey,
XII, 256–59; that on p. 436 is from the Cyme version of the
Hymn to Isis
.

This book is set fairly exactly in Rome during the summer of 16
B.C
. It is probably a sad comment on the period—or perhaps just on human nature—that the villains are historical figures, while the heroes are inventions. Lucius Tarius Rufus, Publius Vedius Pollio, and Titus Statilius Taurus all existed and held the ranks I assign them; Rufus did ruin himself by investing in land, and the story about Pollio's lampreys was certainly current in antiquity. There is no evidence that Pollio loaned money to Rufus, however, or that he and Taurus were particular enemies. This
is
a work of fiction, after all.

Publius Vedius Pollio died in 15
B.C
., leaving all his property to the emperor Augustus in the hope that this would preserve his memory. Augustus did not fulfill that hope: he not only razed Pollio's house on the Esquiline but he built a shopping mall on the site—the Portico Livia, named after his own wife. Titus Statilius Taurus probably died not too long afterward, though he left descendants—a granddaughter, Statilia Messallina, was the third wife of Nero. Lucius Tarius Rufus may have survived to be curator aquarum in
A.D
. 23–4 (though this has been questioned and it does seem inherently unlikely for a man who was old enough to hold command at Actium in 31
B.C
.).

My defensive comments this time are:

1) Female gladiators are not a feminist invention. There are plenty of references to them in ancient literature, and some representations in art. It's clear they were never as common as male gladiators, but they were by no means unheard of.

2) Yes, there
were
Celts in Spain. The northern part of the Iberian Peninsula was, and still is, a different world from the South.

3) The Romans
did
ban the “Egyptian cult” in the city of Rome: contrary to the belief that they tolerated everyone except Christians, they fairly regularly took steps to suppress cults they viewed as undesirable, though usually just in a local and sporadic fashion.

4) Hermogenes' comments on Cleopatra and the war of Actium are an attempt to imagine the opinions of an Alexandrian of the period, but they are not factually inaccurate.

5) Augustus did indeed describe his foundation of the empire as the restoration of the republic. (Politicians!)

6) Please remember that this book is set in 16
B.C
. Most accounts of the city describe it as it was a century later.

For those who would like to know more about the principate of Augustus, the best primary sources are Dio Cassius, Suetonius, and the beginning of Tacitus's
Annals
. Readers familiar with the history of Rome in the early empire have probably already recognized the influence of two classic secondary sources of Roman historiography: Jerome Carcopino's
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
and Ronald Syme's
Roman Revolution
. Readers unfamiliar with these works, but interested in learning more, might like to have a look at them. (Carcopino is eminently readable; Syme is aphoristic and brilliant, but extremely heavy going.)

 

ALSO BY GILLIAN BRADSHAW

The Wolf Hunt

The Sand-Reckoner

Island of Ghosts

Cleopatra's Heir

About the Author

Gillian Bradshaw's historical novel
The Sand-Reckoner
won the 2001 Alex Award. She is the daughter of an Associated Press reporter and a confidential secretary to the British embassy. Rather than join the Diplomatic Service after getting her master's in classics from Cambridge, Gillian married a physicist, had four children, and began writing historicals (not necessarily in that order). She currently lives in Coventry with her husband, children, garden, and dog. When she's not writing, she cooks and reads, goes for hikes in the countryside, travels around the world with her family, and sings in a choral society.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

RENDER UNTO CAESAR

Copyright © 2003 by Gillian Bradshaw

All rights reserved.

Edited by Claire Eddy

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York, NY 10010

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is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-765-30653-0

First Edition: August 2003

eISBN 9781429971140

First eBook edition: July 2013