The Seven Hills (2 page)

"I have never traveled in the north," Zeno said, "but I've seen a good many Gallic and German slaves, and that is what these men look like. But they don't seem to be foreign mercenaries. They serve in the ranks right alongside the men who are plainly of Italian ancestry." He remembered things he had read of the old Romans, how they had conquered other Italian peoples, rewarding their good behavior with partial citizenship, eventually granting them full citizenship and immunity from tribute and taxation. In this
way Rome grew stronger, for only citizens could serve in the
legions. He spoke of this to his friend.

"What an odd idea," Izates said. "If I moved to Athens, not only would I not be a citizen, but my descendants five
hundred years from now would not be citizens, either. They
would be foreigners, just like me."

Zeno nodded. "I believe our exclusivity has been a great folly. These people are worthy of study for their political in
stitutions alone."

They walked into the city in search of accommodations.
It was far too late in the day to begin their land journey, and
there were still arrangements to be made. They would need
a pack animal, a servant or two, some traveling supplies. As
they looked for an inn, they studied the place.

The locals had the half-stunned look common to people
recently conquered, although nobody seemed to be mistreating them. Whole gangs had been impressed to clean
the city, rebuild walls and restore temples, paint and plaster.
Clearly, the Romans intended to transform Brundisium into a major port city once more.

The legionaries were everywhere. Those off-duty still re
tained their swords, their military belts and boots. Zeno found the latter accoutrements worthy of note. They were
stoutly made of heavy leather, their thick soles densely stud
ded with hobnails. He drew Izates' attention to these and
said they must be an innovation as important as any weapon
on the battlefield.

"I see no innovation," said the Cynic. "Your own Athen
ian general Iphicrates issued his men similar boots almost three hundred years ago. Rather, these Romans seem to be adept at adopting things invented by other peoples. Look at
them! The helmets and shins of mail are Gallic. Those short
swords, unless I am mistaken, are of Spanish origin. The boots they probably got when they fought King Pyrrhus of
Epirus one hundred and seventy-odd years back. Everything
they have is Greek, Celtic or plundered from some other Italian race."

"And isn't that genius of a sort?" Zeno said. "What other people have shown the discernment to adopt only the best and most useful from other cultures?"

"What sophistry! You astound even me, and I had thought myself beyond shock. Surely you cannot believe this cultural acquisitiveness to be some sort of virtue! I grant you that these days everyone wants to be Greek, and that in this passion for all things Greek they happily adopt
the worst aspects of the culture while ignoring the best. But
at least those people look to the very light of the world as the only culture worthy of imitation, but look at these Romans. Some of them are wearing trousers!"

Indeed it was a somewhat shocking sight. Many of the soldiers wore, instead of civilized tunics, trousers fitting tightly to the knee.

"I suppose they are practical garments in the cold north,"
Zeno said. "And the same with those cloaks. The Romans used to wear red battle cloaks, like the Spartans." At least
half of the soldiers wore woolen cloaks of deep, forest green, crosshatched with black lines. Zeno knew this to be another
Celtic item.

"They have been transforming themselves into barbarians up there," Izates asserted. "No, they were barbarians in the first place. They have become even more primitive barbarians."

"They certainly haven't become any less warlike in the
process. Come on, let's find some lodgings."

Like any other port city, Brundisium had no shortage of inns. Near the old theater they located one that was newer
and cleaner than the others, and here they established themselves for the evening. At dinner they quizzed the innkeeper
about the town's new masters.

"They came out of nowhere," the man told them. "The
legion came marching down the Via Appia before we even
had word of their coming. There had been rumors that the Romans had returned to Italy and were restoring their old capital, but nobody thought they could move so fast, or in such strength."

"What did the Carthaginians do?" Zeno asked.

The man shrugged. He was a typical southern Italian, olive-skinned with black hair, pudgy in distinct contrast to the lean, soldierly Romans. "There were hardly any Carthaginians here. Just a customs agent and a couple of coast guard ships in the harbor. Even before the shofet's Egyptian war there wasn't much Carthaginian presence in the area."

"They just walked in without a fight?" Izates asked.

"What was anyone going to do?" the landlord said. "Who is going to stop six thousand armed men? The city guard?" He laughed ruefully. "They act like the lords of the earth, and just now no one is going to dispute it with them."

Later Zeno quizzed the girl who brought them their food and wine. She was a pretty creature of about sixteen and spoke the sailor's Greek common to every port town.

"The Roman soldiers are real men," she said in a low voice, glancing about to make sure she was not overheard.
"Not like the males around here. All the men here complain
that the Romans treat them with contempt, but why
shouldn't they, is what I ask. Carthage has run this place for so long that everyone's forgotten how to fight. Hardly a man
in Italy has ever picked up a sword."

She brushed her coarse hair back from her face. "I'll tell you something else: There was no looting or rape or any other sort of misbehavior, not at all like when the shofet's
hired marines come to town. The Romans took over the run
ning of the place and quartered their troops, but they don't
pick up a leek that they don't pay for and they leave even the
slave girls and boys strictly alone. They just visit the working girls and the lupanars and they pay for the service."

Even as the girl spoke, a group of off-duty soldiers walked in and took a table. The girl went to serve them, smiling brightly. Zeno noted that they did not swagger or speak loudly, but there was nothing diffident in their bear
ing. They seemed to have perfect self-assurance. They spoke
to the girl in halting, broken Greek and spoke among them
selves in a language Zeno supposed must be Latin. It lacked
the beautiful liquidity of Greek, but he found its hard-edged sound pleasing. Like everything else about the Ro
mans, even the language sounded soldierly.

"Those look like dangerous men," Jzates said, his habitual mockery subdued for once. "They don't have to strut
like bullies. They radiate menace as the sun radiates light."

"Very true," Zeno said. He had seen soldiers in many lands, but none like these, who seemed to have been whelped by the very dam of war itself. Something caused the soldiers to laugh, and the sound made both men start slightly.

If
the human voice, can sound like swords clashing against
shields,
Zeno thought,
it is in this Roman laugh.

The next morning they set off along the Via
Appia, leading a donkey laden with their belongings and provisions. The countryside was beautiful and they passed
through well-cultivated fields where sheep and cattle grazed
amid a landscape that seemed taken from a pastoral poem. Most impressive, though, was the road itself. Although built more than a hundred years before, it was as solid and
perfect as upon the day of its completion. The pavement was
of cut stone subtly sloped to drain water. It was perfectly straight and level, with bridges over gorges, viaducts over marshy ground and, every few miles, way stations where
travelers could rest and messengers could get fresh mounts.
These latter were in the process of restoration and remanning by the Romans.

"What a marvelous road!" Zeno said after they had been
on it for most of the morning. "There is nothing like it any
where else in the world. Everywhere else roads are just laid
atop the ground if they are paved at all. This is more like the top of a buried wall."

"They learned the art from the Etruscans," Izates said.

Once they had to step off the road as a military detachment marched past, every man in step as if the army were a
single animal. Each man carried his own equipment and the
army seemed to have only a minimum of noncombatant
slaves to manage its heavy gear and animals. Even the slaves
wore uniform and marched under military discipline.

"We should have stayed at sea," Izates groused when they
stopped at noon. "We could have set ashore within a few miles of Rome instead of walking half the length of Italy."

"That would have meant sailing between Italy and Sicily.
Those waters are dangerous now that Rome and Carthage are fighting over the island."

"An unsafe voyage is quicker and easier than this trudging, no matter how fine the road."

Zeno grinned at him. "It is beneath a philosopher's dignity to notice such things."

Izates made another of his rude noises. "I'm a Cynic, not a Stoic."

They could see that the countryside had been arranged in
the common Carthaginian style, cut into huge plantations with few farmhouses but many slave barracks. Now, though, numerous surveying teams were at work, apparently dividing the huge tracts into smaller plots.

"Do you think they intend to restore peasant cultivation?" Zeno said.

"If they do, they've a job ahead of them," Izates observed.
"There will be endless squabbling over who owns what.
And what about the people who own the land now? It won't
just be dispossessed Carthaginians."

"We shall see if their lawyers are as formidable as their soldiers."

The road took them first to Tarentum, only two days'
travel from Brundisium, a journey that would have taken them at least four on the goat-path roads of Greece. Tarentum had been the Carthaginian capital, heavily fortified, its citadel located on a spit of land jutting into the harbor. Yet
the Romans had taken it bloodlessly, moving so swiftly that the lethargic authorities scarcely knew that they had arrived.

Here the Romans had shown they had craft and guile as well as iron discipline, for they had spoken mildly of trade and diplomatic relations while their legions poured through the mountain passes. They had agreed to hire out as mercenaries (they had insisted on calling themselves allies) for Hamilcar's Egyptian war and thus had insinuated their sol
diers into the city. Soon they were in control of the gates and
the city was theirs.

Interesting as this was, the two paused only long enough to speak with some citizens and take notes, then they pro
ceeded north. The next major town was Vehusia, then Ben
eventum, then splendid Capua, once capital of beautiful Campania. Here they rested for a few days and admired the graceful town. Campania had the richest farmland in Italy and it swarmed with Roman merchants and officials over
seeing the change of ownership. Here they hired a freedman
fluent in both Greek and Latin to teach them the rudiments of the Roman language.

Zeno found the language far easier to learn than Persian, its many cognate words proving it to be related to Greek,
unlike Syrian or Egyptian or Phoenician. Predictably, Izates
grumbled at learning a "barbarian" language, but he learned anyway. A man who grew up on Aramaic and Hebrew, he said, should find a simple-minded language like Latin to be child's play.

The freedman was named Gorgas, and he proved to have
an adventurous past. As a boy he had served a Greek merchant who traded in Noricum. In that land he was sold to a Roman family, with whom he lived for a number of years, employed as a clerk. His master, a military tribune, had taken him along on the trek to Italy. The tribune had fallen sick of the. illness common to the marshy parts of Italy and had freed Gorgas in his will.

"My legal name is now Marcus Fulvius Bambalio, same as my former master's," he had explained, "but that's for legal documents and my tombstone. I still go by Gorgas."

They engaged Gorgas to accompany them to Rome and teach them along the way. For the much-traveled former slave this was a mere outing. Along the way Zeno questioned him about Noricum, but the man could not tell him much.

"I worked on a big estate. What I heard was mostly slave
gossip. The master's family were important, but not of the
highest rank. They were what the Romans call equites. That means they were rich but none of them had ever held office
as high as praetor."

"Equites," Zeno said. "The word means 'horseman,' doesn't it?"

"Exactly. Once, it meant someone wealthy enough to
bring his own horse and serve in the cavalry when the army was called up. Now it's just a property assessment. But near
as I understand it, the equites are as important as the sena
tors in a lot of ways. My master's family served in the lower
offices, what they call quaestors and other things. They aren't judges but they form the juries, and a lot of the junior officers in the legions are equites."