“Don’t call me that!”
They were both distracted by a sudden crash. The juggler had dropped everything at once. The lamp shattered against a wall. The cup skittered across the floor. The copper brooch struck one of the actors in the forehead. The fellow jumped to his feet and lunged at the juggler, fists flailing. The flute player trilled a shrill, discordant tune, as if to encourage them. Plautus hurried to break up the fight.
Kaeso heard a chuckle behind him. “I saw that coming! Got out of the way just in time. You’re Kaeso Fabius Dorso, I believe.”
Kaeso turned. “Yes. And you’re Tiberius Gracchus.”
“I am.” It was hard to judge the man’s age. His hair was turning silver at the temples, but his sunburned skin had few wrinkles. He had a powerful jaw and strong cheekbones, but the ruggedness of his features was softened by a mischievous glint of amusement in his gray eyes. If he was drunk, he didn’t show it. He carried himself with a graceful dignity that seemed entirely natural.
Kaeso and Gracchus conversed. Gracchus did much of the talking, mostly about the challenges of mounting the Roman Games and the fine work Plautus had done on The Swaggering Soldier. Gracchus had a remarkable memory. He recounted long stretches of dialogue verbatim, and his deadpan delivery make Kaeso laugh out loud. There was no talk of Hannibal or duty or death. Such weighty topics would have seemed out of place in the house of Plautus.
After a while, Kaeso’s eyes fell upon the young newcomer he had noticed before. The Greek youth smiled back at him.
“I believe his name is Hilarion,” said Gracchus, following Kaeso’s gaze.
“Is it?”
“Yes. Hilarion means ‘cheerful’ in Greek. The name fits him. Why don’t you try your chances with the boy tonight, before everyone else has him?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Kaeso.
Gracchus smiled knowingly. “Sporting with catamites was not the sort of thing our staid ancestors approved of, although I suspect they did their share of such things, whether it was spoken of, or not. Nor, I daresay, would your staid cousin Maximus approve even nowadays. But we live in a new age, Kaeso. We inhabit a much bigger world than did our ancestors—a bigger world than men like Maximus have eyes to see. The Spartans, who are renowned as great warriors, consider nothing more manly than the love of two soldiers; on her wedding night, a Spartan woman must cut her hair and put on a boy’s tunic, to coax the groom into desiring her. The Athenians put the love of an older man and a younger man at the very center of their philosophy. Carthaginian generals make love to their young officers before allowing them to marry their daughters. Jupiter had his Ganymede, Hercules his Hylas, Achilles his Patroclus, Alexander his Hephaestion—or perhaps it was the other way around, as Alexander was the younger partner. Nature gives us appetites; appetites must be fed. If your eye should fall on a handsome and available Greek slave, why not do something about it? So long as you maintain the dominant role, of course. The Roman male must always dominate.”
Kaeso nodded. The wine was hot in his veins. He gazed at the long-haired Greek youth and allowed himself to feel desire, but in his heart he longed for Scipio.
The midsummer month of Sextilis brought sweltering weather to Roma. Everyone complained of the heat; people grew listless and short-tempered. A stifling haze settled over the city, and with it an atmosphere of tension and foreboding.
Each day, the Forum was filled with people seeking news of the war, and the news was always the same: the Roman consuls and Hannibal were shadowing one another across Italy as each side maneuvered to engage in battle at the most opportune place. It was only a matter of time; the longed-for confrontation would take place any day now.
Kaeso was limping across the Forum, happily whistling a tune after an evening of pleasure at Plautus’s house, on the day the terrible news arrived.
Near the Temple of Vesta, a weeping woman ran across his path. Then he came upon two elderly senators in togas. At first he thought they were arguing, for one of them was shouting at the other.
“All of them?” The man said. “How is that possible? I don’t believe you!”
“Then don’t,” said the other. “The news is not official. There is no official news, since no officers survived to send word back to Roma!”
“It can’t be true, it simply can’t!”
Kaeso felt a prickling across the back of his neck. “What news?”
The senators looked at him with ashen faces. “Utter disaster!” said the quieter one. “Varro and Paullus met Hannibal at a place called Cannae, near the Adriatic coast. Somehow the Romans became encircled. The entire army was annihilated. Varro’s fate is unknown, but Paullus is dead, along with most of the Senate.”
“How do you know this?”
“A few survivors came straggling into the Forum this morning. Each tells the same story. A complete massacre! The largest army ever assembled—obliterated! The worst day in the history of Roma—even the capture of the city by the Gauls was not as bad as this. And there’s nothing to stop Hannibal from doing just as the Gauls did, marching on the city and burning it to the ground. There’s no one to stand in his way. There’s no Roman army left!”
“It can’t be as bad as that,” said Kaeso, shaking his head.
But it was.
Hannibal’s victory at Cannae was overwhelming. On the second day of the month of Sextilis, more than seventy thousand Romans perished, and ten thousand were taken prisoner. A mere thirty-five hundred escaped, and many of those were wounded. The magnitude of the loss was far beyond anything the Romans had ever experienced.
Amid the panic that threatened to overwhelm the city, it was Maximus who took charge. The wisdom of his scorned policy was now clear to all, and the steady hand with which he took control of the city impressed everyone. The remaining members of the Senate, a gray and toothless assembly, granted him emergency powers. No one opposed the appointment, if only because there was no one left to do so. Virtually every able-bodied member of the Senate had either died at Cannae or was fighting the Carthaginians abroad. No man of Maximus’s experience and stature was left in the city.
For much the same reason—because he was one of the few remaining magistrates—the curule aedile Tiberius Gracchus was appointed to serve as Master of the Horse, who was the right-hand man to the dictator.
First, Maximus dispatched riders to seek out the scattered survivors, hoping that more might have escaped than was previously thought. When the riders returned, bringing home a handful of men, they only confirmed the grim truth.
To raise a fresh army, Maximus decreed that underage boys would be recruited. When their numbers proved insufficient, he declared that slaves would be eligible for military service. Eight thousand were enlisted and armed. Such a thing had never been done before, but no one could suggest a better solution.
Kaeso eagerly responded to the call to arms, but in front of the recruiting officer, in public view on the Field of Mars, he suffered a bout of the falling sickness. He was carried home unconscious, and was forbidden to report again by Maximus himself, who wished to suffer no further embarrassment from a member of his family.
Amid the general hysteria two Vestals, Opimia and Floronia, were accused of breaking their vows. The news caused riots. A mob outside the House of the Vestals accused the transgressors of bringing ruin on the city. Both Vestals were quickly tried and found guilty. Opimia committed suicide. Floronia was entombed alive near the Colline Gate while the clamorous mob looked on. The men found guilty of defiling them were publicly bludgeoned to death by the Pontifex Maximus.
Each day, by the thousands, more men were confirmed dead. Great crowds of women, gathered in the Forum to receive the news, reacted with uncontrollable grief. They ripped their garments, tore out their hair, and fell to the ground wailing. Their frenzy spread across the city. In every street the sound of sobbing was heard all night long. Roma was a city on the verge of madness.
Maximus finally declared that such extreme displays of emotion offended religious decency; the cacophony of so much weeping would drive the gods out of the city. He ordered all women to be shut indoors and imposed a rule of silence. It was decreed that the period of mourning for the dead of Cannae would be limited to thirty days. After that, the city would resume business as usual.
“The show must go on!” declared Plautus, amid the din of hammering.
“So you say,” muttered Kaeso.
“So says your cousin, the dictator Maximus. So says our friend Tiberius Gracchus, who assures me that the Roman Games will proceed exactly as planned. Like everyone else, in light of the crisis, I had assumed that the plays would be cancelled. Is anyone really in the mood for a day of comedy? But the dictator believes that sticking to the regular calendar will reassure the public. Here’s hoping that Hannibal doesn’t show up just as we begin the opening scene of The Swaggering Soldier.”
From above, a carpenter dropped a hammer. It whistled past Plautus’s head, barely missing him.
“Idiot!” shouted Plautus. “That’s what I get for hiring free labor instead of renting slaves. Ah, well, perhaps standing under this scaffolding is not a good idea.”
They were in the Circus Maximus, where, in the great curve at one end of the long racetrack, a temporary stage was being constructed for the Roman Games. The curved bleachers would serve as seats for the audience, with the humblest among them crowding into the semicircle of open ground before the stage. The stage itself—an elevated wooden platform with a decorated wall to serve as a backdrop—would be thrown up quickly and even more quickly pulled down; after a single day of performances it would be dismantled overnight to clear the racetrack for the next day’s athletic competitions. Accordingly, the standards of craftsmanship were no higher than they needed to be. The ornate columns and relief sculptures of the backdrop were illusions made of wood, plaster, cloth, and paint, tawdry when seen close up, but convincing enough at a distance.
“Don’t the Greeks have permanent theaters, built of stone?” asked Kaeso.
“Yes, sometimes built into the sides of hills, with such remarkable acoustics that the actors hardly need to raise their voices to be heard in the back row. But the Greeks are a decadent, pleasure-loving people, sensual to a fault; Romans are not. So, while we love a good comedy, a play may be enjoyed only in the context of a religious festival, and the stage and all its trappings must vanish before the festival is over. It’s a stupid policy, but it keeps these mediocre carpenters employed. You seem preoccupied, boss.”
“I’m worried about my friends. There’s no word yet about cousin Quintus…or about Scipio…” Kaeso wrinkled his brow.
“No news is good news.”
“I suppose.”