“He’s Caesar’s dog,” Silanus said, “but word has it that the Consul doesn’t keep him on a tight leash.” Silanus, like everyone else, spoke of Caesar as if he were the only consul. His colleague in office, Bibulus, was such a nonentity that Romans ever since have referred to that year as “the consulship of Julius and Caesar.” I took my chits and gathered up my slave and my belongings, and I trudged through the rain to the Appian Hate.
By general agreement, I wasn’t supposed to return to Rome until Clodius was safely out of office and, by preference, out of Rome. But then, Metellus Celer wasn’t supposed to die, either. My father’s summons had been peremptory, to say the least.
Our kinsman, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer is dead: it is believed by poison. The family is convening for his obsequies. You are to return to Rome immediately.
It seemed a bit extreme. Granted, Celer was the most distinguished Caecilian of the time, but ordinarily only his immediate family and any members of the gens who happened to be in Rome at the time of his death would attend his funeral and see to the other observances surrounding the passing of a prominent man. To call in Caecilians from as far away as Rhodes suggested that a political crisis was in the offing.
We Metelli were political creatures down to our bones, but I was the one member of the whole family whose presence in Rome was considered to be a political liability. My knack for making enemies was remarkable in a man devoid of political ambition. People with things to hide were nervous around me.
At the city gate Hermes and I picked up our horses and packed our skimpy belongings on a third beast. As we trotted away Hermes bounced on his saddle in a way that was painful to watch. Naturally, I laughed heartily at this. I rode passably well. When I was very small I rode gentle mares on our rural estates; and when I assumed my manhood toga, my father sent me to the circus to be trained by the riders who gallop alongside the chariots, urging on the four-horse teams. This practice served me well in Spain, for much of the guerilla chasing we engaged in among the hills was done by cavalry. Still, horses were never a passion with me, and I always preferred to see professionals doing the riding and driving from the ease of the stands. Still, it beat walking or sailing. Anything beat sailing.
Like all our roads, the Appia was beautifully kept. It was the oldest of our major highways, the stretch between Capua and Rome having been begun by Appius Claudius Caecus nearly three hundred years before, and the rest of it almost as elderly, so that the poplars and cedars planted along its length were stately and mature. The tombs built by the side of the road were for the most part of a pleasingly simple design reflecting the taste of a bygone era. Every thousand paces stood a milestone, inscribed with the distances to the nearest towns and, as always, the precise distance to the Golden Milestone in the Forum Romanum. That way, anywhere in our empire, a Roman citizen knows exactly how far it is to the center of Roman communal life. We find this comforting for some obscure reason. Perhaps it is because, when wandering among barbarians, we find it difficult to believe that Rome exists at all.
There is no finer or more enduring testament to the power and genius of Rome than our roads. People gawk at the Pyramids, which have no purpose except to contain the corpses of long-dead pharaohs. People the world over can use Roman roads. Barbarians seldom bother to pave their roads. Those who do are satisfied with a thin layer of cut stone, perhaps laid over a thin layer of gravel. A Roman road is more like a buried wall, sometimes going down fifteen feet in alternating layers of rubble, cut stone, and gravel to rest solidly upon bedrock.
The center of every Roman road is raised slightly to allow water to drain off. They span the world as straight as so many tight-stretched strings, crossing valleys and rivers upon bridges of prodigious ingenuity, tunneling through mountain spurs too large to be conveniently moved. What other people ever conceived of such roads? They are the pure expression of the uniqueness that is Rome.
All right, we learned road building from the Etruscans, but we build them better than they ever did. We certainly build them in places the Etruscans never dreamed of.
I was occupied with such pleasant thoughts as we rode toward Venusia. I had been too long among foreigners and I yearned to be in the great City again, even if Clodius was there.
Three days of riding brought us to Capua. The beautiful city, finest in Campania, was situated amid the richest farmlands in all of Italy. As we drew near we could hear the clatter of Capua’s famed bronze works. There were foundries and smith’s shops all over the city, and the din of hammering was incessant. Everything crafted from bronze, from lamps to parade armor, was made in Capua.