Saturnalia(67)
It had been another long day.
11
ROME AWOKE TO THE GREAT, collective hangover of the day after Saturnalia. All over the city hundreds of thousands of bleary eyes opened, the merciless light of morning pierced through them, and a vast groan ascended unto Olympus. Patrician and plebeian, slave and freedman, citizen and foreigner, all were afflicted and were half certain that Pluto had them by the ankle and was dragging them toward the yawning abyss; and, on the whole, they viewed the oblivion of the trans-Stygian world as not such a bad prospect after all. Even Stoic philosophers were retching into the chamberpot that morning.
But not me. I felt fine. For once I had been moderate in my intake and what little I had imbibed I had sweated out in my flight through the city the night before. For the first time since leaving Rhodes I’d had a decent night’s sleep. I awoke clear-eyed, clear-headed, and ravenously hungry. The sun was high and it flooded through my window as though Phoebus Apollo were especially pleased with me.
“Hermes!” I bellowed. “Cato! Get up, you lazy rogues! The world is back to normal now!”
I got up and went into the little sitting room I use for an office. I threw open the latticed shutters and breathed in the clear air and listened to the songs of the birds and did all those things that I ordinarily despise. As a rule, morning is not my favorite time of day. I heard a slow shuffling behind me and Cato pushed the curtain aside.
“What do you want?” he asked grumpily. I’d seen livelier looking mummies in Egypt.
“Bring me some breakfast,” I ordered. “Where’s Hermes?”
“No sense calling for that wretch. He won’t be finished vomiting until noon. Those young ones don’t have the head or the stomach for proper celebrating.” He shuffled off chuckling, then moaning.
I unwrapped my bandaged hand and was pleased to see that the cut was almost healed. Everything seemed to be going well that morning. I took out one of my better tunics and my best pair of black, senatorial sandals. To these I added my second-best toga, since I was likely to be calling on some official people that day.
Cato brought in bread, cheese, and sliced fruit, and as I fueled myself for the day ahead I planned out my itinerary. In a city as sprawling as Rome, geography is the most important consideration. The idea is to avoid backtracking and, above all, climbing the same hill twice. In a city as hilly as Rome, this last is difficult. I dipped a piece of bread in garlic-flavored olive oil and thought about it.
I decided to try Asklepiodes first. He would be in the Transtiber, and I could stop at the Temple of Ceres on the way back into the City. Besides, as a man of moderate habits the Greek was unlikely to be in a homicidal mood this morning. I called for hot water and went through the unfamiliar act of shaving myself. It would not be a good day to entrust myself to the shaky hand of a public barber.
Dressed and freshly, if inexpertly, shaved, I went out into the uncommonly subdued streets of the City. Rome seemed to be half-deserted and looked as if it had been defeated in a major war. It was something of a miracle that no destructive fires had started during the uproarious celebrations. Everywhere people lay like the corpses of slain defenders, only snoring much more loudly. Discarded masks, chaplets, and wreaths littered the streets and public buildings.
On a hunch I took the Fabrician Bridge to Tiber Island. On a good many mornings Asklepiodes was to be found in the Temple of Aesculapius, and if he was there I would be spared the walk to the ludus where he had his surgery. The splendid bridge had been built four years earlier by the tribune Fabricius, who never did anything else, but who ensured the immortality of his name with this gift to the city. Relative immortality, anyway. I suppose in a hundred years another bridge will stand there bearing another politician’s name, and poor old Fabricius will be forgotten. For once, the beggars who ordinarily throng all the bridges of Rome were absent, sleeping it off with the rest.
The morning was unseasonably warm and children crowded the bridge’s abutments and supports, diving into the chilly water, screaming in delight, or more sedately fishing with long poles. While their elders slept off the excesses of the night before, the children of Rome had an extra holiday, free from supervision.
I paused in the middle of the bridge and savored the sight. To the east and south the City bulked behind its ancient walls, the gleaming temples atop the hills lending it the semblance of the home of the gods. The play of the children below me made the scene as idyllic as something from a pastoral poem. How deceptive it all was. But I could remember playing here myself as a child on the day after Saturnalia. The bridge was wooden then, but otherwise things were unchanged. There in the water had been the real holiday, when noble and common and slave and free and foreigner were all the same. We had yet to acquire the hard and bitter perspectives of adulthood.