The King's Gambit(51)
“No, he’s a patrician. You can kill them, but they don’t take humiliation well.”
“And who is this?” Publius hissed.
“Oh, forgive me. Where are my manners? Publius Claudius Pulcher, allow me to introduce Titus Annius Milo, late of Ostia and now a resident of our city, a client of Macro’s. Milo, meet Publius Claudius Pulcher, scion of a long line of Consuls and criminals. Was there anything else, Claudius?” I considered telling him what I had been doing with his sister, just to see if I could induce apoplexy, but I really wasn’t sure what I had done.
“Don’t depend on your family to save you this time, Decius. This is no game for boys who aren’t willing to play it seriously, to the end.” He glared at Milo. “As for you, I suggest you go back to Ostia. This is my city!” Publius always spoke of Rome as if he were its sole proprietor.
Milo grinned. “I think I’ll kill you now and save myself the trouble later.”
"Not in front of me, you can’t!” I told him. “Just because a fool deserves to die doesn’t mean you can do it yourself.”
Milo shrugged and flashed his smile at Claudius once more. “Later, then.”
Publius nodded grimly. “Later.”
We walked the rest of the way to the river without further violence. In later years I thought of how much trouble and grief I could have spared everybody by letting Milo kill Claudius that day. Even augurs cannot foresee the future, but can only divine the will of the gods through the signs they send. None but sibyls can look into the future, and they only speak gibberish. To me, on that day, Claudius was little more than a highborn nuisance, and Milo just an amiable young thug on the rise.
At the docks we asked a few questions and found a barge about to head downriver after discharging its cargo. We went aboard and found seats in the bow. Soon the bargemen cast off and we were drifting downstream. The rowers maneuvered the craft into the swiftest part of the stream and then concentrated on keeping us in a favorable position, letting the Tiber do most of the work.
This was a far more pleasant way to travel than by road. The wind was damp and chilly, but it would have been the same on the road, and there I would have been getting a sore backside riding a horse. The Via Ostiensis, like all highways near the city, was lined with tombs, as if reminders of mortality were really necessary. As if the tombs weren’t mournful enough, most of them were covered with the painted advertisements for political candidates, announcements of upcoming Games and the declarations of lovers.
The river presented no such vulgar display. Once we were beyond the city, the Tiber floodplain was embellished with beautiful little farms, the occasional country houses of the wealthy and here and there a great latifundium with its own river wharf. After the continual uproar and clatter of the city, this travel by water was most restful. A following wind blew up, and the bargemen hoisted up their single, square sail, so that our progress was swifter and even more silent as the oars ceased to work against their tholes.
“Is he typical?” Milo asked. “That fool Claudius, I mean. Is he what most of the Roman politicians are like? I’ve heard of him before. They say he wants to be a tribune.”
I wanted to say no, Claudius was an aberration, that most were conscientious servants of the state who desired only to be of honorable service to the Senate and People. Unfortunately, I couldn’t.
“Most are like him,” I said. “Publius is perhaps a little more ruthless, a little more mad.”
Milo snorted. “I already like Rome. I think I’m going to like it even better.”
We reached Ostia in late afternoon. I had only the sketchiest knowledge of the city, having embarked from there to go to Spain, at which time my friends had carried me aboard the ship quite drunk, so that my memories were very hazy. I had come back by the slower but less perilous land route. I determined to learn a little about the city on this trip. When I reached the minimum age, I would stand for the quaestorship, and each year one quaestor was stationed in Ostia to oversee the grain supply. The many long wars had stripped Italy of most of her peasant farmers, and the lati-fundia were inefficient, so that we had come to rely on foreign grain.
We passed the great naval harbor built for the wars with Carthage and now fallen into decay. In their sheds, beneath falling roofs, the old warships lay like dead warriors long after the battle, their ribs thrusting through rotting skin. A few sheds were kept up, and the ships inside were in good repair, stored for the winter with their masts, spars, sails and rigging removed. As we drifted past the commercial docks Milo named them for me: the Venus dock, the Vulcan, the Cupid, the Castor and the Pollux, and some half-dozen others.