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I was looking forward to a good year. I always surveyed each new year with optimism, and events almost always proved my outlook mistaken. This year was to be no exception. I was young, not yet quite twenty-nine, and it takes much to overcome the natural high spirits of the young. The wherewithal to crush my optimism was waiting, in great supply.
Everything looked fair as I rode toward the city, though. One reason for my cheerfulness lay outside the walls: a huge encampment of soldiers, prisoners and loot. The loot alone covered acres of land, protected by sheds and awnings. Pompey was back from Asia, and these were the preparations for his triumph. Until the day of his triumph, Pompey could not enter the city, and that was the way I liked it. The anti-Pompeian faction in the Senate had blocked permission for the triumph so far. As far as I was concerned, he could wait out there until the gods called him unto themselves, an unlikely occurrence, whatever he might think.
I knew I would have an active year. My father had been elected Censor, and that is an office with many duties. I expected him to assign me to the census of citizens, since that is tedious and demanding work, leaving him free to concentrate on purging the Senate of unworthy members, which was satisfying, and letting the public contracts, which was profitable.
I did not care. I would be in Rome! I had spent the past year in Gaul, where the climate is disagreeable and people do not bathe. They do not eat well, and a thousand years of Roman civilization will never teach the Gauls to make decent wine. The gladiators were second-rate, and the only saving grace of the place was its wonderful charioteers and racing horses. The Circuses were mean and shabby by Roman standards, but the races were breathtaking. Also, my duties had lain principally with the army. I always had a most un-Roman dislike of military life. There had been no fighting, which was boring and unprofitable, and my duties had been principally as paymaster, which was humiliating. Soldiers always smirk when they see an officer tricked out in parade armor counting out their wages one coin at a time and making them sign the ledger.
All that was over, and my heart sang as I drew nearer the Ostian Gate. I could have taken a barge upriver from the port, but I felt like making an entrance, so I had borrowed a horse from the quaestor at Ostia, had my parade armor polished and bought new plumes for my helmet. It was a fine day, and I made a splendid sight as I rode in, acknowledging the gate guard’s salute.
The city walls now stood well beyond the pomerium, and I could ride through this part of the town in full military splendor, accepting the admiring hails of my fellow citizens. The popularity of the military stood very high at that moment, as Roman arms had turned in a string of victories with rich loot. I halted and dismounted at the line of the old city wall, established by Romulus. To cross the pomerium in arms meant death.
Ostentatiously, I removed and folded my red military cloak and tied it to my saddle. Careful of my new plumes, I removed my helmet and hung it from my saddle by the chin straps. Bystanders helped me out of my cuirass, embossed with muscles that Hercules would envy and much unlike those that adorned my body. I tucked my sword and its belt into a saddlebag and stood dressed in my gold-fringed military tunic and red leather caligae. These were permitted within the city proper. Taking my reins in hand, I stepped across the pomerium.
The moment I crossed, I felt as if a weight far heavier than my armor had been lifted from me. I was a civilian again! I would have burst into song, had that not been too undignified. My step was so light that the hobnails on the soles of my caligae made little sound.
I longed to go to my house and change clothes and go prowl the Forum and catch up on the latest city gossip. My spirit longed for it as a starving man longs for food. But duty demanded that I call upon my father first. I drank in all the sights and sounds and, yes, even smells as I made my way to his house. I find the stenches of Rome preferable to the perfumes of lesser cities.
I rapped at the gate and the janitor called Narcissus, Father’s majordomo. The fat old man beamed and patted my shoulder.
“Welcome home, Master Decius. It is good to see you back.” He snapped his fingers, a sound like the breaking of a great limb. A young slave came running. “Take Master Decius’s horse and belongings to his house. It is in the Subura.” He pronounced this last word with some disdain.
The slave went pale. “But they’ll kill and eat me in the Subura!”
“Just announce that these are the belongings of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger,” I told him, “and no one will molest you.” The dwellers of the Subura couldn’t do enough for me since I had brought home the head of the October Horse. Looking doubtful, the boy took the animal’s reins and led him off.