"They just walked in without a fight?" Izates asked.
"What was anyone going to do?" the landlord said. "Who is going to stop six thousand armed men? The city guard?" He laughed ruefully. "They act like the lords of the earth, and just now no one is going to dispute it with them."
Later Zeno quizzed the girl who brought them their food and wine. She was a pretty creature of about sixteen and spoke the sailor's Greek common to every port town.
"The Roman soldiers are real men," she said in a low voice, glancing about to make sure she was not overheard. "Not like the males around here. All the men here complain that the Romans treat them with contempt, but why shouldn't they, is what I ask. Carthage has run this place for so long that everyone's forgotten how to fight. Hardly a man in Italy has ever picked up a sword."
She brushed her coarse hair back from her face. "I'll tell you something else: There was no looting or rape or any other sort of misbehavior, not at all like when the shofet's hired marines come to town. The Romans took over the running of the place and quartered their troops, but they don't pick up a leek that they don't pay for and they leave even the slave girls and boys strictly alone. They just visit the working girls and the lupanars and they pay for the service."
Even as the girl spoke, a group of off-duty soldiers walked in and took a table. The girl went to serve them, smiling brightly. Zeno noted that they did not swagger or speak loudly, but there was nothing diffident in their bearing. They seemed to have perfect self-assurance. They spoke to the girl in halting, broken Greek and spoke among themselves in a language Zeno supposed must be Latin. It lacked the beautiful liquidity of Greek, but he found its hard-edged sound pleasing. Like everything else about the Romans, even the language sounded soldierly.
"Those look like dangerous men," Jzates said, his habitual mockery subdued for once. "They don't have to strut like bullies. They radiate menace as the sun radiates light."
"Very true," Zeno said. He had seen soldiers in many lands, but none like these, who seemed to have been whelped by the very dam of war itself. Something caused the soldiers to laugh, and the sound made both men start slightly.
If the human voice, can sound like swords clashing against shields, Zeno thought, it is in this Roman laugh.
The next morning they set off along the Via Appia, leading a donkey laden with their belongings and provisions. The countryside was beautiful and they passed through well-cultivated fields where sheep and cattle grazed amid a landscape that seemed taken from a pastoral poem. Most impressive, though, was the road itself. Although built more than a hundred years before, it was as solid and perfect as upon the day of its completion. The pavement was of cut stone subtly sloped to drain water. It was perfectly straight and level, with bridges over gorges, viaducts over marshy ground and, every few miles, way stations where travelers could rest and messengers could get fresh mounts. These latter were in the process of restoration and remanning by the Romans.
"What a marvelous road!" Zeno said after they had been on it for most of the morning. "There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. Everywhere else roads are just laid atop the ground if they are paved at all. This is more like the top of a buried wall."
"They learned the art from the Etruscans," Izates said.
Once they had to step off the road as a military detachment marched past, every man in step as if the army were a single animal. Each man carried his own equipment and the army seemed to have only a minimum of noncombatant slaves to manage its heavy gear and animals. Even the slaves wore uniform and marched under military discipline.
"We should have stayed at sea," Izates groused when they stopped at noon. "We could have set ashore within a few miles of Rome instead of walking half the length of Italy."
"That would have meant sailing between Italy and Sicily. Those waters are dangerous now that Rome and Carthage are fighting over the island."
"An unsafe voyage is quicker and easier than this trudging, no matter how fine the road."
Zeno grinned at him. "It is beneath a philosopher's dignity to notice such things."
Izates made another of his rude noises. "I'm a Cynic, not a Stoic."
They could see that the countryside had been arranged in the common Carthaginian style, cut into huge plantations with few farmhouses but many slave barracks. Now, though, numerous surveying teams were at work, apparently dividing the huge tracts into smaller plots.
"Do you think they intend to restore peasant cultivation?" Zeno said.
"If they do, they've a job ahead of them," Izates observed. "There will be endless squabbling over who owns what. And what about the people who own the land now? It won't just be dispossessed Carthaginians."