“Now, Senators,” Pompey said, “I want no one to try to run, no matter how late it gets. We’ll never make it that way. We can get this done on time if we keep to a legionary quick pace. You’ve all been drilled in that since you were boys. Rome will rest on your shoulders today. So, lift!” Again came the word, hurled like a deadly missile, and we all stooped, laid hold of the poles, and lifted the tremendous parade float onto our shoulders. Upon the walls the people sighed with satisfaction. The animals seemed not to notice, merely blinking with lordly equanimity.
The flamines and other priests set out before us, some of them swinging censers in which incense burned. Atop the walls more incense smoked in braziers. We were burning enough that day to cause a serious shortage of incense throughout Roman territory.
“By the left,” Milo said quietly, “quick step, march.” As one man, we all stepped off, left foot first.
In the beginning, the weight seemed quite tolerable, but I knew that would change. Soon the older senators would start dropping out. Then fatigue would take its inexorable toll. And even among the younger senators, for years many had performed no exertion more strenuous than crawling from the cold bath to the hot. They would not last either. I wanted no part of Cato’s foolish nostalgia, but it seemed even to me that we were growing too soft. Unlike Cato and his ilk I did not blame this on foreign influence, but upon our increasing reliance on slaves to do everything for us.
The wall built centuries before by Servius Tullius had once marked out the boundaries of Rome. The City had long since spilled out of its confines, onto the Campus Martius and even across the river into the new Trans-Tiber district, and Sulla had even extended the span of the sacred pomerium, but these changes were too recent to make much of an impression. To all Romans of that day, the Servian Wall, following the line of the old pomerium, still defined the City.
Much building now lay outside the old wall, but it was surrounded by a span of sacred open ground on which nothing could be built and in which the dead could not be buried. This open ground formed our processional way. It was relatively level, going around the bases of the hills, and it was grassy, for no trees or shrubs were allowed to grow upon it. The old wall was still one of the military defenses of Rome, and you don’t just give your enemy effective cover.
We started out northeast along the base of the Capitol, circling the city to the right. All around us the temple musicians played their double flutes, striving mightily to drown any sound that might disturb the ceremony or be interpreted as an evil omen. Before we had made a half-circuit, I was sweating despite the crisp breeze. Others were in far worse condition. I heard gasping from the older men and from those less well-conditioned.
Between the Colline Gate and the Esquiline Gate, all the elderly senators stepped away from the litter. The weight on our shoulders grew fractionally heavier. When we reached the embankment where the river runs along the base of the wall, the middle-aged men were dropping out fast.
About an hour before noon we reached our starting point. Four hours for the first circuit. Here Pompey left us, red faced and puffing.
“Keep it up, men,” he gasped. “At this pace, we’ll finish before sundown handily.”
But there was more to it than time and pace. For the second circuit, we had perhaps half as many men to shoulder the burden. Granted it had been the weaker half that had left, but the willing backs of even old men had been a great help. By noon my shoulder was aching, and the sweat streamed off me by the bucketful. At least, to cheer myself up, I could always look back at Clodius, who was wheezing like a punctured bellows.
From atop the walls whole troops of little girls showered us with flower petals. They must have raided every garden and flower box in the City, and most of the petals were rather withered at that time of year, but we appreciated the gesture. All along our route, lesser priests and temple slaves dipped olive branches into jars of sacred, perfumed water and splashed it over us liberally, like the Circus attendants who dash water on the smoking chariot axles during the races. This we truly needed and appreciated, although ritual law demanded that we drink nothing during the ceremony.
We completed the second circuit of the wall by mid-afternoon, and some of us were in serious condition. My shoulder, neck, and back felt like molten bronze, and spots swam through my field of vision. My right arm was all but numb, my knees were shaky, and my feet were bleeding despite the hard marching I had been doing in Gaul. I was in better shape than 90 percent of those who were left. Clodius was in a near-coma, but still gamely on his feet. I no longer took delight in his discomfiture. Cato was hanging on stoutly to his Stoic demeanor, but I could see the signs of deathly fatigue in him. Milo and Balbus seemed not to be distressed, but neither was an ordinary mortal. Many of my colleagues would clearly not make it for another quarter-circuit, and I was having waking nightmares about the drugs wearing off and those huge animals setting up a struggle, rocking the litter.