Tales of Ancient Rome Read online

  The first of the gold dolphin markers that counted off the laps tipped up, to a massive roar from the crowd.

  “First lap over and nothing much has changed: the lead three are all a little closer together, but no difference in position. Again, Scauvus is pushing like mad to close with the first two and, as they pass the Emperor in his box, it’s still Sura leading by half a length, Prudens fighting him desperately for first place, and Scauvus less than a length behind them.”

  He swallowed another mouthful of water quickly. It was thirsty work.

  “There’s trouble for the whites, but they’ve lost anyway. Their second quadriga is pulling off without even completing a lap and making for the carceres. Looks like the outer horse is lame. He’s… yes, he’s off the track and out of the race.”

  “Screw him” the blind master snapped excitedly. What about the three? Are they at the corner yet?”

  Andros took a deep breath.

  “As they round the far corner again, positions are the same. It’s tight, though… so tight you wouldn’t believe. Now, there’s hardly room to separate the three. Sura and Prudens are almost alongside, with Scauvus close behind. They’re putting on extra speed as they come close to our corner again.”

  Lentullus nodded eagerly.

  “Yes, yes. Are they here? I can’t hear the horses for all the shouting. Are they at the next turn?”

  “They’re closing on it now, master. Here they come: Sura first, but his two mares are still arguing and…” his voice rose a notch. “Yes… they’ve pulled out too wide for the turn and Prudens has found the room. He’s in now, neck and neck. As they come back into our straight, it could go either way by the end of this lap!”

  Something was happening in the crowd off to his left, but he kept his eyes riveted on the action just left of straight ahead.

  “Scauvus is still closing. It’s so tense and overwhelming. If we’re lucky we might see all three of them jostling for first by the time they straighten out!”

  But the cause of the commotion in the crowd suddenly became apparent, with a roar and screams. Half a brick, cast with anger and deadly accuracy, hurtled out from the stand, smashing into the nearest guide horse of Sura’s team. The blow was not hard enough to damage the horse, but the shock did enough. The black Armenian mare reared desperately in pain, and the entire team foundered, chaos ensuing.

  Desperately, seeing what had happened, Prudens hauled on his reins and steered his chariot in so close to the spina that the wheel hub raised sparks from the stonework. In a heart-stopping moment, he pulled out past the rolling disaster that was Sura’s quadriga.

  Half the crowd cheered, not entirely sure what was happening but aware that, whatever it was, Prudens was out clear now and in the lead.

  But the disaster wasn’t over. Unable to swerve enough from his following position, Scaurus’ team drove straight into the former leader’s chariot, the two vehicles slamming together. Horses went down in squeals of pain, while the one wounded by the brick broke free from the trouble and galloped off ahead down the track, yanking the hapless rider straight from the wreckage of his chariot and throwing him to the sand of the arena, where it proceeded to race away, dragging the broken charioteer away by the rein-wrapped arms.

  Chaos and death.

  Disaster for the teams.

  Financial ruin for many spectators.

  But what had immediately occurred to Andros in that flash of panic as the accident began, was just how close to the track they were and the location and direction of the two chariots as they collided. A tiny mental calculation based on the approach angles, and he was already leaping away through the crowd at the very moment Scauvus’ quadriga smashed into that of Sura, running up the stands.

  The great, broken wooden bulk of the chariot, borne aloft by the momentum of the crash, the yoke sheared away and freeing the poor horses, hurtled through the air and into the stands.

  Lentullus turned to his sightless friend.

  “Where’s the boy. What’s going on?”

  A whistling noise and growing rush of air was the last thing either of them ever heard.

  Andros, his heart still racing, watched the panicked and miserable crowd filing out of the circus. In the chaos following the fatal crash that had demolished part of the stands and killed or injured more than a dozen people, nobody thought to question the young Greek slave as he made his way to the raised seating area where senator Paulinus sat.

  The ageing man had barely raised an eyebrow, given the scale of his losses today, as he paid the young man with a large leather bag of coins. After all, the boy was Lentullus’ slave, and had the legal chitty.

  Andros grinned.

  Life was going to be rather nice. By the time the chaos was under control, and he was missed, he would be at Ostia boarding the first ship bound for home.

  And he’d be going home richer than the Gods.

  “Bless you, Prudens the master charioteer.”

  How to run a latifundium

  Marcus Aelius Pacutus looked out over his latifundium with a professional, practiced eye and nodded to himself.

  The huge estate that covered the lower slopes of the mountains above the city of Carsulae in central Italia rolled off over the slopes, revealing seemingly endless rows of vines, each tended lovingly and carefully and renowned for their produce that went on to make some of the finest wine exported across the Empire.

  The devotion of this great estate to wine had been the work of Pacutus’ grandfather, a man of blinding and astounding luck who had not only survived the reign of Nero unscathed despite his noted opposition to the Emperor’s policies, but had even managed to come out of it with land, money and title and the respect and support of the new Emperor.

  Two and a half generations was all it had taken to turn a new vineyard into a wine variety sought after by the noble classes and sold in bars and thermopolia from Gaul to Syria. It was largely down to the soil, of course. As Columella had noted, the soil was at the heart of it all, and the soil here high in the valley in the centre of the country was rich and dark, perfect for the vine.

  Some of it, of course, had come down from his father and grandfather’s financial acumen. Too many latifundia had failed and been sold away because the owners invested too heavily and landed themselves in deep debt, or overstretched, or hired too many freedmen workers.

  Not so on the Pacutus estate. Marcus’ forefathers had been astute and wise and had carefully balanced the coffers with income and expenditure to make sure that the latter never outweighed the former.

  The estates finances and income had, in fact, been in such a strong position that his father, after serving briefly as a decurion in Carsulae, had retired from public life entirely at a surprisingly young age, to live on the estate and the fortune it made.

  It had come as a surprise to no one then, when his father died six years ago, that Marcus had immediately discarded his cuirass and abandoned the military tribunate to return to the estate and take control.

  Marcus had new ideas, though. His father and grandfather were financially astute, yes, but they had also been weak and sympathetic people. The estate made more than enough for a nobleman to live a comfortable life, but Marcus knew it could be better still. Working the figures himself, he passed them before a friend who had worked in the treasury and who was a genius with an abacus. The simple fact was that, though the latifundium had made a fortune, it could easily have made twice as much with a little less softness and sympathy.

  His nose itched, but that would go away in its own time. An itchy nose was a sign of something, he remembered hearing tell. Was it that he was coming into money? Hopefully, it would take him that inch closer to his dream of actually rolling in golden coins. He smiled.

  Rubus had been the main cutback. Not the only one, but the main one. The middle-aged Gaul had begun as a slave on the farm, freed by his grandfather toward the end of his life and installed as the overseer for the estate. His grandfather and father bot
h had prized the Gaul for his knowledge and efficiency, but they had paid him a small fortune for his work.

  Stupid, given that they were both present permanently at the villa and knew damn well how to run things themselves. What a waste of money. Totting up how much money he’d saved in the five years since he drove Rubus from the estate made his palm tingle. Enough to buy a new caravan of wagons, or to perhaps put down a payment on a barge; all things that would expand the growing empire of Pacutus.

  Personal attention had changed everything. The money had started to pile up so rapidly he couldn’t have spent it if he’d tried. He didn’t, of course. He was too busy making the money to spend any of it.

  Of course, there were days when the work was harder than others, such as today. Some days the slaves were especially lazy and stupid and he had to expend precious energy with the whip, or even use his own, soft, white hands to labour on the estate. After all, it was better to do some things oneself than to rely on unreliable wasters like the Numidian carpenter or the other slaves that had been given the task of building the arbour across the patio outside the villa.

  It would be lovely when complete. The beautiful, decorative patio claimed an unrivalled view of the estate with its rolling slopes, and of the majestic peaks that towered over it. He smiled as he took it in once again. It was nice now, but when he could look at it from this very spot shaded by the timber structure with vines growing across it, laden with succulent grapes.

  He would have to start thinking about a wife soon. He would need a son, of course, to pass the estate to. It certainly wasn’t going to that soft, podgy cousin of his that talked endlessly of the new Jewish religion that Nero had forbidden and urged him at every social engagement to free his slaves and hire free workers. The moron.

  No. A son it would have to be. Then his son could sit on this very patio under the arbour, surrounded by the finest grapes in central Italia and watching his slaves work.

  No sign of the slaves now, though, as the sun began to descend. His arms ached, but then they would, after such a day. He sighed as he scanned the vineyards once more from the patio viewpoint.

  He wondered whether he’d spent more of the afternoon beating the damn wastrels or hammering the nails himself? Probably beating. He did seem to have beaten them a lot today; more than usual, and he would be the first to admit that he beat them a lot anyway.

  But they were slaves. More slaves could always be found cheaply. They didn’t have to be clever or powerful to dig a hole or pick grapes. Slaves were worth less than the soil they worked. Beating them was natural; the very order of things.

  That, of course, was why it had come as such a shock when they had turned on him. The Judean girl had been the first to use the whip. He’d been so surprised at the turn of events while the two Numidians held him down, that he’d barely noticed the pain as they flayed the skin from his back with the barbed lash. He’d not screamed. Why would he? They were only slaves.

  He really wished he could scratch his nose, but his arms were tied fast to the crossbar of the hastily manufactured crucifix. There had been some intelligent irony among them, in the end. They’d crucified him using the very timber and nails he’d been beating them for misusing.

  A raven cawed in a nearby tree, watching him with anticipation. He could swear it was almost drooling as it watched its meal start to sag and fade.

  Marcus Aelius Pacutus looked out over his latifundium with a professional, practiced eye and nodded to himself.

  Time was up.

  A Reading

  Spurius Bulba took a deep breath and swallowed nervously. Glancing up surreptitiously he eyed the waiting folk. The handsome, chiselled features of the central figure, master of this grand palace and employer of unfortunate wretches, watched expectantly, his advisors gripping their togas in anticipation. Spurius swallowed again.

  It had not been an easy morning.

  The very first thing he had seen when he opened his eyes was the image of Castus the moneylender, his face a mixture of violent anger and hungry amusement. He’d been meaning to pay Castus back all month but, as was always the case, whatever money came into his hands seemed to evaporate whenever he passed by one of the thermopolia where men gathered to play dice. The dice didn’t like him, and his few satisfied customers had joked that he was safe anyway, since his entire being was anathema to chance itself.

  Castus had been surprisingly accommodating. The Syrian thug with him broke the fourth and fifth fingers on Spurius’ left hand, which is the most excruciating way to wake up, but also allowed him an extra week to pay. It could have been worse, for sure.

  Donning his tunic and quickly splashing water over his face and his ever-unruly hair with the bald patch that allowed the shining dome of his intellect to rise through like the Capitol, he quickly rifled around his table. The only furniture in his small room apart from the rickety bed and the washstand, the table was a permanent dumping ground for anything and everything. Broken wine pots mingled with unwashed underwear and the lead curse tablets he kept just in case. He’d been tempted to use one on Castus, but had relented, as they were costly, and it seemed like throwing good money after bad. Somewhere on the table, amid the chaos, a former meal had gone mouldy as the general reek announced, but he wasn’t over-keen to excavate and locate the errant fungus.

  The search turned up, along with unspeakable things, seven copper asses. Seven asses! It wouldn’t even buy a morning snack. Grasping the coins as though they might flee and reaching for his work bag, Spurius had left his room, hurried down the grubby, badly-maintained stairwell and out of the insula into the street.

  Jerusalem. Not the nicest city in the world, but one of the few that would have him. In the past eight years since he had left Rome via Ostia at high speed with bruisers chasing him intent on extracting blood, he had spent brief times in almost every great city of the empire.

  Narbo had been nice for a while until the debts mounted up and he’d had just enough left to take ship, the moneylenders baying after him like hounds. Tarraco had been more civilized still, but he’d soon been found out and exiled by men of import. He’d tried Syracuse for a time, but the moneylenders there were shrewd and shunned him. Epirus had made him shudder. Everyone had been far too clever and pleasant. He’d felt like a turd in a bathhouse his entire stay, and it remained unique as the only city he had ever left voluntarily.

  Athens had been pretty nice, despite the fact that a notorious lover of boys had taken a liking to him and followed him around, trying to get into his breeches. Still, a heavy bet on the track races there had seen him fleeing north on a stolen donkey with no possessions but the tunic he wore and the tools of his ‘trade’. Byzantium had been next and, unfortunately, a very similar story to Athens, though without the constant danger of rape. Tarsus had been brief but dangerous, with knife-wielding maniacs, the usual blood-hungry moneylenders and customers, and an almost fatal bout of something that caused the world to fall out of his bottom.

  And so he’d ended up in Jerusalem at the arse end of the empire, where rebellious Jews spent their entire time badgering, corrupting, knifing and denouncing the occupying Roman forces. After the first week he’d even given up bothering to comment when they spat on his feet. It wasn’t as though he was going to get any dirtier, after all.

  The street opened up before him that morning with its usual commotion, smells and noise. It was as though someone had ripped the roof off the Cloaca Maxima and filled it with people and stalls. Uniformly horrible. He rubbed his hands in anticipation, wincing as the two broken fingers, bound together with a torn strip of tunic, moved painfully. When this morning was over, he would have enough money to either pay Castus off, or buy a horse with plenty of change and get the hell out of this shit hole. Not both. The latter was starting to sound good, though. Alexandria might make a nice change.

  Strolling down the street, he smiled. The initial bad start to the morning was clearly just that. His luck was changing. One of the stalls at the
roadside was busy packing away after the morning rush. The proprietor was head-down in his bags, packing the remnants away, but had left a loaf of bread hanging from the hook at the stall’s corner. Spurius leaned to his left as he walked and picked up speed. As he reached the stall, he lunged out with his hand, unseen by the stall’s owner, and grasped for the bread.

  The owner’s son, a tall boy with a sour face, swiped the bread out from under him, glaring, and Spurius found suddenly that his balance was off. Momentum carried his hand into open air where the bread had been, his feet seemed to do some complicated dance and moments later he was face down in the straw and horse shit by the side of the road with two bakers laughing at him.

  Hurriedly he picked himself up, dusting off the worst of the crud, and gathered his bag in his arms, clutching it tight. A quick glance up failed to improve his mood.

  As a haruspex, a diviner of truths in the entrails of beasts, Spurius was expected to be staid, sombre, sober, and above all, accurate. However, since he had ‘learned’ his craft, such as it was, from a drunken lunatic with a tendency to dribble, a beard that things lived in and the most curious smells, skin afflictions and twitches, all for the price of a place to stay for a month, he was not entirely convinced of his pedigree. The man had claimed to be an Etruscan of age-old lineage. What, in fact, he appeared to be was a drunk, a fraud, and quite possibly a carrier of disease.

  Certainly Spurius had learned a few things from the old man. While he may have had all the talents of prognostication of a jar of fish sauce, he knew the jargon and the basic principals and it was astounding in the past decade just how often Spurius had made accurate predictions based partially on the signs around him and partially on a one in two chance of being right.