A THROWBACK THURSDAY of a different sort...

My Apprenticeship

Many years ago, I came across a word in my youth I was unfamiliar with: Apocryphal. Fake Gospels, or, more accurately, Gospels that were accepted by the young Church to be considered…doubtful. Questionable. THE GOSPEL OF SAINT THOMAS was one of the Apocryphal texts.

It got me to thinking, and before you knew it, I was penning a story that I finally settled down to write as a novel. The Apocryphy. It took place in Rome, starting in the year 48 AD. I found a story I was able to weave through both THE ANNALS OF ROME by Tacitus, and THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, by St. Luke.

I wrote three different drafts of this story — never quite finishing the story itself — but each one coming in at over 250,000 words. It was what I called my apprenticeship. It was the story that turned me into a writer. It went back so far into my past, that I actually started writing it by hand, as a poem, and then on a typewriter, and finally on a computer.

I’ve never released to story, but I did put the Prologue up once or twice — a series of letters between Pliny the Younger, and one of the characters of my story: Marcus Praetonius Cornelius Gaius, later called Parthicus for his exploits during the Parthian Wars under General Corbulo.

So, as you can see, a lot of history at a time when you had to go to the library and look things up, and then request the research material through inter-library loans. And now we have the internet, and wikipedia, and thousands of other articles and research papers available at our fingertips.

I am offering the first chapter for you to read. I haven’t looked at it in years, so don’t judge me too harshly. It’s long, but then, so is everything else I write. I just seem to do things that way. It’s a story that follows three characters, and involves a great many historical names at the time.

Rather than bore you with all the nascent details, I’m just going to let you read and decide for yourself. If you are religious in any way, you might want to read this out of curiosity; if you like history, you might like it because of the times; if you like a good story, you might like it for that.

PART ONE

ASIATICUS

*

CHAPTER ONE

799 a.u..c

A.D. XIII Kal. Mai (19 April, 47 A.D.)

COLOSSUS

At seventy-eight, Sempronius Cornelius Gaius was the oldest member of the Senate. He walked with a limping stoop as much as he walked with the careful deliberation of the aged, using a cane in his right hand to support himself, as well as a slave on his left side. He was always fearful in case he should stumble and fall, and he wasn’t hesitant about using his cane on the back of some unresponsive slave if the need arose. His left arm infirm, it was tucked into the folds of his toga.

I used to be a patient man in my youth, he thought with a slow shake of his head. Perhaps it’s just misplaced? he told himself a moment later, taking in the beauty of the apple blossoms that snowed around him as he strolled through the Garden with Josias. They followed a foot path lined with red and white bricks that led to the nymphaeneum — the largest of his fountains near the end of the property. There were flower beds and shrubs to his left, and a row of olive trees and vegetables on his right. As they approached the nymphaeneum a mist of water caught the afternoon light and a large rainbow spanned the width of the pool in front. Statues lined the walkway — copies of ancient Greek masters he admired — as well as porticoes with columns and plinths of pink marble and black obsidian supporting red tiled roofs with benches beneath and ivied vines twisted throughout. His villa lay outside of Rome’s ancient Servian Wall, and the Garden — the Horti Cornelii — ran down a gentle slope where it overlooked the Tiber and the docks of Rome. Rome itself rose beyond, her temples and buildings gleaming in the afternoon light; her long sinuous aqueducts a testament to the ingenuity of her engineers — and a constant supply of water for the three other fountains spaced around his Garden.

He paused to watch one of the large galleys laden with grain from Egypt making its way upriver. There would be a hundred slaves and just as many oxen struggling to turn the behemoth in mid-stream — and from there they would try to pull the ship into the dock. He wondered how the Senate allowed ships of that size to make the journey all the way to Rome.

They should off-load the grain in Ostia, he thought with a slow nod; but the harbour at Ostia was undergoing extensive repairs and wouldn’t be ready until early in the New Year, he remembered.

The day was temperate, and for that he was grateful. Josias, his slave, had taken a wrap out with him just the same, although Sempronius doubted if he’d use it because the toga he was wearing felt warm enough. His hair was white, and thin, hanging limp where it rested on his slight shoulders. There were age spots on his forehead as well as his hands which appeared as wrinkled and loose-skinned as the skin sagging on his face. He sometimes drooled because of his affliction, and it bothered him to think that he’d become the man he used to be frightened of as a child. He wondered if the permanent scowl he carried whenever he looked in the mirror frightened the children who saw him. Maybe it’s for the best, he thought. He sometimes questioned the reasoning of the gods, but he never gave up believing in them.

He was thin, but reasoned that was because he’d been a vegetarian for most of his life. He’d had a voracious appetite when he was younger, but with age it lessened to the point where he needed just enough food to stave off hunger. His eyes were clear, a deep blue that still had the piercing quality he was known for when he was an ambitious young Senator looking to be Consulatis.

He’d achieved all of that and more during the course of his long career. He’d actually survived, and was now considering a second retirement. At the moment, he attended to his position as Princeps Senatus — the leader of the Senate — with all the seriousness borne out of his past experiences. He had a profound understanding of the sheer magnitude and scope that was involved with running an Empire. Where he once gathered support in the Senate from Clients willing to pay for his influence, now he saw to the appointments of the city’s Censors, praetors, and curile aediles. He was still known to accept gifts of gratitude. He was one of a few men in Rome who remembered the day Augustus received the title Father of his Country, an honor voted on him by the citizens and the Senate of Rome — an honor he himself had helped bestow. It was an empty honor now, he felt, but then thought that was probably because of the quality of the men who succeeded Augustus. How could anyone think to heap such praises on men like Tiberius, Gaius, or Claudius? And yet, they did.

The citizenry of Rome is all that matters, his father told him years before, something it took him most of his life to understand. He’d put on elaborate Games at great expense to the gens for different Festivals during his years in Rome — just as his father had done, and his father before him — and he’d held various posts and offices throughout his career — both foreign and domestic — as well as most of the priesthoods.

Once the common people understood the price they had to pay for peace, Sempronius told himself, they accepted whatever reforms Augustus presented. But his father had never understood the idea of the Principate and what it meant as far as personal freedom was concerned; he could never see the freedom that it promised. When the Civil War came to an end — as all wars eventually do — and Augustus referred to his battle weary warriors as soldiers instead of Comrades, his father said to him, ”That man will never give up power now, or bring back the Republic.”

And why would he, Sempronius asked himself.

Sitting in the shade of the three large apple trees he’d planted with his father more than seventy years before, he nodded to himself as if in some reflective mood. The trees had grown over the years, nurtured by his own hand; the branches sometimes hung so heavy with fruit they seemed to moan as they bent to touch the ground. The trees were so large now he had difficulty recalling how small they’d once been. There was a slight breeze, bringing with it the smell of apples stewing in the culina, and he drew in a deep breath and smiled to himself. The last of the dried apples from last season had to be used, so he knew the slaves were busy.

There’ll be sauce enough tonight for all of us, he thought, and smiled in anticipation.

He had fond memories of standing beside the trees as a child — measuring himself against them as if he was taking the measure of himself as a man. He was always looking up at his father then, waiting while his father carved notches in the trees’ trunks every season — every year a different tree. He looked at the tree trunks now, thinking he might see the marks, and when he saw how they were spaced out a hands’ width, the trees’ naked exposures appearing weathered and looking more like the bald heads of men he knew, he wondered what happened to his youth. It was a recollection that brought a smile to his lips — a rueful memory of a life gone by and lost to the distant shadows of a forgotten past.

Gone; forgotten; neglected and set aside, he thought. Is that all a man can hope for when he outlives the past?

He sat in his chair enjoying the scent of stewed apples and cinnamon coming from the villa, enjoying the flowers and watching the bees as they moved about with a carelessness he thought inviting.

The Garden of the Hesperides. He smiled and reminded himself he meant to commission a large dragon to be sculpted so that it might wind its way through the trees--a fantasy of mind he’d had for more than forty years now. Ladon, he thought. He never referred to the Garden as the Hesperides himself--that was a name one of his sons had picked out, but he couldn’t remember which son it was. He’d always called it The Garden, perhaps thinking of the retreat Virgil visited in Neapolis to study with the great Epicurean thinkers of his day. As a boy, Sempronius had heard Virgil reading his masterpiece aloud and told himself whenever he listened to the wind sifting through the trees now, he was listening to the call for glory he’d heard all those years ago--a call to arms and the man--and thought perhaps it was an echo stirring within his own breast. That a man could be moved to write poetry like that had always been a marvel to him.

Virgil wasn’t the same as Horace or Ovid he was quick to say whenever he discussed poetics. There was something in the way the man spoke; it was the timbre of his voice and the richness of his phrasing. People sometimes looked at him and asked him what he was going on about, and he’d look at them and say, “Virgil, of course!” forgetting that he’d first heard the man when he was a child of eleven.

In moments such as this, he told himself, and then swung his cane out at Josias.

“Josias! I’m thirsty. Give me some water!” he said with a deep, raspy voice. He looked up at the man and waited with a shaky hand as Josias poured him a cool goblet of water. Sempronius slurped half of it away and held the goblet out.

“More, dominus?”

“If I want more, I’ll tell you I want more,” Sempronius said quickly, swinging his cane out once more. Josias easily stepped aside and let the cane hit against one of the apple trees. He reached out and took the goblet.

“Yes, dominus,” he said with a gentle inclination of his head, trying not to smile as he stepped back into the shade and waited.

The breeze shifted and came in from the Tiber. He could smell the stench of the city, the dried mud of the river at low tide, and for a moment regretted that he didn’t have the wrap of Thyme, or Rosemary he usually kept close at hand whenever he went into the city. The wind blew his hair in his face and he swept it aside with a thin hand--shifting uncomfortably in his chair as he remembered when his hair was thick, and dark. He used to be a tall man once, stately--or so his wife used to tell him--and chided himself for being a fool, telling himself to stop living in the past. He tried not thinking about the past too much; the gloom of his losses bore down on him like a weight on his heart and burdened his soul.

His wife was dead, and his children gone. He thought a man might be able to accept whatever the Fates affirmed, but he’d outlived his children--all of them--standing by in silent witness as his sons fell to the political machinations of the day. A man should never outlive his sons, his father told him as they watched his brother’s funeral pyre tumbling down on itself against the light of a setting sun. He remembered the embers spiraling into the heavens on their journey to the Elysian Fields, and remembered that day as he watched his own children’s pyre. He thought he finally understood.

“The gods toy with us, and abandon us when we need them most,” he said softly, and Josias stepped forward.

“Dominus?”

“What?”

“I thought you called for me.”

“Well, I didn’t call you, did I? When I want you--or if I want to tell you something--I will. I was just thinking. Can’t a man think? The gods know I’ve got lots to think about.”

“Yes dominus; I’m sorry,” Josias said.

Josias had been born into the household as a slave and would have lived anonymously among the servants except that when he reached his fourteenth year he started growing. He was a large boy for his age and became an even larger man. At seventeen, Sempronius considered selling the boy to one of the gladiator schools in Pompeii; that was until Sempronius became infirmed five years ago.

He’d been stroked by the hand of god he used to say--without saying which of the great Pantheon he’d meant--and it left his left arm hanging at his side like a dead thing; his face sagging in abject dejection. Josias carried him about in his arms like a father carrying a child, depositing him into his bath, laying him on his bed, reading him the poetry he so loved to hear.

“I was thinking about Sejanus, if you must know,” he said softly, “but every time I think about that man, I get a taste of bitterness in my mouth; reminds me of bile. Do you know what bile is? It’s a man like he was. Do you know the man almost single-handedly destroyed everything Augustus fought so hard to secure?”

Josias remained impassive.

“What happened to the old fashioned sense of duty we used to have in my father’s day? A duty to the State; the family; to friends? What happened to the moral standards Augustus himself tried imposing? There are no moral standards anymore. Oh, there are men who are moral, but it seems those men are more or less destined to be victims of their own morality, rather than mortality.”

Look at what happened to Seneca, he reminded himself. Exiled for being the lover of Claudius’s sister--as if anyone could believe such a thing!

Sempronius knew Claudius’s wife saw Seneca as a threat--but she saw every cultured man as a threat, and every accomplished man as an enemy. A great many Senators in the city felt Seneca was better suited to serve as Emperor than Claudius--and that his wife was a better example of what an Empress should be than Messalina was. And maybe they were right. Maybe the Empire needed a philosopher king? Seneca had been a successful orator in his youth, his skill envied by everyone. Caligula wanted to have him killed, “for having a voice that obviously reminds the gods how much they miss Orpheus.” As a god himself, Caligula felt simple mortals shouldn’t be praised any more than he was.

Seneca could actually thank the gods he was sickly, Sempronius thought with what could only be a nod to the ironic. And it’s his poor health that’s saved him again and again. When someone told Caligula Seneca suffered from asthma and probably wouldn’t live out the year, the same person asked if maybe the young quaestor could retire to the countryside. Seneca obliged. It was his ill health that saved him from Claudius’s wrath.

“And maybe living in exile isn’t so bad when you look at what Rome has to offer,” Sempronius said softly.

Secrets and lies, he thought, and though he knew he was no different and certainly no better, he thought, I’m not so much a corrupt man as I am corruptible.

“Not everyone in Rome is corrupt or untrustworthy,” he said aloud; again Josias looked up and waited before he answered.

“I know more than anyone there are admirable men in Rome. My own family descended from the Gracchi on my father’s side. Did you know that?”

“I’m proud to have been born into such an esteemed gens, dominus,” Josias said with a slight nod.

“Proud? You don’t know what pride is, boy. You’re nothing but a slave. You have nothing to be prideful of. I’m proud to have called Cornelia my great-great-aunt. Do you know who she was?”

“No, dominus,” Josias said with some embarrassment.

“No? Well, of course. And why would you? She was the mother of the Gracchi, you dolt. Don’t you know how to read?”

“I know how to read, dominus,” Josias said softly. “I read Virgil to you.”

“Don’t change the subject, boy. The Gracchi! That’s who we were talking about. That’s pride! Rome will always have men of stature; men who succeed no matter what, because that’s what greatness means. Pliny’s a fine example of that. Corbulo’s another, and so’s Piso. They’re men who have natural ability, men of intellect, and talent beyond compare — a deadly combination at the best of times — and because of that, they’re a danger to themselves, and anyone who knows them.”

This was why Sempronius usually distanced himself from such men. He could admire them, and even respect them, but he could never let himself become their friends.

“They’re easy men to destroy because of their incorruptibility. When a man’s willing to take his own life because he can see no other recourse, the gods honor him.”

Men of letters and men of words.

“Corbulo’s a man of action; Tiberius recognized that about him; Caligula feared it. So he sent him to the Eastern frontier and refused to allow him to come back to Rome. He knew Rome needed men like him on her frontiers, and that may have been the one thing that saved him. And do you know why?”

“No dominus.”

“Because once Corbulo was gone, Caligula forgot about him.”

In his youth, Sempronius was a staunch believer in the Principate and the divinity of Augustus. He still believed, sacrificing an ox every year on Augustus’s birthday. Through the sheer force of his will the man wrestled an Empire away from his enemies, Sempronius thought. And all the while they’d thought he was nothing more than a boy and dismissed him. He’d forced the Senate to acknowledge him as Consularis when he was nineteen — unprecedented. While the Senators debated on the legalities involved, men like Sempronius’s father — a man who chose the winning side out of loyalty to the gens because the Valerii had always been Clients of the Julii — forced the issue through at the point of his sword. Sempronius remained a firm believer in the Principate throughout his long career.

Born during the fourth Consulship of Augustus, by the time he’d reached the age of consent and sacrificed his first beard to the household gods at twenty-one, Sempronius knew any attempt to bring back the Republic would only cause more bloodshed and civil war. Had Augustus ceded the powers of the Principate to the Senate, Sempronius was certain Augustus and his family would have been the first victims of the New Order--along with the peace and security of the Empire. But he wondered if that was still true.

Or is it just because Claudius is Emperor?

He’d been just as hesitant as the next man had when the Praetorians proclaimed Claudius the Emperor. He kept telling himself that they’d simply replaced a madman with an idiot. He knew Rome would never survive politically as a Republic — not after all these years — but he also wondered how it could succeed with a man like Claudius at the helm--like a rudderless trireme lost at sea, he thought. If the Senate had the power to elect the Consulatis instead of having them appointed by Claudius, maybe the Empire could survive. Or maybe if the Senate had the power of Veto, instead of Claudius?

There are just too many things wrong with it and not enough time to fix it.

His veneration for the memory of Augustus led to a comprehensive disenfranchisement of the men who succeeded him. Did they really think to call themselves gods? Tiberius? The man became a degenerate recluse and left the city in the control of his Guards Commander Sejanus — the gods take him to the darkest Tartarus — while Gaius had proven himself insane.

“I’ve always thought of Claudius as a simpleton,” Sempronius said softly, and Josias looked at him in shock.

Sempronius smiled up at him and laughed.

“You worry too much, boy. I readily admit there’s no denying Claudius has turned out to be the best of the three; he’s proven himself a competent and able man when it comes to his foreign policy. In fact, he seems to enjoy hammering out treaties and meeting foreign ambassadors and the hostages they bring. And why not? Claudius treats them well. They’re well cared for and afforded a good Roman education. Herod Agrippa grew up in Rome and was a close friend of Claudius’s years before. Do you know of Herod Agrippa?”

“No, dominus.”

“For years he lived here as a hostage. He kept asking Tiberius to send him back to Judaea, but Tiberius always had one excuse or another, there being too must political unrest being the most handy. It’s just plain craftiness — using political hostages like that, I mean. By the time the hostages return home, they’re Romanized and eager to please the Emperor — no matter who the Emperor is. Claudius learned that from Augustus, but then, Tiberius kept Gaius hostage and look what kind of a monster he turned out to be.”

Sempronius turned his head and looked up at Josias. The young man was listening — he could see that — but he appeared wary, and apprehensive, as if what he was hearing might one day come back to haunt him. Sempronius supposed Josias was thinking he might have to testify against his dominus one day, and the only way a slave could testify was under torture. He never gave it another thought. At seventy-eight, Sempronius doubted if anyone wanted to hear what he had to say.

“If there’s one thing Claudius can be blamed for, it’s his neglect of Rome and the Senate. It’ll prove to be his undoing,” Sempronius said with a note of conviction in his voice. “Claudius has the undying belief in the abilities of his Freedmen. Narcissus, Pallas, Callistus — the lot of them!” he added with a swing of his cane. There was anger in his words; venom in is heart.

“They’ve fallen prey to their own corruption and greed, that’s what they’ve done. They’ve let themselves be influenced by political gains in the hopes of enriching themselves, which wouldn’t be a problem if not for their birth. The Empire’s become a conglomerate of multinationals, but as long as everyone thinks or believes in Roman superiority, Rome will succeed. Rome can’t hope to control the world and not expect to be influenced by it. All roads lead to Rome, they say, and it’s true. But it’s the corruptibility of the individual that lays at fault here; I know this because I’ve been corrupted.

“Men like Narcissus and Pallas, they’ve used their positions to advance themselves and earn riches beyond any man’s wildest dreams. But they’re Freedmen — a step up from being born a Slave, no doubt — but only a generation or two removed from it. A man’s grandfather could have fought in the great revolts of past generations, only to have his grandson grow to be one of the most influential and wealthy men in the world. It’s heady stuff for any man to consider. It’s just as well I’ve withdrawn my name from the lists again.”

“Yes, dominus,” Josias said softly, and Sempronius thought he detected a note of relief in the man’s voice.

He’d already retired from public life in Rome once, shortly after the fall of Sejanus; before Caligula killed his own grandfather and assumed the purple; before he went mad. Sempronius had moved out to the Campanian countryside with his grandson where’d they lived for almost eight years. He knew his two remaining sons would care for the gens, and he knew the Cornelii would always have a strong faction within the Senate as long as they made the censor’s list every year. He’d always be pater familias, so he knew he’d always have the last word.

But that doesn’t matter anymore.

He was planning to retire from the Senate a second time after the censors were chosen for the New Year. He was looking forward to a leisurely life in the country. As the pater familias of the Cornelii gens he was responsible for more than one hundred families spread out across the city — and though not all the families were rich, he had to ensure that they still made the censor's list and were able to keep their seats in the Senate. It had been this power base that guaranteed him the support he needed to serve as Consularis three times with Tiberius.

Now he planned on sitting in the warmth of the countryside and receiving those visitors who bothered making the trip out during his first three hours of the day. It was just as easy doling out new duties and sage advice from the country; that’s why he had scribes, he told himself. People don’t want to waste their time with travel when it’s just as easy to send a note. If he did get visitors, he knew it would be to endorse a marriage proposal, or guarantee a loan for some impoverished branch of the gens. With his days free, he’d spend his time tending to his flowers and fruits trees — perhaps imbibing in a little wine and poetry - —and serving out his allotted days in praise of the gods.

ddd he thought suddenly. Perhaps I’ve gone on too long?

He sometimes thought about opening his veins and making the long trip out to the Elysian Fields himself, wondering if it was something he should have done years ago. He wouldn’t be the first man his age to have simply given up on living. Sextus Papinius had chosen to end his life, he recalled, but he’d been old and feeble, his mind nearly gone Sempronius remembered, and he was no where close to that yet. He knew the gods were watching over him, and he was grateful to the lares for that because he’d already escaped one death sentence sent out to him.

Sempronius was a widower, his wife dying twenty years earlier in a fire on the Caelian hill, and he’d never remarried. There's no one that could have replaced her, he thought. He’d been one of those men whose love for his wife was overshadowed by events within the Empire, and he wished, too late, that he could have loved her more openly; that he could have expressed himself to her more clearly — for surely she was a woman of abounding love, he thought. Aemilia threw the doors of their home open and provided medical attention and supplies to several of the thousands of Romans crushed and mutilated in one of several catastrophes that occurred that year — and for the life of him, Sempronius couldn’t understand how the gods would let such tragedy befall a city dedicated to their glory. She’d spent endless days in prayer, offering sacrifices to the lares and at the Aesculapium — the god’s temple — endearing herself to the city and receiving the praise of Tiberius. Within two months she was dead.

They had seven children in their forty-two years together, but only three had staved off childhood — only to fall victim to the political madness of later years. He’d married her when he was sixteen, and she provided him with a proper Roman home. She’d been a doting mother and a loving wife. His one remaining heir was his grandson, Praetonius, his eldest son’s child, and on him Sempronius placed his hopes for the future.

Sempronius had taken Praetonius to the Campanian countryside without his son Marcus’s approval, knowing that his daughter-in-law agreed with him that a month in the country might do the ten year old boy a world of good. The political atmosphere in Rome was unstable. With Tiberius living in Capraea, Sejanus ruled the city in his name thinking to make it his own by using the Praetorian Guard to forcibly declare him as Imperator. It was a bold plan, but one doomed to failure — and Sempronius told Marcus he sat perched ready for a fall as one of Sejanus’s intimates.

It was something Sempronius never regretted — taking Praetonius to his villa in Campania — because Marcus, his wife and two daughters, were killed in mob violence brought about with the fall of Sejanus ten days later. If there were any regrets that haunted the old man, it was that he didn’t take the girls with him.

“I’ve lost other children,” he said quickly, as if to remind Josias in case he thought Sempronius might have forgotten. “There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t think of one child or another. Four daughters and three sons dead. All of their children — every one of them. Why do you think the gods persecute me so? I’ve always honoured them.”

Sempronius had determined to raise Praetonius as his own, and over the next eight years only made sporadic trips to Rome. He was still the pater familias, even though much of the family’s responsibility he’d shifted to his sons. He made certain they saw to it that family alliances stayed together — that the censor’s list was met — and that they attended to the Clients who once stood waiting on their father.

Sempronius requested that his name be taken from the Censor’s list of Curile Praetors, citing his age as reason enough. He was too old to lead armies into battle for the Consulatus, he said, although he’d always enjoyed war and warfare; there’s something about pitting yourself against the barbarian hordes. But he had to see to his grandson’s education. He’d have preferred to instruct the boy himself, of course — as his father had instructed him — but his patience had worn thin over the years and much of what he thought, or said, could have been taken out of context and reported as treasonous, libellous, and dangerous.

“My sons hated me,” he said with a laugh. “Did you know that? Almost as much as Praetonius did — or does. I don’t know if he still hates me, but he did. And do you know why?”

“No, dominus,” Josias said softly.

“It was when Gaius came to power. Caligula, if you will. He was such a beautiful child, did you know that? We loved him because he was his father’s son. His father was Germanicus you know.”

“Yes, dominus, and the world still grieves his loss.”

“And well it should,” he said. “Well it should. He used to wear those little boots his mother made for him. That’s what his name means, did you know that? ‘Little Boots?’ But such a beautiful child. After Tiberius died and we found out Gaius was the heir, there was a feeling in the city that things would change. Plus there was also Gemellus, Drusus’s boy, still a boy himself but closer by blood to Tiberius, as well as closer in his heart. Yes, we thought the gods were smiling on us at last. Tiberius was a despot, and Sejanus had taken it a step further, so how much worse could Gaius be? You know Praetonius’s family died in the riots that followed Sejanus’s fall, didn’t you?”

“Yes, dominus.”

“How old are you now?”

“I’m in my twenty-second year, dominus.”

“Yes, well, too young to remember Sejanus, and barely old enough to have understood what happened with Gaius. He was a benevolent ruler when he first came to power. The people loved him. A ruler needs the love of the people if he wants to amount to anything. Augustus understood that, and so did the divine Julius. The people, that’s what it’s all about, just like it says above the Senate doors — ‘The Senate and People of Rome.’ I was out in the countryside enjoying my retirement when Gaius came to power, so I didn’t have to worry about what I said or did — not that I did anything that might have been misconstrued, but that doesn’t really matter if someone wants to destroy you. I’ve destroyed a great many people in my day, and these things have a way of coming back on you in one way or another. But I’d heard that Gaius stood on top of the Capitoline and threw out hands full of coins to the people gathered below. Just threw it out until there wasn’t any more. Can you imagine what that would have been like? Slaves and Senators side by side fighting over money raining down on the streets.

“It was only a matter of time before he changed, I suppose. It must have been all those years he spent on Capraea with his grandfather. He killed Gemellus. He told the Senate Gemellus was plotting to overthrow him and he’d ordered his execution for treason. Who knows if it was true? I don’t suppose it matters anymore. And maybe he would have been the better choice, but he was still a boy. So many of Augustus’s heirs died young. He should have never adopted Tiberius, but he was Livia’s son and she was his wife, so, there you have it. Of course, he still had his own sons then and would have preferred leaving everything to Drusus, but the gods like to play by their own rules, and besides, Augustus wasn’t yet a god himself so there was nothing he could have done.”

The wind came again and Sempronius shuddered. He looked up and saw that he was in the shade of the apple trees and would have stood up and moved the chair into the sun, except that it was impossible to lift it with his injured arm. Josias stepped forward with the wrap.

“Are you cold, dominus?”

“It’s just a chill, boy. Just a chill. I don’t want the wrap, though. Move me into the sun.”

Josias bent down and picked up the chair with Sempronius and walked him further out into the garden.

“That’s good. Right here,” Sempronius said, stabbing at the ground with his cane.

“Perhaps I should put the wrap on your legs, and then if you get cold you can throw it around you shoulders?”

“Yes, I don’t see why not. And maybe some water. Get me some more water.”

“Yes, dominus,” he said, turning to bring the small table out and place it beside the chair.

Sempronius was silent for a moment, watching a murder of crows as it winged its way across the city’s hills. He thought maybe it was an omen — it could only be good if it is. He’d been taught to read the auspices by an old priest who claimed to be an Etruscan, and used to read the entrails of the sacrifices himself before going into battle. The gods are never wrong when it came to war, he thought.

“He had my sons put to death, you know,” Sempronius said at last, looking up at Josias with a squint.

Josias simply nodded, and Sempronius nodded as well before he turned to look out over the city again. The sky was a soft blue and the clouds along the horizon hung low, heavy with rain. He could feel it in his bones. A half moon sat above the clouds, pale and limpid.

“He had them killed even though they gave him everything they had. Their wives and children were killed as well. I thought them fools for making a gift of the family’s fortune, but Gaius had declared his divinity by then and squandered the money Tiberius left behind; it was only a matter of time before he turned on the gens. Some of the families never recovered. They’re still impoverished. With Marcus and his family already dead, I suppose I was thinking if that’s what it takes to survive in this day and age, so be it. But they hadn’t given him everything. They told me they invested with some of the other families and hid a fortune overseas. But to cement the deal, they wanted Praetonius to marry Lavinia. Did you know that?”

“No, dominus,” Josias said.

“No, I suppose not,” he said softly.

“But dominus, your grandson and the domina have been divorced for six years now.”

“Yes. They have, haven’t they?”

“It’s not my place to say anything, dominus.”

“No? No, I suppose it isn’t.”

“But haven’t the gods smiled on the Cornelii, dominus? Haven’t you returned to the Senate once again? Surely the censor’s have added your name to the lists.”

“They have, but that doesn’t mean the family is as wealthy as it was, it simply means that we can only afford the requirements one needs to sit in the Senate. I’m Princeps Senatus by virtue of age alone. The gods willing, I’ll retire to the countryside again and never have to come back here again.”

“You would abandon Rome, dominus?”

“I’m weary of Rome.”