Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

The barber men produced his scissors — a very fine pair which Lucius Claudius had given to me as a gift and which I had passed on to Eco when I left for the countryside. The barber laid a rough cloth over Meto's shoulders and set about shearing him until he looked quite respectable and remarkably grown-up, with his ears and the back of his neck showing. The barber then treated his hair with a scented oil and was done with him.

I allowed the man to trim my hair and beard a bit, but refused to let him touch me with his razor. Then it was Eco's turn.

"This is your chance,' I said, 'to get rid of that absurd haircut and that eccentric beard.'

Eco laughed. 'Absurd and eccentric? Papa, look around you.'

I did — and saw more than a few young men of Eco's age affecting the same style that he had adopted along with Marcus Caelius — their hair shorn short on the sides but left long on top, their beards trimmed and blocked into a thin strap across the jaw.

'You know where the fashion originated?'

'Yes, with Catilina. Or so you told me, and I've heard others say the same. Catilina and his circle set all the trends.'

'Well, did you know that Catilina has abandoned that particular fashion?'

'Really?'

'It happened under my very roof One night he had the thin beard, and the next morning—' I drew my finger across my jaw. 'All gone.'

'Cleanshaven?'

'As smooth as Meto's cheeks. Isn't that so, Meto?' Meto, still stroking his face to experience the novelty of it, nodded in confirmation.

'You see,' I said, 'it's Meto who has the fashionable look now. Perhaps you should do the same.'

'But everyone else is still wearing a chin-strap beard…' 'For a while.' I shrugged.

Eco reached out and the barber handed him a mirror. He studied his face and ran his forefinger and thumb over the thin black line of his beard. 'Do you really think I should get rid of it?'

'Catilina did,' I said, and shrugged as if I really had no opinion at all.

'Menenia never really cared for the beard anyway,' Eco said afterwards, stroking his jaw and studying himself in the polished copper mirror held up by his barber. He tapped at his chin and winced a bit; where the hair grew thickest the barber had resorted to tweezers to pluck him smooth. Eco had borne the ordeal without flinching. The barber, I suspect, had rather enjoyed it. By inflicting such tiny discomforts, slaves are occasionally able to vent their frustration against their masters.

‘I thought you said Menenia liked the beard,' I said, to needle Eco a bit.

'Shell like me even more without it, I'm sure.'

And she did. To judge from the look in her eyes and in Eco's when we rejoined the women in the vestibule, one might have thought they had been parted for months, not moments. But such is the first blush of passion. As for Meto, Bethesda touched his cheek and sighed, as if she could really tell a difference where the razor had passed. Diana, with the brutal frankness of a child, insisted that she could see no change at all. Menenia again took charge of the situation by proposing that Diana ride home in the Utter with her, a suggestion to which Diana assented at once. Menenia had put up her long hair in a coil held together with combs inlaid with bits of shell, in very much the same fashion as Bethesda's — though Menenia's combs, I noticed, were not quite so ornate. I admired her tactfulness more and more.

Clean and refreshed, we arrived back at the house on the Esquiline to find that preparations were almost complete. A sundial down on the Subura Way had shown the time to be almost noon; the first guests would arrive soon. It was time for Meto to put on his toga.

The donning of the toga is no simple matter, even for advocates and politicians like Cicero, who wear them almost every day. What seems so simple in its unfolded state — a very wide piece of thin white wool, cut into a roughly oblong shape — becomes devilishly intractable and takes on a life of its own when one attempts to make it into a respectable-looking toga. That, at least, is my experience. Somehow the thing must be made to cross the chest, drape over the shoulder, and lie across one arm. The precise placement of the numerous folds and the way they hang are of supreme importance, or else a man ends up looking as if he simply left the house wearing a common bed sheet — an absurd appearance sure to elicit the scorn of his neighbours.

Fortunately, as for everything else of importance, Romans have slaves to take care of the problem of donning the toga. (Indeed, there was a joke common when I was a young man in Alexandria that the reason the Romans were bent on conquering the world was to supply themselves with slaves to help them dress.) The same slave who groomed and barbered Eco also served as his dresser. Here, as with the tweezers, was an opportunity for a slave to take petty revenge on his master, arranging for him to leave the house with the hem of his toga dragging or some fold tenuously placed so that it would later lose its shape. But Eco's dresser was quite competent, and more than a little patient as he helped the three of us into our togas, beginning with his master, then myself) and finally Meto.

Eco had purchased Meto's toga from a fine shop at the foot of the Palatine. It took two attempts to get him into it, and quite a bit of fussing with the folds, but at last Meto stood before us perfectly draped in his first manly toga.

'How do I look?' he said.

'Splendid!' said Eco.

'Papa?'

I hesitated to speak, because I felt a catch in my throat. 'You look—' I began to say, then had to clear my throat. How fine he looked! He had been a beautiful boy; he would be a handsome man, and in that moment one could see both together, past and future at once. His hair looked very black and his skin very smooth against the white wool; the colour made him appear to be wrapped in purity. At the same time the authority and anonymity of the toga itself lent him an air of dignity and manliness beyond his years. I had told him last night that he could put his years of slavery behind him forever, that he need never worry about his unseemly origins again. Now I believed it myself.

'I am proud, Meto. Very proud.'

He walked towards me and would have hugged me, I think, but the drapes of cloth over his left arm constrained him. He looked confounded for a moment, then laughed and turned around, realizing that moving comfortably in a toga was a skill he would have to master. 'How on earth do I go to the privy with all this on?' he asked, grinning.

'I shall show you that when the need arises,' I said, and sighed in mock weariness. 'Ah, the duties of fatherhood!'

XVII

Out in the garden, the guests had begun to arrive. The sun was well up, and the filtered yellow light through the gauzy canopy cast a warm glow over the courtyard and into the hallways and rooms around it. Dishes with all sorts of delicacies had been placed on the tables, and the couches were disposed in informal arrangements, so that the guests could feed themselves and gather as they wished, rather than reclining and being served a succession of courses. This seemed rather chaotic and perhaps even a bit ungracious to me, but Eco assured me it was the new fashion.

'And like your beard, I suspect it shall come and go,' I said under my breath.

As always with such gatherings, at first there seemed to be only a handful of guests, and then suddenly the garden was full of them, the men in their togas, the women in multicoloured stolas. The soft murmur of their conversation filled the air. Their various perfumes and unguents mingled with the floral scents of the garden and the delectable odours of the roasted figpeckers and stuffed pigeons that kept arriving on trays from the kitchen.

I made my way through the throng, stopping to speak with neighbours and clients I had not seen in years, and at last found Eco and pulled him aside. 'Did you invite all these people?' I whispered.