Conn Iggulden - The Gates Of Rome

At last, he wept.

"Rome-the largest city in the world," Marcus said, shaking his head in wonder as they passed into the vast paved expanse of the forum. Great bronze statues gazed down on the small group as they walked their horses through the bustling pedestrians.

"You don't realize how big everything is until you get up close," Cabera replied, his usual confidence muted. The pyramids of Egypt seemed larger in his memory, but the people there looked always to the past with their tombs. Here, the great structures were for the living and he felt the optimism of it.

Alexandria too seemed awed, though in part it was at how much everything had changed in the five years since Gaius's father had bought her to work in his kitchens. She wondered if the man who had owned her mother was somewhere still in the city and shuddered as she recalled his face, remembering how he had treated them. Her mother had never been free and died a slave after a fever struck her and several others in the slave pens beneath one of the sale houses. Such plagues were fairly common and the big slave auctions were accustomed to passing over a few bodies each month, accepting a few coins for them from the ash makers. She remembered, though, and the waxen stillness of her mother still pressed against her arms in dreams. She shuddered again and shook her head as if to clear it.

I will not die a slave, she thought to herself, and Cabera turned to look at her, almost as if he had heard the thought. He nodded and winked and she smiled at him. She had liked him from the first. He was another who didn't quite fit, wherever he found himself.

I will learn useful skills and make things to sell, and I will buy myself free, she thought, knowing the glory of the forum was affecting her and not caring. Who wouldn't dream in a place that looked as if it had been built by gods? You could see how to make a hut, just by looking at it, but who could imagine these columns being raised? Everything was bright and untouched by the filth she remembered, narrow dirty streets and ugly men hiring her mother by the hour, with the money going to the owner of the house.

There were no beggars or whores in the forum, only well-dressed, clean men and women, buying, selling, eating, drinking, arguing politics and money. On each side, the eye was filled with gargantuan temples in rich stone; huge columns with their heads and feet gilded; great arches erected for military triumphs. Truly, this was the beating heart of empire. Each of them could feel it. There was a confidence here, an arrogance. While most of the world scrubbed in the dirt still, these people had power and astonishing wealth.

The only sign of the recent troubles was the grim presence of legionaries standing to attention at every corner, watching the crowds with cold eyes.

"It is meant to make a man feel small," Renius muttered.

"But it does not!" Cabera countered, gaping around him. "It makes me feel proud that man can build this. What a race are we!"

Alexandria nodded silently. It showed that anything could be achieved-even, perhaps, freedom.

Small boys advertised their masters' wares from hundreds of tiny shops along the edges: barbers, carpenters, butchers, stonemasons, gold and silver jewelers, potters, mosaic makers, rug weavers-the list was endless, the colors and noises a blur.

"That is the temple of Jupiter, on the Capitoline hill. We will come back and make a sacrifice when we have seen your uncle Marius," Tubruk said, relaxed and smiling in the morning sun. He was leading the group and raised his arm to halt them.

"Wait. That man's path will cross ours. He is a senior magistrate and must not be hindered."

The others drew up and halted.

"How do you know who he is?" Marcus asked.

"Do you see the man beside him? He is a lictor, a special attendant. Do you see that bundle on his shoulder? Those are wooden rods for scourging and a small axe for beheading. If the magistrate were bumped by one of our horses, say, he could order a death on the spot. He needs neither witnesses nor laws to apply. Best to avoid them completely, if we can."

In silence, they all watched the man and his attendant as they crossed the plaza, seemingly unaware of the attention.

"A dangerous place for the ignorant," Cabera whispered.

"Everywhere is, in my experience," Renius grunted from the back.

Past the forum, they entered lesser streets that abandoned the straight lines of the main ones. Here, there were fewer names on the intersections. The houses were often four or even five stories high, and Cabera, in particular, gaped at these.

"The view they must have! Are they very expensive, these top houses?"

"Apartments, they are called, and no, they are the cheapest," said Tubruk. "They have no running water at that height and are in great danger from fire. If one starts on the bottom floor, those at the top rarely get out. You see how the windows are so small? That is to keep out the sun and rain, but it also means you can't jump from them."

They wound their way through the heavy stepping-stones that crossed the sunken roads at intervals. Without these, the fastidious pedestrians would have had to step down into the slippery muck left by horses and donkeys. The wheels of carts had to be set a regulation width apart so that they could cross in the gaps, and Cabera nodded to himself as he watched the process.

"This is a well-planned city," he said. "I have never seen another like it."

Tubruk laughed. "There is no other like it. They say Carthage was of similar beauty, but we destroyed that more than fifty years ago, sowing the land with salt so that it could never again rise in opposition to us."

"You speak almost as if a city is a living thing," Cabera replied.

"Is it not? You can feel the life here. I could feel her welcoming me as I came through the gate. This is my home, as no other house can be."

Gaius too could feel the life around him. Although he had never lived within the walls, it was his home as it was Tubruk's-maybe more so, as he was nobilitas, born free and of the greatest people in the world. My people built this, he thought. My ancestors put their hands on these stones and walked these streets. My father may have stood at that corner, and my mother could have grown up in one of the gardens I can glimpse off the main street.

His grip on the reins relaxed and Cabera looked at him and smiled, sensing the change of mood.

"We are nearly there," Tubruk said. "At least Marius's house is well away from the smell of dung in the streets. I don't miss that, I can assure you."

They turned off the busy road and walked the horses up a steep hill and a quieter, cleaner street.

"These are the houses of the rich and powerful. They have estates in the country but mansions here, where they entertain and plot for more power and even more wealth," Tubruk continued, his voice blank enough of emotion to make Gaius glance at him. The houses were sealed from the public gaze by iron gates, taller than a man. Each was numbered and entered by a small door for those on foot. Tubruk explained that this was only the least part; the buildings went back and back, from private baths to stables to great courtyards, all hidden from the vulgar plebeians.

"They set great store by privacy in Rome," Tubruk said. "Perhaps it is part of living in a city. Certainly, if you were just to drop in at a country estate, you would be unlikely to cause offense, but here you must make appointments and announce yourself and wait and wait until they are ready to receive you. This is the one. I will tell the gatekeeper we have arrived."

"I'll leave you here then," Renius said. "I must go to my own house and see if it has been damaged in the rioting."