John Williams - Augustus

"Let me die," he said, "in my own country, which I have often saved."

It is known that his slaves were ready to fight for him with bravery and loyalty: but he ordered them to set down the litter, and to suffer quietly the hard necessity of fate. As he leaned from the litter and kept his neck still for the purpose, his head was struck off. But that did not satisfy the brutality of the soldiers: they cut off his hands, too, reviling them for having written against Antonius. So the head was brought to Antonius and by his order set between the two hands on the rostrum where he had been heard as consul and as consular, where in that very year his eloquent invectives against Antonius had commanded unprecedented admiration. Men were scarcely able to raise their tearful eyes and look upon the mangled remains of their countryman.

I. Letters: Strabo of Amasia to Nicolaus of Damascus, from Rome (43 B.C.)

My dear Nicolaus, I send you greetings, as does our old friend and tutor, Tyrannion. I send you greetings from Rome, where I arrived only last week, after a long and most wearying journey -from Alexandria, by way of Corinth; by sail and by oar; by cart, wagon, and horseback; and sometimes even on foot, staggering beneath the weight of my books. One looks at maps, and does not truly apprehend the extent and variety of the world. It is a new sort of education, the gaining of which does not require a master. Indeed, if one travels enough, the pupil may become the master; our Tyrannion, so learned in all things, has been at some pains to question me about what I have seen during my travels.

I am staying with Tyrannion in one of a little group of cottages on a hill overlooking the city. It is a sort of colony, I suppose; several established teachers (one does not call them philosophers in Rome, where philosophy is somewhat suspect) live here, and a few younger scholars who, like myself, have been invited to live and study with their former masters.

I was surprised when Tyrannion brought me here, so far away from the city; and I was even more surprised when he explained the reason. It seems that the public library in Rome is worse than useless; an incredibly small collection, often badly copied, and as many books in this dreadful Latin tongue as in our own Greek! But Tyrannion assures me that whatever texts I may need are available, though in private collections. One of his friends, who lives here with us, is that Athenodorus of Tarsus of whom we heard so much at Alexandria; he has, Tyrannion assures me, access to the best private collections in the city, to which we wandering scholars always are welcome.

Of this Athenodorus I must say a few words. He is a most impressive man. He is only a few years older than Tyrannion- perhaps in his middle fifties-but he gives one the impression that he has the wisdom of all the ages somehow within his power. He is aloof and hard, but not unkind; he speaks seldom, and never engages in those playful debates with which the rest of us amuse ourselves; and we seem to follow him, though he does not lead. It is said that he has powerful friends, though he never drops a name; and his personage is such that we hardly dare to discuss such matters, even out of his presence. Yet for all his power in the world and of the mind, there is a sadness within him, the source of which I cannot discover. I have resolved to talk to him, despite my trepidation, and to learn what I may.

Indeed, you will be getting these letters through his auspices; he has access to the diplomatic pouch that goes weekly to Damascus, and he has let me know that he will have these letters included.

Thus, my dear Nicolaus, begins my adventure in the world. According to my promise, I shall write you regularly, sharing whatever new learning I get. I regret that you could not come with me, and I hope that the family affairs that keep you in Damascus soon are solved, and that you can join me in this strange new world.

You must think me a bad friend and a worse philosopher; I am not the former, but I may be on my way to becoming the latter. I had resolved to write you every week-and it is nearly a month since I have put pen to paper.

But this is the most extraordinary of cities, and it threatens to engulf even the strongest of minds. Days tumble after each other in a frenzy such as neither of us could have imagined during our quiet years of study together in the calm of Alexandria. I wonder if, in the balm and somnolence of your beloved Damascus, you can even conceive the quality that I am trying to convey to you.

With some frequency I am struck by the suspicion (perhaps it is only a feeling) that we are too complacent in our Greek pride of history and language, and that we too easily assume a superiority to the "barbarians" of the West who are pleased to call themselves our masters. (I am, you see, becoming somewhat less the philosopher and somewhat more the man of the world.) Our provinces have their charm and culture, no doubt; but there is a kind of vitality here in Rome that a year ago I could not have been persuaded was even remotely attractive. A year ago, I had only heard of Rome; now I have seen it; and at this moment I am not sure that I will ever return to the East, or to my native Pontus.

Imagine, if you will, a city which occupies perhaps half the area of that Alexandria where we studied as boys-and then think ofthat same city containing within its precincts more than twice the number of people that crowded Alexandria. That is the Rome that I live in now-a city of nearly a million people, I have been told. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. They come here from all over the world-black men from the burning sands of Africa, pale blonds from the frozen north, and every shade between. And such a polyglot of tongues! Yet everyone speaks a little Latin or a little Greek, so that no one need feel a stranger.

And how they crowd themselves together, these Romans. Beyond the walls of the city lies some of the most beautiful countryside that you can imagine; yet the people huddle together here like fish trapped in a net and struggle through narrow, winding little streets that run senselessly, mile after mile, through the city. During the daylight hours, these streets-all of them-are literally choked with people; and the noise and stench are incredible. A few months before his death, the great Julius Caesar decreed that only in the dark hours between dusk and dawn might wagons and carts and beasts of burden be allowed in the city; one wonders what it must have been like before that decree, when horses and oxen and goods-wagons of all descriptions mingled with the people on these impossible streets.

Thus the ordinary Roman who lives in the city proper must never have any sleep. For the noise of the day becomes the din of the night, as drovers curse their horses and oxen, and the great wooden carts groan and clatter over the cobblestones.

No one ventures out alone after dark, except those tradespeople who must and the very rich who can afford a bodyguard; even on moonlit nights the streets are pitch dark, since the rickety tenements are built so high that it is impossible for even a vagrant ray of moonlight to find its way down into the streets. And the streets are filled with the desperate poor who would rob you and cut your throat for the clothes you wear and the little silver you might carry with you.

Yet those who live in these towering ramshackle buildings are little safer than those who would wander the streets at night; for they live in constant danger of fire. At night, in the safety of my hillside cottage, I can see in the distance the fires break out like flowers blooming in the darkness, and hear the distant shouts of fear or agony. There are fire brigades, to be sure; but they are uniformly corrupt and too few to accomplish much good.