Ashes Book III and Interlude

By Theodore Irvin Silar

Ancient Roman slave-catcher, Aries, returns from a long pursuit to find that his anticipated reward has disappeared, his father, Titus Pomponius Basso, successful chariot-horse trainer in the Circus Maximus, has been falsely convicted of witchcraft and sold into slavery on a landed Etrurian estate, and his grandmother, Felicia, has gone into hiding in an attic deep in the slums of Rome, vowing to devote her life to the cause of the liberation of all who languish in chains. Rescue and vengeance, however, Aries finds, carry a price—learning the truth about his family’s origins.

In a comic interlude, an obsessed physician causes himself immense trouble trying to raise the money to buy and ravish a slave-girl. The slave-girl’s beloved, a female gladiator, struggles mightily to thwart him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theodore Irvin Silar
• Release date: Jan 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370561896

Theodore Irvin Silar

Among other pursuits, Theodore Irvin Silar has served variously in the capacities of bricklayer, auto worker, accountant, cab driver, teacher, historian, musician, composer, graphic artist, inventor, and writer. Holder of a Ph.D. in English Literature from Lehigh University, he leads an interesting intellectual life.

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Ashes Book III and Interlude

A Novel of the Poor of Ancient Rome

Theodore Irvin Silar

Copyright 2016 Theodore Irvin Silar

Published by Theodore Irvin Silar at Smashwords

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Caput I ♦ Narnia to Rome

Caput II ♦ Etruria

Caput III ♦ Etruria to Rome

Caput IV ♦ Vindictae

Caput V ♦ Roman Tables

INTERLUDE

Caput I ♦ Abdias

Caput II ♦ Tribunal

Caput III ♦ Semiramis

Caput IV ♦ Dionysius Apollonius

Caput V ♦ Collegium Tonsorum

Caput VI ♦ Venalicius

Caput VII ♦ Melissa and Mutillus

Caput VIII ♦ Collegium Tonsorum

Caput IX ♦ P. Decius Mus

Caput X ♦ Domus Dionysius Apollonius

Caput XI ♦ Flagitatio

Caput XII ♦ Popina to Domus Dionysius Apollonius

Caput XIII ♦ Auster

Caput XIV ♦ Popina to Domus Dionysius Apollonius and Back

Caput XV ♦ Popina to Domus Dionysius Apollonius

Caput XVI ♦ Domus Mus

Caput XVII ♦ Forum Cupidinis

Personae

Glossarium

About the Author

Other Works by the Same Author

Connect with the Author

Incipit Liber Tertius

Caput I ♦ Narnia to Rome

Aries and Syriaticus sat on the ground beside the Via Flaminia, their backs against a towering oak tree, crunching old bread and drinking from wineskins before a roaring campfire. Two inexplicably relocated paving stones peered from amongst the weeds and cypress saplings nearby. The gaps from whence the stones had long ago been prised still yawned. The mournful cries of two nightingales drifted out of the darkness beyond. The fugitivarii were not happy.

It seemed that Aqbar, the slave they had had transported back to his master in Umbrian Narnia at the commencement of their long southern anabasis and katabasis had been steadily doing better, secure in the certainty that, though he himself was apparently doomed to abject, humiliatingly pampered captivity, his brothers were on their way to freedom and the Carthaginian homeland. Reunion with his brothers, far from gladdening, had devastated him. Precipitously, he had pined away, refusing food and drink despite his brothers’ best efforts to hearten him with ever more fanciful schemes of ever more foolproof escapes. He had expended his last breath the day of the very banquet at which the three brothers were to be freed. Moments after his death, the surviving brothers had lept hand-in-hand from the villa’s beautiful portico to their deaths. Their master’s penchant for decorum had undone him, for he had kept his intentions of manumission severely secret, in the hope that he might for once in his life see shining stars of joy, love, and gratitude dawning in his unsuspecting cynosures’ eyes.

♦

In the absence of the abjectly inconsolable dominus, Lucianus had been forced to sit across a table from and negotiate with the absent dominus’s vilicus, a diminutive, square, black-haired, broad-faced, matter-of-fact man as ill-disposed towards magnanimity as his master had been magnanimous.

Publius Silvius Priscus Niger is elsewhere, answered the vilicus to Lucianus’s question about his master’s whereabouts.

Obviously. Not to be vexatious, but would you care to descend to particulars? If you will pardon my audacity.

On religious peregrinatio.

Vita hominis peregrinatio. Surely you mean wandering the hills and fields as mad as the Proetides?

I meant the words I spoke.

On pilgrimage. Non dubium. Somehow I do doubt, however, that you will be dilating any further upon this little matter of whereabouts any time soon.

I am not at liberty to dilate.

I stupefy myself with my command of the subject of human nature. It is a gift. . . .

Lucianus admired the sumptuous wall hangings, the multi-colored marble floor, the smoke-grain pattern in the gilded citrus-wood table.

You, I presume, then, are his vicarius, duly authorized, with all appropriate pomp, to carry out, in totum and in singulorum, his intentions with regards to my colleagues and myself.

Authorized, insofar as said intentions are stipulated.

Venia vestra, in my senility I fear I have misplaced your name along with my comb and my walking stick.

Tithonus.

Publius Silvius Priscus Niger Tithonus, I presume, by Hercules.

You may presume it.

I am glad to make your acquaintance, bone Publie.

Call me by my cognomen. I am a slave.

Tithonus. A virile cognomen. I also am of Greek extraction.

I am Armenian.

Greek, Armenian, what is the difference? When Mithridates was rampant, we rode side by side. Illud erat vivere!

Tithonus sat mute. Lucianus leaned forward, smiling unctuously.

Permit me to speak to you as one urbanus of Eastern origin to another, good Tithonus. Gentlemen, as you know, friends, comrades, men united on great emprises, have understandings. A glance, a wink, a handshake, and the deed is done. I had such an understanding with the good and pious Publius Silvius Priscus Niger. A man such as yourself might have such an understanding with a man such as myself. . . . There is the little matter of a praemium.

The praemium is fixed in the pact you signed. It obtains on the return of slaves unharmed. They have been harmed.

Surely you cannot hold us responsible for matters out of our hands. We relinquished them to you sanus et robustus. Had they died of old age would you have sued us for restitution?

They have been harmed.

Lucianus made sure that Tithonus watched his smile fade before he leaned back, whispering, Perhaps sequestered away out here in your quaint rustic wasteland, puerule, you are ignorant of who I am and what, persuasion I can bring to bear.

Kill me then, snapped Tithonus, unmoved. My life is worth nothing anyway. Do you think I enjoy this? Kill me. Still you will not get your praemium.

Lucianus changed tactics with the speed of thought.

But an additional praemium is simply implied. Do you not understand my meaning? There are unwritten customs. You, dear Publie, could be their beneficiary.

Sequestered away here in my rustic wasteland, I have remained ignorant of such customs.

I could throw you to the most ferocious advocati in Rome and see how you fare, you black-hearted pygmy.

You signed a pact with our familia. Sequestered in a safe place, by the way. The witnesses are all in the familia’s camp. They are also sequestered in a safe place. Are you champing at the bit to face a Roman jury when a train of mourners bears into the Forum to be submitted as evidence the catafalque upon which lie the deceased slaves’ embalmed corpses? Our Egyptians are masters, you know. And beauty, as I am sure you are aware, even dead, vanquishes age.

By sheer perseverance, Lucianus eventually pried a small extra portion out of the vilicus by citing an expenses clause, enabling him to square accounts with Aries and Syriaticus at just above the level where they might revolt.

Follow at your own pace, he had instructed them, climbing into an essedum, whip in hand. A month of overdue business awaits me in Rome.

Are you not going to do something about this, this fraudator? hissed Syriaticus. Or have we sown the sand again?

Festum fatorum favet fervescere, my impetuous Syrian firebrand, replied Lucianus, his smile returning. Time shall be his judge, he recited, cracking his whip and trotting off, a shower of pebbles kicked up by the hooves of his matched pair of roans.

♦

Lucianus’s platitudes had done little to assuage them, and they were in no hurry to return to Rome. Having halted their progress earlier than was their wont, they had spent the evening draining their wineskins dry beneath the oak. Tired of the world and all its perfidy, they piled the fire even higher, rolled over, and fell asleep in their cloaks where they were.

Both were haunted with nightmares that night. Each of them at different times was awakened by the agitated cries of the other. Even the horses were restless, snorting and whinnying and shying throughout the night.

Aries awoke the next morning with a palpitating headache, to the acrid smell of ashes steaming with Syriaticus’s piss. A strong wind had set the oak boughs above them to creaking.

I am glad to be awake, he said, rubbing his temples. Last night I dreamed I was the fugitive, pro Iuppiter. Packs of umbrae were pursuing me like hounds.

I had your old dream, Syriaticus spat, and eyed Aries as if Aries were to blame. The endless twilit road. This place is cursed. I never dream.

They hastily packed up and fled, galloping miles before slowing their horses to a traveling pace.

A few days later, they came at twilight upon the grove of fruit trees at the first milestone before Rome on the Via Flaminia, where the festival of Anna Perenna was underway. The full moon of the new year was rising, the evening breeze was unseasonably mild, they were young, their money-pouches were full, and nothing of significance awaited them in the city, and so they joined in. The auspices were more than propitious, portentous. The sacrifices came off impeccably. After so long, for Aries and Syriaticus to be once more amongst the men and women of Rome was a welcome delight, and the company drank the night away, as was the custom, vying to out-wish one another longevity.

No! A long life to you!

No! An even longer life to you!

The next morning, Aries broke off coitus with a plump Phrygian meretrix to piss. Exiting the tent where at some point in the night he had come to rest, he was confronted with a boy holding his horse by the halter and gesturing for him to mount. In response to the question in Aries’s eyes, the boy put his finger to his lips and shook his head. The urgency in the boy’s manner spoke persuasively enough. Narrowing his eyes, Aries flashed the secret hand signal of his old grex, and the boy grimly gave the countersign. At least now Aries knew in whose hands he was putting himself. He pissed furiously against the trunk of a pine, lept onto the horse, and they set out.

Running evenly beside the horse, the boy looked like any other attendant seeing a drunken master home from revels. Dawn broke, and the city gates opened as if for their benefit. On the inside, another boy took over. When Aries made as if to remonstrate, the dread on the boy’s face, and the anxious way he peered about him, induced Aries to desist. Through the Forum and past the Circus they trotted, hardly noticed by knots of yawning clients queuing for their daily salutatio, the scent of fresh-baked bread wafting from bakery doors. At the foot of the Aventine, another boy took over and led Aries’s horse up the hill through narrow back streets tremulous with hanging laundry to the doors of a temple.

♦

Oh, Glorious Mother Libertas, murmured Felicia too softly for anyone to overhear, her arms spread, gazing up at the gilded image of a richly-adorned matron, Font of Hope, Source of Light, or however you wish to style yourself, man or woman, one or many, you who know my plight best, who see the way ahead where all is darkness to me, as it is your right, I vow unto you that I shall consecrate myself to your service as long as I shall live. I vow to consecrate every moment of my life to delivering every living thing languishing in vincula, the caged bird, the kicked dog, the dishonored wife, the suffering ancient praying for death, the lovesick swain praying for antidote, the tormented ancilla, the captive whore, the forlorn in the mines, and every slave who ever dreamed of a home she never had, if only you will deliver my son.

On the plinth beneath the goddess’s image, Felicia placed a tiny ceramic figure, lovingly crafted and painted, of a smiling, naked, black-haired boy, arms akimbo.

The sight of the figure made her smile, and so she was smiling when she turned to see her grandson. Aries was standing stock-still, aghast at her ragged hair and torn clothes. She put her finger to his lips before he could speak, shook her head, and, taking his hand and kissing it, for he was too tall for her to kiss his cheek, she conducted him out of the candlelit dimness into the sunshine.

Aries lifted Felicia onto his horse and took the bridle himself. Their urchin lares, still lurking, were even more circumspect with the two of them together. One of them would race to a corner, survey the prospect, and beckon them forward. Another followed, equally as vigilant. Others appeared like surfacing frogs and beckoned them this way and that, until they were deep in the most crowded and squalid part of the Subura, a place where even legionaries feared to tread.

Had they been paying attention, they would have sensed a strangeness in the air of Rome. One moment a back street would be eerie with silence, the next, alive with lone running men. Small groups of whispering people would point at them as they approached and rush inside. Everywhere they went they were accompanied by the sound of the slamming shut and barring of doors. Furtive eyes peered from between shutters and from behind curtained balconies. Turning a corner to skirt the Palatine, they had almost been run over by three careering plaustri, piled high with luxuries and silk-wrapped women, apparently hastening for the nearest way out of the city. As suddenly as a lightning stroke, all Rome was in a fever. Some politician had done something, they gathered. But politicians were always doing things. Aries and Felicia were intent on more important matters.

♦

Neme sewed like a watermill all the while they talked. They were in the back room of an apartment, the rest of which was pullulating