“What kind of a way is that to talk? You’re not God, Gracchus.”
“No. No, not even distantly related to any of the gods, as some of our better born halfwits claim. Not at all. But I’m as close to God as anyone has ever been in Roman politics, and I’m close enough to frame you, Flavius, and to see you on the cross. And if any of this gets out, I will. Mark my word.”
IV
On the afternoon of the next day, Gracchus set out to go to the baths, an act of political expediency which was not without its rewards. More and more, the public baths were becoming political and social centers; senators and magistrates were made and unmade at the baths; millions of
sesterces
changed hands at the baths; they were stock exchange and political club combined, and to be seen at the baths at certain intervals was almost an obligation. There were three large and well-fitted bath houses which Gracchus patronized, the
Clotum
, which was rather new, and two others which were older but still elegant. While these were not free to all citizens, the admission price was exceedingly modest, not enough to keep even a poor man out; although a certain social status kept the rabble away from these particular places.
In good weather, all Rome was out of doors in the afternoon. Even the dwindling number of Roman workers were through by an hour past noon; longer hours would have made it easier not to work, to live by the dole. The afternoon was the time of the free man; the slaves labored; the Roman citizen took his ease.
Gracchus, however, had little interest in the games, and only occasionally in the races. He was somewhat different from his colleagues in that he could not see the drama of two naked men, each with a knife in his hand, who cut away at each other until they were horrors of torn flesh and pouring blood. Nor did he see the pleasure in watching a man squirm in a fish net, while his eyes were torn out and his belly perforated by a long fish fork. Once in a while he enjoyed an afternoon at the jockey races, but chariot races, which were becoming more and more a physical contest between the opposing drivers, with an audience never satisfied unless a head was broken or a body smashed, only bored him. It was not that he was more soft-hearted than the next man; it was simply that he hated stupidity, and to him these proceedings were exceedingly stupid. The theatre he did not understand at all, and he went only to formal openings where he had to appear as a city functionary.
His greatest pleasure in the afternoon was to walk to the baths through the dirty, twisting, endless streets of his beloved city. Rome, he had always loved; Rome was his mother. As he put it to himself, his mother was a whore, and he was cast out of his mother’s womb into the filth of the street. But until now, he had loved this mother, and this mother had loved him. How could he explain to Cicero what he had meant by retelling that old legend? Cicero would have to love Rome first, and such love would have to be connected with a knowledge of how vile and evil this city was.
That vileness and evil was something Gracchus understood. “Why should I go to the theatre?” he once asked one of his intellectual friends. “Can they put on a stage what I see on the streets of the
urbs?
”
It was something to see, all right. Today, he did it almost ceremonially. As if he asked himself, “How often shall I do this again, ever?”
He went first to the day market, where the stalls would do business for another hour before they closed down. You had to force your way through the shrilling women to walk on this street, but he steered gently through, vast in his white toga, like a great warship under a slight wind. Here was what Rome ate. Here were mounds of cheese, round cheeses, square cheeses, black cheeses, red cheeses, white cheeses. Here were hung the smoked fish and geese, the slaughtered pigs, the sides of beef, the tender lambs, the eels and the herrings salting in their barrels, the barrels of pickles, smelling so pungent and good. Here were crocks of oil from the Sabine hills and from Picenum, the marvelous Gaulish hams, the tripe hanging everywhere, the big wooden bowls of chitterlings.
He lingered at the vegetable stands. There was a time, within his memory, when every peasant for twenty miles around had his own truck garden, and when all Rome ate of the wonderful variety of vegetables that were at the market. But now the
latifundia
was interested only in cash crop, whether it was wheat or barley, and the price of vegetables had gone far beyond the reach of any but the ruling class. Still, one saw piles of radishes and turnips, lettuce in five varieties, lentils and beans and cabbage, squash and melons and asparagus, truffles and mushrooms—a great, colorful variety of vegetables, and fruit too, piles of African lemons and pomegranates, the yellow and red so bright and lush, apples and pears and figs, dates from Arabia, grapes and melons from Egypt.
“What a pleasure just to look at it!” he thought.
He walked on, passing through the edge of the Jewish quarter of the city. He had dealt with the Jews occasionally, as a politician. What a strange people they were—so long in Rome and still speaking their own tongue and worshipping their own God and still bearded and wearing those long striped cloaks of theirs, no matter what the weather! One never saw them at the games or the races; one never saw them in court. One hardly saw them at all, except in their own quarter. Polite, proud, aloof—“They will drain more blood out of Rome in their own good time than Carthage did,” Gracchus often thought when he saw them.
He came to a through street, and stood to one side against a shopfront as a City Cohort tramped by, drums beating and fifes blowing. As always, children ran after them, and as always, he could just glance from side to side and see, watching the parade, an Arab, a Syrian, a Sabaean.
He walked to where the towering tenements gave way to gardens and light, marble porticos and cool archways and broad avenues. In the Forum, the dice throwers were already at it. Gambling was like a disease in Rome, and dice was the worst brand of the disease. Every afternoon there were clusters of gamblers all over the Forum, rolling the dice, pleading with the dice, talking to the dice. They had a language all of their own. Loafers, off-duty soldiers, and the fourteen and fifteen year old girls who were everywhere in the city, doing nothing, bred in dirty little flats, living, as their parents had lived, on the dole, and making a little more out of indifferent prostitution. He had heard that many of these girls would go to bed with a man for as little as a glass of wine and a
quadrens
, the smallest coin in the currency. Once, he and so many others had considered it terrible and monstrous, but these days, when there was no shame cast on a virtuously married man who kept a dozen slave girls to spice his bedtime, it was no longer a matter for care or discussion.
“Little by little,” Gracchus thought. “A whole world comes to an end, but we never stop to wonder at it. And why should we? It happens so slowly and man’s life is so short!”
Here and there he paused to watch one of the dice games. He could remember rolling dice when he was a lad. You couldn’t very well live on the dole then, and there were certain matters of ethics which made a proud man refuse the dole then, even if it meant starvation.
Now he walked on to the baths. He had planned it carefully. The odds were three to one that Crassus would be at the baths today, and that he would arrive at just about this time. And sure enough, when Gracchus entered the
apodyteria
, as the dressing rooms were called, Crassus was already there, stripped down and pausing a moment to admire his long, lean body in the tall mirrors. The rooms were filling up. Here was an interesting section of city life, a political mixing pot, few of the idle bluebloods, but enough political power to rock the city from its foundations, bankers and powerful merchants, ward bosses, slave importers, vote manipulators, a gallery of petty heelers and gang leaders, an important senatorial caucus, even a
lanista
or two, a trio of former consuls, a magistrate, one or two actors, and a round dozen of consequential military men. Interspersed with them were sufficient men of no particular importance to bear out the democracy of the baths—of which Rome boasted so importantly. Kings and satraps from the Eastern lands could never get over the fact that the rulers of Rome—which meant the rulers of the world—mingled so casually with the rank and file of the city and walked so indifferently upon the city streets.
Keeping an intermittent watch on Crassus, Gracchus sat down on a bench and let a slave undo his boots. Meanwhile he received greetings, nodded and smiled, let a word drop here, a word there. He gave advice when it was asked, briefly and decisively. He offered, also when asked, brief and certain opinions on the trouble in Spain, the African situation, the necessity of Egyptian neutrality—that eternal breadbasket of the city—and the problem of what to do with the incessant Jewish provocation in Palestine. He reassured dealers who were whimpering that the price of slaves would continue to fall until it wrecked the economy, and he squashed a rumor that the army in Gaul was planning a coup. But all the time, he watched Crassus, until finally the millionaire, still naked and displaying his lean fitness, ambled over and passed the time of day. Crassus could not resist standing there in public comparison as Gracchus undressed. When the slaves removed the politician’s toga, the mountain of the man was revealed, but still impressive. When the tunic followed, the pathos of a very fat man was worse than any simple nakedness. Strangely, Gracchus had never before been ashamed of his body.
They walked together into the
tepidarium
, the lounging room and clubhouse of the baths. Here were benches and mats upon which one could stretch out and relax, but the general practice was to stroll back and forth between plunges. From this broad and handsome gallery, marble-paved, decorated with mosaics and statuary, one could go to the cold outdoor pool, the warm pool, the hot baths, the steam rooms, and through each of those to the various exercise and massage rooms. Then, wrapped in a cool sheet, one could indulge in the garden promenades, the libraries—a part of the baths—and the sitting rooms, the solariums. The whole routine was for those who had hours to spend at the baths. Gracchus usually satisfied himself with a cold plunge, a half hour in the steam room, and then a massage.
But now he tempered himself to Crassus. Harsh words and harsh feelings were evidently forgotten. Naked, fat and loose, he walked alongside the general, being charming and attentive—which he was most skillful at.
“Building bridges,” people remarked who looked at them, and wondered what new political alliances were in the making here, since Crassus and Gracchus were not known for this kind of comradeship. Crassus, however, waited patiently. “Whatever he’s up to,” he said to himself, “it’s bound to out.” He became slightly insulting and asked the politician,
“Since when are you an authority on Egypt as well as other things?”
“You mean what I said before? Well, a few general words fill in a gap. It’s a matter of reputation.” This was a new Gracchus indeed.
“A reputation for knowing everything?”
Gracchus laughed. “You’ve been to Egypt haven’t you?”
“No. And I don’t pretend at it.”
“Well—well. I don’t know, Crassus. We snap and snarl at each other. We could be friends. Each of us is a friend well worth having.”
“I think so. I am also cynical. There is a price on friendship.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, indeed. What have I got that makes my friendship so precious? Money? You have almost as much.”
“I don’t care about money.”
“I do. What then?”
“I want to buy a slave from you,” Gracchus blurted out. There it was. Done.
“My cook, no doubt. If you had hair, Gracchus, I’d say you wanted my hair dresser. A set of litter-bearers? Or possibly a woman. I hear you have nothing but women in your household.”
“God damn it, you know who I want!” Gracchus cried. “I want Varinia.”
“Who?”
“Varinia. Let’s not play games with each other.”
“My dear Gracchus, you’re playing the games. Who has been peddling information to you?”
“I keep informed.” The fat man stopped and faced the other. “Look—look, Crassus. No beating about the bush. No haggling. No bargaining. I’ll put it to you straight. I will pay you the highest price ever paid for a slave in Rome. I will pay you one million
sesterces
. I will pay you that in gold coin, and turn over every bit of it to you immediately, if you will give me Varinia.”
Crassus folded his arms and whistled softly. “Now, that is a price. That’s a handsome price. They could write poems about such a price. When a man can go to market today and buy a ripe, big-breasted beauty for one thousand
sesterces,
you are ready to pay a thousand times as much for a skinny German girl. Now that is something. But how could I take such a sum? What would they say? They’d say Crassus is a damned thief.”
“Stop playing with me!”
“Playing with you? My dear Gracchus, you are playing with me. I have nothing that you can buy.”
“I made a serious offer.”
“And I answer you seriously.”
“I double my price!” Gracchus growled. “Two million.”
“I never knew there was that much money in politics.”
“Two million. Take it or leave it.”
“You bore me,” Crassus said, and he walked away.
V
“Varinia, Varinia, now you must dress. Now we must dress you, Varinia, because the master comes home and you are to sit with him and dine with him. Why do you make things so hard for us, Varinia?”
“I don’t want to make things hard for you.”
“But you do. You see how hard you make things for us, Varinia. You tell us that you are a slave. You don’t want four slaves to wait on you, hand and foot. No, you are just a slave like we are. You tell us how wretched you are. You know how it is to be a slave. Or maybe when you were with Spartacus, conquering the whole world, you forgot how it was to be a slave. Then you were a queen, weren’t you, Varinia? So—”