A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  “And two hecatombs sacrificed in his behalf when he was born,” said Helvia. “One should have been sufficient.”

  “A lovely babe,” said Lira. “Rome does not know this yet, but a Hero has been born.” She stroked the delicate fine hair of the sucking child. “Do you know what the Jews say, Lady? They are expecting a Hero. They are all excitement. They say it is in the prophecies. And at Delphi, I have heard, the Oracle spoke of the Great One who is about to appear. There have been portents in the sky. The priests murmur of it in the temples. The Hero.”

  Helvia said, “He seems more like a lamb born before its time, or a little goatling without hair. I still cannot find those sesterces.”

  “He is a Hero,” said Lira. “Ah, there will be magnificent events in Rome when this is a man!”

  *This phenomenon was actually recorded.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Many years later, the child, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the third of the name, wrote to a friend, “It was not that my mother, the lady Helvia, of the illustrious Helvius family, was avaricious, as I have often heard it meanly remarked. She was simply thrifty, as were all the Helvii.”

  He often thought of the very modest household near Arpinum where he had been born on that very cold day in the month of Janus, for there, for many reasons, lay his sweetest memories. After his naming, to avoid confusion, his father was no longer addressed as Marcus Tullius, but simply as Tullius, which maddened the old father who roared that it appeared that he, himself, had lost his own name after the birth of his grandson. “It is that woman!” he would shout at his son. “I am the grandfather, to whom respect and all honor are due, yet I have heard the very slaves speak of me as ‘the old father!’ I am despised in my own household.”

  Helvia thought him unreasonable. Had not the old father insisted upon the name of his grandson? Life was indeed complicated enough without three males with the same name, in the same household. “I insist on your calling me ‘grandfather,’” said the old father, “for it is due me now.” As Helvia had always addressed him so from the moment of her first son’s birth she thought him more captious than even before, and shrugged. Men were not to be understood. It was illogical for a woman to expect a man to be logical. “He is old, Helvia,” her husband, Tullius, told her mildly, to which she replied: “My father is older than he, and of a better temper. That is due to my mother, who will permit no roaring in the household, not even at the basest slave. Once,” said Helvia, with a look of pleasure on her agreeable young face, “my mother hurled a dish of sauced fish at my father’s head when he became intemperate at the table.”

  Tullius, thinking of his own father, and smiling, asked, “What did your father do on that catastrophic occasion?”

  “He wiped the sauce and fish from his head and face with his napkin,” said Helvia, surprised at the question. “What else could he do?”

  “He did not object?”

  “My mother was larger and stronger,” said Helvia. “Moreover, there was a dish of beans near at hand. My father contemplated the beans, then asked a slave for another napkin. There were few quarrels in our household. Your mother did not insist upon her authorities when she married your father. It must be done at once, as my mother told me before I married you, my love. Later, a man is less tractable.”

  “Am I tractable?” asked Tullius, still smiling but feeling some vexation.

  Helvia patted his cheek fondly. “I have a wise mother,” she said.

  So I am tractable, thought Tullius, without much happiness. Helvia did not bully him, as many matrons bullied their husbands in covert or overt ways. He knew that the household was placid, which was good for his delicate digestion, and that his father roared far less than he had done in years past, which was also good for the digestion. No one appeared afraid of the redoubtable Helvia, or at least not notably and obviously, yet no one dared to be very fractious in her presence, or complaining. She had only to stare with her beautiful eyes, stare as a child stares, and even the old father would subside though not without a grumble to show that he was still head of the household in spite of a daughter of the Helvii. In private, alone with his son, he would become sardonic on the subject of women. He preferred, he thought, a household where a woman knew her place.

  “Helvia knows her place,” said Tullius, gloomily. “And that is the trouble.”

  Helvia had her staff of authority, though it was tipped with strong serenity. Rarely was she disturbed or openly annoyed, and never was she completely angry.

  “She has no emotions, no fire, no passions. Therefore, she is stupid,” said the old father to his son.

  Tullius knew that Helvia had passions in bed, somewhat unnerving to a young man of his retiring nature. But Helvia, in passion, was as honest as she was when inspecting household accounts. Nothing was subtle to her, nothing immeasurable, nothing wonderful or inexplicable. She had no doubts about anything. She performed all her duties to perfection, and was greatly admired. If she never truly saw a star or a flower, and never felt a rapture at the spring, was never seized by nameless sorrows or awed by immense vistas, did that argue that she was stupid? Tullius sometimes had the thought that Helvia saw as a calm animal saw, accepting everything with simplicity and without marveling, having forthright appetites and expecting good and sound behavior from man and beast at all times. Once, when they were newly married, Tullius had read one of Homer’s poems to her. She had listened politely, then had asked, “But does it mean anything? All those words are a confusion.”

  She was not talkative, which was a virtue in a woman, Tullius would remind his father when the old man began to stamp like a bull with exasperation.

  “She has nothing to say!” shouted the old man, stamping harder.

  “That is wisdom, when one does not speak when one has nothing to say,” said Tullius, who thought words in themselves were beautiful and capable of infinite meanings beyond the mere seeming. Tullius had always lived in himself, in silent recesses. But he was lonely. He turned hopefully to his little son, who had his face and introspective expression.

  The family did not live in Arpinum, itself, but with Arpinum they enjoyed the Roman franchise, and so were Roman citizens. They could see the town on one of the Volscian Hills, a small city of some consequence, looking down upon its steep-banked poplars and oaks at the edge of the blackly glittering mountain stream of Liris; they had a view of the small river of Fibrenus where it joined the Liris and the island on which they lived, and which the grandfather owned and cultivated. The island was curiously shaped, like a great ship whose prow divided the waters; seen at a distance one thought of sails furled and a vessel caught in the furious stream. The water broke on the earthy prow with a noisy vehemence and the sound of plunging. The air was serene and very cool and bright, and untouched by the gold of Umbria except on some resplendent sunsets. It had a northern rather than a southernly atmosphere, heightened by the enormous majesty of crowding trees, especially the sacred oak, the fresh green meadows of the interior, the lush vistas, the springing earth which on occasion broke forth in mossy stones. The area had none of the wild color of southern Italy and none of its gay exuberance. The people were calmer and colder and spoke of Rome disdainfully as a welter of polyglots. Here the spirit of Cincinnatus and the Republic still lived. The inhabitants spoke of the Constitution, which the Roman Senators and the courts were continually violating without challenge from a supine urban populace. The people of Arpinum remembered the old days when a Roman was truly fearless and free and revered her gods and practiced the virtues of piety, charity, courage, patriotism, and honor.

  The grandfather had been born on the river island near Arpinum; his son, Tullius, had been born there. Here, also, little Marcus had been born. Helvia spoke of the farmhouse as the Villa. The grandfather called it the House. Tullius, but only to himself, thought of it as the Cottage. So for once opposing his father and his wife he began to expand the house to more spacious proportions, and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of c
hipping and hammering and the voices of workmen. Helvia, calmly accepting, came from the women’s quarters to inspect and criticize and assure herself that the workmen, vivacious all, and from Arpinum and so free men and not slaves, were not overly engorging their stomachs with fare from the frugally guarded kitchens. She, it was, who sniffed at every jug of wine taken to the workmen by the happy female slaves from the house, who had not seen such activity in a long time, and rejoiced in it. At sunset, she would perch on a big and comfortable stone nearby and inscribe the hours the men had spent at their labor and their exact wages, to the copper. They began to complain of the quality of the wine, but she calmly ignored them. They muttered that this must be a vulgar family, because of the food and its quantity; Helvia inscribed the food in her books to the last fish, bean and loaf of bread. By the time the enlargement of the house was complete she had gained the sullen respect of the workmen who, however, vowed that never again would they visit the island with a hammer or saw.

  The workmen were also acutely aware of the presence of the “old father,” who scowled at stone and wood and avoided his daughter-in-law with her account books. Like all workmen, they were gossips. The family, they told themselves, was not truly a knightly one, but was completely plebeian. None of its sons had held a curule office, not even an aedileship, and so could not ride in an ivory chair. The “old father,” it was rumored, boasted that the Cicero family belonged to the Equestrian class, and that the Tullii were of old Roman royal ancestry, and were sons of Tullius Attius, ruler of the Volscians, who had won an honorable war against the crude early Romans. By the time the last wall was in its place the workmen openly scoffed at such pretensions, and in the hearing of Helvia, herself.

  She spoke of it to the “old father” with indulgence. “Is it not strange that the meanest of men, who are boastful of their lowliness, take umbrage at employment by those they fear are not as far above them as Olympus is above the plain? In truth, their arrogance is in ratio to their worthlessness.”

  “It is because, sorrowfully, they believe that they are worthless,” said the gentle Tullius, who had not been included in the conversation. His father and his wife had recently begun to be startled when he spoke and to be surprised at his presence. “It is sad,” continued Tullius, as the two frowned at him, “that no man in these days is proud that he is just a man, who is far above the beasts, and has a soul and a mind. No, he must have pretensions of his own.”

  Helvia shrugged. “There is only money,” she said. “One can buy illustrious ancestry, I am informed, in Rome, by the rubbing together of money. The keepers of the genealogies will invent noble blood for the lowest of freedmen, if the weight of the gold is enough.”

  This pleased the “old father” who was thankful that the daughter of the Helvii was not impressed by patrician lineage, and thought only of money and accounts. But Tullius must spoil this tranquil occasion by remarking that a man’s nobility came from ancestors of noble mind and heroic character, however obscure. He retreated more and more to his library, and moved his books to the new wing of the farmhouse. He was hardly aware any longer of anything except his books, his secretly written poetry, his walks along the banks of the turbulent river, the trees, the peace, and his thoughts. It was when his son, the little Marcus, was in his second summer that the isolated young man turned to his first offspring with some tremulous hope.

  Little Marcus, though slender as his father and subject to inflammations, had walked alone at the prodigious age of eight months, and at two years had mastered a formidable vocabulary. The latter had come from secret visits of his father to the nursery. Tullius, even under the fierce eye of old Lira, had dandled the babe on his knee and had taught him to speak, not in infant accents, but in the accents of a learned man. The child would stare at his father with his mother’s large and changeful eyes; in his case, the eyes were eloquent and mystical. It pleased Tullius that his son otherwise resembled himself. He was convinced, by the time Marcus was but twenty-four months old, that the young child understood him completely. Certainly, Marcus listened to his father with a grave and thoughtful expression, his small thin face tight with concentration, his rare smile sweet and dazzling when Tullius made a little jest. He had Tullius’ long head, fine brown hair, gentle chin, and sensitive mouth. He also had an air of resolution at times, which escaped his father, and a look of determination, both of which he had inherited from his grandfather. Little Marcus had inherited, together with his eyes, the calmness and steadfastness of his mother.

  Helvia thought the child too fragile, too like his father. Therefore, as she indulged her husband with maternal fondness, she indulged Marcus. She petted him briskly. To her he was a little lamb who needed strength, fond but firm handling, and no pampering. When he would babble at her earnestly she would stroke his silken hair, pat his cheek, then send him off with Lira for an extra cup of milk and bread. She believed, with all sincerity, that the strugglings of the mind could be soothed by food, and that any anguish of spirit—which she never experienced herself—was only the result of indigestion, and could be cured by a goblet of country-brewed herbs. Tullius and little Marcus, therefore, were frequently forced to drink appalling infusions of herbs and roots which Helvia gathered herself in the woodlands.

  The sweet and spicy ominousness of autumn lay on the island, and cool mists, though it was hardly past the noon hour, were floating in the immense branches of the oak trees, the leaves of which were scarlet as blood. The poplars were bright golden ghosts, fragile as a dream, but the grass remained vividly emerald. The waters ran wildly and darkly along the banks of the island, those cold and brilliant waters which Marcus was to remember all his life and whose mysterious colloquy was always in his ears. Here, on the banks, stood clumps of tall yellow flowers, or uncultivated bushes of crimson blossoms, or small purplish lakes of lavender. Bees still murmurously pursued their industry in spite of a sharp hint in the breeze, and clouds of white and orange butterflies blew up before one’s footstep like delicate petals. Birds still cried stridently in the trees; a vulture or two hovered in the vast and deeply blue vault of the autumnal sky. The distant Volscian Mountains stood in bronze against that sky, furrowed with dark and brownish clefts and erosions; if one looked across the river one could see Arpinum climbing a flank of a mountain, walls white as bone, roofs the hue of cherries in the strong sunlight.

  There was no sound in this peaceful spot, at a distance from the farmhouse, except for the conversation of the joined and hasty rivers, the challenges of birds, and the faint whispers of fallen oak leaves which ran before the occasional breeze like dry, red little animals, seeking shelter here and there along the roots of shrubs, in tiny gullies, against the trunks of alders, or, taking flight, hurling themselves upon the water to be borne off like the bloody stains of a wounded man. The fallen poplar leaves were less turbulent; they were pulling themselves into small mounds of fretted gold. And everywhere was the intense spice of the season, springing from tree and grass and flower and sun-warmed air, the ripened fruit in the orchards beyond, burning wood and pungent pines, darkening cypresses and heavy grain.

  To Tullius, seeking his little son today, the scene seemed caught in a still and vivid light, rustic and remote, far from those cities whose pulses could not be felt here, far from the quarrelsome men he hated, far from ambition and force and the politicians whom he detested, far from splendor and grandeur and courts and multitudes and crowded edifices, the restless days of other men, and loud music and trampings and banners and walls and chambers and echoing halls, far from the voice of pride and the bustling of those who believed that action only, not meditation, was the true vocation of man. Here there were no temples built by the hands of men, but temples built by nature for nymphs and fauns and other shy creatures who, like Tullius, himself, dreaded and avoided cities. Here a man was alone, truly alone, his essence held within himself like perfumed oil in a vessel. Here no one demanded that he pour out that sacred essence to mingle with the careless outpourin
gs of others, so that it lost its identity and the vessel was empty, drained of that most precious thing which distinguished one man from another, in scent and texture. Men had strong color when they stood alone. Cities destroyed the faces of men, rendering them featureless. Tullius’ opinion of civilization was unflattering. He never longed for Rome. He wanted nothing of the theatre or the circus or gaiety or hectic exchange. Only here, on his paternal island, did he feel free and, above all things, safe. Since the new addition to the house had been completed he had taken a small room for his bedroom, with a strong door which was always locked.

  He stood on the bank of the river and listened to all the sounds which enraptured him, and here he could believe there was no Rome, no cities of the sea, nothing which could engage him against his will. Then he heard the laughter of little Marcus near at hand. He walked toward the sound, fallen leaves rustling under the soles of his shoes. The breeze had fallen; the air was warmer. Tullius removed his white woolen cloak and let the sun shine on his thin legs which moved rapidly under his woolen tunic.

  He found old Lira sitting with her mantled back against a tree, watching her charge, Marcus, who was trying to catch butterflies in his little hands. The child, hardly out of infancy, was tall and graceful; he did not stumble as other children did, clumsily. Tullius paused for a moment, still unseen, to watch his first-born with pleasure. Yes, the boy resembled him closely, though he admitted that Marcus’ chin was more resolute than his own, and that he had a kind of latent strength revealing itself about his sweet and eloquent lips and in the carving of his nose. Here was one, Tullius reflected, who would never be much afraid of anything, and Tullius felt the smallest of envies and then the greatest of prides. For this was his son, with his own brown hair curling over his brow and on his nape, with his own form of body and molding of flesh; though the profile was clearer than his own, it was still his own. The boy stopped for a moment in his play to stare at the river, and Tullius could see his eyes, changing always in color like Helvia’s. They were amber, now, in the mingling of light and shade, a clear amber like honey. They did not stare, like Helvia’s. They contemplated, and lightened or darkened with silent moods.