“Why so grave?” he asked one day, coming on Marcus alone in the schoolroom with his books while the other boys were outside wrestling and boxing and eating forbidden sweets and drinking their noonday wine.
Marcus blushed. He was about to murmur an evasive word or two, then looked up into the large and shimmering brown eyes directed down at him with a kindly smile. Then he said, “I am no favorite, except with that little boy, Julius, who is an actor like you. He is always on your heels, is he not?” Marcus continued, hoping to direct the other boy’s intent inspection from him.
“He is an incipient actor. I am an accomplished one,” said Noë. He had his delicacy basket in his hand and lifted the white napkin that covered it. “Hammantashin,” he said to Marcus, who bent his head to look within the basket on the table before him. He saw little triangular pieces of pastry which gave forth a delectable smell. “Have one,” invited Noë. “Have two, three,” said Noë, largely. Marcus took one; it was filled with sugared fruit. Marcus, due to his mother’s cooking, rarely was interested in food. But these were delicious. Noë watched him with pleasure as his hand dipped in the basket again for a fresh pastry. “We have three cooks,” said Noë, “but my mother presides. We are all fat,” he said, as he patted his lean belly. “My father is at the mercy of all the doctors in Rome. He has indigestion. My mother says he has a Gentile stomach.”
Noë was not a handsome boy. He merely had a pleasant and happy and alert appearance, with a very long profile. His eyes were as gentle as a girl’s, with thick fringes about them. His mouth was mobile, always changing expression, and in spite of close cropping his hair was thickly curling. His ears, unfortunately, were very large and stood far out from his head. No one mocked him about them, for he jested about them himself. His skin was very white, and so his dark hair and eyes were emphasized.
He sat down beside Marcus, and they inspected the crannies of the basket together until not a crumb remained. Marcus was suddenly aware that he felt at ease, as he felt with none other of his schoolmates. He was astonished when he heard himself laughing, not reluctantly but with openness. For Noë could change his voice from the highest pitch of a hysterical woman to the deepest tones of an adult man. He used his voice as a musician uses his instrument. He talked of the play he was directing, one of Aristophanes’, which was not liked by Pilo. Marcus was one of the few who had declined parts in the play.
“Why?” said Noë, today.
“I should feel foolish,” said Marcus.
“But folly is not always foolish,” said Noë, wisely. He looked in Marcus’ delicacy basket, then hastily but politely replaced the coarse napkin. “I hear you are decided to study law. How will you face judges, then, and courts, if you are afraid to stand up and speak? A successful lawyer is always an actor.”
“I was thinking of jurisprudence,” said Marcus.
Noë leaned back on his seat and studied Marcus critically. Noë’s garments were of the finest linen, his sandals beautifully ornamented. He wore a big amethyst ring surrounded by small emeralds on the long white index finger of his right hand. He pointed the finger at Marcus. “You? A miserable law clerk, advising fat judges who half-snore in their chairs after their fatter meals? Ridiculous. You have the face and bearing of an actor.”
Marcus did not know whether to be offended or flattered. Noë said quickly, “It is not that you are flamboyant or of a stage presence or like a preening actor, who is all gestures and alluring gurgles and appeals to the ladies. It is your eyes, your voice, and especially your eyes. They are very strange, very compelling. And when you speak it is with authority and eloquence.”
“I?” said Marcus, amazed.
Again Noë pointed at him. “You,” he nodded. “I have watched you. I am an actor of no mean accomplishment, and that is what I will be, though my father beats his breast and threatens to take us back to Judea where I must grow a beard and study the word of God exclusively and marry a fat Jewish girl and have ten sons, all rabbis. I will produce plays; I write plays, too. My accomplishments are not to be despised. A sincere actor, like yourself, my grave Marcus, is beyond rubies.”
Marcus, blushing again, considered all this.
“You can make the dullest philosopher sound like pearls of wisdom,” said Noë. “I know Plato’s Republic to be all nonsense, and I will tell you later why I think so. Nevertheless, when you spoke of it last week you almost convinced me. You believed in what you were saying, no matter if Aristotle was quite correct concerning Plato. Your voice,” said Noë, “is far better than mine. You are convincing. I am only a comedian, though I am now interesting myself in more serious plays, such as Sophocles’ Antigone. It is absurd that Romans will permit only prostitutes to appear on the stage. To return to yourself, Marcus: You could convince even Pilo he is a fool if you tried, though I regret, at times, your modesty and shyness when you first stand up to recite.”
He was so kind and so earnest that Marcus knew he spoke without malice.
“You do not appreciate yourself,” said Noë. “You have had unhappy experiences. Does your father beat you very much?”
“My father?” cried Marcus, thinking of his beloved and gentle parent. “He is the sweetest of men. I have never been beaten in my life but once, and that was by Pilo.”
“I have heard of that,” said the other boy, pursing up his mouth. “You were much admired for your fortitude but considered stupid under the circumstances. That Lucius must be a scoundrel. I am sorry he is no longer here. I should make him the buffoon of the school. My father knows his family well; Lucius’ father is trying to regain a fortune long lost, but he is not a man of astuteness. I have seen your Lucius at a distance. I admit his beauty, but still he must be a scoundrel.”
“I am glad that I shall never see him again,” said Marcus. “He is without honor and principle. He is no true Roman though he is considered a patrician.”
“The apple,” said Noë, “is a noble fruit, but when it is rotten it is only a rotten apple. Let us consider patrician families. Do they become decayed when they lose their fortunes or do they lose their fortunes when they decay? My father believes the latter and I agree with him. He has a hard hand, and I am his only son, and the object of his constant prayers. I love him so I do not cross him often. Besides, I am his heir and I will need money for my plays. But will he be proud when he sees my plays in the theatre? He will not.” Noë struck the palm of his hand flatly on the table and squeezed up his eyes ruefully.
“I have a brother, Quintus,” said Marcus, and did not know how his eyes could change so brilliantly from light olive to passionate gray with love.
Noë was touched in his volatile heart. “I see we have no Cain and Abel here,” he said.
“Cain and Abel?” asked Marcus.
Noë told him of Adam and Eve and their sons, and Marcus moved eagerly in his attention to the edge of his bench, and he nodded over and over. The story entranced him. At last he said, “Tell me of your Messias.”
“Ah!” said Noë. “We expect Him hourly, for are not all the portents here concerning His coming? My father prays for His coming at dawn—and Jews rise even earlier than do Romans, a barbaric custom—and at noon and at night. He will deliver Israel from her sins, so say the rabbis, and be a light unto the Gentiles. But my father and his friends believe He will give Israel rule of the earth, including Rome and all her legions, not to mention the Indus, the Greeks, the Spaniards, the Britons, the Gauls, and lesser tribes and nations.”
“So small a country?” said Marcus, feeling a Roman’s incredulous surprise.
“A pearl, however small, is more valuable than a handful of the most polished glass,” said Noë, feeling a Jew’s pride. But his restless mind left the subject. He picked up the purplish edge of Marcus’ tunic. “You are not yet a man,” he said, “though you have the mind of a man.”
“I will soon be invested,” said Marcus. “I am nearly fourteen.”
When Marcus announced to his family that he wished, at hi
s adolescence, his emergence into manhood, to take Pallas Athene rather than the Roman Minerva as his patroness, Archias chuckled under his clever nose, Tullius smiled in pleasure, the grandfather roared his horror, and Helvia said, “He is fourteen years old, and therefore he is no longer a child and must make his own decisions. He is certainly, however, displaying that effete preference for things Grecian which is scandalous. But, he must live with the scandal. What is in a name? Pallas Athene is the same as Minerva.”
“You are inconsistent!” exclaimed the grandfather. “First you speak of scandal, and then you say, ‘What is in a name?’ I consider names sacred.”
“Minerva is more sinewy than Pallas Athene,” said Helvia, unmoved. “She has more masculine attributes. Nevertheless, Marcus must do as he wishes.”
“To such degeneracy has Rome fallen!” said the grandfather. “In my day the father had the power of life and death over his children, as inscribed in the Twelve Tables of Law. But now sons, hardly removed from the breast, presume to announce their learned decisions to their parents. When children decay—”
“The nation decays,” said Helvia, with patience. “We hear that daily, do we not, Grandfather? Marcus, you wish Pallas Athene?”
“Not if it will cause so much distress,” said the boy, who did not like to see his grandfather empurpled of face.
“I am not distressed,” said Helvia. The Greek teacher, being a Greek, was not asked for his opinion. Helvia reached up from her spinning wheel, which she was almost always industriously employing, to smooth her older son’s curling brown hair.
“Pallas Athene,” said the devoted Quintus. The grandfather cuffed him. Helvia ordered him to bed as it was now dark, Marcus pushed his shoulder affectionately, and the Greek teacher dared to think Quintus was not entirely stupid. Tullius gave him a surreptitious pat, but very timidly. He was still afraid of all children except Marcus, who was now no more a child.
Then came the discussion of sacrifices on the occasion when Marcus would assume the toga of manhood, the manly gown. This would not be for over a year more, on the Liberalia, festival of Liber, the sixteenth of the Calends of April. However, all arrangements were long in the planning. Lists were made of guests and distant relatives to be invited. Helvia had to choose the flax to weave the robe, which, as Tullius was a knight, and therefore mandatorily in possession of four hundred thousand sesterces, would be of purple striped with scarlet and draped to the right shoulder. This robe would be of the utmost importance, would need care in selection and sewing and dyeing. All other garments must be freshly made, as for a bride. But not, thank the gods, thought Marcus fervently, the woolen trousers in which my mother insists on enveloping my legs in the winter, so that I must, in shame, wear a longer tunic than other youths in order to hide my infamy.
It was not strange that there was more discussion concerning the sacrifices to be offered up to the tutelary gods in Marcus’ behalf than in deciding upon the guests, and the entertainment, which would inevitably be frugal. Tullius recklessly suggested four hecatombs, which caused his father and his wife to fix him with stern frowns; he compromised, as always, and there would be two, not with gold collars but with silver. On the great day Marcus would take off his bulla, and be officially called by his name, Marcus, though he had been called so from birth. His name would be inscribed in the public records. As this was the day on which all youths of approximately Marcus’ age would enter into adolescence (a stage which would continue until the thirtieth year) it was a national festival. Priestesses of Bacchus would offer white-honey cakes to the god in behalf of the new young men, and the god would accept no other on the grand occasion. A long procession would accompany the youths to the Forum, where they would be ceremoniously presented to their countrymen, and to Rome. Old women and maidens with heads wreathed in myrtle would sing praises, and the youths henceforth would be known as citizens of their nation, with the responsiblity of Romans. They would then return to their homes and there would be a feast, during which they would be permitted to become drunk. Marcus doubted that anyone would become drunk, due to his mother’s frugality. He would be lucky to have two goblets of the precious wine which had been aging for just that day.
“It will be like a Bar Mitzvah, then,” said Noë to his friend. “But mine was at the age of thirteen.” He made his face into a mimicry of avarice. “Will you receive many gifts?”
“Not from the Helvii. Not from my grandfather, who watches every sesterce, but who will probably invest in a few shares of stock for me, which will be kept at his bank until I am truly at an age of prudence. Otherwise,” said Marcus, “I should inevitably squander it on wild and dissolute occasions.” He smiled. “From my father I will receive a fine ring; I have already chosen the gems, and it will be made by one of your countrymen. This will occasion accusations of extravagance against my poor father. Quintus has been saving his small allowance for three years and is very mysterious about his gift. And as guests usually match a family’s gifts in price, I can be certain to receive very useful but very dull and not very expensive gifts from family friends. My mother? Like my grandfather, she will part with a few shares of stock, put them in my name, then seal them away, probably until I am a parent, myself. Archias will give me rare books.”
“And the feast?” asked Noë, fascinated at this glimpse into Roman life.
“Wholesome,” said Marcus. “That is, no confectioner will be called to contribute his talents. There will, doubtless, be a roasted tough ox, or a bull, but not one, as will be rumored among the disgruntled, recently killed by a gladiator in the arena. There will be plenty of bread, baked into appropriate shapes, the nature of which I will not tell you for fear of embarrassing your Jewish ears, many vegetables with no sauces, perhaps a little game, some cakes baked in my mother’s kitchen by slaves trained in economy, and the cask of wine which has been waiting, and, if that runs dry too soon, by the family wine which is execrable.”
Then he said, “Before all this, there will be long discussions with me on my coming new state.”
“I remember similar from before my Bar Mitzvah,” said Noë, with sadness. “I became so intimidated that I expected that the day following that great one would dawn in thunder and I would be tossed by tempests. At the very least the world would be tremendously changed. Portents had been hinted, stern faces had been directed at me. I was quite astonished to discover that there were no thunders, no tempests, no changes, the day after my Bar Mitzvah. It was disappointing. Life proceeded as usual and my father boxed my ears for my stupidity because I forgot the exact wording of one of the Psalms. Is life nothing but anticlimaxes, therefore? Shall all our years be spent in expectations, to arrive at nothing but another dawn, another lesson to be learned, another vexation to be overcome, until the final day arrives when we are gathered to our fathers?”
His mobile face expressed melancholy, and Marcus became depressed. Seeing this, Noë said, “But you shall go to Greece. Not that the men there stand in the postures of gods but at least it will be another country.” He knew very well that all men are the same but he was remorseful that he had made Marcus dejected.
“And you shall be a famous lawyer, Marcus,” he continued.
“To what end?” asked Marcus, who was feeling the dark pangs of adolescence.
To no satisfaction of the spirit, thought Noë, but he said, “It is very important to be a man of law, for is not justice everything and the noblest attribute of God?”
“Do not lecture me,” said Marcus. The two boys were sitting alone in the school, as they often did. “What did your mother pack in your basket this morning?” They forgot the dread premonitions of their manhood in exploring the delights of the basket and enjoying them.
Noë began to instruct Marcus about the religion of the Jews, not because he wished, being an irreverent young man, but because Marcus was endlessly inquiring.
“We shall circumcise you yet,” said Noë.
But Marcus said, “There is only one God, and He
is the God of all men, and not solely of the Jews. Did He not make me as He did you also? He lives in our hearts. Repeat to me the prophecies of the Messias and His coming. I cannot hear enough.”
Noë was abashed. He did not truly believe with all fervor in the faith of his fathers, and thought the prophesied Messias a pathetic and dismal hope of his people, never to be fulfilled. But he told Marcus all he knew, because he was kind, and he applied himself to his sacred books—to the joy of his innocent father—to give Marcus fresh information and lighten that face which was too grave for a youth so young.
“‘A Virgin shall give birth to a Son,’” Marcus would repeat, and he would know that that Virgin was not Minerva or her Greek counterpart, Pallas Athene, nor Diana nor Artemis. “‘And He shall be called Emmanuel, for He shall deliver His people from their sins!’”
He pondered on the Virgin and he did not know why, and he wondered if she were already among the living, perhaps a girl as young as himself. Once in a temple he went to the altar of the Unknown God and laid a sheaf of lilies upon it and said, “It is for Your Mother.” The worshipers about him looked at him strangely, they carrying their living sacrifices to the various priests.
From Noë, he learned the Hebrew of the Jews, the language of the learned men, which was a muscular tongue like Latin.
*Letter to Terentia.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The family as usual went to the island near Arpinum for the summer where the air was fresh and cool, unlike the murky and smothering winds of Rome. Here among the sacred oaks and poplars, the cypresses and the wooded paths, Marcus would wander alone or with his father or his tutor. Here he began to write his first true poetry, and he would despair of ever being able to put into words the color of the sky, the sound of the waters, the intricate green of leaves, the fragrance of grass and flowers. There were tremendous movements in his heart, large and bursting thoughts in his mind, and painfully, to him, they were rendered banal on parchment and on tablet. Was it possible, he thought once, that that which one so dearly and passionately loves is beyond speech, beyond word? His prose, Archias would tell him sincerely, was even better than some of his own and more eloquent. “Suffice yourself with that,” he would say. “But amuse yourself with your poetry, for poetry is natural to a young spirit.” Archias would take a pen and deftly replace a word with a singing other and Marcus would watch in envy and in delight.