Roma - Saylor Steven (книги полностью .TXT) 📗

Weary beyond hope and wracked with sobbing, Blossius pulled himself onto the riverbank and collapsed into oblivion.

“If I had followed your advice, dear mother—if I had tied my fortunes to those of Tiberius—just imagine the consequences!” Lucius Pinarius nervously paced the garden. “Now you must follow my advice. Drive this dangerous fool from our house!”

He pointed at Blossius, who sat stripped to the waist, patiently allowing Menenia to tend to his many wounds with ointment and fresh bandages. Three days had passed since his brush with death, but he was still badly shaken.

The entire city was reeling from the shock of the massacre on the Capitoline. At least three hundred men had been killed. No man alive could remember anything like it; for the first time since the fall of Tarquinius and the precarious early years of the Republic, political strife had erupted in mass bloodshed, with Romans killing Romans. The careless desecration of the bodies was grossly offensive even to many who opposed Tiberius, and had caused widespread anger and resentment. But the senatorial faction that had put an end to Tiberius, led by Scipio Nasica, was unrepentant. Having gained the upper hand, they had proceeded to order the arrest, interrogation, and execution, without trial, of anyone involved in what they called the “Gracchan sedition.” New names were constantly added to the list of suspects; those arrested were tortured until they implicated others. Rumor and panic ruled the city. The Tiber was jammed with vessels taking men to Ostia, where they hoped to board ships to take them away from Italy, into exile.

Blossius winced as Menenia dabbed the stinging ointment onto a cut across his shoulder, then he took her hand and kissed it. “Your son is right,” he said. “I escaped the massacre on the Capitoline, and somehow, so far, Nasica’s henchmen have overlooked me. But very soon, they’ll come for me.”

There was a banging at the door. Blossius stiffened, then stood and covered himself.

A troop of armed lictors came striding into the garden. The senior of the lictors spared only a glance for Lucius and his mother, then glared at Blossius. “Here you are, philosopher! We went looking for you at the would-be king’s house first. Isn’t that your official address here in Roma, where you sponge off the daughter of Africanus? Did you think you could escape us by hiding here? Or is this how you philosophers make a living, going from the house of one lonely Roman widow to another, sucking up their wine and spilling your seed in their beds?”

Lucius bolted forward angrily, but the lictor raised his club, and Lucius stepped back. His mother was less timid. She dabbed her fingertips in the jar of ointment, then flicked them in the lictor’s face. The man dropped his club and wiped the stinging unguent from his eyes.

“Bitch!” he shouted. “If you were anything but a woman, that would count as an act of sedition, and I’d see you stripped naked and flogged for it!”

The man bent to retrieve his club. Rising up, he struck Blossius hard across the belly. Blossius bent double in pain. A pair of lictors seized his arms and roughly escorted him from the garden.

Menenia covered her face and began to weep. The lictor leered at her. “Are you going to miss the old Stoic that much? He looks a bit decrepit for stud service. You’re still a handsome enough mare. Surely you could find a strong young Roman to mount you!”

The man looked sidelong at Lucius; the insult was aimed as much at him as at his mother, daring him to strike back. Lucius clenched his fists and bowed his head, seething with outrage and shame.

As soon as the lictors had departed, Menenia gripped his arm. “Follow them,” she pleaded. “Do whatever you can for Blossius!”

“Mother, there’s nothing anyone can do.”

“Then at least see where they take him and what they do to him. I won’t be able to stand it, if he simply vanishes and I never know what happened. Please, Lucius, I beg you!”

Unable to stand her sobbing, Lucius ran from the house. His heart pounding, he followed the lictors at a safe distance and watched as they entered house after house on the Palatine, arresting one man after another. The prisoners were tied together and herded in single file down a winding path to the Forum.

Following the captives, Lucius witnessed a sight that seemed more appropriate to a nightmare than to the Forum in broad daylight. While a circle of well-dressed men, some of them senators, looked on and jeered, lictors forced a man in tattered, bloody garments into a wooden box that was scarcely big enough to contain him. Before they closed the lid, they emptied a jar full of writhing vipers inside. Even muffled by the box, the man’s screams echoed across the Forum. The circle of watchers banged on the box with sticks and laughed.

The captives were dragged before an open-air tribunal. Lucius joined the crowd of spectators, standing toward the back and trying not to draw attention.

The judges on the platform included Scipio Nasica, who led the questioning. Blossius was the first prisoner to be interrogated.

“You are Blossius of Cumae, the Stoic philosopher?” said Nasica.

“You know I am.”

“Simply answer the question. There is one protocol for questioning citizens, and another for foreigners. Are you Blossius of Cumae?”

“I am. You call me a foreigner, but I’m a native-born Italian.”

“Italy is not Roma.”

“Nonetheless, I am of noble Campanian blood.”

Nasica raised an eyebrow. “Yes, the tribunal is well aware of your ancestors among the Blossii who betrayed Roma and induced their fellow Campanians to take up arms with Hannibal.”

Blossius sighed. “That was a very long time ago.”

“Perhaps. You come from Cumae, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“As I said, Italy is not Roma—and Cumae can scarcely be considered part of Italy. Cumaeans speak Greek. They practice Greek vices. They send philosophers to spread polluted Greek ideas here in Roma.”

“When Tiberius Gracchus was a boy, I taught him virtue, not vice. When he became a man, I offered him counsel and guidance—”

“The tribunal has no interest in your dubious career. We are investigating a very real sedition, not your imaginary philosophy. We are chiefly interested in learning what you know about the activities of the would-be king, Tiberius Gracchus, and his recent attempt to overthrow the state.”

“This is absurd! There was no such attempt.”

“Were you present when Tiberius Gracchus met with the Pergamene ambassador who delivered the royal testament of the late King Attalus?”

“I was.”

“And did you witness Tiberius Gracchus receive the diadem and purple cloak of the king?”

“Yes. But—”

“Did he not put the diadem his head?”

“Perhaps, briefly, as a sort of joke—”

“Did you not, at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus, draw up a ledger for disbursing the treasure bequeathed to Roma by King Attalus?”

“That ledger was purely hypothetical and contingent upon—”

“I realize, Blossius, that you are not used to answering questions with a simple yes or no. How you philosophers love to hear yourselves speak! Perhaps, to expedite this testimony, I should order your tongue to be removed. Then you can answer by tapping your foot on the ground—once for yes, twice for no.”

Blossius turned pale. The spectators erupted in laughter. Standing among them, Lucius cringed and longed to make himself invisible.

As the interrogation continued, it became clear that Nasica’s purpose was not so much to incriminate Blossius as to bolster his own rationale for taking action against Tiberius. To one leading question after another, he compelled Blossius to answer yes or no.

“From your answers, I believe the tribunal must conclude that any and all crimes you committed against the Roman state were carried out at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus. Is that correct?”