“Well, Hanno, we must find a way for you to earn your keep.”
“I’m not Hanno. I’m Hannibal.”
“But that is not your real name.”
“It is my new name.”
“Do you know it is possible to have two names? I have two, and one of them is a secret. Would you like to hear it?”
“Oh yes, please!”
“My secret name is Alexandros.”
“I want a secret name, too!”
“Hmm. I wonder what it should be?”
The boy walked a few feet, his face crushed in concentration. “I can’t think of any,” he said, almost in tears.
“I know. What if we called your secret name Hanno? That would be easy to remember, wouldn’t it?”
“Hanno! That’s a good one!”
“That’s it, then. Now, do you remember my secret name?”
“No.”
“It’s Alexandros. Can you say it?”
“I don’t like it. I like Alexander.”
“Yes, quite. As does everyone else in this wretched city.”
Chapter III
56 BCE Fall, Rome
Year of the consulship of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus
What was Hanno capable of doing which would keep him occupied and out of the way? I tried putting him to work with the fullers collecting urine; while he was used to the smell, the workmen were unused to and unforgiving of the constant spills. The garden was no better, because the peacocks chased him, and there were bugs out there! In the kitchen, he was underfoot, and cook sent him scampering back to me. Which was where he wanted to be in the first place, Athena knows why. In fact, he seemed happiest sitting at the foot of my work table in the tablinum, eager to accomplish whatever small errands I might demand of him.
Hanno had a keen sense of whether or not he was welcome in someone else’s presence. In spite of lady Tertulla’s warning that the boy was to be treated with respect and kindness, it was an old Roman custom, far from extinct, to treat such misfortunates as fools, good for a laugh; better yet, with a crowd present, to subject them to ridicule, scorn and derision. The larger the audience, the greater the abuse. Guilt and shame, when spread thinly among enough participants, may vanish altogether. I did not hold with maltreatment of any innocent, but I wish that domina and dominus had found some other way to help heal the brutal unkindness done to them by Caesar. They might feel noble as they passed the child on their way elsewhere, eliciting sunshine smiles with a treat or a coin, but the brunt of Hanno’s care and feeding were foisted upon me. Have I told you that I do not like pets?
We cleaned him up, gave him a place to sleep and fresh clothes to wear, but when it came time to sit in the tonsor’s chair, the shearing snick of Tulio’s clippers sent him into a piteous hysteria. He thrust his hands beneath his armpits and swayed dangerously back and forth, moaning and hugging himself so tightly that later I discovered bruises on his sides. “Fine,” I told him, “keep your hair. But next year, when you are sixteen and that fuzz on your face becomes visible, you will shave it off.”
The effect was instantaneous. Off the chair he flew, piercing the puzzled but indifferent barber with a doleful eye. He was on me in an instant, showing his gratitude in a manner that was uniquely Hanno’s: a painfully sincere hug with forehead pressed against my chest. If I did not embrace him in return, he would continue holding me until I did. In this, I was an apt pupil, learning on my own the added benefit of a few kind words and a gentle pat on his head. Tulio rummaged in his supplies and recovered a thin braid of leather which Hanno promptly refused. Exasperated, I had the barber give it to me and said, “We can’t have you running around like a wild man. You’re not a barbaric Briton, are you, boy?”
“No! I’m not.”
“That’s right, you’re not, so let us at least arrange your hair so you won’t be eating it along with your porridge.” Hanno blew air from his compressed lips and nodded. I exhaled with relief, for I had no idea what I would have done had he refused. Thank the gods, he allowed me to tie back his plaits with the headband. I took a spare boar-bristle brush from Tulio and examined its narrow handle. “Tulio, when you have a moment, would you please build this up to make it easier for Hanno to hold?”
From that time on, Hanno’s remarkable hair, though it hung half way down his back, was always restrained by that leather thong. He even learned to tie it up himself. And when he received his modified brush, one could almost always find it thrust through a loop in his belt, as dear a possession as any gladiator’s sword. Watching him sit on the floor in my office, brushing away with ardent diligence, I caught myself smiling and quickly returned to my work.
In spite of myself, and the teachings of my school, I slowly warmed to the boy. The poor creatures who suffered from mental inferiority were known to Aristotle. He, unlike most of the illiterate and uneducated masses, did not share the belief that madness was either just punishment meted out by an irate god, or the result of demonic possession. Even his predecessor and teacher, Plato, believed that this sickness might at times be divinely inspired. Aristotle knew that those who suffered this affliction did so from physical causes, but the belief that mental health or disease is dependent upon moral virtue or vice persists. Hanno’s parents, whoever they might have been, must not be faulted for their actions; in his Politics, Aristotle himself wrote, “as to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” If he would not suffer their existence, what audacity to question the great teacher’s wisdom. Human perfection is the ideal; human imperfection, deformity of any kind, must by definition be less than human, mustn’t it?
I put down my pen and studied the child as he pulled the entangled hairs from his brush and dropped them on the tiles. Hanno did not belong to me, yet he was nonetheless mine; domina had given me authority over him on her behalf. A slave’s slave. I oversaw many in this way, but somehow Hanno was different. It seemed more poignant that in his case I ordered him about, slept in better quarters and ate better food (not that he would accept half the things he was offered). Just as Crassus lived a life beyond my reach. Did that mean I was entitled to look down upon Hanno as Crassus looked down upon me? Dominus would angrily deny that he did any such thing, but no matter how much slack he might pay out on my leash, the collar was still firmly bound about my neck. (I speak metaphorically, of course, although in other houses it was easy enough to find literal examples of tethering.)
Ironically, for most of us, being a slave was a mixture of shame but also of community-a gentle incentive to treat each other with civility, since there were plenty of others eager to remind us of our lowly station. Hanno did not know he was a slave, and if he did, he would hardly care. Why should he, when his prior life had offered no more freedom and far less cheer? I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable at the instinctive impulse to summarily exclude the child at my feet from the rest of our familia. At the sound, he looked up at me and smiled.
In a few more moments, I was interrupted again. Lucius Curio, holding an armful of scrolls cleared his throat at the entrance to my office. I bid him enter and sit, sending Hanno to the kitchen for a sweet roll. As he squeezed past Curio, who made certain no part of either of them came in contact, Hanno asked for two. Two small ones, I told him, and off he went at lopsided speed, ignoring my shouted entreaty to slow down.