Marcus smiled wryly, remembering. "I did. He was a freedman named Numerius. He knew supply regulations that hadn't been written yet. He found winter boots for my legion that were better than anything available from the regular sources, and he got them well under the footwear budget."
Cyclops spread his hands. "You see?"
Marcus told him about the short conference after the Senate meeting.
The old man nodded. "Scaeva and Gabinius are good men, wise counselors. You should listen to them. They saw exactly what I have just advised you about. Flaccus is the scholar you want. So what if he is a wretched soldier? What you see as your weaknesses are tasks for subordinates anyway. Assign them their jobs, review their reports and post them to the Senate. That is a commander's duty, and it is the command position that counts. Accept it, Marcus!"
No family conference was required, it seemed. If Cyclops said Marcus was to accept the Senate's commission, then the matter was settled. He was going to Italy.
Chapter 4
The expedition set out in a drizzling rain. It was not a military expedition, so there was no fanfare, no music, no crowds of young girls to shower them with flower petals. As they made their way through the city, people watched them with curiosity, occasionally shouting good wishes, but generally the mood was quiet. It was not a glorious occasion, yet all felt that something of great consequence was at hand.
Marcus turned in his saddle to look back along the line of men following him. There were forty members in the official party, mostly young, all of them from good families. Many were friends. A few were avowed enemies of his family. As to the rest, he would learn about them soon enough. Besides the official party, there were a score of slaves to tend the animals, set up camp and perform all the other tedious duties of such an expedition. There was no escort of soldiers. This was, ostensibly, a trade and diplomatic mission. The men of the official party were all soldiers, anyway.
The trek south toward the mountains would be through territory long held by the Romans, peaceful and free of brigands. Each man wore a sword belted to his side, but the other arms and military gear were carried by pack animals.
"Is this a good omen?" Flaccus asked, riding up beside Marcus.
"Omen? The augurs took them this morning and everything was favorable."
"I mean this rain. Surely, if Jupiter looked favorably upon this expedition, he would give us a warm, sunny morning to start it."
Marcus grinned. "But as Jupiter Pluvium he is the god of rain. This may be his blessing."
"I see we can look forward to many stimulating discussions of religion." Flaccus drew the hood of his cloak over his head as the rain intensified. He had been appalled at being named to the expedition, but his family's pride would not allow him to back out. Since he was clearly the best man for the role of recorder and historian, he insisted on an extra pack animal to carry his writing gear, portable desk, inks, parchments and so forth. Then he had loaded the beast with extra comforts for the road.
The lands they rode through for the first few days were peaceful, fertile and intensively cultivated. The Romans were a race of farmers, and wherever they went, they instituted the sort of agriculture that had made Italy abound in produce and population, the sort of population that had allowed Rome to raise new legions after every disastrous defeat inflicted by Hannibal. They were determined never to be weakened by insufficient manpower.
These lands had been among the earliest conquered during the migration from Italy; a migration that had been spearheaded by a military invasion, for good land always has occupants, and the fine, fertile river valleys beyond the Alps had been no exception. A mixture of Celtic and Germanic tribes had stood in their way, and they had been crushed, for all they had was numbers and valor. These things were as nothing in the face of Roman organization and discipline. Above all, the natives raised no leader like Hannibal.
The wisest of the natives had allied themselves with the newcomers and assisted in the conquests. It was their descendants who now had seats in the Senate. The land through which the party rode, once the site of bloody battles, was divided into spacious farms and many of these were dominated by splendid villas. Families that had been peasants in Italy were now equites, while people of native descent were small farmers and tenants. Slaves captured in war did much of the field labor.
In the evenings they stopped at the inns that were spaced every ten miles along the fine roads. The roads themselves were splendidly made of cut stone, straight as a chalkline no matter what the terrain. If a gorge was in the way, it was bridged. If a hill intervened, it was cloven as if with an axe, and the road passed through. Only the great mountains forced the Roman roads to climb or bend.
At the inns and on the road Marcus got to know the men of his company. Some of them he had known for years, others he knew by reputation, and still others were total strangers. Quintus Brutus came from a very ancient patrician family, as ancient as the Scipios. Although still a young man, he was already a member of the college of augurs and he acted as the expedition's priest and omen-taker. Lucius Ahenobarbus was not a member of the patrician family of that name, but a descendant of their freedmen. These Ahenobarbi were merchants and contractors, and understood business in a way the land-based old aristocracy did not. Marcus would depend upon him for financial advice and analysis.
Most problematic of all, though, was Titus Norbanus. He was a tall, handsome man with a fine martial bearing although he had no great reputation as a soldier. He had a splendid voice and a rhetorician's way with words, and would be invaluable as envoy and negotiator. He was invariably polite and affable when he and Marcus spoke, apparently quite content with his secondary position. Marcus did not believe any of it for a moment. They were rivals from childhood and the rivalry had often been bitter. Norbanus acted as if this was boyish foolishness long behind them. Marcus did not believe that, either.
He could not explain why he disliked and distrusted Norbanus so. It was just that he was Titus Norbanus, and he could not be trusted.
Marcus was brooding upon this, seated at an inn fire on the evening of the ninth day since their departure, when Norbanus stopped by him.
"Come along, schoolboy," said Titus. "It's time for our lesson."
Marcus set aside his cup and rose. "I thought I'd outgrown this years ago."
"No such luck," Norbanus said, clapping him on the shoulder in a show of joviality that, to Marcus, rang utterly false. They went to a corner of the great room where an imposingly fat man stood with the rest of the party seated around him. Marcus and Norbanus took their places and waited in silence, just as they had when they were schoolboys, before donning the toga of manhood.
The fat man was Metrobius, a freedman and Roma Noricum's best teacher of Greek. Every wellborn Roman boy learned Greek, for it was the language of the civilized world, but few of them used it after their school years. It was the task of Metrobius to sharpen their rusty language skills. Nobody in Roma Noricum knew the Punic language, but it was certain that, in any land that touched the Mediterranean Sea, there would be people who spoke Greek. The Greek merchants who traded in Roma Noricum boasted that Greek was still the language of all educated people and of all who traded or traveled, though the days of Greek power were long eclipsed.