Young Lucius laughed. “You say the funniest things, Grandfather.”
“I try. Speaking of the baths, here we are.”
Lucius enjoyed the morning immensely. Time spent with his grandson was always precious, and the diversions offered by the baths were among the greatest pleasures of city life. The day began with a shave from his most trusted slave. Young Lucius watched the procedure with great interest. His father wore a beard these days, so the boy was not used to seeing the skillful application of a sharp blade to a man’s face.
After the shave, they went outside to the open-air pool—a man-made lake, some called it, on account of its size—where the two of them swam a few laps side by side. The boy’s stroke was choppy, but his breathing technique was good. Wherever life might take him, young Lucius would surely have occasion to travel by ship, and it would behoove him to know how to swim. How many of Antonius’s soldiers had drowned at the decisive naval battle at Actium, not because their armor pulled them under, but because they simply did not know how to swim?
Again, he found himself thinking of Antonius…
A gymnasiarch organized a series of competitions on the long racing track beside the pool. Lucius encouraged his grandson to take part. He was delighted to see the boy win his first two heats. Young Lucius was beaten in the third race, but only by a nose. His grandson was a strong runner.
Another gymnasiarch organized a series of wrestling matches. The competitors were all older and bigger than young Lucius, who sat with his grandfather among the spectators. The wrestlers competed in Greek fashion, naked and with their bodies oiled. Such a diversion, like being carried in a litter, struck Lucius as slightly decadent. What would his ancestors think? True Romans preferred to watch gladiators fight to the death.
Lucius recalled how the emperor, in his heated propaganda war against Antonius and Cleopatra, had railed against the dangerous influx of foreign vices, saying the Greek-blooded queen had corrupted Antonius with the appetites of the luxurious East. Yet, once he triumphed over his rivals, the emperor had made Roma a more cosmopolitan city than ever before. He allowed Agrippa to build the baths. He imported the worship of exotic gods. He catered at every turn to the citizens’ appetite for entertainment and pleasure.
Finished with their morning exercise, Lucius and the boy bathed. They began by scraping the sweat from their bodies, using strigils. They did so in the shadow of the famous statue by Lysippus which depicted a naked athlete doing exactly the same thing, bending back one muscular arm to run his strigil over the other arm, which was extended before him. Agrippa had installed the statue at the baths with great fanfare. Lysippus had been the court sculptor to Alexander the Great. Though many copies had been made of the Apoxyomenos, as The Scraper was known in Greek, the original bronze was of incalculable value. The statue was yet another lavish gift from the emperor to the people of Roma.
Lucius and the boy went back and forth between pools of varying temperature. The coolest was quite bracing after their exercise. The hottest was obscured by a curtain of steam and required a gradual process of immersion. Even the floors were heated, by water piped beneath the tiles. The walls were of marble, and even in the wettest areas Agrippa’s decorators had found means to adorn them with paintings, infusing dyes into beeswax, then fixing and hardening the images with heat. The paintings depicted gods, goddesses, and heroes. Scenes of legend appeared to hover in the mist.
After bathing, they wrapped themselves in linen cloths and took a light meal in an adjoining arcade. The boy ate pieces of bread slathered with garum. Lucius abstained from the spicy garum and ate fig-paste instead.
They discussed the boy’s studies. He was currently reading The Aeneid by the late Virgil, who had been the emperor’s favorite poet. When the emperor asked Virgil to create a Roman epic to match The Iliad and The Odyssey of the Greeks, The Aeneid was the result. The long poem about the adventures of Aeneas celebrated the Trojan warrior as the son of Venus and the founder of the Roman race. Aeneas, it turned out, was the ancestor not only of the emperor and his uncle, the Divine Julius, but also of Romulus and Remus. If Lucius had doubts about the historical validity of The Aeneid, he did not express them to the boy. There was no denying that Virgil had created a work of art that greatly pleased the emperor.
After eating, they rested. A few old friends and colleagues stopped to say hello, and Lucius was delighted to introduce his grandson. The talk turned to foreign imports, the cost of slaves, the advantages and disadvantages of transport by land or by sea, and who had been awarded contracts for various construction projects in the city. “As you can see, my boy,” remarked Lucius, “these days, more business is done here in the baths than in the Forum.”
In the old days, of course, all the talk would have been about politics and war. Nowadays, war was an activity on the distant frontier that might or might not affect trade, and politics—true politics, as their forefathers had understood the word, with everyone freely arguing and shouting to make themselves heard—no longer existed. One might speculate about intrigues within the imperial family, or conjecture about the relative influence wielded by members of the emperor’s immediate circle—but only in whispers.
Exercised, bathed, and fed, the two retired to the dressing room. Young Lucius slipped into the tunic he had worn earlier, but his grandfather, assisted by the slave who had shaved him, put on his toga. While the boy watched, he pontificated on the proper wearing of the toga.
“A man isn’t simply wrapped in his toga,” he explained. “He carries it, as he carries himself, with a show of dignity and pride. Shoulders back, head up. And the drapes should fall just so. Too few folds, and you look as if someone threw a sheet over you. Too many folds, and you look as if you’re carrying a bundle of laundry to the fuller.”
The boy’s laughter delighted Lucius. It meant that his grandson was paying attention. He was watching, listening, learning.
The slave handed his master a shiny trinket on a golden chain. Lucius slipped the necklace over his head and tucked it beneath his toga.
“What’s that, Grandfather? An amulet of some sort?”
“Not just any amulet, my boy. It’s very old, and very important, and today is the very last day I shall ever wear it. But we’ll talk of it later. For now, I want to show you a bit of the city. There are some places I should like you to see through my eyes.”
“Shall I summon the litter?” asked the slave.
“Actually, I think not. The hot plunge has so loosened my knees that I think I might be up for a bit of walking. But you must be patient, young Lucius, and not run ahead of me.”
“I shall stay by your side, Grandfather.”
Lucius nodded. How polite the boy was, always respectful and well-mannered. He was studious, as well, and very clean and neat. The boy was a product of his times. The world had become a much more orderly, peaceful, settled place than it was in the old days of the civil wars. His ancestors would be proud of young Lucius. They would be proud of the harmonious world that their descendents, through much bloodshed and toil, had finally achieved.
As they headed out from the baths, a flash of excitement crossed young Lucius’s face, then he bit his lower lip nervously.
“What is it, my boy?”