Potitius had never stopped protesting the plan to seize the Sabine women—until the moment he laid eyes on Valeria. She had been among the other Sabine virgins being held against her will in the walled courtyard of the king’s house. Looking frightened and miserable, she had not been the most beautiful of the Sabines, but some quality about her attracted Potitius’s gaze, and he could not look away. Pinarius saw him staring and whispered in his ear, “Do you want her, cousin? Take her—or else I will!” As the two men approached her, Valeria cowered at the predatory gleam in Pinarius’s eyes, but when she saw Potitius, who looked as miserable as herself, a very different emotion lit her face. In that moment, a bond was forged between them that was to last a lifetime. Of all the Sabine women, Valeria had been the very first to marry one of the captors willingly. Their child had been the first to be born to a Roman and a Sabine.
Romulus himself married one of the Sabines, Hersilia. Their marriage was happy, but barren. Potitius, who had many children, wondered if the gods had cursed Romulus to remain childless because he had so flagrantly violated the sacred laws of hospitality to capture the Sabine women. If the king himself harbored such thoughts, he never spoke them aloud.
Romulus did, however, develop strong ideas about marriage and family life. As king, he made his ideas into law. No marriage could ever be dissolved, although a husband had the right to put his wife to death if she committed adultery or drank wine (because drinking wine, Romulus believed, led women to adultery). Over his children and their children, a father wielded absolute control during his entire life; he could hire them out to others as laborers, imprison them, beat them, or even put them to death. No son ever outgrew the legal authority of his father. This was the law of the paterfamilias—the supreme head of the household—and it was to remain absolute and unquestioned in Roma for centuries to come.
These things Potitius remembered and pondered, thinking of Valeria, and the first Consualia, and the so-called rape of the Sabine women. If nothing else, Romulus had given him Valeria…
Beside him, Valeria slept. Potitius could tell, because she was gently snoring. Studying her face, remembering all their years together, he decided that their marriage would have been a successful one with or without the stern laws of Romulus, just as their children would have grown up to be respectful and obedient whether or not the king had decreed the law of paterfamilias. Potitius’s own father had often disapproved of his decisions, but would never have invoked a law to punish him or to break his will. What did Romulus—who had no sons or daughters, who claimed to have no human father—know about raising children or respecting a father? And yet, the world that came after Romulus would be different from the world that came before him, because of the laws he imposed on the families of Roma.
There was a rapping at the door to his hut. Moving quickly but carefully so as not to wake Valeria, Potitius went to answer the door. The afternoon sunlight dazzled his eyes and made a silhouette of his visitor, and Potitius did not recognize him until he spoke.
“Good afternoon, cousin.”
“Pinarius! What are you doing here? The feast is over. I thought I wouldn’t have to see your face again for at least a year!”
“Unkind words, cousin. Will you not invite me in?”
“What do we have to say to one another?”
“Invite me in, and find out.”
Potitius frowned, but stepped aside to let Pinarius enter. He shut the door. “Keep your voice low. Valeria is asleep.” From behind the wicker screen that hid their bed, he could hear her quiet snoring.
“I took a good look at her at the feast today,” said Pinarius. “She’s still a handsome woman. If only I had moved a bit faster than you, all those years ago—”
“Why are you here?”
Pinarius lowered his voice even more. “A change is coming, cousin. Some of us will survive it. Others will not.”
“Speak plainly.”
“You’ve always had differences with the king. Over and over you’ve opposed him, since the very beginning of his reign. If I were to tell you that his reign will soon be over, would you shed a tear?”
“Nonsense! Romulus is as fit as a man half his age. He still leads his warriors into battle and fights in the front rank. He’ll live to be a hundred.”
Pinarius sighed and shook his head. “You really have no idea of what’s going on, do you, cousin?”
This was how Pinarius always spoke to him—in riddles, with a mixture of pity and scorn. But Potitius realized that his cousin was serious, and speaking of something very grave. “Tell me, then. What’s going on behind the king’s back?”
“The senators grumble that the king has become too arrogant, that he’s reigned too long, that he takes his power for granted and abuses it. You’ve seen how he strides across the Palatine in his scarlet tunic and purple-bordered robe, surrounded by his coterie of surly young warriors. Lictors, he calls them, using the Etruscan word for a royal bodyguard—yet another of his affectations. The other day, when he deigned to attend a meeting of the Senate, he sat on his plush throne and gazed down on us, not even paying attention; he laughed and joked with his lictors instead. His ears perked up only when some wastrel, a lazy swineherd, appeared before him with a trumped-up complaint against a respectable man of property. And how did Romulus rule? For the swineherd and against the senator! While we were still gaping at that outrage, he announced that he would divvy up a newly conquered parcel of prime farmland among his soldiers, without consulting us—or giving us a share. What’s next? Will the king start throwing his old comrades out of the Senate and replacing us with swineherds and nobodies who arrived in Roma yesterday?”
Potitius laughed. “Romulus loves the common people, and they love him. And why not? He was raised by a swineherd! He may live in a palace, but his heart is in the pigsty. He loves his soldiers, too, and they love him. He was born to be a troublemaker and a rabble-rouser. Pity the poor senators who’ve grown too greedy and too fat to keep the king’s love! You complain that he’s arrogant, but what do you care if Romulus parades about in a purple robe? You care only about protecting your own privileges against newcomers and common folk who don’t know their place.”
Pinarius thrust out his jaw. “Maybe so, cousin, but things cannot go on as they are. A day of reckoning approaches, a day marked in the calendar of the heavens.”
Potitius grunted. “There have always been plots against Romulus—and Romulus has always put a stop to them. Are you here to tell me that another plot is being hatched? Are you asking me to take part?”
“Cousin, you always see though me!” Pinarius smiled. “To you I never tell the truth—yet from you I have no secrets.”
Potitius shook his head. “I’ll have nothing to do with any plot to harm the king.” Behind the screen, Valeria sighed and turned in her sleep. “I’ll hear no more of this. You should go.”
“You’re a fool, Potitius. You always have been.”
“Maybe so. But I won’t be a traitor as well.”
“Then at least keep your distance from the king, if you want to keep your head. What’s the Etruscan saying? ‘When the scythe cuts the weed, the grass is cropped as well.’ You’ll know the time of reckoning has arrived when the light of the sun fails, and day turns to night.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your Etruscans taught you much about divination, Potitius, but they taught you nothing about celestial phenomena. That study was left to me. Years ago, Romulus charged me with finding wise men who could predict the movements of the sun and moon and stars, so that we could better chart the seasons and fix the days of the festivals. There are ways of knowing in advance when certain rare events will occur. A day is coming when, for a brief while, the light of the sun will go out, and the gods will withdraw their favor from the king. Romulus will leave this earth, along with anyone who stands too close to him. Do you understand?”