Cosentia: provincial capital of the Bruttii. A hunchbacked collection of single-storey shacks. It was up in the hills, hard to get at, and had not been as important as the Bruttians' second city, Croton, for several hundred years. Still, Cosentia was their capital; odd tribe, the Bruttii.
I stayed a night at Cosentia, though I hardly slept. This was Magna Graecia: Greater Greece Rome had conquered Magna Graecia long ago; in theory. But I rode through its sullen territory with care.
The roads were almost empty now. At Cosentia only one other traveller stayed at the inn – the man I never saw. This fellow had his own pair of horses, which were what I recognized; a big roan that narrowly missed the grade as a flat-racer, and a skewbald pack animal. We had been running parallel from Salernum, if not longer, but I was always up and on the road before he appeared in the morning and by the time he caught up at night I had fallen into bed. If I had known he was still with me at Cosentia, I would have made an effort to stay up and make friends.
I hate the south. All those old-fashioned towns with massive temples to Zeus and Poseidon; all those schools of philosophy that make you feel inferior; all those sombre-faced athletes and the broody sculptors sculpting them. Not to mention their sky-high prices for strangers and their awful roads.
If you believe the Amid, Rome was founded by a Trojan; as I travelled the south my scalp crawled as if these Greek colonists had me marked as their ancient enemy in a Phrygian cap. People seemed to have nothing to do but lurk in their dusty porches watching strangers down the street. Cosentia was bad enough; Croton, thinking itself more important, was bound to be worse.
Crossing over to Croton involved serious alpine work. The temperature dropped as my road went on rising. Thick forests of chestnut and Turkey oak covered the Sila plains, then beeches and silver fir, while alders and aspens grappled onto the granite crags. Locals called this a good road; it was a wild and winding track. I never travelled after dusk; even in daylight I thought I heard mountain wolves. Once, when I was eating lunch in a sunny clearing full of wild strawberry plants, a viper slipped away behind a rock, eerily emerging from beneath my outstretched boot. I had felt safer swapping insults with the cutthroat Roman call girls at the Circus Maximus.
Snowcaps still lay on the peaks but the naval contractors had started trekking up for seasoned logs, so smoke from their bonfires sharpened the thin air. My nose dribbled as I drew off the path among wayside violets to overtake oxen with long wagons that swayed under the boles of mighty trees. The crumpled plain rose a thousand feet and higher above the sea. In Rome summer was approaching, but here the climate lagged. Everywhere was dripping in the thaw; furious torrents rushed along deep river valleys and icy spring water quenched my thirst.
I forged alone through this rough terrain for a couple of days. Above the Neaethus Valley a spectacular view opened onto the Ionian Sea. I descended among cultivated olives and vines, yet the landscape became scarred with erosions and pimpled with weird cones of clay, stranded there by the summer rush of waterways which had dragged away all the looser topsoil, stripping the dry scenery like a savagely sucked fig. At length my road switchbacked again and I reached Croton, which lurks like a very painful bunion, just underneath the ball of Italy's big toe.
This place Croton had been Hannibal's last refuge in Italy. I reckoned if a heathen like Hannibal passed through here again, Croton would still be prepared to give him a free splash in the Municipal baths and honour him into exile with a banquet at the town's expense. But there was no friendly welcome for me.
I rode into Croton with a stream of sweat between my shoulder blades. The landlord at the official Inn was a lean laggard with eyes like slits who assumed I had come to check his records for the Treasury auditor; I declared haughtily I had not yet sunk so low. He examined me closely before he condescended to let me book in.
'Staying long?' he whined furtively, as if he hoped not.
'I don't expect so,' I answered, implying with pleasant Roman frankness that I hoped not to. 'I have to find a priest called Curtius Gordianus. Know anything about him?'
'No.'
I was certain he did. In Magna Graecia lying to Roman officials is a way of life.
I was in my own country yet I felt like a foreigner. These dry old southern towns were full of fine dust, ferocious insects, lumbering bylaws, and tight-knit corrupt local families who only honoured the Emperor if it suited their own pockets. The people looked Greek, their gods were Greek, and they spoke Greek dialects. When I strolled out to get my bearings in Croton, I found myself in trouble in the first half-hour.
XIII
A toga would have been out of place in Croton. Only the magistrates at the courthouse even possessed formal clothes. Luckily I never insult a strange city by appearing overdressed. I had an unbleached tunic beneath a long storm-grey cloak, with plain leather sandals and a soft cord for a belt. The remains of a good Roman haircut were discreetly growing out, but no one could object to that since my head was well-hidden under swoops of white cloth. I was not frightened of sunstroke; I was disguised as a priest.
A forum is the place to find people. I walked towards it, politely allowing the citizens of Croton the shadier side of the street. They were a pushy lot.
Croton was a shabby sprawl, full of buildings that had been shoved askew by earthquakes. Sour smells seeped out from cluttered alleys where peeling walls carried election notices for men I had never heard of. Dogs that looked like wolves from the Sila mountains scavenged alone or raced through the byways in yelping packs. On second-floor balconies overweight young women with bulging jewels and narrow eyes waited until I passed by, then passed lewd comments on my physique; I refused to answer back because these ladylike daughters of Croton were probably related to the best men in the town. Besides, as a priest I was too pious for witty street chat.
I was led to the Forum by the babble and a strong smell of fish.
I wandered through the market. Everyone else had a good stare. Their eyes followed me from stall to stall, while knives hesitated over swordfish far too long before crunching them into steaks. As I paused in the colonnade, I glimpsed a youth flitting round a pillar with a distinct air of having no real reason to be there; squinted directly at him, so if he was a pickpocket he would know I had spotted him. He disappeared.
The racket was appalling. They had some healthy produce though. There were sardines, sprats and anchovies all shimmering as brilliantly as new pewter candlesticks, and fresh vegetables that looked plump enough even for my mother, who grew up on a Campagna small-holding. The usual disasters too: piles of ever-so-shiny copperware that would stop looking special as soon as you got it home, and streamers of cheap tunic braid in unattractive colours that would bleed in the wash. After that came more mounds of watermelons; squids and sea snakes; fresh garlands for tonight's banquets and laurel crowns left over from yesterday at glossy knockdown prices. Crocks of honey; plus bundles of the herbs that had fed the bees.
All I did was ask the price of liquorice. Well, so I thought.
In Magna Graecia, everyone spoke Greek. Thanks to an exiled Melitan money changer who once lodged with my mother and paid my quarterly school fees (one of life's little bonuses), I had received the scratchings of a Roman education. Greek was my second language; I could strike up a pose then recite seven lines from Thucydicles, and I knew Homer was not just the name of my Uncle Scaro's dog. But my thin-bearded Thracian schoolmaster had left out the practical vocabulary a man needs for discussing razors with a barber in Buxentum, requesting a spoon with a snail-pick from a half-asleep waiter in Vella – or avoiding offence in Croton when bartering for aromatic herbs. I felt confident I knew the word for liquorice root; otherwise even for my mother (who expected a present from the south and had thoughtfully recommended what to buy), I would never have made the attempt. In fact, I must have inadvertently used some ripe old Greek obscenity.