“I would buy her from you.”
“She will die for her crime, and soon.”
“Then may I at least examine her tonight?”
“Unfamiliar words for familiar request.”
Batiatus found himself descending the steps at the same pace as Verres, with little hope of speeding or slowing his progress.
“I envy you your governorship,” he said, after a pregnant pause. “Such opportunities await.”
“Perhaps,” Verres said. “Opportunitiy to be the object of hatred. The Sicilians are as yet unprepared for Roman government. They still yearn for the rule of the whip.”
“Why so?”
“Sicilia was that part of the Greek world where the old ways endured the longest. Their cities once ruled by tyrants-the strongest of men, the worst of men. Perhaps, in rare moments of fortune, also the best men suited to the task.”
“And how does one achieve status of tyrant?” Batiatus asked.
They paused to let a veiled woman pass before them. Her head turned to stare at Verres, her hand raised as if to say something, but then she hurried ahead of them, weaving through the dawdlers on the steps so that she was soon receding from sight far below.
“Application is simple,” Verres was saying. “Requiring only that you kill the previous incumbent. But it is not a responsibility that most mortal men would relish. The constant threat of similar attacks upon oneself? The constant need to make the toughest of decisions about one’s people and one’s supplies. A tyrant’s life is not easy, and a successful tyrant might come from the lowest of the ranks. Might alone endures the worst that fate has to offer, refining him through such hardship, honing him as a whetstone does a blade, until he is the fittest for the job.”
“I see no problem.”
“And when the tyrant dies. Who succeeds?”
“His son?”
“But the tyrant has fought his way up from nothing. He has learned the justice of the battlefield and the honesty of misfortune. He has clawed his way to the pre-eminent position in his domain, and that is what has made him what he is. But what is his son?”
“The son of a tyrant?”
“The son of a tyrant, exactly! Raised in a palace, perhaps? Cossetted and fussed over by a coterie of adoring women and hopeful slave girls. Given the best mentors that money can buy, and opportunities denied his father for poetry, song and epic. He will know his Iliad. He will know his Socrates and Anaximander. He will read Greek…”
“The tyrant should anticipate such obstacles. He should ensure his offspring suffers the correct hardships.”
“You are serious? You think it possible to create some form of ideal hardship?”
“Gladiators train body through exercise. Why not train mind through rigour? Banish him, perhaps? Force him to be raised by shepherds, unaware of true heritage? It might work…”
“And if it does not?”
“Then seek a new tyrant. The son will lose his place in the hierarchy.”
Verres laughed.
“Congratulations, Batiatus,” he said. “You have just invented the Republic!”
“We had our kings and found them wanting,” Batiatus agreed. “Following the bad days of Tarquin the Proud, we replaced them with our Republic. With men such as yourself made to run the course of honors as their training for rulership. With men such as Cicero to learn the best course of political action.”
Verres seemed to suppress a flinch, as if he had stubbed his toe, although Batiatus did not see him stumble on the steps.
“Rome has no tyrant,” Batiatus continued. “That is what makes us great-great enough to overcome the backward Sicilians.”
“Perhaps,” Verres said. “Yet we do have tyrants. Several occasions have seen the Republic falter and the appointment of new dictators to cut through the knots that senatorial government could not. Why, within living memory, Sulla was made our dictator in order to restore order to Rome.”
“And resigned office, once job was completed.”
“Fortuna smiles upon us. But what befalls the Republic should a dictator not resign?”
They reached the base of the steps.
“Then a king would rule once more.”
Each turned to head in a different direction.
“You depart?” Verres asked. “My litter awaits.”
“First I must attend to the gladiators, and sign off on the departed Bebryx. The show is not over for the lanista!”
“Of course. Forgive me. Till tonight, then.”
Lucretia stared listlessly at the colors and muted sights of Neapolis as her litter swayed past them. But no distraction could put the prattling of Ilithyia from her ears.
“I practically envy your husband!” Ilithyia said. “To see all those victorious gladiators.”
“You will lay eyes again soon enough, Ilithyia,” Lucretia replied. “Tonight is the silicernium banquet, when all grief for Pelorus is put from mind.”
“Another gathering!” Ilithyia sighed dramatically. “For a man of no consequence to me.”
“He was nothing but a name, to me,” Lucretia admitted. “A stranger unmet. A fragment of my husband’s history that has brought us little fortune. Would that my father-in-law had never freed him!”
“He need not have.”
“Pelorus saved his life in some forgotten act of kindness. He felt an obligation.”
“A master has no obligation to his slaves,” Ilithyia said. “Nor does a mistress. Slaves are the spoils of our superiority. They are the prize for our labors. We can do as we please with them!” She raised her eyebrows conspiratorially. “Anything!”
“Not anything,” Lucretia said. “Slaves do not spring into the world fully formed. They must be found or bred, raised or trained. They must be clothed and fed. Their illnesses attended to. With such an investment in a human possession, it would be foolish to abuse it.”
“I can no more abuse a slave than I can abuse a table. I have even heard it said that a slave with no tongue is not diminished in value.”
“It is true slaves are not expected to speak,” Lucretia agreed. “In most cases, the tongue is an unnecessary organ. Unless to command other slaves, or serve as nomenclator to remind you of appointments and distant acquaintances. A food taster checking for poison would be of no worth without tongue. As would a pleasure slave!”
They giggled together at the thought.
“Not all men share the entitlements and honors of a Roman citizen,” Ilithyia said. “If a foreigner wishes to be Roman, it is the work of generations to learn the etiquettes and culture required. Why, one such as myself is the very pinnacle of such development, representing generations of breeding.”
“How could we forget?” Lucretia noted, flopping her head back onto her pillow.
“But I fear I am not the type to ever give consideration to freeing a slave. Not unless he is of no possible use to me, and impossible to sell on.”
“You mean if blind, infirm, or senile?”
“Certainly. Why waste coin upon him? Would you have me purchase another slave to care for the one that already drains my resources?”
“Would he not be burden on our city, when found wandering the streets?” Lucretia asked.
“I would see him taken him up into the hills. Left beneath the heavens for the gods to decide his fate.”
“Is that not a little cruel?”
“Such a method gave us Romulus and Remus, suckled by the she-wolf. Rome itself came into being by such means.”
“Does that not seem like a strange comparison?”
“How so?”
“Between the legend of the foundation of Rome, and the abandonment of old slaves in the wilderness!”
“You should have a scribe set this down. A treatise on the management of a state, resembling Plato’s Republic, but absent the good ideas.”
“You think I am a lady of bad ideas?” Lucretia asked.
“In such a state, no work is done, but coin mysteriously appears to clothe the idle and feed the indolent. Your world is the most terrible of Saturnalias, where slaves sit in luxury while their masters scurry like mad to make sums enough to keep everybody happy.”