"Are Senate meetings usually this uproarious?" Zeno asked Gorgas.
"I've heard that they can get noisy. The Senate's divided into a lot of cliques, and they're all at each other's throat over high office and military command. They're only united against the rest of the world."
They waited a while longer, then Izates said: "I think there is nothing more to be learned here. Let's go get something to eat."
They were about to do just that when men began to emerge from the curia. First came a line of men who each carried a bundle of rods tied around an axe. These Gorgas identified as lictors: attendants to the higher magistrates. A man who wore a toga bordered with a broad purple stripe followed the lictors. Then came another line of lictors and another such magistrate. A third man emerged, unaccompanied by lictors, then more lictors preceding purple-striped magistrates and finally a crowd of senators, some of them wearing purple-bordered togas, most dressed in plain garments.
These men were different from those they had seen heretofore. Their faces were stern to the point of ferocity and their bearing was nothing short of regal. They trod like the masters of the earth. The third man to emerge after the two that Gorgas identified as consuls stood a little aside as if he were admiring the view. Then he gazed down at the two Greeks.
"I want to talk to that one," Zeno said. He began to ascend the steps.
"Why that one?" Izates asked, following him.
"He looks more intelligent than the rest. Gorgas, you wait here." They climbed to the top and stood before the white-haired man, whose austere face expressed polite interest.
"Rejoice, sir," Zeno said, hoping the man understood Greek. "We are travelers from Greece. I am Zeno of Athensand this is my friend Izates of Alexandria. We would ask the indulgence of the Roman Senate, of which august body I perceive you to be a member of high standing."
The man inclined his head slightly. "Rejoice, Greek. I am Publius Gabinius and I am a senator. How may I be of service to a distinguished visitor? I perceive that you are both men of good birth. Are you officials of Athens?" His Greek was nearly flawless, but old-fashioned in the manner they had heard their native tongue spoken by other Romans.
"Alas, we are not officials, although we bear letters of introduction from the Athenian Council. We are philosophers. Most particularly, I am a historian, and when I heard that the Romans had returned to Italy, I understood that history is now taking a momentous new turn. It is my desire to be the historian of the Roman resurgence, and I would very much like to have the approval of the Senate in carrying out my researches."
A very slight smile softened Gabinius's granite features. He liked this young man. Though handsome, he seemed to have none of the effeminacy that Romans associated with Greeks, and his words, while flattering, bore no taint of obsequiousness.
"A historian? Like Herodotus?"
Zeno sighed. It seemed he was never to escape that comparison. "I can claim nothing so grand, although my friend here thinks I might make a second-rate Thucydides."
Gabinius looked Izates over. "We haven't had much opportunity to study Greek philosophy up north, but some of us have read a bit. We tend to favor the Stoics. Are you of that school?"
"Izates is a Cynic," Zeno told him.
"Aren't the Cynics the ones who growl and snap like dogs?"
"Some people's toes need to be bitten," Izates said.
Again they heard that swords-on-shields laugh. "So they do! Come, my friends. Join me at my house for some dinner. I don't know how I may be of service to you, but what little I can do is yours to command."
This, Zeno thought, was amazing luck. If it was luck. They fell in beside the Roman as he went down the steps and turned up a narrow street. His stride was that of a much younger man, and something occurred to Zeno.
"I notice that most Roman men walk in exactly the same way, with paces of the same length."
"It's the legionary pace," Gabinius told him, "one thousand paces to the mile. It's drilled into us from boyhood. Short men have to hurry and tall men amble, but every man walks at the same pace." He turned up a yet narrower street. "So you are a historian. I take it that this entails much travel?"
"I've traveled more widely than most," Zeno assured him. "And my new friend Izates is from Alexandria.
"I take it that you both have visited the lands to the eastern end of the sea? Our knowledge of those parts is very out of date and wasn't vast when it was current. Perhaps you could tell me something about that part of the world?"
"Gladly," Zeno said, sensing that this was why the Roman had accepted them so readily. He wanted to know about the East. Perhaps the whole Senate was eager to learn about those lands. It was hardly a matter for wonder. This hardheaded people would understand that knowledge was power, and if the Romans understood nothing else, they understood power.
As they walked, ordinary people greeted Gabinius as a personal friend and he returned their greetings, pausing to exchange words with many of them. Common citizens, it seemed, had great respect for their rulers but held them in little awe. This Zeno approved. It reminded him of the Athenian democracy in the days of Pericles. He remarked upon this to Gabinius.
"Oh, yes. The highest offices are open to all citizens save freedmen recently manumitted, and even they may hold the lower, municipal posts. Among my colleagues in the Senate are men whose ancestry stretches back to Romulus, and others whose grandfathers were barbarian warriors who fought us along the Rhine and the Danube two generations ago."
"We lack your flexible concept of citizenship," Zeno said, "but something of the sort has happened with the spread of Greek civilization. My friend here," he nudged Izates with an elbow, "could be mistaken for a native Hellene, but he was born a Jew."
Gabinius looked at Izates with new interest. "I've heard of your nation. Is it true that you have only one god? That seems unnatural."
"It seems unnatural to everyone but us. But even Plato and other philosophers have speculated that there is only a single godhead, and that men have divided that deity into many aspects in order to explain the phenomena of nature and the universe: Zeus for thunder and lightning, Poseidon for the sea, Aphrodite for the attraction between men and women, Dionysus for the terrible forces of nature, Apollo for the enlightened thoughts of men and so forth."
"This is fascinating. I can see we shall have many enthralling discussions. Tell me, do your people still have their own kingdom, between Egypt and Seleucid Syria?"
The Romans are truly concerned about the power structure of the East, Zeno thought. Something must be happening there.
"Yes, the Hasmonean family clings to the kingdom of Judea. Egypt cares nothing for that part of the world anymore, and the Seleucids are too hard-pressed by the Parthiaris to give them much trouble."
"So your kingdom is strong and secure?"
"No longer my kingdom or my people," Izates said. "I'm more of an Alexandrian Greek, as Zeno says. But a man can't separate himself from his ancestry. The kingdom is beset by civil war, but that's an old story. When we are not united against an outside enemy, we fall to fighting among ourselves."
"Just like Greeks," Zeno said.
"Here we are. This is my house, which you are to regard as your own."
They stood before a blank wall that stretched in both directions for a considerable distance. They walked through the door into a spacious entrance hall dominated by a tall wooden chest. Before the chest was a bronze statue of a god, before which smoldered a small brazier. Gabinius took a pinch of incense from a box next to the brazier and dropped it onto the coals. His guests did the same.
"Is this your household god?" Zeno asked.
"This is Quirinus. He is our founder, Romulus, in deified form. This cabinet holds the wax death masks of my ancestors. My great-grandfather took them north on the exile and I have returned them home."