‘The defeat of Perseus is the greatest triumph ever celebrated in Rome,’ Scipio replied, raising his voice against the din. ‘With victory at Pydna you passed to Rome the legacy of Alexander the Great, and laid open the east to Roman conquest.’
‘Such may be the judgement of history, of men like Polybius,’ Aemilius Paullus said. ‘But the judgement of Rome on a man’s achievements in his lifetime is a fickle thing, swaying this way and that like the wind that twists through these seven hills. Heed my words today. Cato and I have discussed it, and we see dark times ahead. Until Rome truly reawakens to the threat of Carthage, there will be years in which war may seem a distant memory, in which your own destiny may seem clouded and uncertain. You must hold true to yourself, and always remember what Homer said: Those fare best in life whose fortunes swing one way and then the other. When fortune is in your favour, your ability to excel will be boosted by the strength that you will have gained in times of adversity.’
Aemilius Paullus turned back towards the Sacred Way, and Fabius caught Polybius’ eye, seeing the hint of a smile on his lips. The evening before, they had walked together along the bank of the Tiber and Polybius had predicted it: that at the moment of greatest spectacle there would be a solemn moral message from father to son. He had said it was the thing he admired most about the Romans, their moral rectitude, something that had made him turn his back on Greece and make his home with those who had been his captors. He believed that it was what made the Romans such good generals and so different from Alexander the Great, his brilliance as a war leader weighed down by excess and immorality that fortunately seemed so far from the Roman character.
Fabius followed the general’s gaze and watched the legionary standards shimmering in the distance, where they rose above the height of the surrounding buildings on the route to the Field of Mars. Aemilius Paullus had been right about the disaffection of the people. After parting with Polybius the evening before, Fabius had spent much of the night in the taverns with comrades from the first maniple of the second legion, the unit he had trained with before leaving for Macedonia, and he had seen their anger. Men returning to Rome from glorious battle had been turned away from their homes by their wives and shunned by their children. He knew from Polybius what had caused it, not the tribunes of the people but those who had bribed them to spread disaffection, the same group of senators who had opposed the formation of a professional army and the foundation of the academy. It was the first time that Fabius had recognized the power that those men wielded, and how they could bring the plebs to their side. He had also realized that Metellus and his followers could use the enmity of that faction in the Senate towards the Scipiones and the Aemilii Paulli to their advantage, poisoning opinion against Scipio. That was part of the message from his father, about dark times ahead, caused not by an enemy abroad but by an enemy within. Half of those men who were standing around the podium now in togas enjoying the esteem of the people would as soon see Aemilius Paullus cast out of Rome and his triumph discredited. The general had been right about that too. The wind had blown in their favour this day, but it might not the next.
Scipio turned to Fabius and spoke close to his ear, against the noise. ‘Ennius’ pyrotechnical display was the signal. Take a look down the Sacred Way.’ He could hear the drums now, a slow, insistent beat, hollow in the distance, that marked the second part of the procession, the parade of treasures from Macedonia that would be brought by the cartload to the foot of the podium and dedicated in the temples that lined the Sacred Way. For Fabius the greatest sight was not the spoils of war but Scipio himself, flushed with excitement and resplendent in the cuirass and plumed helmet inherited from his adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus, the man in whose memory Fabius had sworn that he would protect the young Scipio unswervingly, staying by his side wherever fortune should take him. Today was the crowning point of Scipio’s life so far; it was the first time he had stood shoulder to shoulder with Rome’s greatest living warrior and statesmen and could grasp his own destiny. Fabius tried to forget the dark side, that this was also the last day that Scipio could have with Julia, the day that marked the beginning of her formal purification rites with the Vestal Virgins before her marriage to Metellus. War may have toughened Scipio up, but not for that. Fabius peered ahead, seeing the first cartload of treasure trundle out of the smoke, drawn by a team of oxen. For now, though, for a few hours at least, he hoped that Scipio could put the future on hold, as they revelled in the greatest spectacle that Rome had ever seen.
Three hours later, the space in front of the podium was piled high with dazzling treasure and works of art, carried there by more than two hundred and fifty wagons and chariots; prominent among them was a huge heap of the silverwork for which the Macedonians were famous, including magnificent drinking cups in the shape of horns, decorated with gold leaf and precious stones, mounded over a vast libation bowl that Aemilius Paullus had ordered made from more than twenty talents of the purest Macedonian mountain gold. Fabius had been more interested in the wagonloads of arms and armour, thousands of helmets, shields, breastplates and greaves, all jumbled together and smeared with mud and dried blood as they had been when they were collected from the battlefield; among them he could identify Cretan round shields, Thracian wicker shields, Macedonian spears and Scythian arrow quivers, a residue of the mercenary force that had been arrayed against them at Pydna alongside the Macedonian phalanx. Next had come over a hundred oxen with gilded horns, destined for sacrifice that evening on the Field of Mars, and then the family and household slaves of Perseus and the deposed king himself, stripped of his armour and shambling along in a black robe, looking confused and sullen in defeat. After he had passed, there was a lull while a final spectacle was prepared; wine and fruit was passed among the spectators by slaves who had been instructed to provide the people with drink in moderation, but not so much that they would become rowdy before the procession was over and the sacrifices had taken place on the Field of Mars that evening.
Polybius had lamented the pillaging of Macedonia; he had told Fabius how so many of these treasures, ripped from the temples and sanctuaries, had lost their significance, and become mere ornaments in the houses of the wealthy in Rome. But now Fabius could see how the greatest of those works, brought here in triumph and dedicated in the temples, had attained a new meaning, been given a new stamp of ownership as they were absorbed into Rome as symbols of conquest and power. From now on, the art and the artisans themselves would work to Roman taste, shaping a new Rome just as Polybius and the other Greek professors at the academy had influenced the thinking of the next generation of Roman war leaders. It was making Rome less narrow, drawing her away from her long-established traditions: a dangerous development in the view of those in the Senate who worried about the solidity of their own power base in Rome, built as it was on maintaining the old established order. He thought of the irony of the old centurion Petraeus, conservative to the core, presiding over part of this change, chosen by Scipio Africanus to usher this generation of boys into a new way of war, one in which conquest and domination would only be possible if they were unshackled from the constitution that had anchored and curtailed personal military ambition in Rome since the early days of the Republic.