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    A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome
    A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome
    A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome
    Ebook1,157 pages25 hours

    A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

    By Taylor Caldwell

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    About this ebook

    New York Times Bestseller: A magnificent novel of ancient Rome and the tragic life of Cicero, who tried in vain to save the republic he loved from tyranny.

    In this riveting tale, the Roman Empire in its final glory is seen through the eyes of philosopher, orator, and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero.
     
    From his birth in 106 BC in the hill town of Arpinum, Cicero, the educated son of a wealthy member of the equestrian order, is destined for greatness. At a young age, he discovers the legend of the Unknown God, the coming Messiah, and it propels the rising lawyer on a journey of spiritual conflict and self-discovery. From his tumultuous family life to his tenuous alliance with Julius Caesar to a fateful love affair with the Roman empress Livia and, finally, to the political role that will make him a target of powerful enemies, A Pillar of Iron is the story of Cicero’s legacy as one the greatest influences on Western civilization.
     
    Based on hundreds of speeches, voluminous private correspondence, and ancient texts and manuscripts, this bestselling epic brings into focus Cicero’s complicated relationships with his contemporaries, including Caesar, Mark Antony, and Crassus, and brilliantly captures the pageantry, turmoil, and intrigue of life in ancient Rome. According to legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, author “Taylor Caldwell is a storyteller first, last and foremost, and once you begin reading one of her books, you can’t help finishing it.”
     
    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Taylor Caldwell including rare images from the author’s estate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateJan 31, 2017
    ISBN9781504042987
    Author

    Taylor Caldwell

    Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) was one of the most prolific and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in Manchester, England, she moved with her family to Buffalo, New York, in 1907. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel when she was twelve. Married at age eighteen, Caldwell worked as a stenographer and court reporter to help support her family and took college courses at night, earning a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931. She adopted the pen name Taylor Caldwell because legendary editor Maxwell Perkins thought her debut novel, Dynasty of Death (1938), would be better received if readers assumed it were written by a man. In a career that spanned five decades, Caldwell published forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers. Her best-known works include the historical sagas The Sound of Thunder (1957), Testimony of Two Men (1968), Captains and the Kings (1972), and Ceremony of the Innocent (1976), and the spiritually themed novels The Listener (1960) and No One Hears But Him (1966). Dear and Glorious Physician (1958), a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God (1970), about the life of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time. Caldwell’s last novel, Answer as a Man (1981), hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.  

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    • 4/5
      Pillar of Iron by the master author Caldwell is unquestionably a work of genius. She covers a huge lot in between, beginning with the time of Cicero's birth and ending with his murder. In 106 BC, Cicero was born on his family's estate not far from Arpinum. His mother, Helvia, was from an aristocratic family, while his father, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who is also known as Tullius in the novel, belonged to the equestrian class. Cicero was regarded as a "new man" and a plebeian in Rome.

    Book preview

    A Pillar of Iron - Taylor Caldwell

    CHAPTER ONE

    Marcus Tullius Cicero winced when the hot plaster was placed on his chest by his physician, and in the somewhat pettish voice of a semi-invalid he demanded, What is that stink?

    Vulture’s grease, said the physician, proudly. Two sesterces a pot and guaranteed to allay any inflammation. Slaves stirred up the coals in the brazier and M. Tullius shivered under his blankets. A fur rug had been placed over his feet but he was still cold.

    Two sesterces, he repeated with gloom. What did the Lady Helvia say about that?

    She does not as yet know, said the physician. M. Tullius smiled with anticipation. The money will go on the household accounts, he said. It is an excellent thing to have a thrifty wife in these profligate days, but not always, when such a thing as this vile unguent is added to the cost of beans and kitchen utensils. I thought we had a medical account.

    I bought the grease from another physician, said the physician with some small rebuke in his voice. The Lady Helvia will not deal with merchants if she can avoid it. Had I bought this in the shops the price would have been five sesterces, not two.

    Nevertheless, the two sesterces will go on the household accounts, said M. Tullius. The cost of the linen and wool for the expected child will also appear among the kettles and the fish and the flour. Yes, a frugal wife is excellent, but in some way, as a husband, I resent being numbered between new chamber pots and goat cheese. I saw it for myself. He coughed heavily and the physician was pleased. Aha, the cough is much looser, he said.

    There are times, said M. Tullius, when a patient, in order to save his life, must hasten to get well and escape his physician’s ministrations and his stinks. It is a matter of self-preservation. What is the weather today?

    Very bad, and most unusual, said the physician. We had a snowstorm. The hills and pastures are deep in it, and the river is frozen. But the sky is blue and clear and fresh, and there is a brisk wind from the north. This will be helpful in your cure, Master. It is the east wind we fear, and especially the southeast wind.

    M. Tullius was beginning to feel warmer, not with the heat of fever but with returning health. The woolen shift he wore began to prickle; he moved, and the stench of the vulture’s grease became very powerful. He hastily pulled the blanket over his chest again. It is a moot point, he said, whether I shall be asphyxiated by the stink or by the congestion in my lungs. I think I prefer the latter. He coughed tentatively. The pain in his chest was subsiding somewhat. He looked about his bedroom, and saw the slaves industriously heaping the brazier with more wood. The thick glass of the window was dripping with moisture. Enough, he said, irritably. I am beginning to drown in my sweat.

    By nature he was not an irritable man, but kindly and very gentle, and always somewhat abstracted. The physician was encouraged by this irritability; his patient would soon be well. He looked at the thin dark face on the white pillows, and at the large brown eyes which always failed, in spite of efforts, to appear stern. His features were mild and clear, his brow benevolent, his chin undetermined. He was a young man, and he seemed younger than his years, which annoyed him. He had the calm and somewhat passive hands of the scholar. His fine brown hair did not take to cropping amiably; it merely lay on his long skull as if painted there and could never be induced to stand upright in the manner of a very virile man.

    He heard footsteps and winced again. His father was approaching the bedroom, and his father was an old Roman. He closed his eyes and pretended to fall asleep. He loved his father but found him overpowering, with all his tales of the grandeur of the family, a grandeur Tullius sometimes suspected did not exist. The footsteps were firm and heavy and the father, also named M. Tullius Cicero, entered. Well, Marcus, said the loud and hectoring voice, when are we arising?

    M. Tullius could see the sun-glare through his lashes. He did not answer. The white wooden walls of his bedroom reflected the glare, which, all at once, appeared too intense to him. He is sleeping, Master, said the physician, apologetically.

    Eheu! What is that stench? asked the old father. He was lean and tall and irascible and cultivated an old-fashioned beard which he believed gave him a resemblance to Cincinnatus.

    Vulture’s grease, said the physician. Very expensive but efficacious.

    It would arouse a man from the dead, said the old father in his dogmatic tones.

    It cost two sesterces, said the physician, winking at him. He was a freedman, and as a physician, then, he was also a citizen of Rome and could take advantages.

    The old father smiled sourly. Two sesterces, he repeated. That should make the Lady Helvia count the coppers in her purse. He breathed deeply and loudly. Frugality is a virtue, but the gods frown on greed. I thought I was master in the art of making three sesterces grow where two grew before, but by Pollux! the Lady Helvia should have been a banker! How is my son, eh?

    Recovering, Master.

    The old father leaned against the bed. I have a theory, said the old father. My son retreats to his bed when the Lady Helvia becomes too dominant—and she with child! What do you think of my theory, Phelon?

    The physician smiled discreetly. He glanced down at his presumably sleeping patient. There are gentle natures, he offered. And retreat is often a way of securing victory.

    I heard, said the old father, that the Lady Helvia has suddenly taken to her bed. Is the child due?

    At any day, said the physician, alerted. I will go to see her at once.

    He hurried from the room, his linen garments swirling about him. The old father bent over the bed. Marcus, he said, I know you are not sleeping, and your wife is about to give birth. Do not try to delude me with that affectation of sleep. You never snored in your life.

    M. Tullius groaned faintly. He could do nothing but open his eyes. His father’s eyes, small and black and vivid, were dancing on him. Who says she is about to give birth? he asked.

    There was a scurrying in the women’s quarters, and pots of hot water, and the midwife in an apron, said the old father. He scratched his hairy cheek. But as this is the first child no doubt it will be some time before it is born.

    Not with Helvia, said M. Tullius. She does all things with dispatch.

    I find her a woman of many virtues, said the old father, who was a widower and thankful for it. Still, she is subject to the laws of nature.

    Not Helvia, said M. Tullius. The laws of nature are subservient to her.

    The old father chuckled at the resignation in his son’s voice. So are we all, Marcus. Even I. Your mother was a sweet and bending soul. I did not appreciate her.

    So you are afraid of Helvia, also, said M. Tullius. He coughed loosely.

    Afraid of women! Nonsense. But they create difficulties, which a wise man avoids. You have excellent color. How long do you believe you can hide in your bed?

    Unfortunately, not for long, and not after Helvia sends for me, Father.

    The old father meditated. There is virtue in taking to bed, he remarked. I am considering it, myself. But Helvia will not be deceived. Two men in bed would arouse her suspicions. You will name the child after us, certainly, if it is a boy.

    M. Tullius had had another name in mind, but he sighed. He opened his eyes widely now and saw the drift of snow against the window. The woolen drapery over the window blew in a short, sharp wind, and M. Tullius shivered.

    I am truly sick, he said, hopefully. There is an inflammation of the lungs.

    The gods have said, and the Greeks also, that when a man wishes to evade his duties he can summon any illness to assist him, said the old father, He picked up his son’s wrist and felt the pulse, and then threw the hand from him. Vulture’s grease! he exclaimed. It must be miraculous. You have a fine pulse. Ah, here is the midwife.

    M. Tullius shrank under his coverlets and closed his eyes. The midwife bowed and said, The Lady Helvia is about to give birth, Masters.

    So soon? said the old father.

    Very soon, Master. She took to her bed an hour ago, by the waterclock which is not yet frozen, and has had one pain. The physician is with her. The birth is imminent.

    I told you, said M. Tullius, miserably. Helvia defies the laws of nature. She should have been in labor at least eight hours.

    A sturdy wench, said the old father. He flung back the coverlets in spite of his son’s cowering. A woman, said the old father, wishes the presence of her husband when she gives birth, and especially a lady of Helvia’s ancestry, which is impeccable. Marcus, arise.

    M. Tullius tried to rescue the blankets but his father threw them on the stone floor. Your presence, Father, said the young man, will be much more sustaining to Helvia than mine.

    Arise, said the old father. He looked at the slaves. Bring a fur cloak at once.

    A fur cloak was brought with unseemly alacrity and was wrapped over M. Tullius’ narrow frame. His coughs, now violent, did not convince his father, who seized his arm sturdily and marched him from the room into a stone hall that blew with bright cold wind. The Nones of Janus! What a time to be born! M. Tullius thought with longing of warm islands in the Bay of Naples, where the sun was benign even now and flowers clambered over brick and wall and the people sang. But the old father believed there was virtue in being wretched, and in this he resembled his daughter-in-law.

    It is not, thought M. Tullius, weakly trying to keep up with the strides of his father through the bitter bright halls, that I do not love Helvia, though she chose me and I had nothing to say concerning it. But she is a formidable girl. It may be that I am a poor Roman; it remains that I prefer sweet voices and music and books and tranquillity, though I admire the military. At a distance. A long distance. There must be Greek blood in me, from some far time.

    They passed an open space between the halls and M. Tullius could see the snow-strewn gardens, the strong white sunlight, the distant Volscian Hills standing in white fire like Jupiter, himself. Even in Rome, northeast of Arpinum, it would be warmer than this; the multitude would heat the air, and the tall buildings would soften the winds or oppose them. There was also shelter every few steps in doorways, and heated litters. But here in the countryside there was no shelter from the winter, which had been unusually severe this year. The old father liked to dress himself in fur and leather and ride over the country, surrounded by grooms, and hunt deer, and come back abominably rosy and hearty and exuding frost, stamping his feet and thumping his chest. The very thought was enough to make M. Tullius cough again and cling to his fur cloak. Helvia was, unfortunately, very rugged also, and thought fresh air salubrious, whereas any physician with a modicum of wisdom knew that fresh air could be fatal under certain circumstances. Only yesterday she had snared two rabbits herself, in the snow, and she weighty with child. M. Tullius found himself heartily disliking healthy people who liked winters. The old father was not really old; he ought, thought M. Tullius, to have married Helvia, himself. Then they could not only plow through the snow together but compare genealogies and eat rabbit stewed in garlic sauce and drink the sour Roman wine in happy company.

    M. Tullius thought of the years he had spent in the army; he had been proud of those years until today. Now he shivered. Hearty people irritated him; they usually expired, very suddenly, with a small ailment that lesser people would simply have dosed with a cup of hot herbs. —They had arrived at the door of the women’s quarters. There was no attendant except for a very old woman with a mustache and with thick shawls over her shoulders. She was a favorite of the Lady Helvia’s, for she had been the young wife’s nurse in her childhood. She shuffled up from her stool in the piercing cold of the hall and glared at the masculine intruders, who were always intimidated by her, even the old father who had a bull’s voice on most occasions.

    Were you waiting until the child was robed in the regilla? she asked caustically. Or, perchance, the toga?

    M. Tullius said, Is the child born? No? How then is it possible, Lira, to know if the child will wear a puerile robe or a regilla? He tried to smile at the old woman whom he privately called Hecate.

    Lira muttered some obscenity under her breath while father and son tried not to glance at each other. The old woman then wheezed her way ahead of them to a farther door. A time of travail, she said in a rusty, mourning voice. But who is at hand but slaves when my child is suffering?

    M. Tullius and the old father could not conceive of Helvia needing any soothing or assistance at all, for she was a redoubtable girl, but M. Tullius said anxiously, The physician is with her, and I hear no commotion!

    The physician! shouted Lira, with her hand on the door and turning to fix a direful eye on the two gentlemen. Of what use is a man except to cause a lady agony? That physician and his smells and his big hands! In my day no man approached a lady in her travails; it is disgusting. Commotion! My lady is of great and gentle blood; she is not one to scream like a wench in the hay.

    Open the door, slave! said the old father, recovering some of his courage.

    I am no slave! Lira exclaimed, in as loud a voice. My lady freed me on her marriage. Her marriage! she repeated, in a spitting tone.

    The old father became as purple as ripe grapes, and he raised his clenched fist, which his son caught deftly, shaking his head.

    Am I not master in my own house? roared old M. Tullius Cicero. Is this the new Rome that gutter filth dares lift its eyes to the Master?

    Hah, said Lira, and pushed open the door to her lady’s chamber. But she stood in the doorway for another baleful moment. She shook her finger at the old father. It is a great and noble occasion for this family of the vetch—Cicero. The child will be a boy and there have been portents. She nodded her ancient head and her eyes glowed on them with triumphant malice. "I have seen them myself. When my lady’s pain came there was a flash in the sky like lightning, and a cloud shaped like a mighty hand holding a scroll of wisdom.* The child will be known in history, and but for him the name of Cicero would die in dust."

    She saw something in the old father’s eye that made her shuffle aside hastily, and the two men entered a room hardly warmer than the hall, for there was but a brazier of small proportions in it and only an ember, or two. The stone of the floor struck even through M. Tullius’ thick leather shoes, and cold appeared to blast from the plastered white walls. Helvia was never chilly, being always in the most robust of health. Three young female slaves were standing near the window and aimlessly rearranging the blue wool curtains, and the midwife was dropping a handful of wood chips on the little brazier. The room was stark, modestly furnished, and dominated by a plain wooden bed. In the bed, with her account books all about her, sat Helvia, a pillow at her back. Lira rushed to her side, murmurously, but Helvia saw her visitors and frowned. Her pen had stopped at an entry in a very large and very heavy book. The physician stood at the head of the bed and looked helpless.

    Helvia, said M. Tullius. He understood, vaguely, that it was the part of the husband to leap to his wife’s side on these momentous occasions, take her hand, reassure her, and offer up a prayer on her behalf. Helvia frowned. There is a difference of three sesterces, she said, in her hearty young voice.

    Oh, gods, muttered the old father. He looked at the small statue of Juno before which three votive lights were burning.

    Your bookkeeper is either illiterate or a thief, Marcus, said Helvia to her husband. She suddenly yawned, showing a healthy pink cavern and a set of admirable white teeth, large and glistening. M. Tullius approached her timidly.

    I rose from my sick bed, my love, he said, to be with you at this hour.

    Helvia appeared puzzled. I am not sick, she said. Her great belly swelled under her blankets. But, do you not have a cough, Marcus?

    I rose from my sick bed, M. Tullius repeated, feeling absurd. Helvia shrugged. You are always in a sick bed, she said heartlessly. I cannot understand this, for the air is very healthful here. If, Marcus, you would but ride daily or walk in the freshness of the winter, you would not resemble a shade. Even Phelon agrees with me.

    The votive lights flickered in a strong and icy breeze and M. Tullius saw that one window stood open, and he coughed loudly. He approached the bed and sat on the plain wooden chair beside it. Helvia looked at him with a sudden fondness, reached out a capable hand, felt his brow, demanded to see his tongue, and dismissed his sickness at once. It is nonsense, she said firmly. But what is that vile odor?

    Vulture’s grease, said her young husband. On a plaster, for my chest.

    She wrinkled her nose. Carrion, she said. I thought I recognized the stench.

    Vulture’s grease, said Phelon. It is very efficacious, lady. It relieved the lung congestion almost immediately.

    Helvia’s gaze became intent. And, without doubt, very expensive. How much? she demanded of the physician.

    Two sesterces, Phelon admitted.

    Helvia reached for an account book, and neatly inscribed the two sesterces therein. M. Tullius, the kindest of young men, was exasperated.

    Is it true that you have come to labor, Helvia? he asked.

    I had a pain an hour ago, said Helvia, abstractedly. She closed the book, shut her eyes and thought. Those three sesterces! I shall never rest in peace until I discover the error—or the theft.

    My bookkeeper is a man of the highest integrity, said the old father. If it matters so much to you, Helvia, I will give you the three sesterces myself.

    That would not satisfy my accounts, said the girl. She opened her eyes and frowned. She had beautiful eyes, large and changeful of color, so that in one light they appeared bluish and in another olive, and yet in clearer light they appeared a deep, golden-gray. They stood in thickets of thick black lashes which could sweep her cheek. She had a perfectly round face, faintly olive in tint, as smooth as silk and flushed like a ripe pear. Her brows appeared plucked, so sharply dark and straight they were. Her forehead was somewhat low, which the old father in moments of vexation against her would remark augured a poor intelligence. Her nose was just slightly aquiline, with good clear nostrils, and she had a large mouth as full and guileless as that of a child, and a dimpled plump chin and a short neck that went at once into dimpled shoulders. Her black hair was so thick and curly that it fell only to her shoulders and refused to grow longer, merely increasing in riotous profusion and shining like new coal. She came of the noble Helvius family, yet no one would have been startled to find her in the kitchen or in the barns, and often enough she was there indeed, watching her domestic thieves. Her big bosom pushed against her shift, and her short arms were dimpled yet muscular, and her hands were broad and strong. She was all health and vitality and vividness, and though she had patrician blood it was not evident.

    When she did not annoy or bully him the old father considered her an excellent matron and his son very lucky. He was usually afraid of her, young though she was, and just come to womanhood, being only sixteen years old.

    Are you not cold, my love? asked M. Tullius, hoping for a larger fire in the brazier. His wife opened her eyes wide at him. I am not cold, she said, in her firm voice. More illness is caused by too much heat than by freshness. She eyed him closely. Are you cold in all that fur and leather?

    Very cold, he said.

    She sighed, caught up one of her blankets and threw it over his knees maternally. We shall be warmer, she said, and ordered a slave to throw another handful of chips on the brazier.

    If we could but close the window, said M. Tullius, huddling gratefully under the warm blanket. I have a cough.

    You also have a smell, said Helvia. Her young face was contorted for a moment, and the physician bent over her solicitously. It is nothing; it is gone, she assured him, impatiently. Then she flushed deeply and looked embarrassed. I fear the child is here, she said.

    The old father hastily left the room. Old Lira began a crooning; the female slaves knelt before the statue of Juno. The physician thrust his hand under the blankets. M. Tullius fainted quietly. The physician was very excited. The head! he cried.

    With no more effort than that, or confusion, the child was born, a boy, on the third day of January, in the Latin year of 648, to Marcus Tullius Cicero and his young wife, Helvia, and in his turn he was named Marcus Tullius Cicero also.

    The child is the mirror of you, my lady, said Lira to her mistress four days later. Helvia was at her table with her account books again, but the physician at least kept her to her room for the prescribed time.

    Helvia looked critically at the babe in Lira’s arms; he was swaddled in folds of white wool.

    Nonsense, she said, touching the thin little cheek with one finger, then chucking the child under his small and sensitive chin. He is the mirror of my husband. He has a distinguished appearance, does he not? I will grant you, however, that he has my eyes. She opened her bodice and put the child to her breast, and over his head and her protecting arms she considered the books again. Ten more linen sheets, she said, severely. We shall be bankrupt.

    The child does not resemble his father in the least, said Lira, obstinately. He has your noble father’s expression, Lady. There is the aura of greatness about him. Am I ever mistaken? Did I not tell you the very day he would be born? And is there anyone like me who can read omens so exactly?

    And two hecatombs sacrificed in his behalf when he was born, said Helvia. One should have been sufficient.

    A lovely babe, said Lira. Rome does not know this yet, but a Hero has been born. She stroked the delicate fine hair of the sucking child. Do you know what the Jews say, Lady? They are expecting a Hero. They are all excitement. They say it is in the prophecies. And at Delphi, I have heard, the Oracle spoke of the Great One who is about to appear. There have been portents in the sky. The priests murmur of it in the temples. The Hero.

    Helvia said, He seems more like a lamb born before its time, or a little goatling without hair. I still cannot find those sesterces.

    He is a Hero, said Lira. Ah, there will be magnificent events in Rome when this is a man!

    *This phenomenon was actually recorded.

    CHAPTER TWO

    Many years later, the child, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the third of the name, wrote to a friend, It was not that my mother, the lady Helvia, of the illustrious Helvius family, was avaricious, as I have often heard it meanly remarked. She was simply thrifty, as were all the Helvii.

    He often thought of the very modest household near Arpinum where he had been born on that very cold day in the month of Janus, for there, for many reasons, lay his sweetest memories. After his naming, to avoid confusion, his father was no longer addressed as Marcus Tullius, but simply as Tullius, which maddened the old father who roared that it appeared that he, himself, had lost his own name after the birth of his grandson. It is that woman! he would shout at his son. I am the grandfather, to whom respect and all honor are due, yet I have heard the very slaves speak of me as ‘the old father!’ I am despised in my own household.

    Helvia thought him unreasonable. Had not the old father insisted upon the name of his grandson? Life was indeed complicated enough without three males with the same name, in the same household. I insist on your calling me ‘grandfather,’ said the old father, for it is due me now. As Helvia had always addressed him so from the moment of her first son’s birth she thought him more captious than even before, and shrugged. Men were not to be understood. It was illogical for a woman to expect a man to be logical. He is old, Helvia, her husband, Tullius, told her mildly, to which she replied: My father is older than he, and of a better temper. That is due to my mother, who will permit no roaring in the household, not even at the basest slave. Once, said Helvia, with a look of pleasure on her agreeable young face, my mother hurled a dish of sauced fish at my father’s head when he became intemperate at the table.

    Tullius, thinking of his own father, and smiling, asked, What did your father do on that catastrophic occasion?

    He wiped the sauce and fish from his head and face with his napkin, said Helvia, surprised at the question. What else could he do?

    He did not object?

    My mother was larger and stronger, said Helvia. Moreover, there was a dish of beans near at hand. My father contemplated the beans, then asked a slave for another napkin. There were few quarrels in our household. Your mother did not insist upon her authorities when she married your father. It must be done at once, as my mother told me before I married you, my love. Later, a man is less tractable.

    Am I tractable? asked Tullius, still smiling but feeling some vexation.

    Helvia patted his cheek fondly. I have a wise mother, she said.

    So I am tractable, thought Tullius, without much happiness. Helvia did not bully him, as many matrons bullied their husbands in covert or overt ways. He knew that the household was placid, which was good for his delicate digestion, and that his father roared far less than he had done in years past, which was also good for the digestion. No one appeared afraid of the redoubtable Helvia, or at least not notably and obviously, yet no one dared to be very fractious in her presence, or complaining. She had only to stare with her beautiful eyes, stare as a child stares, and even the old father would subside though not without a grumble to show that he was still head of the household in spite of a daughter of the Helvii. In private, alone with his son, he would become sardonic on the subject of women. He preferred, he thought, a household where a woman knew her place.

    Helvia knows her place, said Tullius, gloomily. And that is the trouble.

    Helvia had her staff of authority, though it was tipped with strong serenity. Rarely was she disturbed or openly annoyed, and never was she completely angry.

    She has no emotions, no fire, no passions. Therefore, she is stupid, said the old father to his son.

    Tullius knew that Helvia had passions in bed, somewhat unnerving to a young man of his retiring nature. But Helvia, in passion, was as honest as she was when inspecting household accounts. Nothing was subtle to her, nothing immeasurable, nothing wonderful or inexplicable. She had no doubts about anything. She performed all her duties to perfection, and was greatly admired. If she never truly saw a star or a flower, and never felt a rapture at the spring, was never seized by nameless sorrows or awed by immense vistas, did that argue that she was stupid? Tullius sometimes had the thought that Helvia saw as a calm animal saw, accepting everything with simplicity and without marveling, having forthright appetites and expecting good and sound behavior from man and beast at all times. Once, when they were newly married, Tullius had read one of Homer’s poems to her. She had listened politely, then had asked, But does it mean anything? All those words are a confusion.

    She was not talkative, which was a virtue in a woman, Tullius would remind his father when the old man began to stamp like a bull with exasperation.

    She has nothing to say! shouted the old man, stamping harder.

    That is wisdom, when one does not speak when one has nothing to say, said Tullius, who thought words in themselves were beautiful and capable of infinite meanings beyond the mere seeming. Tullius had always lived in himself, in silent recesses. But he was lonely. He turned hopefully to his little son, who had his face and introspective expression.

    The family did not live in Arpinum, itself, but with Arpinum they enjoyed the Roman franchise, and so were Roman citizens. They could see the town on one of the Volscian Hills, a small city of some consequence, looking down upon its steep-banked poplars and oaks at the edge of the blackly glittering mountain stream of Liris; they had a view of the small river of Fibrenus where it joined the Liris and the island on which they lived, and which the grandfather owned and cultivated. The island was curiously shaped, like a great ship whose prow divided the waters; seen at a distance one thought of sails furled and a vessel caught in the furious stream. The water broke on the earthy prow with a noisy vehemence and the sound of plunging. The air was serene and very cool and bright, and untouched by the gold of Umbria except on some resplendent sunsets. It had a northern rather than a southernly atmosphere, heightened by the enormous majesty of crowding trees, especially the sacred oak, the fresh green meadows of the interior, the lush vistas, the springing earth which on occasion broke forth in mossy stones. The area had none of the wild color of southern Italy and none of its gay exuberance. The people were calmer and colder and spoke of Rome disdainfully as a welter of polyglots. Here the spirit of Cincinnatus and the Republic still lived. The inhabitants spoke of the Constitution, which the Roman Senators and the courts were continually violating without challenge from a supine urban populace. The people of Arpinum remembered the old days when a Roman was truly fearless and free and revered her gods and practiced the virtues of piety, charity, courage, patriotism, and honor.

    The grandfather had been born on the river island near Arpinum; his son, Tullius, had been born there. Here, also, little Marcus had been born. Helvia spoke of the farmhouse as the Villa. The grandfather called it the House. Tullius, but only to himself, thought of it as the Cottage. So for once opposing his father and his wife he began to expand the house to more spacious proportions, and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of chipping and hammering and the voices of workmen. Helvia, calmly accepting, came from the women’s quarters to inspect and criticize and assure herself that the workmen, vivacious all, and from Arpinum and so free men and not slaves, were not overly engorging their stomachs with fare from the frugally guarded kitchens. She, it was, who sniffed at every jug of wine taken to the workmen by the happy female slaves from the house, who had not seen such activity in a long time, and rejoiced in it. At sunset, she would perch on a big and comfortable stone nearby and inscribe the hours the men had spent at their labor and their exact wages, to the copper. They began to complain of the quality of the wine, but she calmly ignored them. They muttered that this must be a vulgar family, because of the food and its quantity; Helvia inscribed the food in her books to the last fish, bean and loaf of bread. By the time the enlargement of the house was complete she had gained the sullen respect of the workmen who, however, vowed that never again would they visit the island with a hammer or saw.

    The workmen were also acutely aware of the presence of the old father, who scowled at stone and wood and avoided his daughter-in-law with her account books. Like all workmen, they were gossips. The family, they told themselves, was not truly a knightly one, but was completely plebeian. None of its sons had held a curule office, not even an aedileship, and so could not ride in an ivory chair. The old father, it was rumored, boasted that the Cicero family belonged to the Equestrian class, and that the Tullii were of old Roman royal ancestry, and were sons of Tullius Attius, ruler of the Volscians, who had won an honorable war against the crude early Romans. By the time the last wall was in its place the workmen openly scoffed at such pretensions, and in the hearing of Helvia, herself.

    She spoke of it to the old father with indulgence. Is it not strange that the meanest of men, who are boastful of their lowliness, take umbrage at employment by those they fear are not as far above them as Olympus is above the plain? In truth, their arrogance is in ratio to their worthlessness.

    It is because, sorrowfully, they believe that they are worthless, said the gentle Tullius, who had not been included in the conversation. His father and his wife had recently begun to be startled when he spoke and to be surprised at his presence. It is sad, continued Tullius, as the two frowned at him, that no man in these days is proud that he is just a man, who is far above the beasts, and has a soul and a mind. No, he must have pretensions of his own.

    Helvia shrugged. There is only money, she said. One can buy illustrious ancestry, I am informed, in Rome, by the rubbing together of money. The keepers of the genealogies will invent noble blood for the lowest of freedmen, if the weight of the gold is enough.

    This pleased the old father who was thankful that the daughter of the Helvii was not impressed by patrician lineage, and thought only of money and accounts. But Tullius must spoil this tranquil occasion by remarking that a man’s nobility came from ancestors of noble mind and heroic character, however obscure. He retreated more and more to his library, and moved his books to the new wing of the farmhouse. He was hardly aware any longer of anything except his books, his secretly written poetry, his walks along the banks of the turbulent river, the trees, the peace, and his thoughts. It was when his son, the little Marcus, was in his second summer that the isolated young man turned to his first offspring with some tremulous hope.

    Little Marcus, though slender as his father and subject to inflammations, had walked alone at the prodigious age of eight months, and at two years had mastered a formidable vocabulary. The latter had come from secret visits of his father to the nursery. Tullius, even under the fierce eye of old Lira, had dandled the babe on his knee and had taught him to speak, not in infant accents, but in the accents of a learned man. The child would stare at his father with his mother’s large and changeful eyes; in his case, the eyes were eloquent and mystical. It pleased Tullius that his son otherwise resembled himself. He was convinced, by the time Marcus was but twenty-four months old, that the young child understood him completely. Certainly, Marcus listened to his father with a grave and thoughtful expression, his small thin face tight with concentration, his rare smile sweet and dazzling when Tullius made a little jest. He had Tullius’ long head, fine brown hair, gentle chin, and sensitive mouth. He also had an air of resolution at times, which escaped his father, and a look of determination, both of which he had inherited from his grandfather. Little Marcus had inherited, together with his eyes, the calmness and steadfastness of his mother.

    Helvia thought the child too fragile, too like his father. Therefore, as she indulged her husband with maternal fondness, she indulged Marcus. She petted him briskly. To her he was a little lamb who needed strength, fond but firm handling, and no pampering. When he would babble at her earnestly she would stroke his silken hair, pat his cheek, then send him off with Lira for an extra cup of milk and bread. She believed, with all sincerity, that the strugglings of the mind could be soothed by food, and that any anguish of spirit—which she never experienced herself—was only the result of indigestion, and could be cured by a goblet of country-brewed herbs. Tullius and little Marcus, therefore, were frequently forced to drink appalling infusions of herbs and roots which Helvia gathered herself in the woodlands.

    The sweet and spicy ominousness of autumn lay on the island, and cool mists, though it was hardly past the noon hour, were floating in the immense branches of the oak trees, the leaves of which were scarlet as blood. The poplars were bright golden ghosts, fragile as a dream, but the grass remained vividly emerald. The waters ran wildly and darkly along the banks of the island, those cold and brilliant waters which Marcus was to remember all his life and whose mysterious colloquy was always in his ears. Here, on the banks, stood clumps of tall yellow flowers, or uncultivated bushes of crimson blossoms, or small purplish lakes of lavender. Bees still murmurously pursued their industry in spite of a sharp hint in the breeze, and clouds of white and orange butterflies blew up before one’s footstep like delicate petals. Birds still cried stridently in the trees; a vulture or two hovered in the vast and deeply blue vault of the autumnal sky. The distant Volscian Mountains stood in bronze against that sky, furrowed with dark and brownish clefts and erosions; if one looked across the river one could see Arpinum climbing a flank of a mountain, walls white as bone, roofs the hue of cherries in the strong sunlight.

    There was no sound in this peaceful spot, at a distance from the farmhouse, except for the conversation of the joined and hasty rivers, the challenges of birds, and the faint whispers of fallen oak leaves which ran before the occasional breeze like dry, red little animals, seeking shelter here and there along the roots of shrubs, in tiny gullies, against the trunks of alders, or, taking flight, hurling themselves upon the water to be borne off like the bloody stains of a wounded man. The fallen poplar leaves were less turbulent; they were pulling themselves into small mounds of fretted gold. And everywhere was the intense spice of the season, springing from tree and grass and flower and sun-warmed air, the ripened fruit in the orchards beyond, burning wood and pungent pines, darkening cypresses and heavy grain.

    To Tullius, seeking his little son today, the scene seemed caught in a still and vivid light, rustic and remote, far from those cities whose pulses could not be felt here, far from the quarrelsome men he hated, far from ambition and force and the politicians whom he detested, far from splendor and grandeur and courts and multitudes and crowded edifices, the restless days of other men, and loud music and trampings and banners and walls and chambers and echoing halls, far from the voice of pride and the bustling of those who believed that action only, not meditation, was the true vocation of man. Here there were no temples built by the hands of men, but temples built by nature for nymphs and fauns and other shy creatures who, like Tullius, himself, dreaded and avoided cities. Here a man was alone, truly alone, his essence held within himself like perfumed oil in a vessel. Here no one demanded that he pour out that sacred essence to mingle with the careless outpourings of others, so that it lost its identity and the vessel was empty, drained of that most precious thing which distinguished one man from another, in scent and texture. Men had strong color when they stood alone. Cities destroyed the faces of men, rendering them featureless. Tullius’ opinion of civilization was unflattering. He never longed for Rome. He wanted nothing of the theatre or the circus or gaiety or hectic exchange. Only here, on his paternal island, did he feel free and, above all things, safe. Since the new addition to the house had been completed he had taken a small room for his bedroom, with a strong door which was always locked.

    He stood on the bank of the river and listened to all the sounds which enraptured him, and here he could believe there was no Rome, no cities of the sea, nothing which could engage him against his will. Then he heard the laughter of little Marcus near at hand. He walked toward the sound, fallen leaves rustling under the soles of his shoes. The breeze had fallen; the air was warmer. Tullius removed his white woolen cloak and let the sun shine on his thin legs which moved rapidly under his woolen tunic.

    He found old Lira sitting with her mantled back against a tree, watching her charge, Marcus, who was trying to catch butterflies in his little hands. The child, hardly out of infancy, was tall and graceful; he did not stumble as other children did, clumsily. Tullius paused for a moment, still unseen, to watch his first-born with pleasure. Yes, the boy resembled him closely, though he admitted that Marcus’ chin was more resolute than his own, and that he had a kind of latent strength revealing itself about his sweet and eloquent lips and in the carving of his nose. Here was one, Tullius reflected, who would never be much afraid of anything, and Tullius felt the smallest of envies and then the greatest of prides. For this was his son, with his own brown hair curling over his brow and on his nape, with his own form of body and molding of flesh; though the profile was clearer than his own, it was still his own. The boy stopped for a moment in his play to stare at the river, and Tullius could see his eyes, changing always in color like Helvia’s. They were amber, now, in the mingling of light and shade, a clear amber like honey. They did not stare, like Helvia’s. They contemplated, and lightened or darkened with silent moods.

    The child was clad in a blue woolen tunic, for Helvia believed in wool even in the height of summer. The air, now that the breeze had fallen, was very warm, and little drops of sweat lay on Marcus’ forehead; the moisture had matted the fine hair into ringlets on the brow. Tullius thought of nobility of soul, of regality of spirit.

    Marcus, said Tullius, and came into the open, and the boy turned and looked at him and gave him a smile that was truly dazzling. He ran to his father with a murmur of glee, and Lira turned her Fury’s head and compressed her old features grimly. We were about to return to the house, Master, she said in a forbidding voice. She began to struggle to her feet. Tullius looked at his son, who was embracing his legs, and he put his quiet hand on the child’s damp curls. He longed to be alone with his son and kiss him as no stalwart Roman should kiss a child, particularly a male child, and he wanted to press him to his narrow breast and pray for him silently as he held him.

    And why not? he thought, as Lira swayed heavily toward him. He felt a rare anger and repugnance. He said, It may be that the Lady Helvia needs your assistance, Lira. Leave my son with me for an hour longer. He tried to make his voice stern and dismissing. Lira glowered at him, and sniffed loudly.

    It is time for his sleep, she said, and put out her gnarled hand for the boy.

    It was not often that Tullius asserted himself. He had found a precarious peace in avoiding combat and dissension in his house, even from childhood. He had always been surrounded by strong characters. But when he did offer opposition he succeeded, partly because the others were so astonished and partly because they saw something in the flash of his eye which made them suddenly respect him.

    Tullius said, I shall return him soon to his bed. I wish to be alone with my child for a little time. Go to your mistress, Lira.

    She did not give ground at once. The seams of her face became deeper and darker; her eyes peered from folds of old flesh with a gleam of pure malignancy. She folded her arms upon her sunken breast and eyed Tullius, and he brought up all his strength and kept his eyes on hers until she dropped it sullenly, and silently mouthed an imprecation. Then, without looking back at father or son, she stumped off, her garments catching on bush or low twig. She snatched them away with a gesture suggestive of what she yearned to do with Tullius, himself. He watched her go, smiling a little. Then he sat down on the warm grass and pulled his child into his lap and kissed his cheek and damp brow and neck, and held one little hand tightly.

    The boy’s flesh was fragrant as young earth is fragrant in the spring; yet there was the spicy scent of the season on him also. He stroked his father’s face, and was delighted with caresses, for it was in his nature to love. He leaned back in his father’s arms to study his face with a sudden gravity, for he had intense sensibility. He poised his head as if listening to Tullius’ thoughts, and finding them somewhat sad.

    Tullius embraced him again. My son, he thought. Where will you be, and what will you be, when you are a man? Will you flee the world as I have fled it, or will you challenge it? Above all, what will the world of men do to your spirit, which is now as a cup of clear water? Will they make your spirit turbid and murky, filled with the offal of their evil imaginings, as the Tiber is filled with offal? Will they taint it with their lies and their malices, as a well is tainted by the bodies of serpents and dead vermin? Will they make you as one of them, the adulterers and thieves, the prideless and the ungodly, the brutal and the unjust, the false and the traitors? Or will you be stronger than your father, and surmount them all, despising them not in silence as I have done, but with words like burning swords? Will you say to them that there is a Force that lives not in weapons but in the hearts and souls of righteous men, and cannot be overthrown? Will you tell them that power without law is chaos, and that Law does not come from men but from God? What will you tell them, my son?

    The child appeared to be listening to the young father’s urgent and desperate thoughts, for he slowly raised his hand and touched Tullius’ cheek with the palm. Tullius could feel the littleness of the hand, but he also felt a strong warmth, a comforting, a promise. It is only my imagination, for he is still a babe, thought Tullius, whose eyes filled with unmanly tears, unworthy of a Roman. He cannot understand what I have asked him in my soul, yet he keeps his hand on my cheek like the hand of a father and not a child.

    Tullius lifted his eyes to the sky and prayed. He prayed as the old Romans prayed, not for wealth or lustre for his child, not for fame and glory and the snapping of banners, not imperial power or lustful ambition. He prayed only that his son would be a man as the Romans once knew a man to be, just in all his ways, resolute in virtue, strong in patriotism, ardent in piety, courageous in all adversity, peaceful of temper but no secret server of wrong, protector of the weak, prudent in decisions, eager for justice, temperate and honorable.

    Tullius offered his child to God, pleaded for mercy for him that he might be kept from dishonor and greed, cruelty and madness, that he avoid no battle but engage in it in the name of right, and that he fear no man ever, and fear nothing but that or him who can maim the soul. He prayed as fathers had prayed before, and was comforted.

    CHAPTER THREE

    When little Quintus Tullius Cicero, brother of Marcus and four years the latter’s junior, was born Helvia did not deliver her child easily as she had her older son. She was in travail for many hours, which made Lira look very knowing and caused her to nod her head wisely as though Juno, herself, the mother of children, had given her some secret information. No doubt it is a maiden, said the old father, who was afraid of women and therefore despised them. No one but a woman could cause such misery even before her birth. But the child, delivered when the redoubtable Helvia was barely on the edge of excruciating consciousness, was a boy.

    He was much larger than Marcus had been at birth, much heartier and noisier, and he was handsome and looked exactly like his mother. He had her curling dark hair, her lusty coloring, her broadness of shoulder and plumpness of limbs. He had, from the moment of birth, a stentorian voice which he exercised constantly. He was very robust, in appearance, a miniature soldier, and the old father, who was disappointed in the reserved and gentle-mannered Marcus, rejoiced in him. This is no epicene creature, he said, holding his grandson in his arms and jolting him up and down, to the howling of the little one.

    It is a riotous animal, said Lira. Tullius looked at his son and was immediately both in awe of him and intimidated. Tullius went back to his son, Marcus, and his books. The old father said, He will be a Consul at the very least. He is worthy of his ancestors. Lira, though solicitous of the child as her beloved mistress’ fruit, was not impressed by him. She saw him as a farmer, or as a mere soldier.

    As for Helvia, she looked on her second son with delight, though she would have preferred a daughter. He was her image, even if he lacked her composure. Her relatives visited her, including her parents. Her mother swore that were it not for a certain masculine vigor the child could have been her daughter, Helvia, at birth. Quintus, roaring in his cradle, sucking prodigiously, and waving little fists and broad strong legs, was a marvel to his older brother. By the time Quintus was a year old the two were friends and companions, and Helvia, who approved of family spirit, was pleased. She did not feel any twinge of jealousy when Quintus appeared to prefer Marcus above others in the house, including herself. Quintus, toddling, followed Marcus everywhere and doted on him, laughed with joy to see him, and held out his sturdy arms for an embrace. He is a pleasant little man, said Tullius, who felt some jealousy.

    When Tullius discovered his favorite artlessly offering his bulla to the tutelary gods of the household in behalf of his brother, the father of both decided that Marcus should have intenser education than he had been receiving at the hands of his male parent. Marcus had more than the ordinary sensitiveness to language and was picking up the doubtful vulgate of the slaves in spite of the purist training of his father. It was also time for Marcus to learn Greek, the language of gentlemen. So Tullius journeyed to Antioch, in which city Tullius had learned of a Greek poet and scholar, Archias, and induced the teacher to return with him to the family island to teach his older son. The old father and Helvia were startled again, as they always were, when Tullius evinced independence and proceeded to accomplish acts without consulting others. Archias, who called Rome the nation of grocers, as did all his countrymen, was nevertheless enticed by the large fee offered by Tullius, and he was impressed by Tullius’ gentle manner and unworldliness and scholarly attainments. It would not be entirely a barbarian household, Archias thought, and the fee would enable him to buy prized books and the delicately depraved little figurines he loved, and the isolation of the island would be conducive to meditation. So Archias arrived to meet the distrust of the old father, the staring indifference of Helvia who was presently absorbed in the manipulation of stocks—having taken to business when it became evident that Tullius was not a particularly shrewd investor—and the antagonism of old Lira who could not bear that her little Marcus was to be shared by still another in the house.

    Archias was at first dismayed by the simplicity of the household and its lack of ornamentation and its crude statues and its uninspired country meals. But introduced to rooms of his own in the new wing, close to Tullius who intended that the poet should edify him, too, and given honor, and lured by the amazing fee and the beautiful natural surroundings, he was soon content. Marcus’ perceptiveness and sweet nature, thought the poet, had not been exaggerated by a fond father. Nor was it always offered to a poet the opportunity to take a very youthful mind like Marcus’ and train it to lofty goals. Archias settled down on the island and conceived a deep attachment to his small pupil, an attachment which was to continue all the life of the poet.

    Archias, like all Athenians, was quick of motion and speech in spite of his contemplative nature, and had a great sense of humor and an air of repose when he was teaching. He was also judicious and wise and intuitive. His protection against loneliness was his very young Cretan slave, Eunice, who was fair and blue-eyed like all her countrymen, and was pleasantly stupid, a virtue not to be despised by a poet. She attended her master and enhanced his meals in the kitchen under the frugal eye of the composed Helvia, and became one of Marcus’ most avid playmates, for she was but twelve. She was much taller than the short and slender Archias, and her golden head appeared over his dark sleek one like a miniature sun. Docile, and adoring Archias, who had fine dark features and glowing black eyes, she was soon the favorite even among the household slaves. She considered Helvia a noble lady, to be admired and imitated, and was immediately a pupil of Helvia’s in the art of weaving sturdy linen and wool garments, and in frugality. Eunice was a magnificent success, and Marcus was one day to write of her: Though ignorant and unlettered and of a simple mind, her presence was a delight, so warm was it and so sincere and loving. There are many of our fine Roman ladies who could have emulated her to the satisfaction of their husbands.

    Marcus, as Tullius had told Archias, was indeed of a prodigious mind. He accepted Greek as if it were his native language. Archias’ kindly and humorous nature soon inspired the boy with affection, and Marcus early learned to appreciate his teacher’s subtleties. When he was six Marcus was writing poetry, which Archias considered one of the first attributes of a civilized man and one sadly lacking in Romans. The Greek and the old father were mortal enemies from the beginning, for Archias, so daintily depraved in thought and secluded act, and disinclined to much physical activity, had early dismissed the eldest Marcus as a mere farmer and a typical Roman. He could not, he would aver just to annoy the old father, himself tell a sheep from a goat, nor was he interested in crops except for the grape. Once he told young Marcus that the grape seed was the prophecy of the vine, the grapes themselves, and ultimately of the wine which would delight and soothe the soul and inspire it with wisdom beyond that ever known by an abstemious and sober man.

    He was also an agnostic, a matter he prudently concealed in this pious household. But his intimations to young Marcus during the lessons were to teach the boy skepticism of all insistently stated opinions, though Archias wisely did not impair the boy’s natural piety and earnest devotion to God. Archias, it was, who introduced him to the Unknown God of the Greeks, and Marcus adored Him at his prayers.

    He does not live on Olympus, said Archias, with a smile. Nor does He live in Israel, though the Jews assert He does, with arms, when necessary. Archias found the Unknown God easier to believe in than in the multitude of Eastern, Grecian, and Roman Gods. Obscure, hidden, but mighty, Lord of the Universes, omniscient and powerful, Creator of all beauty and wisdom, He appealed to the subtle Greek.

    Seeing the little Quintus as he exactly was, the poet felt some annoyance at the love between the little brothers. How was it possible for such a one as Marcus, profound, searching, and perceptive, to love a small soldier

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