I reached into the courier’s tube and withdrew the innermost among several dozens of letters. We were in the general’s tent; Crassus lay on his side, ready for bed in his night tunic, his head propped on pillows at the foot of his lectus. We had waited to begin reading Tertulla’s packet of letters until after the young man sent by Livia had left. The apprentice healer had massaged dominus’ feet with a salve meant to alleviate his soreness and the pain from his bunions. The jar of brown paste my wife had concocted now sat open on the general’s night table by his glossy toes, creating an eye-watering zone guaranteed free from arthropod or human incursion. I sat in his big chair with two oil lamps between us. Crassus claimed his eyes grew tired toward the end of the day, but he could have waited till morning to read her letters. Did his father read to him as a child? I would have asked, but I was within slapping distance.
“This was written not long after we departed Brundisium.
Dearest husband, I pray this letter finds you well and without care. You are barely gone, and I find that either I have shrunk, or this house has tripled in size. How larger-than-life is the man I have married! I never knew till now how Marcus Crassus could fill a room. And such a joyless void is left behind when he departs.
I must take lessons from our daughter-in-law. Cornelia is a delight. She is full of optimism and gaiety and has made it her solemn duty to infect me with her cheer while we wait for the return of our victorious husbands and son. I fear her task is Herculean. My melancholy may be forgiven; not since you left to put down the rebel Spartacus have my bed and I spent so many nights alone. We are vexed.
Curio is a master of order, and the estate has never run more smoothly, but at least Alexander was not an insufferable bore. Yesterday, I innocently asked Lucius if there were any women in his life and with a face as straight as an arrow he replied, “You are the only woman in my life, mistress.” When I laughed aloud, he took offense and retired. I haven't seen him since.
One of the peacocks has died, and I mourn alone. Cornelia wanted to eat it! And Curio lobbied to pluck its quills for writing pens. I told them such customs might be practiced in other houses, but here there is only one way beauty and the passing of all things wondrous are honored-on the pyre.
Tell Livia that Eirene and I fight over Felix daily; he is the happiest, fattest baby I have ever seen. No wonder, with three girls offering their breasts every time he yawns. Send her my love and remind Alexander of his promise to me to keep you safe.
He had better, since it is now he who pours your wine, who has discourse with you on all matters great and small, and when his work is done, it is he who may walk but a few steps to hold his Livia. He has you both while mountains and seas separate me from you. It is unfair beyond bearing, and if I did not love you so, I should hate the both of you fiercely. You must ignore this jealous old hen, and kiss me in your thoughts.
Eternally, Tertulla
“She is the most magnificent forty-six year-old hen ever hatched, is she not?” Crassus asked, taking the letter and inhaling its perfume once again before I replaced it in its tin with the others.
“In this tent, she is first among all women. In another, she is second only by the width of a hummingbird’s tongue.”
“Love has made you a diplomat,” Crassus said. “Multiply that craft by three hundred, the issues by a thousand and behold, you are ready to take your place in the senate.”
No, I will not say ‘I am happy where I am.’ “Shall we answer this one before retiring?”
“Tomorrow. Rest well, Alexander. Rest well.”
As I had so often before, I disobeyed my master, for my rest was uneasy. Domina’s letter had stirred a mind ever-intent on self-destruction, and ideas that should have remained quiescent began pecking at the interior of their shells.
•••
The way across Illyricum, Macedonia and Thrace is made almost bearable by a lovely bit of road some thoughtful Roman had built right across the entire northern peninsula. This twenty-foot wide paved and drained marvel made it clear why Roman planning is so vital to its empire: imagine an army tramping through the countryside day after day, negotiating rivers and mountain passes without them. These feats of engineering increase speed and reduce fatigue, taking soldiers, settlers and commerce swiftly to their goals-usually a conquered province. Romans’ chiseled sense of purpose is as wondrous as it is terrifying.
The road is the Via Egnatia. It stretches 700 miles, from dreary Dyrrhachium all the way to where two seas press the land to the thinnest of strips, where the petals of so many peripatetic cultures had converged to form the rose of what, for six hundred years, we Greeks called Byzantion. You Romans know it as Byzantium. But we were not itinerant travelers, nor could we tarry. I whimpered as we marched past banners briskly snapping atop the city walls and crossed over into Asia Minor. That leg of our journey took over two months. And it was the easiest by far.
When I say “we marched,” or “our journey,” understand that these unassuming pronouns bear the weight of a multitude so vast that when I speak of it your imagination will stretch and tear to comprehend and contain it. Not since Alexandros swept through Persia and beyond had such a “we” been amassed by any conqueror. Oh, generals had and would command larger armies, but they were sanctioned, salaried and provisioned by the state. The army of Crassus was the army of Crassus. Tens of millions of his own sesterces, heaped upon the promise of untold plunder drew dismissed and disbanded veterans like bears to honey. They didn’t seem to mind at all that at the midway point of their journey they would be required to fight a war. Some of these men had been given land or taken retirement; others labored as laymen; a few, like Palaemon and Herclides, who could not or would not return to peaceful society, chose to live outside it as criminals. But none would ever, as the Hebrews falsely prophesied, “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” These fighting men turned farmers, tradesmen, husbands and fathers, leapt to sharpen their sheathed swords and polish their tarnished belts. By the thousands they sloughed off the trappings of lives lived as play actors and ran to answer the siren call of adventure, camaraderie and glory.
This was the juggernaut that Crassus led to Syria. I must warn you that to describe the spectacle of a Roman army on the march to one who has not seen it for himself is an undertaking as futile as depicting the breadth and majesty of the star-pierced heavens to a blind man. In truth, unless one grows wings and takes to the skies it cannot be done: from the ground one has but a dust-veiled inkling of the ferocious whole.
Why will you veer, Alexandros, from the narrative of your tale to take time and parchment to set down the size and nature of the army of Crassus? Why must you send your readers back to school, perhaps against their will? Why risk them wandering off to some other distraction, when there is so much more to tell?
The answer is simple: to comprehend the scale of the tragedy, one must understand the magnitude of the undertaking. However, if you have no interest in the bowl, but crave only the pudding, then by all means, skip ahead, skip ahead.
•••
The column was preceded by scouts-archers, slingers and one ala, a wing of cavalry, about a thousand men all told. Then, still ahead of the main body came a vanguard of one legion and another ala of cavalry. Our army was already diminished by the tragedy of our crossing from Brundisium. Casualties of a war that had not yet begun.
Behind the vanguard came surveyors and engineers, marching alongside mules laden with their tools and instruments. Each night they built the fortified town that was the army’s camp. A day’s march averaged about eighteen miles, depending on the terrain and the roads, if any. The camp would be laid out and protected by the time the remaining legions began arriving some five or six hours after the start of the day’s march. If it could not be found within the camp’s boundaries, pasture would have to be found and secured for 25,000 horses and mules. Every night.