around a rough spot. When men started using wagons, the wheels wore ruts in the ground, and that made wider roads. Finally, some unknown genius decided it was time to make a road to fit the purpose, instead of just letting it come about on its own, and so the art of road building was born.
“The road we’re building follows a very old trail that’s been here for centuries; Appius Claudius says it dates back to the days of the old salt traders and metal traders, before Roma existed. Here you see some workers performing the first step in the process. See how they’re digging two shallow trenches parallel to each other? The trenches mark the breadth of the road. This road is fifteen feet wide, the sum of three men lying head to toe. Roman men, that is; it takes only two and a half Gauls to cover that width. They say a Gaul cut in half is the best kind, especially if it’s the half without a head!”
Decius laughed heartily at his own joke, and slapped Kaeso on the back as if he could jar him into doing the same. “Now, if you’ll follow me, up ahead you can see that they’ve moved on to the second stage. They’ve dug out the loose earth between the trenches, and excavated down until they’ve reached a solid foundation for the materials to rest on. How far down you have to dig depends on the terrain. Sometimes, if the ground’s swampy or the soil’s peculiar, you have to drive piles into the earth. Fortunately, that’s not the case here. A strong digger can reach solid roadbed without breaking his back. These fellows hardly even break a sweat. Isn’t that right, men?”
The diggers looked up at Decius and grinned. Kaeso could see that they liked the foreman.
“Keep walking. I’ll show you the next stage. See there, up ahead, those big piles of stones? Those are for laying the first course of the road. These stones have been sorted for size; these are what we call hand-sized, no larger and no smaller than will fit in a man’s hand. They make up the first stratum. On top of those, we lay down a mass of broken stones about nine inches deep, rammed down hard and cemented with lime-that’s called rubble- work. Above that, we lay the road-core, about half a foot deep, which is made up of bits and pieces of bricks and pottery, smaller bits than the stones in the rubble-work, and cemented with lime. You can see a section where the core’s been finished, up ahead.”
“It’s a bit higher in the middle than at the edges, isn’t it?” said Kaeso.
“Very observant. We do that on purpose, to let the water run off. For now, to finish the road, we’re laying down a layer of gravel. That’s usually the end of the job. But on this project, the gravel layer is to be only temporary. As time and money permit, the plan is to scrape away the gravel and lay down blocks of the hardest stone we can find. Around Roma, that usually means basaltic lava. The stones aren’t uniform, like bricks; they’re broken and cut into all sorts of random shapes-polygonal, we call them-but skilled workmen can pick and choose among those stones and fit them together until the surface is so perfectly even and smooth, you’d be hard-pressed to find the tiniest gap, even with your fingertip. I’ve seen walls built that way, and there’s no reason it can’t be done on a road, as well. Up ahead, we’ve completed a small section of the road with a finished stone layer, just as a showpiece for now. Here it is. Have a look. Walk on it. Jump on it! Stoop down and run your hands over it. So flat and smooth and perfect, wouldn’t you swear it was made of one solid stone that just happens to have a few seams running through it?”
“It’s amazing!” said Kaeso. “And beautiful.”
“And likely to last for more lifetimes than those of all your ancestors put together.”
“Do you really think the entire road can be finished this finely, all the way to Capua?”
“I believe that roads this fine will some day run all up and down Italy, and far beyond-as far as any Roman dares to travel. From the Pillars of Hercules to the banks of the Euxine Sea, people will say, ‘Here runs a Roman road!’” Decius laughed. “You know what Appius Claudius once said to me? ‘Alexander conquered half the world with his army, but can you imagine what he might have done, if only the Greeks knew how to build a Roman road?’”
“And just how long has this been going on?” demanded Quintus Fabius, scowling.
“A month or so. Since the day after my toga day,” said Kaeso.
“Just as I thought. This relationship with Appius Claudius won’t do, young man. It simply won’t do!”
Quintus had asked his younger cousin to pay him a visit, but he did not receive him in the garden; instead, he met him in the vestibule. Not only was Kaeso being kept from the heart of the house, like a merchant paying an unwelcome call, and being made to stand rather than sit, but here in the vestibule, following patrician custom, the wax busts of Quintus’s ancestors were placed in niches in the walls, from which they stared unblinking at all who came and went. It seemed that not only Quintus was scowling at Kaeso and judging him; so were several generations of dour-looking Fabii.
“Cousin, I am aware of your disagreements with Appius Claudius-”
“The man is degenerate! He’s polluted his mind with so-called Greek learning. Given half a chance, he’ll pollute your mind as well.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” said Kaeso. So far, Claudius’s efforts to teach him Greek had been fruitless. Happily, Kaeso’s aptitude for engineering exceeded even his own hopes, and Claudius had been quite impressed with his new protege’s intelligence and enthusiasm. “I sought out Appius Claudius only because of his construction projects. I’m learning a great deal about road-building, and also about the new aqueduct-”
“All you need to know about those wasteful and inefficient projects, you could have found out by asking me, young man. They are the result of a gross abuse of the censor’s office. Somehow, Claudius managed to circumvent the Senate and plunder the treasury to finance his illegal schemes.”
“But those schemes, as you call them, are surely for the benefit of all Roma.”
“They are for the benefit of Claudius, a means to extend his political patronage! By giving them jobs, he buys the loyalty of the thousands of citizens he employs. No doubt he is also enriching himself!”
Kaeso frowned. “Are you accusing him of embezzling public funds?”
Quintus grunted. “I wouldn’t put it past him! You’re young, Kaeso. You haven’t yet seen enough of the world to judge a man’s character. Believe me, Claudius is not the sort of man with whom our sort should associate.”
“But surely he’s as patrician as you or I,” said Kaeso.
Did Quintus hesitate before replying? Was he thinking of Kaeso’s origin by adoption, and his uncertain bloodline? He shook his head. “The Claudii have always been vain and self-important, but at least in the old days they were rock solid in their support of patrician privilege. Appius Claudius has done an about-face and made himself a champion of the lower classes. Oh, he pays lip service to patrician ideals-the glory of the ancestors and the founders of the Republic-but at heart the man is a demagogue. He panders to the rabble. He flirts with dangerous democratic ideas, which he probably picked up from reading those wretched Greek philosophers he admires. He should never have been given control of the citizen rolls.”
“But as censor, that’s his duty.”
“To update the rolls, yes, but not to tinker with them, and in a most irresponsible fashion. Oh, he’ll tell you he’s simply reorganizing the voting blocks to make them more efficient, but his scheme is to make elections more democratic and less weighted to the blocks dominated by patricians-a very dangerous idea! The founders, in their wisdom, designed the electoral process deliberately to give more influence to those families whose achievements long ago earned them a special place in the state. Nothing must be done to erode that system. It has served Roma well since the birth of the Republic. It will serve us just as well for another two hundred years.
“Even worse, young man, is Claudius’s abuse of the censor’s right to fill vacancies in the Senate. Every vacancy is filled with a man loyal to Claudius-and some of those new senators are the sons of freedmen! Such a degradation of the Senate would have been unthinkable in my grandfather’s day. What have we come to?”
“Times change, cousin,” said Kaeso.
“And seldom for the better! Once a radical idea takes root, no one can predict how fast or how far it will spread. Consider the consulship. For a very long time, only patricians were able to get themselves elected to the highest office, shutting out the plebeians. The patricians’ exclusive claim on the consulship became a tradition, which eventually took on the force of law. But the so-called reformers objected, and fifty-five years ago, they managed to pass a law that allowed one of the two consuls to be a plebeian. A matter of fairness, said the reformers; if a plebeian is clever enough to get himself elected consul, then why not? But that was only the beginning. Thirty years ago, the reformers passed another law, and this one mandated that one of the consuls
Kaeso sighed. “Cousin Quintus, please understand. I share your political views. How could I not? They’re the
