around in his hand curiously.
“You’ve the right to wear the gold ring, you know,” he remarked.
I explained that I did indeed own a silver goblet, but that I prized the wooden goblet much more highly as I had inherited it from my mother. Vespasian nodded in approval.
“You are right to honor the memory of your mother,” he said. “I myself have inherited a battered old silver goblet from my grandmother and I drink from it on all feast days without caring what people think.”
He drank the wine thirstily and I willingly gave him more, although I was already so used to the poor life in the legion that I calculated how much he was saving by drinking my wine. This was not out of meanness. I had simply learned that a legionary, on ten copper pieces or two and a half sesterces a day, had to provide food for himself, keep his clothes in order and put something by in the legion’s fund toward the day when he was ill or wounded.
Vespasian slowly shook his large head.
“Soon the spring sun will be here,” he said, “and it will dissolve the mists of Britain. Then we may well have a hard time. Aulus Plautius is preparing to go to Rome to celebrate his triumph and he is taking his most experienced soldiers with the longest service with him. Wise veterans would rather accept gratuities than trek the long way back to Rome for a few days’ feasting and drinking. Among the legion commantlers, I was the one whose length of service entitled me to the first chance to go with him, because of my conquest of the Isle of Wight. But someone must see to Britain until the Emperor appoints a new commantler-in-chief in place of Aulus Plautius. Aulus has promised me a triumph insignia anyhow, if I agree to stay here.”
He rubbed his forehead over and over again.
“As long as I am in charge,” he went on, “there will be no more plundering and we shall pursue a policy of peace. But that means we’ll have to extract even higher taxes from our allies and subjects to maintain the legions. That’ll make them rebellious again. Admittedly, it will take some time to do, for Aulus Plautius will take the kings, commantlers and other important hostages to Rome. There they’ll get used to the comforts of a civilized life and their children will be brought up in the Palatine school, but the only result will be that their own tribes will desert them. On our part, we shall gain a breathing space while the tribes competing for power here setde their differences. But if the Britons move swiftly enough, they’ll have time to get a rebellion going by midsummer day. That’s their main religious feast day. They usually sacrifice their prisoners on the communal stone altar. It is strange, when otherwise they worship the gods of the underworld and the Goddess of Darkness with the face of an owl. The owl is also the bird of Minerva.”
He thought for a moment about this.
“In fact we know much too little about Britain and its different tribes and languages and customs and gods,” he went on. “We know something about the roads, the rivers, the fords, the mountains, forests, grazing lands and drinking places, for a good soldier’s first task is to find out about that sort of thing somehow or other. There are successful merchants who travel freely among hostile people, while other merchants are robbed as soon as they set foot outside legion territory. There are civilized Britons who have traveled to Gaul and all the way to Rome and who talk broken Latin, but we’ve not been able to meet them as their rank demands. At a time like this, if someone were to collect the most necessary information on the Britons, their customs and gods, and write a reliable book on Britain, it would be of much more use to Rome than the subjection of a whole people. The god Julius Caesar didn’t know much about the Britons but believed all kinds of loose talk, just as he exaggerated his victories and forgot his mistakes when he wrote his propaganda book on the war in Gaul.”
He drank again from my wooden goblet and became even more animated.
“Naturally the Britons must in time adopt Roman customs and Roman culture,” he said, “but I’ve begun to wonder if we couldn’t civilize them more easily by knowing their own customs and prejudices, rather than by killing them. This would be just right at the moment, when we want peace because our own best troops are leaving Britain and we’re waiting for another experienced commantler-in-chief. But as you’ve killed a Briton yourself, I suppose you want to take part in Aulus Plautius’ triumph, as your descent and your red border give you the right to do. Naturally I’ll give you my recommendation, if you want to go. Then I’d know I had at least one friend in Rome.”
The wine was making him melancholy.
“I have my son Titus, of course,” he went on, “who is growing up and playing with Britannicus in Palatine and who is getting the same education as he is. I have guaranteed a better future for him than I myself can hope for. Perhaps he will finally give Britain peace.”
I told him I had probably seen his son with Britannicus at the riding exercises before the centenary feast. Vespasian said that he had not seen his son for four years and would not be able to this time either. His other son, Domitian, he had not even held on his knee, for the boy was the result of Emperor Claudius’ triumph and Vespasian had had to return to Britain immediately after the celebrations.
“A lot of noise and not much else,” he said bitterly, “the whole of that triumph. Nothing but a mad waste of money to please the mob in Rome. I don’t deny that I too would like to creep up the Capitoline steps with a laurel wreath on my head. There isn’t a legion commantler who hasn’t dreamed of doing so. But one can get drunk in Britain too, and much more cheaply.”
I said that if he thought I could be of any use to him, I should be glad to stay in Britain under his command. I had no great desire to take a part in the triumph which I had not earned. Vespasian took this as a great sign of confidence and was obviously moved.
“The more I drink from your wooden goblet, the more I like you,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I hope my own son Titus grows up like you. I’ll tell you a secret.”
He confessed that he had taken a British sacrificial priest prisoner and was keeping him from Aulus Plautius, just when Aulus was collecting up prisoners for the triumph parade and the battles in the amphitheater. To give the people a special treat, Aulus especially wanted a genuine British priest who would sacrifice prisoners at a performance.
“But a real Druid would never agree to do such a thing just to please the Romans,” said Vespasian. “It would be much easier for Aulus to dress up some suitable Briton as a priest. People in Rome would never know the difference. When Plautius had gone, I was going to set the priest free and send him back to his tribe as evidence of my good intentions. If you are brave enough, Minutus, you could go with him and make yourself familiar with the customs of the Britons. With his help you could make ties of friendship with their noble youths, for I have a secret suspicion that our successful merchants have been in the habit of buying safe-conducts at high prices from the Druids, even if they daren’t admit it.”
I had no desire whatsoever to get involved in an alien and frightening religion. I wondered what sort of curse it was that seemed to follow me wherever I went, for in Rome I had been forced into an acquaintance with the Christian superstition. But one confidence for another, I thought, and I told Vespasian the real reason why I had ended up in Britain. He was very amused at the thought of the wife of a commantler who had gained a triumph being judged by her husband because of a shameful superstition.
But to show he was aware of the gossip in Rome, he said, “I know Plautia Paulina personally. As far as I know she went wrong in the head after letting a young philosopher-Seneca, I think his name was-and Julia, Emperor Caesar’s sister, meet in secret at her house. They were exiled because of this and Julia finally lost her life. Plautia Paulina couldn’t stand a charge of procuring, became temporarily insane and, going into mourning, she withdrew into solitude. Naturally a woman like that gets strange ideas.”
Lugunda had been sitting all this time crouched in a corner of the hut, watching us intently, smiling when I smiled and looking anxious when I was serious. Vespasian had absentmindedly looked at her occasionally and now surprisingly said, “Generally speaking, women do get funny ideas in their heads. A man can never be quite sure what they have in mind. The god Caesar had the wrong idea about British women but he didn’t respect women particularly anyhow. I think that there are good women and bad women, whether barbarians or civilized. For a man there is no greater happiness than the friendship of a good woman. Your wild one here looks like a child, but she can be more useful to you than you think. You probably don’t know that the Iceni tribe has applied to me and offered to buy the girl back. The Britons don’t usually do such things. They usually reckon that members of their tribe who have fallen into the hands of the Romans are lost forever.”
He spoke laboriously to the girl in the Iceni language and I understood little of what they said. But Lugunda looked confused and crept nearer to me as if seeking protection. She answered Vespasian shyly at first and then in a more animated way until he shook his head and turned again to me.
