experienced tribunes.
Like an evil omen, war again broke out in Armenia, and a dreadful woman called Boadicea united the British tribes in a devastating rebellion in Britain. A whole legion was annihilated, two Roman towns were razed to the ground and the Procurator lost control to such an extent that he had to flee across to Gaul.
I think Queen Boadicea would never have won so many adherents in Britain had the legions not been forced to live off the country, and had the interest on the loans made by Seneca to the British princes ever been paid, for the barbarians still did not understand the present monetary system.
The younger knights turned out to be reluctant to volunteer to be impaled and burned by Boadicea, but preferred to play their citterns in Rome, clad in Greek tunics and wearing their hair long. Before the situation had clarified, Nero even suggested to the Senate that the legions should be withdrawn altogether from Britain, where there was nothing but trouble. The country was devouring more than it produced. If we abandoned Britain, three legions would be released to lessen the pressure from the Parthians in the East. The fourth had already been lost.
During the violent discussion in the Senate which followed, Seneca, the spokesman for peace and love of humanity, made a brilliant speech in which he referred to the god Claudius’ triumphs in Britain.
An Emperor could not refute his adoptive father’s conquests without ruining his reputation. Actually, Seneca was of course thinking of the enormous sums of money he had invested in Britain.
One of the senators asked whether it had been absolutely necessary to murder seventy thousand citizens and allies and to plunder and burn two flourishing towns to ashes just to protect Seneca’s profits. Seneca turned very red and assured the Senate that the Roman money invested in Britain went toward civilizing the country and to fostering trade and buying power. This could be confirmed by other senators who had invested their money there.
“The omens are alarming,” someone called.
But Seneca defended himself and assured them that it was not his fault if some untrustworthy British kings had used the money from loans for their own private purposes and the secret acquisition of arms. The conduct of the legions was the main reason for the war, so the commantlers should be punished and reinforcements should be sent to Britain.
To abandon Britain completely was of course much too bitter a pill for the Senate to swallow. That much of Rome’s former pride at least remains. So it was decided not to evacuate the country, but to send more troops there instead. Several incensed senators forced their grown sons to have their hair cut and take up service as tribunes in Britain. They took their citterns with them, but the ravaged towns and the cruelties and shrill war cries of the Britons soon caused them to throw them away and fight courageously.
I have special reason for dwelling on the events in Britain, although I myself did not witness them. Boadicea was the Queen of the Icenis. After her husband’s death the legions had interpreted his will so that his land became Roman hereditary property. Boadicea was a woman and cared nothing for the law. We ourselves needed learned lawyers to interpret wills correcdy. When Boadicea contested the decision and appealed to the Britons’ law of inheritance on the distaff side, she was flogged by the legionaries, her daughters were raped and her property looted. The legionaries had also turned many Iceni noblemen out of their estates and committed murder and other atrocities.
Legally, right was on their side for the King, who had not been able to read or write, had in fact had a will drawn up in which he left his land to the Emperor, thinking that in this way he was securing the position of his widow and daughters against the envy of the Iceni noblemen. The Icenis had from the beginning been allies of the Romans, although they had no special love for them.
After the arrival of the reinforcements, a decisive battle was fought and the Britons, led by this vengeful woman, were defeated. The Romans avenged Boadicea’s brutalities to Roman women, whom, because of the insult she had suffered, she had allowed her people to treat abominably. Soon a stream of British slaves began to arrive in Rome-admittedly only women and half-grown boys, for adult Britons are useless as slaves-and much to the people’s disappointment, Nero had forbidden the use of prisoners-of-war in the battles in the amphitheater.
One lovely day I was visited by a slave dealer who was dragging a ten-year-old boy by a rope. He behaved secretively, winking repeatedly at me in the hopes that I would send any witnesses out of the room. Then he lengthily complained of the bad times, his innumerable expenses and the shortage of willing buyers. The boy looked around with angry eyes.
“This young warrior,” explained the slave dealer, “tried to defend his mother with his sword when our incensed legionaries raped and killed her. Out of respect for the boy’s courage, the soldiers did not kill him but sold him to me. As you see from his straight limbs, his fine skin and green eyes, he is of noble Iceni descent. He can ride, swim and use a bow and arrow. Believe it or not, he can even write a little too and he speaks a few words of Latin. I’ve heard it said that you might like to buy him and pay me more than if I offered him for sale in the slave market.”
‘Whoever told you that?” I exclaimed in surprise. “I’ve more than enough slaves. They make my life intolerable and deprive me of my own freedom, not to mention real wealth, which is solitude.”
“A certain Petro, an Iceni physician in the service of Rome, recognized the boy in London,” said the slave dealer. “He gave me your name and assured me you would pay me the highest price for the boy. But who can trust a Briton? Show your book, boy.”
He cuffed the boy over the head. The boy rummaged in his belt and drew out the remains of a torn and dirty Chaldaean-Egyptian book of dreams. I recognized it as soon as I touched it, and my limbs and joints dissolved into water.
“Is your mother’s name Lugunda?” I asked the boy, although I knew the answer. Petro’s name alone confirmed that the boy was my own son whom I had never seen. I wanted to take him in my arms and acknowledge him as my son, although there were no witnesses available, but the boy hit me in the face with his fist and bit my cheek. The slave dealer’s face darkened with rage and he fumbled for his whip.
“Don’t hit him,” I said. “I’ll buy the boy. What’s your price?”
The slave dealer looked at me appraisingly and again spoke of his outlays and losses.
“To be rid of him,” he said finally, “I’ll sell him at the lowest price. A hundred gold pieces. The boy is still untamed.”
Ten thousand sesterces was an insane price to pay for a half-grown boy when bedworthy young women were on offer in the market for a few gold pieces. It was not just the price, for naturally I should have paid an even higher one if necessary, but I had to sit down and think hard as I looked at the boy. The slave dealer misunderstood my silence and began to speak for his goods, explaining that there were several rich men in Rome who had acquired eastern habits and for whom the boy was of a choice age. But he lowered his price, first to ninety and then to eighty gold pieces.
In fact I was only wondering how I could make the purchase without my son becoming a slave. A formal purchase would have to be made at the tabellarium, where the contract would be confirmed and the boy would have to be branded with my own symbol of ownership, MM, after which he would never again be able to gain Roman citizenship, even if he were freed.
“Perhaps I could have him trained as a charioteer,” I said at last. “The Petro you mention was in fact a friend of mine when I was serving in Britain. I trust his recommendation. Couldn’t we arrange it so that you give me a written certificate to say that Petro, as the boy’s guardian, has assigned to you the task of bringing him here for me to look after him?”
The slave dealer gave me a sly look.
“I am the one who has to pay the purchase tax on him, not you,” he said. “I can’t really knock off any more from the price.”
I scratched my head. The matter was very involved and could easily have appeared to be an attempt to circumvent the high tax on slaves. But I might as well benefit in some way from my position as son-in-law to the City Prefect.
I put on my toga and the three of us set off for the temple of Mercury. Among the people there, I soon found a citizen who had lost his rank of knight and who, for a reasonable sum, agreed to stand as the other necessary witness to the oath. Thus a document could be drawn up and confirmed with a double oath.
According to this, the boy was a freeborn Briton whose parents, Ituna and Lugunda, had been killed in the war because of their friendship for Rome. Through the mediation of the physician Petro, they had sent their son to
