him, not even a slave waiting out of sight for his summons.
The Senate would meet later that morning, after its members had time to go the baths to groom themselves and put on their togas, or, more precisely, after they had been groomed and dressed by their slaves. Titus decided to attend the session. He decided that he might even take part in the debate, something he rarely did.
If he intended to speak, he should probably prepare some notes, he thought. His first impulse was to rouse one of his secretaries, dictate his thoughts, and let the fellow put his random ideas into some sort of order; an old slave called Antigonus was good at that sort of thing. Then it occurred to Titus that he might be saying some things in his speech that he did not care to share with a slave, since the punishment of the 400 slaves of Pedanius would be the subject of the debate. What a peculiar circumstance, that a senator should wish to hide his thoughts from a slave!
Titus fetched a lamp himself and figured out how to light it from the sconce that stayed lit all night. He rummaged in his study until he found a wax tablet and a stylus, and, squinting under the dim light, began to scribble some notes. Within moments his hand began to cramp; he had not written anything with his own hand in a long time. He was also uncertain of some of his spellings; when a man always dictated to a trained scribe, he did not need to know how to spell.
Writing something worthy of being delivered in the Senate House, without a slave to transcribe and edit, was rather hard work, he realized. But it was also quite absorbing, as he found himself rubbing out awkward sentences and reworking them, coming up with new ideas that needed to be inserted inside other ideas, and rearranging the order of his arguments. Before he knew it, dawn had broken and the house had come to life around him. Slaves were scurrying up and down the hallway, some of them clearly surprised to see their master awake so early. The smell of breakfast farina wafted from the kitchen.
Titus was suddenly very hungry and in the mood for something sweet. He called to one of the girls and told her to bring him a bowl of steaming-hot farina with honey and dates and pine nuts. “You know how I like it,” he said.
After breakfast, he summoned his usual retinue of slaves and headed for the baths. Often he patronized a small establishment on the slope of the Aventine above the Circus Maximus. The place was old and small, and a bit drafty, but conveniently close to his house. But on this day Titus decided to go to the Baths of Agrippa. He was in the mood for a bit of luxury and spectacle, and the Baths of Agrippa always provided that. As well, there was plenty of space in the galleries to do a bit of work, in case he wanted to polish his notes a bit more.
The baths were out on the Field of Mars, a fair distance from his house. He considered taking a sedan or a litter, but decided to walk instead. Titus did not want to become one of those effeminate fellows who never stepped outside his house without being carried by slaves.
As he strode through the markets along the Tiber and then through the busy neighbourhood around the old Circus Flaminius and the Theatre of Pompeius, it seemed to Titus that there were a great many people headed the other way, towards the Forum, and that they all looked rather serious. There was a mood in the air, an atmosphere of tension. His bodyguards noticed it, too. Titus saw them draw more closely together, looking this way and that with more than their usual wariness.
Titus could not think what was happening, and forgot all about it once he arrived at the baths. He never ceased to marvel at the grandiose beauty of the place, with its high ceilings, splendid marble columns, and galleries of famous paintings and statues. The sheer luxury of the hot plunge, the cool plunge, the warm plunge, and then a thorough massage did much to rejuvenate him after his restless night. He watched the swimmers in the long pool for a while, narrowing his eyes at the glimmer of the morning sun reflected off the water and feeling its warmth on his face. He nibbled some dried figs and almonds and sipped a much-watered cup of wine, and forgot all his cares for a while. He even forgot his speech, and did no more work on his notes. When he was finally ready to be dressed in his toga, he saw by the sundial next to the long pool that if he did not hurry he would be late for the taking of the auspices – not his duty on this occasion – and the opening of the day’s business in the Senate.
He decided to hire a sedan and told the bearers to move at a fast pace. His bodyguards trotted alongside, but the other slaves lagged a bit; they would catch up and wait outside the Senate House in case Titus needed them. The ride was so smooth that he was able to take out the wax tablet and review his notes. Taking a sedan was not such an indulgence, he decided, if one used the time to do a bit of work.
The bearers took the most direct route, between the north side of the Capitoline Hill and the Temple of Venus built by the Divine Julius. Before Titus knew it, they were approaching the Senate House from the back side. He looked up from his notes, distracted by a strange noise that came from the direction of the Forum: it sounded like the roar of the ocean, or the crowd at the Circus Maximus. As the sedan rounded a corner, Titus saw something he had never seen before: the area before the steps of the Senate House was thronged with people. There were hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands. There was no reason for them to be there; this was not a festival day, and there was no public ceremony requiring their attendance. What were all these people doing here?
The sedan came to a stop at one end of the steps. Hitching up his toga, Titus ascended a few steps, then turned to take a closer look at the crowd. It was made up mostly of men of the common sort, ill-groomed and dressed in drab tunics – the citizen rabble of Roma. He looked at their faces. They did not look happy. Some of them seemed to be drunk, but that was inevitable in any large gathering. Some were clustered in smaller groups, talking among themselves or listening to a speaker. What were they talking about? Why did they appear so angry and agitated?
Titus threw a few coins to the sedan bearers, who disappeared at once. “Wait for me here, at this spot,” he told his bodyguards, feeling an unaccustomed uneasiness. Usually he allowed his bodyguards to loiter around the Forum while he was in the Senate House, rather like dogs let off a leash, but on this day he wanted to know that they would be exactly where he had left them when he came out.
Halfway up the steps he ran into a fellow senator, Gaius Cassius Longinus. Under Claudius, as governor of Syria, Cassius had amassed a great fortune. His learned commentaries on the law had established him as the Senate’s leading expert on all matters judicial. Still, Titus could never forget that Cassius’s ancestor and namesake had been one of the assassins of the Divine Julius. Cassius’s eyesight had begun to fail; he was often in a foul mood, and today was no exception. Titus, who was much junior to Cassius in the Senate, usually would have given the older man a nod and no more, but he could not resist asking Cassius if he knew anything about the crowd before the Senate House.
Cassius squinted at the throng and scowled. “They’re here to plead for mercy for those slaves,” he said.
“Really? There are so many of them.”
“Are there? Then it’s a blessing that I can barely see them. I’m told they’ve been arriving all morning, and more are arriving every moment. You know, our ancestors saw this sort of thing all the time – mobs gathering to demonstrate in the Forum whenever there was a debate in the Senate. Sometimes the mobs would riot. Sometimes it was like this every day in the Republic, especially towards the end. Can you imagine the chaos?”
Titus gazed out at the crowd. So this was an old-fashioned Roman mob! “They look unhappy, but they’re not that badly behaved.”
“Not yet!” Cassius shuddered. “What I find so appalling is the reason they’re here. When their ancestors broke a few patrician heads for plebeian rights, or rioted at the behest of the Gracchi brothers to help the small landowners, or even when they burned down the Senate House after the rabble-rouser Clodius was killed, at least they were fighting for their own self-interest as citizens. But this shameless assembly of freedmen and citizens are here to argue for the benefit of slaves. It’s disgusting! Imagine, during the Spartacus revolt, if the rabble had gathered to tell the Senate, ‘Stop what you’re doing! Perhaps this gladiator fellow has a point!’”
“It’s not quite the same thing,” said Titus cautiously.
“Isn’t it? The law is the law, and these people are here to spit on the law – for the sake of slaves! Nero should summon his Praetorians and drive them all into the Tiber.”
“I think there might be too many of them to do that,” said Titus. Truly, outside the Circus Maximus, he had never seen such a large gathering.
Was he imagining it, or had the crowd grown more unruly in the last few moments? He gathered the folds of his toga and hurried up the steps.
He was just in time to join his fellow senators on the crowded porch for the taking of the auspices. They were favourable, though Titus thought the augur was being rather generous in his interpretation of a crow’s flight. Then the senators filed inside, pausing to light a bit of incense and say a prayer at the Altar of Victory before filling the tiers of seats that faced each other across the long chamber. There was a large turnout. Titus thought there
