A Week in the Life of Rome Page 5

  The early church was universally against such practices, based on the conviction that all humans were created in the image of God, and therefore no one should be considered expendable. The Didache, a first-century church order manual, makes opposition to abortion and exposure one of the hallmarks of Christian identity. In other words, it was part of catechesis to instruct those preparing for baptism that Christians do not abort or expose babies. In the second century all the Christian apologists wrote against abortion and exposure.

  “Stachys, you know young Clemens.”

  “Yes, good to see you Dom—” Stachys stopped himself from calling Clemens “lord.”

  Clemens smiled and shook Stachys’s hand. “We’re all equals here, Stachys. No need for formality.”

  Stachys could not understand why someone from the senate class would say that to someone who was not even an equestrian. No doubt the elder Clemens would feel dishonored to hear his son say such a thing.

  Marcus broke the awkward silence. “Stachys, we may need your help. Clemens and I are talking about the plans for smuggling Peter into the city. Can I count on you to play a part if we need you?”

  Stachys hesitated, looking down at his fidgeting hands. He did not want to get in trouble, but he didn’t feel he could say no to Marcus, so he just nodded his head.

  Marcus continued, “When he arrives at Ostia, our friends there will get him safely off the boat and take him to the Tavern of the Seven Sages.”

  Clemens looked surprised. “A tavern?”

  “Don’t worry, brother. It’s the best place for Peter to stay out of sight.”

  “Are you sure? We wouldn’t want anyone to think Peter is going there to . . . to be an upstairs customer.”

  “If anyone there knows who Peter is, then we have a bigger problem. Clemens, I need you to be the one to go there and get him. Take some trusted slaves—the toughest ones you have—and go and bring him into the city. I’ll send you word when he’s there, and then you’ll go get him and bring him to Pudens’s house. It’s going to be night, so have torches ready.” Clemens nodded, and Marcus turned to Stachys. “Once I get word that Peter’s ship has docked, we will have to get to Clemens right away. I might need your help getting the message to him.” Stachys nodded.

  At the camp of the Praetorian Guard, Lucius Geta paced back and forth across the barracks’ anteroom, which functioned as his office. One of the praetorians entered and saluted. “My lord Geta, I have a message from Narcissus.”

  Geta put out his hand to receive the small scroll sealed with wax. He looked at the seal to confirm that it had the insignia of Narcissus, freedman and secretary of the emperor Claudius, pressed into it. Then he broke the seal and quickly unrolled the scroll, skimming it for the answer he was looking for. “Va cacá! I was worried this might happen. It looks like he’s going to give the prefecture of the grain supply to that nobody Urbanus. I can’t believe Claudius is letting his freedmen give out important appointments. We should never have made that palsy-ridden cripple emperor!”

  The soldier cleared his throat and looked down at his boots, shifting his weight uncomfortably.

  Geta looked at the soldier. “Do you know who Urbanus is?”

  “No, lord.”

  “Equestrian. Lives on the Tiburtinian Road, and has some farmland south of the city. Olives, mostly, I think. I want you to find out everything you can about him. And when the time is right, I want you to be ready to kill him. Understood?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “You’re dismissed.”

  The soldier saluted, turned, and left.

  After lunch, Stachys walked to Urbanus’s house. An old slave he knew let him in, and he took a seat on a bench in the atrium to wait for Urbanus. By the time Urbanus came out, he had exchanged his toga for a cloak, and his house shoes for sandals. He greeted Stachys warmly and shook his hand. Urbanus looked around his home and smiled. “Do you miss it?”

  “Living in your household?” Stachys didn’t want to say the wrong thing, so he weighed his words carefully. After a pause, he decided he could be honest with Urbanus. “I mean no disrespect, but I have grown fond of the peace and quiet in my more humble home.”

  “Well said!” Urbanus laughed. “This house is grand, and that brings honor to my name, and my family. But it does mean more activity than I would like on some days. It’s not as though we need all of these slaves. But the more slaves you have, the more wealthy you look, and that’s what matters.” Urbanus sighed. “I mean, how would it look if we started freeing slaves just because there wasn’t enough work for them to do? But honestly, I don’t know where half of them are at any given time. At the taverns, gambling, no doubt. Come, let’s go.” As they made their way to the door, they met Sabina, coming out of the kitchen.

  Stachys bowed. “Domina.” He figured it was not a blasphemy to use the feminine version of “lord,” since no one could confuse a matron for the Lord Iesua.

  Sabina nodded to Stachys and turned to her husband. “Going out to spread your own fame far and wide, I see,” she said with sarcasm.

  Urbanus’s smile left his face, and it was quickly replaced by a scowl as he glanced at Stachys. “You disrespect me in front of my client? And look at yourself! All that gold jewelry speaks more of you than my actions do of me. Maybe I should take it from you and melt it down, along with your mirrors, and make you a gold and copper veil to cover your mouth!” Urbanus stomped out of the house, with Stachys trying to catch up.

  The two men walked mostly in silence as they made their way to the Field of Mars. “We’re going to the Baths of Faustus—on me,” Urbanus explained. “I usually go to the Baths of Fortunatus, but they haven’t changed the water in a while. You’ll like the Baths of Faustus.”

  Roman Baths

  Virtually everyone, of all social classes, went to the baths. Most people went in the afternoon, during the “siesta” time, but even the people who worked during that time would have been expected to take some time off from work to go to the baths daily. Only the wealthiest Romans would have had bathtubs in their homes, so almost everyone bathed outside the home. Large bath complexes were subsidized by the state and were either free or had a very minimal charge. Smaller bathhouses were privately owned and would charge for entry. Some of these may have been for women only, but most were coed, and in the first century men and women bathed at the same time. Given that all five hundred thousand inhabitants of Rome were going to the baths, there must have been hundreds of bathing complexes, in every neighborhood.

  Emperors and senators built huge bath complexes and opened them to the public in order to increase their own fame and create a sense of indebtedness to them. All the bathing houses would have included locker rooms, in which people put their clothes and shoes in baskets to be watched by slaves while they bathed, as well as space for massages and exercising. The larger complexes had exercise yards surrounded by colonnades that included many works of art. In the exercise yards men could wrestle, hit punching bags, practice swinging a sword against a wooden post, and play a variety of ball games with different kinds of balls. It seems that they even had a game that was something like rugby. Others watched the games, played drinking games, and bet on the contests in the exercise yard. Men and women might have run around the perimeter of the yard, and women had their favorite games as well.

  Bathers went in sequence, first to a steam room, then to a hot pool, and then to a warm bathing pool. They used oil the way we use soap, and the oil was scraped off their bodies with a strigil, a curved metal scoop. After this came the cold pool, and then people dressed for an afternoon of leisure. Some of the bath complexes included libraries, lecture halls, shaded gardens for taking a walk, food vendors, and sometimes prostitutes.

  Figure 2.2. Remains of a Roman bath complex showing the exercise yard, Ostia Antica

  Figure 2.3. Remains of a Roman bath complex showing the mosaic floor of one of the pools, Ostia Antica

  Stachys was sure he would. He almost nev
er spent the money to go to the smaller, private baths. But since there were many of them in Rome, Stachys couldn’t remember whether he had ever been to the Baths of Faustus. He walked alongside Urbanus in silence, anticipating a luxurious and relaxing afternoon.

  Stachys followed Urbanus as they went from the heat and sun into the dim and shadowed halls of the Baths of Faustus. Like most bathhouses, the rooms were decorated with mosaic floors, colorfully painted walls, and Roman copies of Greek statues. There was already quite a crowd, and as they walked through the portico Urbanus waved to some friends who were playing “triangle,” throwing a ball back and forth between three people. Some more muscular men were wrestling in the nude, while another group rubbed oil and sand on their bodies to get ready to wrestle the winners.

  Stachys followed Urbanus into the dressing room, where they took off their cloaks, tunics, sandals, and loincloths and put them in a basket. A slave, whose job it was to watch over the clothing, stared at Urbanus and Stachys briefly to memorize their faces. Then he put the baskets with their clothes on a shelf along the wall. The two men walked out into the atrium, where the many noises of the baths echoed off the tiles. Musicians played, food vendors shouted their merchandise—Urbanus stopped for a sausage—and the sounds of people playing games, yelling to each other, came in from the portico. Men gathered around a barber, talking loudly, and the masseurs slapped the skin of their customers. Stachys tried to pretend that he was not looking at the naked bodies of the women who were bathing. Urbanus led Stachys to the massage area and over to two men standing over open tables.

  “Just a massage,” Urbanus said to one, as he climbed onto the table.

  The other masseur looked at Stachys expectantly. When Stachys didn’t say anything, the masseur said, “Just a massage for you, too, or do you want the works? It costs a little more, but you won’t be sorry.”

  “Just a massage.” He lay down on the massage table and closed his eyes, listening to the music of the panpipes and oboes.

  “I hate that instrument,” Urbanus said, referring to the sound of the reeds. “Too shrill.” The masseur oiled them up and rubbed them down, and then scraped the oil off with iron strigils.

  After their massages, Urbanus and Stachys put their tunics back on to go into the exercise yard, but Urbanus didn’t feel like exercising, so he bet on the wrestlers, while watching the women play “roll the hoop.” Stachys went for a run around the perimeter of the portico, and then was invited to join a group of men playing handball. After the game, Stachys wandered around the yard looking for Urbanus. He noticed a group of men sitting around the Praetorian prefect Lucius Geta, who was talking to them. Stachys couldn’t hear most of what he was saying, but he did make out the words “Tiburtinian Road.”

  Eventually Stachys found Urbanus coming from the portico of the prostitutes. The men left their tunics in the dressing room and headed for the steam room. After taking a steam, they moved to the hot tub, then the warm bath, and finally the cold pool.

  Once Stachys and Urbanus had dressed, they walked through the garden, admiring the sculptures. Stachys thought to himself how pleasant and peaceful it was. He was truly relaxed, and he thought that this was exactly the lifestyle he was looking for, the kind of life that financial advancement would buy him. He wondered whether joining the school of the Way-followers was a betrayal of his patriotic duties and expected loyalties—in other words, was it going to be bad for business?

  As they walked through the portico, Stachys and Urbanus could hear speeches coming from the lecture halls. There were philosophers teaching their students, and public readings of books, and one man was reading a book written by the emperor himself on the history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. “Did you know,” Urbanus whispered, “that the emperor Claudius used to do public readings of his own books?”

  “I’ve heard that. Why did he stop? Was it because of the speech impediment?”

  “Yes. He has such a mumble that his reading is more pathetic than anything.”

  “I’ve heard that as well. And now he wants to add new letters to the alphabet? Do you know, I’ve heard people tell jokes about him.”

  “Once I heard him read from a book he was writing about dice games. I tell you, Stachys, I felt sorry for him, I really did. The man’s been ridiculed his whole life, even by his own family. Why he would want to write their history I’ll never know. But of course that was all before he became the emperor. Now he rarely appears in public. But who can blame him?”

  As Stachys and Urbanus left the Baths of Faustus, Urbanus took the opportunity to talk to Stachys, patron to client. “I’ve heard some good news, Stachys.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, it seems I am first in line for the prefect of the grain supply after all.”

  “That is good news.” Both men looked down as they walked, trying not to turn their ankles on the broken potsherds and other garbage, and trying to avoid the merda in the street.

  “Yes, but of course you know that there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, nothing is given for nothing. Narcissus is offering me the prefecture, but he expects something in return.”

  “What does he want, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “No, I don’t mind. We’ll get to that. But first, you were asking me about helping you get into imports, right?”

  Stachys’s heart started to beat faster with the prospect of business advancement. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Well, I believe I can make that happen for you. But I’ll need something from you in return.”

  “What is it? Anything you want.” Stachys was feeling grateful for the afternoon at the baths.

  “Good. In order for me to get the prefecture, Narcissus wants me to set up one of his newly manumitted freedmen with a position as a tutor. Now your son is just the right age, if I remember—what’s his name—Tertius?”

  Stachys’s heart sank as he thought about handing his son over to a tutor, and having to pay for it as well. “Um, Tertius, yes.”

  As they made their way through the heart of the city, it was getting much noisier. People were now bumping into Stachys and Urbanus on all sides, and it was getting difficult to carry on their conversation. Someone stepped on Stachys’s foot. “Great Mother!” He made the manus cornuta, the horned hand, and pointed it in the direction of whoever had stepped on him. “They really need to get the merda carts out here and take some of this away.”

  Urbanus pressed for a definite answer. “So, can I tell Narcissus we’re agreed?”

  “I don’t know if I can say so right now.”

  Urbanus exaggerated the look of betrayal and disappointment on his face.

  Stachys pretended not to notice and continued, “I have to talk with Maria.”

  “Talk with Maria?!” Urbanus was now indignant. “Who is the father of your household, you or Maria? Hades, she’s not even his mother.”

  “True, but she’s the only mother he has ever known, and I’ve seen her threaten to strangle a man who said she’s not his mother. And these Way-followers . . . they really don’t like the tutor-student relationship. They say the sex is taking advantage of the boys.”

  “What do you mean, as if it’s bad for them? But how else is a boy going to start his own network of friends? This man could be your son’s patron someday. And anyway, Tertius is not a man yet. He can choose to be dominant if he wants to when his beard comes in. There’s no shame in starting your career as another man’s favorite.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Stachys couldn’t find the words to take issue with what Urbanus was saying, but he also could not imagine how he was going to tell Maria.

  “Stachys, I think that Judean woman is going to end up dishonoring you. I’m worried about you, taking up with these Way-followers. By Priapus, what kind of antisocial, unpatriotic club is this that wouldn’t let a boy accept the benefits of a relationship with an older, more powerful man?”

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p; Urbanus’s own words stuck in his throat. He knew he was being unfair to the Way-followers and that their only motivation was to protect the innocence of their children. Even as he condemned their anti-Roman ways, he was strangely drawn to the strength and courage of their convictions.

  “That’s not all they don’t allow,” Stachys muttered, half to himself.

  “What else?”

  “Well, let’s just say, if I am initiated to their table, no more prostitutes for me.” Stachys didn’t let on that he had already given up visiting the prostitutes in order to enter the catechumenate. Truth be told, it was a condition of his union with Maria.

  “What?!” Urbanus was horrified. “How dare they interfere with a man’s right to choose to . . . ! Well, it’s a man’s own business what he does with his body!”

  “It’s true. If I join them, there is a whole list of things I can no longer do.” But Stachys’s protests were halfhearted. In his mind he knew that the lifestyle sacrifices were not his problem—he was more worried about what becoming a baptized Way-follower would do to his ability to conduct business.

  “Then you must not join them! No one can make you. No woman is worth that!” Urbanus kept on sputtering in disbelief and disapproval, and yet Stachys could only shrug, indicating that he had no answer, so the two men walked on in silence. Urbanus’s first thoughts were in defense of his own righteous indignation, but soon his words echoed in his head. No woman is worth that. He thought of his wife, Sabina. Is she worth it? he asked himself. Would he give up so much if she asked him to? As they walked along without speaking, Urbanus eventually concluded that Sabina was a very good wife. He wondered what he would do if he had to give up other women just to keep her. Would she be worth it? He could not easily say that he would leave her and break up his home, even for the lifestyle he was used to. His own thoughts surprised him. When they reached the Fontinalis Gate, Stachys said his goodbyes, and thanked Urbanus for his generosity. Urbanus looked Stachys in the eye and said, “I do not know your Maria well, so I should not have said that no woman is worth that. It could be that some women are worth it.” Stachys nodded to indicate there were no hard feelings, but there was nothing left to say at this point. Urbanus nodded back, and the two men parted.