CHAPTER 2

I faced Seneca, trying to block the other boys out of my peripheral vision. I knew I should be careful because Caligula was petulant and didn’t like to be made the fool. But when I had an audience, I couldn’t resist showing off a little.

I stood to my full height and spoke using my orator’s voice, as Seneca had taught me.

“‘Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies and who believe this to be great and manly,’” I said. “‘Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.’”

A few of my classmates groaned at my eloquence. No matter; Seneca had taught me not to be distracted by a hostile audience.

“Those are the words of Cicero, and those are also words of truth and reason,” I said proudly. “Roman virtues should include not only justice and courage but forgiveness and mercy.”

“Spoken like someone who has never seen a battle, never seen a friend decapitated by a barbarian,” Seneca countered. He paced a little, gauging the expressions of the students. “Cicero, not coincidentally, had never seen the battlefield either. So doesn’t young Gaius have a point? Rome did not conquer the world with etiquette and Senate resolutions. We extended our civilization, including our cherished adherence to Roman law, by brutal force.”

Seneca locked his eyes on me. “How can one claim to honor the law yet not support the forms of punishment that ensure others will follow it?” He pointed behind me to the Appian Way. “Roads like that do not appear from thin air. They are built. Built by slaves, as was your father’s estate, Theophilus. There can be no advance without civilization, no civilization without order, and no order without punishment.”

I didn’t know if Seneca actually felt this way or if he was just challenging my thinking. He was always hard on students like me, ones who thought we could hold our own. In my opinion, he let students like Caligula off too easy, simply because they weren’t willing to try.

I wanted to note that Seneca had never been in battle either. He probably wouldn’t have lasted one day on a forced march. He had the soft body of a philosopher, though his mind was tempered steel.

“Germanicus Julius Caesar was one of the greatest generals Rome has ever seen,” I said. This was Caligula’s father, a revered warrior who had died from poisoning when Caligula was only seven, and I noticed Caligula stir. He scowled and leaned forward as if I had crossed some sacred line just by mentioning his father’s name.

“Germanicus became consul because of his triumph in Germania. Yet when he traveled to Alexandria, he saw the starvation of the people there, and he opened the granaries so they could eat. They worshiped him like a pharaoh, and if he had stayed, they might have made him a god. But Caesar was angry because Rome would now see less of the corn supply.”

“Is this just a history lesson,” Seneca asked, “or do you have a point?”

“My point is this: It is the kindness of Germanicus rather than the brutality of Crassus that best represents the heart of Rome. Germanicus would not have crucified those slaves. You can fight barbarians without becoming one.”

I stood facing Seneca with my chest thrust out, proud of my little speech. Even though there was an unwritten rule that we didn’t talk about the suspicious circumstances of Germanicus’s death, I thought mentioning his name in this context would be acceptable. My argument was especially clever because his own son Caligula had been the one who had argued so peevishly that crucifying the slaves was right. Maybe even Caligula would think twice about it now.

All might have been well if Seneca had just allowed it to end there. But the man never let us savor a moment of oratorical triumph. When we felt the most pride, he would cut our legs out from under us and make us feel small again.

“You have chosen an interesting example, Theophilus. But I must ask: Was what Germanicus did legal? Should he have even been in Alexandria? Or have you premised your argument on a violation of the very laws you would have us honor?”

We all knew the answers to those questions, yet I did not want to say them aloud. The orphaned son of Germanicus was sitting less than twelve feet away.

But what was the truth? That’s what Seneca had drilled into me in the past two years of training. If we got confused, he said, it was probably because we were considering extraneous issues that were clouding our judgment. His advice was to find the truth and cling to it. He gave us one question to ask, one question to guide our answers to life’s most difficult issues.

What is true?

“It was not legal, Master Seneca. Alexandria was important to Germanicus because of his ancestry as a descendant of Mark Antony. But Caesar Augustus’s laws forbade the entry of any member of the ruling class into Alexandria.”

“Was Germanicus a criminal, then?”

I didn’t hesitate. “He was.”

It was the truth. But sometimes the truth has unintended consequences.