70 Explōrātiō Quinta Decima (XV) Adventure Fifteen
Propertius, Elegī 1.1
Mixed I-Verbs (3rd Conjugation -iō Verbs) The Possessive Adjective suus, sua, suum
Campus Martius, Rōma Mēnsis Sextilis
Imp. Caesare Dīvī fīliō Sextō Appuleiō cōnsulibus
“O
Campus Martius, Rome August, 29 BCE
h dear,” Latinitas said, looking up and down the wide street in Rome where we were standing. “I got the hour wrong. I tried to use this watch to time our visit instead of the sun, but like most items of human manufacture, it proved to be
defective.”
I examined her timepiece. It was a fob watch with a long chain, the kind old-time millionaires used to keep in their waistcoats, though she was wearing it around her neck like a necklace. Its second hand was stationary. I think you forgot to wind it, I told her.
“Wind it? Don’t be silly – watch hands move by themselves, that’s the whole point. Anyway, I hope you will forgive me, because we missed today’s parade.”
We were somewhere near the middle of the city – the top of the theater of Pompey was a block or two away. A large crowd wound up the street as far as the eye could see. There was a mess underfoot that reminded me of parade trash: masses of wilted flower petals, fruit rinds, nut shells, broken cups, spilled wine, and piles of horse manure. Smoke was billowing from cooking fires in the shops and the smell of roasting meat made my mouth water. We may have missed the parade, but the celebration was still in full swing.
“Today is the second of a three-day festival organized by Octavian to celebrate his victories – in particular, his defeat of Cleopatra and Antony at the Battle of Actium. The highlight of the festival, which we just missed, was a long parade that the Romans call a triumphus. If we had been here, you would have seen the whole thing. First, a group of musicians and flag-bearers, followed by hundreds of captive Egyptians marched down the street in chains. Next you would
have seen wagons piled with captured weapons and treasures that Octavian had looted from Egypt; a collection of exotic animals, including ostriches and tigers; and parade float with a large map depicting the area around Actium and the battle that was fought there. They were followed by the Roman Senate; nearly all of its 600 members showed up in their purple-lined togas. After the Senators came Octavian himself riding in a triumphal chariot, his head crowned with a wreath of laurel. The last and longest part of the procession consisted of Octavian’s soldiers, thousands of them in uniform but without weapons, chanting army songs as they passed by.”
“The procession started up there, at the north end of the Campus Martius, passed where we are standing now, made a turn around the Palatine Hill, then doubled back through the Forum, reaching its end on the top of the Capitoline Hill. There Octavian made an offering to Capitoline Jupiter, sacrificing two spotless white bulls raised specially for this purpose on a ranch near the Clitumnus river. As Octavian looked on, the bulls were first stunned with hammers, then decapitated and butchered. The meat was roasted on the great altar in front of the temple and distributed to the onlookers.”
I could picture what she was describing and regretted missing it. As I looked up and down the street again a crumpled piece of papyrus near my foot caught my eye; I reached down and picked it up. It looked like a note someone had dropped. It was written in Greek, so I asked Latinitas to read it to me.
“This is what it says: ‘Alexis son of Petosiris, the scribe from the port of Alexandria. Tell my mother I have been captured by the enemy and am about to go to the House of Hades and Persephone. Tell her that I was a good man.’”
We looked at each other.
“I will take care to deliver this later,” she said, tucking it into her robe. “Come this way.”
We headed along one of the narrow side streets, pressed by the crowd, until we found a place to sit down near a three-way intersection in a small area under construction. To our left was a building that Latinitas identified as a balnea, a bathhouse. There was an inscription across its entrance that described the bathhouse philosophy: Balnea vīna Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra set vītam faciunt balnea vīna Venus: ‘Baths, wine, and Venus corrupt our bodies, but baths, wine, and Venus make life.’ In case you were wondering, ‘Venus’ is a polite way to say ‘sex’, and set is how regular Romans tended to spell sed.” We could hear people inside the bathhouse yelling and laughing and messing around.
Across the street to our right was a small but attractive temple, recently built. It was about the size of a small house, with the kind of columns that have leaves at their top, in so-called
Corinthian-style. Over the columns, on the pediment, was a sculpture of a dog’s head and a star. The doors of the temple were open, and there was a crowd gathered before it, including a large number of women and some men with shaved heads. A female dancer was performing on the temple steps. She wore what looked like a fine white silk nightgown with orange hems, and a collection of bracelets that jingled as she moved. She was doing a kind of tap dance, but in ballerina shoes. Two priests were accompanying her dance with a hand-drum and a kind of rattle that made a slithery sound.
“That dancer is a famous mime-actress named Hostia. This temple is dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. The men with shaved heads are priests of Isis, Egyptian immigrants.”
I thought Rome just went to war against Egypt?
“Octavian went to war against Antony, and Cleopatra the queen of Egypt was his ally. But most Romans did not feel particularly hostile to the country. It’s true, in his propaganda, Octavian liked to describe Egypt as an exotic, barbarous, and treacherous foreign kingdom. At the same time, Antony and his allies in Rome were portraying Egypt as the birthplace of civilization, the home of ancient and powerful gods, a land of wise priests and philosophers. All of this back and forth had the effect of making ordinary Romans very curious about Egypt, and increased the popularity of this temple, a piece of Egyptian culture right in the heart of the city. Many women worship Isis because, on the whole, and, in comparison to Roman men, Roman women tend to be more innovative and open-minded about the gods.”