winter, the top was snowcapped.
Squatting next to Attilius he took off his helmet and wiped his forehead. “Hard to imagine,” he said, “snow in this heat.”
“And is she easy to climb?”
“Not too hard. Easier than she looks. The top’s fairly flat when you get up there. Spartacus made it the camp for his rebel army. Some natural fortress that must have been. No wonder the scum were able to hold off the legions for so long. When the skies are clear you can see for fifty miles.”
They had passed the city of Neapolis and were parallel with a smaller town that Torquatus said was Herculaneum , although the coast was such a continuous ribbon of development—ocher walls and red roofs, occasionally pierced by the dark green spear-thrusts of cypresses—that it was not always possible to tell where one town ended and another began. Herculaneum looked stately and well pleased with herself at the foot of the luxuriant mountain, her windows facing out to sea. Brightly colored pleasure craft, some shaped like sea creatures, bobbed in the shallows. There were parasols on the beaches, people casting fishing lines from the jetties. Music, and the shouts of children playing ball, wafted across the placid water.
“Now, that’s the greatest villa on the bay,” said Torquatus. He nodded toward an immense colonnaded property that sprawled along the shoreline and rose in terraces above the sea. “That’s the Villa Calpurnia. I had the honor to take the new emperor there last month, on a visit to the former consul, Pedius Cascus.”
“Cascus?” Attilius pictured the lizard-like senator from the previous evening, swaddled in his purple-striped toga. “I had no idea he was so rich.”
“Inherited through his wife, Rectina. She had some connection with the Piso clan. The admiral comes here often, to use the library. Do you see that group of figures, reading in the shade beside the pool? They are philosophers.” Torquatus found this very funny. “Some men breed birds as a pastime, others have dogs. The senator keeps philosophers!”
“And what species are these philosophers?”
“Followers of Epicurus. According to Cascus, they hold that man is mortal, the gods are indifferent to his fate, and therefore the only thing to do in life is enjoy oneself.”
“I could have told him that for nothing.”
Torquatus laughed again, then put on his helmet and tightened the chin strap. “Not long to Pompeii now, engineer. Another half hour should do it.”
He walked back toward the stern.
Attilius shielded his eyes and contemplated the villa. He had never had much use for philosophy. Why one human being should inherit such a palace, and another be torn apart by eels, and a third break his back in the stifling darkness rowing a liburnian—a man could go mad trying to reason why the world was so arranged. Why had he had to watch his wife die in front of him when she was barely older than a girl? Show him the philosophers who could answer that and he would start to see the point of them.
She had always wanted to come on holiday to the
Bay
of
Neapolis
, and he had always put her off, saying he was too busy. And now it was too late. Grief at what he had lost and regret at what he had failed to do, his twin assailants, caught him unawares again, and hollowed him, as they always did. He felt a physical emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Looking at the coast he remembered the letter a friend had shown him on the day of Sabina’s funeral. The jurist Servius Sulpicus, more than a century earlier, had been sailing back from Asia to Rome , lost in grief, when he found himself contemplating the Mediterranean shore. Afterward he described his feelings to Cicero, who had also just lost his daughter: “There behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, to the right Piraeus, to the left Corinth; once flourishing towns, now lying low in ruins before one’s eyes, and I began to think to myself: ‘How can we complain if one of us dies
Squatting next to Attilius he took off his helmet and wiped his forehead. “Hard to imagine,” he said, “snow in this heat.”
“And is she easy to climb?”
“Not too hard. Easier than she looks. The top’s fairly flat when you get up there. Spartacus made it the camp for his rebel army. Some natural fortress that must have been. No wonder the scum were able to hold off the legions for so long. When the skies are clear you can see for fifty miles.”
They had passed the city of Neapolis and were parallel with a smaller town that Torquatus said was Herculaneum , although the coast was such a continuous ribbon of development—ocher walls and red roofs, occasionally pierced by the dark green spear-thrusts of cypresses—that it was not always possible to tell where one town ended and another began. Herculaneum looked stately and well pleased with herself at the foot of the luxuriant mountain, her windows facing out to sea. Brightly colored pleasure craft, some shaped like sea creatures, bobbed in the shallows. There were parasols on the beaches, people casting fishing lines from the jetties. Music, and the shouts of children playing ball, wafted across the placid water.
“Now, that’s the greatest villa on the bay,” said Torquatus. He nodded toward an immense colonnaded property that sprawled along the shoreline and rose in terraces above the sea. “That’s the Villa Calpurnia. I had the honor to take the new emperor there last month, on a visit to the former consul, Pedius Cascus.”
“Cascus?” Attilius pictured the lizard-like senator from the previous evening, swaddled in his purple-striped toga. “I had no idea he was so rich.”
“Inherited through his wife, Rectina. She had some connection with the Piso clan. The admiral comes here often, to use the library. Do you see that group of figures, reading in the shade beside the pool? They are philosophers.” Torquatus found this very funny. “Some men breed birds as a pastime, others have dogs. The senator keeps philosophers!”
“And what species are these philosophers?”
“Followers of Epicurus. According to Cascus, they hold that man is mortal, the gods are indifferent to his fate, and therefore the only thing to do in life is enjoy oneself.”
“I could have told him that for nothing.”
Torquatus laughed again, then put on his helmet and tightened the chin strap. “Not long to Pompeii now, engineer. Another half hour should do it.”
He walked back toward the stern.
Attilius shielded his eyes and contemplated the villa. He had never had much use for philosophy. Why one human being should inherit such a palace, and another be torn apart by eels, and a third break his back in the stifling darkness rowing a liburnian—a man could go mad trying to reason why the world was so arranged. Why had he had to watch his wife die in front of him when she was barely older than a girl? Show him the philosophers who could answer that and he would start to see the point of them.
She had always wanted to come on holiday to the
Bay
of
Neapolis
, and he had always put her off, saying he was too busy. And now it was too late. Grief at what he had lost and regret at what he had failed to do, his twin assailants, caught him unawares again, and hollowed him, as they always did. He felt a physical emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Looking at the coast he remembered the letter a friend had shown him on the day of Sabina’s funeral. The jurist Servius Sulpicus, more than a century earlier, had been sailing back from Asia to Rome , lost in grief, when he found himself contemplating the Mediterranean shore. Afterward he described his feelings to Cicero, who had also just lost his daughter: “There behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, to the right Piraeus, to the left Corinth; once flourishing towns, now lying low in ruins before one’s eyes, and I began to think to myself: ‘How can we complain if one of us dies
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