A little way off the road, atop a small hill, the pyre had been prepared. It was in the very same location where two years ago we burned the body of Rupa's sister, Cassandra. Hieronymus was laid upon the pyre. The keepers of the flame set about stoking the fire.
A few people had sent their condolences, but only my family saw fit to actually attend the ceremony. Granted, it was still early in the morning, and on that day much else was happening. But I wondered at the fickleness of those whom Hieronymus had supposedly befriended after I left Rome. Of course, when all was said and done, he had been a foreigner and an outsider, with no blood connection to the city.
It was incumbent on me to say a few words, even though only the family was present. I recalled my first meeting with Hieronymus in Massilia, when his intervention alone saved me from arrest; his hospitality to me and to Davus in that desperate, besieged city; his narrow escape from the fate that awaited him as the Scapegoat; and his journey with me to Rome. I reflected on the oscillating fortunes of his life; he had been born a child of privilege in the highest echelon of Massilian society, but his father's financial ruin and suicide had reduced the family to poverty and made them social outcasts. His selection to act as the Scapegoat promised him a brief period of the utmost luxury, followed by a sacrificial death. But it had not been so, and the doomed man became a guest in my home, and then, curiously enough, a sought-after dinner companion to the elite of the city. Then came a reversal as ironic as all the other reversals in his peculiar life, and with it, the end.
While I spoke, Davus began to weep, and Diana hugged him. Mopsus, Androcles, and Rupa, seemed distracted by the work of the fire starters; they stared past me at the pyre, awaiting the first tongues of flame. Bethesda stood stiff and unbending; was she thinking of that other funeral, for Cassandra, which she had been too ill to attend? Eco was still in Syracuse, but his wife, Menenia, was here, along with their golden-haired twins, Titus and Titania.
"What can we learn from his death?" I looked from face to face amid the small gathering of those dearest to me. "Only what we already know: that fortune is changeable, that the love of the gods is no more steadfast than the love of mortals, that all who live must die. But the words and acts of the living carry on after them. The story of Hieronymus is not yet over, not while any one of us who remembers him still lives."
And not while at least one man continues to search for his killer and the true cause of his death, I thought.
I bowed my head. A little later I heard the crackling of wood, smelled the odor of burning, and felt the heat of the flames against my back.
"Farewell, Hieronymus!" I whispered.
IX
What does one do for the rest of the day, when the day begins with a funeral? Such days seem to take place outside normal time. A dull gloom settles over the world. After being made to confront mortality at its starkest, one is left to face the ensuing hours stripped of the simple comforts of a workday routine. Normal thought is impossible. A carefree laugh or an idle daydream are out of the question. We have looked into the abyss, then have stepped back from the precipice still alive, yes, but touched at our core by the chill of death. For the rest of the day, one must simply endure the gloom and wait for the setting of the sun and the eventual escape into sleep that will bring the day after.
But this was not a normal day for anyone in Rome. This was the day of the first of Caesar's four triumphs.
Even before we reentered the city by the Esquiline Gate, I could hear a dull roar from within the walls. When every man, woman, and child in Rome has cause to be out of doors at the same time, all talking to one another at once, the whole city hums like beehive. Such a buzzing seemed to emanate from every quarter of the city, but it grew noticeably louder as we drew near the Forum.
Everyone was in the streets, wearing their brightest holiday attire. (How my family stood out, all garbed in black!) Everyone was headed for the same place, drawn toward the heart of the hubbub. Amid the contagious excitement, Bethesda and Diana completely forgot their intention to return to the auction at the House of the Beaks. Impatient to witness the spectacle, Mopsus and Androcles repeatedly ran ahead and then circled back, entreating the rest of us to hurry.
We reached the Forum. The doors of every temple stood open, inviting the people to visit the gods, and the gods to witness the day's events. Garlands of flowers decorated every shrine and statue. Incense burned on every altar, filling the air with sweet fragrance.
Historians say that King Romulus celebrated the first triumphal procession in Rome after he slew Acron, king of the Caeninenses, in single combat. While Acron's body was still warm, Romulus cut down an oak tree and carved the trunk into the shape of a torso; then he stripped the armor from Acron's corpse and fastened it onto the effigy. Carrying the trophy over his shoulder and wearing a laurel crown, he walked through the streets of Rome while the citizens looked on in awe. He ascended the Capitoline. At the Temple of Jupiter, he made a solemn offering of Acron's armor to the god, in gratitude for Rome's triumph.
Romulus's victory march was the origin and model for all subsequent triumphs. Over the centuries, the pomp and ceremony of these celebrations grew ever more elaborate. King Tarquin the Elder was the first to ride a chariot instead of walk, and for the occasion he wore a gold-embroidered robe. In his day, only kings could celebrate a triumph, but with the coming of the republic, the Senate continued the tradition by granting triumphs to generals in recognition of a great military victory. Camillus, who liberated the city when it was occupied by the Gauls, was the first to harness four white horses to his chariot, in emulation of the quadriga statue atop Jupiter's temple, with its white horses pulling the king of the gods. In those days, the face and arms of a triumphant general were painted red to match the statue of Jupiter, which was dyed with cinnabar on holidays. What a strange sight that must have been!
I had witnessed a number of triumphs in my lifetime. The first I could remember was when I was six years old, and Caesar's granduncle Marius paraded the captured Numidian king Jugurtha through the streets before executing him. A few years later, after repelling an invasion by Germanic tribes, Marius celebrated another triumph. In the year before I met Cicero, I saw Sulla the Dictator celebrate his victory over King Mithradates of Pontus. Cicero himself had been voted a triumph by the Senate, for the dubious achievement of putting down a band of brigands during his year as governor of Cilicia, but the civil war had postponed that event, probably forever.
Pompey had celebrated three triumphs in his career, beginning at the age of twenty-four. The last and most lavish of these was some fifteen years ago, to mark his conquests in the East and his eradication of piracy in the Mediterranean. That triumph had been spread over two days of unprecedented pomp and largesse, featuring not only processions but also huge public banquets and a distribution of money to the citizens; and in a move that surprised everyone, Pompey had spared the intended victims, proving that mercy could be exercised by a victorious Roman general.
But of all the triumphs I had seen, the celebration put on by Caesar that day, and in the days to come, eclipsed them all.
When a man has lived in a place as long as I have lived in Rome, he learns a few of the city's secrets. I happened to know the best vantage point for watching a triumph. While other latecomers pressed toward the front of the crowd, stood on tiptoes, or gazed enviously at those who had arrived early to find seats among the stands, I led the family to the Temple of Fortuna built by Lucullus. At the side of the temple, an easy climb along the branch of an olive tree allowed access to a recessed marble shelf along one wall, just deep enough and wide enough for my entire family to sit, if we huddled close together. Even an old fellow like me could make the ascent with no trouble, and my reward was a comfortable perch above the heads of the crowd below, with a perfect view of the procession along the Sacred Way. Dressed as we were, we must have looked like a flock of ravens roosting on the little outcrop of marble.