Read Online The Roman by Mika Waltari - Free Book Online

the matter himself without interference from women. He had had enough of female interference, he said in hitter tones, so that it had choked him ever since the days of Ins youth. Aunt Laelia was about to reply, but gave me a look and decided to keep quiet. At last we could start eating the olives, the cheese and the vegetable soup. My father saw to it that we did not finish the food but left some of it, even of the small lump of cheese, for otherwise obviously neither of the household�s aged slaves would get anything to eat. I did not realize this myself, for at home in Antioch I had always received the best bits and there was always more than enough left over for the rest of the household and the poor who always gathered around my father.
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    The following day, my father appointed an architect to arrange for the repairs to the family property and a couple of gardeners to put the unkempt garden to rights. A hundred-year-old sycamore tree grew there, planted by a Manilius who had later been murdered in the open street by Marius� men. A couple of ancient trees also grew near the house and my father was careful to see that they had not suffered any damage. The little sunken house he also left as outwardly unchanged as possible. �You�ll be seeing a great deal of marble and other luxuries in Rome,� he explained to me, �but when you grow up you will realize that what I am doing now is the greatest luxury of all. Not even the richest upstart can acquire such ancient frees around his house, and the building�s old-fashioned appearance is worth more than all the columns and decorations.� He turned back to his past in his thoughts and his face clouded. �Once in Damascus,� he went on, �I was going to build myself a simple house and plant trees all around it, to live a peaceful life there with your mother, Myrina. But after her death, I sank into such complete despair that nothing meant anything to me for many years. Perhaps I would have killed myself if my duty to you had not forced me to continue living. And once a fisherman on the shores of Galilee promised me something which still makes me curious, although I remember it only as a dream.� My father would not tell me more about this promise, but just repeated that he would have to be content with these ancient trees, for he himself had not been granted the joy of planting any and watching theft growth. While the building workers and the architect were about the house and my father was in the city from morning to night arranging his affairs, Barbus and I walked insatiably around Rome, looking at the people and the sights. Emperor Claudius was having all the old temples and memorials repaired for the centenary festivities and the priests and wise men were collecting all the myths and tales which belonged to them and adapting them to the demands of the present. The Imperial buildings on Palatine, the temple on the Capitoline, and the baths and theaters in Rome did not captivate me in themselves, for I had grown up in Antioch where there were just as magnificent and even larger public buildings. In fact Rome, with its crooked alleys and steep hillsides, was a cramped city to one who was used to the straight streets of spacious Antioch. There was one building, however, which entranced me with its vastness and its associations. That was the enormous mausoleum of the god Augustus. It was circular in shape, for most sacred temples in Rome were circular in memory of the days when Rome�s first inhabitants lived in round huts The simple grandeur of the mausoleum seemed to me worthy of a god and the greatest ruler of all time I never tired of reading the memorial inscription which listed Augustus� greatest feats .. Barbus was not so enthusiastic about it. He said during his time as a legionary he had become cynical about all memorial inscriptions, for what was left . out of them is usually more important than what is put in them r
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    In that way a defeat can become a