Sextus Pomponius Sacer was proud of his slave. That is to say, the poor girl was deaf and dumb, and probably a bit retarded too, and she was not really pretty. So he was not particularly proud of her as a person, but he was proud of possessing her. In the tenement block where he lived with his little family, that was quite exceptional. In fact, none of their neighbours had a slave. No one could afford it. When you bought one, even a dirt-cheap bargain like Felicitas, you needed to register the transaction at the tabularium, on the Forum, and pay a fee for that; and once a year you had to pay a tax for the privilege of owning a slave. Then, for all your trouble, you had another mouth to feed in your household.
Reclining on his bed, leaning Roman-style on one elbow, Sextus sighed and looked despondently into the gloom that a single oil lamp, nearby on a stool, struggled to dispel. It was hot and stuffy and he was sweating. His home was just one room under the roof beams of the five-story building. There were no windows, but there was a gap between the top of the low wall and the overhanging eaves; all the noises from the street below came through and were reflected by the slanting roof tiles overhead. In Rome the nights were noisy, as carts were forbidden to enter the city by day; the deliveries were brought in from dusk to dawn, the wheels rattling and the drivers cursing. The summer sun had beaten down on the roof all day long and the garret remained incredibly hot. In the winter the place was draughty and freezing cold, but that was only a distant memory now. Still, the home is a man’s castle.
Sextus had to look hard for reasons to be proud, but fortunately he was quite good at that. To start with, apart from the fact that he owned a slave, he was also a Roman citizen, albeit a dirt-poor one. That meant a lot to him and had many advantages: you were entitled to a free ration of grain, distributed once a month courtesy of the emperor himself. You had the right to go to the baths free of charge and had free seats at the circus or the amphitheatre for various shows and games, gladiator fights and chariot races. You were entitled to go to any public library without paying an entrance fee; not that Sextus made much use of that privilege. And what else? Ah yes: you could even take your little family to the zoo in the gardens of Lucullus for nothing… Anyway, when his good wife Claudia complained about their numbing poverty and hinted that he was no more than an idler and a parasite, he would tell her, “Never forget that your husband is a real plebeian, a free citizen of Rome. Always remember that I have the vote!”
And that was the second thing he was proud of. Sextus loved politics and spent a lot of time supporting his patron, senator Antonius Soranus Canio, one of the 600 members of the Senate, a minor but ambitious politician, and wealthy enough to patronize dozens of poor clients like him. In fact he’d spent all day hanging out with his patron, as a member of his numerous retinue. In the morning he’d passed a couple of hours waiting in the lobby of Canio’s big domus, or townhouse, on the Esquiline hill, being fed some bread and olives and served some wine. Then, as the boss went out and about town, visiting friends, the baths, or attending to business on the Forum, he’d accompanied him with all the others, jostling for a position close to great man, loudly approving every word he said and laughing at every joke he made. On that day Sextus had even managed to place a witticism of his own, which had been well received by all; he’d done himself an excellent turn, therefore. But how exhausting it was to be a hanger-on at the very bottom of the ladder; it was hard work; people had no idea! Still, Sextus had no complaints: Canio, for instance, had paid the fees when he’d bought Feli. After all, when one of your protégés became a slave-owner, it reflected well on the patron. And Canio was the owner of the tenement block where Sextus lived. His home might be modest, but at least he didn’t have to pay any rent.
Looking into the gloomy room from his bedstead, Sextus contemplated his household. First his eyes wandered over to the shelf in the corner, where a little terracotta Venus statue presided, given to the couple by his in-laws, on their wedding day, to protect their home. Then he looked over at his wife, Claudia, who was sitting close by on the chest where they kept their clothes and blankets; she was spinning some wool. She twisted a fine thread between her slender fingers, keeping the wooden spindle twirling steadily, her elegant nape bent forward in utter concentration. He had no idea how his wife did it, creating such a fine yarn from some fluffy raw material loosely tied on a stick; it looked effortless; at least it was an honourable occupation for the wife of a Roman citizen. Or it used to be in the good old days… Anyway, his dear Claudia was always hoping to get a fair price for her fine thread, but somehow the money never seemed to materialize.
And then there was his young daughter, Desiderata, sitting on the floor, playing an apparently fierce game of brigands—latrunculi—with the slave. In fact the two girls, who were the same age, where great friends, inseparable companions. They’d carved a grid of eight squares by eight into the wooden floorboards and used two sets of stones: smooth round pebbles from the Tiber and rough, angular clumps from a building site. They were in the process of taking prisoners without mercy. It was typical: he, Sextus, had taught his dear daughter the game, and now she spent hours every night playing it with her great friend, the slave, instead of her own father! Not that he would have demeaned himself into crouching on the ground with her and using mere rocks… but still: it rankled a bit.
However, this was the third thing Sextus could rightly be proud of: his household, his family, and the fact that he was a paterfamilias. In the good old days he would have had the right of life and death over his kin. He could have killed his daughter at birth because she was not sound in body and limb, and he could have sold her on the slave market whenever he wanted… well, he could not have done both, obviously, but anyway… Of course the old laws had been mellowed somewhat by successive emperors, starting with the divine Augustus; nowadays the mores of the Romans were more civilized, and perhaps that was better. As paterfamilias he still had the right to decide who could marry his daughter; it was at his absolute discretion; not that anyone had come forward yet, even though she was already fourteen years old. Or was it fifteen? Sextus had lost count a bit, he was slightly ashamed to admit; how did other fathers keep up, especially if they had several kids? Anyway, in the old days girls were all married off at twelve, and good riddance. Ah, the patria potestas! Sometimes he said jokingly to his wife, “The law is hard on you ladies, I have to admit, but it can’t be helped: that is the way of the Romans!”
“Yes, but don’t forget the lex Claudiae.”
And he would chortle expectantly, “The lex Claudiae? What would that be? Please remind me!”
“It’s the law that applies under this roof, the one that is based on all the promises you made when you were wooing me, remember?”
And they would both smile fondly. It was true, Sextus knew, he’d made many idle boasts about their brilliant future, and Claudia had been a great catch!
Sextus looked over at his daughter again, sitting on the floor in front of the carved-out board. The deaf girl had just made her move, and now Desi patted the pieces with her flat hand, not looking down at the game, but her head slightly turned to one side. She was rather pretty: like her mother she had nice round cheeks, full lips and a pert little nose. Her thick black curls were bundled up with ribbons above her slender nape. She had a beautiful brow too. But where her eyes should have been, you only saw these shocking holes: empty slits sunk in deep sockets, caving in on the shrivelled remnants of withered eyeballs. She’d been born like that, poor thing, totally blind, a cruel joke from the gods!
They’d named her ‘Desiderata’, which in Latin could have two meanings: ‘she who was longed for’, or ‘she who was regretted’. A very apt name, Sextus always said, as at her birth he and his wife had done both. And because of such remarks, the girl disliked her name and insisted on being called Desi.
She made her move on the board, and immediately started to ‘chatter’ silently with her deaf friend. She used her hands to make all sorts of complicated signals, half mime, half military semaphore, and Feli looked on intently and ‘listened’. Then, when the deaf girl wanted to say something back, she’d prod Desi in a special way, and the blind girl would immediately raise her hands, her spread fingers like a cage. Feli would perform her signs and mimics between the blind girl’s fingertips, and sometimes she would let a broader gesture play itself out against the other one’s chest in such a way that her friend could feel its sweep. At other times Feli would seize Desi’s fingers or wrists and use her friend’s hands like two puppets performing in between them, alternatively thumping one girl’s chest, then the other girl’s, in a self-evident choreography of ‘me’ and ‘you’. At this stage they would look like two little girls playing at hand games, totally absorbed, but without ever clapping, which seemed strange. And they could carry on like that for hours, chattering incessantly… in complete silence. What a freak show! What a wonderful joke from the gods: a blind daughter and a deaf and dumb slave… the joke was entirely on him, Sextus sometimes thought.
How hot and stuffy it was in the room! He decided it was time to make use of the perks of owning a slave—just for once. He tried to catch Feli’s eye and mimed what he wanted from her, but he couldn’t help bellowing at the top of his voice as well.
“Come over here, will you? I’m hot! I want you to fan me!”
And with his hand he pointed at Feli, motioned her to come over, and imitated the flapping of a fan. They had an old fan made of mangy ostrich feathers; and Feli was emphatically not looking in the direction of her master, knowing all too well what he wanted.
“It’s no use bawling like that,” Desi remarked, “Feli really can’t hear you.”
“Well, you tell her what I want from her.”
Desi relayed her father’s message and then held up her hands to receive an answer, and before you knew it they were having a whole conversation again.
At length Desi reported, “We’ve just concluded that my slave is not available right now, darling PF, as she’s attending to her mistress. If it can be any consolation to you: she’s beating the stuff out of me on the latrunculi board. I am not enjoying myself!”
Gracious Iove! The girl kept calling him PF, making fun of the last shred of dignity he still clung to with more desperation than he cared to admit… the cruelty of youth!
“She’s not your slave, she’s mine! As paterfamilias I am the owner of everything in this room.”
“Yes, yes, dear PF, if you say so.”
“Well, I do! So send her over here.”
“No. Even if she’s your slave, her job is to care for your poor, helpless blind daughter, remember?”
“Such a stupid slave; such an impertinent daughter!” Sextus grumbled.
“Shall I sponge you down, carus?” Claudia offered placatingly, “And then fan you for a while?”
She wound the smooth length of yarn around the axle of the spindle and put the wool aside. She took an earthenware pitcher from a corner, and pouring water on a sponge she started to rub down her husband’s naked body. He lay back and sighed, then smiled ruefully at his wife.
“How do you manage to always stay so cool, cara mea?”
Meanwhile the two girls were finishing their game, a heated battle that played itself out in increasingly rapid moves.
Desi didn’t believe for one moment that Feli was stupid. She reflected crossly that after all, her friend had probably invented her own language. How many people could say that? Surely Feli hadn’t learned to speak from her own mother—whoever that may have been—like most toddlers. Not even with hand-signs. And Claudia admitted she’d never managed to teach her anything when she’d arrived in their household, when Desi had been a mere baby. (Thus, Feli must be a few years older than Desi.) No, as a little girl she had invented her own language, and then she had taught that to Desi, although she was blind, which made it even more difficult. But Desi could not remember learning their private sign language at all: it must have happened when she was too young to remember anything… So there, anyway: Feli was not stupid. Besides, right now she was beating her, again, at a very complicated game that required strategic thinking and a lot of cunning. And Desi thought she herself had plenty of both, but Feli had even more… so there.
There was another disturbing fact that now pressed on her mind: sometimes Desi and Feli had lively discussions about what it meant to be a slave or not. About what it meant and didn’t mean.
“It means nothing,” Desi would say, “I love you like a twin sister.”
“Yes, I know,” Feli would reply, “but that’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one that is treated like a piece of furniture.”
“I never treat you like a piece of furniture!”
“Maybe not you, but your father does. Or he tries to, anyway.”
“I don’t let him! I’ll never allow it, you know that.”
Feli often sighed, and signed: “I wish I also had a pretty little jewel like yours!” And she would fish out the tiny silver medallion hanging from a thin cord deep inside Desi’s tunic. It was shaped like two moon-crescents, one inside the other, which was unusual. Now, every freeborn Roman child received a pendant like this as a baby, which they always wore around their neck. The boys were given a bulla when they’d survived their first nine days, a tiny pouch filled with lucky charms; the girls a lunula, a moon crescent. And Feli did not have one, it was not for slaves.
Meanwhile Claudia had sponged and fanned her husband so nicely that the PF had fallen asleep. In the street below they heard the call of the second night-vigils’ patrol. “Citizens!” one of the vigilēs cried, “it is the sixth hour! Don’t forget to extinguish your lamps and your fires before you go to bed! Lock your doors and your windows if you can, and enjoy a good night’s sleep!”
“Psst,” Claudia whispered, “shall we go to bed like the man says?”
Desi transmitted her message to Feli, and silently the girls cleared the pieces lying around the game board and crept over to a corner of the room to retrieve the straw mattress that stood there, rolled up into a large bundle. They picked it up and carried it together, Feli leading the way, and Desi’s mother quietly opened the door, holding the oil lamp high. On the landing in front of the door, there were already a number of mattresses laid out on the floor, with young children asleep on them. This was the usual setup: the attic garrets were so small, that Sextus and Claudia, and some of their neighbours, had to accommodate their offspring on the landing at night, especially if they wanted to enjoy some intimacy themselves.
Claudia stepped outside and hung the oil lamp on a hook next to the door, then she silently closed the door behind her. As soon as the two girls had settled down on their mattress, just in front of their own threshold, she crouched next to them, and stroked Desi’s forehead. Speaking very softly, Mater told her daughter that she should let her father order Feli around a bit more, from time to time. “She’s very lucky to be the slave of a decent little family like ours.”
“Hmm.”
Desi was already shifting her body so that she could translate her mother’s words for her companion.
“Stop that!” Claudia hissed, “what I’m saying now is just between you and me, all right? No, really, believe me, a crippled girl like that, with very little commercial value, she could have been grievously abused in any other household. They could have given her to a young child as a plaything, to be handled and ordered around at will, teased constantly, or even tortured… and the child’s cruelty only applauded and encouraged by the parents, you know what I mean? And they call such a human pet a delicata! Most Romans want their kids to learn to be hard on their slaves.”
“What do you want me to say, my sweet Mater? I hate it when the PF orders Feli around like that. She’s like a twin sister to me. Even more: she’s my eyes and I’m her ears. At home you don’t notice it much, because that’s when I’m serving her, mostly, but as soon as we go out on the streets, it’s Feli who’s helping me, and I can tell you, she really looks out for me like a she-wolf!”
“All right, but be nice to your father, yes? He’s a decent man. Believe it or not, they don’t often come any better than him… You’re old enough to understand that now.”
“Well, I never want to get married anyway; I don’t want to be any man’s possession.”
“Hmm. That won’t solve anything, sweetness: if you don’t marry, you’ll just stay in the custody of your father for the rest of your life.”
“Yes, but him I can handle!”
They both giggled. Feli looked at them inquiringly, visibly burning to be let in on the joke. She always loved a joke. And Claudia, feeling a bit guilty for monopolizing her daughter, asked, again very softly, if they would like her to tell a bedtime story.
“Oh yes, please!” Desi whispered, “It’s been a long time!”
And although they’d both spoken under their breath, some of the other children on the landing, who were listening in from their makeshift cots, overheard them and perked up at once. Matrona Claudia was famous for her stories. They woke the other kids and before you knew it, they were all sitting around her in front of her door. She sighed, and then smiled.
“Which story shall I tell? You decide, Desi.”
“Androclus and the Lion, of course!”
Of all of Aesop’s tales, this one was her favourite, her mother knew.
“All right then, so here goes:
“Once upon a time, many years ago, a slave named Androclus escaped from his master and fled into the wilderness, and fearing he would be caught by his pursuers, he hid in a deep, dark cave.
“And just as he was catching his breath he heard a lion near him roaring terribly. The poor slave jumped up and cried, “Androclus, you’re dead meat!” He’d fled into a lion’s den! And just when he thought the lion was going to devour him, the beast raised its paw, and in the dim light Androclus could just make out that the beast had a big thorn stuck into the flesh between its mighty claws, which was causing him great pain.
“Picking up his courage, Androclus took hold of the lion’s huge paw and drew out the thorn from between the sharp claws. The lion roared with anguish when the thorn came out, but soon after found such relief from it that he softly put his paw on Androclus’ shoulder, and licking his face, showed that he was truly grateful for being relieved from the constant, throbbing pain.
“One day, a few years later, a detachment of soldiers came marching through the wilderness and chanced on Androclus as he was fetching water and gathering wild berries for his next meal. They took him prisoner and brought him back to Rome, and he was condemned to death because he had fled from his master.
“Now, as you know it is our custom to throw murderers and other criminals to the lions in the arena, and on the appointed day, Androclus was taken to the arena to be fed to the wild beasts.
“On that day, the emperor himself was present in the royal box and he gave the signal for the beasts to come out and devour the condemned prisoners. But when the first and biggest lion came out of its cage and got near Androclus, what do you think it did? Instead of jumping upon him and shredding him to pieces, it rubbed up against him, and stroked his arm with its huge paw.
“It was of course the very same lion that Androclus had met and helped in the wilderness a few years before.
“The emperor told the arena guards to bring this lucky prisoner to him, and asked him to explain what had just happened. Androclus then told the emperor that the lion was only showing its gratitude, because he’d once relieved it of a thorn that was bothering it. Then the emperor pardoned the escaped slave in recognition of this testimony to the power of friendship, and he let him go free together with the lion.
“Afterwards the people of Rome used to see Androclus walking the streets with the lion attached to a simple dog-leash, making the rounds of the taverns throughout the city. He was given money to buy meat for his big pet, he was offered drinks, and the lion was wreathed with flowers by the young girls, and many of those who met them exclaimed, ‘This lion is a man’s friend, and this man is a lion’s healer!’”
All the while, as Claudia was telling her story, Desi, sitting straight on the mattress, kept translating it for Feli, signalling wildly with both hands. The deaf girl looked on intently, patted Desi’s knee approvingly, and seemed to enjoy the tale immensely. This still annoyed Claudia a bit: why couldn’t her own daughter just listen, without getting in a flap over sharing this with her slave? Translating it into their sign language cost Desi a lot of effort, frowning and gesticulating, and soon she was sweating profusely, while the deaf girl, reclining comfortably, kept cool and wriggled her toes with pleasure.
When she’d finished telling the story, Claudia shooed off the other kids, who returned to their own beds, and she wished everyone good night. Desi thanked her for the tale, hugging her passionately with both her arms around her mother’s neck, telling her how wonderful she was.
“You’re the best Mater in all of Rome! What would we do without you?”
Claudia let go of her daughter and made her lie on the mattress, she bent low and kissed her, and as she looked down on her empty eye-sockets, she thought, “Oh Desiderata, how brave and cheerful you always are; how much I love you!”
Then she noticed Feli looking at her expectantly, lying right next to Desi, her head very close to her daughter’s. Feli was looking at her with those big inquiring eyes; those huge eyes; both reflecting the flame of the oil lamp, looking up adoringly… What could Claudia do? She bent down and kissed the slave girl too.