The Tortoise in Asia Read Free

hopefully as the owner of an estate, is not inconsistent with a soldier’s lot – quite common in fact. It might just be lying in wait for his retirement from active service.
    Through the hot simmer that bounces off the cobblestones in an eye – bending miasma, he sees the image of a ten year old boy. He’s with his younger sister and mother in their wooden hut, the
pater familias
sitting amongst them on a rough-hewn chair, head bowed. It’s a hot summer day, like today, and a short distance away one of their cows is calling in distress, possibly for a calf that’s just died. Struggling for control, his father reveals the awful decision he’s been forced to make.
    Wetness trickles down his cheeks as he mumbles, almost too embarrassed to speak, about giving up their way of life. The
defensor familias
is powerless, unable to do what it’s the essence of a man to do. By the time he’s finished, the moisture is gone, leaving a salt track, gritty white against his sunburnt skin.
    It was a day of pain stifled in silence when the family moved to a cheap district in Rome where the erstwhile farmer learned the blacksmith’s trade. Money was never plentiful but enough for a decent, if largely self-taught eduction for the only boy in the family. It’s remarkable that his mother encouraged learning, as she was illiterate. But she saw, more clearly than her husband, that education was the best way to advance for someone not born into the senatorial class. She pushed him hard – difficult for her sometimes, for it went against her gentle nature. However she believed that, like sugar in teeth, there’s an acid in the sweetness of compassion which tends to dissolve strength in a boy. Nevertheless, as Danae did for Perseus, she gave him a sense of self worth, a faith that he was destined for an exceptional life.
    It was tragic how the wrench tore a piece off his father’s soul, how what remained was too reduced to allow for happiness, how city life turned out to be too different, too remote, how he could never feel the mellow connection there which is the essence of home, and how unsettling feelings would always disturb him, like the rumblings of Tryphon in the subterranean cave.
    Being brought up in a stable, albeit simple home and rising in a career that’ll lead to affluence most probably, he feels a tug of guilt that he can’t identify fully with that depth of sadness. He was too young at the time to feel what his father felt, except vaguely, and now the thought of losing his home isn’t something he really considers. He’s always had one; these days it’s in the army, a peripatetic one, but a home just the same. It gives him the emotional security everyone needs. Nevertheless it’s impossible to forget that day – the only time he saw a grown man cry, an event shocking to the core. His Stoic background with its requirement to control feelings through disassociating emotion from pain seemed assaulted. Later he understood that certain tragedies permit a different response.
    The loss of the family land brings Crassus to mind, ironically the one man who must be impressed. Was he somehow implicated? He was among the most aggressive latifundia owners, those powerful men who drove down the price of agricultural produce by using slave labour from Rome’s conquests. By squeezing the small farmers during those distressed times he added vast amounts to his domain – unconscionable behaviour in the extreme. Perhaps he’s using some of those disgraceful gains to fund the Parthian campaign.
    Is his presence here somehow condoning the outrage to his family? Should he be doing something about it?
    There’s no point thinking about the past; any suggestion that Crassus was involved specifically can’t be proved one way or another. The man’s presently the Commander in Chief and that’s all there is to it. Besides he’s showing kindness now