Seagulls wheeled overhead as Aelius Burrus and Cornelius made their way along the crowded waterfront in Rome's seaport town of Ostia. Docks lined the shore on one side of a major street, row upon row of insulae stood along smaller alleys on the other side. Hawkers shouted their wares, drivers and bearers cursed pedestrians, and ragged children were everywhere. Older teenage boys stood on corners looking for trouble. This was where Rome's working poor spent their lives.
"Now you see why I was so willing to join up to get out of here," Cornelius said.
Burrus looked around. Centurions, such as the men of his family had been for three generations, could make three times the pay of an enlisted man. Careful management and business sense could provide a decent life. He had grown up in the vicus, but lacked for nothing, and his family was comfortable.
"I've seen some rough places back home but this is poverty," he said.
"Talk to me," Cornelius said.
His family were technically patrician, of the gens Cornelii, with ties to the Scipios and Gracchi. In reality, the last real Scipios died about two hundred years ago and the only wealthy person he had ever known was a great-uncle who owned several insulae and took shares in the shops on the street level. Cornelius' father, who had been discharged from the army after an accident crippled his leg, served as a property manager for the uncle. He had been married twice. Cornelius and three sisters were born of the first union. A second marriage produced two more daughters. When Cornelius' father died, his stepmother married again. Her new husband adopted the two younger girls. Relatives took the other three. Cornelius, about twelve at the time, went to work as a runner for his uncle, but otherwise lived in the streets or with friends' families, till he enlisted.
"My uncle wanted me to go into shopkeeping but I just didn't have the head for it," Cornelius said. "He wanted me to be a clerk or a notary, but I'm not a desk man. I went to the army and he got pissed, cut me loose."
"Then why come back to it?" Burrus asked. "If they didn't want you, screw 'em."
"My youngest sister is the only one I care to find," Cornelius said.
He led the way to an apartment building and climbed to the third floor. He knocked on a door at the end of a dingy hallway. An old woman opened it, saw two soldiers standing there, and paled.
"I grew up here," Cornelius explained. "My family lived in your apartment at the time. I'm trying to find my sister, a younger woman, who went by the name Tertia Cornelia. She had a dark brown birthmark on the side of her face."
"She doesn't live here," the old woman snapped.
"Well, I didn't mean any bother," Cornelius said.
The woman shut the door as Cornelius pondered.
"I'm trying to remember where my mother's cousin lived," he said as they went downstairs.
"Let's get something to eat," Burrus said.
They went to a taberna and joined the line to the counter. A woman came up behind them. As Cornelius scanned the buildings around them for landmarks, Burrus caught sight of her face. A dark smudge went across her left cheek.
"You wouldn't go by the name Tertia Cornelia, by any chance?" he asked and nudged Cornelius.
"Yes," she said.
Cornelius turned to her.
"I'm Publius Cornelius Scipio," he said. "My father was Gaius Cornelius Scipio. My mother was Solpia. I had three younger sisters."
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Domina Victrix
Historical FictionDescendants of Triumvir Mark Antony through his little-known first wife, young cousins, Victoria and Marcus, have always known they were heirs to a mixed-blessing heritage. Roman men were expected to brutally dominate their families and the world a...
