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The Son of Rome

I’d never cared for the lyre before meeting Aristotle.

As the Young Patrician of a notable family, I was raised under a certain set of expectations. It was a given that I would be educated. It was all but guaranteed, looking back at my father and my great-uncle’s careers, that I would serve my time in the legions and make the climb up the cursus honorum. How far I progressed in the end was something no one could predict, but it was a safe bet that I would claim that first honor if not any more to follow.

It wasn’t enough to be learned if a man intended to take up the reins of the Republic, even if only in a senator’s small way. It wasn’t enough to serve. Those things were required but not enough alone. In order to carry forward what the greatest statesmen of the past had entrusted to us, a man had to embody the virtues that defined his city.

The Greeks possessed four cardinal virtues, four that defined their cultural identity and sculpted the greatest of their sons and daughters: Temperance. Wisdom. Courage. And of course, Justice.

Just as there were eight rounds in the progression of a Roman soul to contrast the four a Greek traversed, so too was the Republic defined by eight virtues instead of the Greek cardinals.

Virtus Integritas. The complete virtues – four for the city and four for the man. It was a given that a Roman statesman would embody at least one of these eight qualities, And that expectation only grew higher as they progressed up the course of honors.

The four for the city were the highest social virtues, the qualities that a man extended to his fellow Romans whether they were patrician or plebian.

First of the four was Honestas, the honor that a man wore like a triumphal crown. It was his reputation in the eyes of the state, and if his heart was true then Honestas was his pride just the same.

Fides, the good faith that a man acted with at all times. His reliability to the ones that served beneath him, and his loyalty to the ones that stood above.

Innocentia, the selflessness with which a man pursued the interests of his city. It was the charities born of his easy generosity, and it was the simplicity that made his soul so utterly incorruptible.

And finally, there was Iustitia. A man’s justice, fourth of the four and brother to the Greek cardinal virtue. It was a man’s empathy for those wronged in the Republic, for the Republic – even, at times, by the Republic. It was his sense of equity and his ever unsatisfied desire for structured order. Most importantly, it was the responsibility he took when the burden of judgement was laid at his feet. His acceptance of whatever followed.

If the four virtues that a Roman citizen kept for himself – pure Salubritas, dutiful Pietas, resolute Constantia, and heavy Disciplina – were internal qualities, expectations he had of himself, then the four social virtues were the external qualities that his people and his city could expect from him. And did expect, more so the higher he climbed. The internal virtues had been hammered into me and pressure treated by the soldiers and centurions of the fifth legion that my father had entrusted me to.

The social virtues, generally speaking, required a softer touch. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you asked, Aristotle was the one that shaped me to them. From the day he caught me picking pockets in the forum to the day he saw me off to the legions, beginning and ending with justice. The overlap of twin excellence between our two cultures.

Aristotle had opened my eyes in more ways than one, exposed me to aspects of myself and the world around me that I had never before considered in my brief life. He had taught me lessons that no other man in Rome could have conveyed, in large part because he was the only man my mother would not mutilate for sending me home from a lesson bruised and bleeding. Back then, irreverent little bastard that I was, I had tried more than once to have my pitiless mentor fired. No matter what I said, though, my mother would only stroke my head and tell me to bear with it.

In time I’d let go of my resentment and became grateful for her sudden shift to firmness, but I never did understand it. Not in the legions, nor in the Scarlet City. It wasn’t until I went to Olympia and met the mentor of his mentor, until I saw for myself the depths of his resolve in the story of the brothers Aetos, that I finally understood why even my adoring mother would not deprive me of his teachings.

It was all but guaranteed that a Young Patrician would receive a fine education. For the Young Patrician of a family as infamous and esteemed as mine, even the finest education a Roman could give wouldn’t be out of the question.

But I had received neither. Instead, I had been given one of the finest educations in the world. As mad as it seemed, I shared a mentor with the same Damon Aetos that haunted the free Mediterranean nearly twenty years after his withdrawal from it. I was a link in the chain that went all the way back up to the Scholar himself. No one, Greek or Roman or savage barbarian, was guaranteed such a mentor.

What had I done to deserve such an education? Nothing. And what have I done with it? Even less than that.

That wasn’t Aristotle’s fault, though. He had done what he could with me, and corrected as many of my ugly traits as he could. If I had been better from the beginning, I knew in my heart and the marrow of my bones that I could have learned so much more. Even still, Aristotle had accounted for my feelings and instilled in me skills and qualities that would benefit me regardless of whether I fully understood the reasoning behind them.

Such as the lyre.

“You must be-“

“Thyoneus’-”

“Lampter’s-”

“Lyaeus’-”

“Melanaegis’-”

“Eleuthereus’ boys!”

Pleasantries came and went and came again, a dozen introductions and pithy conversations, followed by a dozen more. It seemed like every chthonic spirit saw a different face in the cowls of the ravens, remembered a different man that surely must have sent us in his place. Some greeted us with naked joy, others with thinly veiled hostility, but curiosity was universal.

Young blood, the late Ptolemy had called us. I supposed that made the chthonic revelers the sharks.

“No,” replied the tattooed raven by my side. “Never heard of him,” he informed another spirit. “Disgusting lush. Close your mouth when it’s full,” he said to the next, smacking the man lightly on his shoulder as we passed to take the sting out of his words. The man’s friends jeered at him while we continued on, prodding his flushed cheeks and snatching the grapes off his plate.

Griffon navigated through a symposia attended only by the dead like it was the most natural thing in the world to him, as if he had been raised for environments like these. In some ways, he had. Though he may have cast off his status as Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn, he still carried that upbringing with him wherever he went. It revealed itself in the elegance of his speech, betrayed him even while uttering the foulest sentiment. It was there when he walked, in the commanding swagger of his stride. It was in his eyes most of all. In their distant amusement – and in their disdain.

I ignored the pleasantries that I could and allowed Griffon to engage with the rest, because even though we had both enjoyed the privilege of a sophisticated upbringing, I have never been the man that thrives in social waters. At best I could keep my head above the current and avoid shaming myself. I was no author of conversational flow, never the man whose word commanded every ear in the room. Not like my father had been, and certainly not like Gaius or Aristotle. That was Griffon’s domain more than it had ever been mine.

Aristotle had identified this failing early on, blaming it often and in a tone of long-suffering on the poison of a doting mother and the cruel praise of sycophants. Prior to becoming his student, I had been surrounded by the children of lesser patrician families and enjoyed the delusion that they listened intently when I spoke because I was worth listening to. I allowed them to convince me day after day that they agreed with me because I was convincing, and not simply because their parents had urged them to find my good graces.

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A boy whose age could still be counted on his fingers, and I had been convinced that I was already a paragon of social virtue. When Aristotle had challenged me to match action to words, bundled me up in anonymous rags and taken me to the forum, there had been no doubt in my mind that I would carry whatever conversation he had me take part in.

To this day, the memory still ached.

That was the day that Aristotle showed me the immensity of the gap between the boy I truly was and the socialite I had always thought myself to be. I never forgot that lesson, only learned it again and again as time went on. Eventually, when comparing myself to my role models became too painful, I gave up on my rhetoric all together. Though by this point I was aware of how shameful my past behaviors had been, I regressed anyway, fell back on familiar petulance and refused to engage with Aristotle‘s lessons on discourse and persuasion.