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Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit. (Man is wolf to man when he has not learned what that other is like.) -- Plautus, Asinaria
"Io, Saturnalia," my attendant said when he woke me this morning. My wife also greeted me with those words. So did my household, and my clients, and the street vendor who kept trying to sell me discount earthenware statues on my way to the baths. The festival of Saturnalia was well underway.
Too bad the whole festival is folly, as far as I'm concerned. I like to tell myself I would ignore it if I could. But the truth is, I would fight wolves with a sharp stick in the Flavian Amphitheater to stay in Rome right now. I am as trapped by this celebration as anyone else is in the City. No, worse.
The Saturnalia festivities last for days. There are rites, and gifts, and a special market, and plenty of gambling. Greenery is hung. Boys are granted a holiday from school. Household slaves spend most of their time planning the feasts that everyone will sit down to, including them. Sooner or later, you always see corked faces, or naked singing, or guys shoving each other into the Tiber, all of which is fine as far as I'm concerned.
What is not fine is the social cross-dressing. In tribute to the golden age of Saturn's freedom, the Senators of Rome walk around the City in feasting clothes and the freedman's cap, rather than their usual, purple-striped togas. When you were once held unjustly as a slave and now sit legitimately as a Senator, everyone you meet thinks it's hilarious to complement you on your cap. That gets old fast.
For this reason among others, I -- L. Claudius Lupis Victorianus, formerly Archippos the slave -- was in no sweet mood by the time I reached the house of my adoptive father and one-time master, L. Claudius Lupis Nero. I must have been a portrait of irritation worthy of an epigram. Even the doorkeeper, Dionysus, pursed his lips at me as he let me in through Lucius' gates. I did not bother calling him on the silent reproof. We had once believed we were slaves together, and while there is proper Roman behavior, there is also annoying Roman hypocrisy. Just because I am stuck with the one does not mean I have to exhibit the other.
When I arrived in his atrium, noble Lucius was talking with the handful of senior clients who had waited on him during a holiday morning, still a larger group than they once would have been. After my free birth was affirmed by the Emperor Vespasian and I was adopted by Lucius -- a long story that anyone in the forum will get wrong for those who don't know it already -- my so-called father took to the kind of influence farming required to keep a growing patrician family both prosperous and out of the imperial stew pot. He understood the need for his actions. Being Lucius, he also blames me whenever the whim takes him. I was greeted with a savage scowl that made me feel right at home.
"Father," I said. Most times, that address is fine, but today it tasted like wormy vinegar.
Rather than naming me in return, he grunted. Still scowling, he held out his hand. I bowed and kissed his knuckles, as a son pays reverent tribute to his paterfamilias, ignoring the slow, uneasy twist in my gut with the ease of long practice.
Then I straightened and told him, "Pupinia and the boys send their greetings. They all know better than to come anywhere near you to offer them in person on this day."
"If you are trying to reassure me that I married you off to a more intelligent female than you deserved, and the trait seems somehow to have bred true, I already knew."
"No reassurance intended, but I am telling her you said that." I grinned. The expression may have shown a few more teeth than it would have at any other time of the year. Most days, his own surfeit of yellow bile would also have drained by now, but the claws of the wolf were tearing at us both. We were lucky not to be snarling at each other before the eyes of the City. As I turned away to greet a few clients who I knew well, I noticed when his gaze briefly followed the household slaves who were taking my hamper to his private suite.
It is the fashion of the philosophical, among whose ranks Lucius has always claimed to number himself, to spend this feast in seclusion, away from all the appalling cheerful noise and distracting riotous fun. But as flamen Quirinalis, priest of Romulus Defender, my so-called father is stuck with celebrating the religious rites and public feast that open the festival. Only later during the seven days can he retreat into the rooms he uses on such occasions. By then, Lucius being as self-indulgent as they come, he claims he needs soothing in the form of new scrolls and distracting company. The distracting company in question would be mine.
Three days ago, I had watched him, with his priestly robes and proper gravitas, dominate the sacrifice and ceremony we Roman patricians attend on the first day of the festival. Two days ago, we had all dined at his house after the domestic rites. Yesterday, he had lumbered over to my house, to spend an evening helping me "serve" my slaves during their meal -- experienced or not, no one ever trusts either of us to carry more than a single platter -- before sitting down at our meal to be served by my slaves in turn. As usual, the conversation among our family was intimate, pointed, and sustained, with no one asking for or receiving quarter. If our tiny branch of the Claudii ever loses our wealth, we might be able to eke out livings writing anonymous satires for hire. At least we could pool our earnings and slowly starve together; to the grim amusement of Lucius, we are becoming known around the City for familial loyalty and affection.
When our meal was done, my wife warmly kissed my father's hand before sending him on his way with his guest gift. She spends hours each year shopping to find the apophoreta that will most annoy him; this year a sweetly illustrated and delicately perfumed scroll of Virgil's Georgics was greeted with ill-disguised horror. Their ongoing feud is one of the simple pleasures of her life. I have gathered that her own father, dead before I met her, was pompous, greedy, humorless, and prone to punishing insolence, typical of a new man in Rome rising fast. She savors her chances to defy the paterfamilias now supposed to rule her, a purging of bile that leaves behind it an odd liking for Lucius. Considering my peculiar familial history, and the scars it has left upon me, that is just as well.
This morning, she kissed me languidly in private before sending me off to him. "Be sure to wish our fat and revered father a good Saturnalia from me."
Well, I had. And now I could look forward to two days of being penned up with one of the most annoying Romans that the Fates have ever revealed to me, two days supposedly dedicated to earnest philosophical discussion that would make lesser men dash out their brains against the walls of the City. I wished that discussion was what truly awaited us. At least, I wished I wanted that discussion to be what truly awaited us, rather than what did.
Dismissing my own attendants to return to my house, I went to the chambers of Lucius while he finished briefing his clients. No one needed to show me the way since I had been his literary secretary for years before I was his son. I needed to remember that right now.
Within his study, I looked around and sighed. Then I took a taper, lit the bronze lamp hanging over his desk, and entered his retiring room. The lamp was a signal. At the beginning, there were always signals rather than much in the way of talk. That has not changed. The Furies know, some words are dangerous. We have never discussed the details of what we do during this festival, not even that first time we stumbled after my freedom had been reaffirmed.
Maybe all would have been well without my military service, the legion's usual routine of spilling blood and taking human prizes. Maybe the problem was my having to use the speaking tools again, the slaves that I had ordered about with such unthinking ease as the young offspring of a citizen tyrant in Macedonia. Maybe the weakness grew from Lucius having left the refuge he built from his priesthood and his philosophy, to seek power like a true Roman. Whatever our reasons, we found in the end that we could not stop committing certain acts both infamous between freeborn men and appalling between legal kin.
Off with the freeman's cap, off with the festive gown, off with the winter-weight tunic, off with the sandals bearing the silver lunulae of senatorial rank that would identify me to passers by; the reversal of social order during these festal days was largely a cheat, of course. This is Rome. But the days of Saturnalia are still a sacred time of inversion, powerful to a priest, enough to provide the moral shadows in which we both must lurk. Done undressing, I tossed my patrician tunic across the couch. Then I went to the hamper that contained, hidden by my own experienced hands, a Saturnalia gift that I bring for us both each year: the tunic of a slave.
I pulled it out and free. The familiar touch of rough fabric, together with the feeling of cool stone against my naked feet, was enough to rouse me. Sensing the surge of blood to my groin, I shut my eyes. I shivered, not entirely from the cold, before I returned to the outer room.
When I was his slave, Lucius had used me. Being who he was, this had started as a nuisance, no worse. He had stopped using me when I was reaffirmed, and I had chosen not to hold my service against him. Instead, I had agreed to his offer of a redress through adoption for a captivity not his fault. Maybe I should have said no. Even at the time, I had known that I did not resent him, not even as much as I should have for decency's sake. By then, we had already joined in a folly that I could no more speak of as his adopted son than I would have as his slave.
No freeborn Roman who is not a fool is willingly face-fucked and sodomized. No slave who is not a fool loves his master. But I sang both of these songs of naked folly. As years passed, I found their music merging into one, a shock to anyone who hated slavery as I had, a burning need that all my freedom still hadn't quenched. And I was not the only one still singing.
Taking a deep breath, I slipped on the tunic over loincloth and gooseflesh, told myself not to tense as it fell across my thighs and my growing arousal. Instead, I forced myself to relax. Only then did I take up my station by his desk with the easy, near-slouch of a senior slave left waiting. Once again, Archippos attended upon that fat face-fucker, Noble Lucius, his Master.
There I stood, the familiar scents of lamp oil, ink, and parchment surrounding me. The thud of my pulse grew louder in my ears and heat seemed to thicken in my blood. I could feel the slave tunic against every bit of bare skin it touched. Everything else was slipping away from me, including L. Claudius Lupis Victorianus, Senator and freeborn Roman.
A sound of sandals, and here he was. These were the only times he ever looked down as he entered his chambers. As always, he raised his gaze from the mosaic on the floor to meet mine. His eyes were half closed, glittering behind their lids. His lips were full. He had left his other slaves behind him, and he quickly looked from the lit lamp to me before he jerked his chin toward his retiring room.
We went within. I was hard with my need. When he reached out to seize me, his grip was enough to leave bruises. This first day he could, since there would be time for them to fade before the end of the festival. He held me tighter than he had when his mastery was part of my world, when his touch did not commit crimes that only Saturnalia helped us ignore. Roughly, he tugged off the tunic over my head. I knew he also needed to feel its coarse fabric, the testimony to my resumed slavery.
Tenderness might come later. Right now, he spoke as brusquely with his words as he had his hands. "Disrobe me."
I did, saving his sandals for last. Being down on my knees was a necessary pleasure that still made me shake a little. And he was not responding with his usual gravitas. As I tugged his loincloth free, his desire rose quickly to greet me. Its whims had always been one of my more insistent chores.
Looking up at him, I raised an eyebrow in question. My expression may have been impertinent; he always claimed afterwards that it was. In any case, his eyes darkened even as I asked, "Sucking, Master?"
"Not for long." I knew why he said those words, and my gut twisted pleasantly with the heat of that knowledge. There was an oil flask on the floor by his couch.
My Master may only have required a short span of sucking this day, but he still got my best effort, learned with considerable expenditure of my slave tips to professionals, back when I had wanted him done and out of my face. Now I would have kept him there for hours if I could have, savoring the taste and feel of him, freed from dealing with anything but my mouthful and my task. His scent of clean sweat and the small sounds he made were a private, clenching delight.
Soon, too soon, he briskly tugged me off him, his hands not quite hurtful. "Over there."
I got him the oil.
He was harsh with me until it was time to open me up by shoving fat and oily fingers within. Then, briefly, he was gentle. Gentleness fled again when he bent me over the couch and mounted, driving deep. After a first burn of pain that was somehow also pleasure, I was with him, thrusting back as he thrust, flesh slapping against flesh. I forgot the cold of the chamber, the ever-present danger of discovery, the wrongness of what we did, in favor of our ass fucking.
He took his time with his pleasure until I could not keep the moan behind my clenched teeth. Then he reached around to grasp me in his big, oily fist and demand obedience in that, as well. As I spilled my seed, I started to cry out. With a speed some might not have predicted, his meaty hand shifted over my mouth, muffling my speech as I tasted myself on his skin. Neither of us wanted to hear what I would have named him at the end.
Afterwards, he pushed me down and rode me to his peak, hard and heavy, only the amount of oil he had used saving me from damage. He finished deep within me, hands bruisingly tight again, lips shaping sentences against my flesh that he will never speak.
For a while, I felt his whole weight upon me even as I still shuddered from the strength of my own release. Some part of me was sorry when he shifted off so that I could breathe, his arms hauling me with him until I rested in his embrace.
"Quiet," he said. "Quiet, Archippos." I had not known I was making a noise. Turned out, I was.
Fine. I stopped. Then I cleared my throat. It felt raw. "I'm well."
"Did I ask?"
I snorted.
"Still an insolent slave." His warm hands moved across me as they so often had, idly exploring now that the first urgency had passed. There was comfort in them.
"That's what you get, my Master, for having bought public merchandise."
"Vah." Fingertips were tracing the scar from the sword slash I had gotten with the Fifth Macedonia while winning my corona aurea. He had been livid. His own service scars were more spectacular, but there are some things from which even a free man cannot be protected, as opposed to the many vulnerabilities of a slave. "I think we just ruined this winter tunic beneath us."
"It was getting worn anyhow. Better it than your couch."
"Insolent but loyal, and able to plan ahead. A gem without price, straight from the plays of Plautus."
I rewarded his sarcasm with a gagging noise. His grunt was amused. He kissed me.
Somewhere there is a place where our lives make sense, but that place is not here. Years ago, during the second day of one of our retreats, I asked him about Greece. He reminded me that, "No; to continue with one's young friend after he reached his full manhood was a scandal and a shame. Consider those in the Symposium."
All I recalled from the Symposium was Aristophanes' cartwheeling creatures, split in two by Jupiter and now seeking their other halves with unquenchable longing. What Roman wants to imitate some bad joke cracked by a Greek Comedian? Neither Lucius nor I. And yet, here we were again.
Tonight, after this, I would wear my slave tunic once more and clean him, washing and scraping our mutual transgressions off of his skin even while I still ached with his fucking. Tomorrow, in mutual nakedness and deepest perversion, he would likely serve me in his turn, immolating himself upon the twin altars of my liberty and his love. But whatever our pleasures might be, these two days of the festival end and so does our folly. Then there is nothing left but memories, filial devotion, and paternal protection until the wheel of seasons spins round again. Eventually, for both of us, that wheel must still.
Fortune loves me. The patricians that jest about my captivity still raise me high and grant me tribute. I will defend my mastery, my liberty, and my family until my final breath. Even so, even shamed as I sometimes feel, I suspect that I would gamble it all away for the smallest chance to win a life where we could always celebrate our Feast of Folly in freedom.
Io, Saturnalia. Just my luck; I would be stuck still yearning for your golden age.