Youth (1)

Chapter One: YOUTH

A child of an unhappy birth, I was born in the fourth year of the
reign of our Emperor Domitian. The last son of my father, my
mother unfortunately died at childbirth. She left my father bereft,
alone to raise three sons. My older brothers were in their teens,
one having already received the toga and the other soon to be
garbed in the toga. I was a late comer to my family, the one
that never seemed to fit as well. Perhaps there was always
the thought that somehow I had caused my mother's death,
though nothing was ever said. No doubt the wide disparity of
age between my brothers and me also caused some distance
amongst my siblings and me. And my father was growing old
as I was growing up.

I won't bother with all the Roman names attached to me. All
my life I have been called "Leonardo Felix" by everyone who
passed my way. It was a comfortable name. I liked it. As for
my family, my father was a wealthy merchant and shipper.
Over time my brothers worked for him. We lived in the midst
of Ostia, standing at the mouth of the Tiber River where it flows
into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

When I was old enough I came to learn that we were an
Equestrian family, a knightly order of the Roman Empire.
No longer horsemen, the equites were nobles who stood
between the plebians and the senatorial patricians. There
were all sorts of qualifications involved when it came to being
a member of the Equestrian Order; but, basically, it all pointed
to how much money you made. My father--and all our family
fathers before him--had done rather well, in that our corporation
owned a fleet of commercial ships that sailed to ports all over
the Empire, buying and selling products needed both by Rome
itself and its Provinces.

Ostia, itself, is located some twenty miles southwest of Rome.
By the time I arrived, it was a thriving city of nearly 100,000 people.
It was definitely not a village nor a backwater. Nearby, too, was
a new harbor and port as well as our older port. Consequently,
there were a lot of jobs that called for lots of people. We had our
ruling families, so to speak, who were either civically oriented or
commercially connected. The ports were mainly serviced by
freedmen and imperial-owned slaves. And the richer households,
of course, had their own personal slaves. Interestingly, many of
the slaves that came into our ports were often orphans. Though
I have never been comfortable with the institution of slavery, I had
to think that at least some of these orphans did come to live fairly
well in our homes. And when older, I came to realize that slavery
was labor's backbone of the Empire. Nonetheless, over time I
held serious doubts about this questionable institution. But that's
for later in my story.

Though I never felt I fit really well in my family, my childhood was
not at all unhappy. On one level I learned to live "in my head,"
enjoying my boyhood fantasies. And I loved our house. It boasted
of a large atrium, full of flowers and small trees and even a fountain.
Our house stood on one of the main streets of Ostia. The location
was very convenient to the baths, to the temples and commercial
district, and the theatre. It was hard to miss out on anything that
was going on in Ostia!

One of my earliest memories was riding in a big grain barge, pulled
up the river by lines attached to horses walking on either side of the
Tiber. My father always felt that this mode of transportation was the
most easy way to visit Rome, in that it was far more comfortable than
going by wagon.

Rome itself began as smells, from cooking, laundering, and sewage.
Even as a young boy I had my doubts about this huge, overwhelming
place that seemed to overcome you. The noise, too, seemed a constant
din. Too, too many people just everywhere, always busy, never stopping.
Quiet was lost in this city, whereas in Ostia I could always run through
meadows, sit under shade trees, and it would be so silent that I could
hear the small buzz of insects. That didn't seem so in Rome.

The occasion of our coming to Rome was to visit my aunt Eleana, my
father's only sister. A lovely cheerful woman, well married, still young,
with four children who I counted as cousins, she became most dear and
near in my heart. It was like I was her "boy" too! Happily she lived on
the far outskirts of Rome, in a large villa situated amongst lawns.
Goodness! She even had a swimming pool where we could frolic and
cool off. If having to endure going through Rome to reach my aunt, it
was worth the effort!

Alas, my frolicking didn't last very long. The little "barbarian" in me
was about to be introduced to a Roman education.