The Eagles Have Flown

My name is Lucius. I am the son of Marcipor, a freed-man who once belonged to the Cato family. I was born in the city of Rome in the year 695 U.C.

Until I was six years old, I lived with my father in a dingy little room over his bakery shop at the foot of Aventine Hill. In the winter it was always cold and smoky from the tiny brazier that tried to heat it; and in summer it was stiflingly hot, as is always true of Rome, except on the heights. But I knew no better at the time and used to have great fun with the other boys of the neighborhood, playing odds and evens in the streets and being chased by the businessmen, or swimming off the warehouse docks in the muddy waters of the Tiber and splashing the respectable citizens who ventured too close to the edge. I learned to swim by being thrown into the river by one of the neighborhood bullies when I was four.

But the year I was six, my father died. I could not believe that he was really gone, and begged the neighbors to let me stay at the bakery until he came back. Gentle Mama Segunda, who lived next door, wept. But the neighbors were having a hard enough time feeding themselves and their families, without adding an extra mouth. So one day a servant came from one of the grand houses on the Capitoline and took me away with him, saying that the great Senator Cato had been told of my situation and had undertaken to provide for my future. I cried and pleaded, but it did no good.

Never have I felt so lost and frightened as on that day when I was led past the columns of the Cato peristyle (the Catos had one of the few private houses in the city), through the marble-floored atrium with its splendid wall paintings, and into the solemn study of the senator, lined with row upon row of parchment scrolls. Even at that terrible moment I remember wondering if he had read them all.