To my surprise, I found I had to exert myself with him. He would have had me against the wall with his shield, despite my longer sword, if he had not become out of breath so soon. The swift motions and the clear sunlight of Corinth gradually began to make me ashamed of my former irritability and to remember that all these men were older than I and had served a couple of decades longer. There were just about as many degrees of service as there were men in the troop. A legion of normal strength has nearly seventy different pay grades to increase the zeal for service.
I began to seek a reconciliation with the centurion.
“Now I’m prepared to sacrifice a young bull,” I said. “I’ll also pay for a ram for you to sacrifice. The eldest of the veterans can sacrifice a pig. Then we’ll have meat of the best kinds. It’s not worth bearing a grudge against me for a little exercise in acquaintanceship, is it?”
The centurion looked me up and down and his face lit up.
“I’ll send the best men I’ve got down to the cattle market,” he said, “and they can choose the animals. You’ll provide some wine, too, I suppose.”
Naturally I could not refuse to take part in the sacrificial meal with the men. They vied with each other at extracting good bits of meat for me from the jars. I had to drink some wine too. After the exertions of the day, I was made drunk by the meat alone and the wine went straight to my knees after such a long period of abstention. After dark, a number of women whose profession no one could mistake, though some of them were young and pretty, came creeping cautiously into the camp. I seem to remember that I wept bitterly and told the centurion that one could never trust any woman because every woman was guile itself and a trap. I also remember that the soldiers carried me lying on the God of War’s couch high up on their shoulders around the yard, singing the Pannonian legion’s bawdy songs in my honor. I remember nothing else.
During the last night spell of guard duty, I woke by being sick all over myself as I lay on a hard wooden truckle-bed in the quarters. My legs buckling beneath me, my hands holding my head, I staggered out and saw men lying all over the yard, every one of them where he had fallen. I felt so appallingly ill that the stars in the morning sky danced in front of my eyes as I tried to look up. I washed myself as best I could and was so bitterly ashamed of my conduct that I might have thrown myself on my sword had not all the sharp weapons been locked up in good time the night before.
Tottering through the streets of Corinth with their fading torches and pitch caldrons, I at last found my inn. Hierex had been anxiously waiting up for me. When he saw my wretched condition he undressed me, wiped my limbs with a damp cloth, gave me something bitter to drink and put me to bed under a woolen coverlet. When I woke again, cursing the day I was born, he fed me carefully with a few spoonfuls of wine in whipped-up yolks of egg. Before I even had time to think about my promise, I had gobbled down a portion of well-spiced meat stew.
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Sighing with relief, Hierex became voluble.
“Blessed be all the gods,” he said, “both known and unknown, but most of all your own Goddess of Fortune. I had been very worried about you and was afraid your reason was going. It’s neither natural nor right that a youngster of your age and rank should see the world through sad eyes and eat nothing but cabbage and drink nothing but water. So it was as if a burden had fallen from my back when you came back stinking of wine and vomit and I realized that you had thrown in your lot with ordinary men.”
“I’m afraid I’ve brought disgrace on myself all over Corinth,” I said bitterly. “I dimly remember that I danced a Greek goat dance with the legionaries. When Proconsul Gallio gets to hear of this, I’m certain he’ll send me straight back to Rome to be a writer or a lawyer.”
Hierex forced me to go out and walk with him in the wide streets of the city, telling me the exercise would do me good. We saw the sights of Corinth together, the ancient sternpost of the Argonauts’ ship in the temple of Neptune, the Pegasus spring and the hoof mark in the rock beside it. Hierex tried to lure me up to the Venus temple on the mountain, but I still had enough sense left to refuse.
Instead we looked at the wonder of Corinth, a waxed wooden track on which quite large ships could be hauled by slaves from Cenchreae to Lycaea and back. One would have thought this would have needed hordes of slaves and endless whiplashes, but the Greek shipbuilders, with the help of windlasses and cogs, had arranged it all so skillfully that the ships slid along the track as if by themselves. A seaman who noticed our interest swore on the Nereids that with a good wind behind them, it was sufficient just to hoist the sails. I felt better afterwards, my troubles fading, as Hierex told me about his life and several times made me laugh.
But I still felt embarrassed when I went back to the barracks the next day. Fortunately everything had been cleared up after the orgy, the men on guard were smartly in their places and the usual daily routine in force. Rubrius summoned me and reproached me tactfully.
“You are still young and inexperienced,” he said. “There was no valid reason for inciting these old warriors to fight each other and brawl drunk-enly all night. I hope it will be the last time. Try not to give free rein to the Roman crudeness in your nature, and adapt yourself as best you can to Corinth’s more refined customs.”
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