Ius Romanus
My birthday has just come and passed. I spent the evening last night without a single thought to the occasion, perhaps on purpose. The idea of mortal birth is so very distant that I sometimes wonder if I was ever truly born. I am disconnected from the innocence of childhood, the hopeful naivety of being young.

Much of my life has been a secret and I prefer it that way. That of my life which I have divulged so far is just a mere moment of my true existence. To tell my entire story, one would need a library of empty volumes to record. The size of it humbles me, confuses even me.

Now and then, I like to tell stories. It leaves me refreshed, like I have somehow lived it again.

Who will sit and let me tell them a story?

_____________

A Roman child born out of wedlock was born into the class of his or her mother.

For those first few moments of my life, I was a slave.

As soon as my father took me in his hands and held me, accepted me into the family, I went from the lowest class to the highest. I was part of the Senatorial Patrician order, a member of the long standing citizen group of aristocrats of Rome who were strong even before and certainly during the Republic. If my father had not been such a kind man, I very well might have ended up a slave in his household.

Instead, he raised me and adopted me. I took on his gens, the cognomen of my family.

I had my own nurse and my own paedagogue, a male slave charged with taking care of me personally. The male slave who played with me, escorted me, kept me in sight every day if my youth, I cared for very much. He walked me to school before the sun rose, carrying my writing tablet and my candle, giving me bits of bread and fruit for breakfast. When the day was over, he was there to collect me. Never did a day pass where he did not seem infinitely interested in my life, in my opinions, and in what I had learned. As a well read slave, we spent hours together reciting verses. He combed my hair when I came in from playing so that I would be presentable to meet guests in the atrium next to my father, which was a custom all male sons had to perform in order to learn by example proper male etiquette.

I was well taken care of. Despite that a few families felt I was a disgrace upon my father for being the slave of a barbarian, I was loved immensely and never felt that I lacked for anything. In a sense, I felt liberated from the burdens of pietas; I was the youngest son and the illegitimate child of a slave. It was my brothers who would vie for office and my brothers who would inherit my father's clients.

Without the weight of my father's legacy upon my shoulders, I was fairly independent to make of my life what I wanted it to be. I defied all insistences of my father to marry, I avoided the military until I could avoid it no longer, and I delayed my inevitable entrance into the Senate as long as I could.

Under the mortal laws of Augustus, I should have been married by 21. My marriage would have been the typical arranged marriage, very likely to a fourteen year old girl who would have bored me senseless. It would have been a loveless marriage, though I cannot say that with certainty, though not without tenderness for I would have treated any wife of mine kindly. In order to remain a bachelor, however, I had to pay a hefty tax to the empire.

The price of the tax was certainly worth my freedom, worth the right to wander the empire at will.

As any one knows from Pandora's story, no self respecting Patrician father would have considered marrying his daughter to me. I was part of a Senatorial family, yes, and my family was very rich, but I did not qualify for office and I was, for all intents and purposes, the useless son of a slave conceived, most likely, through abuse. Long since the Struggle of Orders, intermarriage between classes was permitted. At the age of 20, I already knew that my father was seeking a bride for me among the rich Plebeian families who wanted a Patrician name to augment their wealth-- families of Tribunes, merchants, shop keepers. He was also seeking among impoverished Patricians for a family in need of marrying their daughter off to a rich man to re-elevate their status in Rome.

Marry a rich man, send money home to mother and father. Or marry to have a name.

I wanted nothing to do with any of it, so I escaped to catalog the history of Rome. Along the way I met a man named Ovid who I was quite taken with. He was exiled and how he hated it! I knew his writing, I loved his work, and I was familiar with the scandal that had taken place. Ovid lamented to me that the natives taunted him over his style of dress and for his Latin language. They mocked his accent.

I was content. I loved Rome. I collected and submitted volume after volume.

Yet, something happened to change me.

Marriage was never a topic of interest to me simply because I never wanted to marry. However, it just so happened that before my 25th year, I met a young girl who piqued my interest so much that I wanted to marry her. I wanted to cultivate the wit and talent in her and make it mine. I had no hopes, but I had to try. I asked her father to allow me to marry her. The refusal shook me. Never before had I considered succumbing to a martial arrangement. Now, I was saddened that I could not.

Of course, this only lasted a brief moment. I wanted her but forgot her. I continued with my writing, my travels, my resistance to pietas.

Marius de Romanus
ante diem XB Kalends October MMDCCLX