me assure you, the road was long and bitter. Those first days of my shame and humiliation still prickle with crisp memory; I yearn for a cup of forgetfulness from the river Lethe, but it is yet beyond my reach. I cannot forget, but neither can I bear the thought that you will condemn me or call me coward for allowing myself to become the man you shall discover. I shall tell you of those early days, with the hope that in the end understanding may be accompanied by forgiveness and forbearance. As for you Romans who have not already tossed this narrative aside, I hope for and ask for nothing.
From my hiding place in the library I was discovered and at first praised Athena I had not been skewered then and there. I lived to regret that answered prayer. I was thrown shackled into a cart identical to those used to transport wild beasts to the arena. Our oxcart joined a dismal procession of countless others, the yellow dust cloud of our passing clogging our lungs and eyes and turning day to dusk. As we passed the Lyceum I beheld a sight that caused me to shove my way to the wooden bars and groan aloud. I was purple with rage, yet reluctantly grateful as well. Dozens of Roman soldiers were systematically emptying the library of its contents, packing thousands of scrolls carefully into a line of waiting covered wagons. Much of the rest of the city was aflame, yet Sulla was saving the works of Aristotle. This Roman was a strange and perplexing man.
Although my traveling companions and I were total strangers, we soon became intimate. For days, then weeks we rode at the back of Sulla’s army as it cut a swath first through Greece, then into Italy. The rough roads and bare wooden wheels conspired to make close acquaintances of us all. We stumbled and tripped into each other, there not being enough room for all of us to sit on the hay-strewn floor. There were countless carts like ours, and we passed many more thousands chained and on foot. We were the pretty ones, I suppose, destined for labor outside the quarries. Most of my cart-mates were women, plus a few children and six other young men. It took three, maybe four days before we no longer bothered to turn away at the sight of one of us squatting to piss or shit. The bronze butt of a gladius in the gut quickly taught the men not to aim their arcs outside the cage. Soon we no longer tried to avoid our own reeking waste. The soldiers laughed, raised up by the depth of our abasement. The few days it rained, in spite of the chill we pressed close to the bars, washing ourselves as best we could. To our captors I am sure we resembled nothing so much as a troupe of ardent beggars, arms outstretched, hands cupped to catch the drops, a paltry blessing from the gods who had otherwise abandoned us.
Our return to Rome was hastened by consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna. Fearing that Sulla’s victories in the East would obstruct his own ambition, Cinna raised an army and drove them hard to meet his enemy before Sulla could once again set foot on Italian soil. But the Italians thus conscripted had no stomach for the hardships of a forced march across the mountains of Illyria. Facing Sulla’s seasoned legions with no prospect of booty held less allure than the thought of returning to their farms. Which they did, but not before stoning the despotic Cinna to death. When news of the consul’s fate reached Sulla, it inflamed that which Cinna had feared the most: Sulla’s lust to don the mantle of dictatorship. He took five of his seven legions, marched through fallen Athens, past Corinth and northwest to Patrae, dragging his spoils behind him.
In those three weeks, except for the occasional snarl over a maggoty hunk of bread, or an ineffectual attempt at comforting a terrified child, none of us ever spoke a word to each other. Ever. We could barely look each other in the eye. From Patrae, we sailed to Brundisium, and as I stepped blinking from the dark hold, I set foot for the first time in Roman Italy. It looked liked any other country on the Adriatic.
But it was not.
***
The moment Rome learned that Sulla had landed in Italy without disbanding his troops was the signal for civil