Household Gods

“You certainly wouldn’t be liable in a criminal sense,” Nicole said, “but if he wouldn’t have gone to Carthage except at your order, you might have some civil liability.” That at least was the way of it where she came from, particularly in front of a sympathetic jury.

But Marcus Aurelius shook his head. “He is responsible for his own actions then, and solely responsible for them. No man learned in the law would dispute this for a moment; please believe me when I tell you as much.”

She did believe him. She had to. He wouldn’t lie; it wasn’t in him.

So why was his concept of agency so much narrower than hers? It did fit a pattern she was seeing: that everything to do with government was much more limited here than in the United States.

What exactly did the government of the Roman Empire do? All she’d ever seen it do till the Marcomanni and Quadi took Carnuntum was feed one condemned criminal to the lions. Obviously, Marcus Aurelius commanded the legions. She supposed the imperial government kept up the roads; the guide had said something about that, all the way back on her honeymoon in Petronell. Past that…

Education? If you wanted any, you bought it yourself. Welfare? If you couldn’t work, either your family took care of you or you starved. Health care? Health care here was a cruel joke to begin with. The environment? The Romans didn’t care. They would have exploited it worse than they did, if only they’d known how.

The worst of it was, in context it made sense. Even in good times here, people walked one step from starvation. There was just barely enough to keep them going, let alone to give to the government in the form of taxes and service fees. She’d never thought of an active government as a luxury only a rich country could afford, but she’d never had her nose rubbed in poverty like this before, either.

Neither had she stopped to think about the effect the Roman government’s inherent limits would have on the law. By the standards she was used to, the government didn’t and couldn’t do much. Moreover, if it was that limited, then so were its obligations to its citizens. Quid pro quo was good Latin, and perfectly logical. If you didn’t have much to do with the government, the government wouldn’t have much to do with you.

And that left her with precious little by way of a case. Roman law simply didn’t see liability in the same way American law did. It couldn’t. There wasn’t the structure to support it.

Like a boxer sparring for time after taking one on the chin, she said, “But if you send your man to Carthage to buy grain, you don’t give him the tools he needs to commit forcible rape.” The edge of that sword against her neck had been sharper than any of the razors she’d used to shave herself.

“Possibly not,’’ Marcus Aurelius said, “although I suppose he might use a stylus to threaten rather than to write on wax in a tablet.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Nicole said, “but that’s reaching.”

“Perhaps it is.” The Emperor yielded the point without rancor. “But I did not give the miscreant legionary his tools to enable him to violate women. I gave them to him to drive the invaders from the Roman Empire. Having regained Pannonia, I aim to go on and conquer the Germans in their gloomy forests, that this menace may never again threaten us.”

He sighed. If he was a born soldier, Nicole was a born Indy-car driver.

But he was doing what he thought he had to do to make the world a better place, and doing it as best he knew how. Nicole couldn’t help but admire him, even when he was ruling against her.

Would he succeed in his goal? She didn’t know. All she knew was that, sooner or later, the Roman Empire would fall. She didn’t know when, or exactly how. She hoped, just then, that it didn’t fall on this man’s watch. If there was any fairness in the world, he deserved to win his war and hold back the darkness a while longer.

He said – and he said it with some regret, too, “I am going to deny your petition for damages from my government for the attack upon you.”

Nicole drew breath to ask if she could appeal that, but stopped, feeling foolish. If the Emperor refused her, who could overrule him? There was no Supreme Court here, no check or balance to the Emperor’s power. To her amazement, she wasn’t angry at this man, this good and – yes – wise ruler. She didn’t feel cheated. He was playing the game by the rules he understood, and playing it as fairly as he knew how.

“I still think you’re wrong,” she said, “but what can I do? I can’t make you agree with me, any more than I could make your soldier” – she was too stubborn to stop calling him that – “stop doing what he did.”