Rome Drabbles: Past

[artyartie]

Written for rome100, prompt "Past."

The burnished gold of his ancestors’ death masks, glistening in the torchlight, frighten the young boy. Generations of both Junii and Servilli, watching him with solemn expectation. He has learned to return their stares with a calm gaze and unquivering lip – his mother’s sharp look of disapproval when he first whimpered under the weight of his own history hit him like a blow across the cheek.

“One day, your image will join them,” his mother says, kneeling behind him, her hands on his small shoulders. Brutus imagines his own face, older and silent and stern, staring back at him.

***

The sun beat down on his back, but the young boy felt no discomfort. He was gawky, all arms and legs, his head bobbling precariously on a thin neck. His blue eyes, however, were as bright as the summer sky, a scroll clutched tight in his small hands.

While some of the Greek was unfamiliar, certain words almost burned into the page, as if from Aristotle’s own hand. Ethos, pathos, logos. The tools of rhetoric and the orator. The power of words, the very words of power. Other boys played at soldier; Marcus Cicero desired a far more important future.

Comments

[babel.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the first one hurt. In a good way. "Small shoulders" really got me. It says so much without directly saying it. ♥

On the other hand, the second one just about killed me with adorable. Little Cicero. Reading Aristotle. And the last line struck me as so very Cicero.

[artyartie.livejournal.com]

I really love the first one - Brutus seems overwhelmed by his name when he's a grown man, so as a child it must have been overwhelming. And that's even without the slightly unhinged Uncle Cato.

And after all the angsty, emo Cicero of the past few prompts, I figured this was my chance for sweet little Cicero, hero worshipping Aristotle. And yet even back then he's still all ambitious, albeit in an adorable way.