Rome Drabbles: Past
Apr. 3rd, 2007 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
artyartieWritten for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
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.
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.
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Date: 2007-04-04 01:37 pm (UTC)And Cicero... I can picture the scene you've written, and you've described what a young David Bamber probably looked like. ;) Excellent!
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Date: 2007-04-04 03:22 pm (UTC)Evidently the young historical Cicero was also a gawky thing, and so it was easy to 'merge' the two - but the description of the eyes and head motion came from David Bamber's inspiration.