Arpinum

DESPITE HAVING LIVED IN ROME for many years, Lucius had always said that he wished to have his ashes interred in the family vault in Arpinum.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

I was a household slave, born on the family estate in the hills near Arpinum, who had never even seen Rome.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

From where I was standing, just behind Cicero, I could see his crafty gray eyes taking in each of us in turn, and when he released his embarrassed host, he insisted on being introduced, even to me, so that I—a humble domestic slave from Arpinum—could now boast, at the age of thirty-four, that I had shaken hands with both the ruling consuls of Rome.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

But to leave one house festooned with the pine and cypress boughs of mourning and to arrive at another similarly adorned was the height of melancholy, made worse by the mischance that we reached Arpinum on the twenty-fifth day of November, that date kept sacred to Proserpina, Queen of Hades, who carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

Such a marvel cannot be spared to count sheep in Arpinum!

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

The two had grown up together in Arpinum, been schooled together in Rome, and traveled together in the East.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

I asked Cicero if there was anything he required and he replied, with a bitter smile, “Yes, that quiet life in Arpinum!”

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

I was a household slave, born on the family estate in the hills near Arpinum, who had never even seen Rome.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

We stayed the first night at the villa in Tusculum and had reached as far as Ferentium on the Via Latina when a message reached the brothers from Arpinum that their father had collapsed and died the previous day.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006

Without Cicero, Quintus would have been a dull and competent officer in the army, and then a dull and competent farmer in Arpinum, whereas Cicero without Quintus would still have been Cicero.

Imperium Robert Harris 2006