The Seven Hills

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"Nothing like it has ever happened before," Zeno said. He drew in a deep breath, savoring the smell of fertile land. That was Italy over there, long a Carthaginian tributary and now-now it was something else.

"Nothing like what?" Izates wanted to know.

Zeno smiled. His friend was a Cynic and practiced contrariness for its own sake. "You know very well. Never before has a nation vanished, only to reappear more than a hundred years later." The tubby merchantman heeled slightly to a shift in the wind, and Zeno took hold of a stay without noticing the change. He was a great traveler and as used to the motions of a ship as any sailor.

"These Romans never vanished," Izates said. "They just relocated. Now they have come back. There is nothing new in it. My own ancestors were sent into captivity by the Babylonians, then were returned to their homeland by Cyrus the Persian." He had been born a Jew, but had fallen in love with Greek philosophy as a boy and now could almost pass for a native Hellene.

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