Chapter 10

Over the next few days, I "broke in" the rest of the new breeders. None of these had the hangups that Suosie'd had, so they were more of the routine sort of fuck fest. Mostly, I was working on the school thing. Yeah, I know, I was about six or so years ahead of myself on this, but it was my main project until I could get my audience with Claudius. I was really anxious to meet the man, having read Robert Graves I Claudius and Claudius the God. I just hoped that the real Claudius was as good a human being as the fictional character in the book. Well, there was only one way to know for sure!

Two weeks of searching produced a freedman who claimed to be a competent scribe. OK, that was easy to test, but I was also concerned about how good a teacher he would be. He turned out to be good at writing and fair at reading. I wanted the kids to know Greek and at least one of the provincial languages such as a Germanic dialect. Anyway, he turned out to be a bust at Greek, despite his claims, so I never got around to checking him with numbers. I thanked the man and paid him two day's wages for one day of work before sending him on his way.

This search was getting old! I had gone through five candidates before I found the man I wanted. Lucius Flavius turned out to be the type of man I needed. He was 41 years old and in reasonable health. I figured that I could get him back into good shape in a few months of the right food and exercise. He could read and write Latin and Greek and had a smattering of Aramaic. He was also competent with numbers, but a little slow with division, but what could one expect with the cumbersome Is, Vs, and Xs of the Roman way? He was fascinated with the Arabic numbering system, especially the use of the zero, and picked it up more quickly than I could have expected when I showed it to him.

The problem was in his teaching style. He was not used to teaching anybody, much less children, so he was a bit overbearing and impatient. However, I thought that I could work that out of him with a little practice. I picked a particularly bright eight year old slave boy as the practice figure. Lucius and Rufus got along well enough, about what you would expect from a boy and an older teacher. Actually, I hoped that Rufus would turn into the teacher that I would need to follow after Lucius.

We worked out a payment schedule and rate that was stunning to Lucius. He had never dreamed of getting that much money per day. Not only that, we moved him and his family into our house and added his son (6) and daughter (9) to the class so that Lucius would get some practice with a classroom-like atmosphere. To the surprise of everyone but me, the three kids took to learning like sponges. Within three months, they were all making legible letters and could count to 10 in the new system of digits.

At six months, they were starting to read. I insisted on teaching them using the phonics system. None of this trying to grasp a full word without understanding how it was made up of smaller groups of letters. They also used the word separation method of putting in little dots between words instead of running them all together as was the usual custom. Of course, they were going to have to learn the old method, but we were going to wait on that until they were comfortable with the system of dots.

While this was going on, the women had started producing babies. Marian and Alise were the first, but Atrina was only a week behind Alise. Atrina was as scared as I was going into the delivery sequence. She had dropped back into her depressed and scared state, sure that she was going to die because she was so old and decrepit.

The midwife worked with me in trying to convince Atrina that she was going to come through the ordeal in good shape. The midwife was very experienced and could even have done a Cesarian if it became necessary. Now that would have been a last resort, since we had no anesthetics! The midwife was a household slave who had delivered every one of the babies from the breeders, so she had done well over a hundred deliveries during her career. There was no question that she was as competent a midwife as we could have found in a year of searching, so I tried not to worry. YEAH! I consumed more wine that night than I normally did in a year!

Conan the Younger was born at about 4:00 AM, as all self respecting babies timed it for maximum inconvenience for the attending adults. He was screaming in protest practically from the moment he showed up in the real world. I doubt that he even noticed when he was circumcised (something Atrina wanted since I was that way). That started a trend, and all of the breeders wanted their sons circumcised like that, too. Fortunately for them, the children of Marian and Alise were girls, so that question did not come up.

Atrina came through the birth in great shape. Of course, she was exhausted and hurt pretty much all over, but she was very surprised that she had not died. Atrina gave me all of the credit, and the midwife even commented that my instructions to Atrina on what to eat and how to exercise had done wonders to ease her delivery. The midwife said that, normally, a woman as old as Atrina only had a 30% chance of living through the experience. The whole thing was enough for Atrina to order that all of her breeders adopt her eating and exercise regimes. The women were so impressed with Atrina's performance that there were no arguments. Of course, the women were slaves, so they did not have any say-so in the matter, but it did help that they were in favor of the change in habits.

Over the next year, 11 babies were produced, and everyone survived, both mothers and children. Atrina had a definitely smug "I told you so!" attitude whenever the subject came up. What made this bearable was that she gave me all of the credit.

FINALLY!!! I had an audience scheduled with Claudius. I intended to concentrate my list of new ideas onto public health concerns. It turned that our first meeting was during one of those infamous Roman eating and sex orgies that were popular at the time. All of the sex was between guests and slaves, and not between guests. The male slaves who serviced the women were all castrated, so there was no problem there, but the women slaves took their chances.

Of course, Atrina was also invited to the affair. In fact, officially, she was the one invited, and I went along as Atrina's companion. That way, none of the local elite were insulted by having a freedman invited to the same orgy that they had attended.

At the time, Claudius was married to Messalina, who was well known to everybody but Claudius as a sluttish nymphomaniac. It was rumored that she worked at night as a prostitute. That was not ever proven, but almost everybody knew that she did own at least one brothel where she spent a lot of nights. Anyway, this orgy had been organized by Messalina, and should prove to be a night of nights!

Messalina was known to bear strong grudges and never get over them. Even friends of people Messalina disliked were considered by her to be enemies. This was where Atrina ran afoul of Messalina without even knowing about it. A friend of Atrina's had once snubbed one of Messalina's orgies, but was no longer available for vengeance, so Messalina was going to take out her hatred on Atrina. Of course, we didn't know about this until much later, but it did explain the strange happenings at the affair.

Messalina may have arranged the orgy, but Claudius had the final say in the lounging arrangements. Therefore, I was placed next to Claudius (a rare honor), and Atrina was next to me. Of course, a freedman eating at a place adjacent to Claudius was a mortal insult to him in the view of the aristocracy, but Claudius was immune to such thoughts, either because he didn't care or because he didn't think about the implications. Anyway, I had my audience, and it was up to me to make the best of the situation.