Marcus and the Stolen Laurels

Reading time: 8-10 minutes  |  Ages: 6-12  |  Tradition: Roman  |  Theme: Justice and fairness

Hear now the tale of Marcus and the laurel wreath, which is a tale of games and glory and a boy who learned, one hot afternoon in the Forum, what justice truly costs.

In the city of Rome, in the time of good emperors and marble columns and street sellers who would argue the price of olives until the sun went down, there lived a boy called Marcus Aemilius, who could run.

Not just run as boys run – in a loose, stumbling way that covers ground but suggests the legs are not yet fully in agreement with the rest of the person. Marcus ran the way water runs downhill: inevitable, efficient, and entirely focused on where it was going. He had been the fastest boy in the Subura district since he was six years old. He was now twelve.

The Ludi Iuveniles – the Youth Games – were held every year in the great field outside the city wall, and every year the winner of the foot race received a laurel wreath and a silver clasp and the glory, which could not be measured in weight but was, in its way, heavier than silver.

Marcus had been third the year before, and second the year before that. This year, he had trained every morning before the sun was fully up, running the alleys of the Subura in the dark, his feet learning the stones by feel. He was ready.

His main competitor was a boy called Gaius Petronius, who was the son of a rich merchant and had the particular confidence that comes from always having been given things.

Gaius Petronius was fast. Not as fast as Marcus – Marcus knew this with the honesty that serious training gives you about your own abilities – but fast enough. And wealthy enough, and well-connected enough, and the sort of boy whose father had words with the right officials in the right rooms.

The morning of the race, Marcus was warming his legs in the shade of the starting wall when Titus found him.

Titus was Marcus’s best friend – a round, cheerful boy who was spectacularly slow but deeply loyal and possessed of very good ears, which he used in the way that Romans used aqueducts: to channel everything important to where it was needed.

“Marcus,” said Titus, in the voice he used for bad news. “I heard something.”

Titus told him.

The race master – the official who kept time and declared the winner – had been paid. Not a great deal (which was somehow worse, Titus said, because it meant the man came cheap). Paid to wait one extra breath before starting his stopwatch for Gaius Petronius. Just one breath. Just enough.

Marcus was quiet for a long time. He watched the other boys stretching and shaking out their legs in the morning heat. He watched Gaius Petronius laughing with his friends on the far side of the field, easy and certain in the way of someone who has arranged the world to their satisfaction.

“Are you sure?” Marcus said.

“I heard it from the baker’s son who heard it from his uncle who delivers fish to the race master’s kitchen,” said Titus. “Which is three removes, but the uncle said he saw the money change hands.”

Three removes. Not certain. But not impossible.

Marcus thought about the months of dark mornings. He thought about his mother, who had mended his running sandals four times and not complained. He thought about how a laurel wreath would feel on his head, the clean smell of it, the particular quality of having won something that no one could take back.

And then he thought about what it would actually mean, if Gaius Petronius’s father had paid for a breath.

He would still run fast. He would still cross the line when he crossed it. But the story of the race would be a lie, dressed in the shape of a true thing.

“I’m going to tell the magistrate,” said Marcus.

Titus stared at him. “The magistrate? But if the story comes out wrong – if the uncle was mistaken -“

“Then I look foolish and Gaius Petronius wins and it was a fair race,” said Marcus. “Which is fine. I can train another year.”

“And if it comes out right?”

“Then the race is run fairly,” said Marcus, “and whoever is faster wins. Which is all I ever wanted.”

He found the magistrate – a lean old man called Quintus Varro who had been judging these games for twenty years and had the expression of someone who had seen every kind of foolishness available to Rome and was disappointed to find there were new ones.

Marcus told him what Titus had heard. Clearly and completely, including the three removes, which a magistrate needs to know.

Quintus Varro looked at him for a long time. Then he nodded, once, and walked away.

The race was delayed an hour while the magistrate spoke with several people. Titus’s uncle was among them. The race master stood apart from everyone and looked at the ground with the expression of a man who has been found out and knows it.

When the race finally ran, it was run clean.

Marcus won.

Not by a great deal – Gaius Petronius was fast, and ran with the fury of someone who is angry about the world being arranged badly for him. But Marcus had trained in the dark every morning for six months, and when you have done that, your legs remember even when your mind is too busy being nervous.

The laurel wreath smelled exactly as he had imagined. He held it in his hands for a long moment before putting it on, turning it over, looking at it.

Titus appeared at his elbow. “You won,” he said, with great satisfaction.

“We won,” said Marcus. “You’re the one who heard it.”

“I’m a terrible runner,” said Titus comfortably. “But I am an excellent friend.”

Quintus Varro found Marcus as the crowd was dispersing. He looked at the laurel wreath on the boy’s head with an expression that was somewhere between approval and something more complicated.

“You could have simply run,” said the old magistrate. “You might have won anyway.”

“I know,” said Marcus.

“But you chose to make the race true first.”

“A victory in a race that wasn’t real,” said Marcus, “would just be a story I told myself. I wanted a real thing.”

Quintus Varro was quiet for a moment. Around them, Rome went on being Rome – loud and hot and crowded and relentlessly itself.

“You will make a good advocate someday,” said the old magistrate. “Or a good general. Or a good senator. The particular quality that makes a man speak true when it costs him something is rarer than gold in this city, and considerably more useful.”

He walked away, back into the crowd.

Marcus stood in the afternoon sun with his laurel wreath and his silver clasp and the knowledge of a thing fairly won, which is a kind of heaviness that is entirely good.

Hear now the lesson of it, which is this: the world will often offer you a path that looks like winning. Examine it carefully. If it requires that someone else loses something they didn’t agree to lose, it is not a victory – it is a theft wearing a laurel wreath.

The real thing is harder. It is also the only thing worth having.

So says Rome. So says the laurel. So say the gods, who are watching, and who have, on occasion, been known to arrange things accordingly.