Otherwise Brinnaria was very happy. Through Flexinna she had frequent news of Almo. Ancient Rome had no institution, public or private, in any way corresponding to our post office. But routes of trade and travel by land and sea were well defined and traffic along them fairly regular, on the most used routes almost continual. There were private organizations, vaguely resembling our modern express companies, which forwarded merchandise along the main-travelled routes and even into remote regions. Their messengers took charge of bales, boxes and packages of all sizes and also of letters. The service on the roads of Africa, from Bescera, Nepte and Putea along the frontier of the desert, through Lambese, Capsa and Thysdrus, to Carthage, by well-built vehicles with frequent relays of horses on the excellent highroads was fairly good. The ships from Sicily plied with almost the regularity of our ocean-liners. Roads and road-service in Sicily were of a high quality of excellence. The transit to Italy at Messina was a sort of ferry. Italy was served by a network of roads always busy. Almo’s letters to Flexinna were fairly regular and Vocco heard frequently from his friends among Almo’s brother officers and sometimes from his military superiors.
Almo was an immediate and brilliant success as a leader of scouting expeditions, cavalry dashes, and, within a year, of raids in considerable force. His men adored him at once; his fellow-officers found him excellent company, unassuming and companionable, his commanders came early to rely on him. He won an excellent reputation and was universally regarded as a young officer of great promise, likely to rise to high position and not unlikely to become famous.
This kind of news delighted Brinnaria and promoted her peace of mind. In great contentment she went about her duties, loving them more and more from month to month, preparing the blessed salt, assisting at sacrifices, participating in processions.
Also interest in music and enjoyment of music came to play more and more a part in her spiritual life. As a child she had hated music and had been in continual conflict with her musical governesses. Even after she entered the Atrium her aversion to learning anything about music had given Causidiena a great deal of trouble. Later Brinnaria was docile, but the reverse of enthusiastic. Only after Almo’s departure for Africa did music begins to mean anything to her.
But one keyed instrument was known to the ancients. That was a form of organ, in effect and appearance not very dissimilar to a small portable modern organ, with one bank of keys. Its mechanism, however, was very different in respect to the construction of the pipe stops and bellows. In particular, the steady flow of air to the pipes was obtained from the pressure of water, and a receptacle partly filled with water was an essential part of every Roman organ. From this feature it was called the water-organ. The Emperor Nero had been a notable performer on the water-organ and had interested himself in some improvements in its mechanism.
As with the modern organ, so with the Roman water-organ, the sonorous, sustained and resonant notes lent themselves naturally to the expression of religious emotion.
Religious emotions, Brinnaria, at this period of her life, felt to an overwhelming extent. She expressed them in long colloquies with Numisia and Causidiena, in a tendency to be unnecessarily careful about her duties, to pet her daily routine, as it were; and in an awakening to the charms of music in general and of organ music in particular. She developed into a capable performer on the water-organ, bought for herself the finest to be found in all Rome, had it set up in the Atrium in place of the old one which had belonged to the order of Vestals, and sat before it for hours at a time.
Her solitary communings with her favorite instrument became her chief solace when she was: low-spirited, which was seldom, and her favorite diversion when she was high-spirited, which was often. Moreover, her rendition of well-known airs and he improvisings came to be a great pleasure to all the inmates of the Atrium, most of all to Causidiena.
Besides her many duties and her indoor amusements, Brinnaria found time for much activity outside the Atrium. She had kept up her girlish friendship for the sieve-maker Truttidius, and saw him occasionally, sometimes ordering her litter halted before his shop and leaning out to ask after his health and that of his family. Truttidius had an ailing household, though he himself was always well and never seemed to get any older.
From her talks with Truttidius she came to take a personal interest in the welfare of the countless tenants in her many properties in the poorer quarters of the city. She visited some of them-a sort of approach to modern slumming by the philanthropic rich. Such actions on the part of a landowner and such an attitude of mind from any rich person toward the poor was very unusual in the ancient world. Her behavior in this regard won Brinnaria a sort of fame among the poor, as if she were a live goddess moving among them.