SPQR VIII: The River God's Vengeance

by John Maddox Roberts

  I did a bit of meeting and greeting in the Forum; and by the time I got to the balneum, Hermes was there with the skin, towels, scented oil, and my scraper.

  “Julia was concerned,” he reported, as he relieved me of toga, tunic, and sandals. “She had heard about the riot in the Forum and was worried that you might have been involved. I assured her that we watched the whole thing from the Tabularium, and she was relieved.”

  “Did she know about the coming fiood?”

  “Hadn’t heard a word of it. Cassandra told her that fiood water has never reached the place as long as she’s been a slave there.”

  “Why is it,” I said, bracing myself for the torture of the cold pool, “that everyone in Rome finds out about the most foolish rumors instantly while staying blissfully oblivious of momentous news?”

  “Must be a trick the gods played on us,” he said. “Like when they gave what’s-her-name the gift of prophecy but made it so that nobody would ever believe her.”

  “Cassandra,” I informed him, “daughter of Priam. Yes, that may be it. Gods do things like that sometimes. They have a sense of humor, you know.”

  I decided that since this might be my last chance for some time, to go for the full treatment. So I went out into the exercise yard, and while Hermes helped me oil up I sought out a suitable training partner. A number of the younger senators were wrestling, some of them with considerable brutality, in the sand pit. Older ones contented themselves with rolling in the sand to get a good coating. The smell of overheated bodies coated with cheap olive oil was pungent, but after those sewers I scarcely noticed.

  “Decius Caecilius!” shouted a loud voice. I turned and saw a handsome, ox-muscled young man swaggering his way toward me. “I’ll try a few falls with you.” It was Marcus Antonius. He had recently returned from a stint with the army of Aulus Gabinius in Syria and Egypt, where Antonius had won great distinction as a soldier. He had come back to Rome to stand for quaestor that year, not bothering to campaign for the office because Caesar wanted him for his staff in Gaul and the Centuriate Assembly would simply name him and send him off without a ballot. Things always came easy to young Antonius.

  “You won’t break my nose again?”

  “As long as you don’t grab me by the balls like last time.”

  Within a few seconds, he had me pinned to the ground with an arm twisted behind me and his knee against my spine.

  “You’ve been away from the legions too long, Decius,” he said, letting me up. “When you were first back from Gaul, it took me twice that long to pin you.” Then he yelped as I grabbed his heel in both hands and heaved upward with my whole body. He landed on his back, and the breath went out of him in a great whoosh.

  “Never underestimate age and treachery,” I warned him. “Youth and strength are no match for them.”

  “I’ll remember,” he said, launching himself from the sand like a Hyrkanian tiger, catching me around the waist and making me fiy.

  Some time later we limped from the pit, completely covered with sweat, oily sand, and clotting blood, most of the latter still pouring from my nose. True to his word, he hadn’t quite broken it. Hermes began efficiently stripping the mixture from my skin with the bronze scraper, snapping the accumulation with a practiced fiick of the wrist into the box provided for the purpose. Antonius’s slave was doing the same for him.

  After all the violent activity, the cold bath felt almost good. The tepid bath was better yet, and the hot bath was like ascending to Olympus. The Falernian helped, too. It was considered bad form to drink at the baths, but I was never terribly conventional and compared to Antonius I was the soul of decorum. The young man was swiftly living up to his family’s reputation as a pack of violent criminals. He was enormous fun, though, and consequently very popular.

  “When do you depart for Gaul?” I asked him.

  “Not for another nine months,” he said unhappily. “Everyone insists I have to wait until after the elections. I don’t see why. It’s not as if there’s any question about my getting the quaestorship.”

  “It’s because there’s been too much fiouting of the rules already, and it makes people uneasy. First Pompey gets all his commands without working his way up the cursus honorum, then Caesar gets an unprecedented five-year command, which it looks like he’s going to have extended. It looks bad. If a mere quaestor just starting out his career can ignore the rules, people will start thinking it means a return to the bad old days with Romans fighting Romans for position and power.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “We have to keep up appearances for the sake of the mob, as if the Senate and its old-fashioned rules still had any use in the real world.” He downed another slug of unwatered wine.

  I sighed. How typical of an Antonine. They were as bad as Claudians. Worse, even.

  A patter of sandaled feet announced the arrival of my messenger. Bare feet are the rule in the balneum, but a messenger is exempted from most of the rules of protocol. This one wore the livery of the guild: a brief, white tunic that left one shoulder bare; a round, brimmed hat with little silver wings attached; high-strapped sandals with silver wings on the heels; and a white wand. At this time the messengers were an independent company working on a State contract, much like the lictors.

  While he waited I dictated a letter to the quaestor at Ostia, requiring him to find Lucius Folius’s factor in that city and deliver him a summons to report to Rome for questioning. Hermes copied the message on a wax tablet and held it out for me to stamp with my signet ring. Then he closed the wooden leaves and tied them together.

  “Ride hard and you will be in Ostia well before dark,” I said, as the messenger tucked the tablet into his satchel made of waterproof sealskin. He knew perfectly well how long it took to make the fourteen miles from Rome to Ostia, but he was accustomed to people giving him unneeded advice. He saluted and ran off, silver fiashing from his winged heels.

  “What’s this about?” Antonius asked, so I told him about the late Lucius Folius and the trouble his near-anonymity was causing me.

  “Folius? I think I’ve met that bastard. He’s from Bovillae, I think. Was, I should say. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, he was a client of my uncle’s. The fellow was more than my uncle could stomach, and he let him know that he was unwelcome.”

  “Antonius Hybrida found someone too vicious for his taste?” I said, aghast.

  Young Antonius laughed heartily. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” His uncle, Antonius Hybrida, was as depraved a rogue and bandit as ever left high office in Rome to go on to do even worse things in the provinces. Cruel and corrupt, he was the epitome of all things Antonian.

  “Actually, it wasn’t Folius so much as that iron-plated bitch of a wife he had. Rome’s a better place today for her passing. Once, when they had Hybrida in their house for dinner, she said the duck was overdone, or something of the sort, and she had the cook dragged in. The poor fool was a Greek, trained in Sybaris, cost a fortune. She had a big slave jam the whole duck down the man’s throat, then she had him trussed up to a triclinium wall and fiogged to death in front of the guests. Spattered blood on everyone’s best clothes.”

  My jaw dropped. “Was this in Rome?“

  “In a house Folius rented on the Quirinal. It was too rich even for Hybrida, but typical of those climbers who come here to weasel themselves in with the better people. Folius’s wife thought it would impress the great Romans that she would kill an expensive slave just because he’d spoiled dinner. Hybrida let them know that here in Rome we punish our slaves decently, in private. I think he sent them the laundryman’s bill the next day.”

  It was a shocking story, to be sure. Behavior such as he had described was the sort we ascribed to Orientals and other barbarians. The punishment of slaves was, of course, left to their masters, and legally this included the right to infiict death; but for a master to do this capriciously or over a trifiing fault was depraved behavior. To do it publicly, in front of guests, was the ve
ry final word in poor taste.

  I took my leave of Antonius and dried off. I passed on the massage tables. I still had much to do while the sun shone. My wrestling bout with Antonius had, for some reason, set me pondering upon the way Lucius Folius and his unpleasant wife had died.

  5

  WHERE TO?” HERMES ASKED, slinging his satchel of bath equipment over one shoulder.

  “Across the river. We’re going to visit the ludus.”

  “Have some new boys arrived to fight in your Games?” he asked brightly, the bloodthirsty little wretch.

  “No, I need to consult with Asklepiodes.”

  We went back across the Forum Boarium and crossed the Sublician Bridge into the Trans-Tiber district. I was beginning to wonder if my sandals would last the day. On a typical day during my aedileship, I could cover more ground than a legionary on a forced march. I tried to tot up how many miles I’d walked since leaving my house that morning, then shrugged it off. Anything was better than Gaul.

  When we arrived, the Statilian School resounded with the clash of practice weapons. The school itself, which consisted of exercise yard, barracks, and business offices, with attached mess hall, hospital, baths, and practice arena, was far more spacious and better designed than the old school, which had stood on the Campus Martius and had been displaced by the erection of Pompey’s Theater. The owner and operator, Statilius Taurus, was the son of a freedman once belonging to the great family of that name.

  I found my old friend Asklepiodes in the infirmary, setting the broken finger of a hulking brute who had the bull neck and massive shoulders of a Samnite gladiator—the sort who fought with no armor except for the usual helmet, bronze belt, and arm wrapping, with the addition of a small greave strapped to his left shin. By way of compensation, his shield covered him from chin to knee and curved halfway around his body.

  “Good day, Aedile,” Asklepiodes said with a smile. “I’m afraid the new men from Capua haven’t arrived yet.”

  “That’s not what I’m here about,” I said, admiring the Samnite’s calm during what had to be an excruciating procedure. These men were schooled to accept immense pain without fiinching. “I need to talk with you concerning some recent deaths.”

  “Murders?” he asked, his smile even brighter. He loved this sort of thing.

  “I didn’t think so, but now I’m not so sure.”

  He gave the finger a final wrap and tied off the bandage. “Off with you now, and henceforth oblige me by wearing the padded glove during practice.”

  “Can’t get the feel of the hilt with one of those on,” the man said, in a thick Bruttian accent.

  “It is when you are fighting with the real sword on the sand that proper feel of the hilt really counts,” Asklepiodes reminded him. “You won’t be wearing a padded glove then. Wounds absorbed in training earn you nothing, neither honor nor money.”

  The fellow went away grumbling, apparently more distressed at the unmanliness of wearing protective gear than by the prospect of any number of wounds, which were an expected part of his profession.

  “Now,” Asklepiodes said, “who has died?”

  I told him about the fallen insula and its inhabitants. “It didn’t occur to me at the time that I might require your expert advice,” I told him, “but something has been preying on my mind since yesterday morning. The two of them had their necks broken. I’ve just been wrestling with young Antonius, and several times he tried to remove my head, which I resisted. It struck me that it is not an easy job to break a neck, yet these two died that way, side by side. Some of the dead were horribly mangled, but most looked as if they’d died of suffocation.”

  “Were there head injuries?” he asked. “If the two were dumped into the cellar and landed on their heads, the weight of their falling bodies could easily have snapped their necks. Recall, you had your neck muscles braced when you were wrestling. A neck breaks much more easily if the victim is unprepared or, better yet, unconscious.”

  “Of course I didn’t handle the bodies, but the heads didn’t seem deformed; and there was no blood soaking their hair.”

  “There need not be an obvious injury. I would have to palpate the skulls to be sure. Where are the bodies?”

  “Since nobody stepped forward to claim them, I had them taken to the Libitinarii by the Temple of Venus Libitina. I’d be most grateful if you would examine them and send me a report.”

  “I will be most happy to be of service. You have no idea how boring it gets here with nothing to do save patching up fools who refuse to take care of themselves. I will go right now before someone comes along and reduces them to ashes.”

  “I cannot express my gratitude.”

  “You’ll think of something.” He called for his slaves and his litter and I went back outside, where I found Hermes watching the sparring practice.

  “You spend half your time here as it is,” I reminded him. “I’d think you get to see enough of this.”

  “I’ve hardly been here at all since you took office,” he protested. “Anyway, I train here in the mornings. I don’t get to see the men who train in the afternoons. And there are at least two hundred here who’ve arrived since my last visit.”

  It was true. The swordsmen were coming in from all over Italy and from as far away as Sicily, where some of the best schools of the day were located. It wasn’t just for the upcoming festival season, though. Between bouts, most of them hired out to the politicians as bodyguards, although their duties more often involved breaking up the rallies of their political opponents, intimidating voters, disrupting speeches, and the like. It made for the sort of rioting we had witnessed that morning. Worse, it affected the quality of the fights because the men were too busy being hired thugs to train properly.

  “Oh, by the way,” Hermes said, “Titus Milo is here. He says he’d like to speak with you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, exasperated.

  “I just did.” It was no use. “He said wait until you were finished with your business. It’s not urgent.” He led me to a corner of the yard where a number of men sat around a small fountain. On two folding chairs sat Milo and Statilius, the owner. Several giants stood behind Milo or sat on the edge of the fountain. I recognized them as his personal bodyguard, all of them famed champions of the arena, now retired and riding high on Milo’s political fortunes. Milo could have outfought any of them, but his current dignity as ex-praetor and candidate for the consulship made personal combat in the streets unbecoming. These days he left most of the head breaking to his subordinates. He was as splendidly handsome as ever, but I was astonished for no good reason to see that his hair was fiecked with gray. I had thought Milo immune to that sort of thing.

  “Greetings, Aedile,” Milo said, standing to take my hand. In some ways he was the most powerful man in Rome at that time, but he was as punctilious as Cato about observing the proprieties of office. “We’ve just been discussing some matters that concern you.”

  “How is that?” I asked. It seemed that everything concerned me since I had taken office.

  “First off, these men of mine,” he indicated the thugs, who nodded curtly, “have all volunteered to fight in your munera at a nominal rate. I’ll send their contracts to your office in the next few days, but you may go ahead and publish their names in your announcements.”

  “That is most generous,” I said to them. “Metellus Celer was a very great Roman, and the people will expect extraordinary magnificence at his funeral games. With such famous names on the bill, their success is all but assured.” They grinned and said they were glad to honor the memory of so great a man. Of course, they weren’t doing it for Celer or for me. They were doing it for Milo, who was my friend.

  In truth, the risk they took was not as great as many people imagine. They would fight only with champions of equal rank, where it was no disgrace to be defeated. They had so many fans, they would all but certainly be spared in defeat. It was the tyros on their first bouts and the men who
had not been fighting long enough to gain a following who suffered the high mortality rates.

  Still, men who had been spared, and even men who won, sometimes bled to death from a bad cut; and a trifiing wound could mortify and bring death as surely as a severed artery, only after weeks of suffering. So it was no small thing for men like these to leave a prosperous retirement to reenter the arena. Usually, a single pair of retired champions to top off a day’s combats was the most an aedile could afford. They could cost as much as all the rest of the day’s combatants together. But the people would rather see two such fight than any number of half-trained tyros. To have so many, and at a low price, was the best news I had had in months.

  “We’ve been discussing another matter, Aedile,” said Statilius. “Rome needs an amphitheater; and not just a wooden one, but a permanent, stone structure.”

  “It’s true,” said a fighter named Crescens. He was tall but lean and sinewy, belonging to the new category of netand-trident fighter. “I’ve fought in the amphitheaters of Capua and Messana. Even Pompeii has a fine one. Yet here in Rome we have to fight in the Forum, where the monuments get in the way, or in the Circus, where half the audience can’t see us on account of the spina.”

  “You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know,” I said.

  “Since my father founded this school,” Statilius said, “the City has doubled in population, and the typical munera has more than tripled in size. If politicians insist on outdoing each other in the magnitude of their Games, then we must have a proper venue for celebrating them.”

  “I’m familiar with the problem,” I told them, “but towns like Pompeii and Capua have advantages over Rome in this regard. They are rich, and they are small. I’ve attended munera in both those amphitheaters; and at full attendance, with people coming in from the nearby villages, they need to hold no more than four or five thousand spectators. Rome would need one big enough to hold at least thirty thousand, even if we restrict attendance to adult, male, freeborn, native citizens as, I remind you, ancient law dictates.”