SPQR X: A Point of Law

by John Maddox Roberts

  “An unexpected pleasure indeed,” I said. “Julia, I am surprised you didn’t go out to see all those brawny, sweaty legionaries.”

  “Oh, soldiers are such a common sight, even my uncle’s. But I couldn’t pass up a chance to meet the most learned lady in Rome. We have been having the most marvelous discussion on the work of Archimedes.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment.” During our stay in Alexandria, Julia had dragged me along to see every tiresome philosopher and scholar in that whole overeducated city. She had an enthusiasm for learning that entirely eluded me.

  “Once I began to study your documents, Senator,” Callista said, “I found myself so enthralled that I quite forgot the time. Eventually, my servants tired of replenishing the lamps and forced me to go to bed. But I was up at dawn and right back to work.”

  “I never expected such zeal and cannot adequately thank you,” I said. “So you now have them translated?”

  “I am afraid not. But I have made an excellent beginning. And I’ve made the most interesting discovery!”

  “How so?” I asked, trying to mask my disappointment. Such rapid success was far too much to hope for.

  She took the pages from a small chest upon the table. “You recall that I was puzzled by the repetition of the letter delta?”

  “Indeed, I do.”

  “Well, I was in despair when I finally went to bed last night. But I must have been visited by a god while I slept because when I awoke this morning I knew what it meant. It is something quite unprecedented.” She had a look of almost daemonic enthusiasm.

  “What might this have been?” I asked her.

  “Nothing!”

  I was stunned. “I fail to—”

  “Let her explain, dear,” Julia said. “We’ve discussed a bit of this, and I want to hear more.”

  I sat and a servant brought me a cup. “Please do,” I urged.

  “I know that it sounds absurd, but that delta means nothing at all, and that is what is so exciting. You see, I noticed that the delta was always repeated after a string of other letters, three to eight or so, and that nowhere was a delta doubled. When I woke this morning I realized that whoever encoded these documents intended to simplify decoding by separating the words with the delta, rather the way that some people, when writing, leave a small space between individual words.”

  “I see,” I said. “It seems simple enough.”

  “It is deceptively simple. But the implications are astounding. It is the use of a symbol to mean nothing at all! I think this is quite unprecedented. There is a subset of philosophy involving the meaning of symbols. I intend to correspond with some philosophers I know to discuss the implications of this. I think it could have great applications in mathematics as well.”

  “I daresay it could,” I said, trying to sound wise. I had no idea what the woman was babbling about. To this day I have no idea. A symbol for nothing?It was as ridiculous as the paradoxes of Zeno.

  Julia spoke up. “Callista thinks this might have been the very concept Archimedes was working on when that horrible soldier killed him.”

  “Well,” I said, “that sort of thing happens in a war. He shouldn’t have spoken rudely to the man. Callista, were you able to make any other headway on the letters?”

  “I am almost certain that the language is common Latin. The length and arrangement of the words suggest this. I haven’t yet discovered the key to the letter substitution though. I had thought it would be simple, but now I am sure it is not. A mind subtle enough to invent this delta symbol probably devised something more complex.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but you might be giving him too much credit. He may have hit on the delta as a handy way to separate words without giving a consideration to the deeper implications.” Whatever on earth those might be, I thought.

  “You could be right,” she said doubtfully. “Did you happen to see, where you found these documents, any books, poems, other writings?”

  “Why?”

  “I believe this code employs substitution of one letter for another—in this case each Greek letter stands for a letter of the Latin alphabet—but in order to decipher it, I must have the key.”

  “Key?” I said. “What might that be?”

  “It could be a written instruction, but more likely what has been used will be a well-known book, such as the Homeric poems, Pindar, something like that. If one has the book and knows the system of substitution, decipherment becomes an easy if tedious process.”

  I was not following this, but I trusted the woman to know what she was talking about.

  “Now that I think of it, there were a few scrolls in a holder next to the desk. And one lying on it.” I searched my mind for memories of that stimulating afternoon. “The one on the desk was partially unrolled and it looked like it was one he read a lot. You know how it is with a favorite book—the papyrus was like cloth, and the edges had turned fuzzy. But it wasn’t some famous work like the Iliad.”

  “It isn’t necessary that it be a famous work,” Callista said. “Merely that each correspondent have a copy, and the copies must be identical—no copyist’s errors, and ideally each line of each column should begin with exactly the same word. Sometimes a letter substitution involves counting inward from the first character in a specific line.”

  She had lost me again. “Then the books would almost have to come from the same copyist.”

  “That would be best. What sort of book was it?”

  “It was a textbook of court speeches. They’re standard teaching tools for the rhetoric schools that specialize in teaching lawyers. They use famous legal speeches, or sometimes hypothetical speeches appropriate for hypothetical cases, to demonstrate how to build logical arguments for or against particular positions. This one seemed to be about points of law—the sort of legal hairsplitting that keeps expert pleaders in demand.”

  “Law is not a specialty of mine,” she said. “Is there a standard text for these things?”

  “No, but I happen to know who trained the man in question: Aulus Sulpicius Galba, now duumvir of Baiae.”

  “And has this man written such a text?” Callista asked. “Almost any book can be used for encoding, and it would make sense for a man to use the work most familiar to him.”

  “Almost certainly, since he is a law teacher. I could probably find a copy. I might even be able to get the original that I saw yesterday.”

  “Decius,” Julia said, “you will do nothing of the sort. You are far too old for burglary. Send Hermes to steal it.”

  Callista was looking from one to the other of us as if we were specimens of some exotic beast she was studying. Julia caught her look. “It is quite all right,” she assured the woman. “The man is dead.”

  “Of course it might not be the key,” Callista said, “but it seems to be a good candidate for the job, and I have little hope of making a quick translation without it.”

  “Then I’ll get it for you,” I said. I turned around. “Where’s Hermes?”

  “If I know him,” Julia said, “he’s wherever the best-looking women in this house are kept.”

  “But that’s right in this courtyard,” Hermes said gallantly. He was standing just within a doorway that led to a dining room. He had, however, been chatting up a pretty slave girl.

  “Curb your insolence,” Julia said. “Can you go find us that book without being seen?”

  He thought a moment, going over the urban terrain. “I’ll bribe my way into one of the houses that opens on another street, then cross the common courtyard. If there’s nobody in the house and the book is still there, I’ll get it.”

  “Then go and come back here as quickly as you can—no stopping on the way, mind.”

  “I shall be as my namesake,” he said, hurrying from the poolside as swiftly and silently as a leopard.

  “He seems to be a versatile lad,” Callista noted with some approval.

  “Every politician needs one,” I told her.

  While
we waited for Hermes to return with his loot, we fell to discussing my situation. I told them of my conversation with Cato, about the confusion of marriages and planned marriages that decorated the recent past.

  “I know Octavia and her brother only slightly,” Julia admitted, referring to the wife of Caius Marcellus. “Caesar’s sister, another Julia, married Atius Balbus and their daughter, Atia, married Caius Octavius. The younger Caius Octavius and Octavia are their children. The elder Octavius died some time back. Atia is now married to Lucius Philippus, I believe.”

  “I know their father,” I said. “A few years ago, when Octavius was praetor, Clodius and I brawled our way right into his court. I’d have cut his throat right there in public if the lictors hadn’t separated us.”

  “Just as well you didn’t succeed,” Julia observed. “I heard there was a Vestal present in the court that day.”

  “Right,” I said. “They’d probably have hurled me off the Tarpeian Rock or tied me in a weighted sack and tossed me off the Sublician Bridge.”

  “You Romans have such imaginative punishments,” Callista said.

  “That’s nothing,” I told her. “You ought to see what we do to parricides or arsonists.”

  “And yet you are not under arrest even though you are charged with murder.”

  “We Romans,” Julia told her, “have a robust sense of justice. We reserve our harshest punishments for crimes that endanger the whole community. Rome is a firetrap so arson is the most serious of crimes. Treason endangers us all. Sacrilege, parricide, and incest anger the gods and draw the wrath of the immortals upon the whole City.”

  “Exactly,” I put in. “But a grown citizen is expected to be able to take care of himself. If someone tries to kill you, you should kill him first. You’re a poor prospect for the legions if you’re unable to defend yourself.”

  “There are exceptions,” Julia pointed out. “Murder by subterfuge, especially if poison or magic are involved, are not tolerated. Likewise, violence toward sacrosanct personages, such as Tribunes of the People or Vestals, draws harsh punishment.”

  “Ordinary senators, on the other hand,” I said, “get no such consideration. In really rough times, I’ve seen as many as half a dozen senators carried dead out of alleys. There are always plenty more where they came from. The Curia is too crowded as it is.”

  “I see. And these political marriages of yours: Just what is the point of them since they are so easily dissolved?”

  “They’re traditional,” I told her. “They hark back to a day when divorce was much more difficult. At one time only patricians had full citizenship, and they had a special form of marriage—conferratio—that was indissoluble. In those days a political marriage genuinely bound the two families.”

  “We Roman women of the great families put up with a great deal from our men,” Julia said. “It is bad enough being pawns in a political game, but it would be nice if we were at least pawns that counted for something.”

  “Between your multiple marriages and divorces, and your habit of adopting each other’s sons, I’m surprised you bother with these family names at all. They can hardly have much meaning by this time.”

  “It is odd, isn’t it?” I agreed. “Yet we still behave as if our names were of utmost significance.”

  “I suspect,” Julia put in, “that is because adoption takes place only among a limited number of families, ones that have traditional relationships and a good deal of shared blood.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Metellus Scipio, for instance, is the last of the Cornelia Scipiones, but he is a Metellus on his mother’s side, so he’s a cousin with or without the name.”

  “I find it all very confusing,” Callista said.

  “Be happy that you don’t have to worry about such things,” Julia advised her.

  “Greek women have been known to seek revenge when treated in such a fashion. We remember Medea.”

  “Upper class Roman wives are usually ready for a change of husbands after a year or two.” I saw Julia glowering at me. “There are exceptions, of course.”

  For another hour or so Julia and Callista talked of philosophical subjects upon which I wisely declined to intrude, save to make occasional noncommittal noises, as if I were following their discussion intently. To my great amazement, Julia seemed to genuinely like the Alexandrian woman. Of course, she had come calling that morning to see what sort of woman I was visiting. She must have been surprised to find a kindred spirit instead of some foreign temptress. Not that Callista wouldn’t have made a fine foreign temptress had she chosen to adopt that role.

  Then Hermes returned, having flown upon winged heels, as promised. He entered the peristyle with a bulky bundle over one shoulder and grinning like an African ape.

  “I told you to bring back that scroll,” I told him, “not to sack the house.”

  “I thought as long as I was taking one book, I might as well take them all.”

  “There’s no stopping a born thief,” I said. “Actually, it isn’t such a bad idea. One of these others might be the key.”

  Callista had her servants bring a large table into the peristyle and we spread Hermes’s loot out for inspection. There were about fifteen books altogether, some of them being sizable volumes requiring more than one scroll.

  “Here’s the one you asked for,” Hermes said, taking the scroll from inside his tunic.

  I unrolled it on the table, and we studied it first. Like most books of better quality, it was written on Alexandrian papyrus of the finest sort. I had seen papyrus being manufactured in Egypt, and it is a most exacting process. The versatile papyrus plant is split open and its pith is peeled away in long strips. A layer of strips is laid side-by-side, slightly overlapped. A second layer is laid atop the first, at right angles to it. This delicate mat is soaked, then pressed between planks with a great weight laid atop the upper plank. The resulting sheet, now bound together firmly by the natural glue in the plant, is placed in the sun to dry and bleach until it is almost white.

  The best quality of papyrus is made from the largest plants, so that the fewest strips are needed for the upper surface, the one that is written on. On this surface the strips run in the same direction as the writing. No matter how well the papyrus is rubbed with pumice to obliterate irregularities, the joins between the strips always tend to catch the tip of the pen.

  For books of the best sort, the papyrus is trimmed into sheets about ten inches by twelve. They may be written upon as individual sheets, then glued together along their shorter sides into long sheets suitable for binding into scrolls, or they can be purchased ready-made in the form of blank scrolls, ready to be written upon. Each method has advantages and disadvantages, but the latter is now the most common.

  While I studied this, Julia and Callista looked over the other books. “I see Cicero here,” Julia said, “and Hortalus. Here’s a study of the Twelve Tables, together with commentaries and disputes concerning interpretation.”

  “This,” said Callista, “seems to be a text on the use of the Sybilline Books in Roman law, written almost two hundred years ago by one Valgus of Lanuvium.”

  “Single-minded bastard, wasn’t he?” I said. “It sounds like he was planning a Caesar-like conquest of the Roman legal profession.”

  “Let me see this,” Callista said. She began to examine the opening sheets of the scroll. Its first sheet, in the usual fashion, gave the title, Certain Points of Law, and its author, who was indeed Aulus Sulpicius Galba. Apparently it was written before he became duumvir of Baiae, for he did not include this dignity among his honors.

  It also contained the usual dedication: “This work I dedicate to the immortal gods and the muses, to my revered ancestors, and to my esteemed friends and patrons, Publius Fulvius Flaccus and Sextus Manilius.”

  “Manilius!” I said. “I knew I’d trip over that name sooner or later.”

  “It could be a coincidence,” Julia said. “It’s not an uncommon name.”

 
“When did you start believing in coincidence?” I asked her. “Fulvius and Manilius right here on the same page? That sounds like conspiracy to me. What do you want to bet these two are the fathers of the dead man and our young Tribune of the People?”

  “I know better than to take a bet like that.”

  Callista wasn’t interested in the dedication. She was scanning the text with great speed. She was one of those people who could read silently, a talent I have always admired.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked her.

  “The first sheet that contains every letter in the Latin alphabet. That one is most likely to be the key.”

  She had lost me again. I rose and beckoned to Hermes. “Ladies, I will take my leave of you now.”

  “I’ll stay here and help Callista with this,” Julia said. “What will you do now?”

  “I’m going to find out what I can about young Manilius. Come, Hermes.”

  We left them absorbed in their work, their heads together like two lifelong friends.

  7

  IF ANY ONE PLACE IN ROME COULD BE called the center of government in the old Republic, it would not be the Curia, which was just a place where the Senate met to argue and yell at each other. Nor was it the Septa on the Campus Martius where elections were held. At that time it was little more than a field with barriers to separate the people by tribes, and its informal name of “sheep-fold” was quite descriptive.

  No, the true center of the Republic was the Tabularium on the lower slopes of the Capitoline Hill, where most of the important documents of the City and the Empire were stored. It was our one true government building. Otherwise, we continued our rustic, inconvenient old custom of locating civic functions and offices in temples.

  We had the Treasury in Saturn’s, although money was coined in that of Juno Moneta. The Temple of Ceres housed the offices of the aediles; treaties and wills were kept in the Temple of Vesta. We declared war at the Temple of Bellona. We used the basilicas to hold courts, but they were used as much for markets and banks. Numerous minor temples housed lesser civic functions.