SPQR X: A Point of Law

by John Maddox Roberts

  “All right,” I said, throwing up my hands. “What are you telling me? I am thoroughly confused, and my time is running short. I go on trial tomorrow, and I would really like to be able to demonstrate that I am not guilty of murder.”

  “It’s the boy, Decius.”

  “That child is all of twelve years old! Just being able to deliver a competent eulogy doesn’t qualify him for high-stakes political intrigue!”

  “So who is behind him?” Sallustius said, as insinuatingly as always. “You know Cicero’s dictum: A cui bono? To whom goes the benefit? Who is behind him? Who stands to gain if he becomes Caesar’s heir? Who would absolutely not want to see Fulvius’s silly plan come to anything? Assuming, as we both do, that the various Claudii Marcelli bankrolled him and put him up to it in the first place as a means to undermine Caesar, who would be in a position to know what was going on in that house?”

  A few things fell into place. “Octavia.”

  He nodded. “The boy’s sister and wife of Caius Claudius Marcellus. Who was their father?”

  “The elder Caius Octavius.”

  “And what do we know about him?”

  “He was praetor a few years back,” I said, searching my memory. “I believe he was the first of his family to reach the praetorship. He did a decent job of governing Macedonia as his propraetorian province. Nobody accused him of corruption.”

  “Yes, by all accounts a good and honorable man. Do you know who his forebears were?”

  “My wife keeps excellent track of these things,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “The family is from Velitrae, in the Volscian country. His father was a banker of that city. He married his son to Atia, the daughter of Caesar’s sister, who was the wife of Atius Balbus, another banker of Velitrae. Balbus was of great aid to Caesar in his penurious years. So Caesar’s probable heir and his sister’s are the grandchildren of bankers on both sides. Think of it: An attack on bankers, an attack on Caesar’s power base—these things would not be to the advantage of Octavia’s little brother.”

  “So you think she subverted Marcus Fulvius, drew him away from her husband and the other Marcelli? But how?”

  He slapped his hands against his knees and rose from his chair. “I didn’t say I knew everything. I’m just telling you where you should be looking. You are the one who is supposed to be good at this sort of thing.”

  I rose as well. “I thank you for this information, Sallustius.” I tried not to make it sound too grudging. “This has been most illuminating, and you shall have your interview.”

  “If you live,” he said cheerily.

  We went outside and stood for a moment in the shade of the great portico. Off to the east end of the portico we could see the whole length of the Forum. Out there, near the meeting place of the comitia, I saw a man with his head turbanned in bloodstained bandages, surrounded by a crowd of belligerent-faced men, some of them wielding staves and cudgels.

  “Curio has acquired protectors,” I noted.

  Sallustius smiled benignly. “Are you familiar with the story of Pisistratus?”

  “All I remember is that he was tyrant of Athens.” We walked down the steps and turned toward the Forum.

  “He was a politician and soldier of some account, but merely one among many such. One day he appeared in the agora heavily bandaged, and claimed that he had been set upon by ruffians in the hire of the aristocrats. He petitioned the assembly to be allowed a bodyguard of armed men, and this was granted in an access of antiaristocratic fervor. Somehow this bodyguard kept growing until Pisistratus completely overawed the citizenry and eventually made himself tyrant, which position he enjoyed for a good many years.”

  Sallustius turned to me and smiled again, less benignly this time. “It is the opinion of all rational historians that the wounds suffered by Pisistratus were self-inflicted.”

  “Our friend Curio would never do anything so underhanded,” I asserted. Then we both had a good laugh over that one.

  Sallustius wandered off and left me with some heavy thoughts to ponder. I shook hands and cadged votes bemusedly for a while, assessing the possibilities in the light of this new evidence, if evidence it was, and not just some fancy of Sallustius, who was never above playing his own political games.

  The sun was just touching the rooftops on the west side of the Forum when a Greek slave boy ran up to me.

  “You are the Senator Metellus?” he asked with a heavy Alexandrian accent.

  “I’m one of them. Decius the Younger by name.”

  “My mistress, Callista, sends you this.”

  He handed me a folded piece of papyrus. I opened it and saw a single, oversized Greek letter: Delta. Below that, in small, neat letters, was a single Latin word: Done.

  12

  I FOUND THE TWO OF THEM, JULIA AND Callista, relaxing amid a great litter of papers and scrolls, looking absurdly happy and satisfied with themselves. They were celebrating with a bit of wine, which they were drinking from, of all things, Thracian rhytons; those strange drinking horns made of silver with the bases in the form of animal or human heads. Callista beamed at me and handed me one. Its horn part was delicately fluted, the base representing a ram, its curling horns and dense wool exquisitely molded.

  “Bit of a departure from philosophical simplicity,” I noted. I took a sip and tried not to wince. It was one of those Greek wines flavored with resin that I have always found disagreeable.

  “They were a gift from a Thracian nobleman who attended a course of my lectures at the Museum,” Callista said. “I only bring them out for special occasions.”

  “Well, if this isn’t a special occasion,” I said, “then I don’t know what constitutes one. Breaking a code is a unique sort of accomplishment.”

  “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed anything so much,” she said, with apparent sincerity.

  “What have you learned?” I asked.

  Julia took up a small sheaf of papers. “We could have hoped for more. No names of the conspirators were used, probably for security’s sake, but probably also because they were scarcely needed, since only a tiny circle of plotters were involved. Also they are not dated. Again because the participants would know when they were written and received. These were never intended for future reference.”

  “Marcus Fulvius intended to use them in the future,” I said.

  “How so?” Julia asked.

  “That he intended to use them at some future date I deduce from the fact that he didn’t destroy them after reading, which is what you usually do with incriminating documents. As to his motive, since he intended to be a great man, he may have wanted them for his memoirs, which he fancied would have an audience. Or, more likely, he may have intended to use them for blackmail purposes, or as insurance in case the others should someday turn against him, as I now believe they did.”

  “I never would have thought of those things,” Callista admitted, “yet I find your logic impeccable, and your grasp of the various possible alternatives comprehensive. Most people who have not been trained in philosophy and logic form a single opinion, usually based on prejudice or emotion, and adhere to it stubbornly.”

  “This is what makes my husband the—singular sort of person he is,” said my loving wife.

  “But he employs his gift in a unique way,” said Callista. “Give me a problem of mathematics, of the nature of the universe, of natural history, or the nature of beauty, and I will bring to bear upon it all the resources of five hundred years of philosophical thought, from Heraclitus to the present day. But, confronted with the problems of human passion, of ambition, greed, lust for power, jealousy, and simple stupidity, I am as helpless as a child. Such things do not yield to analysis and philosophical rigor.”

  “That,” Julia told her, “is because you have lived your life in an elevated world of the mind, where thought is the highest joy. Decius, to the contrary, is intimately familiar with all these things.”

  “Well, what do we have here?” I asked, a li
ttle put out at Julia’s fulsome praise of the philosophical world. I had spent some time at the Museum of Alexandria and so had she. Among the teachers there we had found no shortage of pettiness, jealousy, and ambition.

  “We’ve sorted these into what seem to be chronological order,” Callista said crisply. She took a sheet from Julia. “This one I’ve put first because the original showed signs of awkwardness in using the cipher. The ones I’ve assigned a later date show far greater assurance in the execution.”

  “That makes sense,” I allowed. I took the sheet and read. It began without the usual preamble: “From so-and-so to his esteemed friend so-and-so, greeting.” Instead, it got down to business in the first line.

  Our supporters are in place and have their orders. They will assist you in any way you wish, as in locating and inviting the subjects for each of your meetings, accompanying you to the Forum, etc. From receipt of this message you are not to approach us in public or in private. If you encounter one of us in a public place, there can be no more than an exchange of civilities. In public, for now, we are mere acquaintances whose families are vaguely connected. For your first gathering you will invite the following men whose sympathies we deem to be in accord with our program:

  There followed a list of seven names. Those I recognized were low-level senators, two of them relatively well-known malcontents who continualy courted attention by berating the greatest men. They were tolerated because of tradition and because we liked to let the public think that the Senate is an assembly of equals, as in the good old days. When the plebs saw nonentities like these haranguing Caesar or Pompey, Cato or Cicero, to his face, right up on the Rostra, it gave everyone a sense of participation and the comforting and very deceptive feeling that Rome was in no danger of succumbing to tyranny.

  “The next few,” Callista said, “are very brief and mostly list the guests he is to invite to each new meeting.” She showed me these and each of them gave a list of seven names, along with assurances that all was proceeding splendidly.

  “Always seven names,” I muttered.

  “What was that?” Julia queried.

  “Wait awhile,” I said, studying the lists. “Things are beginning to shape up.”

  “I love it when he’s like this,” Julia said.

  “He is communicating with his muse,” Callista affirmed.

  I ordinarily resent it when people talk about me as if I were not present, but this time I was too preoccupied to take umbrage. As the messages progressed according to Callista’s chronological table, the names of the senators and others got less safe. More prominent men began to show up, men known to have reservations about the trend of Roman politics, but not radical. Some names began to be repeated. These must have been the ones inclined to fall in with Fulvius’s crackpot scheme. I mentioned this to the two women.

  “That makes sense,” Callista commented.

  “The equites,” I said, “at least those whose names I recognize, are not in the banking or moneylending fraternity. Most seem to be members of prominent business families. These are probably men who have squandered their wealth and are in danger of being degraded from equestrian status.”

  “I notice,” said Julia, “that while some of these names are prominantly anti-Pompey or anti-Caesar, none are famously pro-Pompey or pro-Caesar.”

  “Very astute, my dear. No, these are mostly malcontents, those perpetually jealous of the great men but adhering to none of them. You may also notice that none of Cato’s patriotic little band are here either. And this despite the fact that Fulvius’s walls were decorated with their favorite historical patriots.”

  Julia thought about that for a moment. “Those men are veritable ancestor worshippers, but they are also against any sort of tyrant.”

  I put down the papers for a moment and gestured to a nearby slave, who refilled my rhyton. I no longer even noticed the resinous taste. My mind was working like one of those German ale vats, where little clumps of spirit-inspired particles swarm around like bees.

  “Do you recall what I told you about the wardrobe Hermes and I found in Fulvius’s house?” I looked around. “By the way, where is Hermes? I haven’t seen him all afternoon.”

  “He said he had to go locate some people, and he’d catch up to you later. As I recall you found some equestrian tunics, some senatorial tunics, a plain, white toga, and a toga praetexta.”

  “Very good. At the time this told me that the man had vaunting, presumptuous ambitions. He was ready to assume a seat in the Senate and curule office. What escaped me at the time was what was not there.”

  “This being?” Julia queried.

  “He had no toga candida and no toga trabea.” I caught Callista’s quizzical look and elucidated. “The candida is the specially whitened toga we wear when standing for office. The trabea is a striped robe worn by augurs and some orders of priesthood.”

  “He could have had the plain toga whitened,” Julia said.

  “That would have left him with no toga for everyday purposes: Senate meetings and sacrifices and such.” More and more in those days, Roman men were discarding the toga except for formal occasions.

  “So what do you deduce from this?” Callista wanted to know.

  “First of all, that he expected to get a Senate seat, and even curule office, without standing for election.”

  “Only a dictator can place a man in the Senate without election. At the very least it takes a vote of the full Senate.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why not a priestly robe?” Callista asked.

  “Most colleges of priesthood are filled by co-option. A priesthood is held for life. On the death of, say, an augur, the College of Augurs meets and votes in a new member. Likewise with most other priesthoods. A flamen can be appointed by a dictator, but they have to be patricians, and Fulvius didn’t qualify. Certain positions, such as Pontifex Maximus, are elective. But once elected, the pontificate is for life. The men behind Marcus Fulvius promised him a Senate seat and a curule office without having to stand for election. They couldn’t make him an augur or a pontifex, so they didn’t bother making the offer.”

  “So somebody intended to become dictator,” Julia said, “and Marcus Fulvius was going to help him do it. But who? Pompey’s supporters have been trying to get a dictatorship for him as long as I can remember, but Fulvius approached none of them.”

  “The Claudii Marcelli,” I said, “have been fomenting political hysteria in Rome. They’ve got everybody thinking that we are about to be tyrannized by either Caesar or Pompey. And they’ve been successful in this. Nobody seems to notice that Caesar is a prodigiously successful and ambitious but meticulously constitutional proconsul, and Pompey is a used-up old man content to rest on his laurels. They have us all drawing our swords against phantoms.”

  “And they planned to overthrow the government with a clown like this Fulvius?” Julia said, incredulous.

  “He’s just the one we’ve discovered,” I told her. “They didn’t put in this much planning, hire Aristobulus to concoct their code, and then kill Fulvius just to control one man to agitate among the debtors and malcontents. They must have other agents, probably far more important than Fulvius.”

  “You said something about there being seven names on each list,” Callista said. “What is the significance of this?”

  “The meetings were conventional dinner parties,” I explained. “His triclinium was set up for it, with all those patriotic paintings. The couches were arranged according to strict form, as to location and size. For centuries we’ve always followed the custom of nine at dinner. He would have adhered to that. Seven guests each time. Fulvius made eight. Who was the ninth man?”

  “This will bear some thought,” Julia said. “What did you learn at the baths?”

  I told them about my little foray, and what Sallustius had told me about the meeting he had attended at the house of Fulvius.

  “Sallustius was holding something back,” Julia said. “He didn’t give yo
u the names of the other attendees.”

  “Even Sallustius can be discreet at times. He knew that if he named names and I used this in a prosecution or denunciation, each of them would know which gathering it was and who had blabbed. That could mean death or permanent exile for him. And he went to only one dinner party, so he could not have known that one of the guests was a permanent fixture at these meetings. The significance would have escaped him.”

  Julia scanned the names, her lips forming each one as she read it, barely voicing them. “What other names do we not see on these lists, now that we are thinking in negatives? I don’t see either Curio or Manilius. These were written well before Curio declared for Caesar, and he was known for his indebtedness. Why not him? And Manilius was a tribune. Who better to rouse the mob against the moneylenders? They would have seemed natural targets for this scheme.”

  “I am not satisfied with Fulvia’s story that she had nothing to do with her brother while he was in Rome. She might have known about Curio’s defection ahead of time and told him. As for Manilius, he’s shown no signs of exceptional radicalism. Curio says the two of them cooperated during his tribuneship.”

  “There is the matter of that estate he suddenly came into,” Julia pointed out.

  “The Claudii Marcelli have plans, and some of them are even constitutional. It’s never a bad idea to have a Tribune of the People in your pocket. It’s done all the time.”

  “Or,” said Callista, “either one of them could have been the ninth man.”

  Julia smiled at her. “Now you’re beginning to think like a Roman.”

  “By next year,” I went on, spinning out my speculations, “or maybe the year after, I believe they intend to declare both Caesar and Pompey to be enemies of the state and get the Senate to name one of themselves dictator. That one will name one of the others his Master of Horse.”

  “How can they do that?” Julia said, heatedly.

  “I don’t know, but they will provoke Caesar in some fashion, offer him some insult that he can’t allow to pass. They want to force him into a move that they’ll be able to take before the Senate as proof that the state is under attack and call for an Ultimate Decree of the Senate.”