The Grove of the Caesars

by Lindsey Davis

  Falco had in fact sent for an amphora. Though he had not gone so far as to summon the legendary Faustian Falernian from our maritime villa near Ostia, he had collected a very drinkable Alban from Grandfather’s old house on the Janiculan. It was too soon to be stocking up for Saturnalia. Pa reckoned nectar would be needed tonight.

  I was nearly late. Idiocies held me up. First, when the fountain team appeared that morning, I had to deal with Sosthenes. Otherwise he would go ahead and we would be stuck for ever with a feature we would hate.

  “If we accept your fountain—for which, incidentally, you have provided no specification, no drawings and no estimate, so take note: I’ve never agreed anything—here’s my condition. I want it on the other wall.”

  Sosthenes said he would prepare a variation order. I snapped: nuts, I wasn’t the soft-hearted vigiles, having their supply maintained at public cost, I was a contractor’s wife. He knew what he could do with his talk of variations (which generally the client has to pay for). “Listen up, man. What I just said is your client brief. So, you will move that water pipe, at your cost, because you installed it without asking.”

  “You were not here.”

  “No excuse. And, Sosthenes, I want my courtyard left level this time.”

  He burbled about sight lines, as they do.

  “Forget that. In this house, we don’t give a stuff for people at the door. The only ones who matter will be having dinner with us. That will take place in our designated dining room, which is there.” I pointed. It was an empty room, but Tiberius had frequently spoken of its future with vision. “Our friends will be gazing out from their couches, looking across the courtyard with delight to our fountain which, do not argue with me, is going to be there!”

  Sosthenes caved in, but I heard him asking Gratus whether I had had some bad experience yesterday.

  * * *

  Next I had to interrogate dear Cousin Marcia about what she had been up to in my absence. After she had made a play for ignorance of why ever I could possibly be asking such a question, she admitted she had gone out with Suza, trying to visit Ovidius, the litigious scroll collector.

  “I told you not to.”

  “Oh, I thought you didn’t mean it. Never mind, he refused to see us. His slaves say he is a complete recluse.”

  “Don’t try again.”

  “No, Albia.”

  “I mean that.” I was hoping that, recluse or not, Marcus Ovidius would appear at the auction to bid on some scrolls. Assuming I ever got there, someone might point him out to me.

  “Oh, you are so grumpy. How does Tiberius Manlius ever put up with you?”

  I was missing Tiberius. Also, my conscience was pricking. I felt bad that we were selling these items, which he had never even seen—and selling them in his name, because his workmen had discovered them. Advice from the Didius auction house had been that to offer them as “pre-owned by a magistrate” would lend enough authority; they had a loose definition of provenance.

  Finally, I had my own professional tasks; I had to cross to the Raudusculana Gate area (the wrong direction from the auction) in order to report to my client, Cluventius. Calmer now, I would omit how I had raged at Ursus yesterday about lack of progress, and my threat to abandon the case.

  Ursus or Karus had already been to tell the Cluventii that if they had heard of any Transtiberina excitements yesterday it had been an unrelated domestic incident. This had been accepted. I was able to confirm firsthand what it had been about.

  Unfortunately, there was a reason why the Blandus love triangle barely disturbed my client. When I said the vigiles were holding a suspect, Quietus, although I had doubts it could ever stick, Cluventius reacted with a dire announcement: “Oh, no! They have the case wrapped up. Julius Karus told me himself: Quietus made a full confession to him, last night.”

  This was bad, yet no surprise. I replied quietly that if the suspect’s admission was true, I was very glad to hear it.

  Perhaps my feelings showed. To me, there was only one way Karus could have extracted this from Quietus: he had beaten him up. That meant this “confession,” though legally it would be deemed safe, solved nothing. The Pest would live on and keep killing.

  To my surprise, Cluventius did not accept the Karus version. He agreed: “Yes, it stinks. I would like you to continue your own enquiries.”

  He was a sharp man. He wanted the truth, for his wife’s sake. He could not be satisfied with the agent’s easy answers.

  There was still no need to mention how yesterday I had felt I was struggling so much against ineffectiveness that I had wanted out. Cluventius was my client; I liked him, his family and friends. Today I was ready to stick with them. I answered that I would need to tread very carefully—but until true justice had been done, I would keep investigating. Like Cluventius, I wanted to prove what had really happened. I wanted the real killer caught.

  “Are you sure, Flavia Albia?” Our professional relationship had swung around to the point where the client was worrying on my behalf. Smiling, I reassured him.

  On past experience, no one would let me see Quietus again; he would be a broken man. Officially, battering him would never be regarded as wrong, yet the physical results would stay hidden. The tortured man would only emerge from the station-house when he went to die. He would barely be able to totter across the arena when they pushed him out to meet his fate.

  Even if at that point he retracted, the Roman crowd would only erupt with jeers. Plenty of criminals crossed the sand for their meeting with the beasts while tied to low, wheeled platforms; often it was not due to their reluctance, but to too many broken bones. It was too late to plead innocence. That only made a convict’s sins seem worse; he was still brazenly lying, even after he had been condemned by our peerless legal system. Such a degenerate must be completely without conscience.

  Meanwhile, in the Transtiberina the real killer, still free, would sooner or later persecute more victims. Caesar’s Gardens would never be safe. The sacred Grove of Gaius and Lucius would be despoiled with yet more sacrilege.

  * * *

  Sometimes the best action is to ignore a problem temporarily. While I thought about what to do next for Cluventius, I took a few hours of respite at the sale of the buried scrolls.

  LVI

  “Smalls” day at the Saepta Julia. It was raining. The sale had been moved from the huge open-air courtyard into a corner under a colonnade, blocking passers-by. As they had to step out into the weather, they cursed loudly. The shops on that corner could not be easily accessed, so their owners were glaring out balefully. Even the walk-about snack-sellers looked depressed.

  Staff had set out the usual mismatched stools and chairs that were awaiting sale on a furniture day. Wise punters had brought their own cushions. Everyone sensible had a cloak, while dodgy ones hid their faces under hats. Most of any auction audience can be classified as shifty. Of course, people say the auctioneers are worse.

  It was the end of the year. Romans were deep in preparation for Saturnalia. While their enforced jollity did involve wondering what the heck they could give as a present to their awkward Auntie Livia, few would choose something to read. Her sight had gone, but that wasn’t the problem. Whatever you pick out for a grumpy old relative, she is bound to complain she has already read that one. So, it would be bath oil as usual.

  My father was selling someone’s library. He had cracked the Auntie Livia joke as part of his cheery patter, but it had not helped. The library had belonged to a man, now deceased, who had had every scroll he possessed re-copied neatly by one scribe, then he kept them all in matching scroll boxes, fastidiously labelled on identical tags. He had owned a collection of glorious world literature, but it now looked boring.

  Homer and Aristotle failed to reach their reserves. Fortunately, a small group of adventure novels livened things up, a common result of abduction by pirates or a visit to the moon. A flurry of interest in travelogues was followed by a deep trough of near rejection for comed
ic plays (Roman based on Greek), then a surge of bids for original Greek tragedies; one lot included what my father described, po-faced, as supposedly a piece of wick from Aeschylus’s oil lamp. “As is. Caveat emptor, as the proverb has it. No returns. Who’s read The Oresteia? Oh, we’ve got some clever ones in! All the parts, was it? Aeschylus, smart fellow, was the first writer to realise that if you write a trilogy, you will sell three times as much. But we only have one piece of his wick! Start me at a thousand…”

  Surprisingly, Father had five proxy bids on his book. Then more people in the colonnade vied fiercely. Some were dealers. This was what they had come for. The price went up like a comet, until that wizened bit of lambswool alone turned the library sale into a dazzler for the late owner’s daughters. At the end, everyone applauded. Although it was only mid-morning, Father took the sellers to lunch. They would be paying. Falco would not reappear.

  Gornia took over the gavel. He now sold a mixed batch of pendants, styli, strigils medals, and strange bits of military equipment. The bygones went for coppers, though coppers mount up. Then he offered a batch of lecture notes of Quintilian, the rhetoric teacher; these were in fact notes taken by someone in the audience at public lectures that Quintilian had given before he retired last year. That meant they were unreliable; moreover, Quintilian had complained. “The great man has very sweetly declared he assumes stealing his intellectual property is done out of affection for him. Now is your chance to acquire some fine material from the official tutor to the Emperor’s young heirs, sadly not autographed…” No, Quintilian would rather have sued for breach of copyright, but too many notes of his lectures had made it into the wide world.

  Gornia rattled through at speed, not because he used the “auctioneer’s chant” method to add urgency, but because his bladder wouldn’t last it out. We reached my scrolls, but he had to go. After he nipped off for relief, my cousin Cornelius, one of dopey Aunt Allia’s almost as dopey children, took over. I’d known him since he was eleven. He was now in his early twenties but unchanged: large, chubby, taciturn, with uncombed dark curls. Primarily a loner, he had a shy manner, though he knew what to do on the podium. Given a list of my scrolls, with descriptions, Cornelius worked through them even though, as I remembered, he was barely literate. He would have been coached in advance, helped by his excellent memory. People who cannot read or write, or not well, develop much practical intelligence, because they have to.

  I could have taken the gavel, but I really wanted to observe the audience. While Marcia demonstrated the lots, pointing to scrolls with antics that increasingly annoyed me, I acted as bid-catcher, collecting each final price in a note-tablet, with the name of its buyer. That meant they had to tell me who they were. I had the list of absentees’ bids as well. All useful.

  Prior advertising ensured we had drawn serious buyers. They were already keyed up after the library sale. Some, I knew, had been sent invitations, after names were suggested to Father by Tuccia from the Mysticus shop and other contacts. My man Donatus attended. Tuccia was missing, though I did recognise one of her staff, Tartus, the man with the pointed nose, like a triangle, whom I had talked to about Mysticus. Earlier, during the library sale, Donatus told me who some other interested parties were; he said we had not lured out Marcus Ovidius. We did have a couple of fervent collectors, plus agents who would act for people who could not, or did not want to, attend in person. Too shy to come, too secretive or, as Father hoped, too filthy rich.

  There was a distinct change in atmosphere once we reached the buried scrolls. Men who had been biding their time sat up. Snack-sellers drifted off to try their luck around the jewellery stores because no one would be wanting a lukewarm sausage here.

  On the podium, Cornelius began: “We follow with a number of scrolls of unknown provenance, offered today by a serving aedile, Tiberius Manlius Faustus. A well-respected man. I have to say that as he married my cousin…” Mild laughter. Cornelius could handle the crowd. “You may have heard he was struck by lightning for daring to have her…” Louder laughter. “Sorry, Albia!” I brandished a fist, so my bangles rattled. Guffaws. This crowd was easily entertained.

  “Get on with it!”

  “We are able to offer various scrolls with an ancient appearance, though we have been unable to verify their history. Buyers must make their own judgement. Usual terms will apply.” Marcia waved a document that was supposed to be our conditions of sale, though it looked as if it had been used to wrap butchers’ bones. “Our reader has put them into sets, although in some cases no author can be assigned.”

  First offered were a few scrolls or fragments that had had no title page. I had devised brief notes to identify these: “Extract from play, with accusatory Chorus”; “Cosmology, abstruse”; “Nutty theories”; “Recipe for game pie, not tested.” Even part-works and odd papyrus sheets were snapped up. Dealers bid relentlessly, but Donatus had told me they had clients with no critical discernment; they were just desperate for rare works to let people show off.

  Cornelius made a joke that we ought to have donated the recipe scrap to Xero’s pie shop. People seemed to know what he meant. Xero’s has a reputation.

  Now came accredited works. Fierce rivalry between two private collectors, plus Tartus from the Mysticus shop, drove up prices; Tartus must have been trusted with a substantial bag of denarii. Despite being dubious, with their authors unclassified in reliable catalogues and their papyrus perhaps too recent, Epitynchanus the Dialectician and Philadespoticus of Skopelos became hot stuff. Bibliomaniacs craved these things. Philadespoticus, with his single fragment, caused a frenzy. The three-cornered fight became so tense, Cornelius started to look nervous. He had one bidder whose way was to loll on the sidelines as if taking no interest; then, just when the gavel was about to fall, he would nod. A second man stayed head down over a note-tablet; immediately the first had bid, still without looking up he waved a higher figure. Tartus from the scroll shop leaned on a pillar. He looked as if the situation was a big joke—yet, with perfect timing, he coughed at Cornelius and acquired what he wanted. It was Tartus who bagged the Philadespoticus. The man who waved looked ready to disembowel him with a scroll rod.

  If the Mysticus shop was the source of the fakes, I could not see why Tartus had bid. The only possibility was that after Philly’s fragment had acquired a new history of sale by us, Tuccia could now offer it around for an even higher price. Our auction house was helping to make pieces more desirable. In future, the buried scrolls would be as “previously sold by the Didii,” actually gaining respectability from us … Mind you, nobody would ever say, “Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius, has read them and she reckons these are crap.”

  The fragment of Didymus Dodomos had been withdrawn from sale. Marcia had told me my father had decided that, in view of the previous incident, with the Dodecanese Doctrinalist nearly landing himself in court, we would not risk it. The fragment was still listed, however. People who might be interested would see we had it.

  I had a last-minute change of mind about Thallusa, the Greek poet. I noticed Donatus was after her half-damaged scroll, but I liked her work too much; I decided to keep it. At my signal, Cornelius looked quizzical, then declared a no-sale. With the Didius auction house, that meant no commission but it was allowed: the Didii are not shysters. Not to relatives. All right, but only occasionally.

  We did well. I could say more, but auctioneers don’t boast. You are supposed to pretend you look after everyone, buyers and sellers equally. You disclaim any interest in money. Never, says the code, show delight in your premiums.

  I hung around while payment and collection occurred. Cornelius bought up any leftovers from wandering sausage-sellers for him and the staff. We bribed the shop-owner whose premises had been blocked by our sale. A few unsold items were carried upstairs to the office, where tomorrow Father would curse them, using foul language if he was still hungover from his lunch today.

  I nobbled Marcia. “I’ve been thinking. Go back and talk to your frie
nds at the Writers’ Guild. See what they know about letter-writers, in case we can identify which one Alina used.”

  “Isn’t everyone dead in the love triangle?”

  “So the writers will thank you for bringing salacious gossip about that.”

  “Selling gossip’s your profession, is it, Albia?”

  “Just try. They are writers. Wear a low-necked tunic. Now get out of my way. I want to tell Gornia you were hopeless at demonstrating.”

  Marcia squealed, but Gornia agreed with my assessment of how she had shown the lots. I said if he could cope with a dancing boy, Galanthus might be suitable. He could make very elegant gestures, and he might see working at the Saepta as a safe haven. The old porter promised that the boy would be treated kindly. I would ask Galanthus whether he fancied a new life in antiques.

  During the final stages, one dealer wanted a word with me. He was middle-aged, with dry, crinkled hair. I had seen him buy very decisively from the library collection earlier today, then bid more selectively on our scrolls. When he talked he made short, chopping movements with both hands. What he talked to me about was Didymus Dodomos.

  “I act as agent for a collector who likes to stay out of the public eye.”

  “Do I gather he wanted the Didymus?”

  “I am to ask you about its provenance.”

  “The scrolls were found all together in a hoard. There is no history.”

  “May I look at your fragment?”

  “Yes. Can I ask you why?”

  “Could I take it away?”

  “No. Come clean. What is your interest?”

  “The man I represent…” He paused, making it significant. “… he is Marcus Ovidius.”

  I sighed. “I see. Ovidius wants to compare my scruffy piece with the scroll he once nearly bought from Mysticus?” Now that I had examined so many new “old” scrolls, I would like to compare them myself. Were they produced in the same workshop? If so, was it here in Rome? Had I even been there? “What has happened, may I ask, to the controversial scroll?”