Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery)

by Lindsey Davis

  The first two appear occasionally and are self-explanatory, but I spend a lot of time on the vigiles, who make a good fit with Falco.

  The vigiles

  Augustus established the vigiles as a fire brigade. All cooking, lighting and water-heating in Rome was carried out with naked flames. There were rules about leaving fires unattended, but compelling householders to obey rules was hopeless. As the vigiles patrolled the night-time streets looking for fires, they ran into numerous burglars so became the police force too.

  The force was paramilitary though neither uniformed nor armed. The vigiles’ life was harsh and dangerous. Most of them had been public slaves. They had signed up because eventually, if they survived, they earned honourable discharge as citizens. The official term was just six years. Soldiers in the legions serve at least twenty. There was a good reason for the short enlistment, and not many vigiles lasted the full term. [THF] Known as ‘espartos’ after the mats they used to smother fires, the vigiles were well equipped for fire-fighting with siphon-engines, buckets, ladders, axes and so forth.

  They were a scarred-looking crew, though most had affectionate mothers and one or two could even tell you who their fathers were. [SB]

  The fire engine was a gigantic tank of water pulled on a wagon. It had two cylinder pistons which were operated by a large rocker arm. As the vigiles worked the arm up and down – something they did with gusto when a crowd was watching – the pistons forced a jet of water up and out through a central nozzle. It had a flexible joint that could be turned through three hundred and sixty degrees. [TFL]

  Each cohort patrolled two administrative regions, with a headquarters in one region and an outstation in the other. Some are known to archaeologists, though not Petro’s Aventine outstation. A well-preserved Casa for the squad guarding the corn supply has survived at Ostia Antica. In these buildings the work might differ, but I imagine the atmosphere much as it is in police stations today – sometimes deserted because everyone is out, sometimes throbbing. In McBain’s words: Telephones rang and typewriters clattered and the place had the air of a thriving, if small, business concern.

  I don’t see the vigiles as ‘Dad’s Army’, but they have distinct colour, which I explore. They cannot parade with their gear highly polished, and insofar as they drill it consists of life-saving tips and equipment practice. They are reluctant to march. A vigiles salute is likely to be derisive. Neat lines don’t put out fires. If someone in the crowd had screamed for help, the Fourth would have shown themselves to be good men. But ceremonial was not their strength. [STH]

  Falco readers are expected to give unstinting loyalty to the Fourth Cohort, believing with Petronius that the rest are incompetent, corrupt, or idiots.

  The vigiles had investigators called quaestiones, which my ‘Watch Captain’, Petronius Longus, is; I wish now that I had found a more Roman title for him. Petro is often called to murders very early in the morning: They dump the corpse in the dark, then the dawn patrol discovers it at first light … [TTD] I have assumed enquiry methods were crude and brutal. Petronius and Sergius were teasing a statement out of a recalcitrant victim by the subtle technique of bawling fast questions while flicking him insistently with the end of a hard whip … They might close the case in a way that was traditional for the vigiles: find a suspect; say he did it; and if he really wants to get off, let him prove what really happened. [OB]

  The two homicide cops looked down at the body on the sidewalk. It was a hot night, and the flies swarmed around the sticky blood on the sidewalk …

  MC BAIN

  I show tension between the vigiles and informers, whom they regard as amateurs. It cuts both ways: Trust the vigiles; they have to invent a single hypothesis then prove it, whereas informers can cope with several ideas at once … [THF]

  In their work, the vigiles encouraged owners of premises to install fire protection and swooped on clothes thieves at the baths. They assisted aediles in regulating bars and brothels. The ‘undesirables’ they monitored included secret religions and anything involving magic – not just witches and astrologers, but mathematicians and philosophers. A running joke against Falco is that the secret lists include informers – a forerunner to making private eyes register.

  I have made Falco sympathetic to the vigiles’ situation: Sometimes the pressure and danger, and the sheer weight of despair, caused one of them to resign.The others became even more unsettled for a while. But normally they moaned a lot, got paralytic with an amphora, then carried on. Given their lousy pay and harsh conditions, plus the traditional indifference of their superiors, complaint seemed understandable … [TTD] Both he and I see them as slightly raffish; of their widows and orphans fund Falco says, They want the grateful widows to save their thanks for the right people – their late husbands’ colleagues. Some are good-looking girls who, being paupers, have to give their thanks in kind, poor dears … [AC] I base them on their modern counterparts: the patrol-car occupants Richard and I often saw parked up in a Rome side street while they waited for a call, untidy, with dangling fags, chatting up disreputable-looking women …

  In the detective squadroom of the 87th Precinct, the boys were swapping reminiscences about their patrolman days.

  Now you may quarrel with the use of the word ‘boys’ to describe a group of men who ranged in age from twenty-eight to forty-two, who shaved daily, who went to bed with various and assorted mature and immature women, who swore like pirates, and who dealt with some of the dirtiest humans since Neanderthal … There, was however, a spirit of boyish innocence in the squadroom in that dreary, rainy March day. It was difficult to believe that these men who stood in a fraternal knot around Andy Parker’s desk, grinning, listening in attentiveness, were men who dealt daily with crime and criminals. The squadroom, in effect, could have been a high school locker room.

  MC BAIN

  If you happen to get arrested, always find out the names of your guards. [VC]

  Torture

  Torture was a recognised part of the enquiry process, essential in the case of slaves. In The Accusers, Second Cohort vigiles accidentally kill a slave they are ‘examining’. I bet it happened.

  Torture consisted of applying hot flames to the soles of the feet, and using thumbscrews, pincers, and/or whipping. When Amicus is summoned to squeeze information from gangsters and witnesses in The Jupiter Myth, he also uses general deprivation (starvation) and psychological pressure (simple terror). Falco and Petronius deploy methods in Nemesis that I could only bear to hint at; I felt very squeamish about allowing these much-loved heroes to behave so cruelly but you’ll see that the scene has a definite point.

  Crime in Rome

  Crime, socially and in the streets, is a frequent subject for Roman writers. Some crimes – extortion by a provincial governor, knowingly selling a runaway slave, or wives’ adultery – are more their preoccupations than ours. Most is familiar: theft of different kinds, especially aggravated by violence; fencing stolen goods; rustling; embezzlement; forgery; abduction; rape; and of course murder. Anything to do with witchcraft or magic was particularly suspect. Poisoning included abortion. Having someone’s horoscope prepared – or simply possessing it – especially that of an emperor, implied that you wished them dead.

  Fraud and confidence tricks are regularly mentioned by satirists. Turius in Ode to a Banker and Lutea are hustlers: He would be able to build an extensive career preying on the rich widows of exotic commodity traders … The widows would get plenty out of it. I saw them playing dice with him, their beringed fingers flashing in the light of many lampstands, while they congratulated themselves on their cultured catch. Lutea would leave them flat broke; even so, they would remember him with few hard feelings. [AC]

  In my books, we see both crimes and their effect on people; people who sometimes become clients. Falco pities victims and considers their bereaved associates. Like Petronius, he can be deeply upset: It had been a terrible day.This was the true face of the Caesars’ marble city: not Corinthian
acanthus leaves and perfect gilt-lettered inscriptions, but a quiet man killed horrendously in the home and workplace he shared with his brother; a vicious revenge thrust on the one-time slave who had learned a respected profession then repaid his freedom and citizenship with a single act of assistance to the law. Not all the fine civic building programmes in the world would ever displace the raw forces that drive most of humankind. This was the true city: greed, corruption and violence … [TTD]

  Even when less despondent, Falco has strong views on motive, such as: So often it is the people who have who think they deserve more. Those who lack expect nothing else from life. [LAP] He is also aware of the domestic source of many murders. Nemesis opens with a discussion of this phenomenon. In Last Act in Palmyra Falco comments that a killer may be: someone you eat with; a man somebody probably sleeps with … Someone who has done you kindnesses, made you laugh, sometimes irritated you to Hades for no reason in particular. Someone, in short, just like all the rest in this company.

  Petronius rants at the ambiguity with which society – ours too – views the successful criminal: the ‘diamond geezer’ syndrome. A straight villain always respects a straight arrest. He’ll shrug and accept that he’s caught. But you self-justifying types have to make out that you cannot believe that anyone could so terribly misjudge you. You convince yourselves all that matters in civilised society is for men like you to continue your businesses without interference from officious sods like us. Sods who don’t understand. Only I do understand. I understand what you are all too well … [TTD]

  I am fascinated by street scams, which have a centuries-long history – for instance, the ‘craft-rig’ used by Gaius and Phlosis at Ostia, and the myriad petty crimes that Falco and Petronius take for granted in city life. Fusculus collects arcane terms – vocabulary invented by me because I cannot use English ‘canting’ that belongs to a much later period; we don’t know the Latin words for criminals like rat thieves and porch crawlers.

  Legal Procedure

  If you did something illegal, your fate depended on what it was and who you were. There was a system analogous to the modern British police caution/magistrates’ court/crown court hierarchy. The vigiles dealt with day-to-day crimes like street theft, burglary, or failure to have statutory fire equipment; they acted either at patrol level or more formally via the Prefect of Vigiles, or they sent repeat offenders and capital cases up a level to the Urban Prefect. Aristocrats could demand to be tried by the Senate, or might even try to wangle a private hearing with the Emperor (intra cubiculum – literally in his bedroom). Because a paterfamilias counted as chief magistrate in his own household, even serious matters could be dealt with at home. A domestic tribunal occurs in Nemesis, a story about families. Although the accused is not a relative, legal recourse is unavailable and the issue of justice concerns everyone present. (So does the risk, if the proposed action goes wrong.)

  The chief magistrate of Rome may be a blithering incompetent, but when the magistrate makes a pronouncement there is no appeal. [AC]

  Normally, as happens now in many legal systems, a pre-trial hearing before a magistrate determined whether a case went to court. Most important in my series is the court where Marponius lurks. The full title of the murders court is the Tribunal for Poisoners and Assassins. Poisoning is routinely associated with spells, potions and other foul magic. Assassins may be all kinds of murderers, including armed robbers. [AC] Juries had seventy-five members, free citizens drawn from each of the three ranks; they sat silent and voted in secret, though intriguingly it was possible to know the collective votes of each rank.

  It is surprisingly hard to find details of court procedures. In The Accusers, I did my best. There is the pre-trial hearing, the award of time for investigation and the right to speak first, the intricate process of selecting the judge: defendants are made up cosmetically to look distressed, an accused nearly fails to appear. We also have a prosecutor (Falco) in danger of a very serious penalty for dropping his case, even though new facts have emerged.

  Then as now, a court case involved theatricality, though the Romans were more open about it. Juries love a man who goes to the trouble of bad acting. [AC]

  Informers and Their Work

  For the Falco series, I suggest a kind of private eye existed. People called informers certainly did.

  Get yourself a proper job and earn some decent cash! [SB]

  Who Were Informers?

  ‘Yours is an unenviable job, Falco.’

  ‘Oh it has its attractions: travel, exercise, meeting new people from all walks of life …’ [SB]

  ‘The idea is that we obtain facts by our skill and cunning.’ I left out theft, bribery and fraud. ‘Then in order that we can make a living, other people pay us for those facts.’ [LAP]

  He [Anacrites] wore a neutral-coloured tunic with faintly rakish styling, close-fitting boots, and a hard leather belt. Hung on the belt were a small purse, a large note tablet, and a set of nail files to keep him occupied if he ever needed to lean against an Ionic column for hours observing a suspect. Someone must have been giving him lessons. He had the classic informer’s look: tough, slightly truculent, perhaps amiable if you got to know him, a curious and faintly unreliable sort of character … [THF]

  So what was an informer, a delator? Their pedigree goes back at least to the Greeks; Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds, source of ‘Cloud-cuckoo-land’, has an informer, who flies about the Greek islands handing out subpoenas.

  INFORMER: Wings – I need them for my job. I’m a summoner, an informer you know. I work the islands.

  PEISTHETAERUS: A noble profession. I congratulate you.

  INFORMER: Rigging up prosecutions and so on …

  PEISTHETAERUS: And is this how you earn your living? A young man like you, with nothing better to do than go round laying information against foreigners?

  INFORMER: What else can I do?

  PEISTHETAERUS: There are lots of respectable jobs a man like you could do. You could earn an honest living instead of hanging around the lawcourts all the time.

  ARISTOPHANES

  An excellent book by Steven H. Rutledge discusses the First Century informer: He is one who is a fierce opportunist, a ruthless careerist who will climb to the top and create peril for all who cross his path, who disregards danger to himself, who gains access to the princeps’ ear. He is lowborn, advances from poverty to wealth, and is a threat to those of high rank. In short, delatores constitute a negative social category, often based on the social and political prejudices, as well as the status-conscious nature of Roman society; it was a way Romans communicated with one another concerning perceived abuses of the legal system and of political privilege as well. Falco is acutely aware of informers’ behaviour under Nero and of why, therefore, the public despise them: Those vermin skulking behind temple pillars to overhear unguarded comments from the pious, or even using private conversations at dinner parties to betray their last night’s hosts. The political parasites who, before Vespasian purged public life, had put fear into the whole Senate. The slugs who had empowered bad emperors’ favourites, and oiled the jealousies of worse emperors’ mothers and wives … [PG] Late in my series, at the start of The Accusers, Falco says: I had been an informer for over a decade when I finally learned what the job entailed … Then we see the traditional version.

  Who’s next? An informer.

  He turned in his noble patron,

  And soon he’ll have gnawed away that favourite bone of his,

  The aristocracy. Lesser informers dread him, grease

  His palm with ample bribes, while the wives of trembling actors

  Grease him the other way.

  JUVENAL

  But initially, instead of making him a full-time prosecutor, I devised Falco from scratch rather differently. Shedding a putrid body from the Censor’s list of citizens was up to standard for my work. It was unhygienic, irreligious, and put me off my food … In my time I had operated for perjurers, petty bankrupts and frau
ds. I swore court affidavits to denounce high-born senators for debauchery so gross that even under Nero it could not be covered up. I found missing children for rich parents who would better abandon them and pleaded lost causes for widows with legacies who married their spineless lovers the very next week – just when I had got them some money of their own. Most of the men tried to dodge off without paying, while most of the women wanted to pay me in kind. You can guess which kind; never a sweet capon or a fine fish. [SB]. We know Falco has experience of tracing lost children; however, his response to Albia’s plea to find her family is glum: It was always the most painful question an informer could be asked. Either you cannot trace the missing ones, and you never stood a chance of doing so, or you do find them and it all goes badly wrong. I had never known a good outcome. I refused to handle such requests from clients any more. [JM]

  It was important to establish Falco as a recognisable fiction genre type. Raymond Chandler discussed this, seeing him as: a lonely man, a poor man, a dangerous man, and yet a sympathetic man … I think he will always be awakened at some inconvenient hour by some inconvenient person to do some inconvenient job. It seems to me that is his destiny, possibly not the best destiny in the world, but it belongs to him. This is certainly true of Falco’s life on the Aventine when we first meet him. It fits comfortably with the Roman Stoic’s attitude: Such is more or less the way of the wise man: he retires to his inner self, is his own company. So long in fact as he remains in a position to order his affairs according to his own judgement, he remains self-content even when he marries, even when he brings up his children. Falco says, half joking, We informers are tough men. Our work is grim. When not treading a solitary path we like to be surrounded by other grim, tough men who feel that life is filthy but that they have mastered it. [STH]