SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  “You are Draco of the Samnite School, are you not?” Caesar said. The trainer nodded. I knew the name, of course, it had been famous for years, but I had never seen him without his helmet. “You had ninety-six victories when I left Rome ten years ago.”

  “One hundred twenty-five when I retired, master, and five munera sine missione.” Allow me to explain this term, which has fallen out of use. Before they were forbidden by law, munera sine missione were special Games in which as many as a hundred men fought until only one was left on his feet, sometimes fighting in sequence, sometimes all against all. This man had survived five such, besides his one hundred twenty-five single combats. This may help to explain why I prefer that such men be confined except when employed in their official public capacity. While we waited for Statilius, Draco and Julius chatted about the Games, with the swordsman predictably lamenting the sorry state to which the art of mortal combat had fallen since his day.

  "In the old days,” he said, smiting his chest with his fist and making the scales rattle, “we fought in full armor, and it was a contest of skill and endurance. Now they fight with the breast bared and the fights are over before they fairly begin. Soon, they will just push naked slaves out into the arena to kill one another with no training at all. There’s no honor in that.” It has been my observation that even the most degraded of men have some notion of honor which they cling to.

  Statilius arrived, accompanied by a man in Greek dress who wore a fillet around his brow, plainly the school’s resident physician. Statilius was a tall man, dressed in a decent toga. He introduced the physician, who rejoiced in the grandiose name of Asklepiodes. Briefly, I asked Statilius about Marcus Ager.

  “You mean Sinistrus? Yes, he was here for a while. Just a third-rate daggerman. I sold him a couple of years ago to someone looking for a bodyguard. Let me consult my records.” He hurried off to his office while Caesar and I conversed with the trainer and the physician.

  The Greek studied my face for a moment and said: ”I see you’ve been in battle against the Spaniards.”

  “Why, yes,” I said, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “That scar,” he said, indicating a jagged line along the right side of my jaw. It’s still there, and has plagued my barbers for the sixty years since I received it. “That scar was made by a Catalan javelin.” The Greek folded his arms and waited to receive our awestruck applause.

  “Is it true?” Julius asked. “When was that, Decius? Sertorius’s rebellion?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “I was a military tribune in the command of my uncle, Quintus Caecilius Metellus. If something hadn’t attracted my attention and made me turn my head, that javelin would have gone right through my face. All right, Master Asklepiodes, how did you guess?”

  “I did not guess,” the Greek said smugly. “The marks are there to see, if one knows what they mean. The Catalan javelin has a serrated edge, and that scar was made by such an edge. It traveled at an upward angle. The Catalans fight on foot, and this gentleman is clearly of a rank worthy to go into battle on horseback. Furthermore, he is of the right age to have served as a junior officer in the campaigns of Generals Pompey and Metellus in Spain of a few years ago. Hence, the gentleman was wounded in Spain in recent years.”

  “What’s this?” I said, vastly amused. “Some new form of sophistry?”

  “I am compiling a work describing the infliction and treatment of every imaginable warlike injury. With my staff of surgeons, I have worked and studied in the ludi of Rome, Capua, Sicily and Cisalpine Gaul. I have learned more in this way in a few years than twenty years with the legions could have taught me.”

  “Most sagacious,” Caesar said. “In the arena fights, you get to see the effects of many kinds of foreign weapons without having to take the time and trouble to visit all those places in time of war.”

  This discussion was interrupted by the return of Statil-ius. He held some scrolls and wax tablets and proceeded to display them to us.

  “Here is what you want.” He opened the tablets and unrolled the scrolls. There was the bill of sale, stating that Statilius had bought a healthy Gallic slave who had all his teeth and was about twenty-five years of age. His name was something unpronounceable and he had been given the slave-name Sinistrus. Another scroll held the man’s school and amphitheater records. He had shown little aptitude for the sword and spear, and had been enrolled in the Thracian School as a dagger fighter. His record in the arena had been undistinguished except for his survival: a couple of wins, two adjudged ties and three defeats in which he fought well enough to be spared. He was wounded frequently.

  One tablet was a record of a sale to the steward of one H. Ager. There was much official documentation to go with the transfer of ownership. I remembered that that had been a year of the slave rebellion, and the sales of slaves, especially males of military age, had been under severe restrictions. While I studied the documents, Caesar proceeded to ingratiate himself with Statilius, spoke of his future aedile-ship and asked for “something different” in the way of combats for the Games he intended to sponsor. Five years later, I was to witness this “something different,” and it was to be the biggest sensation in the history of the Games.

  “Here’s where he got his freedman’s name,” I remarked. “With your permission, Lucius, I would like to keep these for a while, until my investigation is finished. This is a trivial business, so I should be able to return them by one of my freedmen in a few days.”

  “Please feel free,” Statilius said. “Now that I won’t be buying him back, I’d probably just destroy the records, except for the bill of sale, in any case.”

  We bade goodbye to Statilius and the Greek and retraced our steps toward the Forum, I to check the records at the Grain Office and Caius Julius to continue his politicking. It seemed that even this item of dull routine was to be interrupted. A Senate messenger was standing on the base of the rostra, scanning the passing throng. He must have had eagle eyes, for he spotted me almost as soon as I entered the Forum along the Via Capitolinus. He hopped to the pavement and ran up to me.

  “Are you not Decius Caecilius Metellus of the Commission of Twenty-Six?”

  “I am,” I said resignedly. The arrival of such a messenger always portended some unpleasant task.

  “In the name of the Senate and People of Rome, you are summoned to an extraordinary meeting of the Commission of Three in the Curia.”

  “No rest for one on the business of Senate and People,” said Caius Julius. I took my leave of him and made my way the short distance to the Curia. With the Senate messenger preceding me, nobody sought to detain me for conversation.

  I have always felt a certain awe for the Curia. Within its ancient brick walls had occurred the debates and the intrigues that had brought us victory over Greeks, Carthaginians, Numidians and a score of other enemies. From the sacred precincts had issued the decisions and orders that had changed Rome from a tiny village on the Tiber into the greatest power in the world that borders the inland sea. I am quite aware, naturally, that it is also a sewer of corruption and that the Senate has brought Rome to near-ruin at least as often as it has decided nobly and wisely, but I still prefer the old system to that currently, and I hope temporarily, prevailing.

  The great Senate chamber was empty and echoing, unoccupied except for the bottom row of seats, where sat my two colleagues on the Commission of Three, and beside them Junius, the Senate freedman who acted as secretary. As always, Junius had stacks of wax tablets beside him and a bronze stylus tucked behind his ear.

  “Where have you been?” asked Rutilius. He was Commissioner for the Trans-Tiber district, a cautious and conventional man. “We’ve been waiting since the second hour.”

  “I was sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter and then conducting an investigation into a murder in my district. How was I to know an extraordinary meeting was called? What has happened that requires such prompt attention?”

  “What murder?” asked Opimius. He was my ot
her colleague, in charge of the Aventine, Palatine and Caelian districts. He was a supercilious little climber who came to a bad end several years later.

  “Just some freed gladiator who was found strangled this morning. Why?”

  “Forget the scum for the moment,” Rutilius said. “There is a matter demanding your immediate attention. You’ve heard about the fire down near the Circus last night?”

  “Who talks of anything else this morning?” I said, annoyed. “We’re Police, not Fire Control. What has the fire to do with us?”

  “The fire started in a warehouse on the river. There is every appearance of arson present.” Opimius spoke with the indignation which Romans reserve for fire-raisers. Treason is treated much more leniently. This was serious, indeed.

  “Please go on,” I said.

  “The fire, of course, was in my district,” Opimius continued, “but it seems that the owner of the warehouse lived in the Subura.”

  "Lived?” I said.

  “Yes. A messenger sent to notify the man of the fire found him in his lodgings, dead. Stabbed.”

  “Peculiar, isn’t it?” said Rutilius. “Junius, what was the fellow’s name?”

  Junius glanced at one of his tablets. “Paramedes. An Asian Greek from Antioch.”

  “Just a moment,” I said, sensing a chance to shift the whole business to someone else. “If the man was a foreigner, this case properly belongs to the Praetor Peregriniis.”

  “There seem to be complications,” Opimius stated, “that hint of a certain”—he made wavy gestures with his hands—"delicacy to the affair.”

  “It has been determined,” Rutilius said, “that the investigation should be carried out at a lower level, with as little public disturbance as possible.” It was plain that ours was not the first meeting to be held that day. Some very frantic conferences had been convened uncommonly early in the morning.

  “And why all this intrigue?” I asked.

  “There are international implications here,” Rutilius explained. “This Paramedes, or whatever his name was, was not just the importer of wine and oil that he pretended to be. It seems that he also had contacts with the King of Pontus.” That was indeed something to ponder. Old Mithridates was a thorn in the Roman side and had been for many years.

  “I take it that the fellow’s been under investigation for some time. Who’s been in charge of the investigation? If I must handle this, I’ll want to see all the records and documents that have been compiled on this man to date.”

  “Ah, well,” Opimius said, and I feared the worst. “It seems, ah, that, since these matters touch on state security, those documents have been declared secret. They are to be put under Senate seal and deposited for safekeeping in the Temple of Vesta.”

  “Are you serious?” I barked. “Am I really expected to conduct an investigation while important evidence is withheld from me?”

  My colleagues found something of absorbing interest on the Curia ceiling and studied it intently. Obviously, there was only to be the form of an investigation, not its substance. State security! The meaning was clear: Senatorial reputations were at stake, and the most junior member of the elected government was being sent out to sweep the whole untidy mess into a dark room and close the door after it.

  “We serve the Senate and People of Rome,” Rutilius said, when I had calmed a bit.

  “Exactly,” I said. “All right, Junius, tell me whatever scraps of information I am permitted to know.”

  “The late Paramedes of Antioch,” Junius droned, “was an importer of wine and olive oil and owned a large warehouse, now incinerated, on the Tiber, near the Circus.”

  “Wait,” I interjected as he paused for breath. “If he was a foreigner, he couldn’t have owned property in the city outright. Who was his citizen partner?”

  “I was just coming to that,” Junius sniffed. “As title holder for his city property, Paramedes had as partner one Sergius Paulus, freedman.”

  That was more like it. That man Junius so blithely dismissed as S. Paulus, freedman, was one of the four or five richest men in Rome at that time. Paulus, once a slave of an illustrious family, had risen to the position of steward while in servitude. Upon his master’s death, he was willed his freedom and a generous sum of money. With this stake, he had put his freedman’s expertise to work and made many shrewd investments, quickly multiplying his wealth. At this time, he owned so many farms, ships, shops and slaves that there was really no way to calculate his wealth, except that it was fairly certain that he was not quite as rich as General Marcus Licinius Crassus, who was as rich as a Pharaoh.

  “What’s a moneybags like Paulus doing in partnership with a petty Greek importer?” I wondered aloud.

  “No opportunity for making money is too small for base cash-breeders like Sergius Paulus,” Opimius said with contempt. No patrician, no plebeian noble, can match the snobbery of a jumped-up commoner like Opimius.

  “I’ll call on him this afternoon,” I said. “Junius, be so good as to send a Senate messenger to the house of Paulus and tell him to expect me. Do you think I could pry a lictor loose to accompany me?” Nothing impresses a Roman with one’s power and gravitas more than a lictor bearing the fasces. It is truly amazing how a simple bundle of rods tied about an ax can invest a simple mortal with the majesty and might of the Senate, the People of Rome and all the gods of the Pantheon.

  “They’re all assigned,” Junius said. I shrugged. I’d just put on my new toga and hope for the best. The meeting broke up. Opimius was to get a full report on the fire, which was, of course, in his district. I was to look into the murder of Paramedes, which had occurred in my district, and call upon Sergius Paulus, who likewise lived in my district. Rutilius was going to flee back to the Trans-Tiber and hope that none of this would touch him.

  I cursed piously as I left the Curia. I would loiter a few minutes to allow the messenger time to reach Sergius’s house, then proceed there myself, stopping at my house on the way to change into my new toga. It would be a long trudge and I would have to forgo my customary bath and midday meal. It was not shaping up into a good day. There had been days when I had had to investigate ten murders before noon, but a hundred ordinary homicides were preferable to one which involved high personages.

  There was also the little matter of my career, which could come to an abrupt and premature end should I mishandle this matter. So, I reflected, could my life.

  2

  THE HOUSE OF SERGIUS PAULUS stood on a back street in the Subura, flanked by a pair of tremendous tenements. I was resplendent in my new toga, whitened with fuller’s earth and only a little dirtied by my progress through Rome’s unsanitary winter streets.

  The janitor conducted me into the atrium and I studied the decorations while a slave ran to fetch the master. In contrast to the squalid streets outside, all within was rich and sumptuous. The mosaics were exquisite, the lamps were masterpieces of the bronze-worker’s art, the walls were covered with frescoes superbly copied from Greek originals. All the stone in evidence was fine marble and the roof-beams smelled of cedar.

  I had not expected this. While it is true that freedmen often possess great riches, they seldom have taste commensurate with their wealth. I speculated that Paulus had had the sense to buy a good Greek decorator, or perhaps he had a wellborn and educated wife.

  Sergius himself arrived with commendable promptness. He was a portly man with a round, hospitable face. His tunic was of plain cut, but its material and dye probably cost more than my whole house and its contents and, probably, its occupants.

  “Decius Caecilius Metellus, how honored I am to make your acquaintance!” He grasped my hand and his grip was firm despite the pudginess of his hand. His palm had never suffered manual labor or practice of arms. “You look starved. I know you must be here because of that terrible business this morning, but do let me offer you a bite of lunch before we get down to serious matters.” I accepted gladly and he led me through his lavish peristyle and into the dini
ng room. There was something instantly likable about the man.

  I realize that this may sound strange coming from a member of the nobility, a class with a traditional contempt for the new-rich who have made their wealth from commerce and speculation, instead of decently through inheritance, but in this as in many another attitude, I have always differed from the general run of my class. My beloved Rome is made up of a multitude of human types, and I have never sought to banish any of them from my company on a basis other than personal behavior or poor character, or, sometimes, because I simply didn’t like them.

  Sergius’s “bite of lunch” consisted of a banquet that would have done the Senate proud at the reception of a new ambassador. There were pickled peacocks’ tongues and sows’ udders stuffed with Libyan mice, deep-fried. There were 1ampreys, oysters, truffles and other rare, exotic delicacies in endless profusion. Whoever handled Sergius’s interior decoration did not moderate his table. It was ostentatious and vulgar and utterly delicious. I did my noble best to do justice to the meal, but Sergius, a notable trencherman, surpassed me easily. Father would have been shocked. The wines were as lavish as the food, and by the end of the meal I was most unprofessionally jovial.

  “Now,” I began, “the matter touching which the Senate has sent me here to make inquiry about.” I stopped abruptly and repeated the sentence mentally, to see whether it made any sense.

  “I won’t hear of it,” Sergius protested. “I would be a poor host were I not to offer you a bath. After all, your business is detaining you from attending the public baths. It happens that I have a modest bath right here in the house. Would you care to join me?”

  Nothing loath, I followed him to the rear of the house. A pair of sturdy slaves flanked each of us to prevent accidents. They seemed well-drilled in the art of getting master and guests from table to bath without unpleasantness. Bath attendants divested us of our clothing at the entrance of the bath. Predictably, Paulus’s “modest bath” proved as much of an understatement as his “bite of lunch.” Private baths were still rare in those days, but since they are now common I will not bore you with an account of its size and appointments, except to note that the bath attendants were all young Egyptian girls. Sergius was making up for his years as a slave in great style.