SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Spain, you say?” I mused, speaking half to myself.

  “Truly, most of the sea west of Sicily. This is a mere nuisance, since the great bulk of all trade and shipping, perhaps as much as ninety percent, is to the east of Rome. After all, what great cities exist in the West since the destruction of Carthage? Only Rome. To the east, there are many great cities and rich islands, all in relatively close proximity. There you will find Antioch, Alexandria, Pergamum, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Crete and Cyprus, Rhodes and all the other islands. That is where the commerce is, and so therefore that is where the pirates are most numerous and best organized.”

  “But to the west,” I persisted, “there are independent fleets. Are these numerous or powerful?”

  Zabbai made a very eloquent gesture of the hands, indicating the mutability of all matters pertaining to human affairs. “It is not as if these things were established by constitution, or even by guild rules or the solemn agreements of a consortium of businessmen. These pirates are individualistic and whimsical in the extreme. A group of them will decide to cruise off such and such a stretch of coast, while others will insist upon betaking themselves to a strait between two islands, fancying that the commercial traffic there will be especially heavy and rich in this season. There is no formal arrangement of fleets.”

  “And how do they decide where they want to cruise?” I asked.

  “They may have any of a number of reasons. Dreams and omens play a part, or they may consult one of the sibyls. Or they may have harder information, bought from the factors of shipping merchants. It is best not to speak too far in advance of the sailing season where one’s servants may overhear.”

  It is a well-known fact that Romans hate the sea. Usually when we need a fleet, we levy one from the Greek allies, put a Roman officer in command and call it a Roman fleet. It is odd that a peninsular people should be so hydrophobic, but there it is. We are also dunces when it comes to commerce, which we perceive as Graeco-Oriental, and faintly disreputable. Respectable wealth comes only from land, agriculture and warfare. The city subsisted on plunder taken in war and tribute levied on the defeated. Our idea of a great financier was the likes of Crassus, who grew rich through extortion. I made a mental note to learn more about these things, even if they were rather un-Roman.

  “A few years ago,” I said, “you may recall that General Sertorius, who was still in rebellion against Rome, entered into certain treasonous relations with King Mithridates of Pontus. He supplied that monarch with ships and some officers. Did these Western pirates act as intermediaries in this process?”

  Zabbai’s eyes went wide at the obviousness of the answer, but he replied politely. “And how could it be otherwise? To those who have their business on the sea, it was common knowledge that Mithridates sent his request through the pirate chief Djed, and that the accomplice of Sertorius was the equally illustrious sea-brigand Perseus. Djed is an Egyptian and Perseus, I believe, hails from Samothrace. These pirates are a cosmopolitan lot, and men of every maritime nation are to be found among their crews.”

  “I am curious,” I said. “Just how does one go about contacting these pirates? They seem to have no permanent abode; they do not maintain embassies in the various nations of the world. If one has business with them, as did Sertorius and, later, Spartacus, how would one let it be known to them?”

  “As I have intimated,” Zabbai said, “they are businessmen. They deal in large quantities of goods, most prominently the great lots of slaves they must sell every year. In order to facilitate the sale and transfer of these goods, they maintain business agents in all the major port cities.”

  I was stunned. “You mean there is a pirate agent operating in Ostia?”

  “Oh, but of a certainty. Also in Rome.”

  “In Rome?”

  “Rome is, after all, where many of the wealthiest buyers are to be found,” he pointed out reasonably.

  “Could you tell me the name of the current agent here in Rome?”

  “I wish that I could. Unfortunately, the last agent died and a new one has not yet arrived.”

  “And who was the deceased agent?” I asked.

  “An importer of wine and olive oil named Paramedes of Antioch.”

  Zabbai must have assumed that I was rather befuddled as I took my leave of him shortly thereafter. However, he was unfailingly polite and insisted that I accept a guest-gift. It was a scarf of saffron-colored silk, nearly two feet square, strong as armor and light as a breath. Since the silk seemed to be unadulterated, it was a gift rich enough to be construed as a bribe, but Zabbai had no cause to bribe me. I decided that he was foresightedly building up goodwill with one who might have a political future. His help and the gift had certainly made me well-disposed toward him, so he must have known what he was doing.

  Now I had another link. The late Paramedes had been an agent for the Mediterranean pirates. What else was there that I did not know about this humble Asian-Greek importer? Certainly the hospitable Sergius Paulus had not mentioned any such embarrassing connection. Yet he had been Para-medes’s sponsor, so he must have been dipping his spoon into so rich a bowl.

  I began to feel profoundly melancholy. The way the Senate had put obstacles in the way of my investigation indicated a foul stew of corruption at the very highest levels. I should not have been surprised. Indeed, I was not surprised. Intrigue, infighting and bribery had been the rule rather than the exception for the past two generations, and the Senate remained a sink of crime and self-seeking despite the periodic attempts by Censors to weed out the worst elements. But Censors are only appointed every fifth year, and they have only a year of power before they must step down. The evil proliferated at a far greater rate than such methods could deal with.

  I walked down to the docks and sat on a great wooden bollard, staring out into the swirling, muddy water as if seeking omens there. As painful as the thought was, I had to admit to myself that the Senate was obsolete.

  Our system of assemblies with the Senate at the top, with its quaestors, its aediles, its praetors and Consuls and Censors and tribunes of the people, had been a fine arrangement for the city-state that Rome had once been, when every man was a farmer-soldier. The Centuriate Assembly had once been the annual war-hosting where, since every free citizen was present, it was a convenient time to take a vote on matters of public importance. In those days most citizens were farmers or craftsmen. Slaves were rare and free idlers were rarer still. We had dealt honestly with one another and with the neighboring nations.

  Now all was changed. It was wealth that got a man into the Senate, not selfless public service. Our generals made war for the sake of loot, not to protect the Republic, and where once Rome had been esteemed everywhere as an ally faithful to treaty obligations, always ready to defend the liberties of a neighboring state, now she was feared as a rapacious predator.

  Cicero’s famous prosecution of Verres had brought out a telling point. In the course of the trial, a former colleague of Verres had quoted him on his philosophy of administration when he was in the process of looting Sicily. He had said that the profits of his first year he would keep to enrich himself, the second would go to enrich his friends and the third would be for his jury. It was a sign of the times that most people took this as excellent wit rather than as a shocking comment on the quality of Roman provincial administration.

  Still, all was not totally lost. The Sicilians had asked Cicero to represent them in court because they had been very pleased with the honesty of his own tenure of office on that island. And Sertorius, despite his excessive loyalty to the Marian cause and his unforgivable raising of rebellion against Rome, had been an administrator of true genius. Of Lucullus’s excellent handling of the Asian cities I have already written.

  So what was to be done? The old Roman spirit and virtues were still there, even though the citizen body was now a minority, sitting on top of an enormous mass of slaves. There were still good men who could restore the good name of the Republic, although it m
ight require a reform of our governmental system more severe than anything Sulla had ever dared. In the meantime, those charged with such duties must root out the criminals, high or low. That was my task.

  I rose from my bollard and saw that the sun was past its zenith. It was time for the baths. Then I would seek out dinner. Darkness came early at this time of year, and when darkness fell, the strange little Chrysis would come to fetch me to Claudia.

  I began to walk toward the Forum, feeling lighter with each step.

  6

  OTHER CITES GROW QUIET WITH the coming of darkness, but the early hours of the night are the noisiest in Rome. This is because, with only minor exceptions, wheeled traffic is forbidden during the hours of daylight. With the fall of night, innumerable wagons and carts come rolling through the gates. These bear farm produce for the morning markets, fodder for the Circus horses, building materials for the incessant construction projects, charcoal and wood for the fires, sacrificial birds for the temples and so on. Some wagons arrived empty. These were headed for the docks, to be loaded with the goods brought upriver from Ostia. Above Rome the Tiber is no longer navigable for the larger vessels, so it is the transshipment point for goods going inland.

  During these hours, the streets of Rome are clangorous with the clash of metal tires on paving-stones, the indescribable squeal of crude wooden wheels on the axles of farm carts, the profane shouts of the teamsters, the groans of harnessed slaves, the lowing of oxen and the braying of asses. Silence came only after midnight.

  As the great carts rumbled by my door, I waited impatiently for Chrysis to show herself. Nervous and unsettled, I cast about for something to do in order to while away the time. A walk through the dark streets of Rome was not without risk, so I thought I had better arm myself. It was strictly forbidden to bear arms within the city, but most prudent men did, anyway.

  I opened the lid of my arms-chest and examined its contents. Cato kept my weapons and armor clean and oiled against those calls to military service that are the duty of every Roman in public life. In the chest were my crested bronze helmet, the glittering bronze cuirass and greaves that I wore for parade, also my field armor of iron Gallic mail. I picked up my long sword for mounted fighting and my short sword for foot combat. Both were keen and of the highest quality, but they were rather too large to carry thrust beneath a tunic. The broad-bladed pugio was a more practical weapon, with its double-edged blade eight inches long. I tucked the sheathed weapon inside my tunic beneath the belt; then something on the bottom of the chest caught my eye. I reached in and brought up a tangled mass of leather strapping and bronze.

  It was a pair of caesti. Pugilism is the silliest of all combat arts. It consists of taking the human hand, with its multitude of tiny, frangible bones, and smashing it against the human skull, a most unyielding target. The old Greeks had alleviated the damage to their hands somewhat by inventing caesti, which in the beginning were mere straps of hide wrapped around the hands and forearms. Later, this dull sport had been livened up by the addition of bits of bronze on the striking surface. Later yet, plates were added. My pair were of the formidable Macedonian type called murmekes, also known as “limb-smashers.” These were reinforced with a thick strap of bronze across the knuckles. This in turn sported four pyramidal spikes, each a half-inch long. I had won these in a game of knucklebones during my army service, and had lugged them around with me ever since. At last, I thought, I might find a use for them. I dropped one back in the chest and from the other stripped the complicated forearm-straps, retaining only the part that wrapped around knuckles and palm. This I dropped into my tunic on the other side, so that I could slip it onto my left hand as I drew my dagger with my right.

  Minutes after I had thus armed myself, Cato came in to tell me that a woman awaited outside. I ignored his reproachful look as I hurried out to join her. We had to wait for an immense hay-wagon to rumble and screech its way by before we could speak.

  “Please come with me, sir,” she said. She was veiled, but nothing could disguise that insinuating voice or the snakelike way her body moved. There was sufficient moonlight, reflected from the whitewashed walls, to see fairly well.

  I had flattered myself that I knew every street in Rome, but she soon had me in an unfamiliar area only a few minutes’ walk from my door. Truthfully, no person may truly know all of Rome. The city is large, and areas are leveled by fires or land speculators and rebuilt along new lines. This was an area of insulae, the new type of housing that had come into use as the expanding city crowded up against its ancient walls and there was no way to expand except upward. Five, six, even seven stories high towered these structures. The well-to-do had their apartments on the ground floor, where there was running water. The upper floors were occupied by the poor. These buildings had an unnerving habit of collapsing abruptly because of shoddy materials and inferior workmanship. The Censors kept passing laws regulating building standards, which the contractors persisted in flouting.

  The faint light disappeared as we entered this district, for the insulae were so tall, and the streets so narrow, that the moon could only cast its rays from directly overhead, a period of only a few minutes each night.

  Perhaps I should explain that in those days we had three types of streets in Rome. The itinera were only wide enough for people on foot. The acta were called “one-cart” streets because they were just wide enough to permit vehicular traffic. The viae were known as “two-cart” streets because it was possible for carts to pass one another on them. In those days, there were precisely two viae in all of Rome, the Via Sacra and the Via Nova, neither of which served the Subura. It is not much better now. Our Roman roads are the marvel of the whole world, but they begin outside the city gates. The streets of Rome are nothing more than our old rustic paths paved over. Visitors from Alexandria are always shocked.

  Twice we saw wealthy men returning from late dinner parties, accompanied by torch-bearing slaves and bodyguards gripping wooden clubs in scar-knuckled fists. I sighed enviously, wishing that I were rich enough to own such an establishment. Not that I would have taken them on this night’s mission.

  Abruptly, I felt Chrysis grip my arm and draw me into a recessed doorway. She must have had cat’s eyes to find the door, or to see me, for that matter. She scratched at the door, and from inside I could hear bolts being drawn. It opened and light flooded the street. Framed in the light stood Claudia.

  “Come in, my dears,” she said, her voice a low purr that set my blood racing.

  I stepped inside and Chrysis closed and rebolted the door. To my eyes, accustomed to the gloom outside, the light was dazzling at first. Lamps stood everywhere, some of them sporting seven or eight wicks, all of them burning perfumed oil. To make the best use of the limited space available in an insula, the apartment was not laid out like a conventional house, but instead had a single large room off the street entrance, with a few smaller rooms opening off the main one.

  “Welcome, Decius,” Claudia said. She stood by a bronze statue of Priapus. The god’s immense phallus jutted forth, gleaming in the lamplight. Such statues ordinarily stood in gardens, but since the god was depicted in the act of lubricating his outsized member with oil from a pitcher, it was obvious that it was intended to be erotic rather than fructifying.

  “I rejoice to hear you welcome me,” I said. “After our last encounter, I despaired of hearing such words from your lips.”

  She laughed musically. It did not sound forced, but it did sound practiced. “You must learn that I am not always to be taken so seriously. We women lack the reserve and control wielded by you men. We are more at the mercy of our emotions and express them freely. Aristotle himself says so, so it must be true.” Again the musical laugh.

  “You sounded most sincere at the time,” I said, admiring her dress and makeup. She had made dramatic use of cosmetics, knowing that she was to be viewed by lamplight. She was lightly wrapped in a Greek gown pinned at the shoulders with jeweled brooches. Her breasts moved freel
y beneath it, showing that she wore no strophium.

  “I usually do,” she said, enigmatically. “Come, sit by me and let me make up for my hard words of a few nights ago.” She took my hand and led me to a side of the room that was furnished in the Eastern fashion, with thick cushions on the floor near a low table of chased bronze. We sat, and Chrysis came from one of the side rooms bearing a tray of delicacies, a pitcher of wine and several small goblets.

  “How do you like my little hideaway?” Claudia asked me as Chrysis filled the goblets. “Even Publius doesn’t know about it.”

  “Unique,” I said. I had been studying the decorations, and they were indeed not what one would expect to find in the apartment of a patrician lady. Nor of a plebeian lady, either, for that matter. The frescoes on the walls, exquisitely rendered by one of the better Greek artists, depicted couples and groups performing intercourse in every imaginable position. The couples were not always of opposite sex, and one astonishing scene depicted a woman entertaining three men simultaneously. This sort of decor was quite common in brothels, although seldom of such high quality. It was not unknown in the bedrooms of the more uninhibited bachelors.

  It was not at all common in the main room of houses, respectable or otherwise. We Romans are seldom shocked, except by the doings of our women.

  “Yes, isn’t it? I have decided that since life is terribly brief, there is little point in stinting oneself on its pleasures. Besides, I love to shock people.”

  “I am shocked, Claudia,” I assured her. “Generations of ancestrial Claudians are shocked as well.”

  She made an impatient face. “That’s another thing. Why should we conduct ourselves to please a lot of dead people? Anyway, most of my ancestors were scandalous when they were alive, so why should their being dead make them such paragons of righteousness?”