One was a Junia, sister of Decimus Brutus, daughter of Sempronia Tuditani. Why she had been offered to the College at six years of age was no mystery: Sempronia Tuditani couldn’t stomach a potential rival, and Decimus Brutus was proving ruinously expensive. Most of the little girls came healthily provided for by their families, but Junia was dowerless. Not an insuperable problem, as the State was always willing to provide a dowry for those who lacked one from their families. She would be quite attractive once the pangs of puberty were done with —how did these poor creatures cope with that in such a restricted and motherless environment?
The other child was a patrician from an old though somewhat decayed family, a Quinctilia who was very fat. She too was dowerless. An indication, thought Caesar grimly, of the present College’s reputation: no one who could dower a girl well enough to get her a reasonable husband was going to give her to the Vestals. Costly for the State, and bad luck as well. Of course they had been offered a Pompeia, a Lucceia, even an Afrania, a Lollia, a Petreia; Pompey the Great was desperate to entrench himself and his Picentine followers within Rome’s most revered institutions. But old and sick though he had been, the Piglet was not about to accept any of that stock! Preferable by far to have the State dower children with the proper ancestors —or at least a father who had won the Grass Crown, like Fonteia.
The adult Vestals knew Caesar about as well as he knew them, a knowledge acquired mostly through attendance at the formal banquets and functions held within the priestly Colleges —not, therefore, a deep or even a particularly friendly knowledge. Some private feasts in Rome might degenerate into affairs of too much wine and too many personal confidences, but never the religious ones. The six faces turned in Caesar’s direction held —what? It would take time to find out. Yet his breezy and cheerful manner had thrown them a little off balance. That was deliberate on his part; he didn’t want them shutting him out or concealing things from him, and none of these Vestals had been born when there was last a young Pontifex Maximus in the person of the famous Ahenobarbus. Essential then to make them think that the new Pontifex Maximus would be a paterfamilias to whom they could turn with real security. Never a salacious glance from him, never the familiarity of touch from him, never an innuendo from him. Nor, on the other hand, any coldness, lack of sympathy, off-putting formality, awkwardness.
Licinia coughed nervously, wet her lips, ventured to speak. “When will you be moving in, domine?”
He was, of course, in truth their lord, and he had already decided that it was fitting they should always address him as such. He could call them his girls, but they would never have any excuse to call him their man.
“Perhaps the day after tomorrow,” he said with a smile, stretching his legs out and sighing.
“You will want to be shown over the whole building.”
“Yes, and again tomorrow, when I bring my mother.”
They had not forgotten that he had a highly respected mother, nor were they ignorant of all the aspects of his family structure, from the engagement of his daughter and Caepio Brutus to the dubious folk with whom his empty-headed wife associated. His answer told them clearly what the pecking order would be: mother first. That was a relief!
“And your wife?” asked Fabia, who privately thought Pompeia very beautiful and alluring.
“My wife,” said Caesar coolly, “is not important. I doubt that you’ll ever see her, she leads a busy social life. Whereas my mother is bound to be interested in everything.” He said the last with another of those wonderful smiles, thought for a moment, and added, “Mater is a pearl beyond price. Don’t be afraid of her, and don’t be afraid to talk to her. Though I am your paterfamilias, there are corners of your lives which you will prefer to discuss with a woman. Until now you have had either to go outside this house or confine such discussions to yourselves. Mater has a fount of experience and a mine of common sense. Bathe in the one, and delve in the other. She never gossips, even to me.”
“We look forward to her advent,” said Licinia formally.
“As for you two,” said Caesar, addressing the children, “my daughter isn’t much older than you, and she’s another pearl beyond price. You’ll have a friend to play with.”
Which produced shy grins, but no attempt at conversation. He and his family, he saw with an inward sigh, had a long way to go before these hapless victims of the mos maiorum managed to settle down and accept the new order.
For some moments more he persevered, looking absolutely at ease, then he rose. “All right, girls, that’s enough for one day. Licinia, you may show me over the Domus Publica, please.”
He commenced by walking out into the middle of the sunless peristyle garden and gazing about.
“This, of course, is the public courtyard,” said Licinia. “You know it from the functions you have attended here.”
“At none of which I’ve ever had the leisure or the isolation to see it properly,” said Caesar. “When something belongs to you, you regard it through different eyes.”
Nowhere was the height of the Domus Publica more apparent than from the middle of this main peristyle; it was walled up on all four sides to the apex of the roofs. A covered colonnade of deep-red Doric pillars surrounded it, with the arched and shuttered windows of the top floor rearing above its beautifully painted back walls, done in the red style and displaying against that rich background some of the famous Vestals and their deeds, the faces faithfully reproduced because Chief Vestals were quite entitled to own imagines, wax masks tinted to lifelike truth surmounted by wigs accurate in color and style.
“The marble statues are all by Leucippus, and the bronzes by Strongylion,” said Licinia. “They were the gift of one of my own ancestors, Crassus Pontifex Maximus.”
“And the pool? It’s lovely.”
“Donated by Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, domine.”
Obviously someone gardened, but Caesar knew who was going to be the new guiding light: Gaius Matius. At which moment he turned to observe the back wall, and saw what seemed like hundreds of windows peering down from the Via Nova, most of them filled with faces; everyone knew that today the new Pontifex Maximus underwent inauguration, and was bound to call in to see his residence and his charges, the Vestals.
“You have absolutely no privacy,” he said, pointing.
“None, domine, from the main peristyle. Our own peristyle was added by Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, and he built its walls so high we are invisible.” She sighed. “Alas, we get no sun.”
They moved then into the only public room, the cella between the building’s two sides that constituted the temple. Though it contained no statues, it too was frescoed and lavishly gilded; the light unfortunately was too dim to appreciate the quality of the work the way it demanded. Down either side, each on a precious stand, marched a row of miniature temples, the cabinets in which lived the imagines of the Chief Vestals since the order had been started in the misty days of the earliest kings of Rome. No use opening one to peer in at the color of Claudia’s skin or the way she had worn her hair; the light was too poor.
“We will have to see what we can do about that,” said Caesar, proceeding back to the vestibule, the first room he had entered.
Here, he realized now, the antiquity of the place showed best, for it was so old Licinia could not tell him exactly why it was the way that it was, or what the purpose of its features might have been. The floor rose ten feet from the outer doors to the temple doors in three separate ramps tiled with a truly fabulous mosaic of what he guessed might be glass or faience in convoluted but abstract patterns. Dividing the ramps from each other and giving them their curving outline were two amygdalae, almond-shaped wells paved with time-blackened blocks of tufa, each one containing at its ritual middle a pedestal of polished black stone upon which stood the halves of a hollow spherical rock lined with garnet-colored crystals glittering like beads of blood. On either side of the outer doors lay another tufa-paved well, inner edge curved. The walls and ceiling were m
uch newer, a complex riot of plaster flowers and lattices, painted in shades of green and picked out with gilt.
“The sacred car upon which we move our dead passes easily down either side ramp—Vestals use one, the Pontifex Maximus the other—but we do not know who used the central ramp, or what for. Perhaps the death car of the King, but I do not know. It is a mystery,” said Licinia.
“There must be answers somewhere,” said Caesar, fascinated. He gazed at the Chief Vestal with brows raised. “Where now?”
“Whichever side you prefer to see first, domine.”
“Then let it be your side.”
The half of the Domus Publica which accommodated the Vestals also housed an industry, plain to see when Licinia ushered Caesar into an L-shaped room fifty feet long. What would have been the atrium or reception room of an ordinary domus was here the workplace of the Vestals, who were the formal custodians of Roman wills. It had been most intelligently converted to serve its purpose, with box shelves to the lofty ceiling for book buckets or unprotected scrolls, desks and chairs, ladders and stools, and a number of stands from which hung big sheets of Pergamum parchment made up of smaller rectangles carefully and minutely sewn together.
“We accept custody of the will through there,” said the Chief Vestal, pointing toward the area closest to the outside doors through which entered those who wished to lodge their wills within the Atrium Vestae. “As you can see, it is walled off from the main part of the room. Would you like to look, domine?”
“Thank you, I know the spot well,” said Caesar, executor of many wills.
“Today, of course, being feriae, the doors are closed and no one is on duty. Tomorrow we’ll be busy.”
“And this part of the room contains the wills.”
“Oh, no!” gasped Licinia, horrified. “This is just our record room, domine.”
“Record room?”
“Yes. We keep a record of every will lodged with us as well as the testament itself—name, tribe, address, age when lodged, and so forth. When the will is executed it leaves us. But the records never do. Nor do we ever discard them.”
“So all these book buckets and pigeonholes are stuffed with records, nothing but records?”
“Yes.”
“And these?’’ he asked, walking across to one of the stands to count the number of parchment sheets suspended from it.
“Those are our master plans, an instruction manual for finding everything from which names belong to which tribes, to lists of municipia, towns all over the world, maps of our storage system. Some of them contain the full roll of Roman citizens.”
The stand held six parchment sheets two feet wide and five feet long, each of them written upon both sides, the script clear and fine and darkly delineated, quite the equal of any trained Greek scribe’s writing that Caesar had ever known. His eyes roamed the room and counted thirty stands in all. “They list more than you’ve told me.”
“Yes, domine. We archive everything we can, it interests us to do so. The first Aemilia who was ever a Vestal was wise enough to know that the everyday tasks, tending the sacred fire and carrying all of our water from the well—it was the Fountain of Egeria in those days, admittedly a lot farther away than Juturna—were not enough to keep our minds busy and our intentions and our vows pure. We had been custodians of wills when all the Vestals were daughters of the King, but under Aemilia we expanded the work we did, and commenced to archive.”
“So here I see a veritable treasure-house of information.”
“Yes, domine.”
“How many wills do you have in your care?”
“About a million.”
“All listed here,” he said, hand sweeping around the high, crammed walls.
“Yes and no. The current wills are confined to pigeonholes; we find it easier to consult a naked scroll than to struggle in and out of book buckets all the time. We keep things well dusted. The buckets contain the records of wills departed from our custody.”
“How far do your records go back, Licinia?”
“To the two youngest daughters of King Ancus Marcius, though not in the detail Aemilia instituted.”
“I begin to understand why that unorthodox fellow Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus installed your plumbing and reduced the taking of water from the Well of Juturna to a ritual daily pitcherful. You have more important work to do, though at the time Ahenobarbus did it, he created a furor.”
“We will never cease to be grateful to Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus,” said Licinia, leading the way to a flight of stairs. “He added the second storey not only to make our lives healthier and more comfortable, but also to give us room to store the wills themselves. They used to be in the basement, we had nowhere else. Even so, storage is once again a problem. In earlier times wills were confined to Roman citizens, and mostly citizens who lived within Rome herself at that. These days we accept almost as many wills from citizens and non-citizens who live all over the world.” She coughed and sniffled as she reached the top of the stairs and opened the door into a vast cavern lit from windows on one side only, that looking at the House of Vesta.
Caesar understood her sudden attack of respiratory distress; the place exuded a miasma of paper particles and bone-dry dust.
“Here we store the wills of Roman citizens, perhaps three quarters of a million,” said Licinia. “Rome, there. Italia, here. The various provinces of Rome, there and there and there. Other countries, over here. And a new . section for Italian Gaul, here. It became necessary after the Italian War, when all the communities south of the Padus River were enfranchised. We had to expand our section for Italia too.”
They were pigeonholed in rank after rank of wooden box shelves, each one tagged and labeled, perhaps fifty to one single box; he withdrew a specimen from Italian Gaul, then another and another. All different in size and thickness and the sort of paper, all sealed with wax and someone’s insignia. This one hefty—a lot of property! That one slender and humble—perhaps a tiny cottage and a pig to bequeath.
“And where are the wills of non-citizens stored?” he asked as Licinia descended the stairs ahead of him.
“In the basement, domine, together with the records of all army wills and deaths on military service. We do not, of course, ever have custody of soldiers’ wills themselves—they remain in the care of the legion clerks, and when a man finishes his time, they destroy his will. He then makes a new one and lodges it with us.” She sighed mournfully. “There is still space down there, but I fear it won’t be long before we have to shift some of the provincial citizen wills to the basement, which also has to house quite a lot of sacred equipment we and you need for ceremonies. So where,” she enquired plaintively, “will we go when the whole of the basement is as full as it was for Ahenobarbus?”
“Luckily, Licinia, it won’t be your worry,” said Caesar, “though it will undoubtedly be mine. How extraordinary to think that feminine Roman efficiency and attention to detail has bred a repository the like of which the world has never known before! Everyone wants his will kept safe from prying eyes and tampering pens. Where else is that possible except in the Atrium Vestae?”
The largeness of this observation escaped her, she was too busy shocking herself at discovery of an omission. “Domine, I forgot to show you the section for women’s wills!” she cried.
“Yes, women do make wills,” he said, preserving gravity. “It is a great comfort to realize that you segregate the sexes, even in death.” When this sailed somewhere miles above her head, he thought of something else. “It amazes me that so many people lodge their wills here in Rome, yet may dwell in places up to several months’ journey away. I would have thought all the movable property and coin would have vanished by the time the will itself could be executed.”
“I do not know, domine, because we never find out things like that. But if people do it, then surely they must feel secure in doing it. I imagine,” she concluded simply, “that everyone fears Rome and Roman retribution. Look at the will
of King Ptolemy Alexander! The present King of Egypt is terrified of Rome because he knows Egypt really belongs to Rome from that will.”
“True,” said Caesar solemnly.
From the workplace (where, he noticed, even the two child Vestals were now busy at some task, feriae notwithstanding) he was conducted to the living quarters. These were, he decided, very adequate compensation for a conventual existence. However, the dining room was country style, chairs round a table.
“You don’t have men to dine?” he asked.
Licinia looked horrified. “Not in our own quarters, domine! You are the only man who will ever enter here.”
“What about doctors and carpenters?”
“There are good women doctors, also women craftsmen of all kinds. Rome bears no prejudices against women in trades.”
“So much I don’t know, despite the fact that I’ve been a pontifex for over ten years,” said Caesar, shaking his head.
“Well, you were not in Rome during our trials,” said Licinia, her voice trembling. “Our private entertaining and living habits were publicly aired then. But under normal circumstances only the Pontifex Maximus among the priests concerns himself with how we live. And our relatives and friends, naturally.”
“True. The last Julia in the College was Julia Strabo, and she died untimely. Do many of you die untimely, Licinia?”
“Very few these days, though I believe death here was common before we had water and plumbing laid on. Would you like to see the bathrooms and latrines? Ahenobarbus believed in hygiene for everyone, so he gave the servants baths and latrines too.”
“A remarkable man,” said Caesar. “How they reviled him for changing the law—and getting himself elected Pontifex Maximus at the same time! I remember Gaius Marius telling me there was an epidemic of marble-latrine-seat jokes after Ahenobarbus finished with the Domus Publica.”
Though Caesar was reluctant, Licinia insisted that he should see the Vestal sleeping arrangements.
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