We went through the long corridor that led from the entrance to the vast courtyard within. There were about a hundred long tables inside beneath a canopy worthy of the Circus where people feasted and watched the entertainment. I was recognized instantly, being a well-known public figure, of course. The madam, an immensely tall woman who emphasized her height by wearing an actor’s buskins and a towering wig, greeted me with a resounding kiss on the cheek.
“Senator Metellus!” she said in a voice that echoed off the walls, “you haven’t honored us with your presence in far too long!” Heads turned from all directions to gape at me. There was a good deal of laughter.
“Ah, yes. Well, as it occurs I’m here on official business. I need to consult with Felix the Wise. Is he here tonight?”
She hooted a great laugh. “Business! Oh, that’s a good one, Senator! Business! Well, all right, I’ll go along with it. Felix usually comes here later in the night. Come along, let’s find you a table and get you something to eat.” We followed her elaborately swaying bottom to a small table near one wall, beneath a fine plane-tree that was hung with colored lanterns made of parchment. Its centerpiece was a wonderfully obscene statuette depicting Ganymede and the eagle.
The madam clapped her hands and servants laid the table with a remarkably fine dinner and a pitcher of first-rate wine. “Senator, can’t you convince Caesar to pay us a visit? It would do me ever so much good with the patrons and it would convince the aediles to accept smaller bribes to leave me alone.”
“Doesn’t he ever come here?” I asked her.
“Never once. Nor to any other lupanar that I ever heard of. Not that I blame him for avoiding them, they’re pigsties. But the Labyrinth is the most illustrious lupanar in the world. Do you suppose those stories about him and old King Nicomedes are true? Well that’s no matter, I have boys of every race and age if that’s to his taste. Or does he just prefer that his whores have patrician pedigrees?” Once again she threw her head back and hooted out her great laugh. “Now Sulla was a proper dictator. Practically lived in the whorehouses and chummed around with actors and entertainers, so my grandmother told me. She was running the Palace of Delight across the river back then.” She sighed. “Those must have been great times.” Another Roman pining for the good old days.
“Perhaps the good times will come again,” I told her. “In the meantime, you’ll just have to be content with being the most stunningly successful madam in the history of Rome.”
“Oh, you’re too kind, Senator. Well, I must toddle off. I’ll send word when Felix gets here. Business, indeed!” She swayed off, laughing and snorting.
So with nothing better to do we set teeth to our dinner, which was better than most great houses could provide. Granted, it was a menu she reserved for her highest ranking guests, but even the ordinary fare was better than you could get at any tavern.
“Rack of venison in wine sauce,” Hermes marveled. “Roast duck stuffed with quail eggs, octopus cooked in ink, poached pears—we must come here more often.”
“She’s buying favor,” I told him. “In case I should be praetor again, or city prefect, or have any of the new titles Caesar is busy inventing. She wants to be safe.”
“What of it?” he said, stuffing his mouth. “We rarely get to eat like this. I don’t anyway. You sometimes get to eat at Caesar’s table.”
“And there I dine miserably,” I informed him. “Caesar cares nothing whatever about food or wine. I don’t think he can even taste them. I’ve seen him pour rancid oil over his eggs and never notice it.” I tore off a rib of venison and it was superb.
“He doesn’t care about food and his only use for women is their pedigrees,” he mused. “What’s wrong with Caesar?”
“Some men care only about power. That’s Caesar. He wants to accomplish things and he has to have power to do so, so he has pursued power with a single-mindedness such as I’ve never seen. It makes him uncomfortable to be around. I prefer a brute sensualist like Antonius. He wants power, but that’s just so he can accumulate more wealth and more women and wine and food and houses. Power to him means things he can taste and feel. To Caesar”—I shrugged—“to Caesar I don’t know what it means. I can’t fathom him.”
By the time we finished dinner the evening’s entertainment had begun: a troupe of actors who played Atellan farces with great energy. Then there were singers and Spanish dancers and tumblers and mimes. Wrestlers and pugilists from the nearby Statilian school put on an exhibition and while these were performing, the madam sent a dwarf to inform us that Felix had arrived. The dwarf was dressed in a stylized burlesque of a gladiator’s outfit, with the addition of a huge stuffed leather phallus protruding in front, painted scarlet and gold.
We rose a bit unsteadily and made our way to the alcove where Felix lorded it over his minions. In Rome proper he would have come to me, but this was his little kingdom so I called upon him. The alcove was lined with huge cushions on which Felix and the others sat with little Arabian tables in front of them.
Felix the Wise was Rome’s premier gambler, handicapper, and tout. Whether it was fights, athletic competitions, or races Felix would bet on it or advise you how to bet, for a percentage. He knew intimately every racehorse in every stable in Rome and for many miles around. He took a percentage from every gambling establishment and his strongarm boys acted as his collectors and enforcers. His gang prospered when all the others were crushed because unlike them he avoided politics as others avoid noxious disease. Gambling was his only interest and passion and it had served him well.
“Well, this is an honor, Senator. Have a seat.” Some men moved aside and Hermes and I sat. Felix was a small, white-haired old man with sharp features and he always carried a faint scent of the stables, since he spent the better part of every day in them. He poured us cups ceremoniously and waited until we had tasted the wine, then said, “What will it be, a tip on the upcoming races?”
“Perhaps later,” I told him, “but right now I’ve run into a puzzling operation and I’m wondering if you could enlighten me.”
“Anything to be of service to the Senate and People.” His bright old eyes glittered. I told him what I knew of the game Polasser had been playing.
“Have you ever run into anything like it?”
He nodded a while, stroking his chin. “I’ve never heard of an astrologer doing it, but it’s an old handicapper’s dodge.”
“How so?” I was surprised that he had recognized it so quickly.
“It works like this. You have four racing companies, right? The Reds, Greens, Blues, and Whites. Now everybody backs one faction or another and claims to bet only their own color, but there are plenty of people who prefer to bet on whoever they think will win. So you select, say one hundred men you know are gamblers. When the next big races come up, say the first race of the Plebeian Games, you tell twenty-five of them the Reds will win, twenty-five the Greens will win and so on. After the race, you eliminate the seventy-five you gave a bad tip to. The twenty-five you gave the good tip to, you do the same. Here’s why: You have to wait until you’ve got a few left that you’ve steered right in three straight races, then you start charging big money for your tips. In time you’ll have a fool who’s won at least four or five straight races and thinks you’re infallible. Then you take him for everything he has. With luck, he’ll steer some friends your way and you can make extra off of them. Of course, you can’t pull this one too often. It’s a good idea to keep traveling to towns that have big circuses.”
“Amazing. It’s so simple, absolutely elegant. Is there anyone here who’s known for that sort of dodge?”
“They don’t work in Rome once I learn about them,” he said grimly. “Oh, I’m not against a bit of chicanery now and again. The gods send us these fools so they can be fleeced, and it angers the gods when you turn down their gifts. But a big job like that can give us all a bad name, especially when the fool is rich and well connected. That’s the sort of thing that brings the aediles dow
n on all of us.”
“Who has tried it most recently?” I asked him.
“Let me see—there was a man called Postumius, a freedman who worked for a while at the headquarters of the Reds. See, having that position, it was easy to convince people that he had all sorts of inside information, when he was nothing but a clerk. I gave him a warning—just broke his arm and told him I’d cut out his tongue if he tried that trick again in Rome.”
“Admirable forbearance. Do you know if he’s still in Rome?”
“He is. I’ve seen him around these last few months. He took my advice and traveled Italy and Sicily for a while, but the problem with a habit like his is that it makes you real unwelcome quick, so you have to keep traveling. He just couldn’t stay away from the Great Circus for long, I guess. But I’d know if he was up to his old tricks.”
“Have you any idea where he might be found?”
“Well, Senator, last I heard he was clerking at the Temple of Aesculapius, on the Tiber Island.”
6
“It was most enthralling,” Julia told me the next morning. “Callista met us right after the ceremony—she’s a foreigner so of course she couldn’t take part—Servilia was there, with a sizable bodyguard, and Atia, with an equal number.”
I was being shaved, always a delicate procedure with my rather battered and scarred face. “Did Callista hint at what business Caesar and Servilia had with her the day I visited?”
“She and Servilia were both being intriguingly discreet about it. They just barely acknowledged knowing one another. Anyway, we all got into Servilia’s litter—it’s a rather large one, you know.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Callista is very unaccustomed to traveling in a litter, would you believe it? She says she always walks. It’s some sort of philosopher’s austerity, I think. I can hardly imagine walking everywhere in Alexandria, but if she lives at the Museum like so many of the professors she doesn’t really need to go much of anywhere, I suppose.”
“And this marvelous conveyance took you where?” I prodded.
“You’re trying to rush me again, dear. Don’t do that.”
“Sorry.”
“So the four of us were carried across the river into the Trans-Tiber and up the slope of the Janiculum almost to the top, where the flag flies. There are hardly any dwellings up there, it’s mostly just the ruins of the old fort, but there are a few new houses since even the Trans-Tiber is getting crowded these days. We stopped at a beautiful little house surrounded by an exquisite garden full of fruit trees and flowering shrubs. At least they will be flowering in the spring. They’re rather bare right now but the proportions of the garden are beautiful.”
I relaxed in my chair. She would get around to what I wanted to hear in her own good time.
“So,” she went on, “we went inside and were greeted at the door by the most amazing woman.”
“Amazing how?” I asked.
“To begin with, she wore a gown that seemed to be made of a single long strip of fabric wound several times around her. It fit very closely, but was really quite modest and incredibly graceful. It was made of a very thin cotton dyed in bright colors. The lady herself was rather dark but quite beautiful in an exotic fashion, with huge black eyes. Her hair was black, too, parted in the middle and gathered behind and very long, almost to her heels. Her hands were painted with henna in very intricate patterns. She had dots and stripes painted on her face in red and blue.”
“I think I will recognize her in a crowd now.”
“Don’t be facetious. She bowed in the most charming manner—used her hands and arms, feet, head, all moving at once. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What else? Was she tall, short, plump?”
“She was quite, well, quite feminine. Very small, but formed like some extremely ancient concept of Aphrodite. Rather full breasts and hips but with a waist I think my hands could have spanned. All this was very obvious because her gown was so tight. Oh, and it left her navel exposed.”
“Anything unusual about her navel?”
“She had a huge ruby or garnet in it. Wherever she comes from, they must artificially stretch a girl’s navel, the way some people stretch the earlobes or lips to wear jewelry.”
“So it’s safe to say that she’s not some runaway Greek slave woman. I suppose that would have been too simple.”
“Servilia introduced us and told her what we wanted. Ashthuva led us into a quite spacious room lit by what seemed hundreds of lamps and candles. Its walls and ceiling were painted all over with constellations, marvelous to see.”
“What was the style of painting?” I asked her.
“That’s an odd question. Well, the treatment of the familiar figures, the lion, the Capricorn, and so forth, looked rather Greek.”
“Were these paintings new or had they been there for a while?”
She thought about it. “Now that you mention it they looked rather fresh. I could still smell the paint, and the ceiling wasn’t smudged with lamp soot. But then the whole house looked new, as well as the plantings in the garden.”
“Very good. What next?”
“On one wall she had a bookcase. It was in the honeycomb style, but much larger than usual because it held star charts instead of ordinary scrolls. She asked us the birth dates of those whose horoscopes we wanted cast, and she went to the case and drew out several of the charts and took them to a broad table. She unrolled some of them and weighted their corners with little linen sandbags.”
I started to say something but she hurried on. “And before you ask, the charts gave every appearance of being quite ancient. They weren’t made of papyrus or parchment, and they were in a style that was not Greek or Roman or Egyptian. In fact, they resembled no style of art I have ever seen. And the writing was utterly incomprehensible, just tiny squiggles attached to long, straight lines. Yet the constellations were perfectly recognizable, once you understood the stylization of the art.”
“Who went first?”
“Atia. She gave Ashthuva young Octavius’s birth date and time and Ashthuva went over a sheet that seemed to be some sort of conversion table. I could make out a column that listed the Roman consuls of the past fifty or so years, and next to it a list in Greek of the Olympiads and the successive archons of Athens and next to that a column of writing in that odd language from the charts. It was pretty clear that this was her way of translating Roman and Greek dates into her own system. It was not ancient like the charts and it was written on very fine parchment.”
“Quite clear,” I commended. “There was no nonsense with braziers and arcane things burning? No purification ritual or mysterious libations?”
“None of that, and what if there were? We have plenty of those things in our own religion.”
“Yes, but it seems to make more sense when we do it.”
“Anyway, astrology is not a religion. How could it be? It makes no provision for the will of the gods, nor of their mutability. It involves no sacrifices or appeals to higher powers. It simply deals with human destiny as it is determined by the positions of the stars and planets at the moment of birth and their relations and juxtapositions as they change throughout life.”
“You sound very taken with this business,” I noted with more than a bit of alarm.
“I find something very satisfying in it. It is as rigorous as the study of Sosigenes, it merely applies these things to human life, while the astronomers simply study celestial phenomena without regard to the doings of humanity, as if the stars were above such things.”
“I suppose so. Still, it seems unnatural. No taking of omens, no sacrifices, no prayers. Why are these stars telling us about our destiny when we’re doing nothing for them?”
She rolled her eyes upward in a long-suffering gesture. “Why do I bother?” She took a deep breath. “To continue, and please try not to interrupt unless you have a truly pertinent question.”
“I promise.”
“Ashthuva t
old us that what she would do that night constituted only a preliminary casting, that each horoscope would require much longer study and detailed analysis.”
And cost more, I thought without saying it.
“She explained how the sign of Octavius’s birth was affected by the planets of that moment, which was ascendant, which was actually within the sign, how the phase of the moon affected all these things. It was quite fascinating.”
I hoped the woman foretold an early death for the brat, but I was disappointed.
“She said that Octavius had a most remarkable congregation of signs at his birth, that he would rise unprecedentedly high in the world and would be served by the best and most loyal people.” She caught my expression. “All right, go ahead.”
“How can she go wrong predicting a bright future for a highborn woman’s only son? It’s what any fortune-teller would have done.”
“You are such a Cynic. She told Atia she would have a much more detailed horoscope prepared for her in a few days. Then she did yours.”
I felt a slight shiver. I always hated this sort of thing. I have always been content to meet my bad fortune as it comes, without having to anticipate it. What good fortune I have enjoyed has always come as an agreeable surprise. “Go on.”
“Well, first of all, she predicted no future greatness for you.”
“It would be a stretch, at my age. If I were going to achieve greatness I’d have done it long before now.”
“But she did say that you would live a very long life, full of incident and adventure. She said you would die very old and very sad.”
“If I achieve great age I suppose I can anticipate great sadness at the end of it, though I think relief would be more in order. Anything else?”
SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion Page 10