SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion

by John Maddox Roberts

  “And much will, I’ve no doubt,” said Cinna, “but not an election. Not as long as Caesar is dictator in perpetuity. All offices with imperium will go to men nominated by Caesar and confirmed by his tame assemblies. We’ll have tribunes of the plebs, but their power of veto is suspended while he is dictator, and what is a tribuneship without the veto? All they can do is propose the legislation he has already laid out for them.”

  That was the real reason for the resentment of these men. Caesar was frustrating their own ambitions and humbling their pride. Except for Cicero, they were all men from the great families, men who thought high office to be their natural right, inherited from their ancestors. I had been such a man myself, once. When men prate of things like patriotism, you can be sure that self-interest is at the root of it.

  “Caesar is not immortal,” Brutus said, a pronouncement that could be banal or fraught with meaning, depending on how you looked at it.

  “He thinks himself godlike,” Cicero said lightly. “Let us hope that his fellow deities see fit to call him to join them soon.” The rest laughed, but without much humor.

  They turned back toward the City gate and left me pondering. “Cassius is plotting something,” I said to Hermes, “but he doesn’t want to talk about it in front of Cicero.”

  “I caught that,” he said. “But why, do you think? They all seem to be of a mind on the subject of Caesar and his power and ambition.”

  “He could be planning something desperate, and Cicero is not a man you want to involve in desperate action. He’d lose his nerve at the last minute. He acted decisively and against popular opinion once in his career, when he put down the Catilinarian revolt. He’s been conservative and vacillating ever since. He’d be the weak reed in any conspiracy.”

  “What is Cassius up to?”

  “I don’t want to know.” It was all a great distraction. I had other things on my mind.

  That evening Julia filled me in on what she had learned the previous night.

  “Servilia is definitely on the outs with her dear little Brutus, and she doesn’t really approve of his friends lately, Cassius and Cinna and that lot.”

  “Why not? They positively reek of nobility and old-fashioned Roman virtue.”

  “I think it’s because they’re so vehemently anti-Caesarian. I, on the other hand, am most definitely in the Caesarian camp so she feels she can confide in me. She wants Brutus close to Caesar and wishes he’d go back to his old moneylending habits. She loathes the business as ill-bred, but at least it’s politically neutral.”

  “Anything about the astrologers? The exotic woman in particular?”

  “No, and every time I tried to bring the subject up—discreetly, of course—nobody seemed much interested. Atia was there and she had a whole collection of omens from all over Italy. She must employ people just to collect them. So everybody was talking about a two-headed goat born in Bruttium and an eagle that snatched a child in Cumae and a statue of Scipio Africanus in Nola that wept blood.”

  “And what did these ladies discern from such prodigies?”

  “That something dreadfully important is going to happen.”

  “Something dreadfully important is always going to happen. What of that?”

  “They all believe that it will concern them personally.”

  “Did they say why, other than that this lot never needs much excuse to see the will of the gods at work in all their doings?”

  “They were noticeably reticent on that point.”

  “Because they fear what they say to you will get back to Caesar?”

  “Most likely.”

  “At least Atia should be in your camp, since she wants her vaguely Caesarian brat to inherit. She may want to call upon you privately soon.”

  “In fact, as we were leaving she asked if she might do exactly that tomorrow after the morning ceremony at Vesta’s.”

  “Do you patrician women do anything that doesn’t revolve around that temple?”

  “It’s convenient. Common women get together at the corner fountain or the laundry to meet and gossip. The rich freedwomen and wives of the equites gather at the expensive shops on the north end of the Forum. We have the Temple of Vesta. To be terribly honest, very few even pay attention to the ceremonies except on special days.”

  “I always thought it must be something like that. Like senators at the baths in the afternoon.”

  I told her about our barely productive visit to the gymnasia, then about the military review on the Field of Mars. Her face fell when I told her about the boots.

  “He’s giving his enemies a sword to use against him, isn’t he?” she said.

  “I’m afraid so. Everything else they’ve been able to swallow, albeit with poor grace: the triumphal regalia, the ivory staff, the wreath—they’re all the things we allow a triumphing general, although only for a day. But the trappings of royalty? That’s different. The day he shows up in the Senate wearing a diadem there will be a revolt.”

  “Do you think he’ll go that far?”

  “I fear that the day isn’t far off,” I assured her.

  One of Julia’s slaves came in. “There is a messenger outside. He says he bears a missive for my mistress from Callista of Alexandria.”

  My eyebrows went up. “What might this portend?”

  “I can think of a very easy way to find out,” Julia said. “Send him in.”

  The messenger was dressed in the tradition of his guild in a white tunic that exposed one shoulder, brimmed red hat with the silver wings of Mercury attached, sandals with similar wings, and a wing-topped wand twined with serpents. He handed Julia a rolled and sealed letter. I tipped him and told him to wait in the atrium in case she should wish to return a reply. Julia unrolled the thing and read it for an unconscionably long time.

  “Well,” I fretted, my patience at an end, “what is it?”

  “Don’t rush me, dear, you know I don’t like that.”

  So I snapped my fingers at a slave and the well-trained man instantly refilled my cup. It was, as I recall, an excellent Massic.

  “It begins with the usual pleasantries. She calls me her sister and says that I have not called upon her in far too long, that she has missed my company dreadfully, yet she doesn’t overdo these formalities the way so many women do. She is a woman of the most exquisite taste.”

  “I daresay,” I muttered.

  “She invites us to a salon to be held the evening after tomorrow and apologizes for the short notice.”

  “Aha!” I said, my ears pricking up finally.

  “Aha what?”

  “Just aha. Do go on.”

  “She says that some astronomers of her acquaintance will be attending.”

  “This sounds promising. Perhaps she’s found out something for us.”

  “But here is the most interesting part. She says that at sundown, the whole group will go to a small banquet at Cleopatra’s villa.”

  “Interesting, indeed. What is the woman up to?”

  Julia smiled. “I just can’t wait to find out.”

  12

  The next morning I woke up realizing what I had missed the previous evening. That messenger with his Mercury garb. I should have thought of it much sooner, but I was finding that, as I got older, some mental processes seemed to be slowing down. The baleful influence of a hostile god, no doubt.

  I sent for Hermes, and he arrived while I was about my morning ablutions.

  “Hermes, we’re going to the headquarters of the messenger’s guild this morning.” I thrust my face into the bowl of cold water and blew like a beached whale for a while. I straightened and groped for a towel, which Hermes thrust into my hand. The cobwebs and smoke seemed to clear from my head as I dried my face.

  “I should have thought of it myself,” Hermes said.

  “My thought exactly. What more logical than that our fleet-footed fugitive should work as a messenger? He can keep in training and get paid for it in the bargain.”

  �
��But the guild members are mostly slaves,” he pointed out. “He could be working as a messenger at one of the great houses instead of at the public service.”

  “That’s likely,” I said, knowing that men like Cicero carried on huge correspondence and employed full-time messengers. Businessmen sometimes had scores. “But it’s a place to start and there has to be network of information among the community of messengers. It’s not that large a group of men, even in Rome.”

  After a few bites of oil-dipped bread we were out the door just as the sun was clearing the roofs of the lowest buildings. Then we turned our steps, as on most mornings, toward the Forum. The headquarters of the messenger’s guild was located near the Curia, since they got a great deal of business from the senators.

  It was a modest building, the carving above its portal proclaiming it to be, logically enough, the Brotherhood of Mercury. There was a rather fine statue of that deity out front, and a number of members lounged about on the steps. Ordinarily, a great many more occupied the tavern just across the narrow street, but it was all but empty at this early hour. We climbed the short flight of steps and passed within.

  As a guild whose only stock in trade was its membership, the place needed no elaborate facilities or warehousing space. There was a single, spacious room, its walls decorated with tasteful frescoes, a fine marble desk in its center. In the rear wall was a doorway leading to what appeared to be a smaller room lined with honeycomb shelves for record-keeping. That was all. A substantial man rose from behind the desk.

  “Welcome, Senator Metellus!” he said. “How may I help you? I am Scintillius, duumvir of the Honorable Guild of Mercury at Rome.” Actually, the word “substantial” is a weak one to describe the duumvir of the guild. He was grossly corpulent and wheezed as he rose. If he had ever been a messenger himself, those days were long behind him.

  “Ah, my friend Scintillus!” I said as if I wanted his vote. “Well met! This morning I find myself in need of your services. That is to say, I am trying to locate a man who might be a member of your guild.”

  “Eh?” He looked a bit hesitant. “I mean, I shall be most happy to help you and the noble Senate any way I may.” He sweated slightly but that might have just been all that fat. “I do hope there is no, ah, irregularity involved?”

  “None at all, none at all!” I assured him heartily.

  “The senator is looking for a man who may be going by the name of Caius Domitius,” Hermes rapped out. “We think he works here.” This was a routine we had worked out long before. I was all hearty geniality, and he came across as threatening. Sometimes if you keep people off-balance you learn things you might not otherwise.

  “I see. Caius Domitius, you say? I can’t say that I know all of the messengers by name, but with two names he must be a citizen so that narrows it, and we have records, of course. Why did you say you wanted him?”

  “We didn’t say,” Hermes told him forcefully. “Records, you say?”

  “Yes, yes,” he gestured toward the door behind him. “Right back here. Records of our purchases and discharges, payrolls, important commissions and so forth.”

  “Show us!” Hermes barked.

  The man whirled and now it was time to do my bit. I took him by the arm. “This fellow should be distinctive. He’s a great cross-country runner, surely an asset to your magnificent, ancient, and very honorable establishment. Such a man as you might use to run messages to country estates, or even hire out to the legions for wartime service. Why, when I was in Gaul with Caesar a few years ago we had a company of men hired from this very guild for routine communications between far-spread cohorts, all those daily missives that don’t call for a detached cavalryman, you know.” While I babbled on thus we entered the smaller room which was jammed full of cabinets, the nests of cubbies stacked to the ceiling.

  “As you see, Senator, we keep very careful records.”

  I could see nothing of the sort, but I hoped they were in better order than those at the public archive. “So I see. A splendid facility indeed. And among these heaps of scrolls do you have the employment record of our Caius Domitius?”

  “I truly hope so, Senator. As you can see these records go back many, many years, but I presume that the man you seek will have been employed here, if indeed he was, in rather more recent times?”

  “Certainly within the last few years.”

  “Then the payroll records are the place to look,” he said, taking down a large scroll. “Since most of our staff are slaves, those receiving a free laborer’s pay are a decided minority.”

  “Why do you employ free men at all?” Hermes demanded.

  “It’s a matter of law,” he said, “laid down by the censors in the times of the wars with Carthage. In businesses that employ more than a hundred persons, no more than eighty percent may be slave. It is the same for the construction industry, the stevedores, brickmaking, and so forth. In fact, only agriculture is exempt, and certain occupations that free men won’t do for any pay, like mining.”

  This was a law dating from the earliest days when cheap slaves began to pour into Italy. There was fear that free labor might be totally displaced and the censors acted to stem the tide. Their success has been partial, at best. Caesar had recently passed a law requiring those who grazed their herds in Italy to employ not less than one-third freemen as herders. It was the least he could do, considering how many Gallic slaves he had dumped on the market.

  He went to a table beneath an east-facing window and began to unroll the big scroll. “The first part,” he explained, “records the contributions we make to each man’s peculium. These vary in size and frequency according to the man’s length of service and diligence at his work. One who works hard and stays sober can expect to buy his own freedom from the savings in his peculium in five to seven years.” This is the traditional means of assuring obedience and good work from a slave. “They can, of course, keep any tips they receive.” He unrolled the scroll further, revealing figures in a different color of ink.

  “Now here,” he went on, “are the records of the free employees’ pay. Men are paid on the day before the calends of each month. Of course,” he grumbled in a lower voice, “with this new calendar, we must refigure everything.”

  “Just see if he’s in there,” Hermes growled. He was beginning to overdo it. The man was cooperating after all. I made a signal to back off and Hermes complied, reluctantly. This was one of his favorite games.

  “Certainly, certainly. Ah, here he is!” He stabbed a pudgy, beringed finger at a line on which in large letters was written “C DOMIT CIT.”

  “You see? Caius Domitius, citizen. This accounts for his slightly higher grade of pay than that of a foreigner, of which we employ a number.”

  “Dates?” I asked.

  “Last worked for us in Quinctilis of that year.” For those too young to remember, that is the name of the month that Caesar had that very year obtained consent from the Senate to name after himself, July. The Senate would grant him almost anything in those days.

  It was looking like another blind alley. “Did he quit or was he dismissed?” I asked him, all but discouraged.

  “Hmm, let me see, there’s a notation here. Ah, he went on detached service. That is something we do frequently. A great house or business will lease a man from us fulltime, sometimes a whole company of our messengers, as you mention your legion in Gaul did.”

  I felt a tingle. “Who hired him from you?”

  “Let’s see—ah, yes, now I remember it. A foreign steward hired him for the household of Queen Cleopatra for the duration of her stay in Rome.”

  I thanked him effusively and we went back outside. “I knew it!” I said.

  “Knew what?” Hermes asked.

  “I knew that scheming Egyptian was up to something.” Have a pygmy shoot me in the nose, would she? We’d see about that.

  “But what is she up to? Do you think she ordered the murders?”

  “Well, we don’t really know that, but
she’s involved somehow.”

  “We’ve suspected that for some time. In fact, we still really don’t know much at all, do we?”

  “We know that Cleopatra hired Domitius. What we need to find out now is how he got from her household to the stables of Archelaus, and why.” I looked across the street to the tavern catering to the messengers. The painting to one side of the door featured, unsurprisingly, Mercury. On the other side was painted a gladiator. For reasons I have never been able to understand these luckless men have become a popular symbol of good luck and you see them painted everywhere, usually at entrances. “Hermes, I want you to come back here this afternoon when the tavern is crowded. Hang about and see if you can learn anything about our friend Domitius.”

  He beamed. “Certainly.”

  “You are to stay sober.”

  “How can I do that without losing all credibility?”

  “You’ll find a way. You are clever. That’s one reason that I gave you your freedom.”

  “It wasn’t because of affection? Because of my years of hard work and faithful service? Not to mention the numerous occasions upon which I’ve saved your life or the awful perils we’ve gone through together?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. What now?”

  By this time we had turned a corner and entered the Forum. It was even more noisy and chaotic than usual due to Caesar’s building projects. Great cartloads of marble rumbled along the pavement. Others carried wood or brick or the powdery cement which, mixed with gravel and water, made Rome’s uniquely ugly, pinkish concrete. People crowded one another and loudmouths sounded off from the bases of monuments. Unsupervised children darted between the legs of adults, bound upon missions of mischief. Farmers led asses piled with produce toward the vegetable markets beyond, peddlers hawked their wares in blissful violation of the laws banning such activities in the Forum. Mountebanks performed with equal contempt for the law, and fortune-tellers had their booths set up along the porticoes, tempting the anxious with prophecies of good luck and the favor of the gods.