Under Vesuvius

by John Maddox Roberts

  “I want to meet him,” Circe said. She was a brown-haired beauty who had spurned the suits of Marcus Antonius, Gnaeus Pompey the Younger, Catullus the poet, Marcus Brutus, Cassius Longinus, King Phraates of Parthia (really!), and many others less illustrious.

  “He’s too far beneath you,” Antonia told her. “We Antonii, on the other hand, are known for our low tastes.”

  “Rein yourselves in, ladies,” Julia advised. She was eyeing the boy, too. He alit gracefully, kicking one leg over the saddle and sliding down, catching himself with no trace of awkwardness. He strode toward us, smiling. He even had beautiful teeth. However stingily the gods may have dealt with him in the matter of pedigree, they made it up handsomely in physical attributes.

  “Praetor! So soon among us! I am Gelon, son of Gaeto, merchant of Baiae. I bid you welcome to our district.” Here he performed a courtly bow, a gesture never performed by Romans but somehow dignified and without the groveling implications of the Oriental bow. “And to your lady, the distinguished Julia of the Caesars, and the lovely Lady Antonia, and this other Lady Julia whose name of preference I must learn, and to all your entourage, welcome again!”

  The women cooed and fluttered like pet doves. So much for patrician dignity.

  “You are uncommonly well-informed,” I noted.

  “As it happened, a party of my father’s agents who returned yesterday from Capua, attended a ceremony at which the Capuans honored you.”

  “Well, that explains it. We thank you for your very courteous welcome, Gelon, and we look forward to our stay in beautiful southern Campania.”

  “Should you desire to see the many sights of the neighborhood, Praetor, please allow me to be your guide. It would be both an honor and a pleasure to me.”

  “I may well take you up on that,” I told him. Behind me I heard scandalized little sounds from the stuffier part of my following. He was, after all, a slaver’s son and a foreigner to boot. But I didn’t care. I was the one with imperium and could do as I pleased. I was going to have to keep an eye on Julia, though.

  “What are you doing here?” This indignant shout came from a bald, white-bearded specimen who, to judge by his white robe and laurel chaplet, had to be Diocles, priest of Apollo.

  “I’m supposed to be here,” I informed him. “I’m the new praetor peregrinus.”

  “Not you!” he cried, pointing a skinny finger at Gelon. “Him! That African slave seller! He fouls the holy precincts of Apollo!”

  I was perfectly aware that he hadn’t meant me, but I couldn’t help having a little fun. “Oh, he can’t be all that bad, surely. His horses are as handsome as Apollo’s own. Could such splendid animals be owned by a man unworthy to approach your temple?”

  The old boy tried to calm down and regather his dignity. “The honored praetor is pleased to jest. This lowborn foreign scoundrel has been seeking out my daughter at every opportunity.” He shot that lovely young woman a venomous glare, and she lowered her eyes, then stole another adoring glance at young Gelon.

  “That proves only that he has good taste,” I said. Then Julia moved in to smooth things over, a task she undertook on my behalf with some frequency.

  “Reverend Diocles,” she said, stepping close and laying a soothing hand in his arm, “forgive my husband’s levity. He is a very serious man in court but nowhere else. And this young man has acted most courteously. Please do not mar our arrival with rancor.”

  Actually, I didn’t mind a bit of rancor. It livened things up. But the old man acquiesced with a fair degree of grace. “I would do nothing to make your arrival among us any but the most pleasant of experiences. Gorgo!” he snapped. “Go back inside.”

  The girl turned wordlessly and obeyed, wiggling her bottom rather more than necessary. The display was intended for young Gelon, but I admired it anyway.

  “And I, too, will take my leave of you, Senator,” said the youth who was the focus of these contending passions. “Perhaps I will have the privilege of seeing you again at the banquet to be held in your honor.”

  “I shall look forward to it,” I assured him, and with that he mounted. It was a performance far removed from the undignified scramble with which I placed myself on a horse’s back. He seemed to flow onto the saddle as if lifted there by the hands of an invisible god. The women gasped in admiration.

  “He rides pretty well,” Hermes said grudgingly, “but I’ll wager he’s no good with a sword.”

  “Diocles,” my wife said, “please have dinner with us this evening. I would love to meet your wife as well.”

  “Alas, my wife died many years ago,” he told her.

  “Then bring your lovely daughter.”

  “Gorgo? To the house of the praetor? She is not worthy—”

  “Nonsense. I would love to become better acquainted with her.”

  “Then, to please you, my lady—”

  “Splendid!” Julia could work people like a politician when she wanted to.

  We took our leave of the priest and began to walk back toward the villa. “Looks like it will be lively times in Campania,” I observed.

  Julia poked me with her fan. “You should not have provoked him. He is a priest, after all.”

  “Just of Apollo,” I said. Perhaps I should explain here that Apollo, though worshipped in Rome, was not in those days highly regarded as a deity. He was brought to Rome from Greece by our last king, Tarquinius Superbus. Four and a half centuries of residency did not make him a Roman, and people still regarded him as a Greek import. It has only been in recent years that the First Citizen raised him to the dignity of a State god and built him the splendid temple on the Palatine. He did this because an ancient temple of Apollo resides on the headland overlooking Actium, and he credits Apollo’s favor for his unexpected victory in the naval battle fought there against the fleet of Antonius and Cleopatra. Personally, I think he gives Apollo the credit so that Marcus Agrippa, who really won the battle for him, won’t get too much of it.

  The grounds and gardens were so splendid that I didn’t think the house could possibly match them, but I was wrong. The steward led us through room after room, each of them a jaw-dropper in point of luxury. Every room had exquisitely frescoed walls and ceilings, painted with mythological scenes in the highest degree of artistry. We learned that these were renewed every year, plaster and all, because Hortalus couldn’t abide faded colors. There floors consisted of picture mosaics, each room’s featuring a different deity and known by that god’s name. Since there were so many rooms, there were gods represented I had never heard of.

  The library was not a single room but a whole series of them, each packed with books stored in racks of fragrant cedar. One room was devoted entirely to Homer and commentaries upon him, another to the Greek playwrights, another to the philosophers.

  His wine cellars contained amphorae of wine from every region of the world, the great jars seeming to stretch on into infinity. Old Hortalus had needed plenty of wine, because not only did he entertain lavishly but also watered the trees in his olive orchard with wine, believing they yielded superior fruit and oil because of this special treatment.

  But even these wonders paled when we saw the baths. Even the finest public baths in Rome were not as splendid nor as extensive. You could have rowed a trireme on the larger pools. The hot baths were fed with water piped in from Baiae’s famous hot springs by miles of underground aqueducts laid in at enormous expense. Not only were the waters health giving but also the splendid air was not marred by the pall of woodsmoke that hangs over conventional hot baths. Marble was the only stone used in these baths, unless you counted the jewels and coral with which the bottoms of the pools were decorated. And all of them were surrounded by more of the fabulous statues Hortalus had collected so single-mindedly.

  It was not exactly the most luxurious dwelling I had ever seen. I had, after all, lived for months in Ptolemy’s palace in Alexandria. But for a private citizen’s house it was pretty comfortable. Lucullus and Philippus and a f
ew others owned properties even more lavish, but Quintus Hortensius Hortalus owned several more like this one. And this was a man who, by his own choice, never accepted the offices of propraetor or proconsul and thus never had a province to loot. It just goes to show you what a successful career in the law can get you.

  “I just know I’m going to love it here!” Julia proclaimed when the tour was over.

  I was having second thoughts about the whole matter. “You understand, my dear, that these are the fruits of a lifetime of conniving, political corruption, bribery—I could go on for hours. I have a feeling that, lacking Hortalus’s stupendous income, this place might get rather expensive to support.”

  “Nonsense. Just stick with Caesar and we will never have money problems.” She said this with great finality, as she said most things.

  Later on that evening I discussed the same misgivings with Hermes.

  “Sell off some of the statuary,” he advised. “The price of just one or two of those pieces would keep this place running for years.”

  “It’s a thought,” I admitted, “though I would hate to lose them. Originals by Praxiteles!”

  “The wine, then. Even you can’t drink your way through that much. Not if you live to be a hundred.”

  “Even worse!” I groaned.

  2

  I held my first assizes in Cumae, a town I had never visited previously. Cumae is believed to be the oldest Greek colony in Italy, perhaps a thousand years old at this time. It was once the capital city of Campania, but that was long ago. As all the world knows, it is the home of the Cumaean Sibyl, the hereditary prophetess of Apollo and, after the Delphic, the most widely consulted of the sibyls. Cumae is always full of people from all over the world who have come to seek her counsel and so, as praetor of the foreigners, there was business there for me to attend to.

  Besides the foreigners, the resident Greeks, the Romans, and the Campanians, the other major population group was the Samnites. These people, who spoke the Oscan dialect, had for many years been firm allies of Rome. But within living memory, they had been our implacable enemies, contending for control of central and southern Italy. When my father was a young man, the word “Samnite” was used interchangeably with “gladiator,” since most of our Samnite prisoners of war were assigned to that exciting if rather demanding profession.

  While Julia and her ladies went to tour the sights of the town, I and my staff held court. The basilica was a fine one, an imposing structure built in the years since Cumae became a Roman colony. Although not as lofty as the vast new Basilica Aemilia in Rome, recently rebuilt by a member of the Aemilian family (using Caesar’s money, of course), it had beautiful proportions and tasteful decoration.

  Since the weather was splendid, a dais had been set up on the steps of the basilica, shaded by an elaborate awning and facing the town’s forum. When I arrived, preceded by my lictors and surrounded by my staff, the bustle and hubbub of the forum stilled, the lounging idlers rose to their feet (save a few crippled beggars), and everyone faced the dais as a gesture of respect. This I took as a good sign. It meant that the people here were content, glowers and rude noises being the rule when they were not.

  And why should they not be content? They were members in good standing of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, enjoying all its advantages without being involved with the political infighting of the capital; and Roman justice was always an improvement over whatever system had been in place previously.

  A man in the striped robe and bearing the crook-topped staff of an augur solemnly proclaimed that the omens were propitious for official business. A priest performed the required sacrifice, and we were ready to proceed.

  A young relative of mine named Marcus Caecilius Metellus stepped forward and proclaimed: “People of Cumae, attend! On behalf of the Senate and People of Rome, the distinguished Praetor Peregrinus Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger has come from Rome to hear your cases concerning foreigners and render judgment. Hail the Senate and People of Rome!” The crowd returned the salute fervently. Marcus had a fine, trained orator’s voice. He was about eighteen at the time, just beginning his public career and soon to serve as military tribune.

  A gaggle of local officials joined us on the dais. Like so many Italian towns, Cumae was governed by annually elected duumviri: two local magnates who kept close watch on each other, each determined that his colleague not steal more than himself. The holders of lesser offices—three praetors, a couple of aediles, and so forth—were mostly men who had held the duumvirate themselves, and they took the office in rotation. All these men were members of three or four prominent families who regarded office holding as an ancestral privilege. The same was true of the Senate at Rome, only the pool of families there was somewhat larger.

  “Have we sufficient equites present to empanel a jury, should we need one?” I asked a duumvir.

  “Easily,” he answered. “This isn’t Rome. We seldom use more than twenty or thirty jurors.”

  Roman juries often numbered in the hundreds. Even the richest men found that many difficult to bribe. Not that some didn’t try, and successfully at that.

  “It’s a bad law, anyway,” I said. “Any free citizen should be eligible for jury duty.”

  “That would lead to anarchy!” said an indignant official. “Only men of property are competent to make legal judgments.” The rest made sounds of agreement. They were all equites, of course.

  “We used to say that only men of property could serve in the legions,” I observed. “How many of you have ever shouldered a spear?” They bristled, and Hermes gave me a nudge. I was starting things badly. “Oh, well, what’s up first?”

  Most of the cases that morning involved suits brought against foreign businessmen. By law, such men had to have a citizen partner. Usually, it was this partner, or his advocate, who argued on the foreigner’s behalf. Except for an occasional question I had very little part in the proceedings except to listen. I was no legal scholar myself, but on my staff I had several men who were, and these could provide me with any necessary precedents.

  Swift justice is the best justice, and I had all but cleared the docket before noon. The last item was the only criminal case of the day: a Greek sailor accused of killing a citizen in a tavern brawl. The man hauled before me in chains was a tough-looking specimen, his dark-tanned skin very little paled by his months in the town’s lockup.

  “Name?” I demanded.

  “Parmenio,” he said.

  “Would you prefer to be tried in Greek?” I asked him in that language.

  He seemed surprised at such consideration. “I would.”

  One of my lictors smacked him across the back with his fasces. “‘I would, sir!’” he barked.

  “I would, sir. That is very kind of you, sir.”

  “Do you have an advocate?”

  “Not even a friend, sir.”

  “Then will you speak on your own behalf?”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Very well. Lictor, call up the witnesses.”

  A half score of men who had the look of professional idlers came forward and they all told substantially the same story. Upon a particular date they had been carousing in a particular tavern when an argument broke out between this foreign sailor and a citizen. Flying fists had escalated to flying furniture and the citizen had ended up dead on the floor, brained by a weighty, three-legged stool.

  “What have you to say for yourself?” I asked the defendant.

  “Not much, Praetor. We were playing at knucklebones and I won most of his money. The last roll, he said I threw the Little Dog when anyone could see that I threw Venus. I called him a liar and he called me a boy-humping Greekling. We fought. I did not intend to kill him, but I did not want him to kill me, either. Also, we were both drunk.”

  “Admirably succinct,” I told him. “Would that all our lawyers appreciated brevity. This is my decision. The fact that you were drunk is neither here nor there. A self-induced incapacity d
oes not constitute a defense. You have killed a citizen, but you did not lurk in ambush or provide yourself with a weapon in advance, and these facts are in your favor. Also, you have not wasted this court’s time with a windy self-justification and made us all late for lunch and the baths.

  “So I will not sentence you to the cross or the arena. I declare this killing to be death by misadventure in a common brawl. For shedding the blood, not to mention the brains, of a citizen and disturbing the public order, I sentence you to five years as a public slave, your owner to be the town of Cumae. Perhaps five years of cleaning the local sewers and gutters will lead you to a more sober, thoughtful life.”

  The relief that rolled off the man was all but palpable. The crowd applauded and declared that this was a sterling example of Roman justice at its best. The truth was, homicide was not regarded as a particularly serious crime, as long as poison or magic were not involved, and a killing in a fair fight hardly qualified as murder at all. It was this man’s misfortune that the dead man was a citizen and he was not. No doubt he was already plotting his escape.

  I declared the court adjourned and was looking forward to a pleasant afternoon of eating, bathing, and socializing when I noticed a striking man who had stood among the onlookers and now wore an expression of disappointment. He was very tall, with a dark, hawk-featured face and dense, square-cut black beard. He was dressed in a long robe of splendid material, worked with a great deal of gold thread. I sent a lictor to summon him.

  He approached, smiling. “Praetor, your notice does me honor.” He glanced toward the local officials who, noses high, affected not to notice him and added wryly, “More honor than some think I deserve.”

  “That’s all right. I’m the one with imperium here, so I can do as I like. You’re Gaeto the Numidian, I presume?”

  “I am he.”

  “I met your son recently. The resemblance is not difficult to spot. Do you attend courts often?”