Under Vesuvius

by John Maddox Roberts

  A short distance from us, Circe and Antonia had planted themselves at either side of young Gelon. The lad seemed quite accustomed to such feminine attention and was regaling them with something that made them rock with immoderate laughter. I looked all over but did not see Gorgo, the priest’s daughter. The priest himself was at our table, but was not looking as merry as the rest, perhaps because he was sharing the table with Gaeto.

  By late evening the party began to break up. It might have gone on all night, but a stiff breeze sprang up off the sea and the boatmen advised that the great raft be taken apart and towed ashore. Before leaving, I got up and addressed the community.

  “People of Baiae, at last I have found the one place in Italy where people truly know how to live!” This brought vigorous applause and shouts of agreement. “Now that I’ve seen Baiae, I may not even bother going to Pompeii and Puteoli. What would be the point?” At this, the crowd roared with approval. “In fact, I may just settle here permanently!” Raucous clapping and pledge making ensued.

  On that note, the wind redoubled and everyone hastened to get ashore. Our litter was brought over the boat bridge from shore, and we crawled in. I was replete with the all the delicacies I had taken aboard and my head was only lightly buzzing from the wine. The bridge rocked with the growing waves, but our lurching steadied as the bearers took us ashore.

  “I am going to have to get one of those Coan-cloth gowns,” Circe said.

  “I already have one,” Antonia informed her. “I’d have worn it tonight if I’d known it was the fashion.”

  “Not in my party, you wouldn’t,” Julia said. “The dignity of the praetor has to be upheld, and it wouldn’t look good if the women in his entourage dress like trans-Tiber prostitutes.” She affected to ignore their laughter. “I suppose there’s something to be said for transparent gowns. How else would we know that Rutilia, the wife of Norbanus, gilds her nipples or that Quadrilla, the wife of Silva, has a navel stretched three times its natural size to accommodate that huge sapphire?”

  “How did she do that? I wonder,” Circe mused.

  “Started with a small, navel-sized sapphire,” Antonia said, “and replaced it with a larger one and then a larger, until she could accommodate that stone.”

  “The concubine of the marble merchant has Scythian tattoos all over her thighs and buttocks,” Circe remarked.

  “They were Thracian, not Scythian,” I told her. “I’ve seen those designs before.”

  “I can see where your attention was all evening,” Julia said. Then she grew thoughtful. “They are a strange lot of people. With all that wealth and dazzle I expected them to behave like rich, jumped-up Roman freedmen, all vulgarity to go along with their ostentation. But they are as suave and cultured as any of the better class of Romans, considering how many of them are tradesmen.”

  “A little light on the gravitas, though,” Antonia said. “And that suits me just as well. I’ll take frivolity over heavy political talk any day. Or night.”

  I was wondering about Gaeto’s words to me. He’d said that I might find the banquet “illuminating.” Had he meant this social leveling? Certainly, I would never have expected to see a slaver at the table of honor at a banquet in Rome. Or anywhere else.

  3

  The next few days, I traveled among the towns of the district, holding court, being feted and entertained, and generally enjoying life.

  One day I went to the lovely little town of Pompeii. Actually, all the towns of this district are beautiful. Pompeii showed off its greatest adornment by entertaining me with an afternoon in the amphitheater. This splendid structure is made of stone, taking advantage of a natural depression in the ground. The depression was improved by digging, forming a perfect oval that was lined with stone seats. The outer, aboveground wall is a complete circle of graceful arches, decorated with fine carvings. One enters this imposing structure by ascending a double stair built against the outer wall, then taking one of the inner stairs that descend among the seats.

  This clever building seats no fewer than twenty thousand people. That is not a great number compared to Rome’s Circus Maximus, which can accommodate one hundred thousand, but it is huge for a town the size of Pompeii, which lacks sufficient free population to fill half these seats. At festival time, people from all the surrounding countryside and nearby towns flock to Pompeii to attend the spectacles.

  On that afternoon the gladiators from the local school came out to entertain us. Since the occasion was not a munera, the fights were not to the death but only to first blood or a declared decision. We lounged at our ease in the editor’s box as they marched out in their finery, colored plumes nodding from helmets, the sun flashing on polished armor, blades and spearpoints glittering.

  Campania is the homeland of this dangerous sport. The funeral combats are enormously popular in Rome, but in Campania they form a veritable cult. These men were as fine and skillful as any I had ever seen, fearless and tireless as they fought in pairs, matching a man from one style with another of contrasting weapons: large shield against small shield; sword and shield against net and trident; spear against sword; curved sword against straight; even a man who fought with a sword in each hand against a heavily armored man with a small shield and a spear. Two teams of horsemen pelted one another with javelins.

  Hermes and I, and the other men of my following, enjoyed all this immensely. Julia had chosen not to attend and forbade the women of our party to go. She said that, since women were forbidden by law to attend the munera, there was no reason why they should go to the sham fights. Of course, women went to the fights anyway and nobody stopped them, but Julia was a great stickler for the proprieties during those years. (In more recent years, the First Citizen has reinstituted the adult-male-citizen-only rule for the munera. It has not improved his popularity. Half the fun was seeing how excited the women got.)

  In the box with us that day was a man whose dress and beard were Greek, and everything about him reeked of wealth. He took a keen interest in the fights and seemed knowledgeable about the fighters, for he knew each man by name, his style, and the number of his victories. When the two-sword man and his opponent came out, he leaned toward me and said, “Praetor, which of these two do you fancy?”

  I could not imagine how a man bearing two offensive weapons could defend himself properly. “I favor the spearman. He has good armor and a shield. He can attack and defend himself at the same time. The other man can only attack.”

  “That is the conventional interpretation, but there is nothing conventional about such a fight.” He smiled in that superior Greek way. “I think that, should you bet on the two-sword man, you will leave this place richer than when you arrived.”

  “Who would take such a bet?”

  The Greek looked around, then said, “Since no one else seems inclined, I will bet on the spearman myself. One thousand sesterces, five-to-one odds.”

  “Five-to-one in whose favor?” Hermes wanted to know.

  “In the praetor’s of course. If my man wins, he pays me a thousand. If his wins, I pay him five thousand.”

  “Why would you bet at five to one on a man you think will lose?” I asked him.

  He smiled again. “I am a sportsman. I like long odds.”

  “Very well, then,” I said, curious to see where this would lead. “Done.”

  We settled down to watch the match. The men saluted and then squared off under the sharp eye of a trainer. Other trainers armed with staves stood by, ready to separate the combatants should they get carried away and actually try to kill each other, a not uncommon occurrence among these spirited men.

  The spearman wore a leather sleeve covered with metal plates on his weapon arm and high greaves strapped to both legs. His helmet had wide cheek plates with throat protectors. To defend his body he had a round, deeply convex shield. To supplement his spear he carried a straight, slender sword behind his shield. This was a type of fighter rarely seen in Rome but popular in the south.


  By contrast, the other man was all but unprotected. He wore a light helmet and had studded leather guards on both forearms, and that was the extent of his protective gear. His swords were legionary type: twenty inches long, straight, broad and double-edged.

  They looked to me for the signal, and at my nod the trainer shouted, “Begin!”

  The two went at it immediately, with the two-sword man pressing in aggressively, forcing the other man back several steps and seeming, to me, to expose himself recklessly.

  “A pair of double-edged gladii,” said the Greek, “means about eighty inches of razor edge. That is a formidable thing to face.”

  I’d thought of that myself, but I was more interested to see how my man was going to defend himself from that spear, which had reach. This became quickly apparent. When the spearman thrust, my fighter used his left-hand sword to block while simultaneously aiming a thrust at the other’s face. And so it went through several exchanges; each time the spearman attacked, the swordsman used one weapon to defend, immediately counterattacking with the other.

  This was what I had not anticipated. A soldier uses his sword to block only as a desperate measure. Clanging sword against sword damages both weapons. Swords are expensive, and you want to keep yours in good condition for the rest of the battle. Thus, soldiers depend on their shields and armor for defense, reserving the sword for attack against an enemy’s vulnerable areas. Swords are intended to cut flesh, not wood or metal.

  But, I now saw, if you had two swords, and were paying for neither of them, you could afford to let them get notched, blocking and parrying your enemy’s weapons. You’d get new swords for the next fight. Plus, you could keep your enemy guessing which sword was going to be used for what.

  Both men fought with exceptional spirit and skill, and we were all jumping to our feet and shouting like boys attending their first munera. The spearman crouched behind his shield and tried to keep the other at a distance with short thrusts, first toward the face, then at the body and legs. The swordsman danced out of the way, sprang forward and back, and kept drawing the other’s shield up and down by attacking from different directions. He hoped to tire his opponent’s shield arm and create an opening that would let him attack the unprotected torso.

  Finally, the spearman overextended on a thrust, and the left-hand sword came down, shearing away the iron point. Immediately, the man dropped the useless shaft and snatched the reserve sword from behind his shield. But in that instant the right-hand sword darted in over the shield and scored a cut on the man’s shoulder.

  Immediately the men with staves jumped in and separated the two fighters while we cheered and applauded. The loser’s wound bled freely but it was only a superficial cut, the best sort of wound for a gladiator: a real crowd-pleaser that doesn’t incapacitate the man.

  “It seems that you won, Praetor,” said the Greek. He reached into his robe and drew out a well-stuffed sack, which he handed to Hermes. “Sport doesn’t get better than that. I am Diogenes, perfume importer and partner of Manius Silva. Please accept these gifts for your esteemed lady.” He reached behind him and a slave placed a small wooden box in his hands. The Greek worked the latch and raised its lid. Within, nestled in fine wool felt, were perhaps twenty exquisite little glass vials filled with clear liquid, some colorless, others amber tinted. “These are a modest sampling of the perfumes I import. I hope she will find them pleasing.”

  I accepted the gift. “You are a generous man and a good loser, Diogenes.”

  He smiled again. “I am a Greek. We are good at losing.”

  He took his leave, and when he was gone Hermes said, “He arrived with his losses already counted out and bagged. Decius Caecilius, I believe you’ve just been bribed.”

  “No, I’ve just won five thousand sesterces. That Greek may think he’s bribed me, but he’s wrong.”

  “Bribed to do what?” Hermes wondered.

  “Doubtless we’ll know soon enough,” I assured him.

  That evening, Julia and the other women had a sniffing party. They made admiring sounds over the fine cedar box and the beautiful glass vials, and then they unstoppered them and began to dab scent on themselves, on each other, and on their slave girls. Each new perfume brought a babble of excitement. When all had been tried, the women gazed at the vials in wonder.

  “Decius,” Julia said, “these are some of the costliest scents in the world. This collection is worth far more than you won with your foolish bet.”

  “No bet is foolish if it wins,” I told her. “Maybe it was you the Greek wanted to bribe.”

  “The vials are Babylonian glass, the very finest,” Antonia reported. “Any time that Greek wants to bribe me, I’ll be glad to accept.”

  “I’m not certain it’s the Greek doing the bribing,” I said.

  “Manius Silva?” Julia said.

  “He and Diogenes are partners,” I said. “It would make sense if Silva wanted to bribe me, to send his foreign lackey and keep his own hands clean.”

  “I notice,” Circe said, “that no one thinks the Greek is just a foolish gambler who is princely about gift giving.”

  When the laughter died down, Hermes enlightened her. “I’ve been asking around. He’s not just Greek, he’s from Crete. Everyone knows that the Cretans are born liars and connivers. They couldn’t be truthful under torture.”

  “I’ve never liked them,” Antonia said. She had good reason. Her father was known as Antonius Creticus. But the Creticus was not an honorific voted by the Senate. It was bestowed in derision by the populace when he was defeated by the Cretans. In my opinion, any Roman who could get himself whipped by Cretans deserved worse than a funny name.

  “What else did you learn?” Julia asked Hermes.

  “Just that he’s recently back from a purchasing expedition. It seems each year he makes a circuit of the big markets: Alexandria, Antioch, Cyprus, Berytus, and so forth. He spends about half the year at this, then he returns and spends the balance of the year here in Baiae.”

  “And what did you learn about Silva?” I asked him. “Presumably you didn’t just snoop around about the Greek.” Hermes was my freedman and client. He also considered himself my protector. Like my family, he thought I was incompetent to protect myself, so he compulsively investigated anything he thought might be a threat to me, such as this Greek with his enigmatic bribe.

  “Manius Silva is the son of a freedman. His wife comes from a highly placed local family, although rumor has it she became a prostitute after her father was ruined during Sulla’s proscriptions.”

  “I knew that belly button was too big for a respectable woman,” Circe said.

  “What else?” I asked Hermes.

  “Silva owns a big perfumery down by the shore on the edge of town. Besides the perfumes he buys, Diogenes also brings back a lot of ingredients and materials from his trips. The perfumery does a lot of mixing, blending, refining, and so forth.”

  “That must be the building we passed after we visited Neptune’s temple two days ago,” Julia said. “Remember the smell?”

  Circe sighed. “Like all the flowers in the world, and musk and ambergris—”

  “Musk and what?” I asked her.

  “Ambergris,” Julia told me. “It’s a mysterious, waxy substance found floating in the sea. A naturalist at the museum in Alexandria told me that it is thought to be secreted in the stomachs of whales and vomited up when they are sick.”

  I was not sure I had heard her correctly. “You are telling me that perfumes are made with whale puke?”

  “You’d be surprised at what goes into perfume,” Antonia said. “The placentas of some animals, the anal glands of certain—”

  “Tell me no more,” I pleaded, shutting my eyes. “There are some things we men should never know!”

  * * *

  The evening came for our dinner with Norbanus and his gilded wife. Their home was not a town house in Baiae but rather a villa just off the road connecting Cumae and Baiae, and only about
five miles from where we were staying. The connecting road was made brilliant with torches and lanterns and melodious with singers and musicians. Lest anyone get bored along the quarter mile to the house, men dressed as satyrs chased women dressed (or, rather, undressed) as nymphs through the copses by the road.

  “Oh!” Antonia said, pointing to one especially impressive satyr, “I hope he catches a nymph! I’d like to see that in action.”

  Julia squinted toward the hairy, horned Dionysian. “Surely it’s not real.”

  We had no chance to find out, as we arrived at the villa a few minutes later, the satyr having had no success in his pursuit of the fleet-footed nymphs.

  Norbanus and Rutilia greeted us, the lady dressed this time in another Coan-cloth gown, this one not merely transparent but practically invisible. Their welcomes were effusive and rich with false humility. Slaves brought us garlands and the huge flower wreaths that were the custom of the district. Perfumed water was sprinkled on our hands and hair, and we were given large bowls of watered wine. To my astonishment, there were lumps of ice floating in the wine.

  “Where do you get ice at this time of year?” I asked.

  “It’s brought down in winter from the mountains,” Norbanus explained. “There are lakes up there that freeze, and the ice is sawn into blocks. These are packed in straw and carried down in wagons. We store the blocks in caves dug into the hillsides, packed with more straw. Stored this way, it melts very slowly and will last until the end of summer. Most of the larger villas here have ice caves.”