SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Thank you, Floria. You are dismissed.”

  “So you see, citizens,” I continued, “how they chose and deceived their victims. Those they picked were conducted to the shrine of Hecate, not the riverine Oracle chamber below, and given a false prophecy, which the victims believed to be the voice of Hecate herself. You will now learn how they performed this deception. I call the master stonemason Ansidius Perna.” The man stepped forward and took the oath. “Perna, explain to this court the ventilation system that supplies fresh air to the subterranean tunnel.”

  Baldly, Perna explained how a second tunnel, above the first, provided ventilation. When he was done, I dismissed him.

  “Ansidius Perna and his workmen cut me an access to the tunnel above. He did not accompany us on our exploration of this second tunnel. That was undertaken by myself and several of my companions. Directly above the chamber of the shrine we found lamps and litter indicating where Iola’s confederate provided the false voice of Hecate. I would now like some of the distinguished men of this district to go and examine the ventilation tunnel and confirm that all I say is true. I have provided a ladder and my men will be there with torches. The more energetic of you may wish to travel the whole length of the tunnel, but it is a long walk, about two miles there and back.”

  As I had expected, quite a number of the prominent and less prominent people were eager to see this unprecedented marvel. While they were thus preoccupied, I decreed a recess, and most of the crowd headed for the vendors. I retired with Pompey and Cato to an inner room where we could drink without scandalizing anyone. Roman magistrates on court duty are supposed to abstain from food and wine for the duration. I had never seen this custom observed rigorously, but most officers tried to be discreet about it.

  “Not much trouble so far,” I said. “I expected more outrage.”

  “There would have been,” Pompey said, “if we hadn’t been here.”

  “True,” I acknowledged. “The presence of heavily armed Roman soldiers has a remarkably calming effect.”

  Julia joined us. “I must say this is the strangest trial I have ever attended.”

  “The usual forms won’t work in this situation,” I told her.

  “I am wondering,” she said, “how you can get a verdict without empaneling a jury.”

  “Oh, I shall manage, my dear,” I told her. She was not satisfied, but she knew better than to have at me in the presence of two high-ranking Romans. Roman wives, especially patrician wives, were not supposed to act that way, so she had to observe the proprieties. How she and all the other wives acted in private was another matter.

  When we got word that people were returning from the tunnel, we went back out and I declared recess at an end.

  “Are you satisfied,” I asked, “that the circumstances of that tunnel are as I have described them?”

  “We are, Praetor,” said a man of distinction who appeared to be the spokesman for the group. “But we are at a loss how the false voice of Hecate reached the place above the shrine.”

  “When those who decided to go the whole length of the tunnel return, they will affirm that it ends at the bottom of what appears to be a deep and wide well, but which is in reality a sort of mundus. It is located in a remote area on the property of the woman Porcia, well known in this area.” This raised a loud murmur from the spectators.

  “Bring out Porcia,” I said to my lictors. They tramped off and returned with the woman, who looked decidedly angry.

  “Praetor!” she shouted before I could speak. “What is the meaning of this travesty? This is not a proper trial and you are charged only with hearing cases that involve citizens and foreigners. You have no right or authority to do this!” There were mutters from the crowd that she was right.

  “As a matter of fact, Porcia, you are a woman of citizen status and she”—I pointed to Iola—“told me herself that she came here from Thrace. So she is a foreigner. I interpret this to mean that this matter falls beneath my purview. You will now take the oath.”

  Fuming, she did so.

  “Very well,” I said. “Now, Porcia, what was your father’s name?”

  “My father was Sextus Porcius,” she said sullenly.

  “I now summon Marcus Belasus, duumvir of Pompeii,” I said. Belasus came forward, accompanied by a secretary. The secretary carried a satchel of the type used for holding papers. There was the usual oath taking and I continued. “Duumvir, will you tell this court the circumstances of my visit to Pompeii some days ago?”

  Belasus explained about the murder of the Syrian Elagabal, and about my visit and what proceeded from it. He was a good public speaker, and threw in many embellishments and fine figures of speech. He left out the part about the party that evening.

  “I thank you, Duumvir,” I said, when he was finished. The secretary took a paper and handed it to me. I held it up. “I have in my hand the first of many incriminating documents we found in the office of Elagabal the Syrian, supposedly a speculator in ships’ cargoes, but in reality the most prodigious fence and receiver of stolen goods in all of Italy!” Once again, an exaggeration, but lawyers are expected to exaggerate. It is part of what makes a trial such a popular entertainment. I read off its list of goods. “These are typical robbers’ and burglars’ loot, and it was brought to Elagabal, something more than ten years ago, by none other than Sextus Porcius!” This went over well with the crowd. Many scornful looks were directed toward Porcia. Had she been wellborn as well as rich, she might have drawn more sympathy, but she was a mere freedman’s daughter, and her riches probably made her resented all the more.

  “There are probably a hundred men named Sextus Porcius in Campania, Praetor!” she shouted. “Probably far more than that. This means nothing!”

  “By itself, no,” I agreed, “but it is only a small part of the evidence against you.” I paused for drama. Then I held up a couple of the tiny arrows. “These, for instance. When we visited the mundus on your property and found some of these nearby, I asked what their significance might be, since they represented no Roman custom. You said that you didn’t know what they were for. Yet I discovered that everyone else around here knows that they are used to petition a god for vengeance. Why this ignorance on your part, Porcia?”

  “You think I know every detail about what people here believe? I’ll bet there’s lots you don’t know about Roman religious practice. Everyone’s got more superstitions and beliefs than any one person can know about.” The woman had a quick wit, I was forced to acknowledge.

  “Yet,” I said, “at the banquet held by my friend Duronius, whom I see in the first rank of those gathered here, you seemed to have a comprehensive command of local beliefs. And that mundus we visited, the one you said you thought was just a long-dry well that had been abandoned: That is the entrance to the ventilation tunnel.” This last I spoke with the rising inflection employed by all lawyers and actors for making a major point. There came a collective gasp from the crowd.

  “I told you I hardly ever visited there, and I spoke the truth!” she said. “You’ve seen my property. Anyone can go to that mundus without my ever knowing about it.” I saw how Iola glared at Porcia. Iola sensed that she was doomed, but that Porcia might somehow get out of this. I was counting on her resentment.

  “Yet the evidence is mounting against you, Porcia. You see, when I first suspected that the Oracle was faked, it occurred to me that whoever spoke as the voice of Hecate, a goddess, had to be a woman. You were the voice of Hecate, Porcia. On a day when a victim was to be fleeced by means of a false prophecy, you went down your mundus—we saw where you placed your ladder, by the way—and went down the tunnel to lie with your ear to the vent hole and listen for your cue like an actress about to go onstage. If it was going to be a long day, you took some refreshments with you. You left plenty of evidence behind.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she maintained.

  “Iola, come over here,” I said. Both women looked a bit startled, which was all to the good
.

  “Iola, you told me you came here from Thrace about seven years ago, but you were lying. According to the testimony of Floria, you were here ten years ago. You were a temple slave, or posing as one. Which was it?”

  “The woman is lying. I was not here then and I was never a slave!”

  “I believe you were here then, and that you were a slave, Iola. You see, the estimable Lucius Pedarius, whose family have been patrons of the Temple of Apollo for generations, has provided me with papers detailing the priests of Hecate as well as those of Apollo, their dates of accession and their deaths, providing some details of how they died. It also seems that there was a purchase of slaves twelve years ago including one young woman, unnamed, from Thrace. A lot seems to have started happening here right about that time.”

  “That was not I!” she cried, her voice trembling on the edge of hysteria. “The sanctuary has always had slaves, and many of them are from Thrace because that is the homeland of the goddess. I was born a free woman and I came here as a priestess!”

  “Yet I believe you to be this Thracian girl in the records. There is no record of her manumission. You know what that means, do you not?” Iola went dead pale. As a noncitizen, a foreigner and a slave, she was subject to judicial torture.

  “At the time you arrived, the priest was one Agathon. He died within a year of your purchase, displaying symptoms identical to those of the late Manius Pedarius, whom I am firmly convinced was poisoned by another slave recently arrived in his household. The position was then taken by one Cronion, who died shortly thereafter from an unspecified fall which resulted in a broken neck. Next to take up this hazardous office was Hecabe, a priestess, who lasted quite a bit longer, several years, before being found dead in her chamber from what appeared to be some sort of seizure: face blackened, eyes bulged and red, foam at the lips, and so forth.”

  “These were all natural deaths, Praetor,” Iola protested.

  “One such might not arouse suspicion,” I admitted. “Even, perhaps, two. But three priestly deaths in a row that could easily be interpreted as violence or poisoning? This strains the limits of coincidence.” Iola looked as if she was staring directly at her doom. Porcia, for her part, was glaring at Iola. She knew the other woman would break first.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, as if I had just remembered something, “there is a peculiarity about these records of the Pedarii. They go back for generations, kept by ancestors of the present generation of that family. They include fairly detailed records of their patronage of the Temple of Apollo. They also include much briefer records of the priesthood of the sanctuary of Hecate, since it seems there was a limited patronage of that cult, probably because both occupy essentially the same property. However, these record only such things as the accessions and deaths of the high priests and priestesses and, very occasionally, of large purchases of property such as slaves, this I presume because the Pedarii contributed some of the purchase money as partial patrons. These details of how the priests and the priestess died occur only in the records kept by Manius Pedarius, and only for the last ten to twelve years. Why do you think that might be?” I looked back and forth from Iola to Porcia. The crowd was utterly silent. I had them now.

  “I will tell you what I think. I believe that Manius Pedarius was a man with a great deal of pride and very little money. His was once one of the great patrician families of Rome. They fell upon hard times, as have many other fine families, through no fault of their own but through bad luck or the malice of some god.” Here I made one of the gestures to ward off the unwelcome attention of the immortals. It was repeated by everyone present, along with some local variants.

  “Rather than continue dwelling in Rome as virtual paupers among the great families, they chose to remove to the south of Campania, where they prospered modestly and upheld the obligations of a patrician family through patronage of this unique double temple. It is not one of the great temples of Italy, but even its modest requirements strained the finances of the Pedarii.

  “Some years ago, the priests of Apollo approached Manius Pedarius. The temple was in need of restoration. Could he undertake the costs incurred by this project? He could not, but he was too proud to say no. His patron and my friend General Pompey,” here I gestured toward that resplendent figure, “very generously offered to underwrite the entire expense, and not even place his name on the pediment, the usual custom of one paying for such a project.” There was applause for this largesse, which Pompey acknowledged with a slight inclination of his head.

  “But Manius Pedarius thought it unfit that he should accept more than a fraction of the required money from his patron. Apparently, the priest of the sanctuary of Hecate knew of the proposed restoration and realized that this would put Pedarius in a very difficult situation. This was probably the priest Agathon, but I cannot be certain. He offered to cover the cost, but with a proviso: Pedarius was never again to visit the sanctuary, to take no interest in its doings. Naturally the man was suspicious, but he needed the money badly to save his honor. He stayed away, but he kept track of certain things, such as how the priests came and, more importantly, went. He had to be suspicious that the sanctuary had to have come by this wealth in some less than holy fashion.”

  “Praetor,” Iola said, “this is pure speculation.”

  “Then call me a philosopher,” I advised her. “My school of philosophy consists of collecting facts, even tiny facts that seem irrelevant, and building them into a picture of what has happened. With these facts and pictures, I can form a model, or to use the Greek word, a paradigm, of events as they are most likely to have occurred.” I could see that nobody had the slightest idea what I was talking about. Well, I shouldn’t have strayed into a field that I couldn’t explain very well.

  Pompey whispered behind me so only those on the dais could hear, “How far would this sophistry get you in a Roman court?” Even Cato chuckled.

  “Thus,” I said, getting back to business, “we can see that the illicit practices of the sanctuary of Hecate go back a number of years, probably before this woman Iola even came here. Perhaps they go back centuries, but we can do nothing about that. What is clear is that Iola brought a new scope to the proceedings—and I do not believe that she came up with the plan alone. Porcia was its creator.”

  “Prove that, Praetor,” said the woman.

  “In due time, Porcia. Be patient. We now come to the murder of Eugaeon and the rest of the priests of this venerable temple.” Another grand sweep of the arm, toward the temple that stood above and behind me. A finely draped toga makes this gesture especially graceful and impressive. When the toga has a purple border, it can scarcely be matched.

  “In earlier days, before the advent of the resourceful Iola and the devious Porcia, the practice at the sanctuary of Hecate had been to find petitioners who were from places far from here and who had no local friends who would notice their disappearance. They were taken into the chamber of the Styx and the Oracle”—I pronounced these heavily loaded words in my most solemn tones—“and there, instead of receiving a prophecy, they were murdered and their bodies thrust down into the river, where its powerful current swept them down beneath the earth, never to be seen again, their shades destined to wander forever because they never received the customary rites.” My audience shuddered, their faces betraying horror.

  “But Porcia,” I pointed at her, “knew something that the clergy of the temple did not, or had long forgotten. You see, the tunnel and its grotto were here long before the Greeks or the Oscans came. It was already ancient even before they arrived. The cult of Hecate moved in and claimed it not knowing that the tunnel had a ventilation tunnel above it, and that the ventilation tunnel debouched at the supposed mundus on the estate of Porcia. At least, they didn’t know until Porcia came and told them. But you didn’t tell the whole staff, did you, Porcia? You told Iola first, and between you was hatched a long-range plan. The priests, Agathon or Cronion or whichever it was, would of course have leapt at a plan tha
t promised such abundant booty with such safety. Nevertheless, you wanted to narrow the field. You would do away with the superiors until you had maneuvered Iola into the position of high priestess.”

  “I won’t even protest this,” Porcia said. “You have no power to condemn me. There is no jury here. Do as you like, I will take this all the way to the Senate at Rome.”

  Then Iola turned on her. “Of course he can do nothing to you. You are a woman of citizen status. I am a foreigner and have no rights here!”

  Porcia glared at her. “Be still!”

  Yes, they were definitely falling out. Time to work on Iola again. “It was a cozy arrangement. Porcia provided the false Oracle. You picked the victims and committed the murders, except for those that had to be carried out at a distance by confederates, whom you will name for us later. Elagabal and probably others fenced the goods for you, and Manius Pedarius kept his mouth shut and stayed away. There was only one factor you did not have under control: those pesky priests of Apollo upstairs. They have been living side by side with you, only in a vertical fashion, for centuries. They just had to have noticed that there were odd doings going on down below.”

  Now I addressed the assembled audience in sorrowful tones, “I would like to believe that Eugaeon was threatening to denounce the Hecate cult as criminals and mass murderers, but it is also possible that Eugaeon wanted in on it and demanded a cut for himself. Which was it, Iola?”

  “You have no proof!” she said desperately.

  “That’s a weak objection. No matter. Doubtless Apollo and Hecate will judge which of these people betrayed their trust, and in what fashion. Both are reputed to have terrible punishments in store for those who would violate their most sacred oaths.” Porcia looked unimpressed, but Iola was clearly terrified.

  “Once Eugaeon approached her, for whatever purpose, Iola and her confederates began to plot his death and those of the other priests. Murder had always been a simple business for these cultists: a rap on the head or noose around the throat, rifle the bodies, and send them down the river to the underworld. Or else leave it to professionals overseas. Either way was eminently safe. This was different. The priests of the Temple of Apollo were persons of public importance, known locally by everybody. They would be immediately missed, even if you could kill them all quickly and dispose of the bodies down the river. It had to be planned carefully, so that no suspicion could fall on you. You had to know the schedules and routines followed by the priests, and exactly when they would be most vulnerable. There was only one way you could accomplish this: plant a spy in the temple.