The River God s-8

by John Maddox Roberts

  “I suppose I could,” he allowed, “if you didn’t mind me lying to you. Those are Plautius Hypsaeus’s men. There are so many gangs these days that they’ve taken to wearing different colors to keep each other sorted out during the street brawls.”

  “So that’s why the last dead Clodians I saw in the streets had orange stripes on their tunics,” I said.

  “And why Milo just gave all his men new white tunics, although he claims it’s just so they’ll look smart when they follow him around in public. Aufidius’s boys have red borders on their tunics, Scaevola’s wear sky blue-” He went on, reciting a list of lesser mobs, each now with its own insignia.

  The Plautius Hypsaeus he mentioned was yet another of our political gangsters. Like Milo, he was a candidate for consul for the coming year. It says much of Roman politics of the time that three candidates for the highest offices were gang leaders.

  “Uh-oh,” Hermes said. “Look over there.” He was pointing to another group of men crossing the Via Sacra near the Temple of Venus Cloacina to the north. These had the same swagger, and their tunics were red bordered. Aufidius was a lesser gangster, but he supported Milo, Hypsaeus’s rival. “A silver denarius says they’re fighting before the redstripers are past the urban praetor’s platform.” Bloodthirsty little wretch.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “They’re outnumbered, so they’ll run over there to Sulla’s Numidian War monument and put their backs against it, if they’ve got the sense of a goose.”

  “Done,” Hermes said. “If first blood falls between the platform and the monument, the bet’s off.”

  As I had anticipated, the two little mobs caught sight of one another across the Forum and stopped in their tracks like two dog packs with their necks bristling. I could almost see their fingers moving as they counted; then the men in green charged forward as those with the red stripes sidled toward the old monument, one Caesar had never bothered to restore since Sulla had been his enemy and had stolen the glory of that campaign from Marius. The red-striped Aufidians just managed to reach the monument and turn at bay as the Hypsaeans caught up with the hindmost man and brought him down with a brick. Hermes slid the denarius along the railing toward my hand. I picked it up and tucked it beneath my belt.

  Down below, some women started screaming, and people mounted the steps of temples and basilicas to enjoy the show. The bullies of these gangs were often ex-gladiators who had served their time, so there was sometimes skilled fighting to be seen.

  When neither side could make the other run with sticks and bricks, the forbidden blades appeared and the blood began to fiow in earnest.

  “New bunch!” Hermes cried, as a little gang of men wearing yellow headbands ran in from the direction of the Temple of Vesta and attacked the green-wearers from behind.

  “Who are these?” I asked Hermes.

  He shrugged. “Never saw them before. They’re good.”

  A general engagement now prevailed in the Forum. A few veteran brawlers wearing no discernible colors had joined in, apparently just for the fun of it. The state freedman who, along with his staff, had been ignoring all the noise, turned from his records at a renewed outburst of screaming and looked at the fighting mob disdainfully.

  “Rome should have a decent police force. I am from Pergamum, and my city has never been disgraced by such a scene.”

  “We’ve always done well enough without police,” I said. He was right, of course. Rome desperately needed a reliable police force, but you don’t just admit such a thing to a foreign-born freedman.

  “If this is doing well enough, you can have it,” he said, turning back to the stacks of documents.

  Foreigners often act as if law and order were the highest of civic virtues, especially those from the civilized and monarch-ridden eastern part of the world. Romans were disorderly in those days, but at least they didn’t spend their lives kissing the backside of a king. Unlike now.

  Hermes and I enjoyed the show in the Forum for a while longer. Two well-known swordsmen of the day, Thracian dagger fighters, climbed on the monument and dueled to great applause and encouragement. Hermes won his denarius back on that one. On the whole, although it lacked pomp and solemnity, gilded armor and colorful plumes, it was almost as good as the munera.

  “Aedile?” said the freedman. “As much as I hate to interrupt your-”

  “Think nothing of it,” I said, waving aside his apology. “It’s all but over. Nothing much left to do except mop up the blood. What progress have we made?”

  “We,“ he said, emphasizing the word, “have separated all the documents relating to the public contracts let by authority of that censorship. I have marked two that featured the name you mentioned.” The stack he indicated was much reduced but still substantial.

  “Excellent. Have these delivered to my house in the Subura. I shall need to peruse them at leisure.”

  He looked at me as if a malicious god had just transformed me into a sheep. “You want me to allow state documents to leave the Tabularium?” Judging by his tone of voice, I might have asked him to break into the House of the Vestals and bugger all the virgins.

  “Exactly. The Tabularium is not a temple or any other sacred place. It is state property dedicated to the storage of state documents. As an official of the State in pursuit of his duties, I require that these documents be taken to my home.”

  He folded his arms and stared at me down his long, Graeco-Syrian nose, no small feat since I was far taller than he. “Not without the express order of a censor or one of the consuls.” There is nothing to match the hauteur of a state fiunky.

  “The censors stepped down from office last year,” I said, “and the consuls have not yet taken office due to irregularities in the election of last year.”

  “Well, then, you must simply do your perusing here.”

  Behind him the state slaves grinned. One of them winked at me and made the universal hand sign for a transfer of funds.

  I draped an arm over the freedman’s shoulder. “My friend, let us take a little walk and speak together.” We promenaded along the beautiful colonnade, where scholars and officials studied a multitude of state documents at the long tables, the southern exposure affording them the best possible reading light. As we walked, heads close together, we negotiated.

  Luckily for me, the man did not want his bribe in the form of cash, of which I had little to spare; but he knew that I would be a praetor within a very few years, and there was a promotion he very much desired, which, in that office, I would be in a position to grant him. He likewise wanted to name the state slave to be manumitted and placed in his own present post. I knew that it was from that man he would receive his cash bribe, making his transaction with me more like a respectable exchange of favors. By the time we returned to the table, we had come to an agreement, and he directed some of the slaves under his charge to box up the documents and deliver them to my house.

  This was a fairly straightforward transaction as such things were practiced at the time. A straight transfer of money was crass and vulgar, but a mutual exchange of favors was much esteemed. It was an unfair, inefficient, and corrupt system; but at least it worked, after a fashion. The First Citizen has spoiled it all by creating a bureaucracy made up of his own freedmen, handpicked by him and educated to their tasks, subject to periodic review and promoted or demoted accordingly. It is awesomely efficient and service is much improved, but the freedmen owe their loyalty only to him.

  I prefer the old way.

  4

  We were walking back across the Forum when Festus caught up with me.

  Now that the fighting was over, a couple of praetors had come out with their lictors to make arrests. A number of men lay about groaning, trying to crawl away, or just lying inert. I couldn’t tell if any particular gang had emerged victorious, but that really wasn’t the point. It is seldom possible to determine the winner in a brawl. The idea is to disrupt civic life and cow and terrorize the citizenry so that nobody dared stand f
or office against the gang leaders or the politicians they supported. The elections themselves were usually decided by bribery. I never said the Republic was perfect.

  “Patron!” Festus shouted. Then, correcting himself, “I mean, Aedile!” He was an officious little man, son of one of our country stewards, come to the City and prospering as an oil merchant. He was one of the men I had sent to check on the troublesome drains.

  “Yes, my friend?” I said, gesturing broadly. One of the rewards of clientage was being recognized publicly by a high official. Festus basked in the attention.

  “Aedile, the state freedman Acilius wants you to come at once. He has something he says you must see.”

  “He does, does he?” I had been looking forward to an hour or two at the baths, free of official worries. “This freedman summons a high official like a household slave?”

  Festus smiled obsequiously. “He says it’s very important, sir.”

  “Oh, well. What’s an aedile anyway? Just a glorified errand boy at everyone’s beck and call.” I went on in this fashion for some time. I did a lot of complaining that year. While I lamented the woes of the aedileship, we walked to the Forum access to the Cloaca Maxima, first and biggest of Rome’s sewers.

  This access was covered with a shrine in the form of a miniature temple dedicated to Venus Cloacina, she who oversees the purity of Rome’s water. Inside this diminutive sanctuary, a steep staircase led down to the great drain. The distance was not far, for the tunnel lies just beneath the surface of the streets, angling downhill to the river. The stairwell was lined with tiny niches in which burned oil lamps. By the time we reached bottom, my eyes were almost accustomed to the dimness. The air was cold after the unseasonable warmth of the open air.

  I was always uneasy intruding in this subterranean realm. There seemed something unnatural about this aqueous city beneath the City. It took an effort to maintain my air of official dignitas as we entered the small landing, its walls painted with ancient murals depicting half-forgotten gods and demons; snake-haired harpies with bulging eyes; long-nosed, donkey-eared, Etruscan death guides; and creatures that had no names in the whole vast nomenclature of Roman religion. Most prominent among them was the ferryman common to most religions, the one who takes the shades of the dead across the river Styx.

  His near-double was waiting for us. Tied up to the miniature landing was a barge built like a small riverboat, painted black but decorated with the serpents, ox skulls, and red dogs traditionally associated with underground deities carved in low relief all around the sides, twined with painted myrtle and cornel shoots. Chained in the stern of the barge was an old slave whose white hair reached his elbows, bearded to the waist, clutching a long pole in hands like twisted claws. In the lamplight, his deep-shadowed eyes glittered like obsidian. In the subterranean gloom, he was as sure sighted as an owl, but he would have been struck blind by sunlight.

  This ancient apparition was, naturally, known as Charon, and he had been a sewer bargeman since my father was a boy, condemned for some long-forgotten crime to ply the dark waters and never return to the surface.

  “Welcome, Aedile,” said Acilius, who stood on the landing with a couple of his assistants. “If you will accompany me in the barge, I will show you a few things that demand your immediate attention.”

  “Splendid,” I said, stepping into the craft and seating myself on one of its benches. “There’s nothing to liven up a fine afternoon like a boating expedition in a sewer.”

  Actually, that stretch of the Cloaca Maxima was not at all objectionable, Many people never realize that the Forum was once a swamp, and the original cloaca was a simple canal dug to drain it. In time, the channel had been lined with stone to make it permanent; then it was roofed and paved over back when Rome had kings. Those old kings had built well; and after four hundred years, the stonework was as solid as ever, needing no upkeep at all.

  “Roman engineering at its best!” I exclaimed, admiring the great, beautifully fitted tufa blocks overhead and to both sides. Here the water was relatively fresh, but that did not last long. Soon we came to the first of the public latrines situated directly over the sewer. Luckily for us, Charon, with his long pole, was adept at avoiding these conveniences, so we were spared being the targets of descending missiles. At intervals we passed lower arches, where smaller sewers contributed their outfiow to the greater stream.

  The air began to grow dense as the water grew thicker. Soon we were plowing through a horrid scum through which unpleasant bubbles rose and burst, like the bubbles of fermentation in a wine vat. I withstood the stench manfully. It was little worse than some of the fouler alleys of the Subura where the inhabitants dumped their slop jars and kitchen refuse into the streets and where the muck would suppurate through a hot, rainless summer until just passing by such an alley could be lethal to one not native to the district. The Cloaca Maxima had a long way to go before it would be that bad.

  “Fine prospect, eh?” Acilius said exultantly, as if this were his own, personal triumph.

  “It’s not exactly boating on the Bay of Baiae,” I said, not to be intimidated, “but it smells better than a Gallic town that’s been under siege for a month or two.” This put him in his place nicely. Being a freedman, he had never served with the legions, whereas soldiering was the primary duty of my own class. Like the rest of them, I often pretended that I enjoyed the horrid business.

  “Six years ago,” he went on, “this water was nearly clean all the way to the Tiber.”

  “So what has happened in the last six years?” I asked, with a sigh. Some men cannot simply state what is on their minds. First, they have to unburden themselves of a whole philosophical system.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?” Here it comes, I thought.

  “Exactly! Nothing has been done by the last censors or the last five sets of aediles to care for these drains and sewers, the very lifeblood of the City!”

  “I would have used a more suitable anatomical metaphor, but I get your point. Is the structure in danger?”

  “Aedile, as far as I can tell, this system has not required repair to the structure since it was built. Even the smaller, later sewers that drain the lesser valleys are perfectly sound and will last another thousand years, barring a truly terrible earthquake.”

  “Well,” I hazarded, “there are rather more people in the City than there used to be. Pompey’s veterans who couldn’t get land settlements, for instance, and they’ve brought in countless slaves that were a part of their loot. And all the manumitted slaves who-”

  “Still not enough to strain the system,” he said, impatiently. “And most of the new population have taken up residence in the new districts outside the walls, the Trans-Tiber and the Campus Martius. No, Aedile, what we have here is plain neglect.” He turned to our boatman. “This one,” he said, pointing to a low arch from which black fiuid fiowed sluggishly.

  “Hold your breath,” Hermes muttered.

  “Don’t worry,” Acilius said, “we won’t be going far.”

  The light of our torches barely pierced the foul haze within the sewer. Drain openings overhead shot occasional beams downward, but the water was too clogged and murky to refiect anything. We heard occasional slithers and splashes, for there are creatures that prefer such an environment. Eventually the prow of the boat nudged something and would go no farther.

  I squinted ahead but saw nothing but a shapeless mass before us. “Give me a torch.” Hermes passed me one, and I held it out over the prow. It wasn’t much improvement. I could make out nothing but a hulking mass of indescribable rubbish. I thought I could make out a few broken pots, a bone or two, but the great mass had crumbled, melted, rotted, or otherwise metamorphosed into a form of matter unknown to the philosophers of Alexandria. The stench that emanated from it was as palpable as a brick in the face.

  “Careful,” Acilius warned. “Even here, you could set it afire.”

  “That could only improve things,” I
said. I removed the torch from dangerous proximity though. “How did this come about, and how extensive is it?”

  “It came about through long neglect of the sewers, coupled with widespread violation of the ordinances against dumping trash in the drains. Everything people are too lazy to carry to the dumps outside the walls gets thrown down the nearest drain. The objects that will not fioat build up in the channel until they form veritable reefs, then everything piles up against them, and high water from the heavy rains just heaps it up higher. You asked how extensive this problem is?”

  “I did,” I said, as if either of us needed reminding.

  “Every last sewer in Rome is like this, Aedile. Only the main channels of the largest sewers are clear: the Maxima, the Petronia, and the Nodina. Those follow the courses of old creeks and have a relatively steady fiow, and even their bottoms are getting full of nonbuoyant refuse. The smaller, tributary sewers are clotted just like this one, all of them. And it’s not just broken furniture and kitchen trash, Aedile. There are a great many corpses down here.”

  “Corpses?” I knew that something more potent than garbage had to account for that smell.

  “Oh, yes. The poor use the drains to dispose of aborted or unwanted infants. And people often want to be spared the expense of burying their dead slaves or the inconvenience of hauling them to the pits outside the Esquiline Gate. And these are not just the slaves of contractors and factory owners, either. Slaves of the wealthy sometimes find their way down here, and, of course, the occasional murder victim.”

  “Infamous!” I said, meaning it. Not that murder was so great a crime, and the exposure of unwanted infants was lawful if distasteful, but to deny proper burial even to the lowliest was impious and could draw down the wrath of the gods. “The whole City could suffer for this!”

  “I’d say it was suffering right now,” Hermes said, gagging.

  “We’ve seen enough, let’s get away from here,” I told the boatman. He began to pole us back toward the main channel. Soon we were breathing what seemed to be, by contrast, almost clean air. I ordered Charon to take us to the river.