SPQR V: Saturnalia

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Very well. What is to be my authority?”

  “We want this handled with discretion,” Creticus said. “After all, this is within the family. But if you encounter difficulty, you may say that you are acting for Scipio. As tribune, he will bring charges against the venefica.” He used the old word for witch poisoner.

  “You understand that poisoning is perhaps the most difficult of all murders to prove?” I said.

  “I’ve prosecuted and judged such cases,” Father said. “So has Creticus. Just bring us evidence for a credible charge and we’ll get rid of her.”

  “Why did Celer marry her in the first place?” I asked.

  “We needed an alliance with the Claudians at the time,” Creticus said. “What else?”

  What indeed?

  At the door of Father’s house, Hermes took a torch from the stand and began to light it from the doorside lamp.

  “Don’t bother,” I told him. “There’s decent moonlight tonight.”

  I preferred to avoid torches in Rome except on the inkiest nights. Their light is flickering and they destroy your night vision. An attacker need only throw a cloak over it or douse it with water and you are utterly blind until your eyes readjust. Besides, a torch draws attention.

  We went outside and stood by the gate for a few minutes while our eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. After that, the streets were fairly negotiable. The moon was three-quarters full and almost straight overhead, casting her beams upon even the narrowest alleys.

  “What did you learn?” I asked Hermes as we set out.

  “Not much. Your father isn’t exactly chummy with his slaves.”

  “But they hear things,” I said. “What do I keep you around for if not to pick up slave gossip?”

  “Near as I can tell, the old man’s just like always. Doesn’t use the whip as much as he used to. Maybe he’s mellowing.” He paused. “There’ve been several of these late meetings where the staff were sent to the back of the house in the last few months.”

  “That doesn’t mean much,” I said. “Not for political connivers like my family. Has there been talk about Metellus Celer? Or his wife, Clodia?”

  “They say she poisoned him, but that’s just city gossip, not inside family information. Is that what this is all about?”

  “Exactly. The family wants to punish Clodia and they are sending me out to dig up evidence.” I talked about these things openly to Hermes. Despite his criminal inclinations, he could be an invaluable help in my investigations and had a real feel for the work. This caused me some disquiet. Did Hermes have the instincts of an investigator, or did I have the instincts of a slave?

  “This is your chance!” he said. “That woman’s been a sword hanging over your head for years. Now you can be rid of her for good.”

  “I know. I ought to be rejoicing, but I’m not.”

  “Why? Oh, well, she is the sister of Publius Clodius. It’ll give him one more reason to hate you.”

  I shrugged. “That isn’t it. He can only kill me once, and he intends to do that as soon as possible. No, something else feels wrong about this business.” I brooded for a while, and we walked across the ghostly, moonlit Forum. Dead politicians glared down at us from their pedestals as if we were Gauls come back to loot the Capitol again. I paused.

  “What is it?” Hermes asked.

  “Something just became clear to me. Everyone seemed awfully cheerful in the streets and the Forum today.”

  “I noticed. Is it because of Saturnalia?”

  “No. It’s because the year is almost over and next year will be one of utter political chaos. I just realized that Romans like political chaos!”

  “Maybe citizens do,” Hermes said.

  “Don’t be mealy mouthed. Slaves love civil unrest more than anybody else. They can get away with a lot more then. When men can brawl in the streets, they don’t vent their anger by beating their slaves.”

  “That’s what you know about it,” he said, but I had lost interest.

  What I was wondering about was why they had recalled me from Rhodes. Certainly I had a reputation as an investigator, but any halfway competent iudex could come up with enough material of the sort that passed for evidence in a Roman court, where eloquence of denunciation was more important than proof of guilt. Maybe they just didn’t want to run afoul of a woman with Clodia’s reputation. Poisoning is not only difficult to prove, but it is also difficult to avoid.

  4

  CATO WOKE ME FAR TOO EARLY and Cassandra brought in my breakfast tray. My two aged house slaves were intrusive and officious as usual, but they were always good for a few days of cheerful service immediately after one of my returns from foreign parts. After that they would revert to their customary cranky selves.

  “Are my clients outside?” I asked.

  “No, they’ve not yet got word you’re back in town, Master,” Cato said. “You should send your boy to summon them.”

  “Absolutely not!” I said. “I don’t want them calling on me in the mornings. The longer they’re in the dark, the better.” I took the napkin off the tray, revealing hot bread, sliced fruit, boiled eggs, and a pot of honey. Breakfast was one of those degenerate, un-Roman practices to which I was addicted.

  Fed and dressed, Hermes in tow, I went to a corner barber to be shaved and have my hair trimmed. It had grown a little shaggy around the ears during my voyage and long ride. Besides being necessary, there was no better place to hear the gossip of the streets.

  “Welcome back to Rome, Senator,” said the barber, one Bassus, who was shaving the head of a burly butcher. The other men waiting their turn welcomed me back effusively. I was popular in my neighborhood, and in those days even patrician senators were expected to mix with the citizenry, especially in the mornings.

  “It’s good to breathe Roman air again,” I said, taking an ostentatious breath through my nostrils. It smelled foul, as it usually did in Rome. “Is the district still Milo’s?”

  “Solidly,” said the butcher, running a hand over his newly smooth scalp. It gleamed with oil. “Next year will be rough, but the year after’s ours.” The others agreed heartily.

  “How is that?” I asked.

  “Because Milo’s standing for the tribuneship next year,” said Bassus.

  “Milo a tribune!” I said.

  “He swears if Clodius can hold the office, so can he,” chuckled a fat banker. The gold ring of an equites winked from his hand. “And why not? If that little ex-patrician rat can be elected tribune, why not an honest, upstanding rogue like Milo?”

  Milo and Clodius ran the two most powerful gangs in Rome at the time. But Clodius was from an ancient, noble family that, like mine, regarded the higher offices as theirs by birthright. Milo was a nobody from nowhere. He had been elected quaestor and was now a senator, which was difficult enough to picture. But tribune? I would have to call on him.

  Actually, I had a number of calls to make. If I was going to conduct an investigation, I would have to learn how much support and help I had available to me in the City. Men of importance spent much of their time away from Rome. I also needed to learn how my enemies were disposed.

  “How is Clodius behaving these days?” I asked, taking my seat on the barber’s stool.

  “Almost respectably, for him,” said the banker. “He’s so happy with the prospect of taking up his office in a few weeks that he just preens and struts around, and his men don’t fight with Milo’s unless they happen to bump into one another in an alley. Both of next year’s consuls are his sympathizers, too. I hear Cicero’s already packing.”

  “Who are the consuls?” I asked. “Someone told me in a letter, but I’ve forgotten.”

  “Easy ones to forget,” Bassus said. “Calpurnius Piso and Aulus Gabinius. Clodius promised them fat provinces after their year in office. They’ll do as he wants.” Next year was sounding more and more like a good one to be away from Rome.

  “Clodius isn’t going to have a tribuneship,” I said. “I
t sounds something more like a reign.”

  “We got Ninnius Quadratus in as tribune,” the butcher said. “He hates Clodius. Terentius Culleo won as well, and he’s supposed to be a friend of Cicero. But they won’t be able to do much. Clodius’s gang rules the streets in most districts and they have the Via Sacra, and that means the Forum.” Everyone agreed that this gave Clodius an unfair and nearly unbeatable advantage.

  If this all seems confusing, it is because Rome had two sorts of politics in those days. The great men like Caesar and Pompey and Crassus wanted to rule the whole world, and this meant they had to spend much of their time away from Rome. But Rome was where the elections were held that determined everyone’s status and future. Many communities had Roman citizenship; but if they wanted to take part in the elections, they had to journey all the way to Rome in order to vote. Thus, voting power remained a virtual monopoly of the City populace.

  Hence, men like Clodius and Milo. These contended for control of the City alone. Each of the great men needed representatives to influence the elections, by force if need be, and watch out for their interests while they were away. The politics of the gangs and the City districts each controlled were as complicated as those of the Senate and the Empire. The gangs of Clodius and Milo were by no means the only ones, merely the most powerful and numerous. There were dozens of others, and these operated within a complex web of shifting alliances.

  All of this was greatly aided by the fact that Rome was not so much a single city, like Athens, as it was a cluster of villages within a single continuous wall. In very remote times, it really had been seven separate villages atop seven distinct hills. As the villages gained population, they grew down the sides of the hills until they merged. The Forum back then was their common pasture and marketplace. This is why the ancient and revered hut of Romulus is not near the Forum, nor even on the Capitol, as one would think. Rather it stands amid several other sacred sites at the foot of the Palatine near the cattle market. That is probably all there was to Rome when he founded it.

  The result is that Romans identify themselves as much with their districts, or ancestral villages, as they do with the City. Only outside of Rome do they really think of themselves as Romans. My neighbors were Suburans, who took pride in their famously noisy, raucous district where, they contended, all the toughest Romans were bred. They looked down upon the Via Sacrans, who thought they were holier than anyone else because they dwelled along the old triumphal route. The two districts had a famous traditional street fight at the ritual of the October Horse. And they were only two districts among many.

  These things, plus the fact that Rome had no police, made gang control of the streets possible, and I would have had it no other way. It is all gone now. The First Citizen gives us peace, security, and stability; and most people these days seem happy to have them at long last. But in accepting them, we gave up most of what made us Romans.

  It didn’t occur to me at the time. I was concerned mainly with getting through the next few weeks alive and trying to decide where to wait out the next year. I loved Alexandria, but people there wanted to kill me. Gaul was to be avoided at all costs. It was full of Gauls, and now there would be Germans and Caesar fighting them. There was fighting in Macedonia as well. I had spent too much time in Spain and was bored with the place. There were always the family’s rural estates, but I detested farming as much as I did the military life. Perhaps I could get posted with Cicero’s brother in Syria. It sounded like an interesting place, if the Parthians would just keep quiet. It would bear thinking about.

  I rubbed my smooth-shaven jaw, detecting the usual stubble along the jagged scar left by an Iberian spear years before. It has defeated the efforts of barbers ever since.

  “Hermes,” I said, “I have an errand for you.”

  He looked around uneasily. “You don’t intend to go wandering around alone, do you? Here in the Subura’s fine, but nowhere else. Get Milo to lend you some of his gladiators as a guard.”

  “I’m touched by your concern, but if my neighbors are right I should be safe enough in daylight. Clodius is being a jovial man of the people again. I want you to run to the house of Lucius Caesar and find out if the Lady Julia Minor is home. Her last letter was from Cyprus months ago. If she’s here, I want to call on her.”

  Hermes set off at the slow amble that was his usual pace except when heading for a dice game, a gladiator fight, the races, or a meeting with some unlucky family’s pretty young housemaid.

  Julia was Julius Caesar’s niece and my betrothed. Since all marriages among the great families were political, they were waiting for the political atmosphere to be correct before setting a date for the wedding. It was pure accident and a matter of no concern to my family or hers that she was the one lady I truly wanted to marry. The Metelli wanted a link with the Julii and we were to provide it. I am not sure whether these arranged marriages did any good or not. Creticus had married his daughter off to the younger Marcus Crassus, and they were deliriously happy. Caesar’s daughter married Pompey, and they seem to have gotten on well enough until she died in childbirth. Celer married Clodia for the sake of a temporary alliance with the Claudians, and I was there to find out whether she had decided to divorce him with drastic finality.

  I was in the dark about one matter, and I decided to rectify it before proceeding further. I turned my steps west toward the river and began the long walk to the Transtiber district.

  I found Asklepiodes in his spacious surgery in the ludus of Statilius Taurus. His intelligent face broke into a smile when he saw me come in. His hair and beard were a little grayer than when I had last seen him in Alexandria, but otherwise he was unchanged. He was directing a slave, who was rubbing liniment into the shoulder of a massive Numidian.

  “Rejoice!” he said, taking my hand. “I hadn’t heard of any recent, interesting murders in Rome. What brings you home so suddenly?”

  “The usual,” I said. “Just not recent.”

  “You must tell me all about it.” He dismissed the slave and the injured gladiator. “Wrenched shoulder,” he commented. “I keep telling Statilius that training with double-weight shields causes more injuries than can be justified by any good that they may do, but it is traditional and he will not listen.”

  I took a seat by his window. The clatter of arms drifted musically up from the exercise yard below.

  “It is upon the mysteries of your profession that I wish to consult you,” I told him.

  “But of course. How may I help?”

  “What do you know of poisons?”

  “Enough to know that I am forbidden by oath to prescribe them.”

  “Sophistry,” I said. “You use them all the time in your medicines.”

  “True, the line is a fine one. Many beneficial medicines, in excessive quantities, can kill. A drug that slows the heart can stop the heart. But I presume that your interest is in those poisons favored for homicide?”

  “Exactly. My family wants me to look into the death of Metellus Celer.”

  “I suspected as much. Like everyone else, I have heard the rumors. An important man, married to a notorious woman, a sudden, unexpected death, ergo, poisoning.”

  “I must snoop,” I said. “I must ask questions. But what am I looking for?”

  Asklepiodes sat and pondered. “First, you must discern the symptoms. Were there convulsions? Did the victim foam at the mouth? Did he complain of stomach pains or chills? Did he vomit ejecta of unusual form or color? Was there a bloody flux of the bowels?”

  “That sounds simple enough,” I said.

  “It is perhaps the only simple part. You must realize that, when the subject is poisoning, there is far more superstition than learning involved.”

  “I know,” I admitted. “Here in Italy the whole subject is associated with witches more than with physicians or apothecaries.”

  “As you say. Few poisons act with terrible swiftness, few are lethal in minute quantities, few can be administered undetected.
In fact, some are given in very small quantities over a very long time. Their effect is cumulative. Thus the victim may appear to have died of a lengthy illness.”

  “You are saying that poisoning is a job for experts.”

  He nodded. “Or for a murderer with access to expert advice. There are always a few professionals in the field, and they are never without practice. Remember, many approach poisoners for purposes of suicide. Among those not under the oath of my profession, this is a quasilegitimate practice. Neither gods nor civil authorities forbid suicide.”

  “How do real poisoners get their victims to take the stuff?” I asked him.

  “The most common fashion, one you are familiar with since it has been tried upon you without success, is orally. This is almost always accomplished through food or drink as the transmitting agent, although it is not unheard of for poison to be disguised as genuine medicine. The difficulty with oral transmission is that most poisons have powerful, unpleasant flavors.”

  “That’s where disguising it as medicine would help,” I commented. “Most medicines taste awful.”

  “Very true. Most poisons take the form of liquids or powders. They may be mixed with drink or sprinkled over food. A few occur in the form of gums or pastes and a very few can be burned to give off a poisonous smoke.”

  “Say you so? That’s a new one on me. I knew the smoke of hemp and opium are intoxicating; I didn’t know there were lethal smokes.”

  “Poisoning by inhalation is perhaps the rarest sort and it is usually accidental, not deliberate. Artisans who work with mercury, especially where it is used for extracting gold from ore, sometimes inhale poisonous fumes. There are places where poisonous fumes occur naturally, as in the vicinity of volcanoes, and certain swamps are notorious for the phenomenon.”

  “Not likely to be used for murder then?”

  “It would be difficult. Poisons may also be administered rectally. It presents difficulties, but the amatory preferences of some persons could render intimate companions access to that area. The poisons may be the same as those taken orally, although of necessity their administration must be somewhat more forceful.”