SPQR V: Saturnalia

by John Maddox Roberts

  “The result was,” Crassus continued, “Caesar not only got his law passed by the Popular Assembly, meeting in extraordianry session, he made the entire Senate confirm it and swear an oath to uphold it.”

  The sheer gall of it was breathtaking. This was far more radical than the peevish reports I had received overseas.

  “Except for Celer, I take it?” I said.

  “Celer, Favonius, and the ever-reliable Cato held out the longest,” Vatinius said. “But in the end they swore to it along with the rest of us.”

  “Who’s Favonius?” I asked.

  “We call him ‘Cato’s Ape,’ “Bestia said. “That’s because he’s as loyal as a dog but not as dignified.” Another general laugh. I suddenly realized that Antonius and Fulvia had arranged their clothing, cushions, and coverlets so that their hands could not be seen. The boy’s face was redder than ever, and his mind did not seem to be on politics.

  “That was the last significant resistance to Caesar,” Crassus said. The fingers began to go down in quick succession. “He remitted a part of the Asian taxes to help out the tax farmers, and he confirmed Pompey’s arrangements for the government of Asia. That took care of the three biggest issues.”

  More fingers went down. “There was a reaffirmation of the absolute inviolability of a magistrate while in office—that one will cause Cicero trouble—a law for the punishment of adultery …”

  “A marvelous piece of legal impartiality, coming from Caesar,” Clodia said. More laughs.

  “… a law to protect the individual citizen from public or private violence; a law forbidding anyone who lays hands on a citizen illegally from holding office; a law to deal with judges who accept bribes; several laws to deal with tax dodgers; laws against debasing the coin; laws against sacrilege; laws against corrupt state contracts; laws against election bribery; and, finally, a law to regulate the accounting each promagistrate renders to the Senate concerning his period of governance abroad, one account to be filed in Rome, the other in the province, and any discrepancy to be made up from the governor’s own estate.”

  “Don’t forget the Acta Diurna,” Clodia said. “He decreed that a daily record be kept of all the Senate’s debates and activities and published the next morning.”

  “And,” Crassus said with satisfaction, “he rammed every bit of that legislation through over the heads of the Senate, addressing the Popular Assemblies in a group, directly.”

  It was a staggering circumvention of custom. “From what you say,” I put in, “it sounds as if Caesar is not acting as consul at all; he’s behaving like a sort of supertribune!”

  “That is very much the case,” Vatinius said. “And it was necessary. Most of those laws have been bandied around in the Senate for years, and they never got anywhere because the Senate has become an intransigent body of self-seeking little men who will always ignore the best interests of the state in favor of their own.”

  I found it profoundly depressing. An arrogant, ambitious demagogue like Julius Caesar passed a huge, just, and enlightened body of laws, while my own class behaved like pigheaded Oriental lordlings.

  “How did Cicero stand in all this?” I asked.

  “With the aristocrats, as usual,” Crassus said. “He’s getting into deeper and deeper trouble, but he won’t face it. We’ve given him every opportunity to work with us, then he’d have nothing to fear, but he won’t believe he’s in any danger. He thinks the people love him! Pompey and I can put up with him and Caesar actually admires Cicero, but he’s become totally self-deluded and thinks he doesn’t need us.”

  “What a waste of fine talent,” Clodia said. “Years ago I thought Cicero was the coming man in Roman politics. The most brilliant mind I’d ever encountered; and coming from outside as he did, without all the baggage of a family history in Rome and a lot of useless political ties …” She paused and sighed. “He could have had the world, and in the end all he wants is to be accepted as some sort of pseudoaristocrat.”

  The talk got looser and more frivolous as the wine flowed and I took little part in it. During it all I brooded on one inescapable fact: Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer had been a man with enemies.

  After a while we rose, groaning and full-bellied, from our couches. Some went out to the peristyle to walk off their dinner, for the house had no formal garden. Antonius and Fulvia slipped away somewhere. The two parasites made fulsome thanks and left. Such men, if they are skillful at both cadging and timing, can work in two free dinners a night.

  I now realized that Rome, along with myself, was now suspended in a brief breathing space between the upheavals of Caesar’s consulship and the one to come. This frequently happened at the end of a year, when the outgoing consuls were getting ready to proceed to their provinces and the newcomers were arranging their staffs and, often as not, collecting bribes prior to taking office. It was at this time that the whole populace was celebrating Saturnalia, giving gifts, settling debts, and sloughing off the old year for the new. After that, it would be shield up and sword out, and the fighting would start all over.

  And the year to come would surely be worse than the last.

  Clodia came to me when most of the guests were gone. I hadn’t seen Antonius take his leave.

  “Now I think we can talk, Decius. I have a sitting room just off my bedroom. It’s very comfortable. Come along.” I followed her into a small, neat room furnished with two lounge chairs with a small table between them. Much of one wall had been turned into a large window overlooking a small, delightfully picturesque gully carpeted with myrtle, from which rose the sounds of night insects. Thirty yards away, on the other side of the little gorge, was a circular temple of Venus in one of her many aspects.

  “I had no idea this house commanded such a prospect,” I said, leaning out the window and hearing the sound of a spring running over the gravel below.

  “Isn’t it lovely? Celer never would have noticed, since this is the rear of the house. This was a storeroom until I took it over and had the window made. My maids make me up here in the mornings. It catches the early light.” She clapped her hands and a pair of slave girls brought in a pitcher of wine and goblets. They were typical of Clodia’s purchases. They were twins, barely nubile, and quite beautiful, except for the barbaric designs tattooed over their faces and bodies.

  “Scythians,” said, noticing my interest. “Only the children of the nobility are tattooed like this.” She stroked the tawny hair of one. “The pirates wanted a fortune for them. They claimed they’d lost a number of men kidnapping them, but I doubt it. Even nobles can fall on hard times. They probably sold these two rather than have to feed them.”

  “Lovely creatures,” I said, wondering how I would fare as a slave among foreigners. “However, it’s getting late and we must talk of serious matters. Speaking of which, you should keep a tighter rein on Fulvia. She and Antonius were behaving shamelessly tonight.”

  “Decius, you are such a prude.” She smiled as she poured wine for us.

  “I don’t care if they dance naked on the rostra, but Clodius is apt to take offense.”

  “Why should he? They aren’t married yet.”

  “Why, indeed?” They were a strange family. “Anyway, Clodia, I must inquire into the death of your husband.” I took a seat on one of the lounge chairs and she took the other. The lamps cast a bronzy glow over us and the room. The air was sweet from the nearby countryside. Luckily, the breeze blew from the northeast. If it had come from the southeast, it would have passed over the notorious lime pits where the bodies of slaves and the unclaimed indigent were disposed of. We were far from the fetid heart of the city.

  “And why are you doing this?”

  That took me aback. “Why? Just this afternoon, Clodius all but ambushed me at the baths and …”

  “Yes, yes, he told me.” She waved it aside with elegantly painted nails. “He thinks you can put an end to the suspicion that I killed Celer. But I am equally certain that Celer’s relatives want you to p
rove just the opposite. Is that why you are back in Rome?” Her eyes were direct, clear, and steady, even though she had done more than justice by the evening’s liquid refreshments and was even then putting away more.

  “You know what my family wants and what Clodius wants. Why don’t you ask me what I want?”

  “All right. What do you want, Decius?”

  “I want the truth.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you’re such an honest drudge, Decius. I don’t know how you manage to lead such an interesting life. You have Cato’s rectitude, although you aren’t as boring.” She laughed again and then stopped and glared at me with dagger-point eyes. “You think I did it, don’t you?”

  “I am witholding judgment until I have evidence,” I said. “Why do you think I judge you guilty?”

  “Because you haven’t touched your wine, and I know you have a thirst like Sisyphus. And you don’t get to drink wine of this quality every day, either.”

  I knew my face was flaming as bright as Antonius’s had earlier that evening. Ostentatiously, I took a large gulp from my cup. It was a wonderful Massic, as smooth as Clodia’s complexion. She leaned forward and studied my face solemnly.

  “I do wish we had better light,” she said. “I’m trying out a new one, and I’d like to observe the effects.”

  “You bitch!” I said, pouring myself another cupful. As she had said, it might be a long time before I had a chance to taste such a fine vintage again. “Now tell me how it happened.”

  She sat back, smiling. “That’s better. You aren’t too objectionable when you’re not pretending to be Romulus. Where shall I begin?”

  I thought about what Asklepiodes had said. “Was Celer’s death sudden, or did it come after a lengthy illness?”

  “It was unexpected. He was always a powerful, vigorous man, and anger didn’t weary him as it does most men. He was like my brother in that.”

  “Anger?” I asked.

  “Weren’t you listening at dinner?” she said impatiently. “His whole term as consul was one battle after another, and it didn’t stop when he stepped down. He was being prosecuted continually for his actions in office so that he had to keep putting off leaving for his proconsular province.”

  “Which province was he to have?”

  “Transalpine Gaul. Afranius, his colleague, was to have Cisalpine. But that tribune, Flavius, was after Celer like a Mollossian hound. Finally, he got Celer’s appointment revoked.”

  I made a mental note to visit this firebrand. “Men have been known to drop dead from such provocation. Might his anger have brought on a seizure?”

  She shook her head. “No, he never got carried away. His anger was of the cold, deliberate sort. He was a Metellus, after all.”

  Meaning that my family was famed for moderation, unlike the Claudians to whom she belonged, who had a streak of criminal insanity.

  “He was going to take Flavius to court again,” Clodia went on. “The year had gotten so far advanced that it would have been useless to go to Gaul even if he could have gotten his appointment back, but he planned to sue for another appointment for the next year.” This was not unheard of. Pompey had once had a delay of three or four years between sitting as consul and being assigned a proconsular province.

  “But he died before he could take Flavius to court?”

  “He rose that morning to go to the Forum. He was the old-fashioned sort, like most of you Metelli. He just threw on his tunic and toga and went out to receive his clients.”

  “Did he take breakfast?”

  “Never. While he went through his greeting round, he always had a cup of hot pulsum. That was all.” She made a face and I sympathized. The old soldier’s drink of vinegar and water had never agreed with me either. “Since he was going to court, they were all supposed to follow him there. As he was going out the door, he collapsed, clutching his chest and breathing heavily. The slaves carried him back to his bedroom, and someone went running for a physician.”

  “Did you see any of this?”

  “No. We maintained separate bedrooms on opposite sides of the house, and I rarely rise before noon. The steward came and summoned me when he collapsed.”

  “And you went to see him immediately?”

  “Of course not!” she said testily. “Do you think I am going to go out among important people with my hair tangled and my face in disarray?”

  “There is precedent,” I said. “It is even customary, along with breast-beating and lamentation.”

  “He wasn’t dead yet. For all I knew he wasn’t even in serious danger.”

  “Who was the physician?”

  “Ariston of something or other. He wasn’t much use.”

  “Ariston of Lycia. I know of him. My family retains his services.” Under a common arrangement, the Metelli gave this physician a fat present each Saturnalia and he attended us at need. By law, physicians in Rome, like lawyers, could not charge fees for their services.

  “He’d arrived by the time I got to Celer. My husband was having great difficulty breathing and his face was turning blue, as if he were choking, but that was not the case. He felt Celer’s belly and said something about paralysis of the diaphragm and tried to sound very wise, but I could see that he had no idea what to do.”

  Ariston. Another man to see. Before this was over I was going to have to talk to everyone who had been in Rome that day. I might have to make a tour of the provinces, to find those who had left. This was getting more complicated, and it had started out complicated enough.

  “When did Celer die?” I asked her.

  “Just before nightfall. His breath grew more and more labored, until he stopped breathing entirely just after the sun set.”

  So much for spectacular symptoms. “If he had been a bit older,” I said, “or in less than perfect health, there would be little suspicion of poisoning.”

  “Of course there would be!” she said, revealing for the first time the strain under which she lay. “Because I am his wife! When a prominent man dies and it is not because of age, violence, or a recognizable disease, poisoning and witchcraft are always suspected. As it happens, his wife was a scandalous woman. Everybody knows how he and Clodius hated each other, and that I have always supported my brother. Hence, I must be the poisoner.”

  “I won’t be hypocritical and pretend I think you incapable of such a crime,” I said. “Nor that I think you wouldn’t do it without a qualm if you thought you had sufficient reason. It’s just that there are so many candidates that you are not even at the top of the list. Clodius, Flavius, and Pompey had plenty of motive, and they are just the three most prominent.”

  “Yes, but they are men!” Clodia said. “Everyone thinks they would have murdered him in an open and respectable manner, with swords or daggers or clubs. Poison is supposed to be the weapon of women or contemptible foreigners.” She was beginning to get wrought up. “And I am a scandalous woman! I speak my mind in public, no matter who is listening. I keep company with poets and charioteers and actors. I indulge in religious practices not countenanced by the state. I pick my slaves personally, right in the public market, and I wear gowns forbidden by the censors. Of course I must have poisoned my husband!”

  “You forgot to mention incest with your brother,” I pointed out.

  “That is just one of the rumors. I was speaking of the things I actually do. The truth is, it doesn’t take much to be a scandalous woman in Rome; and if you are guilty of one impropriety, then you must be capable of anything.”

  I shook my head. “Clodia, what you say is true enough of Sempronia and the elder Fulvia and a few others. They are just unconventional and have a taste for low company and are public about it. I happen to know from personal experience that you are capable of murder.”

  She held my gaze for a few seconds, then lowered her eyes. “I had no reason to poison Celer. He wasn’t a bad husband, as such things go. He didn’t pretend that our marriage was anything more than a political arrangement, and he allowed m
e to do as I pleased. After the third year, when he was satisfied that I was not going to bear him any children, he no longer objected to any men I cared to see.”

  “He was a model of toleration.”

  “We would have reached an amicable divorce soon anyway. He was looking for a suitable woman. I wouldn’t have killed him for his property. He left me nothing, nor did I expect him to. I had no reason to kill him, Decius.”

  “At least now you’re not pretending that you don’t care whether I believe you.”

  “It isn’t that I prize your good opinion. Do you know the punishment for venificium?”

  “No, but I’m sure it’s something awful.”

  ”Deportatio in insula,” she said, her face bleak. “The poisoner is taken to an island and left there, with no means of escape. The island chosen is always exceedingly small, without population or cultivated plants, and with little or no freshwater. I made inquiries. Most last only days. There is a report of one wretch who lasted several years by licking the dew from the rocks in the morning and prying shellfish up with her bare fingers and eating them raw. She was sighted by passing ships for a long time, howling and raving at them from the waterline. She was quite a horrid sight toward the end, when her snaky white hair almost completely covered her.” She was quiet for a few moments, sipping at her Massic.

  “Of course,” she added, “that was just some peasant herb woman. I would not wait to be carried off. I am a patrician, after all.”

  I stood. “I will see what I can do, Clodia. If someone poisoned Celer, I will find out who it was. If I find that it was you, that is how I will report it to the praetor.”

  She managed a very small, tight smile. “Ah, I can see that I’ve snared you with my feminine wiles again.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not an utter fool, Clodia. When I was a child, like most children, I burned myself on a hot stove. That taught me to be wary of hot stoves. But while I was young I still burned myself through incaution. Now I am careful of approaching even a cold stove.”