So I continued on my walk, all the way to the Esquiline Gate and out of the City. This was one of the most undesirable districts of Roman territory, where the poor were buried. Besides the depressing clay tombs of the poor, a part of the district included the notorious “putrid pits,” where the poorest of the poor, the unclaimed slaves, and foreigners and dead animals unfit for salvage were thrown into lime pits. In the hot days of summer, the wind blowing from that quarter carried an utterly appalling stench. It was none too fragrant in winter, for that matter.
In more recent years, Macaenas has covered over these pits and replaced them with his beautiful gardens. For this civic improvement I can almost forgive his being the First Citizen’s crony.
The learned Ariston actually lived in a house not far from these notorious pits. It was a two-story affair standing by itself, like a country villa, only much smaller. Its only plantings consisted of a small herb garden, and its only neighbors were some very modest tombs and a few small shrines.
At least his doorway and walls were devoid of magical images, I noted with some relief. My tolerance for supernatural paraphernalia has never been high. The slave who answered my knock at this unadorned portal was a middle-aged man. When I announced my name and mission, he ushered me inside, where an undistinguished woman his own age was sweeping. Ariston didn’t seem to share Elagabal’s taste for attractive, docile young serving women. Stoic, probably. Minutes later a man entered the atrium.
“Yes, what may I do for you?” No extravagant signs of welcome or offers of hospitality, just this rather abrupt greeting. The man had a tangled, gray beard with matching hair, and he wore Greek clothing. I took this for an affectation. Cumae was once a Greek colony, but it had been a Roman possession for two hundred years.
“You are Ariston of Cumae?” I asked.
“As it happens, yes. Aside from being a senator, what distinguishes you from the rest of the citizenry?” Obviously, this fellow was going to be difficult. Maybe he was a Cynic rather than a Stoic.
“My commission, which is to investigate the curse delivered by the Tribune of the People Marcus Aemilius Capito. Living where you do, you might not have heard of the affair.”
“I’ve heard. I live here by choice; I’m not an exile on some island. Come along, then. I have to look at my garden.”
I followed the peculiar specimen back outside. “I rather thought you lived here because you were driven from the City three years ago by the aediles.”
“Nonsense. I’m a Roman citizen; I can live anywhere I like.” He stooped to examine a sickly looking plant.
“Then why here? Most don’t consider it a desirable district.”
He gestured toward the surrounding tombs and the pillars of smoke ascending from the lime pits. “The neighbors here are quiet and don’t bother me much. That way they don’t disturb my studies.”
“You’re sure it’s not because proximity gives you the opportunity to commune with the dead?”
He straightened and glared from beneath tangled brows. “Most of those interred here were ignorant fools whom death has improved in no way whatever. Why should I want to talk with them?”
“Report has it that necromancy and trafficking with the chthonians are your specialties,” I said, undeterred.
“There is a difference between being a scholar of these things and being a fraudulent sorcerer,” he informed me with great dignity.
“And yet you enjoy a great reputation among my wife’s more superstitious lady friends, who can scarcely be accused of scholarship.”
His face clouded. “And what if I sometimes sell them the occasional charm or counsel them concerning the fate of the dead? Even a scholar has to eat.”
“I quite understand,” I said with patent insincerity.
“Listen, Senator,” he said, nettled, “Marcus Tullius Cicero himself does not scorn to come to me with questions about obscure gods and ancient religious practice. He has come here many times in the course of his researches and has asked me to read the drafts of his writings on the ways of the gods, solar and lunar, earthly and chthonian.”
This actually was most impressive. A man as deeply learned as Cicero would not allow anyone to edit his work except a scholar of equal credentials. I made a mental note to question Cicero about the man.
“Then you must indeed be what you say. That being the case, you are probably an authority on the extraordinary and alarming deities invoked by Ateius Capito some few days past.”
“I am. And if there is one thing I hate, it is the performance of dangerous, exacting rituals by an amateur!”
“You mean the curse was not well-done?”
“Oh, he carried it off well enough. Magical practice, on the level of ritual, is simply a matter of memorization; and if there is one thing every politician can do, it is memorize. The schools of rhetoric teach little else.”
“I knew that conventional temple ritual works that way. The flamines and pontifices have to memorize interminable formulae in languages nobody understands anymore. Is it the same with sorcery?”
“Oh, yes.” He lost some of his irascibility as he launched into his favorite subject. “The greatest difficulty may be encountered in assembling the very specialized apparatus and materials required to carry out a particular ritual. If, for instance, your ceremony requires the mummified hand of an Egyptian pharaoh, it isn’t something you can just pick up in the stalls around the Forum. You might have to travel all the way to Egypt to secure such a thing, and even then it can be difficult to distinguish such a hand from the appendage of a lesser person.”
“I can well imagine. The Egyptians are sharp traders.” I said this with considerable conviction, having been there.
“Even with something as simple as herbs and other plants,” he gestured to his well-kept garden, “it is best to grow your own. That way you are sure of purity and authenticity.”
I found myself fascinated despite my skepticism. It is always interesting to hear a real expert expound upon the arcana of his realm.
“How do men of learning such as yourself acquire these-these objects and assure yourselves of their quality?” I was remembering the nameless things Ateius had tossed into his brazier.
He glanced at me shrewdly. “If you need leopards for the shows you will be giving, how do you expect to get them? They aren’t sold in the Forum Boarium.”
“I’ll contact one of the hunting guilds in Africa Province.”
“And you will probably do this through the propraetor governing Africa, will you not? And is he not a man who was once an aedile himself, required to do exactly the same thing?”
“I see where this is leading. There is a sort of brotherhood of magicians who know how to contact one another and trust each other’s honesty and expertise?”
He actually smiled. “Exactly! Throughout the lands around the sea, there are scholars like myself, practicing sorcerers, priests of many deities, all able to call upon one another at need. It takes a lifetime to build up such an acquaintanceship, but it is an invaluable resource.”
He walked to a small marble bench beneath a stately cypress and sat. While we had been talking, the slave woman had brought out a pitcher and cups. I sat by him and accepted one.
“So, what did you mean when you said that Ateius is an amateur, even though he performed his curse competently?”
He brooded for a moment. “Sorcery, the deepest practice of magic, is a terribly serious business. I do not speak here of the petty magics practiced by witches. I mean the summoning of the often malevolent spirits of wasteland and underworld. It is not sufficient that this work be done by knowledgeable persons. It should be approached only by those who possess great strength of character, inner fortitude, and true nobility of soul.”
“And why might this be?”
“Because one who is easily corrupted by the temptations of power will be instantly and utterly corrupted by the beings whom the greater gods have driven into the wasteland or beneath the earth. T
he practice is intensely dangerous to the practitioner. Cicero is a splendid man, and deeply learned, but he knows better than to practice any of the arcane arts we have discussed. Not only does he consider them ignoble, but he is very aware of his own weaknesses in this area.”
This was a shrewd comment. I admired Cicero above all other Romans of the day, but I, too, had seen how his thirst for power and distinction had lessened him. Once a young orator with all of Cato’s rectitude and none of Cato’s repulsive bigotry, he had over the years acquired an unseemly self-importance and a querulous indignation at being thwarted and denied the highest levels of influence and prestige. How interesting to learn that he recognized this himself.
“I take it that Ateius Capito is not such a man?”
“He is not.”
“Then you know him?”
“I do. Like many another, he has come to me over the years for instruction, which I imparted to him freely, as I do to all serious students. I daresay that some of the obscure deities he invoked are ones he learned from me.”
“And you taught him these things knowing him to be a man of poor character?”
He snorted. “Those names possess little power in themselves. They have been largely forgotten, not suppressed. The Romans came to a respect for the chthonians late in their history, but it was not so for the other Italian peoples-the Samnites and Campanians, the Falisci, the Sabines, the Marsi, the Paeligni, the Umbrians, above all the Etruscans. And I need hardly point out that southern Italy was largely Greek until a short time ago. My own home city of Cumae was founded as a Greek colony more than a thousand years ago, and my ancestors knew all those people well. In fact, the people of this peninsula have been more intimate with the underworld than all the rest of the world together.”
“I’ve had some experience with the local witch cults,” I admitted. It was an episode I preferred not to think about.
“Then you have some understanding of this. Well, Ateius Capito was a rising young politician and a minor scholar. He was agreeable, as politicians usually are when they want to be; he was quick and intelligent. But I soon discerned that he wanted the knowledge I had to impart in order to gain political advantage over his opponents, as such men often do.”
This caught me by surprise. “He was not the only man in Roman politics who has come to you?”
“Far from it. Power is power to them. When I was still living in Cumae, I was even consulted by the Dictator Sulla, who was famously attached to magical things, attributing all his successes to a unique relationship with the goddess Fortuna. He was also, I might add, easily duped by frauds. A man who is incredibly astute in his chosen field is often an utter fool in another.
“But whether intelligent and statesmanlike or merely grasping, such men care only for power, not for knowledge. A genuine scholar, like a philosopher, cares only for knowledge.”
I had my reservations about that. “When did Ateius last come to you?”
“Let me see, it could not have been in this year; his office has kept him far too busy for that. He came rather frequently beginning about four years ago, but his visits became fewer as he realized that I was not going to impart to him any genuinely fearsome secrets. I suppose he was last here about eighteen months ago, and then he was so preoccupied with his campaign for the tribuneship that his visit was at best perfunctory.”
“And what was he after that last visit?”
“Words and names of power, what else? He wanted me to help him influence the election! Absurd!” He snorted, above all such petty considerations as he was.
I had been wondering how to lead into the crux of my investigation without giving too much away, and this provided me with an opportunity.
“There are some in our higher pontifical offices,” I said delicately, “who suspect that he may have employed just such words or names.” I could not be more specific than that. “Would you know if he did?”
His look was frosty. “If he did, he learned none such from me!”
With this rather conditional denial he rose, and taking his cup, he walked into the nearby field, studded with its humble graves. He stopped at one of them, a mere stone marker crudely carved with a name. Beside the stone was a clay pipe that led into the ground below. Into this pipe Ariston emptied his cup.
“This one was a terrible drunkard,” he said. “He murdered his wife and children, then hanged himself. If he doesn’t get a drink from time to time, he disturbs the neighborhood.” He favored me with a less frosty glance. “It doesn’t pay to underestimate even dead men.”
We walked back to his house, and there I took my leave of him. “I thank you for your cooperation. This has been most informative. I may need to call upon you again.”
“Feel free to do so. Please give my regards to Cicero. Tell him it has been too long since I have seen him.” With that, he went back inside.
I began to walk back toward the City. As I made my way homeward, I reflected that this extraordinary investigation was bringing me into contact with some decidedly odd people. In the course of a single day, I had interviewed a priest of Syrian gods, a mountebank with a magical egg, and now a proud scholar-philosopher and friend of Cicero who was not above selling the occasional spell, charm, or cantrip to gullible customers. Rome is a city of such incredible variety. No wonder I have always hated to be away from her.
That evening, I discussed my findings with Julia, while she displayed, for my horrified edification, the clothing and adornments she had purchased for the reception at the Egyptian Embassy.
“I think Eschmoun sounds the most promising,” she said. “What do you think of these earrings?” She held them up to her delicate lobes.
“Lovely,” I said, a sudden pain shooting through my head. “Emeralds go so well with your eyes. Why Eschmoun? The man is nothing but a mountebank.”
“That is why I suspect him. He convinced you so easily that he is just a cheap trickster. That means he is hiding deep secrets. What about these green-tinted pearls?”
“They go well with the emeralds. No, I am not entirely satisfied with Ariston of Cumae.”
“Cicero’s friend? He seems to have been open and cooperative.”
“That means little. Every villain who knows his business knows how to seem open and cooperative.”
“But you pride yourself on spotting these subterfuges,” she pointed out. “This gown is half silk. Shall I wear it?”
I didn’t even want to think of what it cost. Half silk! “Please do. What he said didn’t rouse my suspicion. What he didn’t say did.”
“How subtle. Do go on.” She admired herself in a polished silver mirror.
“He was on Scaurus’s exile list, but he is still in Rome. Well, just outside the City, but you know what I mean. Elagabal as much as admitted that he secured his own situation with a substantial bribe and would be all too happy to perform the same tribute to me. So did Eschmoun.”
“And did you ask Ariston?”
“You don’t ask a citizen a question like that except in court or at least with a praetor’s authority, as an appointed iudex. No, a certain indirection was called for.”
“Are you sure he’s a citizen?” She tried pushing her hair into a pile atop her head.
“The Cumaeans have had full citizenship at least since Marius’s day, maybe before. If he’s really a Greek, he must be one of the last Cumaean Greeks alive. The place was taken over by the Campanians centuries ago.”
“You rarely hear about Cumae, except for the sibyl. Everybody knows about the Cumaean sibyl. Well, we already know Scaurus went easy on the accused citizens.”
“I’m sure he required hefty payments from them, though,” I said. “And that’s what bothers me. Here is a prestigious, but penurious, scholar, reduced to selling spells, living frugally in a humble house on what has to be absolutely the cheapest real estate in all of Roman territory. What did he bribe Scaurus with?”
This, finally, took her mind off her preparations. “That is a goo
d question. Might it have been the bribe itself that impoverished him?”
“That’s a thought, but he spoke as if he’s lived there for longer than just the last three years. I’ll have to ask Cicero.”
“Do that,” she advised. “Do you think Cicero will be at the embassy tomorrow?”
8
"Do you think she got my hair right?” Julia asked.
“You look superb, my dear,” I assured her. In fact, she was better than superb as we rocked along in our hired litter to the admiration of all eyes. The sides were rolled up to give those eyes the best possible view. Julia, dressed in her half-silk gown and decked in her emeralds and pearls, her face made up by an expert and her hair dressed in a high-piled lattice of curls, could have modeled for one of the goddesses. I didn’t look so bad myself, with my bruises fading and wearing my best toga. The winter sun of late afternoon, low in the south but shedding a clear light, flattered us both. Behind us, as usual, walked Hermes and Cypria.
“I am so excited,” she said, fanning herself unnecessarily.
“I don’t see why. You’ve attended the festivities at Ptolemy’s own court. This won’t be nearly so lavish.”
“You know it’s not the same. In Alexandria, I could only stay for the first part of the evening. For the sake of my reputation, I had to leave before things got really scandalous. Besides, those were the revels of a barbarian court, full of half-mad Egyptian nobles and Persian degenerates and Macedonian brutes. Lisas’s entertainments are attended by the cream of Roman society.”
“I’ve seen the cream of Roman society behave like a shipload of drunken pirates plundering a coastal villa,” I told her. “Part of a diplomat’s art is getting people to loosen up, and Lisas really knows how to do it.”
“Then you will have to protect me,” she said.
The Egyptian Embassy was situated on the lower slope of the Janiculum, in the relatively new Trans-Tiber district. Free of the cramping walls of the City proper, the estates on the Janiculum sprawled amid generous grounds, and much of the property was the domain of wealthy foreigners. At the top of the hill was the pole, from which fluttered a long, red banner, which was taken down only if an enemy approached.
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