SPQR III: The Sacrilege

by John Maddox Roberts

  And the Claudians had Etruscan blood, although they always claimed to be Sabine in origin. In recent years there had been a veritable mania for things Etruscan. People claim Etruscan descent whose ancestors came to Italy as slaves two generations ago. Others pay absurd prices for authentic Etruscan art, and there is a thriving trade in forgeries. Now that the people are all but extinct, there is something romantic about them that was not apparent when they were around to plague us. Back then we still remembered that they had once lorded it over us as kings and we had little love for them. Their primary reputation lay in the fields of magic and sooth-saying, which always struck me as an easy way to make a living without actually having to do anything.

  I had a few more questions to ask, but we were interrupted by the arrival of none other than Caius Julius Caesar with his whole retinue.

  “I fear I must take my leave, Decius,” Crassus said. “The Pontifex Maximus and I have a little business to discuss.” He lowered his voice as if letting me in on a deep secret. “I’ve just about persuaded him to let me have the first plebeian vacancy in the college of pontifexes.”

  “Then please accept my congratulations in advance,” I said. I did not doubt that he was telling the truth, but I also did not doubt they had far more serious business than mere sacerdotal honors. Caesar had debts. Crassus had money. It didn’t take Aristotle to figure out the connection there.

  As I walked away from the house of Crassus, I pondered the connections between Caesar and Crassus. What I needed, I decided, was a good, unbiased source for rumor, gossip and calumny. And I knew just where to go to find it.

  7

  A foreign embassy might seem a strange place to go looking for semi-reliable information on internal Roman politics, but I knew better. Ambassadors live on inside information and rumor. They freely discuss among themselves things avoided by Romans. They hear everything and are always anxious to curry favor with well-connected Romans.

  The Egyptian ambassador at this time was a fat old degenerate named Lisas. He had been in Rome forever and he knew everybody. I have already mentioned the connection between Crassus and Ptolemy, which made Lisas a natural source to sound out. Besides, I was hungry and Lisas was a famous host.

  The Egyptian embassy was a great sprawl of buildings outside the city walls on the slope of Janiculum. Its architecture and decor displayed the great Hellenistic mishmash of Egypt and Greece that characterized Alexandria. Hermes goggled at the place as we trudged toward the main gate.

  “Did you ever come this way when you ran away?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “I’ve never been outside the city walls before.”

  “A good thing. When the Egyptians catch a runaway, they feed him to the crocodiles in their pool.” Just then one of those torpid beasts bellowed from the other side of the wall surrounding the compound.

  “I’ve heard that,” Hermes said, his face pale. “Is it true?”

  “Absolutely,” I assured him.

  A liveried slave stood in the gateway to greet visitors, and when he saw my Senator’s insignia, he bowed so low that his nose could have brushed his ankles.

  “Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger to see the Ambassador Lisas,” I said grandly. The slave conducted me into a wide atrium and hurried off in search of the master. In the center of the room was a sphinx of white marble with the face of Alexander the Great.

  A few minutes later Lisas waddled in amid a cloud of greetings. Besides his great girth, he was distinguished by a huge black wig and grotesquely heavy facial cosmetics. Like all the ruling caste of Egypt, he was of Macedonian descent, but he affected the trappings of the pharaonic past. He was famed for his many perversions, some of them unknown outside Egypt until he brought them to Rome. In spite of all this, I liked the man, who was genuinely kind and thoughtful.

  “It is so good to have you back among us, Decius Caecilius,” Lisas said, eyeing Hermes wistfully. I knew he would do no more than look. He was too well mannered to make an indecent proposal concerning another man’s slave. “But I can see that you’re faint with hunger. Please come with me and we’ll remedy that.” I went with him into a triclinium laid out as if for a minor banquet. It was not a regular dining-hour, but Lisas kept a buffet in this room at all hours for unscheduled visitors. I heaped a plate with smoked fish and pickled tongue and other items such as did not have to be served hot. Lisas did likewise and we sat down to talk. Since this was purely informal, we dispensed with couches and servitors. I brought up the subject on my mind and he mused for a while, popping sugared dates into his mouth.

  “Crassus and Caesar…” His pudgy fingers sketched idle designs in the air between us. “One hears so many rumors.”

  “What sort of rumors?” I asked.

  “You recall the year of Caesar’s aedileship?”

  “Who could forget that year?” I said. “He put on the greatest games in history.”

  “There was a rumor at the time, just a rumor, mind you, that he had more than public duty and splendid games in mind. He is supposed to have taken part in a conspiracy to overthrow the state, in league with Crassus. You recall that the Consuls-designate of that year were not allowed to take office?”

  “I remember,” I said. The year before, the consular election had been won by Publius Autronius Paetus and Publius Sulla, nephew of the Dictator. They had been convicted of bribery before they had a chance to take office, and the two runners-up were chosen to serve in their stead.

  “The plan, it is said, was that Caesar and Crassus would attack the Senate house on the new year and kill all their enemies while they were gathered in one place. Then Crassus was to assume the Dictatorship and name Caesar his Master of Horse. Publius Sulla and Autronius would then serve as Consuls.”

  “That sounds like malcontent talk to me,” I said. “Not that I’d put it past any of them, but it’s rather farfetched. Neither Caesar nor Crassus had enough followers to pull it off. Now, Sulla I can understand. He’s harebrained enough to try something like that. Ever since the old Dictator died, every adult male bearing the name Cornelius Sulla has been involved in every crackpot conspiracy that’s come along. He was tried for throwing in with Catilina, and it took a defense by Cicero to get him off. His brother was accused and convicted, although he escaped execution.”

  “It was Caesar’s intervention that spared him, was it not?” Lisas said blandly.

  “Now that I think of it, it was. Servius Sulla was so guilty, Jove himself couldn’t have got him free, but Caesar got his sentence commuted to exile.” This looked suspicious, but by this time I was seeing conspiracies everywhere. I shook my head. “No, Caesar and Crassus are too shrewd for anything so desperate.”

  Lisas smiled his man-of-the-world smile. “So it may seem to you, my young friend, but that is not at all apparent to me. In Crassus I see a man of thwarted ambition who yearns for supreme power and glory, only to see it all go to Pompey. Caesar is a man who has watched his best years pass by without performing any deeds of note. They may have perfected a pose of serene majesty, but they are desperate men. Historically, such men have always been the overthrowers of states and the establishers of tyrannies.”

  “Well, perhaps among Greek and Asiatic states,” I said. “But we are Romans.”

  “And what of that? Was Gaius Marius any different, or the great Sulla? Was Romulus, for that matter? The other great men were away from Rome that year. Had they shown enough resolution, they might well have carried out such a coup.” He made a gesture intended to acknowledge the mastery of the gods in all things. “They might have, that is, had this matter been anything other than a mere rumor, which, I remind you, is all it is.”

  “And now,” I said, “Caesar is so buried beneath his debts that he needs a province and its legions to dig him out.”

  “And soon he will have just such excavationary resources,” Lisas said.

  “Then why,” I asked, “is he still in Rome?”

  Lisas performed an express
ive shrug. “More rumors. His creditors will not allow him to leave until he posts some surety for his debts.”

  “A surety only Crassus can provide,” I said.

  “I know of no one else.”

  I thanked him for his hospitality and his enlightening gossip and took my leave. A slave fetched Hermes and brought him to the atrium. He looked a bit distressed.

  “They took me to see the crocodiles,” he said. His breath smelled of Egyptian date wine. “There’s one in there that must be twenty feet long. Biggest lizard I ever saw.”

  “Did you see them eat?”

  “No, but I saw bones in the bottom of the pool. They looked like human bones.”

  “It makes you think, doesn’t it?” I said. The tour of the crocodile pool was a service the embassy provided for the slaves of their guests. The “bones” were made of marble. It seems that crocodiles crunch bones to tiny fragments.

  We almost made it to the door before a house slave scurried up to me with a wrapped parcel.

  “The master said that you forgot this. It is for your slaves at home.” At a dinner, of course, I would have wrapped some goodies in my napkin to take home to my slaves. It had not occurred to me to do so at this informal lunch. As I have said, Lisas was uncommonly thoughtful. I handed the parcel to Hermes.

  “I want you to take this home to Cato and Cassandra. Don’t unwrap it and eat along the way. Cato is to divide it among you after you get there.”

  He shrugged. “They fed me here. Better than you do.”

  “Lisas can afford it. Do you know where Milo lives?”

  “Everyone in Rome knows that.”

  “Then you are to rejoin me there when you have delivered this. Wait for me in Milo’s atrium and don’t fraternize with his household staff. They are very bad people.”

  He grinned with gleeful anticipation. “Yes, sir!” That I was a Senator and a Caecilius Metellus meant little to him. That I was the friend of Titus Milo impressed him no end.

  I was glad of the opportunity to walk alone and think things over. I often had my best thoughts in this fashion, ambling along in a semi-unconscious state, letting my feet take me where they would. Sometimes, my feet would lead me to a place crucial to the solution of my problem. I have often wondered why this should be, and I think it may be that the small gods of the crossroads, whose shrines I passed at every intersection, were aiding me. They are the most Roman of deities, and it was only natural that they should take an interest in my ponderings, which usually involved protecting our ancient city in some fashion.

  I thought about Caesar, and Crassus, and Pompey and all the others who plagued us with their power games. And I thought of Julia. Something she had said had raised a question in my mind, but I had been so distracted by her presence that I had not been able to concentrate, and now I had forgotten what it was. I dismissed that as a lost cause and went back to Crassus and Caesar.

  Crassus was unthinkably rich, but he was woefully lacking in the sort of military leadership we considered crucial to a successful political career. To wit: one that involved plenty of loot and glory. He had all the requisite experience under senior commanders. He had commanded legions in one campaign, the Servile War against Spartacus and his slave army.

  Spartacus might have been the wiliest, ablest, most dangerous enemy Rome had ever faced, but he was a slave and his followers were slaves, and Romans refused to acknowledge a slave army as a worthy enemy. Worse, Crassus had conducted a prudent, plodding war of maneuver, making best use of the legions’ skills of discipline and engineering. He turned in a victory that was shatteringly complete and low in Roman casualties, but lacking in the sort of dash admired by the public. As usual, Pompey had arrived from Spain after all the real fighting was over, mopped up a few bands of fleeing slaves and claimed credit for the victory. Crassus had never forgotten. He was itching for a good war, but perhaps, given his mentality, a coup was not out of the question.

  As for Caesar, then as now he was an enigma. He was a man of immense capability who had done nothing. He was an aristocrat of one of the oldest patrician families who posed as a man of the people. He was an old Marian in a Rome that had belonged to the supporters of Sulla for twenty years. We Metellans had been his supporters, as had the Claudians, the Cornelians naturally enough, and most of the other great families, such as the Crassi. Even some Julians had backed him, but Caius Julius had always stressed his marriage connection to Gaius Marius, even during the years when his fortunes were the lowest. Could there be more to Caesar than I had thought? He even backed the Greens in the Circus.

  On this day, the guardian deities of the city did not seem inclined to guide my steps in any fruitful direction. I walked completely around the Circus Maximus, no mean undertaking. I rounded the base of the Palatine and ascended to the Forum, which was rapidly emptying of its day’s occupants. I climbed the Capitol all the way to the Temple of Jupiter. I walked inside and stood watching the priests as they went through a scantily attended evening ceremony. The new statue of Jupiter still seemed out of place, although its majesty was impressive. The haruspices had declared that a new statue of the god was necessary to protect the state and expose plots against the constitution. They must have been right, because no sooner had the statue been tamped in place than the conspiracy of Catilina was exposed.

  I have always found the services in our temples to be restful and conducive to meditation, as long as they were not sacrificing something large and protesting. This was one of the oldest of our temples, exceeded in antiquity perhaps only by the Temple of Vesta. It had been rebuilt many times, and at one time had been a sanctuary containing no image, for the practice of giving our gods the form of human beings was relatively recent. When the Greeks became our slaves, they began reordering our city to suit their own ideas of propriety. I have never understood how it comes about that our slaves take over our lives, but it seems to be a universal rule.

  With the smell of incense clinging to my hair, I left the temple and made my way to Milo’s house. It was not an hour usually considered proper for calling on a citizen, but Milo was not an ordinary citizen. He never seemed to sleep, and it was a point of criminal/political principle with him to be available to citizens at all hours. When it came to giving the citizens individual attention, Caesar was an amateur compared to Milo. But then, Milo was not distracted by armies and provinces and rival generals. Milo did not want to conquer the world. Milo just wanted to control the city of Rome. To that end he had assembled an immense clientele, and by no means were all of them drawn from the criminal classes. His gang of brutes remained the hard core of his strength, naturally enough, but he had expanded his relationships to include many of the highest personages of Roman society, as witness his recent invitation to lunch with Lucullus.

  Milo had accomplished his astonishing rise from street thug to political contender through driving energy, immense charm and a ruthlessness that was breathtaking even in that age of men without compunction. His aims, I suppose, were no different from those of Clodius, but they were different men. Clodius began with wealth, high birth and social position. An easy mobility in the highest circles was his birthright. Milo began with nothing. Milo had, I will not call it honor, but rather a consistent and punctilious regard to his loyalties and obligations. Milo had friends whereas Clodius had toadies.

  Admittedly, I may have been prejudiced in his favor because I detested Clodius so heartily, but then, Clodius was a detestable man. I have never considered myself to be unfair or arbitrary in these matters.

  Milo greeted me warmly when I arrived. I was lucky enough to find him alone, by which I mean that he had no other visitors of consequence, although he had a somewhat understrength century of thugs lounging about the house. He conducted me to a side room where we relaxed on couches.

  “You look tired, Decius. Have some wine.” He poured two cups and handed me one. It was a good Falernian, mixed with no more water than what was necessary to avoid charges of incivility. I drank gr
atefully.

  “I should be tired. I started the day at the house of Celer, went from there to the Forum, thence to the house of Caesar, from there to the house of Crassus and then to the Egyptian embassy. After lunch with Lisas I went to the Capitol to see if Jupiter could sort things out for me, a favor he declined. Now I’ve come to talk with you. I should have stayed in Spain. The legions are less strenuous.”

  “If you are going to get ahead, you must expect to exert yourself.” Milo had scant sympathy for those whose energies were less formidable than his own. “Still the matter of the sacrilege?”

  “Yes, and now the murder of Capito has taken a new turn.” I described to him the peculiar wounds as interpreted by Asklepiodes, and he listened with great attentiveness. The arts of mayhem were always of deep interest to Milo.

  “So the hammer blow came after the fellow was dead?” Milo mused. “That sounds—I can’t say—it sounds more like ritual than ordinary murder. I’ve been inquiring among the sicarii, looking for someone who uses that two-blow technique, but I’ve been assuming that the hammer blow was to set the man up for the kill. This changes things. If it’s ritual, it isn’t Roman ritual. You may have to look into the foreign community.”

  “Wonderful. Rome is full of foreigners and their loathsome religions. I cannot go knocking on the door of every Asiatic or Gaul or African in Rome.”

  “You can eliminate most of them easily enough,” Milo said with his usual perspicacity. “It will have to be someone who had doings with Capito. Surely he wasn’t involved with Nubian tribesmen or Arabian camel-herders. Find out what Capito was involved in and you will probably find which foreigner had cause to kill him.”