SPQR III: The Sacrilege

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Thank you, Decius. Poor Nero. So many of us die untimely.” And with that cryptic but ominous pronouncement in my ears, I left.

  As I walked from Celer’s house I passed someone going the other way. It was a woman swathed in veils, and something about her seemed oddly familiar. I restrained myself from looking at her, but when she was past me I turned in time to see her step through the door of Celer’s house.

  A short way down the street I found a wineshop with an open front. The barkeep dipped me a cup from one of the big jars recessed into the counter, and I carried it to a table near the front. There I could sit and ponder what I had learned while keeping an eye on Clodia’s door.

  It was always inadvisable to draw hasty conclusions when dealing with Clodia, but I thought I knew a few things now: Clodia had not known of Nero’s death, and therefore was unlikely to have ordered it. She had been visibly upset when I suggested that there might be a legal way to subpoena testimony about Clodius’s doings at the rites. Fulvia had queered my plan when she pointed out that in that case he could scarcely be charged with serious sacrilege. I had been annoyed at the time, but the randy little twit had unknowingly supplied me with further food for thought, because Clodia had still been upset at the thought of herself or someone else being forced to testify. The charge of sacrilege was not the one she feared her brother having to answer to. What else had he been up to that night? Dalliance with Caesar’s wife, who must be above suspicion? That was laughable. As serious offenses went in Rome, adultery ranked right along with failing to wear one’s toga to the games.

  This opened whole new vistas to delight my vindictive spirit. I wanted nothing more than a chance to prosecute Clodius for something really serious. Up to now, I had been engaged on a rather frivolous investigation, the principal aim of which had been to keep Celer’s wife out of it. Now this bare-bones project was gaining some real flesh. And if I was right about the woman who had just gone into Clodia’s house, the sacrilege and the recent murders and the attempt on my own life were intimately connected.

  She reemerged just as I finished my wine, a bit of timing I deem propitious. As she walked toward the wineshop I turned away, then got up when she was past. It is never terribly difficult to follow someone through the streets of Rome in the daytime. The ways are narrow and the crowds prevent any fast movement. They also allow you to keep close without being detected.

  Not far from the Forum Boarium, she went into a charming little public garden. Besides its plantings, it featured the usual image of Priapus and one of those quaint, miniature tombs we erect on ground where lightning has struck. She sat on a bench bearing a plaque that gave the name of the rich man who had donated the garden to the city, and another rich man who had undertaken its upkeep. I passed by that same garden not long ago. Now the plaque is gone and there is another, bearing the name and lineage of the First Citizen. He would claim that he founded Rome if he thought he could get away with it.

  The woman started as I sat down beside her. “Well, Purpurea, we meet again!”

  She got over her startlement quickly. “And not by accident, I’ll bet.”

  “Yes, actually, I was wondering what you were doing in the house of Metellus Celer, which is also the house of his beloved wife, Clodia Pulcher.”

  “You were following me!” she said, indignant.

  “Absolutely. Now tell me what you were doing with Clodia, or I’ll cause all sorts of trouble for you.”

  “I’m just a poor, honest herb-woman. You’ve no call to be harassing me!” She shifted the basket in her lap. Something rustled inside it.

  “I haven’t the slightest interest in your honesty or lack of it,” I told her. “But people are getting murdered all over the city, and I was almost one of them. I suspect you of involvement. Your best course is to implicate somebody else, so speak up.”

  “Murder! I am involved in no such thing. The lady Clodia sent for me to procure certain herbs and have her fortune told. Her and young lady Fulvia, that is, and isn’t that one a hot little piece?”

  “She is indeed,” I agreed, “and no doubt Rome will suffer grievously because of her in years to come, but let’s return to Clodia. Would whatever is rustling in that basket have anything to do with telling her fortune?”

  “Oh, aye.” She reached into the basket and hauled out a fat, torpid black snake at least three feet long. “Old Dis here is the best fortune-telling snake in Rome. He’s not very lively this time of year, though.”

  “And the herbs?” I asked.

  “Just the usual.”

  “The usual?”

  “You know, aphrodisiacs. You ought to let me mix some up for you. Give you a cock like Priapus there.”

  “I don’t suffer from the deficiency,” I said, nettled.

  “They all say that, except the ones old enough to be honest about it. I think her husband needs a bit of encouragement now and then.”

  “Are you sure that is all you delivered to her? No poisons, by any chance?”

  “Now, sir, you’ve tried that one before,” she chided. “Do you really think I’m going to admit to a capital offense?”

  “I suppose not,” I said, rising. Then I let fly an arrow at random, the sort that sometimes strikes an unexpected target. I do not know why I asked her, except that her craft was an ancient one, involving many arcane rituals. “Citizens are being murdered, Purpurea. Someone is stabbing them in the throat and then, after they are dead, smashing them on the forehead with a hammer. What do you know of that?” To my astonishment her face drained of color and her jaw dropped.

  “You mean they’re in the city?”

  I was taken much aback. “Who? Who do you mean by ‘they’?”

  She jumped up, clutching her basket. “Nobody I want to be involved with. Take my advice and don’t you fall afoul of them, either. Good day to you, sir.” She shouldered past me and headed for the street.

  “Stop!” I said. “I want to…” By that time, I was addressing her back, She was not just walking away. She was running. I began to chase her, but I quickly gave it up. The toga is a wretched garment for performing anything strenuous, and I did not dare throw it off. Someone would steal it for certain.

  I shrugged, thinking that I could always find her in her booth. Then I trudged back home, where I found two notes waiting for me.

  One was from my father, informing me that the following morning the Senate would go to Pompey’s camp to give him formal permission for his triumph. I was to dress properly for the occasion.

  The other was from Julia. It read: I have important information. Meet me tomorrow evening at sunset on the portico of the Temple of Castor.

  9

  It was a fine morning, and we assembled in the Forum dressed in our best togas. It was not an official holiday, but there was a holiday spirit in the air, as there always is when routine is broken. Hortalus got up on the Rostra and proclaimed our mission, and the crowd cheered, praising the Senate’s wisdom.

  Of course, Pompey had known for days of the Senate’s decision, but his flunkies had insisted that we revive the ancient custom of the entire Senate trooping in a body to the victorious general’s camp to give him the good news personally. Since they had adequate historical precedent to cite, there was no way the rest of us could get out of it.

  As we went down the Via Sacra to the city gate, we all kept good, impassive senatorial faces, but there was plenty of grumbling all around. I did a bit of it myself.

  “It had better be the triumph to top all triumphs,” somebody groused near me, “since he’s putting us to all this trouble.”

  “Just like Pompey,” said somebody else. “Not enough to get his triumph; he has to see the whole Senate come out to him to kiss his glorious backside.” This was all to the good, to my way of thinking. In those days the Senate still had a great deal of pride and was an assemblage of peers. We did not like anyone who puffed himself up and gave himself kingly airs. A triumphator received semi-divine honors for a day, and th
at was thought to be enough for any man.

  Pompey’s lackeys had been petitioning the Senate to grant him the right to wear his triumphal regalia at all public functions, a piece of abject toadying that horrified all right-thinking Romans. Unfortunately, right-thinking Romans were getting fewer all the time.

  Pompey’s camp was laid out identically to a legionary camp, but without the customary fortifications. That would have been an intolerable provocation. His soldiers were still under arms, but they showed the lax discipline Pompey allowed between campaigns. Few bothered to wear armor or bear shields, and those detailed to guard the treasure merely belted on their swords and leaned on their spears, most of them passing the time with dice and knucklebones. There were some flaming faces as we made our way to his praetorium. Many felt mortally insulted that Pompey had not bothered to have his men turn out for an inspection parade to honor a visit by the massed Senate.

  At the praetorium we found Pompey enthroned on a dais. We walked down the via praetoria between the ranks of his honor guard. These indeed were finely turned out, their mail newly cleaned and oiled, the sun flashing from the polished bronze of their helmets. Their cloaks and their horsehair crests were new and colorful. The damage had been done, though, when the Senate had seen the slovenly louts standing guard. I remembered what Cicero had said about Pompey, that he was a political imbecile. A man who neglected to flatter the most august body of men in the world had little future in Roman politics.

  “Just like calling on the King of Kings, isn’t it?” I turned to see Crassus standing close to me. “Look at him. That dais must be fifteen feet high, and that curule chair is ivory, unless my eyes deceive me.”

  Indeed, Pompey looked more like a king than a soldier, for all his gold-plated armor and scarlet cloak. His curule chair was draped with leopard skins, and his feet rested on a footstool cleverly wrought from the crowns of monarchs he had conquered.

  “He certainly doesn’t mind rubbing it in,” I concurred. Behind him stood the eagle-bearers of his legions, their heads and shoulders draped with lion pelts above their old-fashioned scale shirts, and beside him stood some odd-looking men whose long, pointed beards echoed the shape of their tall caps. They were draped in rough brown cloaks. I asked Crassus about them.

  “Those are the Etruscan soothsayers I told you about. He claims they bring him good fortune.”

  These were hard-faced, fanatical-looking men. But then, I thought, men who spent their days cutting open sacrificial animals and delving among their viscera for omens had not chosen the pleasantest of professions.

  We stopped before the dais and stood there looking noble while Pompey tried to look regal. Hortalus stepped forward and spoke sonorously.

  “Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, we, the Senate of Rome, in exercise of our ancient right, do hereby grant you the honor of a triumph!” His grandiloquence was somewhat marred by the trumpeting of an elephant nearby.

  Pompey stood. “Honorable conscript fathers,” he began; then several more elephants blasted away. He waited for them to quiet down, then went on. “I accept this honor, to the glory of the gods of Rome and the ancestors of my house.”

  “What ancestors?” said some wag. “That flute-player four generations ago?” This raised some guffaws. Like many others, his family had been raised to prominence by Sulla. They had amounted to nothing before that.

  “Io triumphe!” shouted the honor guard, drowning out all the sly remarks being passed at Pompey’s expense.

  I heard Crassus say, in a low voice, “What an opportunity!” Something in his tone made me uneasy.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean, here we are, the whole Senate. And there he is, and all around us are his armed troops. He could massacre the lot of us right now and not a thing we could do about it.”

  “It would certainly be the crowning achievement of an extraordinary career,” I said. I spoke flippantly, but the sweat began to spring out on my scalp. Surely, I thought, not even Pompey would be so bold. I would not feel safe until I was back within the walls of Rome. It taught me something else: that Crassus might very well seize such an opportunity, should it ever come his way. I determined that, should he ever be encamped outside the city awaiting a triumph, and should the Senate be summoned to go deliver him the good news, I would beg off on account of a sudden illness.

  “The augurs,” Hortalus went on when the soldiers were quiet, “will take the omens and determine the will of the gods concerning a propitious day for the triumph.”

  “No need,” Pompey said. He gestured toward his Etruscans. “My haruspices have already worked their art, and they have proclaimed the third day from today to be most pleasing to the gods.”

  I could see that Hortalus was furious, but he was a man of great experience and knew that he would cut a ridiculous figure trying to argue points of ritual in such a setting, where Pompey had arranged things to emphasize his own majesty. There was no dignified way to argue with such high-handedness, so Hortalus acceded gracefully.

  “So shall it be proclaimed in the Forum,” he said.

  Now Pompey rose. “I give you all freedom of my camp, and I invite you to partake of some refreshment with me.”

  And so we ended up being Pompey’s guests for lunch. He had laid out tables under an immense tent-roof, which also sheltered some of the more fragile items destined to grace his triumph: paintings and other works of art, fine furnishings, fabrics, brocades, even models of the besieged cities and forts carved from ivory and shell.

  The food wasn’t bad either. I got pleasantly tipsy since I saw no good reason not to. Happily stuffed, I got up from the table and wandered among the treasures, admiring as always our wonderful Roman talent for acquiring other people’s property. Pompey had acquired a good many of the people as well. In one tent were enemy princes and nobles, tastefully fettered in golden chains. Another vast marquee sheltered some of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.

  “Scandalous,” clucked another senatorial inspector. It was Cato, naturally. “A triumph should not be made into a brothel.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “These look like good stock. Who wants to be surrounded by ugly slaves?”

  “Nonsense!” he retorted. “Within ten years half of them will be freed, living in the slums and spawning babies to be a further burden on the state.” There was some justice to that. Reluctantly, I left the entrance of the tent. Several Senators were crowding in behind me.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go see the elephants.” Grumbling, Cato accompanied me. I disliked Cato greatly, but he was fun to have around on such occasions. He had no sense of humor whatever, and that made it easy to insult him without his noticing.

  In a nearby field we found score upon score of the immense beasts, with their drivers putting them through their paces. Some were being trained to carry various trophies in procession. Others had platforms erected on their backs, bearing images of the gods. Still others carried small forts, and these were manned with slaves dressed to resemble the enemies Pompey had conquered.

  There was another compound, heavily guarded, which held captive warriors. These were fierce men, too dangerous to leave at home and unsuitable for ordinary slave work. Most of them were destined for the arena, where a few of them might win their freedom at the whim of the crowd. Besides the legionaries, wooden towers at intervals around this compound were manned by expert Cretan archers with arrows fitted to their strings.

  “Here, at least,” Cato proclaimed, “Pompey hasn’t let his men get too slack, even though he’s had to employ those Cretan hirelings.”

  “He doesn’t have much choice,” I said. “Romans are swordsmen and spearmen, not archers.”

  “Did you see those idle louts as we entered the camp?” Cato all but hissed. “I cannot believe that those were Roman soldiers. I have heard of how slack his legions are, but I never guessed the extent of their indiscipline.”

  “All the more reason,” I said, “that we should
prevent him from ever getting command of Roman soldiers again.”

  Cato nodded. “You are right. In the future, I shall apply myself to blocking his attempts at further military commands.” He mused for a while. “And those foreign soothsayers! What he did was an affront to the gods of our ancestors! I suppose it’s what you might expect from a man whose father was killed by lightning.” I did not argue with this.

  As I walked back toward the camp entrance I passed the praetorium and heard voices speaking in a strange language. I thought it probably the conversation of Asiatic slaves and was about to pass on when some half-forgotten familiarity in the sound of the language stopped me. Slowly, I stepped nearer the great tent.

  Just within one of the entrances I saw the soothsayers huddled. Theirs were the voices I had heard. I suppose I must have heard Etruscan spoken before, probably in the form of prayers or chants. It was a dying language, but was still spoken in some of the more remote parts of Tuscia. One of the men looked up and caught sight of me. He said something and they all fell silent and glared at me.

  I had no idea why they thought I was eavesdropping on their conversation, since nobody on Earth except Etruscans could understand their incomprehensible gibberish. Ill-mannered foreigners. If Pompey was cultivating such as these, he was welcome to them.

  With a few other Senators as companions, I walked back to the city. None of them were Pompey’s supporters, so I was not constrained in my speech. Everyone agreed that Pompey’s arrogance had grown intolerable. Nobody, however, had any good propositions as to what to do about it. After listening to a number of futile suggestions, I decided that our best course was probably that put forth by Cicero: Let time, the absence of promising wars and Pompey’s own political ineptitude bring him down.

  I had one major apprehension about this policy, though. I feared that Pompey’s downfall would probably come about because he would be replaced by men more unscrupulous than he.