SPQR III: The Sacrilege

by John Maddox Roberts

  She nodded fractionally. “Very well. I shall take no action against Julia until I have spoken with my sons, both of them. If her honor has been compromised in any fashion, I shall take measures to have the Censors expel you from the Senate for moral turpitude.” She nodded toward Julia and, with a sideways glance at me, Julia disappeared into the house.

  “I think we have no further business, Senator,” she said, and stalked back into the house.

  “Come on, Decius,” Milo said. “Getting back won’t be so easy. There’ll be reinforcements now. Come to my house. It’s closer and far stronger.”

  As we walked back across the Forum, somebody behind us said: “Does Caesar’s niece have to be above suspicion, too?” and everybody laughed uproariously until we were attacked by a crowd armed with every manner of weapon, some of them carrying torches. An Etruscan, all eyes and teeth and pointed beard, came for me with a knife in one hand and a hammer in the other. I had the great satisfaction of cutting him down with my sword. The knife-and-hammer business was only good for killing unprepared men. I picked up the fallen hammer and dropped it inside my tunic.

  “That one’s for Capito,” I said to Milo. “I want two more for Nero and Purpurea.”

  “They were no friends of yours,” he said through his grin.

  “They were Romans, and foreigners shouldn’t be allowed to kill Romans. I take it very ill of Pompey that he should use his barbarians thus.”

  We made it to Milo’s house with only minor casualties. With the massive door bolted behind us, Milo called for food and bandages and sent sentries up to the roof. With the excitement over, I began to ache in a hundred places. Apprehensively, I opened my tunic and examined my cut. So excellent was Asklepiodes’s sewing that I had not sprung a single stitch, and only a bit of blood oozed from the wound’s edges.

  “Decius,” Milo said, “eat something, have a little wine and get some sleep. I’m not sure how you propose to survive until tomorrow night even with my help. I can ask a great deal of my men, but even I can’t demand that free men miss a triumph just to preserve the hide of Rome’s maddest Senator.”

  This was odd phrasing, but in later conversation with Milo’s men I learned that I was, indeed, gaining this reputation for eccentricity. They regarded me as a sort of mascot, rather as soldiers in foreign parts will adopt some exotic beast and invest it with spurious, luck-bestowing qualities. I thought it rather presumptuous that such lowborn scum should regard a noble Senator thus, but it is always a good idea to stay on fine terms with men like those.

  I did as Milo suggested. I ate well, had just a little wine, then went to one of his guest rooms and slept gloriously. I would wager that I slept better that night than Pompey, Caesar, Crassus or Clodius.

  14

  It was a beautiful morning. I rose just before sunrise and went up to the roof of Milo’s house to watch the first light strike the gilded rooftops of the Capitol. Since it was likely to be my last such sight, I took it in with uncommon relish. All my frustrated agitation of the past few days was gone. I knew exactly what I had to do, and I was at peace.

  This is not to say that I was not excited. It would be an eventful day, whatever its outcome. I spoke with the sentries and they said that Clodius’s men had hung around for several hours, but then had gone away. They also said that there had been a good many unfamiliar faces among the enemy. Pompey’s reinforcements, I thought.

  At intervals along the roof, between the fire buckets full of water, stood bins of fist-sized rocks. The city had no laws against possession of rocks, but few things are more effective when launched from a roof. The guards boasted that they had left some sore heads among the besiegers.

  Milo came onto the roof, active and alert as always. He never seemed to sleep.

  “What’s the plan?” he asked. “The triumphal procession will be forming up soon.”

  “As a Senator,” I said, “I will have to take part, so first we must go to the Circus Flaminius. Just get me there safely and I will do the rest.”

  He was incredulous. “You really propose to march in Pompey’s triumph?”

  “As a Senator, I consider it my duty,” I assured him.

  He leaned back and roared with laughter. “You may be a fool, Decius, but you have real style. To the Circus, then.”

  Hermes had delivered my formal toga to Milo’s house so that I would be properly dressed. Awkward though the garment was, it was so voluminous that it gave adequate concealment for my weapons.

  “I wonder if Pompey will be bold enough to have you attacked during the procession,” Milo mused as we walked toward the Campus Martius.

  “With luck, he won’t know I’m there for a while,” I said. “The Senate and magistrates march in front, with the gods. Pompey can’t even come into the city until his soldiers have marched through the whole route and had the gates shut behind them afterward. As for Clodius”—I patted the handle of my sword to reassure myself—“we shall just have to see how rash he is.”

  All Rome was flocking to get a good position to see the triumph. The greater part would be in the two great Circuses, but a window or rooftop along the route would afford a better and closer view. Along the Via Sacra, some people had camped out for the past two or three nights on especially favorable rooftops, and landlords had rented out the best windows for tidy sums. The Roman need to gape at glory was insatiable.

  At the Circus I had to leave the comforting proximity of Milo and his thugs. Circus officials, accustomed to sorting out huge crowds, were ordering matters. Near the gate where the chariots enter for the races, I was hustled toward the rear of the senatorial procession.

  “By Jupiter!” said a junior Senator. “It’s Decius! I can’t believe you’d show your face in public.”

  “Duty calls,” I said. “How could I forgo my very first opportunity to participate in a triumph?”

  “Don’t get us laughing in front of the citizens, Metellus,” said another.

  Atop the spina, a sheep was sacrificed and its entrails examined. To nobody’s surprise, the priests announced that the gods were favorable to the celebration of a triumph on that day. I have never known them to be unfavorable at such a time. I squinted at the priests, but they were just ordinary Etruscan haruspices, not the strange hammer specialists Pompey had brought to the city.

  With a blast of trumpets, we stepped out and entered the Circus, walking up one side, rounding the spina and then back down the other side. The populace applauded respectfully, although the Senate certainly wasn’t what they had come to see. And so it went, all the long triumphal route, finally down the Via Sacra to the Forum, then up the Capitol. It was exhilarating, although my mind was elsewhere much of the time.

  After a formal salute to the image of Jupiter Capitolinus, we Senators scattered to get good vantage points for the main part of the show. I began to walk down the hill toward the Forum and the Rostra, which was a fine vantage point from which to view a spectacle. And from which to be seen.

  A hand gripped my arm and I reached for my sword. I hadn’t expected to be attacked on the Capitol. Men have died for less foolish assumptions.

  “Draw that and I’ll have you sentenced to the Sicilian sulfur mines.”

  “Why, Caius Julius Caesar, you do me great honor.” He smiled widely, nodding and acknowledging greetings and well-wishers. I smiled back as gaily. We were two distinguished Romans, walking down the hill on this great day of Rome’s triumph.

  “Pompey wants you dead, and by all the gods, I never saw a man cooperate so wholeheartedly in his own assassination! How did a family of plodding drudges like the Metellans ever produce a specimen like you?”

  “Oh, come now, Caius Julius, we may be a bit conservative, but we are scarcely—”

  “Shut up and listen!” he hissed. “You might, just might, live to draw breath tomorrow if you will heed me. Pompey will be far too busy to concern himself with you for the next few days, what with his triumph and his games. Clodius thirsts for your blood
, but while the celebrations are going on, he won’t be able to get his men to do anything.”

  “Good,” I said. “Just Clodius and me. That’s the way I want it.”

  “Venus, my ancestress, deliver me from such fools!” Caesar cried, in one of his better theatrical gestures. “He has those Etruscans Pompey loaned him, and they don’t care about Roman holidays.”

  “And I killed one of them last night,” I said with satisfaction.

  “Worse. Now it’s personal. Decius, I will stand beside you on the Rostra for the great procession, and maybe they won’t try to attack you. But when Pompey goes up to the Capitol, I will have to be there to preside over the sacrifice and then the banquet. Do Rome a favor and sneak away. Come back in a month or two, when Pompey has more immediate enemies to concern him.”

  We were almost to the Rostra by this time, and to all outward appearances we were conversing in greatest conviviality.

  “I know what you were up to, Caius Julius,” I said. “You and Pompey and Crassus. I wish I had been there. The sight of you three in women’s gowns must have been a rare spectacle.”

  I had expected him to be embarrassed. “Political expediency is not always consistent with one’s highest vision of one’s own dignity. But even that particular indignity is not to be despised. Glorious foreign conquest usually means months of lying on a verminous pallet, fever-ridden, covered with one’s own blood and bodily effluvia, yet it can result in a triumph such as this.” By this time we stood at the railing of the Rostra, and Caesar gestured toward the marching soldiers bearing standards and trophies, his golden bracelet flashing. I understood then that men such as I was up against had no more concept of shame than of conscience.

  “Why are you so solicitous, Caius Julius?” I asked. “Why try to preserve me when your friends want me dead?”

  He looked at me with open puzzlement. “Why do you call them my friends?”

  “Cohorts, then. I know what you plotted, dividing the world among you, setting aside the constitution and the Senate, and I intend to destroy all three of you!” I never made such a reckless speech sober.

  “How did you figure it all out?” Caesar said, smiling gently and obviously interested. I almost told him about Nero’s letter, but decided that it might make me look less astute. I still had a young man’s vanity, but more important, I had learned that it was best to maintain a sense of mystery about one’s own capabilities. That was something Caesar had long known.

  “To a logical mind,” I said, “to one who knows how to see with clarity and think with penetration, the evidence was all there.” That, I thought, was rather good.

  “You are a truly remarkable man, Decius Caecilius,” he said. “And that is why I go to so much trouble to preserve you from your own suicidal stupidity. I shall have work for you to do, in the future.”

  “What?” I said incredulously. “You won’t have a future after this evening!”

  “Look!” he said, pointing. “Here come the animals!”

  So we watched the procession: the floats bearing treasures, the exotic beasts, the chained prisoners, the unthinkable booty Pompey had assembled in three separate conquests. And Pompey himself, of course. He stood like a statue in his toga picta and red paint. Getting a little pudgy, it seemed to me.

  “Love your purple dress!” I shouted as he went past. Under the red paint I couldn’t tell if he turned truly red. In the uproar, I doubt if he or anyone else heard me.

  As the crowd broke up, I noticed that Caesar was gone. It struck me, with a chill, that I was now on my own. I saw other Senators making their way up the Capitol, toward the banquet in Pompey’s honor. I began to go that way myself. It was time to confront the three would-be tyrants before the assembled Senate and bring them low. Besides, I was hungry.

  It was getting dark fast. I was perhaps halfway up the hill when I saw the first Etruscan. He lurked in a space between two buildings, and the last beams of the setting sun struck glimmers from his bronze hammer and steel dagger. One was no problem. I glanced at the other side of the street. Two more. Then I saw a small crowd behind the two. These were Romans, most likely followers of Clodius, taking a few minutes from the festivities to eliminate an enemy. I looked up toward the temple, which suddenly seemed to be very far away. I was already in plenty of trouble with the Roman courts, and the gods seemed to have deserted me, so I drew my sword.

  “Two more!” I yelled. “I want two more of you pointy-bearded Tuscian slaves to pay for the blood of two Romans. The one I got last night wasn’t enough!” No sooner asked for than received. The Etruscans attacked, howling. Even in the excitement of the moment I noted that the others weren’t so eager. I would like to think that they were overawed by my heroics, but more likely they thought it unworthy to assist wretched foreigners in killing a Senator.

  One came in, swinging a hammer. I ducked the blow and ran him through and then jumped on the next one before he had a chance to understand that it was I who was on the offensive. With a sense of the very finest irony, I poked him in the throat with the point of my gladius, just as my instructor had taught me years before, in the old Statilian ludus. I only wished that I had a hammer to whack him between the eyes with.

  The others began to close in. I’d had my two. Rome was avenged. I turned and fled downhill, scattering citizens right and left. The pack baying at my heels caused further alarm. The press of celebrating citizenry got too dense to push through, and I turned to confront my pursuers. At that moment, something large and solid bowled into me, shoving me through a dense pack of ivy-wreathed celebrators and into an alley, down a flight of stairs and through a low doorway.

  “Keeping you alive could call for the full-time attentions of a legion,” said Titus Milo. People looked up from their tables. I smiled at them and sheathed my sword. They returned their attention to their food and wine.

  “I have to get to the temple,” I said.

  “You won’t. At least, not for a while. Let’s wait here until things are quiet outside. I don’t think they saw where we went.”

  “Good idea,” I said. The tavern was like a hundred others in the city. By law they were not supposed to stay open to the public after sunset, but this was a holiday, and besides, nobody paid any attention to that law anyway. We found a table and within minutes were tearing into roast duck with fruit and white bread, which we helped down with rough local wine. I told Milo about the odd interlude with Caesar.

  “He’s a strange one, Caesar,” he said. “But he’s like one of those horses in the Circus that surprises you by coming out of nowhere to win, when you’d put your money on the flashy, quick ones.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said, helping myself to a handful of figs. “Until now, I’d dismissed him as a posturing buffoon. Everyone has. But he’s been behind it all.”

  “Behind what all?” Milo said alertly.

  I told him what I had learned from Nero’s letter. “Clodius thinks it was his own doing, and doubtless Pompey and Crassus each thinks himself the dominant member of this—this triumvirate, but it is Caesar who holds the reins. He is the near trace horse.” The familiar chariot-race image seemed the best way to describe Caesar’s place in the arrangement.

  Milo sat back, and I could see the machinery working in his head as he sorted through this information and analyzed it for political content.

  “Perhaps his niece is right,” Milo said at last. “He may be trying to keep the peace between the others while he is away.”

  “That’s part of it, I have no doubt. But when he returns, the three of them will be at each other’s throats. Three such men cannot last as peaceful, cooperating colleagues: a general, a financier, and a … whatever Caesar is.”

  “A politician,” Milo said. It was a new word. I think Milo made it up. “He is a man whose sole qualification for office is that he knows how to manipulate people. As you have remarked, he brings nothing to the bargain but shattering debts and inexperience. It does not matter. He is using th
e system itself to propel himself into prominence.”

  “He underestimates the Senate,” I said.

  “Does he?” Milo’s bland, understated contempt for the wisdom and power of the Senate did more than anything in my recent experience to shake my faith in it.

  I reached within my clothes and took out the message tube. “When I reveal this, they will have to take action. The Senate has grown lax and corrupt, but even so, they cannot allow such men as these to wield power. As for Caesar and Pompey and Crassus, their ambitions could never survive such ignominy.”

  “Let us hope so,” he said.

  We ate for a while in silence. “Speaking of the Senate,” Milo said, “If you are truly foolish enough to go up there and confront Pompey, you had better do it while they’re sober enough to understand you.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It is getting late.”

  We rose and went outside. To my surprise, the streets were still jammed. We forced our way with difficulty through the Forum and began to ascend the Capitol. Above, we could see a great lurid glare of torchlight and could hear a raucous bellowing, some of it human.

  “What’s happening?” I said. “The procession ended hours ago.” I had a dreadful premonition that there had been a change in procedure.

  “Let’s ask somebody,” Milo said, with his accustomed good sense. He took a citizen by the arm and made the relevant inquiry.

  “Pompey is coming back down,” the man said. “Word spread an hour ago that he is planning something extraordinary!”

  “He’s cut the banquet short!” I said. “It should go on until midnight!”

  Milo grinned. “But then most of the citizens would be asleep and unable to admire their idol.”

  “I have to get up there!” I shouted. “If I can’t get to the temple before the Senate breaks up, it will be days before they meet again!”