Catilina's riddle rsr-3

by Steven Saylor

  Inside the main entrance, beneath a shaded portico, the men and women parted ways. Diana was peeved at the separation and pouted, then was quickly distracted when Menenia leaned down and said that they would take turns brushing one another's hair. Diana abandoned me at once, and I watched her skip away towards the women's baths, flanked by Menenia and Bethesda holding her hands, and the two slave women following behind with their burden of unguents and brushes and combs.

  'She has quite a way with children,' I said, looking after Menenia and her long black hair.

  'Yes,' said Eco, nodding and smiling. 'I don't suppose—' 'Not yet, Papa.'

  He led us into the recently rebuilt and enlarged men's baths. The size was impressive, sprawling, almost Egyptian in scale. Even so, Eco complained about the crush. 'Normally you'd have room to swing your elbows,' he sighed, 'but with so many men in the city for the election — well, you see how full it is.'

  We made our way to the central courtyard, where two naked wresders were grappling on the lawn. Their companions stood by, either cheering them on or stretching their own muscles. Beneath the shaded portico a group of Stoics, fully dressed, sat in a circle. As we passed them, I overheard two of them arguing the merits of

  Cicero's rhetorical style versus that of Hortensius, but it seemed to me that most of the philosophers were more interested in watching the naked young athletes.

  Within the walls I was struck at once by the smell of the place (water on stone, bodies filthy and bodies clean) and the vague booming echoes that bounced from the domes in the ceiling (men laughing, boys whispering, water sloshing and dripping and splashing, the rhythmic slapping of wet feet against paving stones). We stripped out of our tunics and piled them onto the waiting, outstretched arms of Meto's barber. The slave folded them neatly and stored them in a niche in the wall, then returned with towels and strigils for our use.

  We bathed first in the warm pool, which was gently scented with hyacinth, then in the hot pool, which made Meto yelp and lift his bottom from the water — and inspired the men already immersed to their necks to croak with laughter that echoed about the high-ceilinged room. Meto took no offence and merely laughed with them, suppressing another yelp as he lowered himself delicately but resolutely into the steaming, swirling water.

  Scraped clean by the strigils, our faces flushed and our beards softened by the hot water, we removed ourselves from the pool and took turns submitting ourselves to the barber's blade. Meto went first, for this was his special day and the first time a razor would touch his face. The slave got into the spirit of things and made quite a production out of what could have been accomplished with three or four simple passes of the blade. There was, to be sure, a fair amount of downy growth on Meto's cheeks, almost invisible except when seen at certain angles in the light, while on his upper lip and his chin there was hardly any hair at all. Nevertheless, the barber approached the job as if he were faced with a grizzled veteran who had not shaved in months. He whetted the long, slender blade against a leather strop, rapidly, passing it back and forth until Meto, watching the guttering metal, became fascinated. The barber applied a hot, steaming towel to Meto's face and cooed to him like a charioteer calming a steed. He circled about him and delicately applied the edge of the blade to Meto's cheeks, jaw, neck, and chin, and, saving the most vulnerable and difficult spot for last, to his upper lip. Meto flinched more than once — being shaved is, after all, the most intimate duty a man can entrust to a slave, and real trust is built only with time. But the man did a splendid job. When it was over there was not a single drop of blood to be seen anywhere, neither on the towel nor the blade nor on Meto's freshly shaved face. Meto seemed almost disappointed not to have been wounded, but he was fascinated by the novel sensation of touching his own denuded flesh.

  The barber men produced his scissors — a very fine pair which Lucius Claudius had given to me as a gift and which I had passed on to Eco when I left for the countryside. The barber laid a rough cloth over Meto's shoulders and set about shearing him until he looked quite respectable and remarkably grown-up, with his ears and the back of his neck showing. The barber then treated his hair with a scented oil and was done with him.

  I allowed the man to trim my hair and beard a bit, but refused to let him touch me with his razor. Then it was Eco's turn.

  "This is your chance,' I said, 'to get rid of that absurd haircut and that eccentric beard.'

  Eco laughed. 'Absurd and eccentric? Papa, look around you.'

  I did — and saw more than a few young men of Eco's age affecting the same style that he had adopted along with Marcus Caelius — their hair shorn short on the sides but left long on top, their beards trimmed and blocked into a thin strap across the jaw.

  'You know where the fashion originated?'

  'Yes, with Catilina. Or so you told me, and I've heard others say the same. Catilina and his circle set all the trends.'

  'Well, did you know that Catilina has abandoned that particular fashion?'

  'Really?'

  'It happened under my very roof One night he had the thin beard, and the next morning—' I drew my finger across my jaw. 'All gone.'

  'Cleanshaven?'

  'As smooth as Meto's cheeks. Isn't that so, Meto?' Meto, still stroking his face to experience the novelty of it, nodded in confirmation.

  'You see,' I said, 'it's Meto who has the fashionable look now. Perhaps you should do the same.'

  'But everyone else is still wearing a chin-strap beard…' 'For a while.' I shrugged.

  Eco reached out and the barber handed him a mirror. He studied his face and ran his forefinger and thumb over the thin black line of his beard. 'Do you really think I should get rid of it?'

  'Catilina did,' I said, and shrugged as if I really had no opinion at all.

  'Menenia never really cared for the beard anyway,' Eco said afterwards, stroking his jaw and studying himself in the polished copper mirror held up by his barber. He tapped at his chin and winced a bit; where the hair grew thickest the barber had resorted to tweezers to pluck him smooth. Eco had borne the ordeal without flinching. The barber, I suspect, had rather enjoyed it. By inflicting such tiny discomforts, slaves are occasionally able to vent their frustration against their masters.

  ‘I thought you said Menenia liked the beard,' I said, to needle Eco a bit.

  'Shell like me even more without it, I'm sure.'

  And she did. To judge from the look in her eyes and in Eco's when we rejoined the women in the vestibule, one might have thought they had been parted for months, not moments. But such is the first blush of passion. As for Meto, Bethesda touched his cheek and sighed, as if she could really tell a difference where the razor had passed. Diana, with the brutal frankness of a child, insisted that she could see no change at all. Menenia again took charge of the situation by proposing that Diana ride home in the Utter with her, a suggestion to which Diana assented at once. Menenia had put up her long hair in a coil held together with combs inlaid with bits of shell, in very much the same fashion as Bethesda's — though Menenia's combs, I noticed, were not quite so ornate. I admired her tactfulness more and more.

  Clean and refreshed, we arrived back at the house on the Esquiline to find that preparations were almost complete. A sundial down on the Subura Way had shown the time to be almost noon; the first guests would arrive soon. It was time for Meto to put on his toga.

  The donning of the toga is no simple matter, even for advocates and politicians like Cicero, who wear them almost every day. What seems so simple in its unfolded state — a very wide piece of thin white wool, cut into a roughly oblong shape — becomes devilishly intractable and takes on a life of its own when one attempts to make it into a respectable-looking toga. That, at least, is my experience. Somehow the thing must be made to cross the chest, drape over the shoulder, and lie across one arm. The precise placement of the numerous folds and the way they hang are of supreme importance, or else a man ends up looking as if he simply left the house wearing a common
bed sheet — an absurd appearance sure to elicit the scorn of his neighbours.

  Fortunately, as for everything else of importance, Romans have slaves to take care of the problem of donning the toga. (Indeed, there was a joke common when I was a young man in Alexandria that the reason the Romans were bent on conquering the world was to supply themselves with slaves to help them dress.) The same slave who groomed and barbered Eco also served as his dresser. Here, as with the tweezers, was an opportunity for a slave to take petty revenge on his master, arranging for him to leave the house with the hem of his toga dragging or some fold tenuously placed so that it would later lose its shape. But Eco's dresser was quite competent, and more than a little patient as he helped the three of us into our togas, beginning with his master, then myself) and finally Meto.

  Eco had purchased Meto's toga from a fine shop at the foot of the Palatine. It took two attempts to get him into it, and quite a bit of fussing with the folds, but at last Meto stood before us perfectly draped in his first manly toga.

  'How do I look?' he said.

  'Splendid!' said Eco.

  'Papa?'

  I hesitated to speak, because I felt a catch in my throat. 'You look—' I began to say, then had to clear my throat. How fine he looked! He had been a beautiful boy; he would be a handsome man, and in that moment one could see both together, past and future at once. His hair looked very black and his skin very smooth against the white wool; the colour made him appear to be wrapped in purity. At the same time the authority and anonymity of the toga itself lent him an air of dignity and manliness beyond his years. I had told him last night that he could put his years of slavery behind him forever, that he need never worry about his unseemly origins again. Now I believed it myself.

  'I am proud, Meto. Very proud.'

  He walked towards me and would have hugged me, I think, but the drapes of cloth over his left arm constrained him. He looked confounded for a moment, then laughed and turned around, realizing that moving comfortably in a toga was a skill he would have to master. 'How on earth do I go to the privy with all this on?' he asked, grinning.

  'I shall show you that when the need arises,' I said, and sighed in mock weariness. 'Ah, the duties of fatherhood!'

  XVII

  Out in the garden, the guests had begun to arrive. The sun was well up, and the filtered yellow light through the gauzy canopy cast a warm glow over the courtyard and into the hallways and rooms around it. Dishes with all sorts of delicacies had been placed on the tables, and the couches were disposed in informal arrangements, so that the guests could feed themselves and gather as they wished, rather than reclining and being served a succession of courses. This seemed rather chaotic and perhaps even a bit ungracious to me, but Eco assured me it was the new fashion.

  'And like your beard, I suspect it shall come and go,' I said under my breath.

  As always with such gatherings, at first there seemed to be only a handful of guests, and then suddenly the garden was full of them, the men in their togas, the women in multicoloured stolas. The soft murmur of their conversation filled the air. Their various perfumes and unguents mingled with the floral scents of the garden and the delectable odours of the roasted figpeckers and stuffed pigeons that kept arriving on trays from the kitchen.

  I made my way through the throng, stopping to speak with neighbours and clients I had not seen in years, and at last found Eco and pulled him aside. 'Did you invite all these people?' I whispered.

  'Of course. They're all friends or acquaintances. Most of them have known Meto since he was a little boy.'

  'But you can't be intending for all of them to walk through the Forum with us, and then come back here for dinner!'

  'Of course not. This is only the general reception. People are invited to come and enjoy themselves, to get reacquainted with the family, to see Meto in his toga, to leave when they wish—'

  To eat you out of house and home! Look, over there!' A man with a grey beard who looked vaguely familiar — the association was not pleasant, and I seemed to recall that we had been on opposite sides of some litigation — was hovering stealthily over a little serving table, dropping stuffed grape leaves into some sort of pouch inside his toga.

  Eco laughed. 'Isn't that old Festus? You remember, he came over once saying he wanted to consult you about a lawsuit pending against him, and we never saw that little Alexandrian vase again.'

  'No.' I frowned, shaking my head. 'That is not Festus.'

  Eco cocked his head. 'Ah, I have it. Rutilius — his own brother brought suit against him, accusing him of thieving from him. The scoundrel never denied it; instead, he wanted us to dig up something horrible and scandalous about his brother, so as to even the score.'

  I shook my head. 'No, it's not Rutilius, either, but probably someone just as awful. Surely you wouldn't have invited either of those two to Meto's party! Oh, the indignities I've had to put up with over the years to keep our bellies full! I'm just glad I'm away from it all now. And I'm glad you're young and hard-shelled enough to see your own way through the snares and traps of this city.'

  ‘You trained me well, Papa.'

  'I wish I had trained Meto half so well.'

  'Meto is different from me,' he said. 'And different from you.'

  'I worry about him sometimes, about his future. He's still such a boy—'

  'Papa, you must stop saying that. Meto is a man now, not a boy.'

  'Still — oh, now this is too much! Look, now that wretched man has begun pilfering the honeyed dates! There won't be any for the other guests. You see, you've invited far too many people — neither of us can even remember who that man is, though we're both sure we don't like him. This is why it's a mistake to have people serve themselves. If we were all seated with slaves doing the serving—'

  'I suppose I should do something, 'said Eco. 'I'll go and ask the fellow if he's murdered any wives or poisoned any business partners lately.'

  With that he ambled towards the old greybeard, who gave a start and jumped back from the table when Eco touched his shoulder. Eco smiled and said something and led him away from the food. The jump must have dislodged the man's hidden cache, for a string of stuffed grape leaves and honeyed dates began to drop from his toga, leaving a trail behind him on the floor.

  A hand touched my shoulder. I turned and saw a shock of red hair, a spangling of freckles across a handsome nose, and a pair of bright brown eyes looking into my own. The next moment I was locked in a mutual embrace, then held at arm's length while Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus looked me up and down.

  'Gordianus! The country life most certainly agrees with you — you look very fit indeed!'

  'And the life of the city must agree with you, Rufus, for you never seem to age at all from year to year.'

  'I am thirty-three this year, Gordianus.'

  'No! Why, when we met—'

  ‘I was about the same age that your son Meto is now. Time flies, Gordianus, and the world changes.' Though never enough for my taste.'

  We had first met years ago in the house of Caecilia Metella, when Rufus was assisting Cicero in his defence ofSextusRoscius. He had been only sixteen then, a patrician of ancient lineage, politically precocious and secretly infatuated with his mentor, Cicero. Not surprisingly, the infatuation had come to nothing, but Rufus's more practical ambitions had led to a successful career. He had been one of the youngest men ever elected to the college of augurs, and as such was frequently called upon to read the auspices and pronounce the will of the gods. No public or private transaction of importance takes place in Rome, no army engages in battle, no marriage is consecrated without consulting an augur. I myself have never had much faith in reading messages into the flights of birds and divining the will of Jupiter from a flash of lightning across the sky. Many (or most) augurs are mere political hacks and charlatans, who use their power to suspend public meetings and block the passage of legislation, but Rufus had always seemed quite sincere in his belief in the science of augury. He, too,
had been involved in the scandal of the Vestal Virgins, for it was Rufus, as a religious colleague, whom the Virgo Maxima had first summoned for help when Catilina was discovered in the House of the Vestals. Rufus had called on Cicero, and Cicero had called on me. As I have remarked before, Rome sometimes seems a very small town indeed.

  'I'm glad you've come, Rufus. There are very few faces from the Forum that I miss seeing from day to day, and yours is one of them. I mean it,' I said, and I did, for Rufus had always been a young man of unusual integrity, soft-spoken but passionate in his beliefs and driven by an intensity that was not immediately apparent from his good-natured manner. His natural sense of justice and moral equanimity often seemed out of place among the self-serving oratory and ceaseless back-stabbing of the Forum. 'But what's this?' I said. 'You're wearing a candidate's toga.'

  Rufus pretended to dust himself, for the natural woollen colour of his toga had been rubbed with chalk to make it a harsh white, as is the practice of men running for office. 'That's because I'm running for praetor this year.'

  'Then I hope you win. Rome needs good men to run the city and give out justice.'

  'We shall see. The voting will take place tomorrow, just after the balloting for the consular election. Normally the election for praetors and the election for consuls take place on different days, of course, but with the postponement of the consular election — well, it will be an insanely busy day. Caesar, too, is running for a praetorship, as is Cicero's brother, Quintus.'

  'I suppose you're still allied with Cicero,' I said, then saw from his face that I was mistaken.

  'Cicero…' Rufus shrugged. 'Well, you know the circus act he performed last summer in order to win the consulship. Blowing smoke from his mouth and jumping through hoops — though it came as no surprise to see him resorting to the most outlandish tricks to get himself elected. Over the years he's reversed his positions on virtually every issue, yet his rhetoric stays the same — as if rhetoric gave a man consistency, rather than principles. I find myself uncomfortable in his presence these days. I read the auspices on the day he took office — not officially, but for my own satisfaction — and they portended a year full of deceit and treachery, perhaps even disaster. Ah, Gordianus, I saw the look that just crossed your face: you have no faith in the auguries. Neither does Cicero, who thinks they're merely tools that men like himself can use to manipulate the masses. And manipulate he does, shamelessly. Hypocritically turning his back on the children of Sulla's victims who seek redress, railing against the Rullan land reform, the way he handled that riot over special seating for equestrians in the theatre, and now this postponement of the elections — you haven't been in the city long, have you?'