Roman Games

by Bruce Macbain

  Valens banged his staff against the door jamb and bawled at them to shut their yaps.

  When there was some semblance of quiet, Pliny spoke to them, while breathing as little of the fetid air as he could. “I am going to ask you to do something very easy, to sacrifice to the gods and our emperor, only that. No one will be tortured, I promise you. We have reason to think that there may be one, or a small number, of depraved madmen among you, devotees of a vicious cult. If that turns out to be true, then maybe, I can promise nothing yet, maybe the rest of you can be saved.”

  Pliny heard with genuine surprise these words come from his lips. Like anyone with a smattering of Greek philosophy, he knew that slavery was against nature. There was no difference between a freeman and a slave except a cruel twist of fate. But as far as Roman law was concerned, the slave was not a man at all but a “speaking tool,” possessing no rights. Pliny wasn’t sure quite when it had occurred to him that his purpose here was to save these men and women from an unjust death. It certainly had not been in his mind two mornings ago when news of the crime had alarmed the city. Valens looked at his superior, incredulous that anyone would talk to slaves this way, while the slaves resumed shrieking their innocence.

  The garden was quite lovely: boxwood hedges, tall elms, and fruit trees; stone benches round a pool where fountains splashed. Here a miscellany of divine images had been assembled. There was, besides the head of Domitian Lord and God, a bronze figurine of Hercules, a lovely marble Diana, a bust of Jupiter, a statuette of Isis, and the inevitable statue of Priapus, godling of vegetation and sex, who leered mischievously here as in every Roman garden.

  The slaves were brought out in batches of ten, shoved along by the troopers, with swords drawn, who cursed at them and struck them with the flat of their blades. Eager to prove their piety, they stumbled forward one by one, dropped incense and wine on the altar fire and mouthed a prayer at Pliny’s dictation.

  Finally it was the turn of Pollux, whom Pliny had saved for last, and four others who clung to the man: an older woman, his mate, said Lucius, and two young women and a boy. All of them tried to shelter behind the boxer’s broad back. There was fear in their eyes. Pollux’s lips moved soundlessly. If it was a prayer, it was not directed at those lifeless statues arrayed before them. Like a statue himself, his ugly face unmoving as a mask, Pollux stood before the altar and did nothing with the incense and wine cup handed to him. For a long moment there was dead silence save for the chirping of song birds in the trees.

  Then, before Pliny could stop him, Lucius dashed forward and struck the slave in the face with all his strength. Pollux, who had been hit by tougher men than Lucius in his time, did not flinch but continued to look straight ahead of him. His fellow slaves stood by, stunned to silence. Then, one after another, they began to murmur: “Atheist, traitor, you’ll get us all killed!”

  One of the young women broke and ran forward to the altar, crying “Please, Masters, I’ll burn the incense!” But Pollux caught her by the arm and pulled her back. “Sister, be brave, in the name of the True God.” In an agony of doubt, the girl looked from the altar to Pollux’s face and back again. The older woman came and put her arms around her and drew her back into their circle. The murmurs of the other slaves rose to angry, menacing shouts. The City Troopers cast nervous looks at their centurion.

  “Murderer of my father!” screamed Lucius. “Heat irons. I’ll have the truth out of him!”

  Pliny felt the situation slipping out of control. “I give the orders here,” he warned Lucius. “Stand back.”

  The young man looked mutinous.

  Stepping close to Pollux, Pliny said in a low voice, “You have put yourself and these others in grave danger. I give you one day to think it over.” The boxer only stared back impassively.

  “Centurion, take them back to their quarters,” Pliny ordered, “and double the guard.” And to Lucius he confided, “I am encouraged that the poison seems to have spread to only a few. I wish I could release the rest of your slaves now but I haven’t the authority. They will have to remain under guard until the Games are over and a trial before the prefect can be conducted. No doubt, you have other slaves in your country estates. By all means bring them in. And now,” he said, “I am leaving.” The urge to be gone from this place was suddenly overwhelming.

  Lucius expressed sullen thanks.

  “But sir,” Valens interrupted. “The lady of the house, Turpia Scortilla. Shouldn’t you have a word with her?”

  “Mehercule,” cried Pliny in exasperation, “haven’t I done enough here today?”

  “It’s procedure, sir. She might just know something.” He used the tone of voice one would in speaking to a dull child.

  Pliny let out a sigh. “Conduct me to the lady, then.”

  Standing guard outside her chamber door, the dwarf Iarbas tried to block their way, hopping from one flat foot to the other and mouthing insults at them. He was the most extraordinary creature that Pliny had ever seen: a black dwarf, fat-headed, with tiny mole’s eyes, a big belly, and short, muscular legs. Golden torques and armlets gleamed against his dusky skin. On his shoulder perched a monkey, equally bejeweled, and making savage grimaces at them with yellow, pointed teeth. Valens pushed man and beast roughly aside. “We tried locking this one up with the others,” he explained, “but the lady was so distressed we let him loose. Seems harmless enough, the ugly little imp.”

  “Harmless?” As soon as he laid eyes on him, an image sprang to Pliny’s mind of the dwarf scrambling monkey-like up the column and through the narrow window of Verpa’s bedroom. And who but Scortilla would have sent him on that mission?

  The lady lay propped on her bed, bone thin and bone white, the tendons in her neck standing out like ropes, her towering red wig askew. But it was her eyes that held him. He thought back to this morning’s sacrifice on the Capitolium—the look in the ox’s eye when the victimarius stunned it with a blow of his hammer. Turpia Scortilla had that same stunned, glassy-eyed look. And the dead whiteness of her face wasn’t just the effect of cosmetics.

  “Madam, I…”

  At the sight of him she shrank back against her pillow, nearly dislodging her wig, the back of one thin hand pressed to her mouth. Iarbas ran around them and clambered up on the bed beside her. She clutched his wooly head to her breast. The woman looked terrified. Why?

  This was not the moment to confront her head-on. Pliny forced a smile. “Come now, I’ve only a few questions for you, nothing to be alarmed at.” Had she heard a disturbance that night? When had she gone to bed? Had Iarbas spent the night with her? Had Verpa seemed worried at all? Had he hinted at anything in the preceding days?

  But to all these questions she only shook her head and clutched the dwarf tighter. In desperation, Pliny addressed the dwarf directly, but got in reply only a string of uncouth syllables. Finally, he gave it up. “I will return another time, Lady, and hope to see you in a better frame of mind.”

  They closed the door softly on her and returned to the atrium. Pliny was unbearably weary of the whole thing: the odious Verpa and his unpleasant family in their ostentatious house, the pathos of the slaves, the centurion’s smirking superiority. This was no job for him. “Now I really must be going,” he said firmly.

  “Sir.”

  “What?” He nearly shouted at Valens.

  “Perhaps just a word with the door-slaves of the front and back door? They may have seen something.”

  “Yes, yes.” Pliny was in a state now. “Bring them here.”

  The two men, who a little earlier had been among those who had proudly sacrificed to the gods in the garden, fell on their knees before Pliny as though he were a god himself.

  “Just think hard now and tell the truth,” he assured them, “and all will go well with you. Now, did either of you see anyone lurking about the house on the night your master was killed? Anyone strange to the neighborhood?”

  The slave of the back door shook his head. But yes, said the slave of th
e front door. There had been someone. Someone who had stood across the street for an hour or more from sundown until it grew too dark to see. Describe him? Well, about average size, neither young nor old, dark-haired, nothing special. One thing though. He carried his left arm in a sling.

  Chapter Nine

  By the time he left Verpa’s house, it was nearing the ninth hour of the day, and the sun was creeping down the sky. The heat was still oppressive, as it had been for days. Pliny longed for the baths. Cool water, a bit of modest exercise, a rub-down, uncomplicated camaraderie with a few casual acquaintances, the blessed anonymity of nakedness, or so he thought. He directed his bearers to take him to the Baths of Titus. But the City Prefecture was on his way and conscientiousness got the better of him. He would stop and make his report first.

  The Prefecture was a sprawling labyrinth of offices, archives and courtrooms connected by dim corridors where clerks and secretaries, minor officials and armed troopers bustled to and fro on hurried errands. Pliny hated the place. He passed rooms where lines of weary petitioners waited patiently to speak with clerks who ignored them. In other rooms, secretaries shuffled through stacks of files and dossiers. Was his own name, he wondered, on one of them? There were still other rooms, rooms in the cellars with iron doors and brick walls. He preferred not to think about what went on there. He pressed on.

  In the antechamber of the city prefect’s office, he asked for Aurelius Fulvus and was told that the chief had gone for the day. He was turning to leave when he heard loud laughter coming from the inner chamber. Suddenly angry, he brushed past the secretary and marched in.

  The prefect was sprawled in a chair with a cup in his hand. Some other men, whom Pliny didn’t know, sat around him. All of them were flushed with wine. Fulvus looked up as Pliny entered. He seemed to have some trouble focusing his eyes.

  “Yes? I gave orders not to be—oh, it’s you, ah, Gaius Plinius. Yes, well, what brings you here? Ah, sit down, won’t you?” He gestured vaguely with the wine cup, spilling half the contents, but there were no empty chairs in the room. “Orfitus, get up and let my vice prefect sit.”

  Pliny replied stiffly that he preferred to stand.

  “As you like. And so, this is about…?

  “The Verpa case.”

  “The…ah, yes, of course.” Fulvus made a visible effort to compose his long-jawed face. “And so what have you concluded? The wretched slaves, of course. It always is.”

  “In this case not, sir. Or, not the majority of them. Everything points to a Jewish assassin who crept in through a window aided by a slave in the household.”

  “Jews you say? By Thundering Jove!” Fulvus slapped the chair arm with a ruby-ringed hand. “Our Lord and God will be pleased! And how many are there?”

  “Only five. One man, three women, and a boy.”

  “Nonsense! Bound to be more. You keep at it, then. Don’t stop short. See what else you can nose out. The emperor likes you, you know. You can make a name for yourself with this case.”

  “If that is your wish, sir. My hope is that the other slaves, the ones who aren’t atheists, can be exonerated. I’m ready to vouch for them myself if need be.”

  “What?” Fulvus looked up in astonishment. So did his friends. “Exonerate? Slaves? Yes, well, something to think about. Now, is that all, my dear Pliny?

  Pliny made no move to leave. “I mean it, sir. They had nothing to do with this murder.”

  “You’ve made yourself quite clear. I said, we’ll see. Just you do your job.” Irritation rose in his voice. He turned his face away. “Orfitus, fill my cup like a good fellow. Good day, vice prefect. Look in again, won’t you, when you have more to report.”

  As he left the building, Pliny’s stomach was churning. He was not ordinarily an excitable man, or so he believed. He had chosen a dull profession—or it had chosen him—because it imposed a wall of paper between himself and the sweaty emotions of real people. If he were investigating a charge of unjustified disinheritance or the distribution of assets among the offspring of a man who had been married four times; if he had been faced with a suspicious codicil or a questionable signature—here Pliny felt himself capable and sure-footed. He was not a stupid man. But this! Bloody daggers, sexual perversion, murderous fanatics, secret symbols scrawled on walls, a louche and slippery filius familias, a concubine catatonic with fright. He felt like a man standing on a pitching deck, grasping vainly for a handhold.

  

  The crowd streamed out of the Theater of Marcellus and Martial patted his grumbling stomach. It was a long, hot walk to the Baths of Titus, but that was his hunting ground. He wouldn’t leave without a dinner invitation from some rich booby. He had lived more than thirty years in Rome since emigrating from Spain, a young man full of hope and poetry. In all that time he hadn’t had to stand in a bread line yet, although he had come close more than once.

  Outside the baths, hucksters, street performers, and food-stalls filled a broad courtyard. Inside rose a vast, echoing fairy-land of brilliant mosaics, high coffered ceilings, wide windows that flooded the spacious rooms with afternoon sunlight; and everywhere, priceless works of art, though here, as elsewhere in the city, the new golden statues of Domitian the God effaced all else. Martial paid his copper coin and went in.

  The Baths of Titus, built by Domitian’s elder brother during his brief reign, was only the latest of the great imperial thermae provided by emperors to the Roman people at enormous expense. The shouts of happy citizens disporting themselves, men and women together, filled the vast echoing complex. There was method to this philanthropy. It had not taken the emperors long to learn the profound truth that people who are warm and wet do not, as a general rule, riot in the streets. In this democracy of nudity even the poorest Roman could, for an hour every day, imagine himself to be a little king; could forget for a moment that elsewhere a real king, in a real palace, held the power of life and death over him.

  Martial undressed in one of the large changing rooms and stowed his things in an open cubicle. Other bathers posted slaves to guard their belongings; Martial had nothing worth stealing.

  Beyond, all was bare flesh. Here respectable citizen and cruising libertine, rich man and poor man, male and female met as equals.

  Martial went first to the caldarium to luxuriate in the steam. Adjacent to the steam room lay the exercise court, from where the poet, who never exercised himself, could hear the grunts and groans of men swinging lead weights, of ball players tossing a medicine ball in a three-cornered game of catch, of wrestlers and runners. On his other hand, were the massage rooms. From here echoed the slap of hands on oiled shoulders and the shrill voice of the hair-plucker, calling his trade.

  When he was red as a mullet, Martial went on to the tepidarium and from there into the frigidarium, where he dove into the cold pool with a great splash and a boy’s happy shout, and swam vigorously for a minute or two.

  The baths cultivated the mind as well as the body. Beside the swimming pools and gymnasia, there were libraries, art galleries, and a large and beautiful recitation hall, where people, back in their clothes again, could beguile the hours, listening to a play or a poetry reading. Hither, in his threadbare tunic, went Martial.

  Instantly a circle gathered round him, already chuckling. He was among friends. He knew their names, knew their foibles, knew they’d take insults from him that they wouldn’t have taken from anyone else. He whirled from one to another, leering, mugging, improvising.

  He flung a hairy arm about the stooped shoulders of an elderly man. “Caecilianus!”

  “Now you’ve shut your wife up tight,

  (A woman as homely as she is!)

  Fututores besiege her by day and by night,

  Got any more bright ideas?”

  He moved on to an aging prostitute, who plied her trade in the baths, and, wrinkling his nose, declaimed—

  “Why won’t I kiss you? Philaenis, you ask.

  You’re one-eyed, you’re red-faced, and ba
ld.

  To undertake so vile a task,

  Why, let some fellator be called!”

  He pranced over to a heavy woman with pendulous breasts and clapped his hands with delight—

  “Dasius sells tickets here,

  No brighter boy than he!

  Big-titted Spatale just tried to come in,

  And Dasius charged her for three!”

  He pounced upon a portly man with curled and scented hair and, waggling a reproving finger under his nose, improvised—

  “Your slave boy’s mentula is tired and sore,

  And, Naevolus, so is your culus.

  We reckon what he has been using you for,

  O Naevolus, don’t try to fool us.”

  Poor Naevolus looked like he wanted to escape. Martial released him and tip-toed over to another, his hand cupped behind his ear.

  “Flaccus, listen, d’you hear

  The sound of hundreds clapping?

  It must be Maro strolling near,

  His great mentula flapping.”

  This brought a lot of laughter; the well-equipped Maro was a familiar sight.

  Martial was warming to his work, starting to enjoy himself—and then in one swift instant he found himself abandoned. Pliny had just been spotted near the door.

  The most populous city on earth was still in many ways only an overgrown village, where nothing stays secret for long. The prefect’s troopers stationed at Verpa’s house had told friends, who had told other friends, and so on, until all Rome by now knew that Gaius Plinius Secundus was handling the Verpa case. He was instantly mobbed.

  Martial knew him by sight; had heard him holding forth in the Basilica Julia where the Chancery Court sat and any passerby might stop and listen. He had put him down as just another brass-throated haranguer with the soul of an accountant.