The Triumph Of Caesar rsr-12

by Steven Saylor

  To whom have you spoken? Reply using initials only.

  That was done easily enough. The second question read:

  Have you discovered anything to indicate that he should not take part in tomorrow's event? Send your reply at once.

  In other words, had I discovered anything to indicate an immediate danger to Caesar? I considered how to answer. If something untoward occurred, Calpurnia might hold me accountable, even if Caesar was unharmed. But I had discovered no clear and present danger to Caesar. "No," I wrote. The word looked small and inadequate amid the blank space she had left for my reply.

  I rose before daybreak the next morning. The family, appropriately garbed in our darkest clothing, gathered to share a simple meal of mourning, consisting of black bread with black beans.

  Had it been entirely up to me, I would have given Hieronymus the simplest possible ceremony. But since Cytheris, with her connections in the performing world, had volunteered to provide the traditional mourners, musicians, and mimes, as well as some sturdy young slaves to carry the bier, it would have been churlish to refuse her offer. Amazingly, the entire troupe showed up on time. It was a good thing Bethesda had prepared extra food, since they all expected to be fed.

  An hour after daybreak, our little procession set out. We took a roundabout route, walking up and down the streets of the Palatine so as to pass by various houses where Hieronymus had been an invited guest. If the inhabitants were not awake before we passed by, the screeching mourners and the musicians with their rattles, flutes, horns, and bells surely roused them from bed. Pedestrians paused and curious onlookers peered from windows to watch the mime, trying to guess whom he was impersonating. The fellow had met Hieronymus only once at one of Cytheris's parties, but he was remarkably gifted; wearing one of Hieronymus's favorite tunics, he produced an uncanny simulation of my friend's posture, gait, hand gestures, facial expressions, and even his laugh.

  One passerby, after watching the mime for a moment, made a typical comment: "Hieronymus the Scapegoat? Is that him on the bier? Didn't know he was dead!" Such recognition was a testament to the mime's talent and to the impression Hieronymus had made on a surprising number of people. I was amazed at how many men and women seemed to have known him. Walking at a slow gait with the rest of the family behind the musicians and the funeral bier, I found myself staring at every stranger who paused to watch the procession, wondering if Hieronymus's murderer was among them.

  Eventually we descended the western slope of the Palatine and crossed the Sacred Way at a point well away from the Forum. Had Hieronymus been a Roman man of affairs, a pass through the Forum would have been mandatory, but I decided to forego the area, where huge crowds were already gathering for the Gallic Triumph. We avoided the narrow, noisome streets of the Subura as well, and instead ascended the slope of the Esquiline through the Carinae district. Cytheris had requested that the funeral cortege pass before the House of the Beaks.

  The performers knew who was paying them; as we approached the house, the moaning and shrieking and the drumming and fluting rose to an earsplitting crescendo. At the same time, the passable portion of the street narrowed considerably. True to his word, Antony was holding an auction in front of the house to sell off some of Pompey's possessions. The auction had not yet begun, but numerous objects had already been laid out for preview on makeshift tables.

  There were odds and ends from silver table settings, many of the pieces dented or black with tarnish. A few items of jewelry, presumably from the collection of Pompey's wife, Cornelia, had been put on display. These included single earrings that had lost their mates, necklaces that needed repair, rings that had lost their stones, and stones that had lost their rings. There were piles of clothing, pieces of furniture, and a few bookcases stuffed with tattered scrolls.

  Behind me I heard whispering. I turned to see that Bethesda and Diana were looking sidelong at the goods for auction and holding a hushed conference. I shushed them, but they seemed not to hear. "Respect!" I finally said, and they tore their eyes from the items on display, looking a bit chagrined.

  "We can come back later and see what's left," I heard Diana whisper to her mother. I had to admit that I myself was tempted to rummage through the shelves and see which of Pompey's books were on offer.

  "See anything you like, Finder? I can put it aside for you."

  I turned to see Antony nearby, leaning nonchalantly against one of the display tables. He reached for a voluminous green tunic with silver embroidery and held it up by the shoulders. "Can this huge sack have been Pompey's? 'The Great One,' indeed! The old fellow had gotten as big as an elephant."

  A hand snatched the tunic from him. Cytheris replaced it on the table and gave him a chiding look. Antony crossed his arms and pouted.

  "Can't you see that Hieronymus is passing by?" she said.

  "Ah, yes." Antony raised his arm in a mock salute. "Hail and farewell, Scapegoat! In Elysium there shall be endless parties for you to crash."

  The day was just beginning, yet Antony was already drunk. Or had he stayed up all night drinking and not yet gone to bed? This was how he chose to mark the day of Caesar's Gallic Triumph, in which he should have played a honored role.

  As we passed beyond the constricted area of the auction and into the open street beyond, I noticed a man leaning against a fig tree. Before he could step behind the tree, I saw his face clearly and recognized him as Thraso, one of Fulvia's slaves. Realizing I had seen him, he made no further effort to conceal himself and even gave me a slight smile and a nod. Something told me he was the man who had followed me after my meeting with Cytheris. Did Fulvia keep a watcher posted on the House of the Beaks every hour of every day?

  At length we passed though the Esquiline Gate. Beyond the old city walls, sprawling over the gently sloping hillsides, was the public necropolis, the city of the dead. The unmarked graves of slaves and the modest tombs of common citizens were crowded close together. On a normal day, there would have been other funerals taking place, their flaming pyres scenting the necropolis with the smells of burning wood and flesh. But on that day, ours was the only one.

  A little way off the road, atop a small hill, the pyre had been prepared. It was in the very same location where two years ago we burned the body of Rupa's sister, Cassandra. Hieronymus was laid upon the pyre. The keepers of the flame set about stoking the fire.

  A few people had sent their condolences, but only my family saw fit to actually attend the ceremony. Granted, it was still early in the morning, and on that day much else was happening. But I wondered at the fickleness of those whom Hieronymus had supposedly befriended after I left Rome. Of course, when all was said and done, he had been a foreigner and an outsider, with no blood connection to the city.

  It was incumbent on me to say a few words, even though only the family was present. I recalled my first meeting with Hieronymus in Massilia, when his intervention alone saved me from arrest; his hospitality to me and to Davus in that desperate, besieged city; his narrow escape from the fate that awaited him as the Scapegoat; and his journey with me to Rome. I reflected on the oscillating fortunes of his life; he had been born a child of privilege in the highest echelon of Massilian society, but his father's financial ruin and suicide had reduced the family to poverty and made them social outcasts. His selection to act as the Scapegoat promised him a brief period of the utmost luxury, followed by a sacrificial death. But it had not been so, and the doomed man became a guest in my home, and then, curiously enough, a sought-after dinner companion to the elite of the city. Then came a reversal as ironic as all the other reversals in his peculiar life, and with it, the end.

  While I spoke, Davus began to weep, and Diana hugged him. Mopsus, Androcles, and Rupa, seemed distracted by the work of the fire starters; they stared past me at the pyre, awaiting the first tongues of flame. Bethesda stood stiff and unbending; was she thinking of that other funeral, for Cassandra, which she had been too ill to attend? Eco was still in Syracuse, but his wife, Mene
nia, was here, along with their golden-haired twins, Titus and Titania.

  "What can we learn from his death?" I looked from face to face amid the small gathering of those dearest to me. "Only what we already know: that fortune is changeable, that the love of the gods is no more steadfast than the love of mortals, that all who live must die. But the words and acts of the living carry on after them. The story of Hieronymus is not yet over, not while any one of us who remembers him still lives."

  And not while at least one man continues to search for his killer and the true cause of his death, I thought.

  I bowed my head. A little later I heard the crackling of wood, smelled the odor of burning, and felt the heat of the flames against my back.

  "Farewell, Hieronymus!" I whispered.

  IX

  What does one do for the rest of the day, when the day begins with a funeral? Such days seem to take place outside normal time. A dull gloom settles over the world. After being made to confront mortality at its starkest, one is left to face the ensuing hours stripped of the simple comforts of a workday routine. Normal thought is impossible. A carefree laugh or an idle daydream are out of the question. We have looked into the abyss, then have stepped back from the precipice still alive, yes, but touched at our core by the chill of death. For the rest of the day, one must simply endure the gloom and wait for the setting of the sun and the eventual escape into sleep that will bring the day after.

  But this was not a normal day for anyone in Rome. This was the day of the first of Caesar's four triumphs.

  Even before we reentered the city by the Esquiline Gate, I could hear a dull roar from within the walls. When every man, woman, and child in Rome has cause to be out of doors at the same time, all talking to one another at once, the whole city hums like beehive. Such a buzzing seemed to emanate from every quarter of the city, but it grew noticeably louder as we drew near the Forum.

  Everyone was in the streets, wearing their brightest holiday attire. (How my family stood out, all garbed in black!) Everyone was headed for the same place, drawn toward the heart of the hubbub. Amid the contagious excitement, Bethesda and Diana completely forgot their intention to return to the auction at the House of the Beaks. Impatient to witness the spectacle, Mopsus and Androcles repeatedly ran ahead and then circled back, entreating the rest of us to hurry.

  We reached the Forum. The doors of every temple stood open, inviting the people to visit the gods, and the gods to witness the day's events. Garlands of flowers decorated every shrine and statue. Incense burned on every altar, filling the air with sweet fragrance.

  Historians say that King Romulus celebrated the first triumphal procession in Rome after he slew Acron, king of the Caeninenses, in single combat. While Acron's body was still warm, Romulus cut down an oak tree and carved the trunk into the shape of a torso; then he stripped the armor from Acron's corpse and fastened it onto the effigy. Carrying the trophy over his shoulder and wearing a laurel crown, he walked through the streets of Rome while the citizens looked on in awe. He ascended the Capitoline. At the Temple of Jupiter, he made a solemn offering of Acron's armor to the god, in gratitude for Rome's triumph.

  Romulus's victory march was the origin and model for all subsequent triumphs. Over the centuries, the pomp and ceremony of these celebrations grew ever more elaborate. King Tarquin the Elder was the first to ride a chariot instead of walk, and for the occasion he wore a gold-embroidered robe. In his day, only kings could celebrate a triumph, but with the coming of the republic, the Senate continued the tradition by granting triumphs to generals in recognition of a great military victory. Camillus, who liberated the city when it was occupied by the Gauls, was the first to harness four white horses to his chariot, in emulation of the quadriga statue atop Jupiter's temple, with its white horses pulling the king of the gods. In those days, the face and arms of a triumphant general were painted red to match the statue of Jupiter, which was dyed with cinnabar on holidays. What a strange sight that must have been!

  I had witnessed a number of triumphs in my lifetime. The first I could remember was when I was six years old, and Caesar's granduncle Marius paraded the captured Numidian king Jugurtha through the streets before executing him. A few years later, after repelling an invasion by Germanic tribes, Marius celebrated another triumph. In the year before I met Cicero, I saw Sulla the Dictator celebrate his victory over King Mithradates of Pontus. Cicero himself had been voted a triumph by the Senate, for the dubious achievement of putting down a band of brigands during his year as governor of Cilicia, but the civil war had postponed that event, probably forever.

  Pompey had celebrated three triumphs in his career, beginning at the age of twenty-four. The last and most lavish of these was some fifteen years ago, to mark his conquests in the East and his eradication of piracy in the Mediterranean. That triumph had been spread over two days of unprecedented pomp and largesse, featuring not only processions but also huge public banquets and a distribution of money to the citizens; and in a move that surprised everyone, Pompey had spared the intended victims, proving that mercy could be exercised by a victorious Roman general.

  But of all the triumphs I had seen, the celebration put on by Caesar that day, and in the days to come, eclipsed them all.

  When a man has lived in a place as long as I have lived in Rome, he learns a few of the city's secrets. I happened to know the best vantage point for watching a triumph. While other latecomers pressed toward the front of the crowd, stood on tiptoes, or gazed enviously at those who had arrived early to find seats among the stands, I led the family to the Temple of Fortuna built by Lucullus. At the side of the temple, an easy climb along the branch of an olive tree allowed access to a recessed marble shelf along one wall, just deep enough and wide enough for my entire family to sit, if we huddled close together. Even an old fellow like me could make the ascent with no trouble, and my reward was a comfortable perch above the heads of the crowd below, with a perfect view of the procession along the Sacred Way. Dressed as we were, we must have looked like a flock of ravens roosting on the little outcrop of marble.

  A roar erupted as Bethesda was settling herself beside me. We were just in time to see the beginning of the parade.

  Following tradition, the procession began with the senators. They were usually three hundred in number. The body had been greatly depleted by the civil war, but new appointments by Caesar had replenished their ranks. Dressed in their togas with red borders, the senators flowed down the Sacred Way like a river of white flecked with crimson. For many of the newcomers, this occasion marked their first public appearance. I could pick out the new senators by how stiffly they adopted the politician's standard pose-one hand clutching the folds of the toga, the other raised to wave to the crowd. These included, either appropriately or ironically considering the occasion, a number of Gallic chieftains who had allied themselves with Caesar. Not one of them sported long hair or a giant mustache; they were as well-groomed as their Roman colleagues. Still, keeping together in a group, they were easy to spot by their stature. The Gauls towered above the sea of white.

  Cicero and Brutus, who were usually the type to put themselves out front, marched near the back of the contingent. They strode with their heads close together, conversing, as if more interested in each other's company than in what was happening around them. Their attitude seemed almost deliberately disrespectful of the occasion. What were those two talking about?

  Next in the procession came the white oxen that would be sacrificed on the altar before the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, attended by the priests who would slaughter them, bearing their ceremonial knives. The oxen had gilded horns, brightly colored fillets of twisted wool on their heads, and garlands of flowers around their necks. Following were the camilli, the specially chosen boys and girls who would attend the priests, carrying the shallow libation bowls in which they would receive the blood and the organs of the sacrificed oxen.

  Other members of the priesthoods followed, wearing long robes and m
antles over their heads. These included the keepers of the Sibylline Books, the augurs responsible for divination, the flamens devoted to various deities, and the priests who maintained the calendar and reckoned sacred dates. Among this last group I saw a familiar face, the white-haired uncle of Calpurnia, Gnaeus Calpurnius, whom I had seen briefly in the garden at her house. Clearly, Uncle Gnaeus was in his element on this day, a priest among priests taking part in a great occasion. His expression was at once solemn and joyous; he had that smug look one often sees on priests, of knowing a little more than ordinary people and rather enjoying this superior knowledge. Now that I realized the priesthood to which he was attached, it occurred to me that it might have been Uncle Gnaeus who piqued Hieronymus's interest in the calendar, and perhaps even assisted him with astronomical calculations-if, indeed, he had deigned to have anything to do with Hieronymus. I made a mental note to ask him about it, if the opportunity arose.

  Next came a band of trumpeters, blaring the ancient summons to arms, as if a hostile enemy approached. In fact, behind the trumpeters, an enemy did approach-the captive chiefs of the conquered Gauls. There were a great many of these prisoners; the Gauls were divided into scores of tribes, and Caesar had subdued them all. These once-proud warriors were dressed in rags. They shambled forward with their heads bowed, chained to one another. The crowed laughed and jeered and pelted them with rotten fruit.

  At their head was Vercingetorix. He was as I had seen him in the Tullianum, nearly naked and covered with filth, but his appearance was even more appalling under bright sunlight. His eyes were hollow. His lips were dry and cracked. His hair and his beard were as tangled as a bird's nest. His fingernails were like claws, so long they had begun to curl. His shoes had disintegrated while he walked; bits of shredded leather trailed from his ankles, and each step left a bloody footprint on the paving stones.