A Point of Law s-10

by John Maddox Roberts

  “When will they decide who frightens them most?”

  “It depends on how Caesar and Pompey act. They’ll try to keep things peaceful as long as they can. If Pompey keeps his veterans in the south, and if Caesar lays down his imperium when his term expires, comes back to Rome and takes his place in the Senate, then my family will try to keep the peace and stay in the good graces of both of them.”

  “Do you think that will happen?”

  “I think it’s unlikely. Caesar has shown his contempt for the Senate too clearly. If he tries to do what Sertorius did and set himself up as an independent king, there will be civil war and Pompey will lead the campaign against him. If Pompey takes it into his head to call up his soldiers and capture southern Italy, my family will go to Caesar and beg him to crush Pompey.”

  “And if Caesar returns to Rome but doesn’t lay down his imperium? If he brings his soldiers with him and camps outside the walls of Rome?”

  “Then my family will side with Pompey. They always back the weaker man, the one they think they can control. I hope it doesn’t come to any of these ends, because then it will make no difference whom we back. It will mean the end of the Republic.”

  “Perhaps it’s time,” Julia said.

  “Never! If there is another civil war, whoever wins, Caesar or Pompey or another man, he will make himself dictator. And unlike Sulla, this one will not retire and restore the Republic. It will be monarchy, just like in the Orient. That would be unworthy of Rome.”

  “We’re getting away from the subject,” Julia said. She would never say it, but the idea of her uncle as monarch didn’t bother her a bit. “I am going to look into this man Fulvius and his past. Someone is behind him and when we know who it is, we’ll know how to fight him.”

  “Much as I detest Sallustius,” I told her, “I am almost ready to take his advice and offer the bastard a bribe to back off.”

  “Whoever is behind him will have thought of that,” she said. “He’s been offered something better than money.”

  “Better than money,” I pointed out, “there is only honor and public office, which he is unlikely to attain if he follows this course.”

  “Men value different things,” she said. “Not everyone is a Roman of great family.”

  “This is quite true,” I agreed. “We need to find out who this man is. We haven’t a great deal of time to do it in.”

  She glanced at the slant of sunlight pouring through the triclinium door. “It’s not late yet. I think I’ll go pay Fulvia a call. She is still at the house of Clodius, I believe. She is so snubbed by women of quality that she’ll be eager to talk.”

  “You be careful around that woman,” I told her. “Take along some of my clients, the ex-legionaries and brawlers.”

  “A Caesar needs no bodyguard,” she said contemptuously. Julia always saw her status as Caesar’s niece as a sort of invisible armor protecting her wherever she went. I saw it more as an archer’s mark painted between her shoulder blades.

  I arrived at my father’s house just as the sun was setting. Hermes was with me, and I had stopped by the houses of a few friends, men of high rank and good reputation, whose support I could count upon. There was already a goodly crowd outside the gate, servants, clients, and supporters of the important men already gathered within.

  As I approached the gate a large litter arrived. It was Hortalus, who had grown too old, stout, and infirm to walk great distances. He was already dressed in his striped augur’s robe and carried the lituus: the crook-topped staff of that sacred office. With him was the eminent Appius Claudius Pulcher, a very distinguished soldier and administrator. He was standing for censor and was sure to be elected. This man was the elder brother of Clodius; but he was a man of entirely different character, and I had never had any but cordial relations with him.

  Inside, a sizable chunk of Rome’s senatorial power was assembled. I qualify this because the real power was elsewhere, fighting Gauls and Parthians.

  “Here’s Hortensius,” Metellus Scipio said, as we came in. “That was a good stab you got in today about the unspeakable year. Was it true?”

  “Oh, yes,” Hortalus said. “I never lie about legal precedents. I wish that sort of opening came my way more often in court.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” I said. “Aside from the fact that Fulvius steals the words of better men, where was he likely to have learned them?”

  “Aulus Sulpicius Galba is the great scholar of the jurisprudence of that era,” said Hortalus. “He used to make all his students memorize the orations of Billienus.”

  “Used to?” I said.

  “He retired from Roman practice at least twenty years ago. We rarely see him here now. Last I heard he was teaching law in Baiae and has been elected duumvir of the town.”

  “If I could be the most important man in Baiae,” I said, “I wouldn’t be in Rome either. Well, that much makes sense. Fulvius is from Baiae, so he must have studied law there under Galba.”

  “Nobody here knows much about Fulvius,” Father said. “He’s been in the City only a few months at most.”

  “Appius,” said Creticus, who held a huge goblet of wine, “not to dredge up any family scandals, but do you know anything about him? He is a relative of yours by marriage.”

  “I never heard of him before today,” Appius Claudius said. “I had little to do with my brother his last few years and even less with his wife. This brother of hers never approached me for patronage and wouldn’t have got it if he had.”

  I took a cup from a passing slave. The wine was, mercifully, not as heavily watered as Julia served it.

  “Marcus Cato can’t be here tonight,” Scipio said, “but he’s agreed to begin tomorrow’s proceedings with an oration concerning conditions on Cyprus. He saw to the Roman annexation of the island, and he briefed Decius before he went out there. We’ve yet to locate any citizens who were there during Decius’s activities against the pirates, and we’re unlikely to anytime soon. We have, however, a great many important men ready to testify to his splendid character.”

  “He’ll have more, swearing what an utter, degenerate criminal and pervert I am,” I pointed out.

  “What’s more, his witnesses will be more believable,” Creticus said, raising a general laugh at my expense.

  “Your aedileship was the most popular since Caesar’s,” Scipio pointed out. “The plebeians will be solidly behind you.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but virtually all my fines and prosecutions were leveled against crooked contractors, dishonest entrepreneurs, violators of the business and building codes, all of them equites. Guess who will be on the jury.”

  “Equites, of course,” Father replied. “In Sulla’s day, a senator was tried before his peers.” I could have pointed out the injustice of that policy, but at that moment I was entirely in agreement with the bloody old butcher.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “we’re approaching this from the wrong direction.” I sketched the possibility Julia had raised. Of course, I pretended that it had been my idea.

  “I don’t believe that his odd phrasing escaped any of us who were there,” Hortalus said. “ ‘The mighty Caecilius Metellus’ indeed! I, too, am inclined to think that this represents an attack on the whole gens Caecilia.”

  “I agree,” Father said. “Has anyone any better idea?” None had. “Very well. The fact remains that the form this attack has taken is a personal one against my son. As such we must address it, and we have three days to clear this matter up so that we can get Decius the younger elected praetor.”

  “Now,” Creticus said, “we need to discuss the various underhanded ways we can counter this exceedingly underhanded offensive. Scipio, will Pompey intervene for us?”

  Scipio’s daughter, widow of Publius Crassus who had died at Carrhae, had married Pompey, a man somewhat older than her father. The old boy was quite besotted with her, and when his father-in-law was prosecuted Pompey called the jury together at his own house and
asked personally for an acquittal. Scipio was immediately cleared of all charges and carried from the Forum on the shoulders of the men who were to have tried him.

  “That won’t work twice,” Scipio said. “He earned enough resentment last time. To do it again, for a member of the same family, could turn the whole Senate against him.”

  “How about a bribe?” Father asked. He saw my mouth open and pointed a bony finger at my face. “None of your delicate scruples now, Son. This is politics at its dirtiest, and bribing the fellow may turn out to be the easiest, simplest, and, in the long run, cheapest way to go. How much of your pirate loot remains?”

  “Very little. After the monument and the new roof of the portico, clearing my debts, and my donation to the Treasury, there’s barely enough remaining to support my state as praetor.” The praetorship wasn’t as costly an office as the aedileship, but my expenses would still be heavy: compensation for my clients, who would attend me every court day; regular gifts for my lictors; and the lavish entertaining expected of an office holder.

  “You shouldn’t have given so much to the Treasury,” Creticus said.

  “We could all lend you a few talents to buy the man off,” Scipio suggested.

  “He won’t be bought if it’s the family he’s after,” I pointed out. Once again I presented Julia’s suspicions as my own.

  “So who can afford to outspend us?” Scipio asked. “Or place him in high office? The only likely suspects are Caesar and Pompey, and it makes little sense for either of them to do this.”

  “There are other men of ambition,” said Appius Claudius. “Desperate men who can’t climb by constitutional means are apt to employ desperate tactics.”

  “You mean like Catilina?” I said. “Some frustrated, would-be dictator currying favor among the malcontents and the dispossessed?”

  “I am thinking more of the exiles,” he answered. “Gabinius would dearly love to come back to Rome and resume his career. You had a run-in with him on Cyprus, did you not?”

  “Yes, early on,” I told him, “but we patched it up.”

  “You are not his lifelong friend though,” Father said, “and no man is your friend where great ambition is concerned. I think we should consider Gabinius as a possibility. What about Curio?”

  “The man’s a pauper!” Hortalus protested.

  “So was Caesar until a few years ago,” Creticus said. “Curio’s standing for Tribune of the People, he has a slate of proposed legislation that’s as ambitious as anything since the brothers Gracchi-”

  “And,” Scipio put in, “he’s suddenly presenting himself as the enemy of the optimates. Just a month ago he was solidly in our camp.”

  I could see that my family had been discussing Curio quite a bit already. I barely knew Caius Scribonius Curio, who was a wellborn, high-living young man of little accomplishment, although he was said to be extremely intelligent and a fine speaker.

  “If he’s elected tribune,” Father said, “he’ll be in a strong position to push Fulvius’s career. Let’s consider him a possibility.”

  It went on like this for some time, one name after another being brought forth for consideration. There were a lot of names to consider, too. A family as politically important as mine had as many enemies as friends. And not everyone at the gathering possessed as logical a brain as mine. Some names were raised simply because the raiser disliked the man, or he was known for some especially unusual vice, or he practiced a suspect religion. Someone even brought up the name of Vatinius, an eccentric senator who was fond of wearing a black toga even when he wasn’t in mourning. It was some sort of Pythagorean practice. Otherwise, the man was harmless.

  By midnight we had run through just about all the legal and political possibilities except for assassination. I think that was omitted only because the problem wasn’t quite that serious. I could always stand for election again the next year, annoying though that might be.

  “Well,” Hortalus said, lurching to his feet, “I’m off. I am going to the house of Claudius Marcellus, where we shall watch the skies from his excellent garden. All of you take my advice and get some sleep. We really can’t formulate our defense until we know more about this upstart, Flavius. This time tomorrow we will know all we need to about that man.”

  “Let me accompany you,” I said. “The streets are black, and the night is moonless. My men brought plenty of torches, and they’re all veterans.”

  “A good idea,” Father said. “When you’ve seen our friend to his destination, get some rest and we’ll all meet at dawn on the basilica steps.”

  Outside, I got Hermes and my men arranged, some in front of Hortalus’s litter, some behind. Just because the great gangs had been broken up did not mean that the streets of Rome were perfectly safe, especially on a moonless night. My men were armed, discreetly, with weapons beneath their cloaks. So was I.

  “Come join us in the litter, Decius,” Hortalus said, as he and Appius Claudius got in. “There’s room for three.”

  Nothing loath, I climbed in. At that time it was considered rather effeminate for a man of military age to use a litter. They were supposed to be conveyances for wellborn women, the sick, and the elderly. But I wasn’t about to stumble around in Rome’s filthy, benighted streets if something better was offered. The bearers groaned at the extra weight when they hoisted us.

  “Are you going to the house of Claudius Marcellus, too?” I asked Appius Claudius. I knew the two Claudian families were related, but distantly.

  “No,” he said, “I’ve been staying as a guest at Quintus’s country villa. Tonight I’ll go on to my own house.”

  Hortensius Hortalus had spent most of his time in recent years in his splendid country houses, where he had been developing fish ponds with his friend Marcus Phillipus. The two wrote long books on the subject.

  “With country estates like yours,” I said to Hortalus, “I wonder that you bother coming to the City at all.”

  “I’m an old Forum politician,” he said. “I just can’t stand to miss an election. Especially not when the issues being debated in the Senate are so crucial to the state. I am long past my days of highest influence, but I flatter myself that my voice is still listened to.”

  “Rome ignores your wisdom at her peril,” said Appius.

  “Which issues concern you so?” I asked.

  “Why the growing insolence of Caesar, of course! Forgive me, Decius, but you’ve been away from the City too long. Did you know that Caesar this year petitioned to stand for consul while keeping his army and his provinces? Unheard of! Might as well crown the bugger king and be done with it.”

  “Caesar has been courting that man Curio we just spoke of,” Appius put in. “I think he’s trying to bribe every man standing for next year’s tribuneship: Pansa and Caelius that I know of, probably the others. But he’ll win over Curio for certain.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “The usual. The man’s terrifically debt-ridden, and Caesar will pay off his debts. Has it occurred to anyone that the root of most of our political disorder is not the generals who go out and accumulate loot but the young, wellborn wastrels who accumulate debt instead? There is nothing more dangerous to the public good than a senator or young man of senatorial family made desperate by crushing debt. They can be bought by any politician with a heavy purse.”

  “That is very true,” Hortalus said, nodding.

  “Next year, if I succeed in being elected censor-”

  “The censorship is yours for the asking, Appius Claudius,” I assured him.

  “Hear, hear,” Hortalus affirmed.

  “I thank you both. Anyway, I intend to use that office to purge the Senate of its worst elements, starting with all those disgraceful debtors.”

  “I hope,” Hortalus said, “that you get a colleague who will cooperate with you. My own censorship was ideal because I had the elder Decius as colleague. But poor Crassus could do nothing because his colleague kept overruling every decision he
made. He had to quit before even finishing the census or performing the lustrum.”

  “Who is most likely to win the other censorship?” I asked. “As Quintus Hortensius has observed, I’ve been out of touch.”

  “I am hoping for the elder Cassius,” Appius said, “but it’s more likely to be Calpurnius Piso. If so, I can work with him. He’s one of those who tries not to declare for Caesar or Pompey, but they’re a vanishing breed. It’s a disgrace that Romans of rank have to be seen as supporters of one would-be tyrant or the other, but one must face the situation realistically.”

  By this time we were near the house of Marcellus. I got out of the litter, took my leave of the two men, and proceeded to walk the short distance to my own home with Hermes and the rest of my men. They had spent the evening loitering around Father’s house, doubtless talking politics like the rest of Rome.

  “Did you get anything accomplished?” Hermes wanted to know.

  “Just a lot of talk,” I told him. Around us the others held torches aloft and peered into dark alleys, their faces truculent, hands resting on hilts.

  “Same here. The mood in the city’s strange since we got back. The quiet is unnatural. Everybody is waiting for something to happen. People are seeing omens everywhere. I just heard about a two-headed calf born near Arpinum, and a hawk killed one of Juno’s geese this morning.”

  “At least it wasn’t a snake,” I said. “When a snake gets into the temple and swallows a goose egg, the city’s on edge for days waiting for disaster. People need something to take their minds off all this peace and quiet. Now would be a good time for some games. It’s been almost two months since the Plebeian Games and the next official celebrations won’t be until spring. Hasn’t anybody important died? A good munera would be just the thing.”

  “Valerius Flaccus is just back from Cilicia. He was at the ludus yesterday arranging for his father’s funeral games, but that won’t be until March.” Hermes trained with weapons at the Statilian school on most mornings when he had no duties to perform for me, like that day’s canvassing for votes.