A Point of Law s-10

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Bear with me. This is the way I think. If you had conspired with some colleagues to murder a prominent man, would you rush right up and cut his throat, the easiest way to do it? No, because you’d know exactly what the others would do: They’d back away with looks of horror, pointing at you and saying, ‘Ohhh, look at what he did!’ Imagine how embarrassed you’d be. No, you give the poor bastard a cut, then you back away and make sure that the rest do at least as much. Only then does someone administer the deathblow.”

  They considered this for a while. They weren’t accustomed to my sort of reasoning. Finally, Nepos spoke up.

  “I can see men conspiring this way against a really great man, a Pompey or a Caesar. But why a nobody like Marcus Fulvius? He was nothing.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but what might he have become?”

  “Decius,” Scipio said impatiently, “you are not Socrates, and we are certainly not your adoring students. Stop asking questions and give us some answers!”

  “Hear, hear!” chimed in the other two. I loved nettling them like this.

  “Just this morning, while conferring with the Greek lady who is working on the code for me, we talked about what family names and bloodlines mean to us Romans, to the common plebs no less than to the patricians and the aristocrats. Marcus Fulvius was the brother-in-law of Clodius, whom the commons still mourn. He and his sister, Fulvia, are also the grandchildren of Caius Gracchus. The commons revere nobody the way they revere the name of Caius and Tiberius Gracchus.”

  “Gracchus!” Father said. “I’d forgotten that. Scipio, what’s the connection?” Scipio, with his patrician antecedents, was the acknowledged expert. He could reel off Roman lineages the way most of us could recite the bloodlines of chariot horses.

  “The wife of Caius Gracchus was a Licinia, of the Licinius Crassus line. Their daughter was Sempronia and she married-let me see-Fulvius Flaccus. The slut Fulvia and the dead fool must be their children. I think there’s another.”

  “Manius Fulvius,” I said. “He’s duumvir of Baiae. Now tell me who was the mother of the Gracchi?”

  “Cornelia,” they all said at once. This took no great feat of memory. Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, was the most famous Roman mother since Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus. Predictably, it was Metellus Scipio who first grasped the implications.

  “Jupiter! Cornelia was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, my own ancestor!”

  “Exactly,” I affirmed. “Marcus Fulvius’s brother-in-law was the most popular tribune of his generation. His grandfather was the glorious hero of the plebs. His great grandmother was the most revered woman in Roman history. His great-great grandfather was the man who defeated Hannibal, then was cheated of all his honors by Cato the Censor, the most reactionary aristocrat who ever lived.”

  I sat back and took a long drink. I needed one. “Picture it: There I am, standing for trial in the court of Juventius. The jury are all members of the equestrian order. Very few members of that body who are not our clients are very friendly toward us in the first place. Marcus Fulvius gets up to introduce himself and reels off that list of recent ancestors and family connections. What happens next?” I looked at them, from one to the other in turn. Father spoke first.

  “He steps right into the spot vacated by Clodius.”

  “And,” said Nepos, “he demands to be elected tribune, even though he hasn’t served a quaestorship. It’s been done before.”

  Father’s scarred face flamed. “This has been going on and we didn’t know about it?”

  “Why should we?” I asked him. “There’s a revolution in the making, and it’s directed against people like us.”

  “Against the Roman Constitution, you mean,” Scipio said.

  “No, against a few entrenched families that have wielded power for far too long. Who has held power in Rome these thirty years past? Men like Pompey and Crassus, Hortensius Hortalus, Lucullus, families like the Claudia Marcella, and, yes, the Caecilia Metella. All of them supporters of Sulla. The old dictator killed all his enemies and theirs, and left them the Republic to run as they saw fit under his new constitution.

  “People are growing tired of them-tired of us, I should say. Caesar gained power with the populares by identifying himself with his uncle-by-marriage, Marius, the sworn enemy of Sulla. Should it be any surprise that another man would try to do the same by stressing his descent from the Gracchi and Africanus?”

  Father surprised me by, for once, not berating me for having such disloyal thoughts. He brooded for a while, then said, “I believe my son is right in this. By whatever pseudo-Greek process of logic, he has found the basis of this threat. But we still don’t know who killed this Marcus Fulvius or why. We had the most reason to, and we know we didn’t do it.” He glared at the others. “We didn’t do it, did we?”

  Nepos and Scipio vigorously denied any involvement. “Face it,” Nepos said, “none of us was clever enough even to have seen the threat. We had no reason to kill him until Decius here just explained it, and now he is already dead. But where does Caius Claudius Marcellus fit into this? As you just said, Decius, the Claudia Marcella are old Sullans and they’re rabidly against Caesar. Why give patronage to this putative Man of the People?”

  “Perhaps,” Scipio said, “the Marcelli wanted to raise up a rival to Caesar. Fulvius might have drained off some of the popular support Caesar needs to further his ambitions. Clodius was Caesar’s tame dog. Fulvius would not have been.”

  “Very astute,” I admitted. “That may very well have been a part of it. It still doesn’t explain who killed him.”

  We pondered that for a while, until we decided that we weren’t going to come to any conclusions that night.

  At the door Father turned to me and said, “Only you could use an investigation as an excuse for a wine-tasting expedition, and then make it work.” I could almost have sworn that I saw him smile.

  Julia came to join me as soon as they were gone.

  “I suppose you were listening,” I said.

  “Naturally. Things are beginning to make a sort of sense. Maybe we can get the rest before it’s trial time.”

  “We’re running short of sources to investigate,” I complained.

  “They’re all around us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How tired are you? Are you up to another expedition tonight?”

  “Where are we going?” Ordinarily, Julia was vehemently opposed to all nocturnal wanderings. Rome was a dangerous city, and my reputation was well-earned.

  “Not far. The neighbors will be up all night, the wine is flowing freely, and this is the Subura. What better time and place to pick up City gossip?”

  Tired though I was, this prospect lent me new energy. “Splendid idea! You get your girl, I’ll find Hermes, and we’ll go test the waters.”

  I dashed to my study, bellowing for Hermes. He joined me and I opened the box on my desk, took out my caestus and dagger, and tucked them within my tunic. No sense taking any chances. Hermes helped me don the dingy old toga I wore for nocturnal excursions, and I was ready to go.

  Julia waited at the door, her head now decently covered by her palla and accompanied by Cypria, her maid. We went out into the bustling streets of the Subura.

  The festive air was not as extreme as at one of the great celebrations like Saturnalia or Floralia. On those occasions, nobody would be sober and upright at this late hour. The atmosphere was more that of a country village fair, with a great deal of jollity but without the total license of the state-sanctioned orgies.

  We received the usual greetings from our neighbors, and we welcomed and praised the soldiers from the district who were visiting their homes, some of them for the first time in years. There were depressingly few of these though. Young City men rarely served in the legions anymore. The legions depended more and more on the Italian municipia, the rural citizen communities where life was dull enough to make a soldier’s life seem attractive. There was just too much to
do in Rome. Life was easy and exciting in the great City. I couldn’t blame them. I, too, hated to leave Rome.

  The district’s innumerable men’s clubs and funeral societies stood open, illuminated with candles and lamps. On every corner fragrant smoke rose from charcoal braziers, where vendors served warmed wine and grilled sausages. There were no major temples in the Subura, but many small ones. Fires had been kindled before the altars of these so that the gods of the district could share in the festivities.

  Our first stop of the evening was an inn called the Gorgon. It was run by a man named Strabo and his freedwoman wife, Lucia. It had stables where I occasionally boarded horses, and on this night the courtyard framed by the stables and the main building had been filled with tables to accommodate the crowd.

  We found places at a table crowded by neighbors and were greeted noisily. Strabo and Lucia bustled over personally to fill our cups.

  “Welcome, Senator, my lady!” Strabo cried. “This is even better than the usual election season, isn’t it?”

  “For us, anyway,” Lucia chimed in. “Too bad about this Fulvius business.” She didn’t seem greatly saddened by my predicament. Not with the business her inn was doing that night.

  “Pay it no heed,” Strabo advised me. “It will all blow over in a few days.”

  “In a few days the elections will be over, and I can’t get elected with this hanging over me.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted.

  “It’s all the Via Sacrans’s doing,” Lucia asserted. “Ever since they lost Clodius, they’ve been looking to do us a bad turn. They know you’re our favorite senator.”

  The Via Sacrans and the Suburans, though fellow Romans, regard each other the way the Spartans and Athenians used to. The rivalry was usually good-natured: shouting at each other in the Circus, where the Suburans supported the Greens and the Via Sacrans the Blues, and the annual fight over the head of the October Horse. But sometimes it erupted into a minor civil war, with scores killed in days of running street fights.

  “Does anyone know anything about this man Fulvius?” Julia asked the table at large. It was a long table, and it held a fairly representative sampling of the neighborhood: shopkeepers, idlers, a thief, a Jewish marble merchant, a craftsman or two, even another senator.

  This last was a man named Spurius Gavius Albinus, a man of a totally undistinguished Suburan family. Each generation they managed to get one son elected to a quaestorship and thence to a seat in the Senate. He then never held higher office, but membership in the Senate was for life, barring expulsion by the censors. Thus these Gavii retained their status as a senatorial family. The great majority of senators at the time were such men. Only a small group of senatorial families ever held the praetorship, and a smaller group yet, my own included, were consuls.

  “Word has it,” a shopkeeper said, “that he was being lined up for next year’s tribuneship elections.”

  “Where does this word originate?” Julia asked.

  The man looked puzzled. “I don’t know. It’s just around. Fulvius was going to make a big name for himself by taking on the Metelli.”

  “I heard,” said the thief, “that he had plans to make Pompey’s life miserable.”

  “Pompey?” I said. “The wretch didn’t lack ambition.”

  “Way I heard it,” the thief went on, “he figured he had better blood in him than Pompey.”

  “I knew his father slightly,” said the marble merchant. “I travel to Baiae two or three times a year on business.” He was a fully Hellenized Jew, meaning that his dress, hair, beard, and adornments were all Greek, and he spoke that language with cultured fluency. He went by the name Philippus. I presume he chose the nane himself, and it was a clever one, being one of the few Roman names of Greek origin.

  “He was Fulvius Flaccus, wasn’t he?” I inquired.

  “Publius Fulvius Flaccus Bambalio,” Philippus said, giving it the full treatment. “He and his partner donated a fine Temple of Neptune to the city of Baiae. I furnished it inside and out with beautiful, sea green marble.”

  “His partner being Sextus Manilius?” I asked.

  “No. It was Caius Octavius, the one who was praetor some years ago.”

  I almost knocked over my cup, but rescued it in time. “Octavius? I’d no idea the man had holdings in Baiae!”

  “Oh, yes!” said Senator Gavius. “Octavius served as duumvir one year out of every three. He was one of the town’s main benefactors.” He added, with a smile of satisfaction, “I go to Baiae often.”

  Probably because you never do anything for the state, I thought. I might have said something indiscreet, but Julia jumped in at that moment.

  “We had heard that Fulvius Flaccus and Sextus Manilius are close friends.”

  “They are,” Gavius said. “Manilius is another of the regular duumviri of Baiae. There’s a little group of families down there who take the highest offices in turn.” He refilled his cup and grinned at me. “Just like here.”

  “Manilius?” said a copper founder named Glabrio. “Is he any relation to the young tribune?”

  “Look!” Julia cried happily, stomping on my foot. “Here’s a hero we know back from the war!” It was fortuitous timing. Even without having my foot stomped on, I knew we didn’t want to expose this Gordian knot of intrigue before our neighbors.

  Entering the courtyard was a family of my clients. In their lead was old Burrus, a veteran of my legion in Spain. Crowned with laurel, in military tunic and belt, was his son Lucius, whom I had last seen in Gaul a couple of years earlier. He had a hand on the shoulder of a nephew who wore one of the Gallic torques that were showing up everywhere. His mother was swathed in what appeared to be about ten yards of vividly checked and striped cloth.

  “Patron! Domina!” Lucius said, catching sight of us. I took his hands and saw that he wore silver bracelets on both wrists. Among Roman men, only soldiers wear bracelets, and these are decorations for valor. It was rare for a man so young to wear two of them.

  “I see you’ve been busy.” I poured a cup and handed it to him. “Still in the first cohort?”

  “I’m an optio now, in the antesignani of the first cohort.”

  Old Burrus beamed with pride, and he had reason to. The term is obsolete now, but in those days the antesignani, “those who fight before the standards,” were the cream of the legions, the bravest of the brave. To be an optio over such men was a great honor.

  “Amazing! You’ll be a centurion in no time!”

  “Next year,” he said confidently, “when the primus pilus retires, then my centurion becomes First Spear, and I step into his place.”

  This popped my eyes. “That means you’ll be a senior centurion without ever having served in the junior centurionate!”

  “Caesar knows how to reward the best men,” his father said, holding up one of the braceleted wrists for general admiration. “He’d be wearing the phalerae if he’d had the rank when he earned these.” These formidable decorations, nine massive silver disks worn on a harness, were awarded only to centurions. “As it is, he’ll be the youngest man ever to be senior centurion in the Tenth.”

  “This we must hear about,” I said. We made room for them all at the table and spent the next hour or so hearing Lucius Burrus’s war stories. And to think that, just a few years before, I had saved this young hero from being executed for murdering his own centurion! It just goes to show that good deeds really are rewarded. Sometimes, anyway.

  When the questioning eased up, Lucius turned to me and said, “Father tells me that you and your whole family are under attack.”

  I gave him a brief rendition of events, the parts that had become public knowledge.

  “Pompey’s probably behind it,” he stated flatly.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He isn’t supporting us the way he was when the war started. He’s jealous of Caesar’s success and glory.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all, but I don’t see
him taking part in something like this. It’s too subtle. Pompey’s a man of direct action. Besides, how is this supposed to push us into Pompey’s camp?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but it’s him. You’ll find out.” There was no shaking his assurance.

  He was getting to be like Julia: Caesar could do no wrong, and Caesar’s rivals and enemies were not to be trusted. All of Caesar’s soldiers thought and spoke this way. I have never understood why men are so loyal to a man who is getting them killed for his own profit and glory, but they do. To be truthful, there is a great deal about human behavior that I fail to understand. Maybe philosophers know, but I am too old to take up philosophy now. Besides, I suspect that most philosophers are frauds and fools.

  Later, Julia and I wandered over to the little Temple of Mercury that stood just behind our house.

  “There’s another name that’s turned up too many times,” I said to her as we walked, “Octavius.”

  “He was just a common political nonentity,” she said. “He made it as high as praetor, but he never achieved any real distinction. I think he died last year or the year before. But you’re right. A name that comes up twice when you are investigating a conspiracy has to be suspicious. Just this morning we were talking with Callista about his daughter and her marriage to Caius Marcellus-”

  “That’s it!” I exclaimed, just as we turned the corner next to the little temple. Its altar fire still burned high, attended by a couple of sleepy-looking priests. They glanced our way at the sound of my cry.

  “Keep your voice down. That’s what?”

  “What Octavia said that was important and I couldn’t remember. She said she hadn’t seen her brother since he was an infant.”

  “Yes, so?”

  “Earlier this morning I talked with Cato. He says that, a few months ago, the younger Caius Octavius gave the funeral eulogy for his grandmother, Julia, the sister of Caesar. Is Octavia saying that she didn’t attend her own grandmother’s funeral?”

  “Decius! Sometimes you really are inspired! I attended that funeral. She was my aunt, after all, and I was there with all the Julia Caesares. I heard the boy speak, and it was excellently done for one so young. It was while you were still on Cyprus.”