SPQR IX: The Princess and the Pirates

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Each of these gentlemen,” said Photinus, “represents a syndicate of Roman merchants dwelling in Alexandria. If I may introduce them—”

  “Please do so,” I said. “Citizens, I apologize for the abruptness of this summons, but my duties press me on all sides, and I have little time for niceties.” All quite true and neatly sidestepping the awkward question of whether I had any authority at all.

  “First,” the eunuch twittered, “Marcus Junius Brutus of the Honorable Company of Wine Merchants.” This was a bald-headed old fellow, clearly of a distant, plebeian branch of that famous patrician family.

  “Next, Mamercus Sulpicius Naso of the Sacred Brotherhood of Hermes, grain exporters.” This one was fat and oily and clearly another provincial. In Rome only the Aemilii used the praenomen Mamercus. I would watch this one closely. Any grain shipper is a speculator, always hoping for a shortage to jack up prices. They are dealers in other people’s hunger.

  “This is Decimus Antonius of the Guild of Hephaestus, importers of metals of all sorts save gold and silver.” This one actually looked like one of the Roman Antonii. At least he had the distinctive features of that clan. That Roman political family was full of madmen and criminals though, but this one looked sane enough.

  “And, finally, Malachi Josephides, leader of the Textile Syndicate.” The man was tall and distinguished, his graying hair and beard groomed in the Greek fashion. I had met his like in Alexandria—what are called Hellenized Jews, meaning Jews who have adopted Greek culture in all things except religion. Even his name was rendered in Greek. Yet he wore a toga.

  “How do you happen to be a citizen, Josephides?”

  I asked. He smiled. “I was born in Massilia, where my family has resided for several generations. My father was the first to have the privilege of citizenship.” A Jew from a Greek colony in Gaul with Roman citizenship; beat that for cosmopolitanism if you can.

  “Gentlemen, be seated,” I said. “We have been keeping the circumstances of Silvanus’s death quiet for the moment, but you should know he was murdered. It was not done openly, and we are at a loss to know the killer’s motive. I wish you to acquaint me with the business disputes and concerns you came here to discuss with him.”

  “You think, Senator,” said Antonius, “that our problems are somehow connected to this murder?”

  “I think nothing of the sort. But I cannot form any basis for a theory until I can understand the concerns surrounding the late Silvanus.”

  Josephides smiled again. “You sound more like a logician than a Roman official.”

  “I have been told so before,” I acknowledged. “Just don’t call me a philosopher. I wish to know one thing first: Did any of your worries involve threats against Rome, Roman citizens, or Roman interests?”

  “You are most incisive, Senator,” said Brutus. “There have been threats indeed: threats to our commerce, threats to our freedom, threats to our safety and our very lives!” The old boy was getting wrought up, having finally found a sympathetic ear.

  “He exaggerates, Senator!” Photinus protested.

  “I shall seek your counsel later, Photinus. For the moment I am listening to the Romans. What are the forms and origins of these threats, Citizens?”

  “Credible threats against our commerce can have only one origin, Senator,” Brutus went on, “King Ptolemy. He seeks to extort vast sums from the Roman merchants of Alexandria, sums that could well ruin us, and he enforces these extortions with threats of imprisonment, confiscation, even public flogging and death!”

  Photinus was bursting to speak, but I silenced him with an upraised hand. “King Ptolemy threatens Romans in this fashion? Have you proof? I want details!”

  “You may be aware, Senator,” said Josephides, “that King Ptolemy incurred sizable debts in obtaining ‘friend and ally’ status, and further debts in regaining his throne?” He, at least, seemed able to retain his equanimity.

  “So I’ve heard,” I assured him.

  “There was yet a further debt incurred in obtaining the services of General Gabinius to unseat his usurping daughter and her husband. You may have cause to wonder just how His Majesty ever expected to repay these tremendous sums.”

  “I assumed he would do it the way kings always have: squeeze his subjects until they cough up the money. Egypt is a famously rich land. Surely even a Ptolemy can make something of it.”

  “It is also the custom of kings,” Josephides continued, “to victimize foreigners before fellow countrymen. Nobody loves Romans; therefore, the king incurs no wrath among the Egyptians if he robs the Roman community of Alexandria.”

  “It’s preposterous!” I said. “Why would King Ptolemy, who owes his throne to Rome, turn against Rome? It would be suicidal! I have met the king, gentlemen. He is a fat, old degenerate who used to play a flute in a whorehouse, but he is not stupid.”

  “What is so stupid about it, Senator?” asked Antonius, the metal merchant. “When was the last time the Senate got indignant over the treatment of overseas merchants? We are equites, Senator. We are wealthy and we are often leading men in our communities; but those communities are not Rome, and our families do not serve in the Senate. People lump us together with the publicani and think we are all tax farmers. Some of us are moneylenders, and everyone hates moneylenders. When Lucullus curried favor with the barbarians by ruining the Roman moneylenders of Asia, who wept in Rome?”

  “My colleague is bitter, Senator,” said Naso, the grain speculator, “but he is quite correct. Lacking the gloss of nobilitas, we are despised in Rome. Since our wealth comes not from land but from trade and hard work, we are not respectable. King Ptolemy risks very little in attacking us.”

  There was much in what they said. Men of my own class committed untold villainies, but we belonged to ancient families and could count many consuls and praetors among our ancestors. Our wealth was decently inherited or wrested by force from our enemies, so we were eminently respectable, despite our frequent crimes and our ruinous ambitions.

  The equites were so-called because of an archaic property qualification stating that men with wealth above a certain level were required to serve in the cavalry and supply their own horses. For centuries, though, it had been a mere property distinction. Equites could serve in the Senate if they could get elected, but for the last century, nearly all the senators had come from a tight little circle of about twenty families. Interlopers like Cicero were a great rarity. We called ourselves a republic, but in truth we formed an oligarchy as exclusive and as corrupt as any that ever ruled a Greek city-state. I was not about to acknowledge this to a pack of merchants though, especially in front of an Egyptian court eunuch.

  “How great an assessment has he levied?” I demanded. “The levy has been by association rather than by individual merchant,” Brutus said. “Each of our associations have been assessed to the sum of one hundred talents in gold.”

  “A stiff sum,” I commiserated.

  “Per year,” Antonius added.

  I winced. “For how long?”

  “Until the ‘state of emergency’ is ended,” said Brutus, “which means until King Ptolemy is solvent, which means until he is dead.”

  “Solvency always seems to elude him,” I agreed. “Now what about these threats?”

  “Failure to deliver the stipulated sum at the proper date,” Brutus said, “will result in the arrest of the officers of the association. Failure then to render the assessment, with penalties, will be punished by a public flogging of those officers and further penalties added to the assessment. After that, any failure to pay up will be punished by beheading.”

  “Ridiculous!” I said. “Photinus, what is your king thinking? Or is he thinking at all?”

  “As for the special tax, Senator, it is perfectly just. After all, my king is allowing these people to trade freely in the greatest and richest port in the world. They owe him something for that. The tax would not have been necessary had Rome not been so astoundingly greedy. Your fello
w senator, Gaius Rabirius, already has control of the grain revenue and several others, so His Majesty may not apply that to his debts.”

  This was true enough. “And threats to imprison, flog, and execute Roman citizens? We have gone to war over far less than that.”

  “Senator, you Romans tend to go to war over nothing at all. Possession of a full treasury draws the legions of Rome as a staked goat draws lions. But I think these men need have little fear on that account. It is customary for the successors of Alexander to specify the severest punishments for failure to comply with their will. It is mere form.”

  He spread his pudgy palms in an appeal to reason. “What is at stake here anyway? These men, who are already rich, will be a little less rich. In the age-old fashion of merchants they will raise the price of their goods, the loss will be passed along to their customers, and they will all be as fat as ever.”

  “He lies!” cried Sulpicius Naso. “We will be ruined! Our livelihood rides on each year’s cargoes, at the mercy of war and weather. We are always on the brink of beggary!” Like most rich men, he had an infinite store of self-pity.

  “Economics is not my field,” I said. “Ask anyone at the Treasury, where I served my quaestorship. Why did you bring your complaints here to Cyprus instead of before the Senate in Rome?”

  “Believe me, Senator,” said Brutus, “a far larger delegation is on its way to Rome for just that purpose. We are here because we have business interests in Cyprus as well as Alexandria. This used to be a Ptolemaic kingdom, but since it is now Roman we sought assurances from the governor that King Ptolemy would not be able to seize our property here, which is considerable.”

  “And what did we find?” said Antonius, his face going red. “We found the governor in a cozy relationship with Aulus Gabinius, the stooge of Rabirius, the man behind Ptolemy’s money woes! Not only that, but Ptolemy’s daughter is his houseguest!”

  “It does seem a bleak prospect for you,” I agreed. So now somebody else had cause to kill Silvanus. In a way a Roman culprit would simplify things for me; the less foreign involvement the better.

  “Of course,” Josephides put in hastily, “we were as shocked and saddened as anyone when the governor was so foully murdered. Despite his unfortunate choice of friend and guest, he listened to our petitions with great sympathy and gave us assurances that our businesses and properties on Cyprus would enjoy the fullest protection. Now, in fact, our situation is once again uncertain. There seems to be no constituted Roman authority here.”

  “Unless you are the new governor,” Antonius said.

  It was time to change the subject. “How is it that you are here with Photinus?”

  “At the king’s insistence,” Brutus said bitterly. “The only way we could get permission to sail was to leave surety for our return and take along a court minister. Our trading licenses are forfeit if we so much as hold a meeting without him present.”

  “As you observed, Senator,” said the eunuch, “King Ptolemy is not stupid.”

  “So it would seem. One more thing, gentlemen, are any of you in the frankincense trade?”

  They looked at me as if I were insane. It is a look I have learned to recognize.

  “Frankincense?” Brutus said. “Why frankincense?”

  “Indulge my curiosity. I have my reasons.”

  “In Egypt,” said Antonius, “frankincense is a royal monopoly and the crown sells it for shipment abroad only to the Holy Society of Dionysus. That society is entirely Greek. No non-Hellene can even apply for membership, which is largely hereditary.”

  “I suppose that answers my question then. Gentlemen, thank you for coming, and you may return to your lodgings now. However, I will ask you not to leave the island until the murderer of Governor Silvanus has been found.”

  “Do you think,” Brutus said, rising, “that we are anxious to return to Alexandria just now?”

  9

  THE NEXT DAY WAS LARGELY GIVEN OVER to the funeral of Silvanus. The weather was beautiful, and the hired mourners wailed superbly. The whole Roman population of Paphos and neighboring towns turned out for the occasion, and there were more of them than I had expected. The visitors from Alexandria were there, naturally, and Photinus represented King Ptolemy, dressed in court robes, wig, and cosmetics, adding a delightful note of the bizarre to the proceedings.

  Since Paphos was a Greek city, a chorus had been hired for the occasion. They sang traditional funeral songs, plus a new one specially written by Alpheus. Gabinius, dressed in an impressively striped augur’s toga (for he belonged to that priestly college), took the auspices, then sacrificed a couple of handsome calves. After the Greek custom, the fat and bones were offered to the gods. The rest would form part of the funeral feast.

  Gabinius performed the oration ably, delivering an eloquent eulogy that, though formulaic, was so well crafted that I almost believed the departed had really possessed all those virtues and accomplishments. All the local dignitaries attended, and so did most of the town’s population. It was an occasion out of the ordinary, a minor spectacle, and everyone appreciates a good show.

  Silvanus was laid out in his whitest toga, wearing a laurel wreath I doubt he ever rated in life, rings winking from his fingers, cosmetics restoring his face to an almost natural color.

  When Gabinius finished his oration, he took a torch and touched it to the oil-soaked wood of the pyre. In moments it was ablaze, its fragrant wood and burden of incense disguising the aroma of roasting governor. I tossed my own handful of frankincense, benzoin, and myrrh onto the blaze and surveyed the scene. No anti-Roman demonstrations so far, but the obtrusive presence of Gabinius’s bullies, rattling with weapons and armor, seemed more of a provocation than a defense. I saw some of the rougher-looking elements of the crowd glaring at them with intense disfavor.

  If there was to be trouble, I thought, it would be because the people here resented the insulting presence of these armed hooligans.

  Even as the late governor went up in smoke, tables were being set up for a public memorial banquet. This agreeable custom seemed to put everyone in a fine mood. In no time people were taking their places at the long tables as slaves hired for the occasion heaped them first with great baskets of fruit, cheeses, and bread, then with plentiful courses of fish, more modest quantities of veal, lamb, fowl, and rabbit. The wine was indifferent and heavily watered, but only the fabulously wealthy can afford better for a public banquet. Knowing this, some of us took care to provide our own wine.

  Most of the population were seated at long benches, but there were also special tables for the attending dignitaries and these had been provided with proper dining couches. I was, naturally, placed at one of these tables. On my right was Alpheus and on my left, none other than Flavia. I wondered, perhaps unworthily, whether she had bribed the majordomo to secure this arrangement.

  “How goes your pirate hunt, Decius Caecilius?” she asked, apparently having decided that we were now intimate enough for her to drop my title and use praenomen and nomen only. I would have to be on my guard when she began to use my praenomen alone.

  “Complicated by this lamentable turn of events,” I admitted. “I shall be infernally distracted until the matter of Silvanus’s murder has been put to rest. If this portends danger to Roman security on the island, the pirates may have to take second place in my priorities for a while.”

  “How would you deal with such a distraction?” Alpheus asked.

  “Well, Gabinius has his veterans, and I have my sailors and marines under arms. There is a sizable body of mercenary material hanging about the bars and taverns, and doubtless a quick voyage to the mainland would net us a sizable force. If necessary, we could secure the island for Rome. I would just rather not.”

  “It seems a free-and-easy sort of military arrangement,” said the poet. “I am no soldier, but I would think your Senate would frown upon such unauthorized adventures.”

  “Outside Italy,” I explained, “there is really nothing to stop a
ny citizen from raising an ad hoc army to deal with an emergency. As long as it is Roman interests he looks after, the Senate won’t say a word in disap-probation. Some years ago Caesar, as mere quaestor, happened to be in Syria when he heard of an invasion from Pontus. He raised a personal army, marched to meet the invasion, and sent the enemy back across the border, all without so much as consulting the Roman governor of Syria. He suffered no censure for his high-handedness.”

  “It helped that he was successful,” Flavia put in.

  “It goes without saying that victory is essential,” I affirmed.

  “But why,” Alpheus asked, “when your General Crassus was defeated at Carrhae, did Rome not immediately pursue that war? I would think that Parthia, not Gaul, would be your first priority.”

  “Crassus wanted a war with the Parthians to match Pompey in military glory. But the Parthians had done nothing to offend us, and the Senate refused to declare war. But Crassus was legendarily rich so he raised and paid for his own legions and marched out on his own. A Tribune of the Plebs named Trebonius laid a terrible curse on Crassus as he left Rome to join his army.”

  “It was the terror of Rome for a while,” Flavia said. She drew a little phallus amulet from its resting place between her breasts and used it to make a complicated gesture, warding evil away from us. The tribune’s infamous curse had been terribly potent, endangering the whole citizenry.

  “So when Crassus was defeated,” I continued, “most people said good riddance. We are under no obligation to avenge him and his army, and there has been no break in diplomatic relations with that kingdom, though young Cassius has been skirmishing a bit with them, or so I heard just before I left Rome. We would like to have the lost eagles back, and we want to free the survivors from captivity; but I suspect that when it happens we will just pay ransom.”

  “I doubt that,” Flavia said. “Parthia is too rich a plum to resist plucking for long. When Caesar and Pompey are free of their current distractions, one of them will have a go at Parthia. Or Gabinius might when his exile is over. And none of them will blunder the way Crassus did, the senile old fool. Think how the plebs will love it when they see those freed captives marching in the Triumph, carrying their lost eagles.”