by Mike Ashley
“It’s a commonly violated custom in these evil times, but if I were standing for office against that man I would prosecute him and tie him up in litigation so thoroughly that he would never take office.”
“That is just what I needed to know. Marcus Tullius, if I might impose upon you further, could you meet with me this afternoon at the ludus of Statilius Taurus?”
Now he was thoroughly mystified, something I seldom managed to do to Cicero. “Well, my friend Balbus has been writing me from Africa for months to help him arrange the Games he will be giving when he returns. I could take care of that at the same time.”
“Thank you, Marcus Tullius.” I started to turn away.
“And, Decius?”
I turned back. “Yes?”
“Do be entertaining. That’s a long walk.”
“I promise it.”
At the bottom of the steps I took the tablet thonged to the slave’s belt and wrote on the wax with my stylus. “Take this to your master,” I instructed. He nodded wordlessly and left. Asklepiodes’s slaves could speak, but only in Egyptian, which in Rome was the same thing as being mute. Then I gave the lictor his orders.
“Go to Quintus Cosconius, the man in mourning dress over there with the candidates, and tell him that he is summoned to confer with me at the Statilian School in” – I glanced up at the angle of the sun – “three hours.”
He ran off and I climbed the lower slope of the Capitoline along the Via Sacra to the Archive. I spoke with Calpurnius, the freedman in charge of estate titles, and he brought me a great stack of tablets and scrolls, bulky with thick waxen seals, recording the deeds of the late Aulus Cosconius. The one for the Aventine town house where I had discovered his body was a nice little wooden diptych with bronze hinges. Inside, one leaf bore writing done with a reed pen in black ink. The other had a circular recess that held the wax seal protecting it from damage.
“I’ll just take this with me, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“But I do mind,” Calpurnius said. “You have no subpoena from a Praetor demanding documents from this office.” One always has to deal with such persons, on public duty. After much wrangling and talking with his superiors and swearing of sacred oaths upon the altars of the State, I got away with the wretched document, to be returned the next morning or forfeit my life.
Thus armed, I made my leisurely way toward the river and crossed the Aemilian Bridge into the Trans-Tiber district. There, among the river port facilities of Rome’s newest district, was the ludus of Statilius Taurus, where the best gladiators outside of Campania were trained. I conferred with Statilius for an hour or so, making arrangements for the Games that had already bankrupted me. Then Cicero arrived to do the same on behalf of his friend Balbus. He was accompanied by five or six clients, all men of distinction in their own right.
With our business concluded, we went out to the gallery that overlooked the training yard. It was an hour when only the fighters of the first rank were working out, while the tyros watched from the periphery. These men despised practice weapons, preferring to train with sharp steel. Their skill was amazing to see. Even Cicero, who had little liking for the public shows, was impressed.
Asklepiodes arrived as we were thus engaged, holding a folded garment. “This is the oddest task you have ever asked of me,” he said, “but you always furnish amusement of the highest sort, so I expect to be amply rewarded.” He handed me the thing.
“Excellent!” I said. “I was afraid the undertaker might have thrown it away.”
“Aedile,” Cicero said a bit testily. “I do hope this is leading somewhere. My time is not without value.”
I saw a man in a dark toga come through the archway leading to the practice yard. “I promise not to disappoint you. Here’s my man now.”
Young Cosconius looked around, then saw me gesturing from the distinguished group on the gallery. He came up the stair, very stiff and dignified. He was surprised to see Cicero and his entourage, but he masked his perplexity with an expression of gravitas befitting one recently bereaved and seeking high office. He saluted Cicero, ex-Consul and the most important man currently residing in Rome.
“I am here on a matter of business,” Cicero said. “I believe your business is with the Aedile.”
“I apologize for summoning you here,” I said. “I know that you must be preoccupied with your late father’s obsequies.” When I had last seen him, he had been busy grubbing votes.
“I trust you’ve made progress in finding my father’s murderer,” he said, coldly.
“I believe I have.” I looked out over the men training in the yard below. “It’s a chore, arranging for public Games. You’ll find that out. I suppose you’ll be exhibiting funeral games for your father?”
He shrugged. “He specified none in his will, which was read this morning. But I may do so when I hold the aedileship.”
Confident little bastard, I thought. I pointed to a pair of men who were contending with sword and shield. One carried the big, oblong legionary shield and gladius, the other a small, round shield and curved shortsword.
“That’s Celadus with the Thracian weapons,” I said, referring to the latter. “Do you support the Big Shields or the Small Shields?”
“The Big Shields,” he said.
“I’ve always liked the Small Shields,” I told him. “Celadus fights Petraites from the School of Ampliatus at next month’s Games.” Petraites was a ranking Big Shield fighter of the time. I saw that special gleam come into his eye.
“Are you proposing a wager?”
“A hundred on Celadus, even money?” This was more than reasonable. Petraites had the greater reputation.
“Done,” he said, taking out his tablet and stylus, handing the tablet to me. I gave him mine, then rummaged around in my tunic and toga.
“I’ve lost my stylus. Would you lend me yours?”
He handed it over. “Now, I believe you called me here concerning my father’s murder.”
“Oh, yes, I was coming to that, Quintus Cosconius, I charge you with the murder of your father, Senator Aulus Cosconius.”
“You are insane!” he said, his dark face going suddenly pale, as well it might. Of the many cruel punishments on our law books, the one for parricide is one of the worst.
“That is a serious charge, Aedile,” Cicero said. “Worse than poisoning, worse than treason, even worse than arson.”
Cosconius pointed a finger at me. “Maybe you aren’t mad. You are just covering up for another of your friend Milo’s crimes.”
“Asklepiodes pronounced that death was the result of a wound inflicted by a thin blade piercing the heart. He found a bit of foreign substance adhering to the wound, which he took to his surgery to study. I thought at first that the weapon was a bodkin such as prostitutes sometimes carry, but this morning it occurred to me that a writing stylus would serve as well, provided it was made of bronze.” I held up the piece of paper Asklepiodes had sent me with its one word: “wax.”
“This confirms it. Aulus Cosconius was stabbed through the heart with a stylus uncleaned by its owner since its last use. A bit of wax still adhered to its tip and was left on the wound.”
Quintus Cosconius snorted. “What of it? Nearly every literate man in Rome carries a stylus!”
“Actually, I didn’t really forget my own stylus today.” I took it out. “You see, the common styli are round or quadrangular. Mine, for instance, is slightly oval in cross-section.” Cicero and his friends drew out their own implements and showed them. All were as I had described. Cicero’s was made of ivory, with a silver scraper.
“Yet Asklepiodes’s examination indicated that the weapon used to kill Aulus Cosconius was triangular. You will note that young Quintus’s implement is of that geometrical form, which is most rare among styli.” I handed it to Cicero.
Then I shook out the tunic the dead man had been wearing. “Note the three parallel streaks of blood. That is where he wiped off the sides of the stylus.”
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“A coward’s weapon,” snorted one of Cicero’s companions.
“But young Cosconius here is standing for office,” I pointed out. “He couldn’t afford to be caught bearing arms within the pomerium. But most Romans pack a stylus around. It isn’t much of a weapon, but no one is going to survive having one thrust through his heart.”
“Why should I do such a thing?” Cosconius demanded. You could smell the fear coming off him.
“Yesterday,” I said, “you told me you didn’t know what use your father intended for that town house. Here is the deed from the Archive.” I took the diptych from a fold of my toga and opened it. “And here he states plainly that it is ‘to serve as a residence for his only surviving son, Lucius.’ He didn’t bother showing you this deed or getting your seal on it because he was a very old-fashioned man, and by the ancient law of patria potestas you were a minor and could not legally own property while your father was alive. He took you to show you your new digs, and that is where you argued and you killed him.”
Everyone glared at Cosconius, but by this time he had gained enough wisdom to keep his mouth shut.
“Killed the old man for his inheritance, did he?” Cicero said grimly.
I shook my head. “No, nobody gets killed over money these days. It’s always politics. Aulus Cosconius was generous enough with his wealth, else why give his son a whole town house to himself? But he supported Crassus and Quintus here is Pompey’s man. Aulus wouldn’t stick his neck out for Crassus, but he could keep Pompey from getting another tame Tribune without risk, or so he thought.”
I addressed Cosconius directly. “Sometime during the tour of that townhouse he told you that he forbade you to stand for Tribune. As pater familias it was his legal right to do so. Or perhaps he had told you before, and you waited until you were together in a lonely spot to kill him. The law admits of no distinction in such a case.”
Cosconius started to get hold of himself, but Cicero deflated him instantly. “I shall prosecute personally, unless you wish to, Decius Caecilius.”
“I shall be far too busy for the balance of this year.”
Cosconius knew then he was a dead man. Cicero was the greatest prosecutor in the history of Roman jurisprudence, which was precisely why I had asked him there in the first place. He took few cases in those days, but a parricide in a senatorial family would be the splashiest trial of the year.
I summoned the owner of the school. “Statilius, lend me a few of your boys to escort this man to the basilica. I don’t want him jumping into the river too soon.”
Cosconius came out of his stupor. “Gladiators? You can’t let scum like that lay hands on a free man!”
“You’ll have worse company soon,” Cicero promised him. Then, to me: “Aedile, do your duty.” I nodded to my borrowed lictor. He walked up behind Quintus Cosconius and clapped a hand on his shoulder, intoning the old formula: “Come with me to the Praetor.”
That’s the good part about being Aedile: You get to arrest people.
These were the events of two days in the year 703 of the city of Rome, the consulship of Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus and Cnaeus Domitius Calvinus.
THE TREASURY THEFTS
Wallace Nichols
So far as I know Wallace Nichols (1888–1967) was the first writer to set a genuine detective story in ancient Rome. His stories about Sollius, the Slave detective, became extremely popular in the pages of the London Mystery Magazine, where over sixty of them ran between 1950 and 1968.
Michael Williams, a Cornish publisher and friend of Nichols for over thirty years called him “the most extraordinary man I have ever known.” The author of over sixty books, Nichols was first and last a poet. His first book of poetry was published when he was sixteen. Born in Birmingham, he was for a while on the editorial staff of the Windsor Magazine and a reader at Ward Lock’s before he moved to Cornwall for health reasons in 1934. In addition to his poetry and his detective stories he wrote historical novels and boys’ adventures. He had known Churchill and Elgar, Dylan Thomas and Lawrence of Arabia. He spoke five modern languages and several ancient ones, including Egyptian and Babylonian. He had written his autobiography which sadly was never published and may well now be lost.
At least we can still savour the magic of his writing. His first two stories about Sollius are so intricately connected that I have run them together here as one full-length novella. This is the first time they have been reprinted in over forty years.
EPISODE I
THE CASE OF THE EMPRESS’S JEWELS
Titius Sabinus the Senator found the Emperor in a dejected mood. Knowing Marcus Aurelius to be a philosopher, he set this down either to some unsolved problem of thought, or else to some domestic trouble which had broken into his usual calm of mind. He knew that rumour spoke of the Empress Faustina as being a very extravagant woman, and also of their son, the young Commodus, as being a stubborn, difficult youth to control. But Sabinus made a point of listening to rumour, especially to Roman rumour, with great cautiousness.
Gazing now at the Emperor’s tired face, he began to wonder, with not a little unease, why he had been summoned so unexpectedly to the huge imperial palace on the Esquiline. As far as he knew, there was no public crisis of any kind upon which his advice might be required, nor, as he could see at a glance, had any other senator been summoned to the same audience. He was still more astonished when the Emperor, taking him aside at once, made a seemingly earnest enquiry about nothing of greater importance than a private occurrence in the Senator’s household.
“Yes, sir, the thief was discovered,” the Senator answered the Emperor, “and the money,” he added, rubbing his hands, “was found also. I lost nothing – except my sleep for a few nights.”
“It was, then, quite a large sum, Sabinus?”
“It was, sir. My steward from Sardinia had just come with the money from the sale of my lead mines there. He arrived late, and there was no time to deposit it in the bank before morning, and by morning – it had gone!”
“An unpleasant experience,” commented the Emperor. “But you got it back – and found the culprit?”
“Both, sir, by the favour of the gods,” replied Sabinus, and a rich man’s satisfaction oozed from every syllable.
“Rumour has been busy with the affair,” smiled Marcus Aurelius.
“Oh, rumour!” muttered Sabinus, and spread out his hands.
“I hope that for once,” the Augustus went on, “rumour is true.”
“Sir?”
“It is said that you owe the discovery both of the thief and the money’s hiding-place to the cleverness of one of your slaves.”
“That is so, Augustus,” Sabinus answered, still surprised at the Emperor’s apparently deep interest. “It is not the first time, either, that the wits of my good Sollius have served me well in the same way. But never before in so large a matter, but only in cases of petty pilfering at my house here in Rome or at one of my country villas.”
“What did you say was his name?” asked Marcus Aurelius.
“Sollius, O Augustus.”
“I understand, too,” pursued the Emperor, “that he has been useful in uncovering thefts for one or two of your friends.”
“I did not know,” said Sabinus, unable longer to hide his astonishment at the course of the interview, “that the doings of one of my slaves had interested your august ear. I hope that he has not been meddling in public matters and joining a – conspiracy, sir!”
Marcus Aurelius laughed, and laid his hand familiarly on the other’s shoulder.
“I only wanted your report of him,” he said. “You see – ”
The Emperor hesitated, and laughed again.
“You see,” he concluded, “I wish to borrow him from you.”
“Augustus!” cried Sabinus, and his mouth remained open.
“Listen, Sabinus,” said Marcus Aurelius, and indicating an ivory chair to his guest, he took his seat on a small, gilded Greek couch nearby. “Listen,
and I will explain. But what I am about to tell you,” he went on in a voice suddenly vibrant with all the might of his august and sacred authority, “must be as secret as one of the old Mysteries until I release you myself from the obligation of silence.”
“Why, of course, sir,” answered Sabinus obsequiously, not a little flattered by the Emperor’s personal confidence, for it was the first time in his life that he had been so honoured.
“It is like this,” the Emperor continued. “The Treasury is being robbed.”
“The gods forbid!” ejaculated Sabinus. “Who could do such a thing?”
“That is the problem,” was the dry answer. “That is why I wish to borrow your cunning slave.”
“Certainly, O Augustus, certainly; he is at your service, wholly at your service, of course! If I had known, I would myself have brought him with me – ”
“Wait, wait, Sabinus,” said Marcus Aurelius. “You go too quickly.”
“Your pardon, sir!”
“The investigations of the Treasury officials,” the Emperor went on gravely, “have discovered nothing. There are even no suspicions, and where there are no suspicions there can be no evidence. Probably, too, the whole matter touches someone highly placed. I have therefore to go very carefully. I must not make a mistake when I accuse – whomever I shall accuse. The whole affair, politically, could be very dangerous. It must be handled with more than secrecy, more than discretion: it must be handled wisely.”
“Most truly spoken, sir!” hastily agreed the Senator.
“I must therefore test this slave of yours, Sabinus, before I permit him to touch an investigation so dangerous.”
“You will find him wholly trustworthy.”
“He is – a young man?”
“No, sir. He is a man in late middle life.”
“So much the better. He is educated, I suppose?”
“He was the favourite slave of my uncle, from whom I inherited him,” replied Sabinus. “He was picked out, even as a youth, to be my uncle’s reader – and my uncle was a great lover of philosophy and poetry, sir – and he had Sollius educated and well trained for that purpose.”