The Tribune's curse s-7 Page 11

  “My dear, I trust your patrician instincts in this. I just ask that you do not-do not, I say, consult with Fausta.”

  We meandered into the triclinium, where the slaves laid out our dinner. It was a rare dinner at home for us, and while we ate, Julia went on happily about the upcoming party at the embassy. While I tried to look bored, I was cheered by the prospect. Lisas gave wonderful entertainments, and I was in need of such. After the dishes were cleared away, I steered the conversation toward more serious things.

  “Did you get to circulate among your lady friends today?” I asked Julia.

  “I started out at the new baths this morning,” she reported. At the time it was the custom for women to use the facilities in the morning, men in the afternoon. “And after that I went to the perfume market and the jewelers’ market, and then to the Temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitol.”

  “The Temple of Juno?”

  “Every month at this time the patrician ladies gather there to practice the songs for the Matronalia.”

  “I see.” Another of those women’s things I was going to have to get accustomed to. “And did this activity reap a rich reward?”

  “Well, first off, everybody has an astrologer. But you aren’t interested in astrologers, are you?”

  “As it happened, references to astrology were about the only occult things left out of Ateius’s curse.”

  “I thought so. Once I’d cleared away the clutter of abortionists and fortune-tellers and so forth, I kept turning up three names: Eschmoun of Thapsus, Elagabal the Syrian, and Ariston of Cumae.”

  “Ariston of Cumae? That doesn’t sound like a magician’s name. It sounds more like a professor of rhetoric.”

  “Nonetheless, a good many well-born women regard him as an infallible seer and spirit-guide. He is supposed to be on familiar terms with the powers of the underworld.”

  “It might have been worse. At least he’s not Ugbo the Wonder-Worker. And what business have these ladies with such powers?”

  “A number of things. Communicating with dead relatives, who give them guidance during difficult times, and underworld spirits are supposed to be good at spying. The women ask what their husbands are up to.”

  “Hmm. No wonder the Senate is always trying to drive them out of the City. Speaking of which-” I took the papyrus from inside my tunic and spread it on the table. “Just as I thought. All three of them are on the list of foreign magicians supposedly driven out of Rome three years ago.”

  “What is that?”

  So I explained to her about Aemilius Scaurus’s somewhat conditional zeal in suppressing the foreign cults.

  “Then why are they still here?”

  “Presumably, they were able to come up with Aemilius’s price.”

  “That is a disgraceful way for a Roman official to carry on,” Julia said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll be an aedile myself next year. I may have to accept the occasional handout from a questionable source, too.”

  “But surely you would never deal with people as loathsome as these?” she said.

  “Oh, I would never do that,” I murmured.

  “Look. By all three names it says, ‘trafficker with the chthonians.’ None of the others has that particular description.”

  I took the list and examined it. “You’re right. What a pity Aemilius Scaurus is in Sardinia and I can’t touch him. I’d love to question him as to why he let these three slide. Oh, well, I can do the next best thing, which is question the men themselves.”

  “They’re an oddly assorted lot,” she noted. “A man from an old Carthaginian city with a Carthaginian name-Eschmoun was a god of Carthage, I believe-a Syrian, and an Italian Greek.”

  “It does sound odd,” I agreed. “But then, they could be three slaves born within brick-throwing distance of this house, tricked out in foreign clothes, beards, and fake accents. That’s a pretty common dodge with frauds. Did you happen to find out where these three exotic specimens live?”

  “Of course. Which will you begin with?”

  “Whichever of them lives nearest. I have a suspicion that I won’t be up to much walking tomorrow.”

  7

  Elagabal the Syrian, it turned out, had his dwelling in the northern part of the Subura, near the Quirinal. This was a relief because, as I had predicted, I awakened in even worse shape than the day before. Amid much loud groaning I was once again massaged and shaved and shoved out the front door. I dismissed my solicitous clients and trudged through the cheerfully raucous morning bustle of my district. Here and there people recognized me and called out congratulations or wished me good fortune. Yes, it was good to be back in Rome, even in the poorest district.

  There was no mistaking the house of Elagabal when I came to it. The facade was painted red, and flanking the doorway were a pair of man-headed, winged lions. Over the door was painted a serpent swallowing its tail. Not your typical, cozy little domus. It was two stories, and a trellis ran around its upper periphery, draped with climbing plants spangled with multicolored flowers.

  When I tried to enter, a hulking brute stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. He had a black, square-cut beard and suspicious little eyes flanking a nose like a ship’s ram.

  “Do you have business with my master?”

  “Is your master Elagabal the Syrian?”

  “He is.”

  “Then I do.”

  The man stood, unmoved. Perhaps the little exchange had been too complicated for him. While he sought to sort out its nuances, someone spoke up from behind him.

  “This man is a senator. Let him in.”

  The hulk stood aside, and I passed within. I found myself in an atrium that had been converted into something resembling a ceremonial temple entrance. Several statues stood there, in human form but in very stiff poses.

  “I apologize for Bessas. He defends my privacy with great skill but little wisdom.” The man was thin with a vaguely Eastern cast of countenance, wearing a long robe and a pointed cap. His beard was likewise pointed.

  “I take it that I address Elagabal?”

  “At your service,” he said, bowing with the fingers of one hand spread over his breast.

  “Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, senator and current candidate for next year’s aedileship.”

  “Ah, a most important office,” he said.

  “One with which you’ve had some official dealings, I understand.”

  “Is this an official visit, Senator?” he asked.

  “Of a sort.”

  He appeared unapprehensive. “Official or social, there is no need to be uncomfortable. Please accept the hospitality of my house. If you will follow me, we may be comfortable above.”

  We went up a flight of stairs and came out onto a splendid little roof garden, some of the plantings of which I had seen from the street below. At the corners, orange trees stood in great earthenware pots, and the trellises arched overhead so that, in summer, they would provide shade. Now, in November, the growth had been trimmed back but was still luxuriant. In its center a tiny stream of water bubbled in a delightful little fountain. There were few parts of Rome with sufficient water pressure to get even that much water up to what was, in effect, the third floor of a building.

  At Elagabal’s gesture I took a seat at a little table, and he sat opposite me. Moments later a young slave woman appeared with a tray set with the expected refreshments, along with some strips of flat bread strewn with granules of coarse salt.

  “If you will indulge me in a custom of my country, bread and salt form the traditional offering to a newly arrived guest. It is the ancient token of hospitality.”

  “I am familiar with the custom.” I took one of the strips of bread and ate it. It was still hot from the oven and astonishingly good. The serving girl stood by silently. She was barefoot, wearing a simple wrap of scarlet cloth fringed with yellow yarn that covered her from armpits to knees. Bangles at wrists and ankles were her only adornments. Her heavy, bl
ack hair was waist length, and she kept her gaze demurely down, with none of the offhand insolence you so often see in Roman slaves. Maybe these Syrians were onto something, I thought.

  Unlike many Romans I have a certain crude regard for other people’s customs, and I knew that, in the East, one did not bring up the subject of business immediately. To do so was a sign of rudeness and ill breeding.

  “The gods in your atrium,” I said, choosing a mundane subject, “which of them is Baal?”

  He smiled. “They all are.”

  “All?”

  “Baal in my language just means ‘Lord.’ In my part of the world, we seldom or never use the actual names of our gods. This practice is so ancient that those names have sometimes been forgotten. So we address each deity by his best-known aspect or his location. Thus Baal Tsaphon is Lord of the North, Baal Shamim is Lord of the Skies, Baal Shadai is Lord of the Mountain, and so forth. A goddess is Baalat, which means, of course, ‘Lady.’ ”

  “I see. Is this true of all the lands east of Egypt?”

  “To an extent. In the various dialects Baal is honored. To the Babylonians he is Bel, to the Judeans El, to the Phoenicians and their colonies, Bal. The word forms a part of many names. My own name translates, from very archaic language, as ‘My Lord Has Been Gracious.’ Baal is also a part of the Carthaginian name best known to you Romans: Hannibal.”

  “Fascinating,” I said. He seemed to be a learned man, not the wide-eyed fanatic I had half expected. “I have never been to that part of the world-no farther east than Alexandria.”

  “Perhaps your duties will take you to my homeland someday. Even now your proconsul Crassus wends his way thither.”

  “It is concerning something touching that expedition that my errand brings me here this morning.”

  “I am far from the high ranks of power, merely a humble priest. But whatever poor knowledge I have is at your disposal; this goes without saying.”

  “Undoubtedly you know of the scandalous act of the tribune Ateius Capito upon the departure of Crassus?”

  He raised his hands in an Eastern gesture imploring protection from baleful powers. “All Rome has heard of this! I rejoice that I was not there when it happened. Such a curse contaminates all who witness it. He is lucky to be a serving official of Rome. In my own land he would be subjected to the most terrible punishments for such an offence to the gods.”

  “I am pleased that you appreciate the gravity of the act. I have been commissioned to investigate this sacrilege.”

  “I am flattered to be called upon. But the curse, as it was repeated to me, involved none of the Baalim. This is the plural form,” he added, although I had guessed the meaning already.

  “Even so, it is thought that foreign influence may be present.”

  “Ah,” he said, ruefully. “And your Roman officials are always wary of the corrupting influence of foreigners, despite your habit of packing the City with them in the form of slaves.”

  “Precisely. Three years ago, during the aedileship of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, there was a purge of Rome’s foreign cults. Your name was on the list of those to be driven from the City, yet I find you still here. How comes this about?”

  He made a truly comprehensive gesture involving hands, shoulders, neck, and head, indicative of all things unknowable and unavoidable, combined with all things eminently mutable and subject to arbitrary change, ever altering, yet ever remaining the same. I have never known a people as eloquent in their gestures as the Syrians.

  “The honorable aedile and I came to an agreement whereby I was to remain in the City, so long as I refrain from any unnatural practices and do not disturb the neighbors.” He smiled broadly. “You have said that you stand for that same office, and surely so eminent a gentleman as yourself will have no difficulty in securing it. I do trust that we shall be able to come to a similar understanding?”

  So he thought I was here soliciting a bribe. He knew his Roman officials, all right.

  “That’s as may be,” I said vaguely, knowing how strapped for money I would soon be, “but just now I am more concerned with that curse. The list of foreign priests to be sent away listed you and two others as ‘traffickers with the chthonians.’ How does this refer to you?”

  He quirked an eyebrow upward. “Chthonian? That is not a word I encounter every day. Greek, is it not? Indicating things of the underworld?”

  “Yes. In Rome, our chthonians mostly came to us by way of the Greeks and Etruscans. We Romans were a rustic lot. Our gods were those of the fields and rivers and the weather.”

  “I see. This must account for your fondness for pastoral poetry.”

  “Please,” I said. “I regard pastoral poetry as one of the blights of this age. Epic is the only worthwhile verse form as far as I am concerned.”

  “Spoken like the scion of an heroic people. Now, as to the chthonians, some of the Baalim are lords of the underworld and have as their servants whole legions of imps ever eager to torment the living. These can deliver to my-my associates,” he chose a legally innocuous term, “certain valuable services, always protective and always secured by means of perfectly respectable ceremonies, I assure you.”

  “But none of these deities were named in the tribune’s curse?”

  “None.”

  “Two other such traffickers were named along with you on Aemilius’s list: Eschmoun of Thapsus and Ariston of Cumae. What can you tell me about them?”

  Another gesture, this time contemptuous. “As for Eschmoun, you will waste your time talking with him. He is a fraud from Africa, of mixed Libyan descent. He claims to commune with the underworld through a serpent that resides in a golden egg. What he actually does is bilk wealthy ladies of large sums of money by bringing them messages from their dead husbands, children, and other relatives. He is exceptionally good at discerning what it is that his clients long to hear. He has purloined the name of a Carthaginian god and taken upon his shoulders the mantle of power still clinging to that thankfully destroyed city.”

  “ ‘Thankfully’?” I said. “You have no esteem for Carthage? And yet were the Punic people not relatives of yours?”

  He grimaced. “Distant kin at the very most. The Phoenicians founded Carthage many centuries ago, and the Punic race worshiped the Baalim, but their practice grew very degraded even as the city grew rich and powerful. As you are aware, they performed the most frightful acts of human sacrifice.”

  “They were barbarians, however well they dressed,” I said.

  “Even so, their practices must have given some satisfaction to their gods, for those deities blessed them with many victories. In the end, of course,” he added hastily, “the gods and arms of Rome prevailed, praise be to all the Baalim.”

  “It was a rough fight,” I admitted, “but it made soldiers of us.”

  I was putting it mildly. The First Punic War alone had been twenty-four uninterrupted years of solid campaigning-land battles, sea battles, and sieges. The Carthaginians had thrashed us far more times than we beat them, but in the end we were a matchlessly warlike, military nation for good or ill. Before, we had just fought our Italian neighbors and expanded our territory incrementally in the peninsula. But we won Sicily from Carthage, and with it our first taste of empire. By the end of the Third Punic War, we had holdings in Spain, Gaul, and Africa, and Carthage was a pile of rubble.

  “Ariston is another matter. He is a very deep scholar of the ways of gods and spirits. Many aspiring scholars and historians consult him on these matters.”

  “And what sort of cult does he lead?”

  A shrug. “I was unaware that he had any such. Of course, men involved in arcane studies often excite malicious and fearful rumors. Perhaps some superstitious or malevolent person gave false information against him.”

  “That may have been it.” I stood. “Well, I thank you for your help and hospitality. I am sure that I shall be able to report that you had nothing to do with the tribune’s scandalous behavior.” I was sure of nothi
ng of the sort, but neither was I under oath.

  “I rejoice in meeting you, Senator,” he said as he led me back to his door. “Soon you will be an official of great authority, and I have learned that previous acquaintance makes one such far more approachable.” He was still expecting to bribe me. I said nothing to discourage his assumption.

  It was a fairly lengthy walk to the house of Eschmoun, which was just off the old Forum Boarium, in a block of tenements that were foul even by Roman standards. Beside his doorway were painted all sorts of trashy mystical signs, and I was sure I would find a filthy, wild-eyed loon within. What I found instead was the well-appointed town house of a man of considerable means.

  Eschmoun himself was a plausible, smooth mountebank, as described by Elagabal. The rogue proudly displayed his mystical egg, a handsome object of smooth gold the size of a child’s head. I had to take for granted the residence within of the holy serpent. Eschmoun, too, tried to bribe me, and again I ignored the attempt, while leaving the impression that I might be back sometime. His occult knowledge clearly extended only to his confidence spiel, and fleecing wealthy, gullible ladies is far down on my list of intolerable offenses.

  It was another long walk to the dwelling of Ariston, and I stopped on the way for lunch and a brief rest. I was loosening up, and walking had become moderately tolerable. Passing through the Forum, I saw Milo returning from his morning court. I asked him if anything had been heard from our eccentric tribune.

  “Not a word or a sighting since the curse,” he informed me. “He has a gang surrounding his house, but no petitioners have been able to get through to see him.”

  “Then he can be impeached,” I said.

  “If someone is willing to bring charges. And if he can be located. The house may be empty. The populares are concerned for the institution of the tribuneship. If he’s disappeared, they may be pretending to protect him from assault to prevent a wider scandal.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope that the bugger’s hanged himself.”

  “He didn’t strike me as so obliging a man.”