The Tribune's curse s-7 Read online

  We were carried across the Sublician Bridge, pushing past the throngs of beggars who always haunt bridges, thence up along the line of the old wall built by Ancus Martius to connect the bridge and the Servian Wall to the little fort surrounding the flagpole. Both the wall and the fort were in ruins, despite occasional calls for their restoration.

  At length we arrived at the embassy, where flocks of slaves doused us with flower petals, sprinkled us with perfume, and generally behaved as if we had just stepped down from Olympus to let mere mortals bask in our radiance. They even draped our slaves with wreaths.

  The place was a marvelous jumble of architectural styles, decorated with the most extravagant paintings, frescoes, and picture mosaics, the buildings and grounds populated with Greek and Egyptian statuary and planted with ornamental shrubs and trees from all over the world.

  Lisas himself came to greet us, swathed in a tremendous, gauzy robe dyed with genuine Tyrian purple, his face plastered with heavy cosmetics to disguise the ravages of his legendary degeneracies.

  “Welcome, Senator Metellus! And this must be the niece of the great conqueror, the beauteous Julia of whose innumerable graces and accomplishments His Majesty and all the royal princesses have sung praises. King Ptolemy was devastated that you had to depart his court. Princess Berenice has been sunk in melancholy since your departure; young Princess Cleopatra asks daily for your return. Welcome, welcome, goddess-descended Julia!” He took her hands but, to my relief, did not kiss them.

  “I am so charmed and flattered. I count your king and his princesses among my dearest friends, and I cannot express how highly my uncle, Caius Julius Caesar, esteems them.”

  “I am enraptured by your words,” he said, seemingly about to faint from sheer ecstasy. Then he snapped out of it. “But the consul Pompey arrives! I must fly to him! Be free of my house and all it offers, however humble. Enjoy my esteem and affection forever, my friends!” And off he went, gauze flapping.

  “You see now what makes a truly great diplomat?” I said.

  “It’s breathtaking! I’ve never felt so much like royalty. I never saw Ptolemy sober enough to remember me the next day, and Berenice is a bubblehead, but Cleopatra was a sweet child, with more brains than the rest of the royal family combined. Give me the tour.”

  So I conducted her through the labyrinth of rooms, all of them full of guests, entertainers, servants, and tables laden with delicacies. Lisas did not believe in formal dinners except when entertaining small, restricted groups like serving Roman magistrates and ambassadors from other countries. Instead, he let people wander as they pleased and made sure there was plenty to divert them wherever they happened to be. Naked nymphs disported themselves in the many pools. At least they looked like nymphs. Close enough for my eyes, anyway.

  I showed Julia the infamous crocodile pool, full of the ugly, torpid reptiles and presided over by a marble statue of the crocodile-headed god, Sobek. No nymphs in that pool, naked or otherwise. Romans were always telling their slaves that, should they run away, they would be sold to Lisas to feed his crocodiles. I doubt that it ever happened, but I could not discount it entirely. He was a man of decidedly unusual tastes.

  “What a monster!” Julia cried, pointing at a twelve-foot specimen that lounged sleepily on the bank of the pool. His back was laced with scars of many battles with the other crocs. “Does he have gold in his mouth?”

  I leaned forward and saw that the brute had gold wire wrapped around the top of one of the fangs of his upper jaw. “Amazing. The Egyptians have marvelous dentists. I’ve known men who had false teeth laced to their own adjoining ones by Egyptians, using fine gold wire. I knew they mummified crocodiles after they died. I didn’t know they took such care of their dentition.” One more Ptolemaic extravagance.

  We encountered a number of friends and started the inevitable round of socializing. Besides prominent Roman statesmen and their wives, Lisas had invited exotics like the ambassador of Arabia Felix and a wealthy merchant from India. Lisas had brought in some poets and playwrights, chosen for their wit and conversational skills, and some courtesans chosen for exceptional breeding and beauty. He knew how to create a well-balanced crowd, and throughout the evening he circulated, making sure that everyone met everyone else and that nobody got bored.

  Pompey was there (Lisas had to invite the consul, naturally), and so were Milo and several of the other praetors, but not Clodius or Antistius or anyone else likely to start a flaming argument to mar the festivities. He neatly avoided inviting deadly enemies on the same evening. The man was the soul of diplomacy.

  I endured many congratulations and backslaps for my feat in carrying the sacrificial litter. The congratulations were all right, but the backslaps were quite painful. We were in the main room of the villa (I am not sure what you would call such a room; it rather resembled Ptolemy’s throne room, but was smaller) when there was a disturbance. From the direction of the entrance came a pair of lictors, flanking a public slave wearing the brief tunic, high-strapped sandals, and cap of a messenger. He carried the white wand that opened all gates and doors and gave him the right to commandeer any horse or vehicle.

  “Is he a Senate messenger?” Julia asked me in the sudden hush.

  “Of praetorian rank,” I told her. “The highest.”

  The man went straight to Pompey and spoke to him in a low voice. The consul’s face was a study in consternation.

  “Do you think it’s a battle report?” Julia said breathlessly. “A disaster?”

  “He’s not carrying a dispatch case,” I pointed out. “Whatever his message is, it’s a short one.”

  Pompey raised a hand and snapped his fingers, a military signal you could hear through the whole villa. “All senators to me!”

  “Wait here,” I told Julia. I hustled over to him along with about two dozen others. Milo already stood next to Pompey, and we gathered close to him, knowing that it boded no good. Like an ebbing tide, those of no official standing drew back toward the walls, leaving the men in the variously striped tunics and togas standing as it were on an island in the center. Lisas looked on with anxiety, but also with a sort of gloating anticipation. A real catastrophe would be the perfect capstone to his party.

  “Senators,” Pompey said, “I have just received news of the gravest importance. The Tribune of the People Caius Ateius Capito has been discovered, murdered.”

  “Hah!” said a vinegary old senator named Aurunculeius Cotta. “Serves the bugger right!” He was a well-known adherent of the aristocratic party. There were many murmurs of agreement.

  “My sentiments to perfection,” Pompey said, drily. “But the man was a tribune, and at this moment the commons are in a frenzy, assembling in the Forum and ready to burn the City down. We have to go there at once and calm them, or there will be a riot such as Rome hasn’t seen in a generation.”

  I went to Julia. “We’re in for a riot. Don’t try to go back home tonight. Stay here or with friends in the Trans-Tiber. Hermes!”

  “Here, Dominus!” He was this formal only when he knew the situation was serious.

  “You have your stick?”

  “Right here.” He patted the rather indecent bulge in the front of his tunic. “I’ll guard your back.”

  “No, stay with Julia. I want her-”

  “Take him,” Julia urged. “I’ll go to Grandmother’s summer house; it’s just a short walk from here.”

  “I’d forgotten about that place. Yes, go there. I’ll arrange with Lisas for an escort.” Even if the rioting spilled out of the City and across the river, no mob would ever have the courage to assault Aurelia’s property.

  “You’re exaggerating the danger,” she said.

  “Not in the least. A tribune has been murdered. That hasn’t happened in nearly thirty years, and the last time the mob rioted for three days without letup.”

  “And I thought your life would be a little quieter away from Gaul.” Like the other wives present, she made no motion to embrace or kis
s me. Such a public display would have been unthinkable for a woman of her breeding. Sometimes I think we carry this business of gravitas too far.

  “Of a certainty,” Lisas said when I spoke to him. “I am already assembling my soldiers. They cannot pass through the gates, but I shall provide my guests an escort to any place they choose on this bank of the river. Of course, the lady is welcome to stay here if she so chooses.”

  “I am most grateful,” I assured him. “I shall not forget.” He appeared about to faint at the prospect of receiving my gratitude, and I left him there, my mind set much at ease. The embassy guards were all hard-bitten Macedonians-not an Egyptian in the lot.

  “Lictors to the fore!” Pompey shouted as we assembled in the courtyard. With the consular and praetorian lictors in a double file, we made a formidable procession.

  “March!” Pompey called, and we set off with Pompey in front, Milo behind him, the other praetors there behind Milo. We lesser senators followed in a gaggle. Behind us strolled a fairly substantial force of bodyguards, mostly ludus-trained slaves like Hermes, forbidden to bear arms but handy with fists and clubs. I was all too aware that they would be little protection against attack by a real mob.

  However, I also knew that Milo’s crowd would be there in the Forum, and Pompey’s many clients, and the personal followings of the other important men, and these might be able to hold the mob at bay long enough for us to escape, should worse come to worst.

  We passed across the bridge and through the gate, where the guard saluted us. Pompey paused there for a moment.

  “Can you see anything?” he called up to the men atop one of the gate towers.

  “No fires, Consul,” the man answered.

  “Good. Things haven’t properly started yet.” He led us off across the Forum Boarium, past the ghostly bulk of the Circus Maximus, and then around the base of the Capitoline Hill. The Tuscan Street would have been more direct, but this brought us out at the Basilica Julia, which had a more commanding view over the Forum and offered a better escape route up to the Temple of Capitoline Jove, should the worst happen. Either way, the walk was all too short.

  “When we get to the basilica,” Pompey said, “I want the lictors in a line halfway up the steps. Senators at the top of the steps, serving magistrates nearest me. Milo, I trust your boys will be there?”

  “They have their orders for situations like this, Consul,” he said. “Every man will be there, in place, to give us the best protection. The question is: which way will Clodius jump?”

  The same question had been running through my own head. “Clodius won’t want a riot unless he controls it, and nobody will control this mob once it loses its head,” I said.

  “Metellus is right,” Pompey said. “Milo, I don’t want anything to break out between you.”

  “I won’t start anything,” Milo said.

  We had been hearing the roar of the crowd ahead from the time we entered the Forum Boarium. The noise abated as we went into the Basilica Julia through a rear door and crossed its cavernous interior, inhabited only by the night cleaning crew of public slaves who huddled in the corners, wide-eyed with fear. Then we walked out onto the colonnaded portico, and the full roar of the mob struck us.

  Beside me I heard a senator mutter, “A white boar to Hercules if I get through this night alive.”

  For my part, I was ready to pledge a whole herd of bulls to Jupiter. The Forum was a seething, storm-tossed sea of people, alight with waving torches, further illuminated by the bonfires that, for some unknown reason, mobs always feel compelled to ignite. The fires were fed with furniture and building materials plundered from all the nearby buildings. At least they were burning on the pavement and hadn’t yet spread to the houses and public buildings, but that was just a matter of time. A mindless mob is always happy to burn its own homes and shops, only to wake up when the hysteria has passed and look for someone to blame for its own beastly behavior. That part is usually good for another riot, one with more bloodshed than arson.

  The lictors took up their station on the steps, standing shoulder to shoulder, their fasces held at a slant across their chests. Some of the mob caught sight of them, and then of the knot of dignitaries on the terrace at the top of the steps. As word spread, an extraordinary motion, something like the way water moves when it is disturbed, swept through the crowd. A bit at a time, starting at the forward fringes and amid little concentrations here and there, the inchoate, antlike swarming began to assume a common direction, and then the whole mass was surging toward the basilica, except for those who had already secured points of vantage on the bases of monuments or who hung, apelike, from the great statues and monumental columns.

  In the fore of the crowd, I saw Clodius, dressed in his work-ingman’s tunic. He was a few steps ahead of the mob and running for all he was worth, not escaping them, but leading.

  “Let that man through!” Pompey ordered the lictors, “but no other who is not of senatorial rank.”

  From behind us, more senators quietly came from the depths of the basilica. They were the braver members of the order, who had been watching from hiding places around the Forum, waiting for a signal to assemble. To my relief I saw Cicero, along with Cato, Balbus, and some others. With so much courage and prestige present, we might just pull it off. I scanned the crowd, and saw that Milo’s thugs had taken up a position well to the fore, ready to turn and hold off the mob on their master’s order. In fact, the whole section of the mob nearest the steps were his adherents and Clodius’s. I felt a sort of perverse pride in the sight. Romans can even organize a bloodthirsty mob. Let the barbarians match that, if they can.

  Clodius rushed up the steps, his face in a wild grimace, gesturing madly with his arms, waving them and shaking his fists as if he were berating Pompey just short of physical attack. But these were broad actor’s gestures for the delectation of the mob behind him. His words were those of a sane, calculating man.

  “Pompey! You’re the only man in Rome this night who can quiet this crowd. I’ve done my best, but even I have never seen them like this! Do something quickly!”

  Pompey came down the steps with an arm extended, which he draped over Clodius’s shoulders in a gesture of concern and conciliation. The two turned and went back up the steps. Behind them, the noise of the crowd muted a bit, not calm yet, but indecisive.

  “A screen, here,” Pompey said. The other senators closed around them, and Pompey, Milo, Clodius, Cicero, and Cato got their heads together for some hasty planning. It was amazing to see how this group of men, among whom there were far more poisonous hatreds than fast friendships, could drop their animosities in an instant and cooperate for the common good. Another aspect of the Roman genius, I suppose: political compromise.

  After a few minutes’ conferral, they broke apart. Behind the screen of senators Clodius and Milo worked their way to the edge of the steps while Pompey and Cicero went through the center. Cato came to stand beside me.

  “What did they work out?” I asked him.

  “A makeshift,” he said, his mouth a grim, tight line. “It might work. Be ready to jump forward when your name is called.”

  Oh, no, I thought, my heart sinking. They had involved me!

  Pompey strode superbly to the front of the terrace and held up his hands for silence. Gradually, the shouting died down, then the muttering and murmuring, and after a few minutes there was silence. Even the waving of the torches grew less wild until they were held steady, and then the only noise was the not-unpleasant crackle of the bonfires. Clodius had been right: on that night, only Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus could have quieted such a mob. The only other man who could have done it was Caesar, and he was far, far away.

  “Citizens!” Pompey shouted in his parade-ground voice, echoing off the buildings on the far side of the Forum, “a great evil has befallen us! The gods have not yet forgiven us for the sacrilege committed five days ago, when my coconsul, Marcus Licinius Crassus, departed for his proconsular province.” Good
phrasing, I thought. Whatever had happened, this would remind people that Ateius had brought his fate upon himself.

  “Now another sacrilege has been committed!” he went on. “A Tribune of the People, holder of a sacrosanct office, has been foully murdered! Like all Romans, I fear the anger of the gods! All our animosities must be put aside until justice has been done, and we can once again discern clearly what our gods want of us!”

  He went on for a while in that vein, speaking of the gods and conciliation, staying rigidly away from partisanship and faction. It was an excellent performance. Pompey wasn’t much of a politician, but he knew how to harangue the troops. While he was speaking, I saw Clodius and Milo down at the corner of the steps, in a dim spot behind an old monument to Scipio Africanus where they couldn’t be seen, briefingtheir men. One would get his orders and rush off into the crowd. I saw one man there who belonged to neither of their gangs: a well-known Forum loudmouth and malcontent named Folius. He formed a sort of party of one, with no clear political agenda, but always ready to mouth off to the mighty.

  After a few minutes, Milo and Clodius rejoined us. “They’re primed now,” Milo said to Pompey. The three conferred in low voices for a moment, and the crowd murmur began to rise again. Then Pompey stepped forward.

  “Bring forth the body of Ateius Capito!”

  Another surge swept through the mob. From somewhere near the center of the Forum, there was a stirring, then a massive shape rose and began to come toward the basilica. It was an eerie sight, as the thing parted the crowd and its torches, like a ship passing through an unearthly sea, and for a moment I shuddered at its fancied resemblance to Charon’s ferryboat conveying the souls of the dead across the Styx.

  Then it was near, and I saw that a group of men bore a corpse laid out on a makeshift catafalque: a platform of scavenged timber atop which they had set a couch, doubtless looted from some house or store. On the couch lay something vaguely man shaped and blood-soaked, wrapped in a weirdly striped robe with which I was all too familiar.