SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead Read online

  We dismounted and walked over to tour the fabulous building. At this time Rome, a far larger and richer city, had no such permanent building. Until just a generation previously, we had held the Games, including munera, in the Forum, where temporary bleachers were erected. Men who wanted to stage especially splendid and extravagant spectacles built wooden amphitheaters, usually on the Campus Martius, which were to be torn down at the conclusion of the festivities. Up until this time, nobody had been willing to undertake the ruinous expense of erecting a stone amphitheater large enough to hold all the adult male citizens of Rome, and the citizens would want nothing less.

  This new Pompeii amphitheater, by contrast, was far larger than the town needed. Since, unlike the chariot races, slaves, foreigners, children, and women were not supposed to attend the fights (although women got around that rule pretty easily), this place could absorb not just the locals but the whole countryside and several neighboring towns. This was source of huge pride for the Pompeiians, since it put such a large district under obligation to them. They attended the spectacles as the guests of Pompeii.

  What we could see as we approached was a semicircular stone wall, perhaps thirty feet high, consisting of a series of high arches. It was impressive, but gave no true sense of the size of the place. A number of men were carving and painting decoration on the walls. A stairway slanted up the side of the wall and we mounted this. Its top ended in a platform. We crossed this and looked down. The tiers of seats stretched away from us in an enormous oval in a series of descending wedges separated by stairways. Each section was crossed by two walkways that allowed access to the other sections. The low walls of these walkways were themselves finely decorated with paintings of fighters, victors holding aloft laurel wreaths and palms and other symbols one associates with the Games. On the terrace where we stood were the masts that on the days of the spectacles would support a vast awning that could be adjusted to allow for the movement of the sun across the sky, providing shade on even the hottest days. Apparently the awning itself, which would consist of thirty or forty wedge-shaped pieces of sailcloth, was stored away someplace when not in use.

  A master builder was there, supervising the placement of the last few blocks. We walked over to him and I complimented him on the incredible stonework.

  “Truly, Praetor,” he said, “it was finished years ago, but an earthquake last year damaged a lot of the stone and the decoration has weathered. This is really a restoration project, paid for by the duumvir Valgus.”

  “The original builder with his colleague Porcius?” I asked.

  “His son, now holding the same office. Would you like to see the building?”

  “Very much so. Please lead on.”

  So he took us through the whole wonderful structure, explaining how the designers and architects and engineers had solved numerous problems involving weights and stresses and the problems of getting twenty thousand spectators seated and out of the building as quickly and efficiently as possible. They had even had the foresight to plant plane trees all over the plaza separating the amphitheater from the town proper. These trees, now mature, were not only very handsome additions, they provided shade for the vendors who set up their stalls to supply the needs of spectators during intermissions in the shows.

  Rome had larger venues: the Circus Maximus and the Theater of Pompey, for instance, but the Circus was not so well designed and the theater was no more than a very large Greek building of the ordinary type. This was something new and I could only wish that Rome had a structure as fine. I thanked the builder and we went back to our horses.

  “Well,” I told the men. “I wouldn’t have missed that, but it isn’t getting any work done, so let’s go find this duumvir Belasus.”

  We rode along the south wall, through the Stabian Gate, and up a major street that traversed the town, then west along a cross street to the city forum. It was a beautiful city, but then it seems that all Campanian cities are, in contrast to Rome, which is a very large city with some very fine buildings, but lacking in overall grace and utterly unplanned, more like a cluster of villages crammed into walls that surround much too small an area. I love Rome, but I am not blind to her faults.

  We found both duumviri in the town’s modest basilica, just finishing up some public business. Belasus was a small, portly man, with a fringe of white hair and the look of a prosperous merchant. Porcius was tall, thin, and aristocratic, a much younger man. I complimented Valgus on his restoration of the amphitheater, and Porcius on his father’s fine contribution to the city and to the district as a whole. Both seemed pleased.

  “Now,” I said, “tell me about this dead Syrian.”

  “His name was Elagabal, and he had an import-export business,” Belasus said.

  “Dealing in what?”

  “He speculated in cargoes. He’d buy a shipload of oranges from Spain, for instance, and hold them hoping the price would rise so he could sell them at a large profit. He’d buy grain and send it to someplace where his contacts informed him that the harvest had failed, that sort of thing.”

  “It sounds like he ran a chancy business,” I commented. “You can’t hold on to oranges for very long, and anything that travels by ship is at hazard.”

  “We have reason to doubt that he made very much money that way,” Porcius said. “But he made a lot of money anyway.”

  “And how did he do that?” I asked.

  “Local rumor has it that he was a receiver of stolen goods,” Belasus said. “His business was just a cover, and he could ship the stolen goods to places where they could be sold without raising suspicions about himself.”

  “Yet suspicions were raised,” I noted.

  “A fence can’t work alone,” Belasus said. “He must deal with thieves, and thieves talk.”

  “So they do. This court case he had pending, did it involve his nefarious activities?”

  “Hard to say,” said Porcius. “He had a citizen partner, as foreign businessmen must by law. He was a man named Sextus Aureus, a tanner. Aureus was bringing suit against Elagabal for defrauding him of his share of several years’ profits from the legitimate business.”

  “You would think it would be Aureus who would end up conveniently murdered,” I observed. “I’ll want to speak with Aureus, but first I want to see the Syrian’s body and his place of business.”

  “You want to see the body?” Porcius said. “Why?”

  “You never know what you might learn from a dead body,” I said. They looked at me as if I were a prize loon. It is a look I had grown used to.

  “Very well,” said Belasus. “If you will come with me, Praetor.”

  “I will have Aureus summoned and sent to you,” Porcius said. “If there is any other way I can help you, please let me know.”

  We took our leave of Porcius and followed Belasus into the city. Its forum was long and narrow and we passed the local Temple of Apollo (that local Greek influence again) and a small but exquisite temple to the public lares. Past the forum we came to a district of more small temples, these dedicated to gods associated with death, as is the Temple of Libitina in Rome. Here we found the facilities of the undertakers. In Campania they don’t wear the Etruscan costumes they wear in Rome. A man dressed like the rest in a black tunic took us to a table where the corpse of the Syrian lay covered by a shroud.

  At my gesture the attendant threw back the shroud, revealing a lean, bearded man of perhaps fifty. Someone had thoughtfully arranged his features into an expression of serenity. Somewhat less serene was the wound in his abdomen, just below the sternum. He had been knifed.

  “Any idea when this happened?” I asked.

  “Probably the night before last,” said the duumvir. “A man with business to transact went to the Syrian’s offices and found him dead on the floor yesterday morning and reported it to the town watch, who sent a runner to inform me. When I remembered he was a defendant in a case coming up before you, I sent a messenger to inform you.”

  “V
ery thoughtful of you. I think we’ve learned all we are going to here. If you could lead us to his offices now I would be obliged.”

  As we made our way through the streets, I beckoned Hermes to my side. “Did that knifework look familiar to you?”

  “Just like the girl at the temple,” he said. “But it’s a pretty common way to dispatch someone with a knife.”

  “If it was in Rome,” I said, “I wouldn’t give it a second thought. Although seeing two people in a quiet place like this, both killed identically, that makes me suspicious.”

  “A man like that Syrian,” Hermes mused, “a professional criminal from the sound of it, used to dealing with thieves and worse—”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “To use a knife like that you have to get close. The man showed no signs of defending himself. Maybe the killer was someone he knew and trusted.”

  “It’s likely. Of course, accomplices can always hold a man’s arms while you stab him. Let’s see what his office looks like.”

  The late Syrian’s office occupied two rooms of no great size on the lower floor of a two-story building, flanked by a tavern and a wool merchant’s shop. Inside, the main room contained a long table, a few chairs, a small desk topped by a tall, honeycomb scroll holder. Along one wall were some circular leather cases with wooden lids and these held yet more scrolls.

  There was also a large bloodstain on the floor. Bloodstains are rather commonplace so I paid it little attention; the flies were giving it attention enough. The back room had obviously been the man’s living quarters. It contained a bed, a low table with a basin and a large pitcher and a fairly clean towel. A niche in one wall held an image of some eastern god flanked by a pair of lamps. Before the image was a clay dish that held the ashes of some cheap incense There was a small wooden chest at the foot of the bed. I opened it and found a couple of tunics, an old belt, a pointed cap, and a striped woolen cloak. That was all. Obviously the man had done nothing in this room except sleep in it.

  Back in the main room, we set to work. “Let’s go over these papers,” I said. “We’re looking for names of contacts, lists of goods that may have been illegally acquired, letters, anything that might give us an idea of who would have wanted him dead.”

  “A fence?” said one of my men. “Who wouldn’t want him dead?” This got a good laugh, even from Belasus. I stepped outside with the duumvir and we sat on a bench next to a fountain where water spouted from the carved face of Silenus into a basin carved in the shape of a seashell. We bought cups of wine from a passing vendor and settled down to talk. Naturally, the talk was about politics. I had other things to discuss with him but the proprieties had to be observed, and when two Italian politicians talked, the principal subject was always foremost.

  “Well, Praetor,” he said, “where’s your money? Caesar, Pompey, the Senate? Some up-and-comer I’ve never heard about?” As if we were discussing Green against Blue at the Circus.

  “Caesar,” I told him bluntly. “Pompey’s through. The Senate will go with the winner except for a few die-hard Pompey adherents who will probably end up in exile. Last time there was civil strife, this town backed the Samnite League against Sulla. Don’t make the same sort of mistake again.”

  He stared at me, astonished. “Well, that’s blunt enough. I thought your family backed Pompey these days. Then again, you’re married to Caesar’s niece, aren’t you?”

  “My family and my wife’s have nothing to do with it,” I assured him. “I know both men, I know their armies, I know the Senate. Caesar’s the man, count on it.”

  “Very well then. But what’s going to happen when Caesar’s top dog on the pile, eh?” He had a self-made provincial’s directness that I liked.

  “I wish I knew that. It would make all the difference. Best would be if Caesar would reorder the Senate and the law courts, which are in need of reordering, set the calendar to rights, which is his job anyway as Pontifex Maximus, review the constitution, make adjustments where they’re needed, and then step down, the way Sulla did. Only I hope he can do it without killing as many people as Sulla did. I know he wants to go to war against Parthia. Crassus was his friend and he wants to avenge him, get the Roman prisoners of Carrhae back, and retake the eagles Crassus lost. And, of course, add to his own laurels. If he’ll just settle affairs at Rome to his liking and run off to his next war, Italy will have gotten off lightly.”

  “You think he’ll be dictator then? Sulla broke the power of the Tribunes of the Plebs.”

  “He’ll be dictator in fact even if he doesn’t get the title voted by the Senate. And Tribunes can be obnoxious troublemakers, but we need them. Without them the people are at the mercy of the senators, many of whom are a pack of self-seeking thieves. Believe me, I know, being one of them myself. One of the better ones, mind you.”

  He laughed heartily at this. “Well, Praetor, you’ve answered me honestly, and now I’ll tell you something that may be of use to you in the coming months. Pompey is a great favorite in this district. People like him. He’s popular, and when he visits he’s cheered and praised and we always throw a good banquet for him.” Then he leaned close. “But nobody here is going to get in a war for him. Popularity is one thing. Loyalty unto death is another. We don’t know Caesar very well down here, but we’re not going to give him any trouble, either. Next time you see your wife’s uncle, you tell him that.”

  “I will, and I appreciate the confidence. Now, tell me, do you know if this Syrian had any doings with the Temple of Apollo and Hecate’s Oracle? You know I’ve been investigating the murders there.”

  “That I do and so does the whole countryside. It’s the prime subject of gossip these days.” He thought a while. “Rumor has it the man was thick with every thief, from bandit to burglar, for a hundred miles around. If anyone there was stealing, they may well have dealt with him. But men like him stay alive and in business by being discreet. Same for the thieves. I can’t say his name was linked with anyone there, but then I don’t get to hear the gossip in the lowest taverns.”

  Shortly after this we were joined by the tanner Aureus, the Syrian’s citizen partner. He was a burly, tough-looking specimen, his hands stained brown by the noxious liquids of the tanning vats. Apparently, he didn’t leave all the work to his slaves. The introductions were brief.

  “Aureus, we can be pretty sure that your partner was a fence,” I began.

  “I can tell you he was a thief. That’s why I was suing him.”

  “What caused you to be suspicious of him?”

  “Well, to start with, he was a Syrian. They’re all thieves.”

  “Yet you went into partnership with him.”

  “Well, a foreign businessman has to have a citizen partner. That’s the law. So it only makes sense to partner with one. Doesn’t mean you have to share his whole life. I only saw the man once a year, around Saturnalia, to settle accounts. Over the years I got suspicious, because he was living mighty high while he was telling me his business was barely clearing expenses.”

  “Living high?” I said. I nodded toward the office across the street. “It looks to me as if he was living with great austerity.”

  “That place? That’s just where he stayed when he was in town doing business. Go visit his villa outside of town. It’s better than the one the duumvir here owns.”

  I looked at Belasus. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s a fine place. He bought it about ten years ago, I think.”

  “So, you see? He was cheating me.” Aureus shook his head. “Looks like I’ll never get my money now.”

  “File a suit against his estate,” Belasus advised. “I doubt the man has a relative to claim it. He was a foreigner and may never have filed a will. Praetor Terentianus will probably condemn the property and it’ll be sold at auction. Get your claim in quickly and you should get a nice piece of the sale price.”

  The man grinned. “Thanks, Duumvir, I’ll do that.” I dismissed the man, telling him I might have m
ore questions for him.

  “There goes another vote for me next election,” Belasus said contentedly.

  Hermes came from the office with a scroll in his hand. “This was in one of the chests. It’s an old one, going by the color of the papyrus. I’m not sure I understand everything, but some things look suspicious. See what you can make of it.” He left it with me and went back inside. I puzzled over the abbreviations and eccentric spelling but it could have been worse. At least the man wrote in Latin, of a sort.

  “As near as I can tell,” I told my companion, “this says that he took delivery of some rings, some gold and silver plate, some gems, and a sword with an ivory hilt and sheath from one Sextus Porcius.” I looked at him. “Any relation to your colleague?”

  He shook his head. “That family’s never used the name Sextus that I know of. Might be a distant relative. Porcius is one of the most common names in this district. There was a Porcius family when Pompeii was founded. By now their descendants and the descendants of the family’s freedmen must number in the thousands.”

  “It’s not exactly rare in the rest of Italy, either,” I said. “My fellow senator Cato is a Porcius, and I think his family came from Etruria. No help there, then. But this inventory is standard burglar’s loot: small items of high resale value, precious metals and gemstones and so forth. One sale could be legitimate, but I’ll bet my men find more like this.”

  “Pretty foolish to put it in writing, don’t you think?”

  “Some people are fanatic record keepers. They can’t help it. They always think someone is going to cheat them and have to keep track of every denarius. It’s a sort of sickness.”

  As I had foretold, within the hour we had at least thirty more such records, all detailing the same sort of items. There were also records of the legitimate cargoes the man had bought on speculation and sold at a profit or, more often, at a loss, but the former outnumbered the latter by a great margin.

  “No question about it,” Belasus said with a sigh. “We have here the district’s biggest fence. Well, good riddance to him. I, for one, don’t plan to waste much time finding out who the killer might be. The man did a public service exterminating this wretch.”