SPQR III: The Sacrilege Read online

  I was overcome by a blinding revelation from the gods, forgetting, in the exultation of the moment, that the gods always mean trouble when they send you a revelation like that. I felt as if surrounded by a golden nimbus as I leapt to my feet, abruptly caught up in the Greek spirit of things.

  “Eureka!” I shouted.

  “Who do you think you are, Metellus?” hissed somebody. “Bloody Archimedes? Sit down or you’ll be arrested!” I ignored everything but my own brilliance.

  “They were all there!” I said, not quite shouting. “All dressed as women!”

  Now the whole front row had turned around, staring at me. My father looked close to apoplexy. Nobody looked pleased. A praetor pointed toward me, and a crowd of lictors began to march up an aisle between the seats, the axes gleaming in their fasces. My exultation evaporated as swiftly as it had come upon me, and I realized with dread what a terrible blunder I had made. I stumbled into an aisle and began to dash toward a gap in the barely begun outer wall.

  “Must be a case of the runs,” I heard somebody say as I got clear of the bleachers. Amid hooting and clapping, I dashed out as fast as my toga would allow. I glanced back over my shoulder to see if any lictors were in pursuit, but they were not. It would have been beneath their dignity. I slowed to a fast walk. Not only was running awkward, but heat built up beneath the heavy woolen toga at a tremendous rate.

  A bit of my god-visited mood returned as I reentered the city, and the city itself was like something seen in a dream. It was all but deserted, with the whole populace packed into the two huge Circuses and the theaters. Adding to the dreamlike quality was the profusion of triumphal decorations, the heaps of flower petals that lay everywhere. The Forum was like a city of gods, populated by statues. I glanced up toward the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Within its dimness, through the smoke of the incense burning to the god’s honor, I could just descry the great statue of Jupiter, the one that was supposed to give us warning of plots against the state. I threw the god a salute. If I could manage it, Pompey would not sacrifice in that temple on the morrow.

  My slave Cato gaped as I came in through my front gate.

  “Senator! We’d not expected you until this afternoon! There’s a lady here to see you, but we told her—”

  “Where’s Hermes?” I said, brushing past him. Then his words sunk in and I turned. “What lady?”

  “A lady Julia, one of the Caesars. She insisted on waiting for you to return. She’s in the atrium.”

  I entered the atrium and Julia was there indeed, rising from a chair with a look of unutterable relief.

  “Decius! How glad I am to see you alive. You’re in terrible danger!”

  “I know that,” I said. “But how did you find out so fast?”

  “So fast? But I only learned late last night.”

  “This is all too confusing,” I said. “Just a moment. I must speak with my slave.”

  “No, you must speak with me!” She grabbed both my arms with surprising strength and swung me around to face her. “Decius, Clodius came to see my uncle last night. He wants to kill you. He was raving like a madman!”

  “Of course he was,” I said. “He is a madman. What had Caius Julius to say to that?”

  “He was terribly angry. He shouted that you were not to be killed for any reason whatsoever, but Clodius wouldn’t listen. My uncle said: ‘If I learn that you have the blood of Decius Metellus on your hands, I will solemnly pronounce the curse of Jove Optimus Maximus upon you before the whole Roman people.”

  This was a serious threat. It would mean that no Roman citizen anywhere in the world could so much as speak to him or give him any aid. No allied king could take him in. He would become a rootless wanderer among barbarians.

  “And what did Clodius answer?”

  “He laughed. He said: ‘Jove need not concern himself. Charun will have him.’ I don’t know what he meant by that.”

  I felt as if I had fallen into the cold pool at the baths. “He means that he has set his Etruscan priests on me.”

  “I wish I could have stayed to hear more, but I’d had to tiptoe from my own quarters when I heard the shouting, and I might have been discovered at any moment. I couldn’t leave the house until my uncle left for the theater, and I had no way of getting word to you earlier.”

  “I don’t know how I can thank you,” I said, my mind whirling. “But you dare not be seen with me. Just coming to my house put you at terrible risk.” Further implications hit me. “They could be out there already. There’s no place to hide in these deserted streets. You have to stay here until dark.”

  “Would they dare attack me?” she asked, all patrician haughtiness.

  “Ordinarily, no,” I answered her. “Clodius fears Caius Julius. But now his derangement has entered a particularly lurid stage, and he is liable to do anything. And the Etruscans are fanatics. Only Pompey can call them off, and he’s not about to do that. Not after the theater this morning.”

  “What?”

  She was not the only one with questions. Just then I was wondering why Caius Julius was so determined to keep me alive. It was a relief to know that there was someone who was not out for my blood, but I could think of no reason why in Caesar’s case. Doubtless all would be made clear in time, when more pressing matters were settled.

  “Oh, I made a bit of a scene this morning. A great revelation came to me while we were watching Trojan Women.”

  “A vision from Apollo!” she cried, clapping her hands. “But of course! Euripides is the most sublime of playwrights, and Trojan Women was the most inspired of his plays. I love Euripides.”

  “Indeed?” I said. Women are difficult to fathom. “Well, in any case, I was suddenly vouchsafed a glimpse of the meaning of a number of anomalies. It was the sight of all those Greek men in women’s clothing, and Pompey sitting there like a puffed-up bullfrog in his triumphator’s robe. And do you know what my first thought was? Without even knowing why it came to me, I thought, ‘Milo will be pleased.’”

  “You make no sense whatever,” she said with considerable restraint.

  “Made no sense to me at first, either. That’s the way it is with divine revelations. You see, my friend Milo wants to marry Fausta. He was very displeased when he heard that you saw her there that night when she had no right to attend the Mysteries but didn’t join you unmarried women. He hinted that he might be quite unhappy with me should I implicate her in any wrongdoing, and Milo is not a man I would want to fall afoul of. So imagine my relief when I understood that she was not there that night!”

  “But I saw her,” Julia said coolly. “Do you think I am a liar, or merely a fool?”

  “No, no, nothing of the sort,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. I must have looked and sounded truly demented. “You see, that wasn’t Fausta you recognized. It was her twin brother, Faustus, dressed as a woman!”

  Her jaw dropped gratifyingly. “Dressed as a woman? Like Clodius?”

  “Yes, like Clodius. And Pompey, and your uncle, Caius Julius. I suspect that Crassus was there as well. Pompey was wearing the dress of the peasant herb-woman, a purple dress. He does so love to wear purple.”

  “But Uncle Caius? Can you be sure?”

  “He was supposed to spend that night at the house of Metellus Celer, but he went out, ostensibly to look for omens on the Quirinal. I checked at the Temple of Quirinus and found out that he did not go out through the Colline Gate that night. I think he, too, must have donned women’s clothing and went into his own house thus disguised. And if Caesar, Pompey, Clodius and Faustus were there, then Crassus was most likely involved as well.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said weakly. “But why? Why meet together in such a bizarre fashion?”

  “That is what I am about to find out,” I said. “Come along. Let’s have a few words with my slave boy, Hermes.”

  “Your slave?” she said as she followed me to the rear of my house, Cato close behind us.

  “Exactly.” I threw open the
door to his cubicle, and the boy backed against a wall, white-faced. “Where is it, you thieving little swine?” I shouted.

  “What do you mean, master? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” At least he had the grace to look as guilty as Mars in Vulcan’s net.

  “I mean the things you stole from the body of Appius Claudius Nero, you disgusting creature!” I slapped his face twice, forehand and backhand.

  “Under my bed!” he cried, all but bawling.

  I threw back his pallet, revealing a cache of rings, bracelets and coins in a hollow scooped into the dirt floor. Among the glittering loot was a plain bronze cylinder as long as my palm and as big around as my thumb.

  “You couldn’t resist, could you?” I said. “You went back out there that night and stripped the body. That’s pretty low, Hermes, robbing a corpse!”

  “Of course it’s low!” he yelled. “I’m a slave! What do you expect! You noblemen can murder each other in the streets, and the praetor sends you out of town for a year or two. We get sent to the cross! I couldn’t just leave him lying there with all that gold on him. Anyway, I sacrificed to Mercury, and he’s the god of thieves.”

  “Admirable piety. Well, you may have cleared things with the gods, but not with me. You made a mistake, Hermes. You came back here with your ill-gained loot and you had to gloat, didn’t you? It was still dark, but you couldn’t resist trying the quality of the gold.” I held the poison ring before his nose. There were teeth marks on its capsule.

  “You didn’t know this was a poison ring and you bit into it. You didn’t suck out all the poison, but you got enough to give you a bellyache all the next day.”

  “So poor old Nero had his revenge after all,” he said, wincing at the memory.

  “He deserves more!” I shouted. “Cato, bring the whip!”

  “You don’t own a whip, master,” Cato said. I turned to face him.

  “Yes, I do. A great, nasty-looking flagrum with bronze studs along all the thongs. My father gave it to me when I set up in my own house. Where is it?”

  “You lost it in a dice game years ago,” Cato said.

  His wife, Cassandra, appeared in the doorway. “Will you all stop yelling? The neighbors will think we’re disorderly. I’m trying to get dinner together. Nobody’s going to whip any slaves in this house, master. Cato’s too old and you’re too softhearted.”

  “Oh, let’s go back out to the atrium,” I said, disgusted. “It’s too crowded in here.” I could swear that I saw Julia masking a smile. I examined the bronze tube. The wax seal over its cap was broken. Back in the atrium, Julia and I took chairs while Hermes, temporarily reprieved, stood nervously shifting from one foot to the other.

  “You’ve been into this, I see,” I said, holding up the tube.

  “I thought there might be something valuable in it,” Hermes said. “But it was just a roll of paper.”

  “That is because this is a message tube. And did you read the message?”

  “How could I? I can’t read.”

  “And did it not occur to you that Nero might not have come to kill me, but rather to bring me a message?”

  “Did it occur to you?” he said insolently.

  I sighed. “I really must purchase another flagrum and a strong, stupid, stony-hearted slave to wield it.”

  “If I’d known it was for you, I’d have brought it immediately, master,” Hermes mumbled.

  “What does it say?” Julia urged impatiently.

  I slipped the paper from the tube and unrolled it. The letter was written in a fine, aristocratic hand, the sort that our schoolmasters whip into us at an early age, but the formation of some of the letters was a trifle shaky, the sign of a writer in a state of emotional distress. The grammar was impeccable, but the phrasing was a bit awkward. One did not expect literary elegance from a Claudian. I began to read aloud.

  [To the Senator Decimus]: a misspelling, but a common one, since my praenomen is extremely rare, while Decimus is not: [Caecilius Metellus the Younger:

  [I dare not set my name to this, but you will know who I am. When I came to Rome to live, I sought only the support and patronage of my family to begin and pursue my career. Instead, I have become involved in matters that terrify me; matters involving murder, conspiracy and, I think, treason.

  Upon my arrival, my kinsman Publius Clodius made much of me, and much of his own glowing future, persuading me to take service as one of his followers. Greatly flattered, I agreed. He entrusted me with matters of some sensitivity, some of them of questionable legality. He continually assured me that this was the way things were done in modern Roman political life.

  For more than a month, Clodius hinted about a crucially important meeting he was arranging. All month, he met many times with Caius Julius Caesar, with Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives, and on several occasions I accompanied him to the camp of Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus to confer with the general.

  All this time, Clodius showed the greatest signs of merriment, and behaved as if he were maneuvering these powerful men at his own will, into his own power. “I’ll control them all,” he told me on more than one occasion. How he was to accomplish this I could not imagine.

  After his last meeting with Pompey, Clodius came away greatly agitated. When I asked him why he was so upset, he said that the general had required of him that he kill the son of the Censor Metellus, who had just returned to Rome. I had heard him speak many times, very bitterly, of this man and asked why he was so displeased with the commission. He said it was because it was at Pompey’s behest rather than for his own satisfaction, and that Pompey had required that the deed be accomplished with poison so that it might appear that his enemy died of natural causes.]

  “I told you,” said Hermes.

  “Quiet,” I said, and continued reading.

  [Clodius sent me to the herb-woman Purpurea to procure the poison. I had been sent to her before, to borrow from her a purple gown, for an unexplained reason. You encountered me just as I left her booth with the poison. Dutifully, I took the poison to Clodius. Then he horrified me by telling me that I was to administer the poison myself! He had discovered that you were to have dinner at the house of Mamercus Capito, and had managed to secure an invitation to the same dinner. I was to take his place, giving the excuse that he could not eat at the same table as you, his mortal enemy.

  I protested, and he grew enraged. Then he all but knelt to beg me to perform this deed. He said that all his plans hinged upon keeping the goodwill of Pompey for this little time, and if I would do this for him I would have his eternal gratitude, and he would make me second only to himself in Rome. At last I agreed. Nobody could be more relieved than I that I failed.]

  “That was my doing,” Hermes said to Julia. “I saved his life.”

  “I’m keeping that in mind, Hermes,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll get a flagrum without the bronze studs.”

  [After the assemblage broke up upon the death of Capito,] I continued reading, [in which I swear before all the gods I had no involvement, I called for my slaves and left. Thinking I had murdered you, I could not bear to face Clodius, and fled instead to my kinswoman Clodia, at the house of Metellus Celer.

  The next day I spent in the temples and the Forum, consumed with guilty agitation. You cannot imagine the relief I felt when I saw you before the Curia, very much alive and conferring with Cicero and Lucullus. I resolved to have nothing further to do with Clodius and went to his house to tell him so. He was displeased that I had failed, but merely said that we would have to try another time. He was far too preoccupied with the meeting planned for that night to concern himself with you. I told him that I did not wish to engage in further dealings with him, but he merely brushed my protestations aside, saying that I would overcome such childish scruples as I gained sophistication in Roman politics. At last I agreed, but I would do nothing unlawful.

  Clodius laughed and called me his friend, and assured me that the night’s doings would be more in the nature of a lark. I was to t
ake the purple dress and another woman’s gown and veil to the camp of Pompey, where, to my amazement, the general and Faustus Sulla were to don them and return with me to the city after sunset. I was to tell the watch at the gate that these were two ladies from a country estate coming to the city for the rites of the Good Goddess. My patrician insignia would assure compliance.

  I did as instructed, although the experience was most bizarre. In the Forum we were joined by Clodius, also in women’s attire, and two other men similarly clad. They mingled with the crowd of highborn ladies entering the house of the Pontifex Maximus and went inside.

  I loitered about the Forum for several hours, until I heard a great commotion from inside. Clodius came running out of the house, stripped almost naked and pursued by a mob of women, screaming like furies. I threw my toga over him and we ducked down an alley and ran back to his house. All the way, Clodius was laughing like a madman, with tears of glee streaming from his eyes.

  At the house he called for wine and began to drink heavily, without watering the wine. Soon he was quite drunk and boasting so loudly that I dismissed the household staff, lest they overhear. He said that now all his ambitions would be realized, and I asked him to explain, still under the impression that the night’s doings had been no more than a prank.

  He said that the three men who were to rule Rome had met at the house of Caesar and had determined upon the future course of the empire and that he, Clodius, had arranged all this. The two most powerful, Pompey and Crassus, could never work together and their rivalry would plunge the empire into civil war. Clodius believed that Caesar was greater than the other two, and had urged him to agree to this meeting, where their rivalries could be hammered out to the profit of all.

  This seemed fantastic to me, and I asked him what he meant by it. He replied that he, Clodius, had perceived that Crassus and Pompey were too unimaginative to settle their differences save through battle; that Caesar, while brilliant and masterful, was too lazy to set a reconciliation in motion, and that all three were too bound by traditional forms to do as Sulla did, and set aside the constitution.