SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead Page 6

  “Yes, I’ve been in Alexandria and have seen that sort of thing. Now for the tunnel.” We went down the ramp and Perna examined the walls, floor, and ceiling.

  “Greek work again,” he said. “The pattern of cuts is the same that’s been taught by Greek stonecutters for generations. Very different from the cutting done in the Oracle’s tunnel.”

  “That’s as I suspected. Is there any way to judge how old this work is?”

  “That’s harder to say. Under the surface like this, there’s no natural wearing to age the stones.”

  I nodded, remembering the pyramid. It was more than two thousand years old, the priests said, yet the stonework in the interior looked as if it had been finished the day before.

  “It’s much newer than the Oracle’s tunnel,” said Perna. “And this temple is far older as well. It’s a Greek temple now, but a lot of the stonework is pre-Greek. The foundation here is made of huge blocks, nothing like native work, more like something Egyptians would use. The temple dates from later than that. It’s pure Campanian work. Then the Greeks came along and altered it to their own taste.”

  It was not an uncommon thing in a place like this, which had been overrun so many times by various conquerors as well as peaceful immigrants. I had seen more complicated structures in Sicily. Why waste a good, solid foundation or sound walls when you can just build on top and redecorate?

  “How long has your family been in the district?” I asked him.

  “You mean how was this tunnel built without anyone outside knowing about it?” He was not without a certain native intelligence. He rubbed his chin. “I’d say it could be done without great difficulty. If someone were to give me a contract to accomplish such a task, I’d bring in foreign workmen and keep them here in barracks under guard. They could work at night, since night and day are the same thing underground. The rubble could be carried out in baskets and scattered in fields or in the nearby rivers.” He thought for a while. “But I can think of an even better way.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Do it when the temple is being restored. That way, nobody at all would wonder about the work going on. You wouldn’t have to disguise the rubble. Just keep sightseers away. Priests can always do that by threatening curses, or promising ritual contamination or talking about omens.”

  “You possess a certain sophistication in these matters,” I told him.

  Perna grinned. “One of the plagues of the building trades is that, for some reason, idlers always want to hang about construction sites, gawk, and get in the way.”

  “I’ve noticed the phenomenon.”

  “Well, I’ve hired more than one priest or soothsayer to keep them away. Usually, it works.”

  “Thank you, my friend,” I said, with a hearty politician’s clap on the shoulder. “You have given me much to think about.”

  “I am happy to be of help,” he said. “But, if you don’t mind my asking, what has the stonework to do with what happened here?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted, “and ultimately this may be of no assistance. But I long ago discovered that learning everything there is to know about a place or a scene or a family can have great bearing upon the solution of a crime.”

  “If you say so, Praetor,” he said doubtfully. Another one who didn’t understand.

  Next I summoned Hermes. “Find me the local historian,” I ordered him, and this time he knew better than to question me. I knew that there would be one. There always is. Usually it is some tiresome old pedant, one with nothing better to do, who busies his normally worthless time with compiling the trivia of local history: its mythical antecedents, the wars fought and social movements, local genealogies. Rome was full of them, having so much history. Having created so much history, for that matter. The virtue of such people was that they needed little provocation to talk about their favorite subject. The problem was to narrow their recitations to the topic you were interested in.

  About lunchtime, Julia appeared with Iola. The priestess looked considerably less haughty than before. Her eyes were haunted rather than illuminated with a self-induced religious fire. “Praetor, how may I help you in this terrible matter?”

  “First of all, please, both of you, be seated.” Julia conducted her to a chair, then took one herself. Julia was usually not slow to assert herself, but when I was seated in the curule chair she had to comport herself humbly. Cato at his most patriotic never had greater respect for Republican traditions than Julia.

  “Now, first,” I said, “Iola, I want you to swear to me, before all the gods, that you and your people had nothing to do with the killing of the entire staff of the Temple of Apollo. I will summon whatever priests or other sacerdotes you require to make your oath binding. But you must know that to make such an oath before a Roman magistrate, you already swear before Jupiter, Juno, and Mars.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose. “I am quite aware of this, Praetor. Your gods are not mine, but I acknowledge their sovereignty. I swear by Hecate that I will tell you nothing but the truth—and I swear by the Styx.” Julia jerked a look at her. By tradition, only the gods of Greece swore by the Styx, but her cult was a peculiar one, with a special relationship to that dread river.

  “That will do. Now, has your cult any knowledge of the tunnel leading from the Temple of Apollo to the subterranean river?”

  “We have—long suspected such a thing,” she said uncertainly.

  “How so?”

  “The adepts of our religion can detect disturbances in our communications with our goddess. We felt that someone was conducting ceremonies concurrent with our own, to destroy our communion with Hecate.”

  This was exactly the sort of supernatural drivel I was hoping to keep out of my investigation, but it seemed to be unavoidable. “Had the staff of Apollo’s temple threatened you?”

  “Never directly. There has always been a policy of strict silence between us.”

  “Indirectly?”

  She was silent for a while. “While the priests themselves would never speak to us, the people of the district who follow their god made no secret of their hostility.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard a bit about the local religious rivalries. But that’s been going on forever. Were there any threats, serious threats, quite recently?”

  “No, Praetor, there were not.”

  I had to take her word for it, but I held my reservations. It was not in her best interests to admit that she had a good reason to kill the priests. I dismissed her and sat brooding for a while.

  “What are you thinking?” Julia asked at length. It was a question I heard often from her. Usually, I kept a store of innocuous answers in readiness for it. This time, though, I saw no particular reason to prevaricate.

  “The girl saw the priests go down into their tunnel carrying torches and lamps. We found none down there. Not only the bodies but the whole chamber had been tidied up. It suggests that a number of people conspired in the murders. Yet so far as we have been able to ascertain, no parties of visitors arrived while we were consulting with the Oracle. It suggests that the murderers were already in the temple.”

  “Then you should put the whole temple staff to the question,” she advised.

  “I am not ready to go to such an extreme yet. Perhaps only one person was required to administer the poison or whatever method was used. Accomplices could have come in later, while we were scouring the countryside.”

  “You are too softhearted to be a praetor,” she said, not without affection.

  The local historian arrived just in time for lunch. Scholars have a way of doing that. His name was Lucius Cordus, and he was a small man with ink on his fingers and eyes permanently asquint from constant reading, even by lamplight. After exchanging the customary amenities, we sat at a table set up beneath my canopy. It was laid with a plentiful lunch, to which Cordus applied himself as if he intended to do it full justice. I waited until he was replete and well lubricated with wine before broa
ching the matter of the day.

  “How may I be of service to the noble praetor?” he said, when the edge was off his appetite.

  “I am told that you are the foremost authority on the history of this district.”

  “I would not style myself so,” he said modestly. “I have some small knowledge of the subject, and what I know is of course at your service.”

  “You are familiar with the events of recent days here at the temple?”

  “Several versions of them, in fact. I could not say which if any are correct. As a historian, I am all too aware of the mutability of information.”

  “Facts can be slippery indeed,” I agreed. “What I need to know is something of the history of these two oddly juxtaposed holy sites.”

  “Ah, this is a fascinating subject,” he said, taking a quick bite of cheese and bread, and washing it down with an even quicker swig of his wine.

  “I take it the tunnel of the Oracle is far older than the temple?”

  “By a great margin. As you may have discerned, there have been at least three temples on the site, possibly more.”

  “I’ve noted that the foundation blocks are quite different from Campanian stonework, and that the Greek temple was adapted from an earlier one of Campanian style.”

  “Exactly,” Cordus agreed.” It is my theory that the tunnel was dug at the same time that the Cyclopean stones of the foundation were put in place. The method of stonecutting seems to be the same. Whether these great stones supported an earlier temple, or were just a platform for the image of a god, or were for some other purpose entirely, we cannot know. It dates from long before the art of writing came to Italy. The earliest writings I have found, inscribed in a very archaic Campanian dialect, speak of the tunnel as being ancient even then. There is one curiosity, though.”

  “What might that be?” I asked him.

  “There is no mention of an Oracle, nor of an association with Hecate. The subterranean river is mentioned, but is not called the Styx.”

  “Interesting, indeed,” I said. “Have you any idea when these ideas became associated with the location?”

  “The Greeks came to southern Italy about seven hundred years ago. Some were Dorians, others Achaeans and Corinthians. First they settled in the east, founding Brundisium, Then up and down the eastern coast, then into the Bay of Tarentum, finally through the strait of Messina to found the towns of this district. Those were wild and dangerous times, and the sea swarmed with pirates, so they built inland roads to connect their settlements. Soon all of southern Italy was known as Magna Graecia. I do not think that Hecate moved in down there before this time, because her devotees are Greek, as are her ceremonies and all of the terminology used in her worship.” He shook his head. “No, I think that tunnel was there for many centuries before the Greeks came. And there is another discrepancy.”

  “And that would be?” I asked, fascinated. At least this fellow did not drone on endlessly like so many scholars of my acquaintance.

  “Hecate is not an oracular goddess. Oracles are usually associated with snakes and there is no snake cult here. She is one of the true Greek autochthonoi, but she doesn’t speak to petitioners. Only here. In fact, I have found no mention of her Oracle here earlier than about three hundred years ago, and that was only in the form of a reference to the sacrifice of black dogs, her traditional tutelary animals.”

  “Do you believe the Oracle could be fraudulent?”

  “I hesitate to make pronouncements concerning the doings of the immortals. If it is fraudulent, it has succeeded longer than most. The human will to believe is a powerful thing.”

  I sat back in my chair and mused. “So, we have a tunnel of great antiquity, of unknown purpose, which may have lain unused until the cult of Hecate moved in.”

  “Needless to say, the writings are very fragmentary, but I can hardly believe that something so remarkable would escape more frequent mention. As for local traditions, I would grant them no credence whatever. Anywhere peasants live, they create mythologies around their district and their ancestors, often mutually contradictory. Few people are trained in the art of rigorous thinking.”

  “So it would seem,” I agreed. “What of the Campanian temple erected atop the foundation?”

  “The Campanians pushed their territory southward and reached this area about the same time as the Greeks. Before, there had been only the primitive settlements of the Aborigines.”

  “You believe the Aborigines really existed?”

  “They must have. There are many burials that predate the people we have been discussing. Whether they were the people of legend I cannot say, but the burials I have examined indicate a very low level of culture. They built nothing in stone that has survived.”

  “So, things got lively here between Greeks and Campanians around the time Romulus and Remus founded Rome.” The official date of that event was some 704 years before this time.

  “Very lively, I would say. They were two aggressive, warlike people who wanted the same land. Plus, the Greek cities, being Greek, fought endlessly among themselves. That temple may have been erected and demolished a number of times. It was dedicated to the god Mamers, who can be identified with Mars. But a far grander Temple of Mamers was erected at Cumae, and eventually this one was abandoned. In time, the Greeks turned it into the Temple of Apollo. That was about two hundred years ago.”

  “Did the rivalry between the followers of Apollo and those of Hecate date from the time that the Campanians and Greeks were fighting over this territory?”

  “Something like that. I think that it came to serve as a substitute for open hostilities, especially after Rome imposed peace on the region.”

  “Well, sometimes you can keep people from fighting, but you can’t stop them from hating one another. The Greeks and the Trojans would probably still hate each other, if there were any Trojans left.”

  “Such seems to be the nature of men,” Cordus said.

  “So it’s always good to be the strongest. That is what Rome determined to do. Always be the strongest. That way it doesn’t matter if people hate you, because you can always whip them and they know it and don’t dare say anything aloud.”

  “Ah, that is very true, Praetor. We are the terror of the world.” This to remind me that he was a citizen, too. “A terror in a good way, of course. Where Rome has conquered, Rome establishes peace.”

  “Yes, well, we seem to be straying from the subject. In all your studies, have you seen any mention of this tunnel beneath the temple, where we found the dead priests?”

  “In fact, I have.”

  “What? The thing seems to have been a mystery to everybody else!”

  He smiled. “How many people bother to read records of construction work from two hundred years ago? In the city archive of Baiae I ran across a contract between the founders of the temple and one Skopas of Alexandria for ‘the construction of a crypt beneath the Temple of Apollo by the Bay of Baiae.’ It does not specify a tunnel, but as far as I know, there is no rule limiting how far down a crypt can be.”

  “Wonderful!” I said. “This is the virtue of paying attention to paperwork. One document is worth any number of legends.”

  “And this knowledge will be of use in your investigation?”

  “I have no idea. But it is wonderful to actually know something in this maze of myths. Earlier today the master stoneworker said that the workmanship on the trapdoor looked Alexandrian. He also said that the easiest way to do it without the locals noticing would have been when it was remodeled to Greek taste.”

  “Very sagacious,” he said, nodding. “The question remains: Why did they do it?”

  “I don’t know, and I certainly hope that it has no bearing on the investigation.”

  We spoke a while longer but he had nothing further to offer, though he promised to pitch into his studies with great zeal to find me more information. I thanked him profusely, for he had proven to be of real assistance. I gave him a small sack of gold and s
ilver “in case he had to travel,” and he went away beaming, happy to have the money, a full stomach, and, above all, to have his wisdom praised and appreciated by one in authority. The path of scholarship can be thankless and unrewarding.

  That evening, my kinsman Marcus Caecilius Metellus came down from Rome for a visit. He was a young man just setting out on his political career, and he had been in my traveling entourage since I entered the praetorship. A month before, I had sent him to Rome to gather the latest gossip for me. For true Romans, being separated from the City is an almost physical affliction. One can stand being separated from the center of the world for only so long. This is why we consider exile such a terrible punishment. Many exiles go insane or commit suicide in despair. At dinner, we were all ears to hear the latest.

  “First, the best news, Decius,” he began. Here at dinner, among close friends and relatives, he was free to address me by my praenomen instead of my title. “You know that Appius Claudius has been going through the senatorial roll like a great scythe, expelling senators for corruption, bribery, debt, and immorality?”

  “Everybody knows that,” I said. This Appius Claudius was the brother of my old enemy Clodius, but was a man of the highest rectitude for whom I always had the greatest respect.

  “Well, among others, he expelled Sallustius for immorality!”

  I laughed so hard that wine shot out of my nose and it was a few minutes before I regained possession of myself. “Wonderful! Too bad it was only immorality, though. He’s guilty of every one of the practices Claudius is so determined to stamp out.”

  “One was enough,” said Marcus. “He doesn’t dare show his face in the Forum.”

  This Sallustius was a wretched climber I had known for far too long. He was as corrupt as any senator who had ever disgraced the curia, and in those years that was very corrupt indeed. He was always trying to ingratiate himself with me and I could not stand his insinuating manner. In later years, with no further political or criminal activity to distract him, he styled himself a historian.