SPQR VIII: The River God's Vengeance Read online

  “Careful,” Acilius warned. “Even here, you could set it afire.”

  “That could only improve things,” I said. I removed the torch from dangerous proximity though. “How did this come about, and how extensive is it?”

  “It came about through long neglect of the sewers, coupled with widespread violation of the ordinances against dumping trash in the drains. Everything people are too lazy to carry to the dumps outside the walls gets thrown down the nearest drain. The objects that will not fioat build up in the channel until they form veritable reefs, then everything piles up against them, and high water from the heavy rains just heaps it up higher. You asked how extensive this problem is?”

  “I did,” I said, as if either of us needed reminding.

  “Every last sewer in Rome is like this, Aedile. Only the main channels of the largest sewers are clear: the Maxima, the Petronia, and the Nodina. Those follow the courses of old creeks and have a relatively steady fiow, and even their bottoms are getting full of nonbuoyant refuse. The smaller, tributary sewers are clotted just like this one, all of them. And it’s not just broken furniture and kitchen trash, Aedile. There are a great many corpses down here.”

  “Corpses?” I knew that something more potent than garbage had to account for that smell.

  “Oh, yes. The poor use the drains to dispose of aborted or unwanted infants. And people often want to be spared the expense of burying their dead slaves or the inconvenience of hauling them to the pits outside the Esquiline Gate. And these are not just the slaves of contractors and factory owners, either. Slaves of the wealthy sometimes find their way down here, and, of course, the occasional murder victim.”

  “Infamous!” I said, meaning it. Not that murder was so great a crime, and the exposure of unwanted infants was lawful if distasteful, but to deny proper burial even to the lowliest was impious and could draw down the wrath of the gods. “The whole City could suffer for this!”

  “I’d say it was suffering right now,” Hermes said, gagging.

  “We’ve seen enough, let’s get away from here,” I told the boatman. He began to pole us back toward the main channel. Soon we were breathing what seemed to be, by contrast, almost clean air. I ordered Charon to take us to the river.

  “Who is responsible for scouring out these channels?” I asked.

  “Like most such work,” Acilius said, “it is done on a basis of public contracts let every five years by the censors, then overseen by the aediles. A thorough cleaning of the whole system should have been undertaken, at latest, two years ago, during the censorship of—”

  “Don’t tell me,” I interrupted. “It was Messala Niger and Servilius Vatia. Didn’t those two do anything while they were in office?”

  “Not much,” Festus commented. “But what’s new about that? You were back from Gaul while they were in office, weren’t you, Patron?”

  “They’d been sitting for about six months when I returned. They were supposed to get the public contracts settled in their first month or two, then conduct the census and purge the senatorial lists, and wind up with the lustrum. When my father and Hortalus were censors, they got the whole task done in their first six months.”

  “Not every Roman magistrate is as energetic and conscientious as your father, Patron,” Festus observed. “And Vatia Isauricus was awfully old, you’ll recall.”

  “Messala was lively enough,” I said. “And still is, for that matter. I may have to speak with him.” One more thing to look for in those documents I’d bribed away from the Tabularium.

  Ahead of us, the half circle of the river portal seemed as bright as the rising sun. Charon nudged the boat alongside the raised walkway that formed an elongated landing. The old boatman squinted, dazzled by the clear light. We disembarked and walked toward the light. The tour of the sewer had been so oppressive that I had to restrain myself from breaking into a run.

  Moments later we were standing by the river, filling our lungs with clean air, blowing like so many porpoises to clear our heads of the nauseous miasma. The daylight seemed incredibly clean and clear.

  “You will do something about this, Aedile?” Acilius asked.

  “Decidedly. What we just saw is a menace to the health of all Romans and an affront to the gods. Why”—I gestured toward the river before us—”Father Tiber himself must be insulted that the unburied dead are committed to him.”

  “He doesn’t look too happy as it is,” Hermes said. “Look, he’s risen since we crossed this morning.”

  He was right. The waterline was noticeably higher than that morning. “Come along, Hermes. We need to speak with the rivermen.” I dismissed the rest of the party with further assurances that I would do something about the condition of the sewers, although just what was unclear even as I promised it.

  We had emerged into daylight with the Aemilian Bridge to our right. Turning left, we passed under the Sublician Bridge, walking along the great westward bend of the river. Beyond the Sublician lay the river wharves, where the barges up from Ostia unloaded their cargoes then reloaded them with the products of Rome and the inland farm country to be taken down to the harbor for export.

  This was one of the liveliest, most active districts of the City, most of it outside the walls. The natives spoke a river dialect all their own, and a score of foreign languages could be heard. Sailors from every nation touched by the sea coming upriver to trade or see the sights are among our most numerous visitors. The factors of many foreign companies had their offices along the wharves.

  Foreign tongues were not the only alien sounds to be heard. The cries, roars, bellows, and squawks of exotic beasts and birds were everywhere, as cages from Africa, Egypt, Spain, Syria, Phrygia, and places even more remote were brought in for the gardens and estates of the rich and, more often, for the hunts in the Circus. There were lions and leopards, peacocks, ostriches, bears, bulls, racing horses, zebras, camels, and even stranger creatures.

  About as many slaves were being unloaded for the markets, but they walked off the barges under their own power and were far quieter than the beasts. This was a sight I found far less agreeable than that of odd animals. I am quite aware that civilization cannot exist without slaves, but some limits should be observed. There were far too many slaves in Rome already, and the recent wars had fiooded the markets with even more, so cheap that even poor households could afford a few.

  The great bulk of the slaves were sold to the vast latifundia of Sicily and southern Italy before they ever saw Rome. The others were, for the most part, the better looking and more skilled captives destined for household service. There were beautiful young women and boys for the houses of the wealthy and the brothels, trained masseurs for the baths, artists, cooks, and so forth, plus a few stalwart young warriors to be trained as gladiators. These last seldom had to be chained or coerced and usually faced their fate cheerfully. Raised as tribal warriors, the prospect of being given their keep and no duties except to train and fight suited them well enough. Being set to labor would have been an unthinkable disgrace.

  But I was not there to enjoy the sights. We walked along the wharves until we came to a stretch of the river walk paved with colorful mosaic, where a stout, baldheaded man sat at ease behind a stone table, shaded by a yellow awning and attended by a secretary. He rose when he caught sight of me and raised an arm.

  “Good day, Aedile! What brings you to the wharves this fine afternoon?”

  “Good day, Marcus Ogulnius!” I called to the wharf master. He was a publicanus charged with collecting import duties, docking fees, and so forth. A bit of each transaction stuck, lawfully, to his fingers, so he was a rich man. I didn’t see much of him because, strictly speaking, his office came under the purview of the curule aedile as regulator of markets. “I’ve come to confer with knowledgeable men about the state of the river.”

  “If you’d come a day later there might have been none for you to confer with,” he said. “When this lot of barges is finished unloading, they’ll be headed
back to Ostia; and we’ll see no more for a while. I’m amazed they made it here today with this current. This evening I’ll pack up my office and move to higher ground for the duration.”

  “That bad?” I said. “I saw that the river was rising, but we’re still far from fiood stage.”

  “Cast your eyes up there, Aedile. Look at the Janiculum.” I gazed toward the hilltop where the red fiag fiew as it had for centuries, to be lowered only if an enemy approached the City. The long strip of scarlet cloth stood almost straight out, its tip snapping back and forth in a blurring motion. “That wind’s from due south, straight out of Africa. Here in Rome it just makes for some nice, warm days in a season when it’s usually still cold. But it’s blowing full blast on the mountaintops, and it’s melting the snow.”

  “I heard something of the sort earlier today,” I allowed.

  “Well, you can believe it. You’ll soon be getting word of mountain towns destroyed by fioods and wiped out by avalanches. The snows this winter were the worst in living memory, so I’m told. Those snows and this sirocco make for a bad combination, sir. The river’s about to rise faster than anyone’s seen it rise, and this bend of the river right here’s going to catch the worst of it. It always does.”

  “Have any precautions been taken?” I asked him.

  He shrugged, surprised. “What can be done about a fiood? When Father Tiber decides to get out of bed and move about, you’d best get out of his way.”

  “Sound advice.”

  He thought for a while. “There were some engineering works supposed to be undertaken awhile back to keep the river in its banks, but they never got past the planning stage. Of course, that was under the censors—”

  “Servilius Vatia and Valerius Messala!” Hermes and I chorused together.

  The wharf master looked at us strangely. “That’s right.”

  A thought occurred to me. “You obtained your public contract from them, did you not?”

  “Renewed it, actually. I’ve held this post for more than twenty years, and my father had it before me.”

  “It is done by open bidding, is it not?”

  “Assuredly. It’s all in knowing the job. There’s others would like to have it, but my family’s done it for so long that I know to the last sestertius what it’s worth to the State and what it’s worth to me. Anyone who tries to underbid me is a fool who doesn’t know the work and will bollix it up, costing everyone. The censors know that, sir, and they renew my contract every five years accordingly.”

  More likely, I thought, he has grown so rich that no one who wants the office could bribe the censors half so well as he. I didn’t hold it against him. He was an honest man by most men’s standards and collecting revenues for the river traffic was too important to the State to be left to a fool or an amateur.

  “How long do we have, do you think, before the low parts of the City are fiooded?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Some predict the river walk will be ankle deep by morning, and that’s why I’m clearing out tonight. It could be up into the Forum Boarium and in the Circus by next morning. Personally, I don’t think it’s going to be all that quick, but I’m not taking any chances.”

  “Wise move. What about the warehouses and the boats?”

  “The river people have known this fiood was coming for more than a year. They’ve taken precautions. Goods have been stored up higher than usual. Anything made of wood’s likely to be lost though.” He shrugged again. “Nothing that can’t be replaced. Inside the City”—he jerked a thumb back over his shoulder toward the city wall that rose behind him— “that, I’m not responsible for. But I hope your house is on high ground.”

  “High enough,” I told him. Something was tickling away at the back of my mind, some business that I had previously had planned for the wharf area. That was my greatest problem—I had too many things crowding my mind, each demanding my attention. Then I remembered.

  “Do you know of a barge owner named Lucius Folius?”

  “Certainly. He owns at least a hundred barges on the river. I heard he was killed in that insula collapse yesterday.”

  “He was, along with his wife and his whole household. Has anyone been acting for him here, a factor or a business partner? Someone is going to have to take over his operations.”

  “No one’s showed up yet, but it’ll take awhile in any case. I know he had a factor downriver at Ostia to handle the overseas part of the trade. All the river trades have their headquarters at Ostia. Like I said, nothing’s going to come up from Ostia for a while.”

  “He can come by road,” I told him. “I’m going to send a summons. I have questions about Lucius Folius that need answering. What sort of trade did he engage in?”

  “At this end, it was mostly general cargoes: slaves, worked metal, oil, some livestock, and paying passengers. Light loads for the most part. A lot more comes into Rome than goes out of it.”

  “And what did he bring in?”

  “He had some fish barges, Rome being a great consumer of sea fish. The usual wines and exotic slaves for the great households. That was at the Ostia end. He also brought in a good deal of cargo from along the river. I’d estimate that at least half of his imports were picked up at the wharves between here and Ostia.”

  “Agricultural products, I take it?”

  “For the most part. And building materials.”

  My neck prickled in that old, familiar fashion, and I felt a little smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Building materials, you say?”

  “Absolutely. I won’t say that he had a monopoly on the stuff—a lot comes in through the landward gates—but I’d wager that more than half of the timber and brick and roofing tile, sand and mortar and so forth, that came up by river arrived in his hulls.”

  “Stone? Marble? Lead and bronze for roofs?”

  Ogulnius shook his bald head. “No, those things are used mainly for the big public projects—the temples and porticoes and the restoration works. In the last ten years, 90 percent of that material’s gone into Pompey’s big theater and its complex out on the Campus Martius. The great men like Pompey mostly contract independently for work like that, use their own slaves and freedmen, and buy directly from the quarrymen. I heard Pompey just bought his own quarries and workers outright to spare himself the trouble of going through middlemen. He bypassed the wharves here and built his own up past the Island, where he could unload near his project.

  “No, Aedile, men like that would not deal with the likes of Lucius Folius, unless they were putting up housing for the workers. Even then they’d deal directly with the building contractors, not with a man who hauled brick and mortar.”

  “You’ve been of great help, Marcus Ogulnius,” I commended him.

  “Always happy to be of service to Senate and People,” he said, beaming. They had certainly been a source of profit to him.

  We reentered the City near the Sublician Bridge, just off the Forum Boarium of which Ogulnius had just spoken. It, along with the nearby Circus Maximus, lay on the lowest ground within the walls and was thereby the area most vulnerable to fiooding.

  Here, just a few hundred paces from the rising Tiber, nobody seemed to be taking any action. All the gossip I overheard was about the brawl in the Forum earlier that day. On a whim I went over to one of the stall keepers, an old fellow from across the river who sold kids and smelled very much like his merchandise. When I asked whether he and the other market people were preparing for a fiood, he merely looked amused.

  “The river’s always rising, sir. Sometimes it fioods; sometimes it don’t. Not much we can do about it either way.”

  I found this to be the general attitude. Several people pointed out to me that it hadn’t rained recently. Mountain snow meant nothing to them.

  “I hope they’ve got the horses out of the City,” Hermes said, pointing to the huge establishments of the racing factions situated near the Circus. Like most Romans, he didn’t care if the rest of the City washed away or bur
ned down as long as it didn’t interfere with the races. A few hundred drowned citizens was a prospect he could face with equanimity. A loss of several hundred fine chariot horses was a tragedy beyond imagining.

  “They’re all out in the pastures this time of year,” I assured him. “The season doesn’t start until the Megalensian Games next month.” As if I needed to remind him when the racing season started. I didn’t need to be reminded either since I would be in charge of a major portion of this year’s Games. There were days when I thought of little else.

  “That’s a relief,” he said. “What now?”

  I contemplated the geography of the City. My own house, while not far up the slopes like the more fashionable mansions, lay high enough to have escaped the last couple of fioods. “Are any of the baths on high ground?” I mused.

  “None I can think of,” Hermes answered.

  “Then I’d better get a bath now. They may be out of commission tomorrow.”

  “Good idea,” he said. “I’ll run and get your bath things.”

  “First go up there,” I pointed up the slope of the Aventine to the Temple of Ceres no more than a hundred paces away. “Find a messenger, tell him to get a horse and whatever else he needs for a dash to Ostia, and report to me at my usual bathhouse. Then to my house. Tell Julia I’ll be late again, and find out if the documents from the Tabularium have been delivered. Bring back a skin of decent Falernian, and don’t drink any on the way. I’ll know if you’ve diluted it.” He looked offended and trotted off. Julia’s dowry had provided me with a better quality of wine than I had been used to maintaining. Keeping the boy’s hands off it was a full-time job.

  I made my way slowly to my favorite balneum, located near the Temple of Saturn. Really large bathhouses were just beginning to be seen in Rome, but this was an older establishment and rather modest. It was handy to the Forum and was frequented by many senators. It charged a bit more than others of the same quality, making it more exclusive. Besides providing a decent bath, it was a good place to pick up political gossip.