SPQR III: The Sacrilege Page 6

  “I’ve spoken to you all,” said Celer. “You know how the vote is to go.” There were murmurs of assent. Besides the great Metellans, there were at least thirty like me: Senators who had served in the lower offices but were otherwise undistinguished.

  “Then to your seats,” Celer ordered. Obedient as a veteran legion, we trooped into the Curia.

  The interior of the Senate house was dim, and it was musty with damp wool, for it had been raining that morning, and the finest toga is not a fragrant object when it is wet. The fullers use human urine in their whitening process.

  Thus my first Senate meeting was not fully as edifying as I might have wished. At least, I thought, it would be the day of a memorable vote. Only the Senate could grant a triumph, one of the few privileges it had managed to keep from the popular assemblies.

  The first part of the morning was devoted to arguments. Pompey’s adherents reeled off the stunning list of his accomplishments: enemies slain, enslaved or brought under Roman control; territory added to the empire; riches brought to the Roman treasury.

  Then the aristocratic party had its hour, belittling the upstart’s accomplishments, complaining that the seas were as dangerous as ever despite his campaign against the pirates (this was outrageously untrue, but the aristocrats were grasping at straws by that time) and accusing Pompey of offenses against the gods.

  Then the presiding Consul, Niger, called for the vote. The Princeps stood. Quintus Hortensius Hortalus was Princeps of the Senate at that time, and he cast his vote for Pompey with a brief (for Hortalus) and undeniably eloquent speech. Even at his advanced age, Hortalus had the most beautiful voice in the world. Cicero rose and cast his vote likewise. There were no boos even from the aristocratic party. Everyone knew that Cicero didn’t like Pompey. They hated him for the Catilinarian executions and awaited a chance to bring him down on that charge.

  Then Metellus Celer was called. He stood and said simply: “I withdraw my former opposition. Let Pompey have his triumph. Let the soldiers of Rome be honored.” He sat amid a huge, collective gasp. Everybody knew it was all over. Even such a qualified vote meant that the whole clan of Caecilius Metellus was now behind the triumph.

  After that, it was mere confirmation. Permission for Pompey’s triumph passed with an overwhelming majority. Even Pompey’s bitterest enemies voted in favor, rather than give the appearance of a futile resistance. After all, Celer had given them an out: the assertion that they were honoring the soldiers as a whole, rather than the general in particular. This little qualification was to have serious consequences they did not foresee at the time.

  We all went out of the Curia in a mixed mood. Some were jubilant, others subdued. Everyone had a sense that some serious, irrevocable step had been taken and that the Roman state, tranquil for a number of years, was poised on the brink of another period of turmoil. When a leader of the aristocrats was willing to yield even an inch to Pompey, things were unsettled.

  On the steps of the Curia, I all but collided with Lucius Licinius Lucullus, celebrated conqueror and enemy of Pompey. He seemed not at all put out by the vote and clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Well, that’s that, eh, Decius? I hate to see that swine riding in triumph down the Via Sacra, but it was a wise political move.”

  “A man with an armed legion outside the gates cannot be snubbed forever,” I said.

  “Exactly. There’ll be no more business of note today, and all this has made me hungry. Come to my house for some lunch. Let’s see who else could stand a bite.” We descended the steps and found Cicero and Milo in conversation. Milo was wearing a splendid white toga, a sure sign that he was embarking on a serious political career.

  “Cicero,” Lucullus said, “come join me for lunch. You, too, Titus Annius. And I see Cato’s sour face. Cato, you need feeding. Come with us.”

  Milo grinned hugely. “I shall be most honored, Lucius Licinius.” Clearly, this was the first time he had received such an invitation. It was as good as a confirmation by the Censors. Cicero and Cato looked a little peeved.

  “Lucius,” said Cicero, “you’re not going to throw a banquet again and call it lunch, are you?”

  Lucullus was all offended innocence. “Now how could I do that? I’ve given my staff no such instruction. It shall be just the usual simple fare they set out for me every day.”

  These invitations were much sought after. The whole idea of lunch was rather new to Romans. We made a practice of starving ourselves all day. Dinner was not only the most important social occasion, but virtually the only genuine meal of the day.

  By this time an album had been set up on the Rostra announcing the decree of the Senate, and there was much cheering from the populace. Everyone loved a triumph, and this one had been long anticipated. Heralds had been dispatched to Pompey’s camp to tell him of the Senate’s decision, but his toadies were already heading that way on fast horses.

  By the time we reached the border of the Forum, Lucullus had picked up Celer, my father, both Consuls and a gaggle of others for his little impromptu luncheon.

  “Prepare to be shocked,” Cato said to me as we walked toward the Palatine. “Our host’s taste for vulgar luxury has grown legendary. He outdoes the richest freedman in base, wretched excess.”

  “I’m looking forward to this!” I told him.

  “On the other hand,” Cato allowed, “he has not been utterly idle in his use of his wealth. He is building a library in imitation of the one at Alexandria, and he has brought cherry trees to Italy for the first time. He’s established a cherry orchard near Naples and will make seedlings and cuttings available to all.”

  “That’s indeed good news,” I said, “about the cherries, I mean.” For all our conqueror’s strut, we still took a real delight in agricultural matters. Bringing a new melon to Italy would make your reputation as surely as conquering a new province.

  “And his fishponds are extraordinary.” Cato had to say these things so that he could endure the guilt of enjoying lunch. There should be a religion for people like Cato. Stoicism is simply not up to the task.

  Milo came to join us and Cato walked away to talk with Cicero. His aristocratic soul rebelled at the thought of political adventurers like Milo. I never noticed that this bothered Milo in the least.

  “Tell me about last night,” Milo said. The story had been all over the Forum by first light. I sketched the details of Capito’s murder, then told him about the alleged poisoning attempt.

  “That may be my slave’s wild imagination,” I cautioned, “or an attempt to ingratiate himself with me.”

  “Best not to take chances where Clodius might be concerned. I’ll leave that to you, but I’ll see what I can find out about Capito’s killer. I don’t know of anyone who uses that two-blow technique. It reminds me of the way sacrificial animals are killed: a knock on the head and a cut throat.”

  “I’d thought of that, too. That’s a two-man job, though.”

  “You like to snoop. Get one of the praetors to appoint you iudex pedaneus.” This last was an official appointed to investigate crimes and disputes.

  “I’m not on the list of names to be drawn from,” I told him. “I won’t be old enough for more than a year.”

  “That’s unfortunate, but if Clodius is trying to poison you, you may not have much attention to spare for other matters.”

  The town house of Lucullus was the size of many country villas, an amazing thing in the tight-packed city. His staff of slaves and freedmen was rumored to number in the hundreds. That was not unusual for a country estate, but town houses were usually more modest. I gaped like any visiting foreigner at the fabulous statuary, the ponds and fountains, the spectacular gardens, where he had had full-grown trees brought in and planted.

  A triclinium is supposed to accommodate nine dinner guests comfortably, with room to wedge in a few extras. The triclinium of Lucullus would have housed a full meeting of the Senate. I was told that this was one of several dining halls, and not among the
largest. We flopped onto couches upholstered with pure silk and stuffed with down and precious herbs. The platter set before me was two feet wide, as thick as my thumb and made of solid silver.

  The opening course was, as usual, eggs. But these had been wrapped in an incredibly fine foil of hammered gold. It seemed that we were to eat them foil and all. Cato fastidiously unwrapped his. The next course was suckling pigs. They had rubies for eyes.

  “This is your modest afternoon repast, Lucius?” Cicero said.

  “Yes, when I’ve nothing in particular to celebrate.” He made a signal and musicians began to play. A troupe of beautiful Greek boys came in and began a Pyrrhic dance.

  “Don’t get him started,” warned Hortalus, my father’s colleague in the Censorship. “When he wants to show off, he brings out the gold table service. It’s as massive as this.”

  “I was wondering what happened to that big golden statue of Mithridates you captured, Lucius,” said Celer.

  “Absurd!” Cato protested. “There was a time when only a single service was owned by the entire Senate, and it was passed from one member to another when foreign ambassadors were to be entertained.” Cato always talked as if there were something special about being a small, poor city-state. The world was full of such places, and he never seemed to admire any of them.

  “I think it entirely fitting and perfectly Roman,” said Lucullus. “Thracian chieftains drink wine from the skulls of their enemies. Why should we not dine off the statue of an enemy of Rome?”

  “Utter sophistry!” Cato protested. The conversation turned to other things; Cato was too easy a target. About this time a group of women of the household entered and took chairs at the tables. At least they didn’t join the men on the couches. That would have sent Cato into an apoplectic fit. One of these, a woman about my age who wore a peach-colored gown, was extraordinarily beautiful. She was as white-blond as a German, but her features were unmistakably Roman, and of the upper classes. Milo, who lay on my right, leaned toward me.

  “Who is the blond goddess?” He did not say this sarcastically. He had the stunned look of a man smitten. I turned to the man on my left, an old Senator who was a regular in Lucullus’s circle, and asked him.

  “The lady Fausta,” he answered. I turned back to Milo.

  “Tough luck, Titus. It’s Fausta, Sulla’s daughter.”

  “What is wrong with that?” Milo asked. “I want you to introduce me to her.” His eyes had a gleam I could only interpret as unhealthy.

  “In the first place, I don’t know her. In the second, she’s a Cornelian, and the gods need permission to call on that family.”

  He gripped my shoulder and I stifled a scream. Milo had hands that could crush bone. He relented a little and leaned close.

  “Introduce me. You are a Metellan, and even a Cornelian will listen to somebody named Caecilius Metellus.”

  “I’ll do it!” I said. To my utterable relief, his hand left my shoulder. I studied the woman. She was something of an enigma in Rome, famous but rarely seen. She and her brother, Faustus, were twins, a portentous enough circumstance without being the children of the godlike Sulla. At his death, Sulla had entrusted their care to his friend Lucullus. Faustus had joined Pompey in Asia and distinguished himself in the wars there. Fausta had remained with Lucullus and for some reason had never married. The twins received their unusual names from their father, in honor of his legendary good fortune. He paid for it at the end, though. He died in terrible, lingering agony of a nameless cancer. The last year of his life must have made him wish he’d not lived the first fifty-nine.

  When the luncheon was over, the guests wandered around admiring the grounds, where you almost expected to see naked nymphs burst from the shrubbery, closely pursued by ithyphallic satyrs. Had satyrs not been in such short supply, doubtless Lucullus would have had them.

  We found Fausta clipping winter roses in a canopied arbor. She wielded the clippers while a little slave girl held up her skirts to collect them. I walked up to her and made the expected obeisance.

  “Lady Fausta, I’ve not had the honor of your acquaintance. I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, recently returned to Rome from a sojourn in Gaul.”

  She spared me the slightest of glances, and her eyes flickered to Milo. “Charmed. And who is your friend?”

  I was a bit put out. Granted, Milo was enormous and handsome as a god, but I was certainly better born.

  “Allow me to present Titus Annius Milo Papianus, a—just what are you, Milo?” I couldn’t very well introduce him as my friend, Milo the gangster, although that was exactly what he was.

  Milo took her hand. “I am the man who is going to rule Rome, as your father did, my lady.”

  She smiled up at him. “Wonderful. Men of ordinary ambition are so common.”

  “I believe we are related,” I said. “Wasn’t your mother a Caecilia Metella?”

  “How long have you been in Rome, Titus Annius?” she asked, utterly ignoring me. Well, it wasn’t that much of a relationship. My family produces even more daughters than sons.

  “A little over eight years, my lady.” After his initial burst of arrogance, he seemed almost tongue-tied, a marvel I never expected to behold.

  “Titus Milo, you say? I believe I’ve heard the name. Don’t your followers get into street battles with the men of Clodius Pulcher?”

  “Not lately,” Milo said, bashful at receiving such praise.

  “How enthralling. You must tell me all about it.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted,” I said. They ignored me. I gave it up as a futile task and walked away from them. I had discharged my duty as Eros.

  Full-bellied and with the balance of a fine day ahead of me, I decided to make another call on a friend, this time with more than social aims in mind. I headed down the Palatine toward the river. I had a call to pay at the Temple of Aesculapius.

  For the first time I crossed the splendid new stone bridge that linked the bank with the island. This had been built the year before by the tribune Fabricius. At the temple I inquired after the physician Asklepiodes and found that he was once again in residence at the Statilian School, which had been displaced by the building of Pompey’s new theater. The new school was situated in the Trans-Tiber district. Armed with directions, I crossed to the far bank into the city’s newest district, which, unconstrained by walls, sprawled over a sizable patch of ground without the suffocating closeness of the old city.

  The new school was a splendid affair, with none of the prisonlike air that so many such institutions have. The walk leading to the school was paved with stone and lined with statues of champions of years past. An archway tunneled through the building, leading to a wide exercise yard whence came the clatter of weapons as the men went through their arms drill. I paused to admire the spectacle, and possibly calculate odds for the next games. The trainees fought with practice weapons, but the senior veterans actually used sharp weapons. The blade artistry of some of these men was wonderful to see. No soldier ever gains this sort of expertise, because soldiers spend much time practicing formation fighting and even more on labor details, digging and building. Gladiators do nothing but train for single combat.

  Most of the men trained with the large shield and the straight gladius or with the small shield and the curved sica, and some practiced with the spear, but there was a new category, one that had appeared during Caesar’s aedileship.

  Caesar had borrowed heavily to put on games of unprecedented magnificence, going so far as to give munera in honor of a deceased female relative when he ran out of dead male ancestors. He bought up so many gladiators that his enemies in the Senate panicked, thinking that he was buying a private army. They quickly passed legislation limiting the number of gladiators one citizen could exhibit at any given set of games. Since he could not show as many as he wanted, he began to use bizarre new types: men who fought from elephants, chariot fighters, horsemen and others. Strangest of all were the netmen.
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br />   Nobody knew what to make of them when they first marched into the arena. They looked like fishermen from the Styx with their nets and their three-pronged harpoons. Nobody thought they could be fighters because they wore no armor. We thought perhaps we were to see some new dance. Then a group of big-shield fighters came in and paired off with the netmen. At first, we expected to see the netmen slaughtered. But this was not toe-to-toe fighting of the sort we were used to. The netmen darted all over the arena, casting their nets, running away if they missed, only to return to the fight after retrieving the net by its cord. After a lot of laughter and hooting, the audience began to get into the spirit of the thing and cheered on the combatants. To everyone’s surprise, more netmen than swordsmen won their fights. It was all so unexpected that there was no way to decide whether anyone had fought really well or badly, so the crowd withheld the death signal, although a few fighters died later of their wounds.

  Caesar had intended this to be a novelty act for that one set of games, but the crowd’s fancy was taken and they began to demand the net fighters. Now I saw that Statilius Taurus had added them to his regular categories of fighters. Traditionalists like my father found them entirely too exotic, and Cato, predictably, said it was a disgrace to the tradition of mortal combat.

  A slave guided me to the quarters of the resident physician, and there I found my friend Asklepiodes, the world’s greatest expert on mortal wounds. We spent several minutes exchanging greetings, for which he had a Greek’s fondness. We swiftly brought each other up to date on our doings of the past year or so; then I broached my current business, telling him of the events of the previous night.

  “Ah, Decius, how like you!” Asklepiodes said. “Back in Rome only three days and already involved in a murder!”

  “One successful,” I said. “The other, fortunately merely attempted.” I handed him the wrapped parcel of pastries. “Is there some way to test these, short of feeding them to a slave?”