A Comedy of Terrors

by Lindsey Davis

  Tiberius and I would have no trouble finding Terentius and Greius. Our fears died. Everyone admitted had been given a token: their designated staircase, their row in a set wedge of seating, and their specific seat number. After getting us in, the Fourth told us, winking, they had special targets. The targets were here. The Fourth were observing.

  Morellus was around somewhere, awaiting our arrival, though he had just wandered off to talk to the dwarf, Spendo, who was organising a display. We heard all the cohorts had been commanded to bring their siphon-engines, perhaps in case a lights display went wrong, though the troops said Spendo had been trying out some big idea for later, with a special contribution from the Fourth. I said I hoped they had brought enough water today, not like yesterday at the party; this caused rather strange laughter.

  Response: the scruffy form of Titus Morellus advanced upon us, grimacing under his monumental wine headache—and bringing a new difficulty. His tribune came too. The last thing an investigation needs is a high-rank visitation, with embuggerance from an office-dweller who suddenly takes an interest. Even Tiberius groaned under his breath: Cassius Scaurus had decided to direct the operation personally.

  His presence in charge indicated how far the mobsters had grown in importance. As a result of Tiberius and Morellus unpicking their scams, Terentius was viewed as a rising criminal organiser. Greius was a major nightmare. Scaurus might have been playing footsie at the party; in reality he wanted to pluck both from his patch and launch them into exile.

  “We know where they are,” announced Morellus, proudly, although he was his pessimistic self: “Pulling them out won’t be simple. Happy people are having the best free buffet of their lives. We can’t just squash along into the middle of their row, whispering, ‘Can we have a private word outside, sirs?’ Imagine.”

  “There would be a riot.” Scaurus liked the idea.

  “They will see us coming,” mourned Morellus, “and they’ll skip.”

  Tiberius explained we had thought of that: hence our ludicrous costumes. Looking like an innocent part of the entertainment, he and I, gourd and ghost, would dance up to the two men. We would lure them from their seats as if claiming them to take part in a tipsy frolic, so the vigiles could grab them.

  “Let’s just think about this…” Scaurus took a moment while his brain churned through whether a cohort tribune was outranked by a civilian magistrate, and if it still applied when the aedile was cavorting in a home-made gourd suit.

  We had to move. Waiters were now returning from the seat tiers clattering empty bowls and well-picked platters. Colourful members from every field of entertainment were pressing in past them for the next stage of the evening. Scaurus decided: time to act and he would let us play our part.

  LXII

  The air was cold, colder than in the corridors, though not as nippy as it had been in the streets. A wall of sound hit us, like a battle. The city all around outside hummed with low-level festivity, but the real noise was here. Thousands of people talked and laughed loudly, all of them at once. Thousands of clashing perfumes—unguents, wine, foodstuffs, vomit and various body odours—were trapped within the great four-storey travertine oval. Cloudy grey skies hung overhead, but the night was free of rain.

  We had hurried around under the huge vaults to the correct vomitorium; its staircase was signalled by vigiles on surveillance. Once out in the stand, we reeled. Tonight, the usual all-in experience was increased by huge gusts of sheer pleasure. Rome feasting. Rome fully feasted in fact, now belching and farting. Romans, utterly joyous on holiday, freed from constraints, flush with their ruler’s personal generosity. It was more than bread and circuses; it was hand-formed fine rolls in pure white napkins and endless free wine, accompanied by every spectacle the Empire could supply. The fancy entertainment was now starting.

  High up above in the darkness, where the velarium could be pulled out for shade in the dangerous heat of summer, I was aware of some large, unfathomable, circular construction. But all eyes were drawn down to the sand-covered floor of the arena, where a whole troop of women gladiators bounded out with bare thighs, shrieks and wildly tossed shining hair. As they wielded their weapons with panache, they played up their notoriety. When women fought, the crowd loved it. Those girls were doing it for real, too, unless that was fake blood. Next, running out like little bundles of furious energy, a line of fighting dwarfs came to join them.

  Guided down the steps by vigiles, Tiberius and I were unnoticed, even in our costumes. As the fighters all went at it, the moves looked good, the skills perfected. If it was choreographed, so what? People said that even about professional gladiators. They needed real talent, even in fixed fights, or one slip and that real weaponry could cause real death.

  We had to dodge around wine-waiters, while new entertainers were appearing on stage: plump belly-dancers from the east with unexpectedly sinuous movements, the cracking castanets of stylised Spanish dancers, Syrian jugglers, actors and rope-balancers. All were in multicoloured costumes that might be shoddy when close up, but looked jewel-rich from high above. Right here in the stands came more actors and gymnasts, among whom I noticed blatant working-girls, openly available for hire at the Emperor’s expense. (He had made himself Censor for life: what kind of moral judge was he?) They offered sex to takers who, on their way outside, had to dodge among men doing tricks with lit sulphur matches. The gangsters must have left some available for these amazing fire-eaters.

  At the end of a row, like one of the audience, a vigilis nodded to us. We had come quite a long way down. I spotted Terentius, the man I had seen at the vigiles’ party last night. He sat barely a few rows up from the platforms where senators and equestrians had their elegant thrones. There was an empty space beside him at that moment; after some visual searching, I recognised Greius, firmly identified now as the thuggish friend of Pinarius. He had got himself down to the walkway behind the marble seats and stood chatting confidently to notables as if the imperial arena was his personal domain.

  It had started. Next year, if no one stopped them, this pair would be positioned down there among those special seats, schmoozing the snooty ranks with all kinds of corrupt propositions, setting their sights on untold political fixing. I touched Tiberius on the arm, warning him to wait. With a cheery wave to his fine new pals, Greius began clambering back to his own seat beside his mentor. He was light-footed and bursting with self-assurance.

  Terentius looked like what he was, if you knew his trade; otherwise he could have been any unlikeable businessman. He had the build of too heavy an eater, grey-haired, clean-shaven, square head, pouchy eyes, a straight, thin-lipped mouth when he stopped laughing, though today was for presenting himself as big-hearted and sociable. Even while he was joking with his young hopeful as Greius came back, or with other people in earshot, he had an intent stare. At rest, his inner stillness was chilling.

  As he flopped back beside Terentius, Greius casually shoved his expensive ankle boots among people in the row in front; though visibly irritated, they were not protesting. Still in his twenties, his facial bones were good enough and he was sufficiently well-built—no wonder women chased him—but I could see how with more years and looser living he would flesh out into another version of Terentius. He had crude intelligence and total daring. Now I knew what crimes he had committed, I could imagine him bursting into violence.

  Tiberius and I set off. As we moved down their row, apologising with silly quips as we stepped over people, Terentius had slung an arm man-to-man across the younger one’s shoulders. This was their relationship: the hard master and his willing pupil, the rising star valued by an honoured warlord who had given him independence. Now they were out together in public. The older was showing off the younger—This is my boy, my trusty, my hard fixer—his own position boosted by possession of his clever cadet.

  Playing two theatre comedians, we reached them. “You!” cried Tiberius, grey-eyed and moon-faced from inside his vegetable foliage. As he beckoned to Tere
ntius insistently, I echoed the call with Greius, adding mournful whoo-hoos. “Zoilus!” cried the crowd. For a famously dud performer, Zoilus had an impressive customer portfolio. I was proud to be impersonating him.

  We deployed that embarrassing game, where hapless members of an audience are dragged out to be humiliated. The crowd eggs them on. Refusal is impossible. Once picked for the ritual, the sheepish victims must oblige. They have to rise and go along with it, looking as if they are enjoying every moment.

  We hooked our pair out. The rest of their row cheered, standing up to help push the victims along with us. The people in the row below, whose garments and hair Greius had kicked, enjoyed it particularly. Tiberius bobbed back to the stairs hand-in-hand with Terentius while I swooped around his younger companion, pulling and beckoning.

  As we all reached the row end, they spotted our back-up and realised it was a set-up. Their bodyguards had been sitting behind them and were still there, roaring at this comedy. While Terentius began signalling angrily to his men, I continued the drama. Audience members could not tell whether it was truth or fantasy: “This poor man is mad and does not know it! We have come from his family to collect him for his own safety.”

  I whipped off the shroud (unlike Tiberius in the gourd suit, I had on a decency tunic underneath). I flung the material around the astonished criminal, rapidly binding Terentius’s arms and fashioning it into a very smelly strait-jacket. Vigiles then gripped his trussed body in a fire-fighters’ lift and bundled him up the stairs out of the stands before his bodyguards were even on their feet. Meanwhile Tiberius simply skittled Greius, knocked him over and sat on him.

  Troops were supposed to help us. Those I could see were squaring up to the row of bodyguards who, after feasting for hours, were only sluggishly responding to the situation.

  “Tiberius, be careful!” I stood on one of Greius’s arms, which was flailing on the stairs.

  “The lads will come back,” Tiberius mouthed at me, over the crowd noise. Greius was ten years younger and clearly well-exercised.

  “Don’t let him up. He’ll get away.”

  “No, I’ll hold him.”

  That was not easy. I gave the vigiles an urgent shout but too much was going on. The Emperor’s banquet had reached the exotic-birds stage. Enormous flocks, whose cost must have emptied the Treasury, were being released for the audience. The flamingos were extremely pink. Someone must have been going to the fish market and feeding them bucketfuls of shrimps. Masses of pheasants and guinea fowl, bemused in the lamp-splattered darkness and stunned by the noise, soared up to roof level, flew short distances among the looped-back shade canvas, knocked into the fixing poles, then fluttered down to be stuffed into folds of dinner outfits. Game birds from distant provinces were crazily flying everywhere. People stood up trying to catch them, teetering and stumbling off balance into lower seat rows. Applause erupted, drowning out yells from Greius, as the people shouted adoration for the Emperor, calling Domitian their Master and God.

  Tiberius, my strict traditionalist, hated that. No man could be a living god. Even emperors are “first among equals,” only called divine after death. He cursed, so angry he lost his grip on his violently struggling captive. Political protest was pointless in so large a crowd—and a bad idea anyway. Worse, Greius, who must have been very fit after all his love-making, bucked himself free. I made a grab; he knocked me almost off my feet.

  He headed down the stairs. As I staggered into a man with an armful of pheasants, Tiberius was concerned for me, but I cried, “Run!”

  He furiously flew after Greius. Rebalancing myself, I followed. We all ducked our heads as a massive new shower of treats and trinkets was released, along with coupons for prizes, some of which would be high-value. People reaching frantically for Domitian’s gifts scrambled in our way.

  Beyond, in the arena, came greater activity. Now darkness had fallen, the large metal structure I had half noticed earlier, was brought into action. All the waiters in charge of seat rows simultaneously quenched lights throughout the stadium tiers. Then dim figures ran along ropes in the open roof with torches—the sailors who managed the velarium—as, slowly, a huge chaplet of flickering stars was lowered towards us. The whole effect was magical: it became a single monstrous sun. I vaguely remembered Spendo talking about asphalt and knew it had been planned for days. Who knows how they really did it, but the light was so bright it filled the arena and must have been visible from the Forum outside.

  Most attention was on the great sun, but mine followed Greius. As best I could, I was stumbling down the steps, following Tiberius. Around the great arena ran a wall to keep spectators safe from gladiators and wild animals. Greius had hurled himself onto and over it. He took a flying leap down. Tiberius and I balked at following him over, but we leaned and looked. There was a layer of sand on the wooden floor, not deep enough to break his fall. He was strong, athletic and, though he staggered badly, somehow he managed to regain his legs. Then, while he struggled to get his balance, he found himself apprehended unexpectedly. Two sword points pinned him.

  “Stop!”

  “Hold it right there, Lover-boy!”

  He was trapped between two women, normal business for Greius. But Zoe and Chloe would never be playthings of his. I remembered them at Prisca’s baths, gossiping with Spendo about the nut-scams and what Tiberius was trying to do, bitterly deploring the warehouse and arson deaths. Zoe and Chloe belonged to the colourful part of the Aventine community that despised all authority—including the power of criminals. If Terentius and Greius thought everyone would roll over and be preyed on, they had miscalculated.

  “Cornellus Greius! We know who you are!”

  “We know what you’ve done, you bastard!”

  The flaming sun allowed me to see from the stand that the girls were sweating and bloodied; they had been seriously fighting. Greius, too, realised these Amazons meant business: he kept very still, risking nothing. Zoe and Chloe gestured for him to start walking. They herded him towards one of the gladiators’ entrance gates.

  Crisis. The huge burning ball that was Sol Invictus must have been suspended on ropes. Had its fiery heat burned through them? It lurched, then abruptly fell. With a sudden roar the fireball sank down as if plunging below some ocean horizon in a dramatic sunset. Parts disintegrated, sending blazing shards in all directions as they hit the ground.

  Zoe and Chloe looked as if they were expecting something, but they ran for cover. Greius took to his heels too but was stopped in his tracks. Rollicking out from the gate he wanted to use came a line of vigiles siphon-engines. Their well-trained mules put on a spurt. With a fireball to quench, they were practically galloping. Six cohorts’ water carts rumbled across the sand and began pumping furiously to douse Sol. Their presence was more than a general safety measure. I knew there was a planned exercise; from the precision moves, it looked as if this was all part of it.

  Greius turned a different way but met a seventh engine. As its team began to push down on its two operating bars, I saw an ecstatic figure, still dressed in his armour as a fighting dwarf, encouraging them to haul the handles faster up and down. Bouncing on top was Spendo, joyfully screaming, “Go! Go! Go, boys!” He was waving the hose nozzle.

  My hand flew to my mouth. I remembered again talking with Spendo about his plans for today, then vigiles telling me he had been working on something special with them. I saw what was about to happen. Whether Spendo intended to aim straight at Greius as he lit up is a big question, but it happened.

  The Fourth’s siphon-engine had been adapted to use in the light show. It was no longer a water cannon. Spendo had turned it into a battle-winning implement: used at the siege of Delium, as reported by Thucydides … He had made a flame-thrower.

  Nothing like this had happened in Rome since Nero had tied his Christians to stakes and burned them with bitumen as human candles. For today’s crowd, civilised by twenty years of Flavian restraint, it was thrilling yet horrific. A silence fell, broke
n only by Greius screaming.

  He stood no chance. Once the stream of molten fire struck him full in the belly, he was done for. The force knocked him over. He dropped to his knees shedding great blisters of skin. One of the kinder cohorts turned their engine his way but water made the chemical flames burn even more fiercely. Vigiles sped up with other equipment, big ex-slaves not needing orders, efficient men who knew their job. A huge esparto grass mat was raised by its corners, flollopped like a giant jellyfish, then slung sideways to cover him. Men stood on the edges to keep out the air. Eventually the fire was smothered. But when it was safe to raise the mat without reignition, Quintus Cornellus Greius was past saving. He had died underneath it in agony.

  * * *

  The Fourth Cohort’s engine had trundled on across the sand. Now we saw what that flame-thrower was for: the others had pumped water on Sol Invictus, leaving the great disc completely dark. Then a fierce blast of fire relit it. Once the whole apparatus was burning once more, the Undying Sun slowly rose again in symbolic triumph.

  LXIII

  Tiberius and I left the stand, holding hands as we tried to steady one another.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “No, but I am sorry to make you see that.”

  I did feel sick. To watch anyone die is difficult, let alone in such a terrible way. Greius had killed the nut-sellers by suffocation and fire, but it would take some time to accept how apt his punishment had been.

  * * *

  At the bottom of the vomitoria there are wide spaces under the Amphitheatre carcass. Where we exited, key figures were gathering. The public and serving staff were being kept out of this area by barricades and by the vigiles. By the time we descended unsteadily, the Fourth’s siphon-engine was racketing back from the arena. As Spendo strutted along beside it, I could hear him yammering about the fiery sun: “Those ropes are going to give way any minute. We can’t relight a second time if it crashes. They ought never to have dropped it down from the top. I was for hauling it up from the ground on A-frames…” I could not bear listening.