SPQR VIII: The River God's Vengeance

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Pompey has agreed to appoint a colleague as soon as he has restored the peace,” Nepos said. “His colleague will be our current interrex, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica.” He gestured grandly as the imposing name rolled off his tongue. Scipio bowed modestly.

  “It’s the perfect choice,” Messala pointed out. “Pompey is the most glorious soldier of the age and immensely popular with the masses; but he has no family, and you know how the people are about names. Once Pompey has restored order, he will have a colleague who combines two of the greatest names. The clan of Caecilius Metellus is famed for its moderation and for its opposition to Pompey, thus allaying fears of a tyranny. The name of Scipio is synonymous with ‘Savior of the State.’ In fact, Pompey will retire to the country and leave Metellus Scipio to preside. I think we can look forward to a much happier and more orderly Rome.”

  “I approve,” I said, nodding brightly, waiting for the axe to fall.

  “There will be much to be done once the City is set to rights,” Father said. “We’ve decided to get the Plebeian Assembly to prorogue your office at the end of the year.”

  Cold talons of horror gripped my heart. “You can’t mean you want me to be aedile for another year! I’ve held this office for only three months, and I’m ready to fall on my sword!”

  “Oh, it will be much more agreeable than this year’s tenure,” Messala said, smiling. “You won’t have to put on another set of Games; you can leave that to the other aediles. Pompey has promised to put his own freedmen at your disposal. They are extremely capable. They’ve been sorting out the grain situation for the last two years.”

  “Think how popular it will make you,” Father said. “Everyone will know what a sacrifice you’ll be making. You’ll have your praetorship for the asking.”

  “And,” Nepos put in, “it will be one more year you won’t be spending with Caesar in Gaul.”

  This caught me up short. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe another year in office wouldn’t be so bad after all. Of course, these three clearly wanted me to exercise that office according to their wishes, but we could see about that when the time came.

  “This bears thinking about,” I said. “I’d have no objection to cooperating with Pompey, so long as his powers are limited and constitutional. I’ll have no part of a dictatorship.”

  “Use your head,” Father said disgustedly. “What need would he have of you or anyone else if he was dictator? He could order anything he wanted in that case, and not a thing any of us could do about it. This way, we keep our authority and we help to guide Pompey’s actions, and that is important. Fine soldier and governor that he is, Pompey is a political jackass. He needs us more than we need him.”

  I looked at Valerius Messala. “And what do you get out of this?”

  He arched his eyebrows. “Why, the satisfaction of being of some modest service to Rome.”

  I nodded. “So you’re Pompey’s middleman in this, eh? Putting together a Caecilius Metellus–Pompey coalition to dominate Roman politics?” I cut a look at Nepos. Messala would have approached the family through its only member in Pompey’s camp.

  “It is what Rome needs,” he said, unapologetically. “Your family forms the single most important bloc in the Senate. You are also vastly infiuential in the Centuriate Assembly. Pompey is also strong in the Centuriate Assembly, and he is the darling of the Plebeian Assembly. It would be an unbeatable combination.”

  “Caesar has strong support in all three bodies,” I pointed out.

  “Caesar will be tied up in Gaul for years to come,” Nepos said. “Much can happen to him. He could die there. If he loses just one battle, all his popularity will be gone. In the meantime, we will be preeminent in Rome.”

  “Please,” Messala said, “you speak as if Caesar and Pompey were rivals. They are close friends. Do they not say so themselves, often and publicly?”

  “Save that for the rostra,“ I advised him. “We all know that those two will be at swords’ points before much longer. Two such men will crowd Rome intolerably.”

  “That’s for the future,” Father said. “Our concern is getting Rome through this year and the next.” Abruptly, he stood. “We must be going. Important as you like to fancy yourself, my son, we have many other calls to make. Good evening to you.”

  I walked them to the door, only to find Julia sitting in the atrium with Asklepiodes, their heads together, deep in conversation. They stood when the great men walked in, both of them bowing formally. The four acknowledged them perfunctorily and walked out, on their doubtless nightlong mission of arm twisting. This was how much of the business of the Senate was done. The loud fioor debates were usually just the final stage.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight,” I said to Asklepiodes when they were gone. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting out here.”

  “Your gracious lady has been wonderfully attentive,” he assured me.

  “Let me offer you a late dinner, at least. I, for one, am famished.”

  “I’ve already given orders,” Julia said. “The triclinium?“

  “In my study,” I told her.

  We retired to the little room off the small courtyard with its tiny pool and fountain. A goatskin bag of documents from the Tabularium sat on the fioor next to my desk. Moments later, my slaves laid out cold chicken, boiled eggs, sliced fruit, bread, pots of oil and honey, and cups of watered wine, lightly spiced and heated.

  “A bit Spartan,” I said, by way of apology, “but I eat when I can these days. Never time for a proper dinner.”

  “This is splendid,” he assured me. “I would rather help you and eat on the fiy than put in any ordinary day’s work followed by a lavish banquet. You’ve no idea how bored I get.” He spoke and ate rapidly, interrupting his words for small bites of food and sips of wine. He was an excitable little man for a philosopher.

  “Ah, you’ve learned something!” I said. “Did the bodies display signs of foul play?”

  “I couldn’t say,” he said, dipping bread in a mixture of oil and garum. “I didn’t see them.”

  “Eh?”

  “It seems there are no bodies.”

  “Just a moment,” I said. “I distinctly remember bodies. Two of them. Lucius Folius and his wife. I couldn’t be mistaken.”

  “Oh, certainly there were bodies; I have no doubt of it.” He vastly enjoyed my perplexity, as usual.

  “Perhaps you had best describe your mission, in sequence and in detail.”

  “Excellent idea. Well, from the ludus I went to the Libitinarii quarter near the Temple of Libitina. A bit of questioning got me to the establishment of one Sextus Volturnus, where the bodies had been taken from the destroyed insula. Upon questioning, the proprietor informed me that the bodies in question had been claimed.”

  “By whom?” I asked.

  “An heir presented himself, a certain Caius Folius, from Bovillae.”

  “Young Antonius told me Folius was from Bovillae,” I said.

  “It seems that the heir was in some haste to remove the bodies for burial in their ancestral town. He had them loaded on a cart and taken away.”

  “Did this heir claim the bodies of any of the household slaves?”

  “I didn’t think to ask. Excellent wine, by the way. Julia has improved your cellar.”

  “Did this Caius Folius present any proof as to his identity?”

  Asklepiodes’s eyebrows went up. “I did not think to ask that either. Is it customary?” He chewed an olive and spat the pit into a bowl that was rapidly filling with fruit peels and cheese rinds. “My old friend, you sent me there to examine the bodies, not to play the role of a State freedman.”

  “Just so,” I said. You had to let Asklepiodes do things his own way. He could be as temperamental as a Greek tragedian. “It’s unfortunate that you couldn’t get a look at them.”

  “And yet my visit was not entirely unfruitful.”

  “How so?” I asked patiently.

  “I spo
ke with the undertaker’s assistants. These men had the task of washing the bodies, disguising injuries, dressing hair, applying cosmetics, and so forth, to make them presentable for the funeral. They are highly skilled and, in their own way, are nearly as knowledgeable about wounds as many surgeons and physicians. I asked them about the condition of the bodies of Lucius Folius and his wife.”

  “And?”

  “Those who’d washed the bodies informed me that there were no cuts or severe abrasions. They might almost have died of suffocation like so many of the others, except that there were no signs of struggle.”

  “Struggle?” I said.

  “Yes. Suffocating people, unless unconscious, usually fight frantically, striking and kicking against whatever obstacle is pinning them down. When the medium is a relatively unyielding building material such as wood, stone, or brick, there is often extensive laceration of the hands, feet, elbows, and knees.”

  “That makes sense.” I shuddered even to contemplate so hideous a situation. It makes death on the end of a Gaul’s spear seem pleasant by comparison.

  “The hairdresser told me that there were no lacerations of the scalps, and he detected no shifting of the skull bones beneath the scalps. Had the bodies been dropped into the basement to land on their heads hard enough to break their necks, strongly depressed skull fractures would certainly have been the result.”

  “So,” I said, “their necks were broken before they dropped into the basement.”

  “Exactly. This is confirmed by another curious factor.” The wine had warmed him, and he was slipping into his enthusiastic teaching mode.

  “Tell me about it.” Asklepiodes was always interesting, even when he carried on to excessive length.

  “You must understand, here I speak of an area that is not within my realm of expertise. As physician to the gladiators, I am accustomed to treating wounds almost immediately after their infiiction. However, I have studied the writings of scholars dealing with every aspect of medicine, attended lectures by all the greatest physicians, held long and extensive discussions with many of them, so I am not entirely unacquainted with the subject of postmortem medical study.”

  “This being?” I inquired.

  “The study of the changes that take place in a body after death. There are few experts on the subject.”

  “I can well imagine,” I said. “Most people pay a physician to make them well again, not to keep track of how they rot.”

  “It is a popular misconception that bodies merely decay immediately after death,” he said.

  I thought of the Puticuli. “From recent experience, I can assure you that they rot.” I poured myself another cup.

  “So they do, and we are in the habit of burning corpses within a day or two of death for that reason. But there is a quite regular and predictable sequence of stages through which corpses pass in the progress of bodily dissolution, and much may be inferred from these. The Libitinarii informed me, for instance, that the bodies of Lucius Folius and his wife were discolored on the dorsal surface. That is, there were deep purple, bruiselike discolorations of the back, the buttocks, the rear surface of the thighs, and so forth.

  “This postmortem condition is common and is called ‘lividity.’ The learned Simonides of Antioch has written extensively of this condition, and it seems to come about thus: During life, blood is distributed somewhat evenly throughout the tissues and organs of the body. It is also under a certain amount of pressure. We have all seen how blood oozes from a minor cut, pours freely from a larger blood vessel, and when an artery is severed, will actually spurt for several feet. The exact mechanism by which this occurs is a matter of considerable philosophical dispute.

  “Upon cessation of life, this pressure and distribution cease, and the blood settles to the lowest part of the body. In the case of a supine individual, such as the late couple, that would be the rearmost area of the body. Living blood is bright red. When the body is dead, it quickly turns rust colored, then an almost blackish brown, resulting in the bruise color.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “I’ve been in command of details when we had to gather Roman dead from a battlefield a day or two after the fighting. If a man died lying on his side, that side was dark, the other was pale. And once I saw the body of a man who had fallen head down into a well and drowned that way. His head and shoulders had turned almost black.”

  “Exactly the phenomenon I mean. Simonides has written in some detail of the progression of this condition, with allowances for the time of year, bodily dissolution being far more rapid in hot weather than in cold. Degree of lividity can tell one with an experienced eye how long the deceased has lain in the same posture dead.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  He held up an admonitory finger. “Bear with me yet a little longer. The corpse handlers told me that the necks of both were broken quite cleanly, a severing of the neck vertebrae usually characteristic of a sharp, twisting action. A blow shatters the bones and hanging pulls them apart. It takes a rather freakish accident to wring the neck in such a fashion. I have seen it when, for instance, a charioteer is thrown headfirst into the spokes of a competitor’s vehicle. In the absence of any other injury to the head, I can only conclude that someone grasped the chin and the back of the skull of each victim and twisted violently.”

  “And would this feat require great muscular strength?” I asked him. This was exactly the train of thought my wrestling bout with Antonius had set in motion.

  “If the victims were soundly asleep, with all muscles perfectly relaxed, any person of moderate strength could have accomplished it, provided he had been instructed in the proper technique.”

  “And is there a special technique?”

  “Allow me to demonstrate.” He rose and fiexed his fingers.

  “Easy, now,” I cautioned him. “You’ve had a bit to drink and your control may not be all it should be.” Asklepiodes loved to demonstrate obscure and exotic means of killing people. More than once he had infiicted minor injuries upon me doing this.

  “I shall be delicate,” he assured me. “Now, an inexperienced person seeking to break a neck in this fashion will grasp the head thus.” He placed his left hand on the back of my head and with his right grasped my lower jaw, my chin in his palm and his thumb and fingers curling around the mandible. “In this way, when pressure is applied—” he began to twist and my jaw slid sideways until it creaked.

  “Ow!” I cried, never having mastered that Stoic attitude so admired by my contemporaries.

  “You see? Done this way, the lower jaw can dislocate before pressure has been applied sufficient to disjoint the vertebrae. It is much better to grasp the head thus.” He left his left hand where it was, and repositioned his right higher, so that the heel of the palm lay athwart the upper jaw, his thumb curling around my cheekbone. This time, when he twisted, my lower jaw moved little and I quickly felt the strain on my neck. I slapped the table in a wrestler’s surrender, and he released me.

  “You see?”

  “Clearly,” I admitted. “You think this is how it was done?”

  “I could say with certainty if I had been able to examine the bodies myself, but the description I had from the Libitinarii leads me to believe so. Keeping in mind that I have only secondhand descriptions to go on, but acknowledging that these descriptions came from knowledgeable sources, my conclusions are as follows: Lucius Folius and his wife were murdered in their bed, while asleep, by a person accomplished in the technique of snapping a neck swiftly and silently. They lay in that position, dead, for not less than four hours before the house collapsed and they were precipitated into the basement.”

  “Wonderful!” I commended him. “That is just the sort of information I wanted. Will you swear to this in court?”

  “With the disclaimers and hedges I have already specified, of course. But you must realize that there is no evidence now. The bodies, even the house, are all gone.”

  “Evidence doesn’t mean that
much in court,” I assured him. “A really loud voice helps a lot. A forceful assertion carries more weight than quiet evidence.” I told him about the switch pulled on me with the house timbers and the murder of the big slave.

  “It sounds as if someone is cleaning up after himself,” he said cheerily. “That slave, though, sounds like a fine candidate for the murder of the master and mistress.”

  I nodded, but there was much doubt in my mind. “That was my own thought, but there is much about that household that gives me pause. Let me tell you something that young Antonius related to me.” So I told him about the unfortunate cook and of the neck rings and punishment marks I had seen on the dead slaves at the disaster site.

  Asklepiodes shook his head and clucked. “How distasteful. Of course, as a Greek, I am quite prepared to believe Romans capable of any sort of enormity, but this seems the very epitome of bad taste.”

  “I have a feeling that until I have some idea of who was doing what in that house, and for what reasons, I will never get to the bottom of this. And it is plain that someone is making it his business to ensure that I learn nothing. In any case, your aid has been inestimable, as always.”

  “Then,” he said, rising, patting his belly, and belching all at the same time, “I will take my leave of you now. Please convey my compliments to your lady, together with my apologies that I could be of no greater aid in her difficulty.” With that enigmatic utterance, he left my study. I walked him to the gate, where his slaves waited patiently beside his litter.

  I longed to go over the documents sent from the Tabularium, but dim lamplight would be too much for my aching eyes, and I was weighed down by a dreadful fatigue. In our bedroom I found Julia waiting up for me. I undressed and lay down beside her.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  So I told her all the events of my long, long day. She laughed when I told her of my boat ride in the sewers, turned her face away in revulsion when I described the Puticuli, and sharpened attentively when I related my conference with the family elders and Messala.