SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  As he staggered wearily off to his bed, Gnaeus Carbo turned to me and said something terribly obvious but unexpected and weighted with much trouble to come.

  “Decius, my friend, let me tell you something: If the Senate thinks Lucullus will wait until March to invade Armenia, they are wrong. He ordered me to return to my legion no later than the end of January, even though that means a sea voyage at the worst season. He will strike before March, while the Senate dithers here.”

  I bade him good night and retired to my own room to think. What he had just said was almost certainly true. One thing our generals knew above all else was that the Senate could debate forever. They dithered with Hannibal at the gates and they would dither while Lucullus made an unsanctioned invasion of Armenia. If he were successful, he would say that he had informed the Senate of his intentions and they had not forbidden him to act. With the loot of Armenia in his purse and his army at his back, the Senate would grant him a triumph, give him a title, perhaps Asia-ticus or Armenicus or some such, and that would be that. Should he fail, he would be condemned and exiled, although in all likelihood one of his subordinates would probably murder him, as Perperna had murdered Sertorius. As I have said, politics was a high-stakes game in Rome in those days.

  5

  THE NEXT TWO DAYS WERE MERCI-fully uneventful. Rome is usually very quiet the day after a public holiday, and the first day was no exception. The second was devoted to an annual religious ceremony of the Cae-cilian gens. All of the oldest families have these private rites, and it is forbidden for a family member to describe them outside the family. On the third day, things began to happen again.

  While it was yet early in the day, I returned from my morning calls to find Gnaeus Carbo packed and ready to set off on the next leg of his journey, to his native Caere. Before he left, he took a small pouch from his belt and shook out two identical bronze disks.

  “Would you do me the honor of accepting one of these?” He handed them to me and I examined them. Each was embossed on one side with the face of Helios, pierced just above his crown so that the charm could be worn on a chain or thong. On the reverse side had been carved both our names. They were tokens of hospitium. They represented a very ancient custom of reciprocal hospitality. This meant far more than a friendly overnight stay. The exchange of these tokens imposed a most solemn obligation on both parties. When one visits the other’s place of dwelling, the host is obliged to provide the guest with all necessities, to render medical attention if the guest falls sick, to protect him from enemies and give him aid in court, and to provide him with a funeral and honorable burial should he die. To underscore the sacred nature of hospitium, below our names was carved the thunderbolt of Jupiter, god of hospitality. We would incur his wrath should we violate the requirements of hospitium. We could pass these tokens to our descendants, who would be obligated to honor them long after we both should be dead.

  “I accept, gladly,” I said, touched by the gesture. It was just the sort of old-fashioned honor I could have expected from an old-fashioned man like Gnaeus Carbo.

  “I will take my leave, then. Farewell.” With no more ceremony, Carbo shouldered his pack and walked out of my house. We remained good friends until he died many years later in Egypt.

  I took the token to my bedroom and placed it in the little wooden box of carved olive wood inlaid with ivory where I kept many such tokens, some of them going back for generations and entitling me to hospitality from families in Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, even one from Carthage, a city that no longer exists. As I put it away, something about the token tickled a memory at the back of my mind, but it failed to elicit any great insights. Just then I had too much on the front of my mind to pay much attention to phantom memories lurking at the back.

  Foremost in my thoughts, getting in the way of all rational consideration of my very real problems and dangers, was Claudia. Try as I might, I could not drive the woman from my mind. I kept remembering her as I had last seen her, with the lamplight making a corona around her. I tried to think how I might have acted differently, but I could not. I tried to think of a way to make things right between us, but I could think of nothing. These were bad thoughts to be entertaining when I was concerned with murder, arson and the likelihood of a treasonous conspiracy involving highly placed Romans and a foreign king who was the sworn enemy of Rome.

  Men, especially young men, do not think clearly when their passions come into play. Philosophers have always assured us of this. Many of Rome’s fortune-tellers offered as a sideline a potion guaranteed to rid one of this morbid fixation on a particular woman. I even considered consulting one of them. But then I had to admit to myself that I did not want to be free of my infatuation. Why young men actually enjoy this sort of suffering is a great mystery, but it is undeniable that they do.

  Cato interrupted these musings. “Master, there is a woman to see you. She won’t state her business.”

  I thought it might be one of the nuisance visits every public official dreads, but I needed some sort of distraction. “I will see her in my reading-room.”

  I put on my toga and went to sit behind my desk, which was stacked with enough parchment to make me look very busy, indeed. In truth, these were mostly personal papers and letters, since I left all my official writings in the Archives, where there were public slaves to keep track of them. A few minutes later Cato showed in a young woman who looked vaguely familiar. Then I remembered. It was Claudia’s serving-maid, the wiry little Greek girl.

  “Chrysis, isn’t it?” I said coolly. Ordinarily, slaves do not call upon public officials, save to deliver messages from the freeborn. Cato would never have let her in had he known her status. But then, when they don’t dress like slaves, how is one to tell?

  “I am Chrysis.” Her face was widest at the cheekbones, tapering to a small, pointed chin. With her cool green eyes and russet hair, she resembled a malicious little vixen. She moved as if her limbs had multiple joints.

  “Why did you not identify yourself as Claudia’s slave to my man?”

  “Because I’m not a slave,” she said. Her name was Greek, but her accent was not. I couldn’t place it, but I had heard its like recently. My fixation with her mistress was doing terrible things to my memory.

  “Then what are you to Claudia?”

  “Her companion.” She used the Greek word, probably to avoid the Latin equivalent, which also means “prostitute” when applied to a woman.

  “Well, Claudia is an unconventional woman. What did you wish to see me about?”

  Her lips quirked up at the corners. “My Lady Claudia wishes to see you.” This was what I both hoped and feared she would say.

  "When last we spoke, Claudia did not seem to want to see me again, ever.”

  Still wearing her enigmatic smile, the strange little woman walked around my desk. Hands demurely behind her back, she made her hips move as fluidly as a python’s spine. Somehow she invested the simple act of walking with an indescribable lewdness. Standing now beside me, hands still behind her back, she bent until her face was inches from mine.

  “But my lady often speaks from anger, rather than from her heart. She finds you a very pretty gentleman. She burns for you and cannot sleep.”

  At least it was clear why she did not wish to commit such a message to writing. Why she should entrust it to this astonishing little slut was less so. Of course, I had doubts whether the message was sincere, but it so mirrored my own feelings that I tried to convince myself that it was.

  “Well, we can’t very well let your mistress go sleepless, can we? How does she propose to resolve this dilemma?”

  “She wishes you to come to her tonight, to a house she owns not far from here. She will go there after dark, and I will come here to guide you to her.”

  “Very well,” I said, my mouth strangely dry, restraining myself from wiping sweaty palms on my toga. The combination of my unresolved feelings for Claudia and the aura of sensuality exuded by this rank little animal reduced
me to feigning a dignified indifference. I doubt strongly that I fooled Chrysis.

  “Until tonight, then,” she said. She swayed out of my reading-room as soundlessly as a ghost. So silently that I suspected that she was barefoot, although only a person of uncommon fortitude would brave the Roman streets without sandals.

  I released a long-pent breath. There were still many hours before dark, and I needed something with which to occupy myself. For a change, I had no official business to transact, so I decided to draft some letters. I began one, but could not get past the salutation. Finishing that, I had forgotten to whom I was writing it. After the fourth try, I threw my stylus against the wall in disgust. It was a gesture of pique entirely uncharacteristic of me.

  I think better walking than sitting, so I left my house and began to ramble aimlessly. It was folly to think of Claudia, so I dragged my thoughts back to the case at hand. I had so many facts, and so many hints, but nothing with which to tie them all together, as the rods of punishment are tied around the ax of execution in the Roman fasces.

  I walked through the ancient streets, amid the familiar sights and sounds and smells of Rome, and I pondered upon what I might be missing. What did I have? Two dead men, the unfortunate Paramedes of Antioch and the wretched Sin-istrus. A great fire that might have burned the city to the ground, had the wind been from the south that night. I had Publius Claudius and his sister, and a mysterious farm overseer near Baiae named H. Ager. I had the foreign prince, Tigranes, and I had the mighty but absent General Lucullus and King Mithridates, the latter now enjoying the hospitality of the Elder Tigranes. I might even throw in the late General Sertorius, whose rebellion in Spain had brought him to a bad end. I stopped in mid-step.

  What, I thought, had been the connection between Sertorius and Mithridates? They were separated by the entire width of the Mediterranean. They were united only by a dislike for Rome. One may make a distinction in the case of Sertorius, of course. He was only on the outs with the then-current government in Rome, the anti-Marian party. He had claimed to be the legitimate government of Rome, in exile, and had even cobbled together his own Senate, made up of out-of-favor malcontents.

  So how had these two enemies of Rome carried on their intrigue? Why, through the only other naval power in the Mediterranean besides Rome. To wit, the pirates. To the astonishment of passersby, I stood there and cursed myself for a besotted fool. Only a few days before, young Titus Milo had mentioned his days in the navy, pirate-chasing. Had my mind been working properly, that alone should have started it working in the right direction, had it not been occupied with lubricious thoughts of Claudia. It is also the nature of young men to blame their own shortcomings on women.

  Once Carthage had been the premier naval power on the sea. We had destroyed her fleet. Rather, Carthage had destroyed several Roman fleets, but we kept building new ones and sending them out until Carthage was eliminated as a naval threat. Having done that, we neglected our navy, concentrating as always on our preeminence as land soldiers.

  Into this naval vacuum had slipped the pirates. They had always been there. In some coastal areas, piracy was still regarded as an honorable profession, as it was in ancient times. After all, had not Ulysses and Achilles blithely raided unoffending coastal villages as they made their way to and from Troy?

  The fact was, these pirates operated freely in what we liked to call “our sea.” No shipping was safe, but shipping was not the chief victim of the pirates. Mainly, they raided coastal districts for slaves. The great pirate haven on the island of Delos had become the pivotal slave market for the whole Mediterranean world. Those nations that were not clients of Rome got no protection from the pirates. Those that were clients got very little protection anyway.

  During the Servile War, Spartacus had contracted with the pirates to ferry his army of slaves and deserters from Messina to freedom somewhere, probably out at the far end of the Black Sea. Crassus had got wind of it and bribed the pirates to betray Spartacus, otherwise that splendid villain might have gotten away clean. We hated to admit it, but the pirates of the Mediterranean formed a sort of mobile nation, richer and more powerful than most land-based kingdoms.

  I looked about me, and found that I was in the warehouse district near the Tiber. Each of us is given, at birth, a genius, and in that odd way that these guardian and guiding spirits have, mine had led my steps while my conscious mind was otherwise occupied, and had brought me to the site of the beginning of all my problems. Nearby rose the immense bulk of the Circus Maximus. Before me, construction was well advanced on the new warehouse that was to replace the one owned by Paramedes and destroyed by fire.

  It came to me that my genius was behaving even more subtly than usual, because this was not merely the Circus and warehouse district. It was also the district where lived Rome’s small but wealthy and flourishing Oriental community. Here were to be found the Asiatics, the Bithynians, the Syrians, Armenians, Arabians, Judaeans and the occasional Egyptian. This, I suddenly realized, was exactly where I wanted to be. Here, if anywhere in Rome, I would be able to pry loose some information about the pirates.

  I walked another couple of streets, until only one block of tenements and storehouses separated me from the Circus. From each shop front and storehouse came the fragrances of the whole Mediterranean world. Incense and spices were stored here, and rare, fragrant woods. The odors of fresh-sawn cedar from the Levant and pulverized pepper from even farther east mingled with those of frankincense from Egypt and oranges from Spain. It smelled like Empire.

  The shop of Zabbai, a merchant from Arabia Felix, stood open, recessed beneath the arches of a shady arcade. Zabbai was an importer of the most precious commodity in the world: silk. So short is human memory that even now men will tell you that Romans first saw silk when the Par-thians unfurled their silken banners before the army of Cras-sus at Carrhae, but this is nonsense. It is true that Romans had never seen silk in such quantity or so brilliantly dyed before beholding those banners, but the cloth had been sold in Rome for at least a hundred years before that, although much adulterated and mixed with threads of lesser fabric.

  Zabbai was a typical Eastern merchant, rich and polite and oily as an old lamp. Arabia Felix owed its happy title to its geographical location, a place where the land routes from the Far East met the Red Sea, with all its African coastal trade, at the spot most convenient for transshipment of goods to the nearby Mediterranean coast.

  His clerk rose from a little table and bowed deeply when I entered. “How may I serve you, master?” He didn’t know me by sight, but he knew an official when he saw one.

  “Summon Zabbai,” I instructed him. Minutes later, the man himself emerged from a curtained back room, grinning and clasping his hands together. He wore flowing robes of splendid material and a silken headcloth. His beard was long and drawn to a sharp point. He was an exotic creature, but it was a relief to see an Easterner who was not trying to be a Greek.

  “My friend Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, what honor you do me, how your presence brightens my day, how I rejoice …” and so on, for quite some time. Oriental effusiveness is a bore to a Roman, but I daresay Easterners consider us churlish and uncultured in our direct bluntness.

  “My esteemed friend Zabbai,” I said when he paused for breath, “I come today not on business, but on a matter of state.”

  “Ah, politics! Do you stand for the quaestorship?”

  “No, I won’t be eligible for another six years. This is not a matter of domestic politics, but of foreign policy. With your wide travels and far-flung contacts, and most especially your constant dealings with ships and shipping, I thought you the best man to consult.”

  He was vastly flattered, or pretended to be. Flinging his arms wide, he said, “Anything! Anything to be of service to the Senate and People of Rome! How may I serve? No, but first, let us be comfortable. Please, follow me.”

  We ducked through the curtain and passed through a storeroom in which thin sticks of incens
e burned constantly to protect the bales of precious silk from the damage of dampness or insects. Beyond that, we emerged into a beautiful courtyard. It was laid out in the traditional Roman manner, with a fountained pool at the center, but with the Eastern addition of flower boxes, which sported a few winter blossoms. Arabs come from a desert country, and they love water and growing things even more than do Italians.

  Near the pool stood a low table of precious wood with a colorful tiled top, where we seated ourselves on cushions stuffed with feathers and spices. Only an Oriental would think of a luxurious touch like that. Servants brought us dishes of nuts and dried fruits and candied flower petals, along with an excellent wine that had been heavily watered, as befitted the early hour.

  When I had partaken enough of his hospitality to satisfy politeness, I got down to business. “Now, Zabbai, my friend, I would like for you to share your knowledge of the pirates who infest our sea.”

  Zabbai stroked his beard. “Ah, the pirates. I deal with those difficult businessmen many times in a year. What do you wish to know of them?”

  “First, some general knowledge. How do you go about your yearly transactions with these romantic fortune-seekers?”

  “Like most merchants whose goods move by sea, I find it most convenient to pay a yearly tribute, rather than have to negotiate separately over each seized cargo or factor to be ransomed.”

  “Yet you say you must deal with them many times each year. How is that?”

  “While the greater fleets cooperate, and in most cases a single payment made at Delos is sufficient to buy them all off, yet there are small, independent fleets that obey no master. These are a special nuisance in the western sea, especially near the Pillars of Hercules, the coast of southern Spain and the northern African coast near Old Carthage. These rogues will take my cargoes and agents, then give me a certain time in which to ransom them. Failing that, they will be taken to Delos and sold. It is a great nuisance.”