SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  “So I’ve heard. It was Sergius Paulus this morning, wasn’t it? Damned Asiatics. The city’s filling up with them. Bad enough when they were just bringing in their foul gods and cults. Now they’re using their strangling cords, as if Roman steel weren’t good enough.”

  “Another sign of the times,” I agreed. A few minutes later young Milo arrived and I explained what I wanted.

  “Can you help him?” Macro asked.

  "Certainly. We can catch a barge going back downriver empty and be there before nightfall. It’s Hasdrubal you want to talk to. He’s a Phoenician out of Tyre. He used to have a shop down by the Venus dock.”

  “Let’s be off, then,” I said. We left Macro’s house and went to the river dock, a walk of only a few minutes. I had tucked the scarf Zabbai had given me inside my tunic and now I knotted it around my throat, soldier-fashion. I needed no more questions concerning the condition of my neck. As we walked, people waved to Milo and called his name. He waved back, smiling.

  “You’ve become well-known in your short time in the city,” I said.

  “Macro’s had me at work organizing the vote for the next elections.”

  “That’s months away,” I said. “It’s early to be out ward-heeling.”

  “That’s what Macro said. I told him that it’s never too early. He still thinks like an old-fashioned man. Most of them do. They think it’s like public service or the religious calendar, where there are days for business and days for sacrifice and holidays and such. I say you take care of business every day, all year. Just in the time I’ve been here, I’ve done twice the work of any ten of Macro’s men combined.”

  “Be careful with Macro,” I cautioned. “Men like him can turn against young men who rise too fast.” Then I saw three men walking toward us. We were passing near my house on our way to the river when one of them saw us and they walked toward us, their three bodies blocking the narrow street. In front was Publius Claudius.

  “Now this is fortunate,” Claudius said. “We were just at your house and your slave told us you had left town.”

  “I am on my way to catch a boat right now,” I told him. His two companions were hulking brutes, scarred arena veterans whose tunics bulged with weapons. “Was it a social call?”

  “Not precisely. I have certain advice for you, Decius, advice that our Consul Pompey is too polite to voice strongly enough. I want you to terminate all this snooping about in the doings of that Greek importer. Turn in a report stating quite truthfully that you were unable to find out who killed him and burned his warehouse.”

  “I see,” I said. “And Sergius Paulus?”

  He spread his hands. “The eunuch killed him. What could be simpler?”

  “What, indeed? Oh, and Marcus Ager, alias Sinistrus? What of his murder?”

  He shrugged. “Who cares? I warn you, Decius, turn in your report and no one will pursue the matter.”

  “You warn me, eh?” I was growing very tired of him and dangerously angry. “And under what authority do you make these demands, or should I say threats?”

  “As a concerned Roman citizen. Will you heed my warning, Decius?”

  “No. Now, get out of my way. You’re interfering with a Roman official in the pursuit of his duties.” I began to brush past him.

  “Strabo, Codes.” At Publius’s words, the two thugs reached into their tunics.

  “Claudius,” I said, “even you won’t attack a public official in daylight.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can do in my city!”

  I realized then, for the first time, that Publius Claudius was mad. Typical Claudian. The thugs were bringing daggers from beneath their tunics and I knew that I had misjudged the situation. Even Pompey would not move against me directly, but Publius would. Belatedly, I began to reach for my own weapons.

  “Excuse me, sir.” Milo stepped past me and slapped the two strong-arm men. Just that, openhanded slaps, one to the right and one to the left. The two massive men went down like sacrificial oxen beneath the priest’s ax. The sound of the two impacts was like breaking boards, and the men’s faces were bloodied as if by spiked clubs. I have mentioned the hardness of Milo’s palms. He pointed to Publius, who stood trembling with frustrated rage. “This one, too?”

  “No, he’s a patrician. You can kill them, but they don’t take humiliation well.”

  “And who is this?” Publius hissed.

  “Oh, forgive me. Where are my manners? Publius Claudius Pulcher, allow me to introduce Titus Annius Milo, late of Ostia and now a resident of our city, a client of Macro’s. Milo, meet Publius Claudius Pulcher, scion of a long line of Consuls and criminals. Was there anything else, Claudius?” I considered telling him what I had been doing with his sister, just to see if I could induce apoplexy, but I really wasn’t sure what I had done.

  “Don’t depend on your family to save you this time, Decius. This is no game for boys who aren’t willing to play it seriously, to the end.” He glared at Milo. “As for you, I suggest you go back to Ostia. This is my city!” Publius always spoke of Rome as if he were its sole proprietor.

  Milo grinned. “I think I’ll kill you now and save myself the trouble later.”

  "Not in front of me, you can’t!” I told him. “Just because a fool deserves to die doesn’t mean you can do it yourself.”

  Milo shrugged and flashed his smile at Claudius once more. “Later, then.”

  Publius nodded grimly. “Later.”

  We walked the rest of the way to the river without further violence. In later years I thought of how much trouble and grief I could have spared everybody by letting Milo kill Claudius that day. Even augurs cannot foresee the future, but can only divine the will of the gods through the signs they send. None but sibyls can look into the future, and they only speak gibberish. To me, on that day, Claudius was little more than a highborn nuisance, and Milo just an amiable young thug on the rise.

  At the docks we asked a few questions and found a barge about to head downriver after discharging its cargo. We went aboard and found seats in the bow. Soon the bargemen cast off and we were drifting downstream. The rowers maneuvered the craft into the swiftest part of the stream and then concentrated on keeping us in a favorable position, letting the Tiber do most of the work.

  This was a far more pleasant way to travel than by road. The wind was damp and chilly, but it would have been the same on the road, and there I would have been getting a sore backside riding a horse. The Via Ostiensis, like all highways near the city, was lined with tombs, as if reminders of mortality were really necessary. As if the tombs weren’t mournful enough, most of them were covered with the painted advertisements for political candidates, announcements of upcoming Games and the declarations of lovers.

  The river presented no such vulgar display. Once we were beyond the city, the Tiber floodplain was embellished with beautiful little farms, the occasional country houses of the wealthy and here and there a great latifundium with its own river wharf. After the continual uproar and clatter of the city, this travel by water was most restful. A following wind blew up, and the bargemen hoisted up their single, square sail, so that our progress was swifter and even more silent as the oars ceased to work against their tholes.

  “Is he typical?” Milo asked. “That fool Claudius, I mean. Is he what most of the Roman politicians are like? I’ve heard of him before. They say he wants to be a tribune.”

  I wanted to say no, Claudius was an aberration, that most were conscientious servants of the state who desired only to be of honorable service to the Senate and People. Unfortunately, I couldn’t.

  “Most are like him,” I said. “Publius is perhaps a little more ruthless, a little more mad.”

  Milo snorted. “I already like Rome. I think I’m going to like it even better.”

  We reached Ostia in late afternoon. I had only the sketchiest knowledge of the city, having embarked from there to go to Spain, at which time my friends had carried me aboard the ship quite drunk, so that my memo
ries were very hazy. I had come back by the slower but less perilous land route. I determined to learn a little about the city on this trip. When I reached the minimum age, I would stand for the quaestorship, and each year one quaestor was stationed in Ostia to oversee the grain supply. The many long wars had stripped Italy of most of her peasant farmers, and the lati-fundia were inefficient, so that we had come to rely on foreign grain.

  We passed the great naval harbor built for the wars with Carthage and now fallen into decay. In their sheds, beneath falling roofs, the old warships lay like dead warriors long after the battle, their ribs thrusting through rotting skin. A few sheds were kept up, and the ships inside were in good repair, stored for the winter with their masts, spars, sails and rigging removed. As we drifted past the commercial docks Milo named them for me: the Venus dock, the Vulcan, the Cupid, the Castor and the Pollux, and some half-dozen others.

  Dominating the city stood the great Temple of Vulcan, dedicated to the patron god of the city. From the Venus dock we walked to the city Forum, where two fine bronze statues of the Dioscuri stood, patrons of Ostia as they were of Rome. Indeed, Ostia was a more attractive city than Rome, far smaller and less crowded. The streets were broader and most of the public buildings were newer, many of them faced with gleaming white marble. The other buildings were constructed for the most part of brick. The Ostians eschewed plaster and whitewash, delighting in intricate and attractive brickwork.

  “It’s getting late,” Milo told me, “but we can get a few questions answered. Come on, let’s go to the theater.” From the Forum we took a broad street that led to the building in question. It seemed like an odd destination for men on our mission, but he was the guide.

  The theater was an imposing structure, constructed of marble-faced stone, semicircular in the Greek fashion. Rome at that time had no permanent theaters, having to rely on extremely flammable wooden buildings where the Senate met from time to time in hot weather.

  As it turned out, all the guilds, fraternities and corporations concerned with sea commerce had their offices beneath the three-tiered colonnade of the theater. It was an admirable use of a public space, centralizing the organizations, each of which paid a contribution for the upkeep of the building. As we walked beneath the arches, I admired the mosaic pavement of the curving walk that ran around the building. Before each office, the mosaic depicted the activity of the fraternity within. There were crossed oars for the rowers’ guild, amphorae for the wine importers, sails for the sailmakers and so forth. One mosaic depicted a naked man in the act of swimming. I asked Milo about this one.

  “Urinatores,” he said, “salvage divers. They’re a very important guild here. Storms and accidents sink ships here every year. There’s always lots of salvage and channel-clearing to be done. Their work is necessary and quite dangerous, so they’re respected men.”

  “I should imagine,” I said. Only fourteen miles away, and yet so different from Rome that the two cities might have been at opposite ends of the sea. “Where are we going?”

  “Here.” He stood on a mosaic depicting the three Fates at their loom: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

  “This needs some interpretation,” I told him. “Surely Ostia doesn’t receive cargoes of fate.”

  Milo threw back his head and laughed. He laughed better than any man I ever knew except Marcus Antonius, the triumvir. “No, this is the headquarters of the cloth importers’ guild.”

  We went inside and a clerk looked up from his desk, where he was tying up a bundle of scrolls, no doubt looking forward to his dinner. “I was just closing the office. Please come back tomorrow. … Oh, hello, Milo.”

  "Good afternoon, Silius. We won’t keep you long. This is Decius Caecilius Metellus, of the Commission of Twenty-Six in Rome.”

  “Afternoon, sir,” he said without awe. He knew perfectly well that I had no authority here.

  “We just needed to know if Hasdrubal’s still about, and where he’s doing business these days.”

  “Oh, is that all? He has a new place, just inland of the Juno dock, between the merchant of used amphorae and the rope loft.”

  “I know the place. He’s still in the old business, isn’t he?”

  “You mean …” Silius made a throat-cutting gesture. Milo nodded. “Yes, he’s still their Ostia agent.”

  “Good. Thank you, Silius. Come on, sir.” I followed him from the theater. I could have gone to the quaestor’s residence to ask for a place to stay the night, but I didn’t feel like socializing with someone I didn’t know, and making a lot of explanations as to why I was here, so I asked Milo if there was an inn where we could stay.

  “I know just the place,” he said. Soon we were walking into the precincts of a large temple. Well, in a city where the businesses had their offices in a theater, why not an inn at a temple? Instead of going into the handsome, columned temple, we went down some steps that led us to a tremendous underground crypt where hundreds of men and women sat at long tables. I had never seen anything like this. Rome is a city of small wineshops and modest taverns. Not Ostia. There were four or five large fireplaces supplying light and warmth, and serving-girls hustled among the tables bearing trays of food and pitchers of wine.

  Greetings were called out to Milo as we passed among the tables looking for a place to sit. I could hear a dozen languages being spoken, and could see the peculiar tunics and headgear of as many guilds, each congregating at its special table. At one I could see men with palms like Milo’s; at another sat a number of sleek, huge-chested men, who I decided had to be divers.

  We found seats at a small table jammed into a corner. By this time my eyes were accustomed to the limited interior light, and I could see that this place had been hewn from the solid rock below the temple. As the servers brought us a platter of steaming fish and sausages along with cheese, onions, bread, fruit and a pitcher of wine, I asked Milo about it.

  “Been here since the founding of the city, they say. It was a natural cave beneath the temple, used for a storehouse. Then it was enlarged and the god up there”—he jerked a thumb upward, toward the temple—"Mercury, it was, came to a priest in a dream and told him to establish a great wineshop down here.”

  “Mercury. That makes sense. The god of profit would be the one to tell his priest to establish a business beneath his temple. And do they rent rooms as well?”

  “Behind the temple they have an inn. Decent lodgings, if you aren’t picky.”

  “This is convenient,” I said. The wine was not bad, either, for a public house. The crowd was interesting and varied. The sailors and rivermen of Ostia were as hard-bitten a lot as I had ever encountered anywhere. They were loud and fairly boisterous, but I saw no fights breaking out. I asked Milo about this and he jerked his chin toward a huge, shaven-headed man who sat on a stool in a corner, an olive-wood club propped against the wall next to him.

  “They keep experts here to maintain good order. I’ve worked here as chucker-out in the off season, when there was no rowing to be done.”

  We concentrated on our dinner for a while. When we had wrought sufficient devastation, a server took the platter away and left a bowl of figs and nuts. While we munched on these, sipping our wine, Milo began sounding me out.

  “Not meaning to pry, sir, but visiting a pirate’s agent doesn’t seem the sort of thing an official in your position ought to be doing.”

  “It isn’t one of my regular duties,” I agreed.

  “And that man Claudius,” he went on, “he was trying to force you to drop an investigation. What was that all about?”

  “And what is your reason for asking?” I demanded.

  His eyes went wide with injured innocence. “Why, I’m a concerned citizen, just like your friend Claudius.” He held his look of innocence just long enough, then he laughed his great laugh again, and this time I joined him. It was an impertinence, but Milo had such an easy and ingratiating manner that I found myself telling him the whole story. Well, not every little detail. I left out
my tryst with Claudia and Chrysis, for instance. I saw no real need to reveal that incident, which was still somewhat mysterious even to me.

  I actually felt a great sensation of relief in explaining these matters to Milo. Of my peers and colleagues, none seemed utterly trustworthy. Most of my superiors in office turned out to have some nefarious interest in the case, some secret guilt to hide. Telling Milo of my woes and my bewilderment seemed to clear the air of a maddening vapor. He listened quietly, with great attention. Only a few times did he interrupt with questions, usually to clarify some point about the political standing of some of the men I mentioned: Caesar, Claudius, Hortalus, even Cicero.

  “So,” he said when I was finished. “It’s all about this stolen amulet?”

  Once again, I was impressed by his quick intelligence. “It can’t be entirely about that. But the amulet is some sort of key that could unlock this whole chest of secrets.”

  “You want to be careful of boxes like that. Remember Pandora, and Ulysses’s men and the bag of winds.”

  “You don’t need to remind me. However, having pried it open a little, I don’t intend to stop until I’ve sifted through to its bottom.” Pleased at having extended the metaphor so far, I took another drink of Mercury’s excellent wine. A sudden thought struck me. “I wonder if Lucullus’s statue here was really struck by lightning a few days ago. Ask somebody.”

  “How could it have been?” Milo asked. “It was never erected. A few years back the city proposed to honor Lucul-lus with a bronze statue, but they never got around to paying for it. They never got further than putting up the marble pedestal at the Juno dock.”

  “I might have known. Now Claudius is making up his own omens.”

  “That would be a handy political device,” Milo mused. “Just spread false stories of terrible omens about your opponents. Who ever looks into the truthfulness of those things?”

  I shrugged. “It would only add another type of lying to an activity already heavily burdened with them.”