Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  But when they left Athens by ship there came the parting of the ways with Claudius Nero, who was anxious to reach Pergamum and not by nature a Grecophile. So Claudius Nero's ship sped as fast as it could to Asia Province, while Dolabella's ship sailed to the tiny island of Delos.

  Until Mithridates had invaded Asia Province and Greece nine years earlier, Delos had been the epicenter of the world's slave trade. There all the bulk dealers in slaves had set up shop, there came the pirates who provided the eastern end of the Middle Sea with most of its slaves. As many as twenty thousand slaves a day had changed hands in the old Delos, though that had not meant an endless parade of slave-filled vessels choking up the neat and commodious Merchant Harbor. The trading was done with bits of paper, from transfers of ownership of slaves to the moneys paid over. Only special slaves were transported to Delos in person; the island was purely for middlemen.

  There had used to be a large Italo-Roman population there, as well as many Alexandrians and a considerable number of Jews; the largest building on Delos was the Roman agora, wherein the Romans and Italians who conducted business on Delos had located their offices. These days it was windswept and almost deserted, as was the western side of the isle, where most of the houses clustered because the weather was better. In terraces up the slopes of Mount Cynthus were the precincts and temples of those gods imported to Delos during the years when it had lain under the patronage of the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria. A sanctuary of Artemis, sister of Apollo, lay closest to the smaller of the two harbors, the Sacred Harbor, in which only the ships of pilgrims anchored. Beyond this, going north, was the mighty and wonderful precinct of Apollo-huge, beautiful, stuffed with some of the greatest works of art known. And between Apollo's temple and the Sacred Lake lay the white Naxian marble lions which flanked the Processional Way linking the two.

  Verres went wild with delight, could not be prised from his explorations. He flitted from one temple to another, marveling at the image of Ephesian Artemis loaded down with bulls' testicles like sterile pendulous breasts, astonished at the goddess Ma from Comana, at Sidonian Hecate, at Alexandrian Serapis, literally drooling at images in gold and chryselephantine, at gem-studded oriental thrones on which, it seemed, the original occupants must have sat cross-legged. But it was inside the temple of Apollo that he found the two statues he could not resist-a group of the satyr Marsyas playing his rustic pipes to an ecstatic Midas and an outraged Apollo, and an image in gold and ivory of Leto holding her divine babies said to have been fashioned by Phidias, master of chryselephantine sculpture. Since these two works of art were small, Verres and four of his servants stole into the temple in the middle of the night before Dolabella was due to sail, removed them from their plinths, wrapped them tenderly in blankets, and stowed them in that part of the ship's hold wherein were deposited the belongings of Gaius Verres.

  "I'm glad Archelaus sacked this place, and then Sulla after him," said a pleased Verres to Malleolus at dawn. "If the slave trade still made a hive of activity out of Delos, it would be far harder to walk about undetected and do a little acquiring, even in the night marches."

  A little startled, Malleolus wondered what Verres meant, but a look at that perversely beautiful honey-colored face did not encourage him to ask. Not half a day later, he knew. For a wind had risen suddenly which prevented Dolabella's sailing, and before it had blown itself out the priests of Apollo's precinct had come to Dolabella crying that two of the god's most prized treasures had been stolen. And (having remarked for how long Verres had prowled about them, stroking them, rocking them on their bases, measuring them with his eyes) they accused Verres of the deed. Horrified, Malleolus realized that the allegation was justified. Since he liked Verres, it went hard with Malleolus to go to Dolabella and report what Verres had said, but he did his duty. And Dolabella insisted that Verres return the works.

  "This is Apollo's birthplace!" he said, shivering. "You can't pillage here. We'll all die of disease."

  Balked and in the grip of an overmastering rage, Verres "returned" the works by tossing them over the side of the ship onto the stony shore. Vowing that Malleolus would pay. But only to himself; much to Malleolus's surprise, Verres came to thank him for preventing the deed.

  "I have such a lust for works of art that it is a great trouble to me," said Verres, golden eyes warm and moist. "Thank you, thank you!"

  His lust was not to be thwarted again, however. In Tenedos (which Dolabella had a fancy to visit because of the part the isle had played in the war against Troy) Verres appropriated the statue of Tenes himself, a beautiful wooden creation so old it was only remotely humanoid. His new technique was candid and unapologetic: "I want it, I must have it!" he would say, and into the ship's hold it would go while Dolabella and Malleolus sighed and shook their heads, unwilling to cause a rift in what was going to be a long and necessarily closely knit association. In Chios and in Erythrae the looting occurred again; so did Verres's services to Dolabella and Malleolus, the latter now being steadily drawn into a corruption which Verres had already made irresistible to Dolabella. So when Verres decided to remove every work of art from the temple and precinct of Hera in Samos, he was able to persuade Dolabella to hire an extra ship-and to order the Chian admiral Charidemus, in command of a quinquereme, to escort the new governor of Cilicia's flotilla on the rest of its journey to Tarsus. No pirates must capture the swelling number of treasures! Halicarnassus lost some statues by Praxiteles-the last raid Verres made in Asia Province, now buzzing like an angry swarm of wasps. But Pamphylia lost the wonderful Harper of Aspendus and most of the contents of the temple of Artemis at Perge-here, deeming the statue of the goddess a poorly executed thing, Verres contented himself with stripping its coat of gold away and melting it down into nicely portable ingots.

  And so at last they came to Tarsus, where Dolabella was glad to settle into his palace and Verres glad to commandeer a villa for himself wherein the treasures he had pillaged could be put on display for his delectation. His appreciation of the works was genuine, he had no intention of selling a single one; simply, in Gaius Verres the obsessions and amoralities of the fanatical collector reached a height hitherto unknown.

  Gaius Publicius Malleolus too was glad to find himself a nice house beside the river Cydnus; he unpacked his matching gold and silver plate and his moneybags, for he intended to augment his fortune by lending money at exorbitant rates of interest to those who could not borrow from more legitimate sources. He found Verres enormously sympathetic-and enormously helpful.

  By this time Dolabella had sunk into a torpor of gratified sensuality, his thought processes permanently clouded by the Spanish fly and other aphrodisiac drugs Verres supplied him, and content to leave the governing of his province to his senior legate and his quaestor. Displaying sufficient sense to leave the art of Tarsus alone, Verres concentrated upon revenge. It was time to deal with Malleolus.

  He introduced a subject close to the hearts of all Romans-the making of a will.

  "I lodged my new one with the Vestals just before I left," said Verres, looking particularly attractive with the light of a chandelier turning his softly curling hair into old gold. “I presume you did the same, Malleolus?"

  "Well, no," Malleolus answered, flustered. "I confess the thought never occurred to me."

  "My dear fellow, that's insanity!" cried Verres. "Anything can happen to a man away from home, from pirates to illnesses to shipwreck-look at the Servilius Caepio who drowned on his way home twenty-five years ago-he was a quaestor, just like you!" Verres slopped more fortified wine into Malleolus's beautiful vermeil cup. "You must make a will!"

  And so it went while Malleolus grew drunker and drunker-and Verres appeared to. When the senior legate decided Dolabella's foolish quaestor was too befuddled to read what he was signing, Verres demanded paper and pen, wrote out the dispositions Gaius Publicius Malleolus dictated, and then assisted him to sign and seal. The will was tucked into a pigeonhole in Malleolus's study and prompt
ly forgotten by its author. Who, not four days later, died of an obscure malady the Tarsian physicians finally elected to call food poisoning. And Gaius Verres, producing the will, was surprised and enchanted to discover that his friend the quaestor had left him everything he owned, including the family plate.

  "Dreadful business," he said to Dolabella sadly. "It's a very nice legacy, but I'd rather poor Malleolus was still here."

  Even through his aphrodisiac-induced haze Dolabella sensed a touch of hypocrisy, but confined his words to wondering how he was going to get another quaestor from Rome in a hurry.

  "No need!" said Verres cheerfully. "I was Carbo's quaestor, and good enough at the job to be prorogued as his proquaestor when he went to govern Italian Gaul. Appoint me proquaestor.''

  And so the affairs of Cilicia-not to mention Cilicia's public purse-passed into the hands of Gaius Verres.

  All through the summer Verres worked industriously, though not for the good of Cilicia; it was his own activities that benefited, particularly the moneylending he had taken over from Malleolus. However, the art collection remained static. Even Verres at that point in his career was not quite confident enough to foul his own nest by stealing from towns and temples in Cilicia itself. Nor could he-at least while Claudius Nero remained its governor-begin again to plunder Asia Province; the island of Samos had sent an angry deputation to Pergamum to complain to Claudius Nero about the pillaging of Hera's sanctuary, only to be told regretfully that it was not in Claudius Nero's power to punish or discipline the legate of another governor, so the Samians would have to refer their complaint to the Senate in Rome.

  It was late in September that Verres had his inspiration; he then lost no time in turning fancy into fact. Both Bithynia and Thrace abounded in treasures, so why not increase his art collection at the expense of Bithynia and Thrace? Dolabella was persuaded to appoint him ambassador-at-large and issue him with letters of introduction to King Nicomedes of Bithynia and King Sadala of the Thracian Odrysiae. And off Verres set at the start of October, overland from Attaleia to the Hellespont. This route avoided Asia Province and might besides yield a little gold from temples along the way, even if no desirable art.

  It was an embassage composed entirely of villains; Verres wanted no honest, upright characters along. Even the six lictors (to whom as an ambassador with propraetorian status Verres was entitled) he chose with great care, sure they would aid and abet him in all his nefarious undertakings. His chief assistant was a senior clerk on Dolabella's staff, one Marcus Rubrius; Verres and Rubrius had already had many dealings together, including the procurement of Dolabella's dirty smelly women. His slaves were a mixture of big fellows to heft heavy statues around and little fellows to wriggle into locked rooms, and his scribes were only there to catalogue whatever he purloined.

  The journey overland was disappointing, as Pisidia and that part of Phrygia he traversed had been thoroughly looted by the generals of Mithridates nine years before. He debated swinging wider onto the Sangarius to see what he could filch at Pessinus, but in the end elected to head straight for Lampsacus on the Hellespont. Here he could commandeer one of Asia Province's warships to act as escort, and sail along the Bithynian coast loading whatever he found and fancied onto a good stout freighter.

  The Hellespont was a small slice of No Man's Land. Technically it belonged to Asia Province, but the mountains of Mysia cut it off on the landward side, and its ties were more with Bithynia than with Pergamum. Lampsacus was the chief port on the Asian side of the narrow straits, almost opposite to Thracian Callipolis; here the various armies which crossed the Hellespont made their Asian landfall. In consequence Lampsacus was a big and busy port, though a great measure of its economic prosperity lay in the abundance and excellence of the wine produced in the Lampsacan hinterland.

  Nominally under the authority of the governor of Asia Province, it had long enjoyed independence, Rome being content with a tribute. There was-as always in every prosperous settlement on every shore of the Middle Sea-a contingent of Roman merchants who lived there permanently, but the government and the major wealth of Lampsacus rested with its native Phocaean Greeks, none of whom held the Roman citizenship; they were all socii, allies.

  Verres had diligently researched every likely place along his route, so when his embassage arrived in Lampsacus he was well aware of its status and the status of its leading citizens. The Roman cavalcade which rode into the port city from the hills behind it caused an immediate stir almost verging on a panic; six lictors preceded the important Roman personage, who was also accompanied by twenty servants and a troop of one hundred mounted Cilician cavalry. Yet no warning of its advent had been received, and no one knew what its purpose in Lampsacus might be.

  One Ianitor was chief ethnarch that year; word that a full Roman embassage was awaiting him in the agora sent Ianitor flying there posthaste, together with some of the other city elders.

  "I'm not sure how long I'll be staying," said Gaius Verres, looking handsome, imperious, and not a little arrogant, "but I require fitting lodgings for myself and my people."

  It was impossible, Ianitor explained hesitantly, to find a house large enough to take everyone, but he himself would of course accommodate the ambassador, his lictors and body servants, while the rest were boarded with other households. Ianitor then introduced his fellow elders, including one Philodamus, who had been chief ethnarch of Lampsacus during Sulla's time there.

  "I hear," said the clerk Marcus Rubrius low-voiced to Verres as they were being escorted to the mansion of Ianitor, "that the old man Philodamus has a daughter of such surpassing beauty and virtue that he keeps her shut away. Name of Stratonice."

  Verres was no Dolabella when it came to bodily appetites. As with his statues and paintings, he liked his women to be pure and perfect works of art, Galateas come to life. In consequence he tended when not in Rome to go for long periods without sexual satisfaction, since he would not content himself with inferior types of women, even famous courtesans like Praecia. As yet he was unmarried, intending when he did to own a bride of splendid lineage and peerless beauty-a modern Aurelia. This trip to the east was going to cement his fortune and make it possible to negotiate a suitable marital alliance with some proud Caecilia Metella or Claudia Pulchra. A Julia would have been the best, but all the Julias were taken.

  Thus it was months since Verres had enjoyed a sexual flutter, nor had he expected to find one in Lampsacus. But Rubrius had made it his business to find out the weaknesses of Verres-aside from inanimate works of art-and had done a little whispering in any gossipy-looking ears as soon as the embassage had ridden into town. To find that Philodamus had a daughter, Stratonice, who was quite the equal of Aphrodite herself.

  "Make further enquiries," said Verres curtly, then put on his most charmingly false smile as he came to Ianitor's door, where the chief ethnarch waited in person to welcome him.

  Rubrius nodded and went off in the wake of the slave to his own quarters, less august by far; he was, after all, a very minor official with no ambassadorial status.

  After dinner that afternoon Rubrius reappeared at the house of Ianitor and sought a private interview with Verres.

  "Are you comfortable here?" asked Rubrius.

  "More or less. Not like a Roman villa, however. A pity none of the Roman citizens in Lampsacus ranks among the richest. I hate making do with Greeks! They're too simple for my taste. This Ianitor lives entirely on fish-didn't even produce an egg or a bird for dinner! But the wine was superb. How have you progressed in the matter of Stratonice?"

  "With great difficulty, Gaius Verres. The girl is a paragon of every virtue, it seems, but perhaps that's because her father and brother guard her like Tigranes the women in his harem."

  "Then I'll have to go to dinner at Philodamus's place."

  Rubrius shook his head emphatically. "I'm afraid that won't produce her, Gaius Verres. This town is Phocaean Greek to its core. The women of the family are not shown to guests."

 
The two heads drew together, honey-gold and greying black, and the volume of the conversation dropped to whispers.

  "My assistant Marcus Rubrius," said Verres to Ianitor after Rubrius had gone, "is poorly housed. I require better quarters for him. I hear that after yourself, the next man of note is one Philodamus. Please see that Marcus Rubrius is relocated in the house of Philodamus first thing tomorrow."

  "I won't have the worm!" snapped Philodamus to Ianitor when Ianitor told him what Verres wanted. “Who is this Marcus Rubrius? A grubby little Roman clerk! In my days I've housed Roman consuls and praetors-even the great Lucius Cornelius Sulla when he crossed the Hellespont that last time! In fact, I've never housed anyone as unimportant as Gaius Verres himself! Who is he after all, Ianitor? A mere assistant to the governor of Cilicia!"

  "Please, Philodamus, please!" begged Ianitor. "For my sake! For the sake of our city! This Gaius Verres is a nasty fellow, I feel it in my bones. And he has a hundred mounted troopers with him. In all Lampsacus we couldn't raise half that many competent professional soldiers."

  So Philodamus gave in and Rubrius transferred his lodgings. But it had been a mistake to give in, as Philodamus soon discovered. Rubrius hadn't been inside the house for more than a few moments before he was demanding to see the famous beautiful daughter, and, denied this privilege, immediately began to poke and pry through Philodamus's spacious dwelling in search of her. This proving fruitless, Rubrius summoned Philodamus to him in his own house as if he had been a servant.