SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy

by John Maddox Roberts

  “That is true. As soon as possible, I want you to go to your kinsman, Metellus Creticus, and alert him. Can you do that without arousing suspicion?” Poor Creticus still waited outside the walls of Rome for permission to celebrate his triumph.

  “Next week the gens Caecilii hold a yearly family religious observance. Since Creticius can’t enter the city, it will be held this year at his villa on the Janiculum. I can speak privily with him then.”

  “Excellent. Tell him of a planned coup, but no specifics. Tell him to await my summons and be ready to rally his men from wherever they are dispersed awaiting his triumph. I shall have Tiro take the same message to Marcius Rex. Between them, they should be able to summon a full-strength legion on short notice.”

  “And your colleague?” I asked.

  “Hibrida is chafing to get away to Macedonia. I’ll tell him to go ahead and assemble his men, but march no farther than Picenum. Have no fear, Decius, we’ll take care of this sorry business handily.”

  I wished that I could be so sanguine. I greatly feared that there would be far more travail out of Catilina’s mad plan than he foresaw. “But, Consul, what of Gaul? The Roman authorities and citizens there must be alerted! The Al-lobroges can spark a tremendous bloodbath there. Our hold on Gaul is not so firm that we cannot be expelled by a mass tribal uprising.”

  “Oh, that.”Now the smile was frostier than ever. “Ful-via is not my only informant, Decius. I want you to meet the other gentleman with whom I have met this evening.”

  I sat mystified while he summoned a slave and sent him to bring this other guest. A few minutes later a tall, boldfaced man entered, a man I recognized.

  “Quaestor Decius Caecilius Metellus,” Cicero said formally, “greet the patrician Quintus Fabius Sanga, of Rome and Gaul.”

  “We’ve met,” I said. “At the Circus, a few days ago.”

  “Then you understand that Fabius Sanga is the patron of the Allobroges?”

  “Yes,” I said. Then, to Sanga, “I spoke to your charioteer that day, the boy Dumnorix.”

  “Amnorix,” Sanga corrected me.

  “Amnorix, then. He races as Polydoxus. He mentioned that you were the patron of his tribe and I remembered that your family surname was Allobrogicus.”

  “Fabius came to me a few days ago with alarming news,” Cicero said. “This evening, he came by to bring me up to date.”

  “That detestable rogue Umbrenus approached the Al-lobrogian envoys some time past,” Fabius said. “He’s the worst sort of publicanus, but he was careful to keep on the good side of the tribes, in Gaul. He knew of the grievances the Allobroges had suffered, and were in Rome to protest. It was just the sort of thing that the malcontents who follow Catilina were looking for. Umbrenus approached them in the Forum and took them to the house of Decimus Brutus. Brutus is away from Rome, but Sempronia entertained them and provided an imposing setting for his proposition. They felt the Gauls would be impressed by one of Rome’s great houses, and so they were.”

  “He claims to have received their firm support,” I said.

  Fabius laced his fingers and leaned forward. “Let me tell you something about Gauls. Like all Keltoi”—he used the Greek word for that race—”they are excitable and they love to boast, but they are not the comic figures we see in the theater. One must never accept their first, emotional reaction to anything as their final feeling on the matter. Given time for reflection, they are usually as sensible and levelheaded as anyone else.

  “When Umbrenus pretended sympathy with their plight, they went into their usual extravagant lamentations of how they have suffered. When he told them that true men will always fight rather than surrender their liberties, they shouted that they would gladly follow any man who promised them the restoration of their ancient freedoms. He told them of Catilina and they declared themselves for him.”

  Fabius took a cup from the table and drank. “Of course,” he went on, “that was just Gaul talk, but Umbrenus took them at their word. Once they had had a little time to think it over, they grew afraid that they had gotten themselves into something serious. When I returned to Rome, they very sensibly came to me to ask what they should do. I came here, to speak with the Consul.”

  “And I advised him to tell the Gauls to play along, to find out who the conspirators are. They told Umbrenus that they would be happier to know that there were important men involved. That turned out to be a mistake, because then the conspirators began to throw in names surely to impress, as they did with you. Your own father’s name was one they gave the Gauls.”

  I all but choked on my wine. “Father? Well, I suppose barbarians might believe such a thing.”

  “They used the name because the Allobroges would now it,” Fabius said. “Your father was their recent governor, and a proconsul is the next thing to a god in barbarian lands.”

  “I have instructed them,” Cicero said, “through Fabius, to demand this: that their kinsmen in Gaul will not rise in support of the rebellion unless they have the signatures and seals of the leading men of the conspiracy on a document that guarantees their own rewards upon success of the revolution.”

  I stared at him, aghast. “They absolutely cannot be that stupid!” I protested. “Granted they are unrealistic to the point of dwelling in the midst of fantasy, but even the most amateur of conspirators knows that you never put your name to anything in writing!”

  “And yet they have promised to deliver this document,” Cicero said. “It even makes sense, in a way. They feel that they must have the Gaulish support to succeed, and they know that if they do not succeed, they shall all die. Besides, like most such fools they don’t think of themselves as conspirators. They fancy themselves to be patriots. They are going to restore the Republic to its rightful condition.”

  “By the time this document reaches Gaul,” Fabius said, “the operations in Italy shall have commenced, so what is a bit of written evidence then? The letter is to be delivered in the next few days.”

  An awful thought occurred to me. “I suppose I will be expected to sign it.”

  “What of it?” Cicero said. “I will attest that you acted under my orders.”

  “Your pardon, Consul, but if they act before we expect, your assassination will be the signal that the war has commenced.”

  “Oh, well, you’ll still have Celer to vouch for you, if he lives, and Fabius here. To be safe, the sooner you talk to Creticus, the better. And now, gentlemen, I have much work to do. Please report to me as soon as you have important evidence. When I have that document in my hands, with the names of the leading conspirators upon it, I shall denounce Catilina in the Senate and we shall crush this rebellion before it has a chance to start.”

  We took our leave of the Consul and Tiro conducted us to the door. Outside, I spoke to Fabius.

  “I would like a few words with you, Quintus Fabius, if it is convenient.”

  “And I with you. Let’s walk to the Forum. The moonlight is adequate tonight, and there we can see for a good distance in all directions.”I was glad to see that he was being cautious. A full moon made the streets navigable, and once we were in the Forum, it was reflected from the white marble that was everywhere, bathing the whole place in a ghostly luminescence. The Forum is like a place seen in a dream on such nights. We paused before the Rostra.

  “You first, Decius Caecilius,” Fabius said.

  “When I met you a few days ago, you were speaking with Crassus. More accurately, you were arguing with him. When I approached, you broke off your argument. Then Crassus said something strange. There were two men with me, Valgius and Thorius, both involved in the conspiracy. Crassus said that he had not met them. Yet when I spoke to your charioteer, he said that Valgius had accompanied Crassus to your house.”

  “That is so. I believe that, just now, Crassus is trying to put distance between himself and anyone involved in the conspiracy.”

  “And the nature of your argument?” 1 asked.

  “He wants me to surrender
my patronage of the Allob-roges. He claims it is for business purposes, involving his many Gaulish interests.”He snorted disgust. “He offered to buy my patronship, as if such a thing could be subleased! Crassus thinks of everything in terms of money. Of course, he simply wants to manipulate the Gauls in Catilina’s behalf. He does not yet know that they have already revealed everything to me.”

  “And you told Cicero of this?” I asked.

  “I did. By now, you know that he is afraid to prosecute Crassus.”

  “So I have found, and I cannot understand why. I thought that Marcus Cicero was afraid of nothing. Why is he so fixed on Catilina when he knows that there must be someone more powerful behind him?”

  He brooded over the expanse of moonlit marble around us. “Decius Caecilius, you and I are of ancient senatorial families, mine patrician, yours plebeian, families almost synonymous with the Roman state. Cicero is a good man, but he is novus homo, and can never forget it. No matter how high he climbs, he will never be secure.”This was a sorrowful thing to hear about a man I greatly admired, but in later years I was to find it an accurate assessment of Cicero. “He will pursue Catilina, and that ruthlessly, precisely because he is the least of the leading traitors. He wants to smash the rebellion before it has a chance to become fully organized, in hopes that the great men will then back away from a lost cause.”

  “But won’t Catilina implicate them?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Who will believe him? We have already heard the names of wholly innocent men he and his followers have thrown around to appear stronger than they are. If he should accuse Crassus of backing him, why should Crassus not claim to be as innocent as your father?”

  “Why, indeed?” I said. “And we can be sure that Crassus will put his name to no foolish letter to the Gauls.”

  “Of that you can be certain,” Fabius agreed.

  “Quintus Fabius,” I said, “one more question. You went to Cicero with your report of treason. Why not to Antonius Hibrida?”

  He laughed, a flat, humorless sound. “The same reason as you. Hibrida is no more to be trusted than any other man bearing the name of Antonius. They are a reckless, unreliable breed, and I’ve no doubt that Catilina has already approached him.”

  I had not thought of that. “Any chance that he is with them, do you think?”

  He shook his head. “You recall how the proconsular provinces were assigned, after the election?”

  “Certainly. Cicero drew Macedonia, Anotonius drew Cisalpine Gaul. But for some reason Cicero refused Macedonia and Antonius got it by default. Catilina thinks Cicero is afraid of the command because there is fighting in Macedonia.”

  “Wrong. Catilina wanted to be Consul this year with Antonius as his colleague, but Antonius threw in with Cicero instead. Too much dirt has clung to Catilina from past corruptions. Anyway, Cicero made him a better offer.”

  “A better offer?”

  “He gave Antonius Macedonia because Antonius wanted it. Antonius wanted a foreign war and the loot that a foreign war brings. And thus he bought Antonius’s loyalty. I don’t doubt that Antonius is toying with Catilina even now, but not seriously.”

  He was uncommonly well informed for a man who spent little time in Rome, but patricians have their ways of passing information among themselves. Another imponderable occurred to me.

  “I am greatly troubled by the position of tribune-elect Bestia in all this,” I said. “He is more intelligent than the others, and I think he’s playing some game of his own.”

  “When are tribunes ever anything but troublemakers?” he said, in true patrician fashion. “Somehow, over the centuries they’ve bypassed the Senate and the courts and come to be the most crucial members of the government, and anybody can get elected to the tribunate.”

  “Anybody but a patrician,” I reminded him. “Clodius has given up his patrician status just to become a tribune.”

  “It’s about what you’d expect from a Claudian,” Sanga all but growled. “I know very little about Bestia, but he seems to be a friend of your kinsman, Metellus Nepos.”

  “Pompey’s legatus? That makes little sense.”

  “Things seldom make much sense in politics until you get a closer look. Sometimes not even then.”

  “How true. For all I know, Nepos and Bestia are old school friends, studied philosophy at Rhodes or some such. Pompey is the one man we can be certain has nothing to do with this conspiracy.”

  “Nothing is certain,” Sanga reminded me. “Good night, Decius Caecilius Metellus.”

  I bade him good night and we went our ways. Before returning home, I trudged the long climb to the Capitol and entered the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. At that hour there was no one in the temple but a slave who, every hour or so, would check the oil level in the lamps and trim their wicks.

  The new statue of Jupiter was a beautiful thing, much like the old one but nearly double its size. It was in the traditional mode, modeled after the legendary Olympian Zeus of Phidias. This statue had been paid for by the great Catulus and the god’s body was sculpted of the whitest alabaster, his robes of porphyry. His hair and beard were covered with gold leaf and his eyes were inlaid with lapis lazuli. In the flickering lamplight, he almost seemed to breathe.

  I took a handful of powdered incense from a chased bronze bowl and tossed it onto the brazier of coals that glowed at the feet of the god. The haruspices had said that this new Jupiter would warn us of dangers to the state, but as the smoke ascended he said nothing. As I left the temple, I paused on the steps, but I saw no mysterious flights of birds, no lightning from the clear sky, no falling stars or thunders from inauspicious directions. As I walked home, I decided that the gods probably had little interest in the petty schemings of the degenerate dwarfs men had become. In the days of heroes, when Achilles and Hector, Aeneas and Agamemnon had contended, the gods themselves had taken an active part in the struggle. Those heroes were near to being gods in their own right. The gods were not likely to bestir themselves for anyone like Catilina, Crassus or Pompey, and least of all for Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.

  10

  THE NEXT MORNING ASKLEPIODESwas found murdered on the bridge connecting the island to the riverbank. Since I was investigating these murderous doings, I made my way to the Temple of Aesculapius to view the body. Anything to get out of the Temple of Saturn. Forum gossip was full of speculation about this latest wrinkle in the wave of murders that had swept the city. Most of the other victims had been wealthy equites. This one, while wealthy, was not even a citizen. For once, I had the satisfaction of knowing what it was all about.

  Asklepiodes had a fair number of friends and many professional colleagues, but the city was being swept by one of its frequent gusts of superstition, and the rumor had gotten around that, with so many murders in the city, it might be bad luck to attend the obsequies of the slain. As a result, poor Asklepiodes was laid out in an atrium of the temple with few attendants except for his own slaves. Among the few visitors I recognized Thorius, his jaw still in a sling, sent there to confirm that I had indeed murdered my creditor. As he left he winked at me, the little swine.

  Asklepiodes had been washed and laid out on his bier, with lamps burning at its four quarters. His skin was gray and there was a shocking wound in his throat. This was carrying fakery to an amazing extreme. Surreptitiously, I touched his face. His skin was cold. I took a wrist. There was no pulse. He was really dead.

  I was shaken more thoroughly than at any time since this whole insane business had begun. Who had murdered him? For a few disordered moments I entertained the thought that I had done it myself. Perhaps I was as crazy as the rest of them. One of the physician’s slaves came up to me and handed me a note. I unfolded the papyrus and read.

  The Quaestor Metellus is requested to attend the office of the physician Asklepiodes on the sixth hour on a matter touching the physician’s will.

  “Who wrote this?” I asked. The slave shrugged. None of his assistants spoke Latin, o
r so he claimed.

  I passed the day in a state of agitation. In fact, that had been my invariable state for some time. I kept checking the sundials as the shadows crept slowly across them. When it looked as if the sixth hour might be approaching, I hurried off to the island.

  When I arrived the atrium was vacant, the body having been removed to await the arrival of the Greek’s city patron, who would have the duty of seeing to his burial. A slave conducted me into Asklepiodes’s office, which was empty. As I sat the slave shut the door behind me and, far too late, it occurred to me that this was a trap. Somebody had murdered Asklepiodes, and I was next. I leapt to my feet, my hand going to my dagger, as another door opened. I would sell my life dearly if need be.

  “Please, Decius, you needn’t stand for me,” Asklepiodes said. “I pray you resume your seat.”

  I sat, or rather collapsed into the chair. “I saw you this morning,” I said. “You were irrefutably dead.”

  “And if you thought so, knowing that we were planning to perpetrate a fraud, how much more convincing must it have looked to those who suspected no such thing?”

  I knew what he wanted me to ask and I struggled against the temptation while he sat there, smiling smugly, all bland Greek superiority. At last I could stand it no longer.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Through skill, artistry, and, I doubt not, some aid from the god who is my patron. A decoction of hemlock, belladonna and wormwood, taken in a minutely measured quantity, brings on a near-cessation of the vital signs, convincing to any but the most astute of physicians, of which I must say in all modesty I am the only specimen in Rome.”

  “It could bring about a complete cessation, I would think. Wasn’t it hemlock that Socrates was executed with?”

  “It is a matter for delicate judgment, but it has been used in the past to simulate death when such a subterfuge seemed desirable. I tested it first on a slave, a man of my own age, physique and general state of health. The results were wholly satisfactory; three hours of deathlike coma followed by a quick recovery and no aftereffects.”