SPQR III: The Sacrilege

by John Maddox Roberts

  “But not this year,” I said.

  “No, Senator.”

  I thanked the two women and left the house. I was still thoroughly mystified, but now I was excited as well. I felt sure that I now had the crucial piece of evidence that would resolve the puzzle of what had happened on that very odd evening, if I could just figure out where it fit. There had been too many anomalous women present, and too damned many veils.

  Hermes was waiting outside the gate. He had taken the opportunity to return my bath gear to my house. He fell in beside me, and after a few minutes of walking I noticed that he was imitating me, walking along with his head down and his hands clasped behind his back. I stopped.

  “Are you mocking me?” I demanded.

  “Who, me?” His eyes went wide with innocence. “They say that slaves always come to look like their masters, sir. That must be what it is.”

  “That had better be the case,” I warned him. “I will not be treated with disrespect.”

  “Certainly not, sir!” he cried. We resumed walking. “But I was wondering, sir. All this questioning and people trying to kill you and all—what’s it all about?”

  “That is exactly the sort of thing that I am famed for detecting,” I said.

  “And have you figured it out?”

  “No, but I expect to have everything sorted out soon. A little time for peaceful reflection is all it takes.”

  “I don’t know about you, sir,” he said with heavy insinuation, “but I never think my best on an empty stomach.”

  “Now that you mention it, it’s been a while since breakfast. Let’s see what the district offers.” Luckily, you never have to go far in Rome to find someone selling food. Before long, we had acquired bread, sausages, pickled fish, olives and a jug of wine and retired to a public garden to restore the mental faculties. We sat on a bench and watched the passing show for a while as we attacked the food and drained the jug. The streets were unusually crowded and many vendors were setting up, although it was an odd hour for it.

  “Jupiter!” I said. “Tomorrow is Pompey’s triumph! I’d all but forgotten. They’re setting up now to have good spots in the morning.”

  “I hear it’s going to be a great show,” Hermes said, munching and nodding eagerly.

  “It ought to be,” I said. “He’s robbed half the world to finance it.”

  “That’s what the world’s for, isn’t it? To make things good for Romans?” He did not say this bitterly, as a foreign-born slave might. Like most native domestics, he expected to be manumitted and made a citizen someday. We are far more easygoing about such things than most nations.

  “I’m not sure that was the original intention of the gods, but that is how things turned out,” I said.

  “Then it ought to be a good show,” he maintained. “I mean, who cares about a bunch of barbarians?”

  “Spoken like a true Roman,” I said. “You have real citizen material in you, Hermes, even if you were given a Greek name.”

  Men in blue tunics were running down the streets with paint pots and brushes in their hands, posting the schedule of events, writing with incredible speed upon walls already thick with such writings. Other graffitists had been through earlier in the day, whitewashing patches on the walls to carry the glorious news. I called a painter over and tossed him a coin.

  “What’s the lineup?” I asked.

  “The games will go on for days, Senator,” he said. “Just now, we’re posting the schedule for tomorrow. We’ll be posting each day for the following day’s entertainments. The big munera won’t be for three days. That’s what everybody’s waiting for.”

  “What’s on for tomorrow?” I asked him.

  “To begin with, there’ll be plays. Italian mime in the two old wooden theaters, but a full-dress Greek drama with masks in Pompey’s new theater on the Campus Martius. The theater’s still under construction, but there’s enough finished to hold the highest classes.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” I said. “I’d prefer the mimes to Greek drama, but I suppose the Senate will have to go to Pompey’s theater. What’s the play?”

  “Trojan Women, sir.”

  “Sophocles, isn’t it?” I said. “Or was it Aeschylus?”

  “Euripides, Senator,” he said, with a slightly pitying expression.

  “I knew it was one of those Greeks. May we hope for something more lively later in the day?”

  “After the plays there will be lusiones. All the men to fight in the great munera will be fighting demonstration bouts with mock weapons.”

  “That’s better,” I said. “Not as exciting as the real death-fights, but fine swordplay is always a joy to watch. When will the great triumphal procession be?”

  “The day after tomorrow, Senator, and it will be a ceremony of unsurpassed magnificence. Leading off will be the beasts General Pompey has collected in his travels, all to fight in the morning shows before the gladiators. Besides the usual lions, bears and bulls, he has collected leopards, Hyrcanian tigers, the biggest wild boar ever seen, a white bear from the far north…”

  “It all sounds inspiring,” I said. “There’s nothing like a triumph to stir the blood and remind people what Rome is all about. And what embodies Rome these days better than Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus himself?”

  “Quite right, Senator,” said the sign painter a little hesitantly. He left and went back to his task.

  “Uh, master, maybe you’d better be more careful how you talk, right out in public.” Hermes looked around, distinctly ill at ease.

  “Why?” I demanded. “Have we reached such a pass that a Roman citizen—a Senator, no less—can’t publicly express his opinion of the likes of jumped-up would-be monarchs like Pompey and Crassus and even Julius Caesar?”

  “I take no more than a slave’s interest in political matters,” the boy said, “but as I understand it, we’ve reached exactly such a pass.”

  “It’s intolerable!” I said, out-Catoing Cato. “I tried to behead Clodius right in front of the senior praetor and I’ll probably have to pay a fine for it. But say the wrong thing in public about a lowbred military adventurer, and I’m supposed to worry that he will try to kill me.”

  “Maybe he already has,” Hermes said. “Tried to, I mean.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Well, somebody tried to poison you. Haven’t you had run-ins with Pompey before?”

  “Yes, I have.” Somehow, I had neglected to suspect Pompey of that particular crime, perhaps because of the relative abundance of other suspects. “To be brutally honest, I never believed I was important enough to attract his hostility. Some rather important men have told me exactly that, in fact.”

  “Master, I may be only a slave, while Pompey’s the greatest conqueror since Alexander, but even I know that there’s no such thing as an enemy who’s too small to kill.”

  “This will bear some thinking,” I said. “You may turn out to be not such a burden after all, Hermes. Keep thinking like this. After he tried to poison me, you saw Nero go to the house of Celer. I’d thought only of Clodia, since she’s the sister of Clodius and has tried to do away with me before, but she’s acted as cat’s-paw for Pompey in the past. But he has those lethal Etruscans with him. Why not send one of them?”

  We thought about that for a while, passing the jug back and forth.

  “How about this?” Hermes said. “Maybe he didn’t want people to think you’d been murdered at all. You can’t always tell with poison. People die all the time from bad food or simply unknown causes.”

  “Right. I was just back in Rome. I might have picked up some horrid disease in Gaul. And since he was already having poor old Capito murdered that night, perhaps he didn’t want to overdo it.”

  “So you think he had Capito done away with?” Hermes was enjoying this talk of murder far too much.

  “He certainly had reason to.” I told him about Capito’s interference with Pompey’s land settlements. The boy gave a low whistle.


  “And I thought Clodius and Milo were dangerous men to deal with! These leaders of the Republic are even worse!”

  I nodded. “Very true. Clodius and Milo are small-scale gangsters, with purely urban ambitions. These men are criminals of world stature. Do try to moderate your admiration.”

  “Well, what do you propose to do about it? Clodius you can always fight. Milo is your friend and his gang is as big and as powerful as Clodius’s. You can’t fight Pompey, if the whole aristocratic party in the Senate can’t do anything about him.”

  For a slave, the boy was learning political nuance quickly. Suddenly, the family farm at Beneventum seemed like a good place to be.

  “I think you’d better make your peace with him, master,” Hermes advised.

  “The problem is, I don’t even know what I’ve done to offend him, if he truly is the one who tried to have me poisoned. I could never prove anything against him in the past. Why should he care about me now?”

  “You have a reputation for finding things out about people, don’t you? Things they’d rather keep hidden? Well, maybe he’s done something, or plans to do something, that he’d just as soon nobody found out about.”

  “Hermes, you amaze me,” I said. “That is very astute.”

  “I told you I thought better on a full stomach.”

  There are stages in the investigation of a crime, conspiracy or other mystery that involves many people acting from many motives. At first, all is confusion. Then, as you gather evidence, things get even more complicated and confusing. But eventually there comes a point when each new fact unearthed fits into place with a satisfying click and things become simpler instead of more complex. Things begin to make sense. I now felt that things had reached that stage. It seemed to me that my guardian genius, my ferret-muse, hovered near and was aiding me to untie this knot of murder and intrigue.

  Or perhaps it was just the wine.

  12

  Rome was decked out in full holiday attire, with garlands and wreaths and fresh gilding everywhere. Statues of heroes had been given fresh victory crowns so that they could share in the triumph. Incense burned before the shrine of every smallest god, and the greatest deities of the state were carried through the streets in solemn processions, seated in ornate litters borne on the shoulders of attendants.

  It always did my heart good to see the city like this, even when it was to celebrate the triumph of someone I detested. Everywhere one looked, people were reeling through the streets, singing triumphal songs and giving the wineshops a tremendous business. Labor had ceased and the farmers had poured in from the countryside, along with what appeared to be the entire populations of several nearby towns. Children dashed about, freed from the tyranny of their schoolmasters for a few precious days.

  All was gaiety, but my spirits were depressed by the thought that I would have to spend the morning at Pompey’s theater, watching some tedious old Greek’s contribution to Athenian culture. I would far rather have gone to see the mimes in the old wooden theaters, or to the Circuses, where lusiones and animal shows would be going on all day. But that was out of the question. The Senate, the equites and the Vestals would have to attend the theatrical display in the new theater. To fail to do so would insult not only Pompey, a prospect many of us would have relished, but also the gods of the state.

  We marshalled in the Forum, and the state freedmen got us into the proper order, with the Consuls in front, followed by the Censors, the praetors, the Vestals, the pontifixes led by Caesar, the flamines, then the main body of the Senate with Hortalus as Princeps in front, followed by the consulars and all the rest in order of their enrollment in the Senate. The result was that I was at the very end of the procession. Ahead of me were some men very nearly as undistinguished as I. It was a long march out to the Campus Martius and the complex of buildings surrounding the new theater.

  Off we trooped, amid shouts of “Io triomphe!”, showered with flower petals. It might be wondered that there were such petals available at that time of year, but Pompey was not about to let his triumph be marred by the season. Against just such an eventuality, he had collected vast quantities of them and had them dried, supplementing them with shiploads of petals brought in from Egypt at intervals to assure that there would be a leavening of fresh flowers for throwing and making wreaths. Huge baskets of them stood along all the streets.

  “The whole city’s going to smell like a whorehouse for weeks,” groused a young Senator in front of me.

  “It didn’t smell all that good before,” someone pointed out.

  Because of the huge new building project, half the Campus Martius was a jumble of building materials, with heaps of cut stone and rubble fill everywhere, along with mountains of concrete and great stacks of wood for scaffolding. Half-built walls stood, abandoned for the holiday by the workmen.

  “You know,” I remarked, “if you aged things a bit and added a few lurking animals, this gives an excellent idea of what Rome would look like in a state of ruin.”

  “You’re in a fanciful mood this morning, Metellus,” said a Senator who had been a quaestor in the same year as I.

  “Fancy is in the air,” I said. “Take Pompey: that theater over there.” I pointed to the squat hulk of white marble that had just begun to rise from its supporting platform. “I’ve heard that when it’s finished, it will hold ten thousand spectators. Pompey has a most unrealistic idea of the Roman capacity for Greek drama.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he intends it for,” said a Senator named Tusculus, who was rumored to be the great-grandson of a freedman. “I’ve spoken with his spectacle-planner. He says that the inaugural games for the theater when it’s finished are to include a whole city sacking onstage, complete with cavalry and infantry and catapults.”

  “That would give old Euripides fits,” I said. “Roman tastes in entertainment are a bit more robust than those of the effete Greeks.”

  All this conversation was accomplished with rigid faces, barely moving our mouths, coupled with the most rigid bearing. It would not have done to allow our gravitas to slip before the eyes of the citizenry. Once we were within the nascent theater we could relax, because there was no seating for the lower orders, all of whom went off to see livelier entertainments. I wished I could go with them.

  The more lordly personages took their seats nearest the orchestra, just in front of the stage. Only these seats had been completed, and were made of white marble. The rest were temporary bleachers of wood. The stage itself was also of wood, as was the immense, three-tiered proscenium that rose behind the scaena. Eventually, this would all be rebuilt in stone, but no effort had been spared to make the temporary structure sumptuous, and all was bright with new paint and colorful hangings. Fountains sprayed perfumed water in high arcs, helping to dull the odor of fresh paint and new-cut pine.

  “If I get pinesap on my new toga,” said an eques behind me, “I’ll bill Pompey for it.” This raised a laugh. Now that the mob had hied away, we could revert to our natural state, which is to say, a pack of outspoken Italians.

  “Here comes Pompey!” someone shouted. We all stood up and applauded dutifully as the great man made his appearance. He was wearing a golden wreath and a triumphator’s voluminous purple toga picta covered all over with golden stars.

  “Well, that’s a bit premature, isn’t it?” said Tusculus. “The procession’s not until tomorrow.”

  “No,” I said. “As giver of the games, he’s entitled to the picta, worse luck. He just wants to get us used to seeing him wearing it. He intends to make it his full-time dress.” There were a lot of boos from the anti-Pompeian faction, together with some of the ruder noises possible with the imaginative employment of lips and tongue. He did not deign to hear.

  With Pompey’s party I saw young Faustus Sulla, and they all took their places in the front row with Caesar, Crassus, Hortalus and the rest of the great men.

  After a lengthy exchange of greetings, good wishes and insults, we all settled down to
be bored into a state of deathlike stupefaction. As the chorus came out to begin their intolerable chanting, we surreptitiously rummaged through the contents of our togas. One of the few advantages of the great ceremonial toga is that it provides innumerable stashing-places for snacks and drink. I had brought along a skin of decent Vatican. It would have been criminal to store really good wine in a skin.

  Of course, it was strictly forbidden to eat or drink during a performance, but who was going to bother us? All the important men were down in front, pretending to understand what was going on on the stage, where a troupe of men was mincing across the scaena, masked and dressed as women.

  “Disgusting,” I grumbled. “At least in the Italian mime, women’s roles are still played by women.”

  “And none of those ridiculous masks, either,” said a Senator. “Wigs and face paint are good enough. All a lot of Greek degeneracy, if you ask me.”

  “Everybody knows playgoing is bad for the public morals,” I said. “Just ask Cato.” I tossed a handful of parched nuts and peas into my mouth.

  Caesar turned around and glared at the rear rows of Senators.

  “Uh-oh,” said an eques, “there’s old Caesar, giving us the holy look.”

  “Good thing his wife must be above suspicion,” said Tusculus. “Mine certainly isn’t.” We all tried not to laugh too loudly.

  Some actors began screeching in horrid falsettos. One of them, Hecuba, I think, or perhaps it was Andromache, began to wail something about the gods and how they had made a fine old mess of Troy. I had to admit that the man had a fine command of feminine gestures. Every movement made his long gown sway gracefully.

  Suddenly, I was absorbed in the performance and I took no note of my neighbor’s rude comments. It was not that I had precipitously acquired an appreciation for Greek tragedy; rather, I felt that I stood on the verge of something. As the actor continued to intone I scanned the stage lineup of men in women’s garments, then the front row of seats where sat Caesar and Crassus, Faustus and Pompey. Pompey, in his purple robe.