SPQR III: The Sacrilege

by John Maddox Roberts

“And you don’t have days to live, at this rate,” Milo said. “Let’s see what we can do.” What Milo could do was considerable. He shouldered his way through the tight-packed mob almost as if it weren’t there, and I followed his broad back.

  Feverishly, I thought about the usual triumphal honors enjoyed by a victorious general. Ordinarily, the day culminated with the banquet on the Capitol, at the end of which the triumphator descended the hill, escorted by the Senate, bearing torches to light his way. Lucullus, at the time of his triumph, had thrown his own banquet in his new garden, but I had not heard that Pompey had asked permission for a change of routine. Pompey, it seemed, was fond of his little surprises.

  Halfway to the Capitol, we broke through the crowd. A mass of lictors held it back, holding their fasces obliquely, the way soldiers carry spears when they are controlling a mob.

  “I must get to the temple!” I shouted at them.

  “You may pass, Senator,” said a lictor, “but not your friend.” There is no one more officious than a lictor who has been given a little authority.

  “You’re on your own,” Milo said cheerfully. “Try not to die foolishly.”

  I began to trot up the hill. There was a great deal of milling about going on up there. The heat built up rapidly beneath my heavy toga, but I dared not throw it off. Running heavily armed into the massed Senate could mean real trouble. I stopped to catch my breath and brush the sweat from my face; then I saw what I had feared the most: a double line of torches coming toward me. I cursed mightily and resumed running toward the lights, so agitated that I didn’t notice that they moved rather oddly. As I neared them, I snatched the message tube from within my tunic and held it aloft.

  “Noble Senators!” I screamed. “I must address you! Stop! Cnaeus Pompeius has no right to—” Then I stopped and gaped. The torches were not held by Senators wearing wreaths. The were carried by elephants, at least fifty of them.

  Pompey had assembled his monsters atop the Capitol so that he could come down the hill in real style. Each elephant had a mahout straddling his neck, and behind each mahout was a wooden castle manned with youths and girls who were armed with baskets of flowers and trinkets to scatter among the onlookers.

  The mahout on the lead elephant pointed at me with his goad and gabbled something. I stood transfixed by the bizarre spectacle, at risk of imminent trampling.

  “Metellus, I knew you’d show up!” Broken from my trance, I looked up to see that the lead elephant’s castle wasn’t manned by any youths and maidens. It held Publius Clodius and some of his thugs. Whooping like a hunter who has started a hare, he snatched up a javelin and hurled it at me. I leapt nimbly aside, and the iron-shod point struck sparks from the pavement.

  Toga flapping, I whirled and ran back down the hill. It seemed that I was spending a great deal of time running from Clodius these days, but an elephant gives a man an unfair advantage.

  Another javelin sailed past me by a good margin. Clodius was always a wretched spearman. Of course, his swaying platform and the uncertain light could not have helped much. Ahead of me, the crowd of citizens and lictors gaped and pointed, at me and at the elephants. I couldn’t pick out Milo’s face among the mob.

  I plowed through the lictors like a ship ramming through an enemy’s battle line. They stumbled trying to get out of my way as the crowd heaved back, instinctively wanting to avoid the path of the trumpeting, torchbearing monsters. Another javelin missed me, but I heard a scream as it impaled some unfortunate citizen.

  The uproar grew deafening as half the mob tried to run away from the oncoming beasts while the other half surged forward to get a closer look. It was like one of those circus riots where a panic starts and hundreds of people get trampled. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the huge gray beast towering above the mob as Clodius poised his arm for another throw. Behind him, cheerful young people mounted on other elephants waved and threw their flowers and trinkets into the mob. He missed again.

  I got all the way down to the Forum in this hallucinatory fashion. The mob and the elephants spilled into the great plaza close behind me, and despite the best efforts of the mahouts, the animals lost all cohesion and began to scatter amid the confusion. People screamed or laughed. All Rome loves an event like this. There was much fleeing from before the beasts, unnecessarily. Terrifying as they are to behold, elephants are actually quite careful where they step and rarely inflict more than a crushed toe. War elephants have to be trained to trample enemies, as it is not their natural behavior. Needless to say, this was not common knowledge in the Roman streets.

  An elephant passed by me, and its inhabitants showered things all around me. This turned out to be almost as deadly as the javelins Clodius was hurling, for it transpired that Pompey was not scattering mere trinkets this night. In the torchlight I saw gold coins, carved gemstones, vials of perfume amid the flowers, and wherever they landed, fights broke out over possession.

  I looked for Clodius and saw him standing in his little castle, looking all over for me. I saw that his beast was about to pass close by the Rostra. I got to the fringes of the mob and ran toward the old monument and dashed up its back steps. There I threw off my toga, consigning the expensive thing to unavoidable oblivion, crossed the base and stepped out onto one of the bronze ship’s rams that decorated the marble front of the platform.

  As the elephant jostled by, I jumped into its castle, my sword bare in one hand and a caestus on the other. The men whirled around with looks of shock and I smashed my bronze-spiked left fist into the jaw of one, in the next instant slashing another across the face. Both men tumbled screaming to the pavement fifteen feet below. Now it was just Clodius and me.

  Screaming, he leapt on me before I could rebrace myself. I had not anticipated the rocking of the platform beneath my feet and I swung my arms wide to regain balance. That gave him the chance to grasp both my wrists as he closed, trying to knee me in the crotch. I spent several seconds jockeying to protect myself. He tried to bite my nose off again, but I tucked in my chin and butted him in the face instead.

  As he staggered back, the platform began to rock violently. I spared a glance down and saw that scores of Clodius’s thugs had rallied to him and were trying to scramble up the sides of the elephant to rescue their master. The poor beast trumpeted with alarm, waving its torch-laden trunk about and scorching several bystanders.

  At last, the strain proved to be too much for the unstable castle. The elephant stumbled sideways and the girth parted. The tower lurched and fell, landing on a set of steps amid a great splintering of wood and rending of wicker. We were thrown violently apart, and I somehow managed to retain my grip on my weapons. I lurched to my feet to see Clodius’s whole mob a few steps away, but they had the look of abashed schoolboys and did not climb the stair as they helped Clodius, shaking his head groggily, to regain his feet. I looked to see who had cowed them and saw, standing in the doorway behind me, the lady Aurelia, Caesar’s mother, livid with rage.

  “Who dares to bring bloodied weapons to the house of the Pontifex Maximus?” she screeched. Hastily, I resheathed my sword and thrust my smeared caestus beneath my tunic.

  “If you will excuse me, my lady,” I said, “these men are trying to kill me. May I come inside?” I could see Julia standing behind her.

  “If you enter this house, I will demand your public flogging!” said the old bat.

  “Let him in, Grandmother!” Julia pleaded.

  “Never!”

  Clodius grinned and came for me again, and I was about to draw when a clopping of hooves interrupted us. From a courtyard beside the house came Caius Julius and a sizable retinue, all mounted. This was a rare sight in the city, especially after nightfall. Well, it was a night for strange sights.

  “What is this?” Caesar shouted. He wore a military tunic and boots.

  “This man,” his mother said, pointing at me, “has violated your house. Have him executed at once, my son!”

  Caesar smiled. “Now, Mother, c
alm yourself. This is Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, and the gods keep special watch over such as he. I, the Pontifex Maximus, have said so.” He turned to Clodius. “Publius, call off your dogs.”

  But Clodius had gone into his gorgonlike rage. “Not this time, Caesar! He is mine!”

  “Decius, come here,” Caesar said. I stepped over to him, keeping a wary eye on Clodius. Caesar leaned from his saddle, an eyebrow sardonically arched. In a low voice, he said: “Decius, just how badly do you want to get out of Rome alive tonight?”

  “Rather badly,” I admitted.

  “The only way you are going to do it is to ride out with me. I am on my way to Spain, and my men are all veterans of long experience. Clodius won’t dare attack. But I want something from you first.”

  “Is that what you do these days, Caius Julius?” I said bitterly. “Make bargains, like some publicanus angling for a government contract?”

  “It’s the way of the new Rome,” he said. “Be quick about it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Many things, but right now what you must give me is your evidence.” He held forth his hand.

  I looked at the enraged Clodius and his murderous men. Nowhere could I see Milo or his thugs. I was alone and I could measure my life expectancy in seconds. I took the message tube from my tunic and placed it in Caesar’s hand.

  “Is this all?” he demanded.

  “It is,” I said, sick at heart. He snapped his fingers, and a man led up one of the remounts and helped me scramble onto its back. He had a hard, scarred, veteran’s face.

  “Attack if you will, Clodius,” Caesar said, radiating contempt. Clodius and his men fell back as we rode through them. I looked back at the doorway and Julia waved shyly. I waved back, rejoicing in my survival, sickened at my defeat. It was an odd sensation, and the situation was rather like one of those tedious Greek dramas.

  We passed through the Forum, which was still alive with its surging mobs and its miniature elephant stampede. This night would be remembered for some time to come. I didn’t see Pompey. As we rode through the streets, Caesar read the letter by the light of a torch held by one of his men. When he was finished, he stuffed it into a saddlebag.

  “What a young fool, to put something like that in writing,” Caesar said. “Just as well he’s dead. He certainly had no future in Rome.”

  We moved out through the Ostian Gate and it closed behind us. After a mile or so, we halted.

  “Come with me to Spain, Decius,” Caesar said. “I shall attach you to my staff.”

  I shook my head. “My father tells me the family estate in Beneventum is in urgent need of my attention.”

  “As you will. You can return to the city in a month or two and all will be forgotten, temporarily. It will be interesting times when we are all back in Rome together again.” He smiled. “As I said, I shall have work for you.”

  “I will never do your work, Caius Julius,” I promised.

  “You’ll change your mind. And I want you to marry my niece, Julia Minor.”

  I gaped, unable to think of anything to say.

  “Farewell, Decius,” Caesar said. He wheeled his mount and he and his escort clopped off. I watched until the last glimmerings of torchlight disappeared into the surrounding gloom.

  “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion,” I yelled after them. In spite of everything, I couldn’t help laughing.

  These were the events of eleven days in the year 693 of the City of Rome, the Consulship of Calpurnianus and Messala Niger.

  GLOSSARY

  (Definitions apply to the last century of the Republic.)

  Acta: Streets wide enough for one-way wheeled traffic.

  Aedile: Elected officials in charge of upkeep of the city and the grain dole, regulation of public morals, management of the markets and the public Games. There were two types: the plebeian aediles, who had no insignia of office, and the curule aediles, who wore the toga praetexta and sat in the sella curulis. The curule aediles could sit in judgment on civil cases involving markets and currency, while the plebeian aediles could only levy fines. Otherwise, their duties were the same. Since the magnificence of the Games one exhibited as aedile often determined election to higher office, it was an important stepping-stone in a political career. The office of aedile did not carry the imperium.

  Ancile: (pl. ancilia) A small, oval sacred shield which fell from heaven in the reign of King Numa. Since there was a prophecy that it was tied to the stability of Rome, Numa had eleven exact copies made so nobody would know which one to steal. Their care was entrusted to a college of priests, the Salii (q.v.) and figured in a number of ceremonies each year.

  Atrium: Once a word for house, in Republican times it was the entry hall of a house, opening off the street and used as a general reception area.

  Atrium Vestae: The Palace of the Vestal and one of the most splendid buildings in Rome.

  Angur: An official who observed omens for state purposes. He could forbid business and assemblies if he saw unfavorable omens.

  Basilica: A building where courts met in inclement weather.

  Caestus: The Classical boxing glove, made of leather straps and reinforced by bands, plates or spikes of bronze.

  Caliga: The Roman military boot. Actually a heavy sandal with hobnailed sole.

  Campus Martius: A field outside the old city wall, formerly the assembly area and drill field for the army. It was where the popular assemblies met. By late Republican times, buildings were encroaching on the field.

  Censor: Magistrates elected usually every fifth year to oversee the census of the citizens and purge the roll of Senators of unworthy members. They could forbid certain religious practices or luxuries deemed bad for public morals or generally “un-Roman.” There were two Censors, and each could overrule the other. They wore the toga praetexta and sat in the sella curulis, but since they had no executive powers they were not accompanied by lictors. The office did not carry the imperium. Censors were usually elected from among the ex-Consuls, and the censorship was regarded as the capstone of a political career.

  Centuriate Assembly: (comitia centuriata) Originally, the annual military assembly of the citizens where they joined their army units (“centuries”). There were one hundred ninety-three centuries divided into five classes by property qualification. They elected the highest magistrates: Censors, Consuls and Praetors. By the middle Republic, the centuriate assembly was strictly a voting body, having lost all military character.

  Centurion: “Commander of 100”, i.e., a century, which, in practice, numbered around sixty men. Centurions were promoted from the ranks and were the backbone of the professional army.

  Circus: The Roman racehorse and the stadium which enclosed it. The original, and always the largest, was the Circus Maximus, which lay between the Palatine and Aventine hills. A later, smaller circus, the Circus Flaminius, lay outside the walls on the Campus Martius.

  Client: One attached in a subordinate relationship to a patron, whom he was bound to support in war and in the courts. Freedman became clients of their former masters. The relationship was hereditary.

  Coemptio: Marriage by symbolic sale. Before five witnesses and a libripens who held a balance, the bridegroom struck the balance with a bronze coin and handed it to the father or guardian of the bride. Unlike conferreatio, coemptio was easily dissolved by divorce.

  Cognomen: The family name, denoting any of the stirpes of a gens; i.e., Caius Julius Caesar: Caius of the stirps Caesar of gens Julii. Some plebeian families never adopted a cognomen, notably Marii and the Antonii.

  Coitio: A political alliance between two men, uniting their voting blocs. Usually it was an agreement between politicians who were otherwise antagonists, in order to edge out mutual rivals.

  Colonia: Towns which had been conquered by Rome, where Roman citizens were settled. Later, settlements founded by discharged veterans of the legions. After 89 B.C. all Italian colonia had full rights of citizenship. Those in the provi
nces had limited citizenship.

  Compluvium: An opening in a roof to admit light.

  Conferreatio: The most sacred and binding of Roman forms of marriage. The bride and groom offered a cake of spelt to Jupiter in the presence of a pontifex and the Flamen Dialis. It was the ancient patrician form of marriage. By the late Republic it was obsolete except for some priesthoods in which the priest was required to be married by a conferreatio.

  Consul: Supreme magistrate of the Republic. Two were elected each year. Insignia were the toga praetexta and the sella curulis. Each Consul was attended by twelve lictors. The office carried a full imperium. On the expiration of his year in office, the ex-Consul was usually assigned a district outside Rome to rule as proconsul. As proconsul, he had the same insignia and the same number of lictors. His power was absolute within his province.

  Curia: The meetinghouse of the Senate, located in the Forum.

  Dictator: An absolute ruler chosen by the Senate and the Consuls to deal with a specific emergency. For a limited period, never more than six months, he was given unlimited imperium, which he was to lay down upon resolution of the emergency. Unlike the Consuls, he had no colleague to overrule him and he was not accountable for his actions performed during office when he stepped down. His insignia were the toga praetexta and the sella curulis and he was accompanied by twenty-four lictors, the number of both Consuls. Dictatorships were extremely rare and the last was held in 202 B.C. The dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar were unconstitutional.

  Dioscuri: Castor and Pollux, the twin sons of Zeus and Leda. The Romans revered them as protectors of the city.

  Eques: (pl. equites) Formerly, citizens wealthy enough to supply their own horses and fight in the cavalry, they came to hold their status by meeting a property qualification. They formed the moneyed upper-middle class. In the centuriate assembly they formed eighteen centuries and once had the right of voting first, but they lost this as their military function disappeared. The publicans, financiers, bankers, moneylenders and tax-farmers came from the equestrian class.