The Year of Confusion s-13

by John Maddox Roberts

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “He is being paid to undertake this mission. Whether or not it succeeds, his pay is the same.” I left unsaid my own suspicions about Caesar and his ambitions. The reputation of Alexander the Great had lain over the heads of ambitious military men for almost three hundred years. Each of them longed to surpass Alexander, and Alexander’s conquests had been in the east, not the west. What was conquering Gaul compared to conquering Persia? And Parthia was the inheritor of the Persian Empire. If Caesar could conquer his way into India, then his empire would extend from the Pillars of Hercules to the Ganges and he would have outconquered Alexander the Great. His would be the new reputation for would-be conquerors to best.

  Without a doubt, Caesar planned to establish a reputation at which rivals could only despair.

  * * *

  The next morning I confronted the man himself in his new Basilica Julia, which was to outshine all the other great buildings of Rome. Caesar looked an unlikely Alexander that morning. The Macedonian boy-king had accomplished his feats while very young. The years of war had aged Caesar terribly, and he was not all that young to begin with. I suppose he was about fifty-five that year and he looked older than that. I had seen Crassus just before he set out for Parthia, and the old moneybags had looked half dead. Caesar had lost none of his energy nor any of his mental acumen, but I did not think him fit for the rigors of campaigning. Oh, well, Caesar had surprised us before. Maybe he could still do it, or perhaps he would sit sensibly in Antioch and leave the actual fighting to his fire-eating subordinates like Marcus Antonius. He could let Cleopatra levy troops for him, not that Egyptians are good for much. He intended to accomplish it all somehow.

  “How was my astronomer killed, Decius?” he asked bluntly.

  “And a gracious good morning to you, Caius Julius,” I said, nettled. “I am working at that very question. He seemed a harmless old drudge, hardly worth killing, and his neck was broken in some mysterious fashion.”

  “Yes, Cassius mentioned it. I want to know who killed him, Decius, and why. I want to know all about this very soon.”

  “You seem to be taking it to heart,” I noted.

  “He was working on the new calendar. That is my project, Decius, and whoever killed him was indirectly attacking me.”

  How like Caesar. “You don’t think it might have been personal, then?” I said. “Perhaps a jealous lover or husband?”

  “Would it matter?” he said, and I suppose to him it did not. The slightest shadow cast upon the personal dignitas of Caesar, inadvertent or not, was not to be tolerated.

  “That calendar is no more popular than it was a week ago,” I told him.

  “They will get used to it,” he assured me. “Soon something else will come along to distract the public.”

  “Let us hope so.” At that time, Caesar was rapt in admiration for his new building, and indeed it was magnificent. The vast, vaulted ceiling soared high overhead. I had never believed that an interior space could be so high. I had toured some of the immense buildings of Egypt but even in their mind-numbing hugeness they always felt cramped inside with their forests of squat columns and they were dark and gloomy. This building was spacious and bright, illuminated by its generous clerestory. Its walls were faced with colorful, costly marble, its metalwork was gilded, its entrances unprecedentedly wide, and its porches capacious. All this magnificence was his gift to the people of Rome for their public use. All he wanted in return was that they should worship him even more than they already did.

  I went out into the City with only Hermes attending me. During my years of office holding, I had usually been accompanied by dozens or even hundreds of supporters, and I had never liked it. I much preferred to roam about by myself or with only one or two attendants. Julia thought this was very unworthy of me, that a Roman of importance should have a following. She never convinced me. Besides my personal convenience, it was not a good time to be showing off too much importance. Important men were dying in great numbers during those years. My years of public importance were behind me. I was a humble private citizen though a member of the Senate and that was how I liked it. I had salted away enough of a fortune to live comfortably and I needed no more: no more wealth, no more offices, no more honors.

  I did, however, need to keep on Caesar’s good side, so I set about my investigation with vigor. That is to say, I put Hermes to work.

  “Go to the home of last year’s praetor peregrinus,” I instructed him. “Find his secretary and learn if Demades ever came before his court, or any of the other astronomers Caesar brought from Alexandria, in any capacity whatsoever.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” he said, “but don’t get your hopes up. Last year the courts were pretty chaotic, what with praetors out of Italy commanding armies for or against Caesar. I doubt the praetor peregrinus spent more than a month or two in Rome.”

  “Still, it’s a possibility. Maybe Demades had an argument with a citizen. I need to find some sort of motive in his death.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “I’m going to visit Callista.”

  “Will that sit well with Julia?” he said dubiously.

  “Julia and Callista are great friends,” I told him.

  “What difference does that make?” he said.

  “Run along and see what you can find out,” I said, shutting off discussion.

  I turned my own steps toward Callista’s house in the trans-Tiber district. Callista was a teacher of philosophy and a leading light of Rome’s Greek intellectual community. This made her a great curiosity in Rome where women were rarely teachers, though they were quite common in Alexandria. She was also one of the most beautiful women in Rome, which may have been why Hermes thought Julia might be suspicious. Of course, I was only answering the call of duty-and on behalf of her beloved uncle-so she had no cause for complaint.

  The truth was, I seldom needed much of an excuse to call upon Callista. Besides her great beauty she was gracious and astoundingly intelligent. Though it pains me to say it, I had been involved with so many bad women that it was a great pleasure to have dealings with a good one.

  Her beauteous housekeeper, Echo, led me inside the house, where Callista sat by her pool. When I was announced she looked up with genuine delight. Callista never faked her affections and would have considered such a thing philosophically unworthy. She lacked the capacity for any sort of deceit, a very un-Greek quality, in my estimation.

  “Senator Metellus! This is a pleasure and an honor. You haven’t called upon me in far too long!”

  “The service of Rome has kept me too busy,” I said pompously. “Besides, the intellectual quality of your company intimidates me. Cicero is more on your level.”

  “You are too modest. And how is Julia? I haven’t seen her in at least a month.”

  “She is quite well and I am sure that she will call soon,” I said. As soon as she found out that I had been here. They were friends, but there are limits.

  “And how may I be of service?” She gestured me to a chair by a little table and she sat across from me while servants brought refreshments.

  “I am investigating a murder at the particular behest of Caesar, and since the victim may have been among your circle of acquaintances, I thought you might be able to tell me something about him.”

  “A murder? And it was someone I know?” She was genuinely shocked.

  “You may have known him. Demades, one of the astronomers who has been working with Sosigenes on the new calendar. Asklepiodes told me that he was sometimes to be seen at gatherings of the Greek philosophical community, so I immediately thought of your salon.”

  “Poor Demades! Yes, I knew him, although not very well, I confess. For a philosopher he was not very loquacious.”

  “Asklepiodes has attested to his reticence.”

  “And he was interested in little except astronomy.”

  “Again, exactly what Asklepiodes told me.”

  “Of course the subject of astronomy comes
up from time to time at my gatherings, but there is far more discourse on other subjects. He took little part in those discussions.”

  “Could you tell me when you last saw him?”

  “Let me see, it was the evening of the last day of the year just ended. He had more to say because the new calendar was about to go into effect. There were several of the astronomers present at that meeting.”

  “Do you recall which ones?”

  “Sosigenes, of course. Some of them were foreigners, which surprised me. There was a pseudo-Babylonian who argued for the merits of astrology, and an Arab who knew a great many things about the stars unfamiliar to me, and a fascinating man from India who spoke for a long time on the transmigration of souls. Marcus Brutus found this enthralling, because he has been studying the philosophy of Pythagoras, whose theories involve just such metamorphoses.”

  “Brutus was there? He was here the first time I called upon you, years ago.”

  “Oh, yes. He has attended nearly every meeting since he returned to Rome.”

  Brutus was another of those enemies of Caesar who had been unaccountably recalled from exile. Caesar treated the whole thing as a boyish lapse of judgment. He always showed a great affection for Brutus, whom I only saw as a rather tedious drudge. Perhaps it was because of Caesar’s old liaison with Servilia, Brutus’s mother. There were even rumors that Caesar had fathered Brutus, but I never credited these. In any case, Brutus had philosophical pretensions and was often to be found at such gatherings.

  “What other Romans were present?” I asked. “It might help to know with whom he mingled in his final days.”

  “Do you think this might be relevant?”

  “One never knows. Sometimes a murder is casual, as when a thug stabs a victim to make it easier to lift his purse. Other times the murder is hired and a professional takes care of it. In neither case would my question be to the point, but I have found that in most cases the killer was someone known to the victim, very often a spouse or close relative. You see, there must be close emotional attachment for one to feel betrayal severely enough to kill. Or the killing is the result of a business dealing gone bad, or of someone impatient for an inheritance. In all those cases there is some close connection between murderer and victim. The idea is to discover what the nature of the connection might be.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “This is so fascinating! I have said before that you should organize your theories of detection into a study and write them down. You could found your own unique school of philosophy.”

  “‘Detection’?” I asked. “It’s a good word, but I fear that nobody else’s mind works like mine. Such a study would be a dismal failure, and philosophers would consider the study of evil or aberrant behavior to be unworthy. They like to concentrate upon the sublime.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. Nobody thought like any philosopher until the philosophers began to propound, and then they changed the ways people thought. And physicians study the illnesses and injuries of the body, so why not the workings of evil in the human mind and the behavior that results from it?”

  Now that I think of it, I suppose that may be exactly what I have been doing these last few years as I idle away my time under the reign of the First Citizen. I have no gift for writing philosophical tracts, however, and instead inscribe these memoirs of my adventures during those dying years of the Republic.

  “I shall consider it. Now, do you remember any other Romans present that evening?”

  “Let me see. Brutus’s wife, Porcia, was with him, still dressed in mourning for her father.” Porcia was the daughter of Cato, who had committed suicide at Utica rather than endure the rule of Caesar. I never envied Cato anything save the manner and nobility of his death.

  “Lucius Cinna was there, though I believe he came only because he was visiting with Brutus. He had never been here before and took little part in the discussion.”

  Cinna was another recalled exile. He was the brother of Caesar’s first wife, Cornelia. That was another Caesarian connection, but could easily be a coincidence. Caesar had been married at least four times that I knew about, and had a whole horde of noble relatives. Almost any gathering of the senatorial class would have a few of them.

  She named a few others, but they were persons of no consequence, just the usual equestrians who took up philosophy instead of politics. Then something struck her.

  “Wait a moment. There was another Cinna there.”

  “One of Lucius’s brothers or uncles? Which one?” The Cornelii were about the only patrician family that was very numerous. The others had dwindled and most had become extinct. Somehow the Cornelians retained their ancestral vigor.

  “This wasn’t a relative. He just had the same cognomen. Somebody remarked upon it.”

  I tried to remember other men of that name. “Was it Cinna the poet?” He had just taken office as Tribune of the Plebs, but in a dictatorship he was all but powerless.

  “Yes! Brutus seems to think rather highly of him, but I confess that much of Latin poetry escapes me. I am well studied only in the Greek.”

  “He’s a nobody as far as I know. Just another climber beginning a political career. He’s not one of the patrician Cornelii. I don’t even know his praenomen or nomen. Do you recall them?”

  She shook her head. “He was introduced only as ‘Cinna.’”

  “Did he take much part in the talk?”

  “We spoke of poetry for a while and he and Brutus expounded rather well upon the verses of Cato.” She referred not to Cato the senator but Cato the poet of Verona, who taught the eminent poet Catullus, who in turn is not to be confused with the one-ell Catulus who was Caesar’s colleague as consul. Sometimes I think half our problems are caused by our repetition of names.

  “And when the astronomers began to argue over the relative merits of astronomy and astrology he weighed in vociferously in favor of astrology. He used some poetic metaphor to demonstrate that astrology is wonderfully poetic, whereas astronomy is coldly rational.”

  “Which do you favor?” I asked her for no good reason except that I loved to hear her talk and did not wish our interview to end.

  “Would that I were learned in both. Most often I am inclined toward astronomy, because it is indeed coldly rational. Like your own specialty of detection, it is based upon observable phenomena. Philosophers like Sosigenes go out every clear night and make observations of the stars and planets. They track their movements, note their risings and settings and watch for the occasional spectacles such as meteors and comets. These they set in context and thereby seek natural explanations for their nature and behavior, eschewing the supernatural.

  “Yet, I cannot deny the emotional appeal of astrology. It is in some strange fashion intensely satisfying, being able to read a human being’s destiny in the arrangement of the stars at his birth and the movements of the planets and the moon through them in all subsequent life. It is irrational, but rationality is only a part of human existence. Philosophers must keep their minds open to all possibilities, so it may be that Sosigenes and the astronomers are wrong and the astrologers are right, or even that the truth lies between the two. The syllogism is a useful analytical tool, but it is a great mistake to take it for reality.”

  “You echo my very own thoughts on the matter,” I said, wondering what in the world a syllogism might be. As if in response, Echo the housekeeper appeared. I almost made a witty remark upon this, but wisely held my tongue. I was in the presence of one to whom my sharpest wit would appear oafish.

  I had never known Echo to be other than as dignified and gracious as her mistress, but her eyes sparkled and she seemed breathless, as if she had just come from a tryst with a lover, an unlikely thing so early in the day. “My lady, the dictator Caesar has come to call upon you.” That explained it. Caesar had that effect on women of whatever station. That, and being the most powerful man in the world, could turn any slave woman’s head. Free women too, for that matter.

  Callista, imperturbabl
e as always, acted as if this were an everyday occurrence. “Show him in, Echo, and see to the comfort of his lictors.”

  Caesar swept in and on his arm was none other than Servilia, mother of Marcus Brutus. I wondered if Caesar was reigniting their old flame. Servilia was a few years older than Caesar, but she looked many years younger, and still one of Rome’s great beauties.

  Callista stood, as did I. “Dictator, you do me too much honor. Lady Servilia, it has been too long.”

  Servilia embraced her lightly and they exchanged a social kiss on the cheek. “You must have had an interesting morning,” Servilia said. “Here we find you with Rome’s most eccentric senator.” I wasn’t sure how to take this. The Senate contained some genuine lunatics.

  “Decius Caecilius is a remarkable investigator,” Caesar said. “So what if his methods are unorthodox? He is looking into the death of a Greek scholar and I’ll wager that is what brought him here.” Very little escaped Caesar.

  “I find that the senator has the most penetrating intellect in Rome,” Callista said, “save only for your own.” This was the highest possible praise, for Callista never stooped to flattery. Caesar acknowledged it with a slight inclination of his regal head. The gesture was made more impressive by the gilded laurel wreath he wore, to hide his baldness. He was not without his vanities.

  “Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said, “you have duties and I will not detain you.”

  I know when to take a hint. I took my leave of Callista and Servilia and Caesar and went outside. Caesar’s twenty-four lictors crowded Callista’s little courtyard sipping wine from small, tasteful cups, trying not to ogle the surpassingly beautiful girls who served them. Like Fausta, Fulvia, and Clodia, Callista had only beautiful servants, and all of Callista’s were women or young girls. Whereas with the others it was a matter of sensuality, with Callista it was a matter of pure Greek aesthetics. She would not have ugliness around her. Despite this concentration of pulchritude, there had never been a hint of scandal or unseemly behavior from her household.

  I went to a lictor named Flavius, who had been one of my own lictors during my praetorship. “What brings Caesar across the river?” I asked him.