SPQR VII: The Tribune's Curse

by John Maddox Roberts

  Then there was the curse, more specifically the Secret Name of Rome. Was Ateius murdered to protect the identity of the person who had divulged that name? This looked more promising. Also, it suggested a conspiracy. One thing I knew from long experience: it is easier to hide an elephant under the bed than it is to hide a conspiracy in Rome, especially one that involves not only important men, but foreigners like the sorcerers I had interviewed. Sometimes, it seems as if conspirators are actually eager to talk, if you can just give them an excuse.

  I was beginning to get impatient with Bacchus when he tapped me with one of those inspirations: I had been concentrating on the cursed man and the murdered man, but suppose these were just minor casualties of an attack aimed at Rome itself? This seemed promising and got my patriotic, republican feathers ruffled. After all, the indignation over the curse was not because of its assault on Crassus, whom nobody liked, but because it endangered Rome. Orodes again? But the business of the curse seemed incredibly subtle for some long-sleeved, trousers-wearing barbarian tyrant. Unless, of course, he had the aid of a Roman traitor.

  I realized that I was trying too hard to pin the blame on a foreign enemy. I did not want to believe that, once again, Romans were engaged in fratricidal, internal warfare. A will to believe or disbelieve something is the enemy of all rational thought.

  Somehow, I knew that I was overlooking something. I was sure that there was a motivating factor that I was missing, as well as a unifying center, a sort of double nexus at which all the tangled strands of this maddening business crossed. I slammed my cup on the table in frustration.

  “Is something wrong, Senator?” asked a plump young serving woman.

  “I am receiving insufficient inspiration,” I told her.

  “I thought maybe it was because your jug’s empty.”

  I looked into the lees swirling in the bottom of the jug. “So it is. Well, that’s easily rectified. Bring me another.”

  She took the empty and returned with a full jug. “I can’t promise inspiration, but the wine’s good.”

  It may be that I was walking a trifle unsteadily when I made my way back through the Forum. Even for the greatest gossiping spot in the world, it was in something of an uproar. Self-appointed public orators were haranguing knots of idlers from the bases of monuments; people were babbling away as if they were actually well informed about the affairs of the world; senators stood around on the court platforms and the steps of the great public buildings, arguing vehemently about one thing or another.

  “Decius Caecilius!” It was Cato, standing in the portico of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. He was with Sallustius Crispus, the hairy oaf I’d met at the baths a few days before. Just what I needed. The man who had been one of my least favorite Romans for many years was friendly with my latest object of dislike. Oh, well. After shaking Clodius’s hand in public the night before, I could smile my way through this.

  “Any progress on the investigation?” Cato asked. He smelled like a wine cask, but then so did I. For a moment I wondered which investigation he meant, then I realized he might not know about the first.

  “Things are coming along nicely,” I lied. “I was looking for Milo to make my report.”

  “Have you heard the rumor that’s sweeping the City?” Sallustius said. “People have reported seeing the Furies right here in Rome!” He grinned, apparently proud of his bravery in speaking the name right out loud. “They are described as having the heads of hags with snakes for hair and long fangs, vulture bodies, huge claws, and tails like serpents.”

  “I always knew they’d look just like the pictures on Greek vases,” I said.

  “Word has it they came to destroy Ateius Capito for his sacrilege,” Sallust said.

  “Asklepiodes says he’s been dead at least two days,” I told them. “Why are they still hanging about?”

  “What I want to know is how such a rumor got started,” Cato said in ill temper. “As if people weren’t enough on edge already.”

  “I’m sure I have no idea,” I told him, my second lie in as many minutes.

  A lictor came up the steps and stopped in front of me, unshouldering his fasces. “Senator, the consul Pompey wishes to speak with you. Please come with me.”

  “I am summoned,” I said. “Will you gentlemen excuse me?”

  “Do not let us detain you,” said Cato.

  Perhaps I should explain our ironic tone. In these days of the First Citizen, subservience is the rule, but back then Roman senators resented being summoned like the lackeys of an Oriental despot. A consul had the right to convene a meeting of the Senate, but he had no power over individual members of that body. We all chafed at Pompey’s high-handed methods, which may have resulted from his ignorance of constitutional forms. Pompey was, as I have said, a political lummox.

  I followed the lictor to the temporary Grain Office established in the Temple of Concord. Here Pompey and his staff had their headquarters, and from here he amended and controlled the grain supply of Rome and all its possessions. We passed through a foyer where slaves, freedmen, and their supervisors went over the heaps of documents that arrived daily by special courier. These were sorted, reduced to manageable size, and reported to Pompey and his closest advisers. The messengers would be sent back out with orders for the many local Roman governors and purchasing agents all over the world. It was a formidably efficient organization.

  We passed out onto a roofed terrace, and Pompey looked up from a broad, papyrus-strewn desk. “Ah, you found him. The rest of you, give us leave.” The other men filed out of the terrace like dismissed soldiers, and the two of us were alone.

  “What progress, Senator?” Pompey asked. I told him what little I’d learned so far that day, and he shook his head in exasperation. “Whatever killed the wretch, I am sure it wasn’t some snaky-headed Greek harpy.”

  “I believe the harpies are supposed to live above ground,” I said, “and while mischievous, are not so fearsome as the Friendly Ones. Prettier, too, if we’re to believe the paintings.”

  “I know that. I am just not interested in tales to frighten children. I need somebody to throw to that mob before they get out of hand.” This was an uncommonly blunt statement, even for Pompey.

  “I’ll have a name for you soon,” I said.

  “Not unless you go easier on the wine.”

  “It’s never interfered with my attention to duty,” I said, fuming. Bad enough to be summoned like a straying slave by this jumped-up soldier, but I had to listen to him berate me as well.

  “Now, what about your other investigation?”

  “Other investigation?” I said innocently.

  “Yes,” he said impatiently, “the one that charges you to discover who betrayed the Secret Name of Rome.”

  “Well, so much for the Pontifical College being able to keep a secret.”

  “Are you serious? Three of the men at that meeting told me all about it within the hour.”

  I told him of my investigation and whom I had interviewed so far. “It all seems rather far-fetched, and I suspect I am pursuing the wrong people altogether,” I said untruthfully. Actually, I was very sure that I was close to something, but I felt no need to tell him anything prematurely.

  “Most likely. Syrian mountebanks! Cumaean scholars! Forget about them. Find me some aristocrat who’s plotting against Crassus, and most likely against me and probably against Caesar, too. I know the Senate’s packed with them, and your family is not backward in that regard.”

  “When my family has opposed you, Cnaeus Pompeius, we have never plotted behind your back. We have spoken out in public.” Doubtless the wine made my tongue a little freer than it should have been.

  He reddened, but quickly regained composure. “So you have. Well, not everyone in the august body is so courageous, and no few members proclaim themselves my friends but plot my ruin and that of my colleagues. I suspect it was one or more of them who put Ateius up to it, and who probably got rid of him immediately afterwar
d.”

  Like most men who rise to great power over the bodies of other men, Pompey saw plots and conspiracies everywhere. Of course, when you behave as he and Caesar and Crassus had, you create plots and conspiracies against yourself.

  “I can’t say whether this was aimed at you personally,” I told him, “but I suspect you may be right in thinking he was eliminated by his confederates rather than by an enemy. I spoke with the man only once, but he struck me as unstable, not somebody a conspirator would want to keep around once he’d been used.”

  “And murdering a tribune got the whole City in hysterics, distracting everyone from the real business at hand, which was the curse itself.”

  “Very true,” I admitted. This interview might not be so unproductive after all.

  “Well, get back to it. Let me know the instant you’ve found out something substantive.” He returned his attention to the papers on his desk. I resisted the urge to salute and whirl on my heel like a dismissed soldier. Instead, I strolled out, wondering if Pompey had been sharing his own musings, or if he had been sowing confusion for reasons of his own. Since I was disinclined to think any good of Pompey, I was biased toward the latter possibility.

  As I went out onto the temple steps, something that had been tickling the back of my mind without result suddenly came up for my inspection. Ateius’s body had been found on the Tuscan side of the river. Why there? He was wrapped in that strange robe, but he hadn’t been seen since delivering his curse. Had he really fled all the way from the Capena Gate to the river and across one of the bridges without being seen while wearing that eye-catching outfit in broad daylight?

  I glanced at the angle of the sun. There was still plenty of time left before nightfall. I needed a walk to clear my head, anyway. I set out for the Capena Gate.

  10

  AT THAT TIME THE SERVIAN WALL had some sixteen gates in common use, and two or three others for ceremonial purposes. I know this does not sound very impressive for a city as important as Rome. After all, Egypt boasts “hundred-gated Thebes.” Well, I have visited Thebes, and it doesn’t have a hundred gates, nor anything close to that number. That is just Egyptians for you. They like to think everything they have is bigger than anyone else’s. But there is no denying that Rome’s walls and gates were rather humble in comparison to those of, say, Syracuse or Alexandria or Babylon. They were, furthermore, in a state of perpetual disrepair. But then, we believed that the best defense of the City consisted in keeping our enemies several hundred miles away and prostrated by defeat.

  Nonetheless, we maintained a tiny guard keeping watch in a minimal state of readiness at each gate. These men were unarmed in keeping with the law forbidding armed soldiers within the City, but they wore military insignia. Real soldiers laughed at them.

  I found the captain of the gate watch lounging against one of the massive, oaken gateposts, arms folded and one booted foot propped behind him, head down, apparently napping in this half-upright position. At my approach a lesser guard nudged him.

  “Sorry to disturb your repose, Captain,” I said, “but I must ask you some questions.”

  The man blinked and came to a sloppy version of attention. “Yes, sir!” He wore a red tunic and over that a harness of handsomely polished leather straps arranged in a lattice. It made him look military, although it had no discernible function, since it neither supported armor nor suspended weapons. He was clearly a freedman who had lucked into this easy job through patronage.

  “Were you on duty the other morning when the consul Marcus Licinius Crassus made his memorable exit?”

  “I was, sir,” he nodded.

  “Excellent. Doubtless you recall the activities of the late tribune Caius Ateius Capito atop this very gate?”

  “Hard to forget, Senator.”

  “Even better. Did you by chance notice how the tribune made his exit?”

  “To be honest, sir, I was rooted to the spot like everyone else, until the consul Pompey and the virgo maxima got things under control.”

  “I see. Did, may I hope, any of your stalwart companions take note of his route of escape?”

  “Those buggers?” he laughed. “They took to hiding when Ateius started reciting his curse.”

  “I should not have bothered to ask. What about outside the gate? Is anyone out there now who was there that morning?”

  “There’s a whole crowd of vendors and beggars that’re out there every day, Senator.”

  “Splendid. Might any of these be considered reliable informants?”

  “Well, sir, I wouldn’t bother asking Lucius the sausage-seller. He’s blind. And the foreigners are all liars, so you can forget about them. The rest might’ve seen something, if they weren’t covering up their heads from terror.”

  “Thank you, Captain, you’ve been a great help. Nice outfit, by the way.”

  “Thank you, Senator,” he beamed. It was certainly a good thing that our legions kept everyone terrorized.

  I went through the gate, which was just about wide enough for two oxcarts to pass through, if the oxen were thin. It was an amazing contrast to the magnificent road just outside, the Via Appia, first and still the greatest of our wonderful highways. Built more than two and a half centuries before by the Censor Appius Claudius, it connected Rome with Capua before being extended all the way to Brundisium. It cut through mountains, bridged valleys and swamps, tunneled through hills, and ran straight as a taut bowstring from one city to the next, perfectly usable all year in any weather because of its perfect drainage and solid construction. Where it crossed soft or marshy ground, it was more like a buried wall.

  Just outside the gate, the first mile or so was lined with fine tombs, interspersed with the occasional crucified felon. It was also mobbed with beggars and with vendors who thus escaped paying the market fees. People sold all manner of goods, both sound and fraudulent. Others offered to act as guides for visitors to Rome, and it was not a bad idea to hire one. The Labyrinth of King Minos was not as confusing as Rome to a stranger. Unlike the great Greek and Roman colonial cities, which were usually laid out in a grid, Rome was an overgrown village of narrow, tangled streets and alleys. I got lost there myself, sometimes.

  Very near the gate, a stout peasant woman sat beneath an awning, surrounded by straw cages holding doves, cocks, and other sacrificial birds. By law, all livestock, including sacrificial animals, were to be sold in the Forum Boarium under the supervision of the aediles. The commons assumed that the authority of City officials extended only as far as the walls. This was not true, but it is notoriously difficult to convince people that their inherited folk beliefs have no legal basis.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed when they caught sight of my senator’s stripe. “I’m doing nothing wrong here, Senator,” she protested before I said a word. “You’re not an aedile, anyway.”

  “No, but I will be next year, so you may as well cooperate, or I’ll make your life miserable.”

  “Well, what do you want, then?”

  “Were you here when Crassus left the City a few days ago?”

  “I was, and it was quite a show, too. We missed the best of it out here. Couldn’t see that crazy man laying his curse on the whole City.”

  “I was on the other side and saw it. But then he disappeared in this direction. Did you see him?”

  “Couldn’t miss him. He was wearing that robe, looked like a Babylonian whore’s tent at a country fair.”

  At last, an eyewitness. “How did he get down from the gate?”

  “Had a ladder, over there.” She pointed to the wall just to the west of the gate. “It’s not there, now.”

  “Did you see him go up?”

  She thought. “Maybe. The ladder was there when I got here before dawn that morning. Sometime after dawn there was two or three men using the ladder. I didn’t pay much attention. I thought it was people getting a good spot to watch the show. Everybody knew Crassus was going out that morning. His horsemen were all gathered over there on the road. Made
a good show.”

  As I had suspected, Ateius had had help. It had struck me from the first that he’d had little time to lug all his gear to the top of the gate and get a fire going. His trappings had been awaiting him when he ran there from the Forum.

  “What did he do when he reached the ground?”

  “Well, first thing, he skinned out of that robe, stuffed it in a sack. A man came up, looked like he was wrapping a bandage around his arm. I heard the tribune cut his arm as part of his curse.”

  “Where did he go after that?”

  She pointed to the west, where the wall made a great curve to the south to go around the base of the Aventine before turning north again to meet the river. “They took off that way. I didn’t see them after they passed those horse stables.” Much of the land just outside the wall in that area was still pasture, but there were numerous houses and stables as well.

  “Thank you. You’ve been the first real help I’ve had in days.”

  “You won’t give me a hard time when you get to be aedile, will you?”

  “I’ll be far too busy.” I asked a few more people, but most hadn’t noticed anything in all the uproar, and the few who had confirmed the bird-seller’s story.

  So they had fled westward, two and possibly three of them. There were three more gates before the wall reached the river. They might have reentered the City at any of them, unnoticed. Or they may have gone on to the river and taken a boat across, or trudged up the embankment to cross one of the bridges. Sometime shortly after that, Ateius had been murdered and his body dumped on the western bank of the river.

  As always, questions arose. Who were the other men? Were they some of his supporters, such as I had met at his house, or were they other men entirely? Why had his body been deposited on the bank, instead of in the river? Above all, who had killed him?

  It did seem that he had not been immediately attacked by indignant Friendly Ones. And it occurred to me to think, what would have happened if his body had been thrown into the river? To begin with, it might have floated all the way to Ostia and gone out to sea, there to feed the fish. And the woman had seen him stuff the robe into a sack, whereas the body had been wearing it. Brilliant philosophical deduction: the killers wanted the body to be found, and by wrapping it in the incriminating robe, they wanted to make sure that it was properly identified, despite its untidy state.