The Venus Throw

by Steven Saylor

  She was teasing me again, I thought, trying to add suspense to the

  telling. "Well?" I finally said.

  "Politics, or something like that," she said hastily. "A falling out between Clodius and Caelius, and then trouble between Caelius and

  Clodia."

  "You're well on the way to making a poem, like the mob in the Forum: Clodius and Caelius, and Caelius and Clodia. You need only insert a few obscene verbs. What sort of falling out? Over what?"

  She shrugged. "You know I don't follow politics," she said, suddenly fascinated by her fingernails.

  "Unless there's a good story involved. Come, wife, you know more than you're telling. Must I remind you that it's your duty, indeed your obligation under the law, to tell your husband everything you know? I command you to speak!" I spoke playfully, making a joke of it, but Bethesda was not amused.

  "All right, then," she said. "I think it was something to do with what you call the Egyptian situation. Some falling-out between Clodius and Caelius. How should I know anything about the private dealings of men like that? And who should be surprised if an aging whore like Clodia suddenly loses her charms for a handsome young man like Caelius?"

  I had long ago learned to weather Bethesda's moods, as one must weather sudden squalls at sea, but I had never quite learned to comprehend them. Something had set her on edge, but what? I tried to recollect the phrase or topic that had offended her, but the sudden chill in the room numbed my mind. I decided to change the subject.

  "Who cares about such people, anyway?" I picked up my empty cup, twisted my wrist to set the dregs aswirl, and stared into the vortex. "I was just wondering a moment ago, about those odd visitors I had on the day before my trip."

  Bethesda looked at me blankly.

  "It was only a month ago. You must remember—the little gallus and the old Alexandrian philosopher, Dio. He came seeking help, but I wasn't able to help him, at least not then. Did he come calling again while I was gone?"

  I waited for an answer, but when I looked up from my cup I saw that Bethesda was looking elsewhere.

  "It's a simple enough question," I said mildly. "Did the old philosopher come asking for me while I was gone?"

  "No," she said.

  "That's odd. I thought that he would; he was so distraught. I worried about him while I was away. Perhaps he didn't need my help after all. Have you heard any news of him, through your vast network of spies and informants?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "And? What news?"

  "He's dead," said Bethesda. "Murdered, I believe, in the house where he was staying. That's all I know."

  The swirling dregs in my wine cup slowed to a stop, the porridge in my stomach turned to stone, and in my mouth I tasted ashes.

  Chapter Seven

  It was not until several days after my return to Rome that I found time to write a letter to Meto. I recounted to him the events which had transpired in my absence — Cicero defeating Caelius in the trial of Bestia despite the accusation of "the guilty finger" (the perfect anecdote for Meto to share with his tentmates!), Pompey's embarrassment on his way to Milo's trial, the obscene chant about Clodius and Clodia.

  Since I had made such a story of Trygonion's and Dio's visit when I saw Meto in Illyria, I felt I should let him know what had become of the philosopher. Merely a matter of keeping him informed, I told myself, as I began setting down the words. But as I wrote, I began to realize that telling the tale was in fact my chief reason for writing the letter. Dio's murder had left me with a nagging sense of guilt, and writing down the gory facts for Meto's perusal, painful though it was, somehow eased my conscience, as if describing an event could mitigate its awfulness.

  When it comes to correspondence, I am not Meto; my prose will never capture great Caesar's admiration. Nonetheless, I will copy down a bit of what I wrote to Meto on that last day of Februarius:

  Also, son, you will probably remember the tale I told you about my visit from Dio, the philosopher I once knew in Alexandria, and the little gallus named Trygonion. You laughed when I described to you their absurd disguises—Dio dressed like a woman, and the eunuch in a toga trying to pass himself off as a Roman.

  The sequel, I fear, is quite the opposite of funny.

  What Dio dreaded came to pass, only hours after he left me. That very night, as I was making ready for my journey to see you, Dio was being viciously murdered in the house of his host, Titus Coponius.

  I learned the bare fact that Dio had been murdered from Bethesda on the morning after my return to Rome. She claimed to know no details at all. Bethesda took a disliking to Dio the instant she laid eyes on him, and you know how she is—from that moment on he might as well not have existed; even her appetite for gossip seems unstirred by his murder. I had to discover the details for myself, posing discreet questions in the proper quarters. This was not difficult, though it took some time.

  It seems that there had been a previous, failed attempt to poison Dio. He mentioned this to me himself on the night of his visit. Apparently some slaves of his previous host, Lucius Lucceius, were suborned (doubtless by agents of King Ptolemy) to poison Dio's food, but succeeded instead in killing his sole remaining slave, who had taken on the role of food taster. Dio fled from Lucceius's house to that of Coponius.

  It was from the house of Coponius that Dio came to call on me, and to ask for my help. If only I had offered to let him spend the night in my house! But then his assassins might have done their bloody work here, under my roof. I think of Bethesda and particularly of Diana and I shudder at the thought.

  Poison having failed, Dio's enemies resorted to less subtle means. After leaving my house, Dio returned to Coponius's as quickly as he could—darkness had fallen and Dio feared the streets, even disguised as he was and with Belbo along for protection. As for Trygonion, Belbo says that he went along as far as Coponius's door and then went his own way, perhaps returning to the House of the Galli, which is also here on the Palatine, close by the temple of Cybele. No one seems to know much about this gallus, and no one can explain to me his relationship to Dio.

  What follows is secondhand information, some of it thirdhand—which makes it gossip, really—but I think it's reliable.

  Back at Coponius's house, Dio shut himself alone in his room, refusing to take any dinner. (He had already eaten at my house, and was very fearful of being poisoned.) The household of Coponius retires early, and soon after dark everyone was abed except the slave who had been posted inside the front door to keep watch through the night. At some point (before midnight, according to the watchman) there was a noise from the back of the house, where Dio was quartered.

  The watchman went to investigate. Dio's door was locked. The slave called his name and rapped on the door. Finally the slave pounded so loudly that Coponius himself (in the bedroom adjoining) was awakened and came to ask what the matter was. At length the door was broken down and Dio was discovered on his sleeping couch, lying on his back with his eyes and mouth wide open, his chest pierced by gaping wounds. He had been stabbed to death in his bed.

  A window in the room opened onto a small courtyard. The shutters of this window were open and the latch had been forced from outside. The killer or killers apparently crept over a high wall, skulked across the terrace, broke into Dio's room through the window, murdered him, then skulked away.

  The killer or killers escaped unseen.

  It was a wretched end to a distinguished life. That Dio foresaw his destruction and spent his final days in a city far from home, dreading every shadow, casts an even gloomier pall over his fate. That he came to me, asking for my help on the very day of his murder, fills me with agitation. Could I have prevented the deed? Almost certainly not, I tell myself, for the men who wished to see Dio dead have resources far beyond anything I could forestall. Yet it seems a cruel jest of the gods to have brought him back into my life after so many years and then to have snatched him away so violently. I have seen much carnage and suffering in my life, yet i
t never be-comes easier to bear. It only becomes harder for me to fathom.

  Now every member of the embassy which arrived last fall from Alexandria has been murdered or has fled back to Egypt or has otherwise vanished from sight. (The few still in Rome, I am told, have either pledged their allegiance to King Ptolemy or been bribed to keep silent; no doubt some or all of them were the king's spies from the beginning.) The people of Rome should be ashamed that such an atrocity could occur not just in Italy but in the very heart of the city itself. To be sure, there are those who say that Dio's murder is such an outrage that the Senate will be shamed into taking some action to punish his slayers (if not King Ptolemy, then at least his henchmen). The Senate may even move to repudiate the king and recognize Queen Berenice, which was the object of Dio's mission. While he lived, the Senate would not even allow him to officially address them, but in death Dio may yet achieve what he desired: an Egypt with a new, independent ruler.

  Can justice follow upon a tragedy such as Dio's murder? Considering the state of Rome's courts and the persons whose interests are at stake, I strongly doubt it. But I refuse to brood overmuch concerning this matter. Had I accepted Dio's commission to expose his enemies, I might now feel some obligation to pursue the matter of bringing his killers to justice. Fortunately, my rejection of his commission was explicit. I told him that I could not help him and gave him a good reason. My conscience is clear. The task of finding the blade which drew Dio's lifeblood, and punishing the hand that wielded it, does not fall to me.

  Whatever happens next, it will not involve me, and for that I am glad.

  Rereading that letter now, I see that my statements regarding the circumstances of Dio's death are marred by a number of errors, some of them quite significant. But no statement was more in error than the final one, which I read now with a shudder of amazement. How could I have been so blithely, smugly unforeseeing? What a perilous world we move through, like men blindfolded. The past and future are equally obscure, and broad daylight can hide as many dangers as the landscape of the night.

  PART

  TWO

  NOXIA

  Chapter Eight

  Almost a month passed before I had occasion to write to Meto again.

  To my beloved son Meto, serving under the command of Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, from his loving father in Rome, may Fortune be with you.

  I write this letter on the twenty-ninth dayof Martius, an uncommonly warm day for so early in the spring—we have thrown open all the windows and the after-noon sunshine is hot on my shoulders. I wish you were here beside me.

  Alas, you are not. Nor are you safely at ease in Illyria, where I last saw you. I learned in the Forum of your sudden move to Gaul not long after my visit. They say that Caesar was called to put down a revolt by some tribe with an un-pronounceable name—I won't even try to spell it. I presume that you have gone along with him.

  Take care, Meto.

  Given your movements, I have no way of knowing if my letter of a month ago has reached you, or will reach you after this one, or will ever reach you at all, but since one of Caesar's message bearers (a young soldier who has carried my letters to you before) is about to leave for Gaul and says he will take along a letter from me if I can finish it within the hour, I am writing very quickly and will simply give you what news I can, even at the risk of conveying events that make little sense for lack of context. (Don't show this letter to your commander, please. I fear that a man who dictates his memoirs on horseback would hardly accept being rushed as an excuse for fashioning such awkward sentences.)

  Hopefully, you did receive my last letter, and so you know of the murder of Dio. I scoffed at those who said Dio's murder was too big a thing to go without consequence and that the scandal would result in someone being punished, but it seems that I was wrong and they were right, up to a point.

  The scandal has been enormous. Dio was even better known and more highly regarded than I had realized—or did murder make a martyr of him and render him larger and more beloved in death than he was in life? For a man who is now spoken of in such tones of awe, he was certainly treated very shabbily in the final months of his life, shuffling from one reluctant (perhaps treacherous) host to another, expending his resources until his purse was empty. The senators who now speak of Dio as a second Aristotle and weep at the mention of his name are the same men who refused to allow Dio to speak in their chambers not long ago.

  (I've suddenly remembered that old conundrum, which Dio posed to me as a young man in Alexandria: Is it better to be beloved in life and despised after death, or despised in life and revered after death?)

  So the debate in the Senate over the Egyptian situation grinds on, freshly fueled by this shameful outrage. Meanwhile a charge of murder was recently brought against one Publius Asicius.

  I must say that I was not surprised to see Asicius accused of Dio's murder. Dio himself suspected this young man of being involved in the failed poisoning attempt at the house of Lucius Lucceius, and told me as much when he visited me. On the very day that Dio's food taster died of poison, Asicius had paid a visit to Lucceius. By itself, this is a merely circumstantial connection. But then, after Dio left my house, and probably not long after he was stabbed in his bed, I happened to encounter Asicius and our neighbor M.C. in the street, and while I overheard them say nothing directly incriminating, the circumstances, at least in retrospect, struck me as highly suspicious.

  So when I heard that the charge had been brought against

  Asicius, I felt greatly relieved, thinking that if he was guilty, then perhaps the whole ugly truth would be given a chance to come out—and without having to become involved myself. (I imagine you sometimes feel the same relief in your work for Caesar, when an odious task is unexpectedly accomplished without any effort on your part, as if some friendly god had decided to do you a favor.)

  But the gods can be fickle with their favors. Who do you think stepped forward to defend Asicius? Yes, the best defense advocate in Rome, our old friend Marcus Cicero.

  When I heard that news, my hope abruptly dwindled. Many things may happen in a trial where Cicero is one of the advocates, but the emergence of the truth is seldom one of them. If justice triumphs, it happens in spite of Cicero's smoke and mirrors, and will have nothing to do with whether or not the truth was spoken.

  They say that Cicero and Asicius were both away from Rome, down the coast, when Asicius was arraigned—Cicero in Neapolis, Asicius across the bay at his family's villa in Baiae. To discuss the case, Asicius went to fetch Cicero and took him back to Baiae in his magnificent litter. Well, not his, exactly, but a litter lent to Asicius by—can you believe it?— King Ptolemy.

  (The complicity is absolutely damning! You would think that a man accused of murdering King Ptolemy's enemy would hide his connections with the king rather than flaunt them, but like most men of his generation, Asicius can't seem to resist any opportunity to show off.)

  The litter was an enormous eight-man affair, elaborately decorated (Egyptian litters make the most elegant Roman conveyances look plain) and attended by no fewer than a hundred armed bodyguards, also lent to Asicius by King Ptolemy. (If the king supplied the bodyguards for Asicius's physical defense, who can help but conclude that it was also the king who hired Cicero for Asicius's legal defense?) Can you see it in your mind—Cicero and Asicius discussing the upcoming murder trial while they proceed along the shore borne aloft in a litter, lolling about in Egyptian luxury with a hundred swordsmen in their train?

  I missed the trial; a relapse of the cough which plagued me in Illyria kept me from venturing down to the Forum.

  Bethesda went to watch, but you can imagine the sort of report she came back with—I was informed that Asicius is quite good-looking, if a bit wasted and pale (Bethesda has heard that he drinks to excess); that Asicius's friend, our handsome young neighbor M.C., was nowhere in sight; and that Cicero was as long-winded and boring as ever.

  And oh, yes, that Asicius was acquitted of mu
rdering Dio.

  I now regret having missed the trial, for I should like to have heard with my own ears the evidence presented. But I do not regret having missed whatever devious conjurer's tricks Cicero used to distract, disorient and ultimately persuade the judges. I don't need the aggravation.

  So, for better or worse, the matter has come to a conclusion. Poor Dio shall go unavenged, but his legacy may yet prevail—

  I lifted my stylus from the parchment, distracted by a knock. I turned in my chair and saw Belbo in the doorway.

  "The messenger's come back, Master. He says he must have your letter now if he's to take it for you."

  I grunted. "Show him in. No need to make him wait in the hallway." I returned to the letter.

  I must close abruptly. Caesar's message bearer has re-turned.

  I have foolishly spent this precious hour recounting Forum gossip and left myself no time to speak of family matters. Know that all is well. Bethesda is as always, and Diana becomes more like her mother every day (more beautiful, more mysterious). Eco continues to prosper, though I often wish I could have taught him a less dangerous trade than his father's, and his beloved Menenia has proved herself a woman of surpassing patience, especially in bringing up the uncontrollable twins. Imagine having two four-year-olds squabbling and stubbing their toes and catching colds. . . .

  I must close. The messenger has entered the room and stands before me, glancing over his shoulder at the statue of Minerva in the sun-filled atrium, tapping his foot impatiently.

  Take care, Meto!

  I dusted the parchment with fine sand, then pursed my lips and gently blew the sand away. I rolled the parchment, slipped it into a leather jacket and sealed the cylinder with wax. As I handed it reluctantly to the messenger, thinking of things left unsaid, I took a closer look at the man. He was dressed in a soldier's regalia, all leather straps and clinking steel and blood-red wool. His jaw was stiff and his countenance stern.

  "How old are you, soldier?" "Twenty-two."

  Meto's age exactly; no wonder the fellow looked to me like a child playing soldier. I studied his face, searching for some sign of the horrors he must have beheld already in his young life, and saw only the bland innocence of youth framed by a soldier's helmet.