Last Seen in Massilia

VII

"What do you know about Massilia?" asked Hieronymus.

"It's far, far from Rome," I said, feeling a stab of homesickness, thinking of Bethesda and Diana and my house on the Palatine Hill.

"Not far enough!" said Hieronymus. "Caesar and Pompey have a brawl, and Massilia is close enough to take a blow. No, what I mean is, what do you know about the city itself-how it's organized, who runs it?"

"Nothing, really. It's an old Greek colony, isn't it? A city-state. Here since the days of Hannibal."

"Since long before that! Massilia was a bustling seaport when Romulus was living in a hut on the Tiber."

"Ancient history." I shrugged. "I do know that Massilia sided with Rome against Carthage, and the two cities have been allies ever since." I frowned. "I know you don't have a king. I suppose the city's run by some sort of elected body. You Greeks invented democracy, didn't you?"

"Invented it, yes, and quickly discarded it, for the most part. Massilia is run by a timocracy. Do you know what that means?"

"Government by the wealthy." My Greek was coming back to me.

"By, for, and of the wealthy. An aristocracy of money, not birth. Just what you might expect from a city founded by merchants."

"Not a good place to be a poor man," I said.

"No," said Hieronymus darkly. He stared intently into his wine cup. "Massilia is run by the Timouchoi, a body of six hundred members who hold office for life. Openings occur as members die; the Timouchoi themselves nominate and vote on replacement candidates."

"Self-perpetuating." I nodded. "Very insular."

"Oh, yes, within the Timouchoi the attitude is very much `us' and `them,' those on the inside and those on the outside. You see, a man must be wealthy to join the Timouchoi, but it takes more than just money. His family must have held Massilian citizenship for three generations, and he himself must have fathered children. Roots in the past, a stake in the future, and here in the present, a great deal of money."

"Very conservative," I said. "No wonder the Massilian system is so famously admired by Cicero. But is there no people's assembly, as in Rome, where the commoners can make themselves heard? No way for ordinary folk to at least vent their frustrations?"

Hieronymus shook his head. "Massilia is ruled by the Timouchoi alone. Of the six hundred, a rotating Council of Fifteen deal with general administration. Of those fifteen, three are responsible for the day-to-day running of the city. Of those three, one is selected First Timouchos, the closest thing we have to what you Romans call a `consul,' chief executive in times of peace and supreme military commander in times of war. The Timouchoi make the laws, keep order, organize the markets, regulate the banks, run the courts, hire mercenaries, equip the navy. Their grip on the city is absolute." As if to demonstrate, he tightened his fingers around the cup in his hand until his knuckles turned white. The look in his eyes made me shift uneasily.

"And what is your place in this scheme of things?" I asked quietly.

"A man like me has no place at all," he said dully. "Oh, now I do. I'm the scapegoat." He smiled, but his voice was bitter. Hieronymus called for more wine. More Falernian was brought. Such largesse in a city under siege seemed nothing less than profligate.

"Let me explain," he said. "My father was one of the Timouchoi-the first of my family to rise so high. He was made a member just after my birth. A few years later, he was elevated to the Council of Fifteen, one of the youngest men ever elected to that body. He must have been a man of great ambition to rise so high, so fast, leapfrogging past men from richer, older families than ours. As you might imagine, there were those among the Timouchoi who were jealous of him, who believed that he had stolen honors properly due to them.

"I was his only child. He raised me in a house not unlike this one, up here on the crest of the ridge where the old money lives. The view from our rooftop was even more spectacular than this; or perhaps my nostalgia embellishes it. We could see all Massilia below, the harbor filled with ships, the blue sea stretching on and on to the horizon. `All this will be yours,' he told me once. I must have been quite small because I remember that he picked me up, put me on his shoulders, and turned slowly about. `All this will be yours…' "

"Where did his money come from?" I asked. "From the trade."

"The trade?"

"All wealth in Massilia comes from the slave and wine trade. The Gauls ship slaves down the Rhodanus River for sale to Italy; the Italians ship wine from Ostia and Neapolis to sell to the Gauls. Slaves for wine, wine for slaves, with Massilia in the middle, providing ships and taking her cut. That's the foundation of all wealth in Massilia. My great-grandfather began our fortune. My grandfather increased it. My father increased it more. He owned many ships.

"Then the bad times came. I was still quite young-too young to know the details of my father's business. He told my mother that he had been betrayed by others, cheated by men among the Timouchoi whom he had considered his friends. He had to sell his ships, one by one, to pay his creditors. It wasn't enough. Then our warehouse near the harbor burned to the ground. My father's enemies accused him of setting the fire himself to destroy records and avoid debts. My father denied it." Hieronymus paused for a long moment. "If only I had been older, able to understand all that was happening. I'll never know the truth-whether my father was responsible for his own ruin, or whether others destroyed him. It's a painful thing, never to know the whole truth."

"What became of him?"

"He was suspended from the Council of Fifteen. The Timouchoi began proceedings to expel him."

"Were there criminal charges?"

"No! It was worse than that. He had lost all his money, don't you see? In Massilia there's no greater scandal. What matters to a Roman most?"

"His dignity, I suppose."

"Then imagine a Roman stripped completely of his dignity, and you may understand. Without wealth, a man in Massilia is nothing. To have possessed wealth and to have lost it-such a thing could happen only to the worst of men, men so vile they've offended the gods. A man like that must be shunned, despised, spat upon."

"What became of him?"

"We have a law in Massilia. I imagine it was devised for just such men as my father. Suicide is forbidden, with penalties exacted upon the suicide's family-unless a man applies to the Timouchoi for permission."

"Permission to take one's own life?"

"Yes. My father applied. The Timouchoi took up the matter as they might have taken up a trade bill. It saved them the embarrassment of expelling him, you see. The vote was unanimous. They were even so kind as to supply him with a dose of hemlock. But he didn't take it."

"No?"

"He chose the harder way. Down there, where the land meets the sea, do you see that finger of rock that juts up through the city wall, so massive they had to build the wall around it?"

"Yes." The rock was naked of vegetation, its summit stark white against the blue sea.

"Its official name is the Sacrifice Rock. Sometimes people call it Suicide Rock, or Scapegoat Rock. If you're agile enough, you can climb onto it from the battlements of the city wall. If you're fit enough, you can climb from the base to the top without using the walls at all. It's not as steep as it looks, and there are plenty of footholds. But once you reach the top, it's a frightening place. The view over the edge is dizzying-a long, sheer drop to the sea. When the wind is high at your back, it's all a man can do to keep from being blown off."

"Your father jumped?"

"I remember that morning vividly. It was the day after the Timouchoi approved his request. He dressed in black and left the house without a word. My mother wept and tore her hair, but she didn't try to follow him. I knew where he was headed. I went up on the roof and watched. I saw when he reached the foot of the rock. A crowd had gathered to watch him climb. He looked so small from our roof-a tiny black figure scaling a white finger of rock. When he reached the top, he didn't hesitate, not even for an instant. He stepped over the edge and vanished. One moment there, the next-gone. My mother was watching from a window below me. She let out a scream the moment he vanished."

"How terrible," I said. From old habit, I sifted the unresolved details of his story. "What became of the hemlock?" As soon as I asked, I knew the answer.

"Creditors came to drive us out of the house the next day. My mother could never have borne that. They found her in her bed, as peaceful as if she slept. She broke the law by drinking the hemlock provided for my father; broke the law as well by mixing it with wine, because wine is strictly forbidden to women in Massilia. But no one sought to prosecute her. There was nothing left to confiscate, and no one left to punish but me. I suppose they thought I had already been punished enough for the sins of my parents." He took a deep breath. "I resent her, sometimes, for not staying with me. I resent him, as well. But I can't blame them. Their lives were over."

"What became of you?"

"For a while I was grudgingly passed from one relative to another. But they all considered me to be cursed. They didn't want me in their homes for fear that the curse would rub off. At the first sign of trouble-a fire in the kitchen, a sick child, a slump in the family business-I was tossed out. At last I ran out of relatives. I looked for work. My father had given me good tutors. I knew philosophy, mathematics, Latin. I probably knew more about the trade than I realized, having picked it up from my father. But no one among the Timouchoi would hire me. You might think one of these exiled Romans who keep popping up in Massilia would have found me useful, but not one of them would touch me for fear of offending the Timouchoi.

"Now and again I found work as a common laborer. It's not easy for a free man to make a living by manual labor-too many slaves about who can do the same work for no wages. I can't say that I ever succeeded at anything except staying alive. Some years I barely managed that. I've worn other men's cast-off rags, eaten other men's garbage. I've swallowed my shame and begged for alms. For long periods I've had no roof over my head. Sun and wind turned my skin to leather. Just as well; a hard hide served me well when fellows like that old coot Calamitos took a cane to me, calling me a vagrant, a good-for-nothing, a parasite, the son of a cursed father and an impious mother."

"Calamitos-is he one of the Timouchoi?"

"Artemis, no! None of that gang of old fools is rich. They're contemporaries of my father who never amounted to much, When I was a boy they were all afire with ambition and wracked by their jealousy, Calamitos especially, of my father and his success. After my father died, it gave them great pleasure to gloat over my squalor and to vent their cruelty on me. Nothing comforts the wretched like having someone even more wretched to despise."

The sun was lowering and the wind was beginning to rise, The tall trees on either side of us shivered and pitched, and their shadows grew longer.

"A terrible story," I said quietly. "Merely a true one."

"The way you described the Sacrifice Rock-you must have climbed it yourself."

"A few times. The first time was out of curiosity, to see what my father had seen, to know the place where he ended."

"And after that?"

"To follow him, if the moment seemed right. But I never heard the call."

"The call?"

"I don't know how else to explain it. Each time I climbed up, I fully intended to jump. What was there to keep me in this accursed world? But once I reached the top, it never felt right. I suppose I expected to hear my father and mother calling to me, and they never did. But soon now… very soon…"

"What did Calamitos mean when he called you `Scapegoat'?" He smiled bitterly. "That's another of our charming ancient traditions. In times of great crisis-plague, famine, military siege, naval blockade-the priests of Artemis choose a scapegoat, subject to approval by the Timouchoi, of course. Ideally it's the most wretched creature they can find, some pathetic nonentity whom no one will miss. Who better than a child of suicides, the lowest of the low, that irritating beggar who haunts the market square, whom everyone will be glad to be rid of? There's a bit of a ceremony-xoanon Artemis presiding over clouds of incense, chanting priests, that sort of thing. The scapegoat is dressed in green, with a green veil; the goddess has no desire to see his face. Then the priests parade the scapegoat through the city, with all the onlookers dressed in black as if for a funeral, the women ululating laments. But at the end of the procession, the scapegoat arrives, not at a tomb, but at a very fine house especially prepared for his arrival. Slaves bathe him and anoint him with oil, then dress him in fine clothes-all in this particular shade of green, which is the scapegoat's color. More slaves pour costly wine down his throat and stuff him with delicacies. He's free to move about the city, and a fine litter-green, of course-is provided for his use. The only problem is, he might as well be in a tomb. No one will talk to him. They won't even look at him. Even his slaves avert their eyes and say no more than they have to. All this luxury and privilege-it's only a pretense, a sham. The scapegoat lives a sort of death-in-life. Even as he indulges in every physical pleasure, he begins to feel… utterly alone. Slightly… unreal. Invisible, almost. Perhaps that's only to be expected. All this time, if you believe the priests of Artemis, by some mystical means his person is collecting the sins of the entire city. Well, that might make anyone feel a bit out of sorts."

"What is the end of all this?"

"Ah, you're eager to jump ahead. Better to shun the future and live in the moment! But since you ask: when the moment is right-I'm not sure how the priests determine this, but I suspect the Council of Fifteen has a say-at the right moment, when all the sins of the city have attached themselves to the pampered, bloated, satiated person of the scapegoat, then it will be time for another ceremony. More incense and chanting, more onlookers dressed in black, more ululating mourners. But this time, the procession will end-down there." He pointed toward the finger of rock. "Suicide Rock, Sacrifice Rock, Scapegoat Rock. I don't suppose the name matters. My misery began there. There my misery will end."

He expelled a long sigh, then smiled wanly. "Surely, my friend, you've been wondering why I've asked you no questions about yourself, why I seem so curiously incurious about two Romans who bubbled up out of that inner moat? Here's your answer. I don't care who you are or where you came from. I don't care if you're here to murder the First Timouchos, or to sell Caesar's secrets to that motley colony of Roman exiles who've washed up in Massilia. I'm simply glad for the company! You can't imagine what it means to me, Gordianus, to sit here on this rooftop as the day wanes, sharing this splendid view and this splendid wine with another man, enjoying a civilized conversation. I feel… not so alone, not so invisible. As if all this were real, not merely a pretense."

I was weary from the day's ordeal and disquieted by the scapegoat's story. I looked sidelong at Davus, who was gently snoring, and felt envious.

While we had talked, the sun had slipped beyond the watery horizon. It was the darkling hour. The line between sea and sky blurred and dissolved. Ethereal patches of silver light hovered here and there on the face of the water. Nearer at hand, shadows deepened. Warmth still rose from the paving stones beneath our feet, but puffs of cooler air eddied from the tall trees on either side, shrouded deeply now in their own shadows.

"What's that?" whispered Hieronymus, leaning forward, his voice urgent. "Down there… on the rock!"

Out of nowhere, two figures had appeared about halfway up the face of the Sacrifice Rock. Both were climbing upward; one was substantially ahead of the other, but the lower figure was gaining.

"Is that… a woman, do you think?" whispered Hieronymus. He meant the upper figure, who wore a dark, voluminous, hooded cloak that flapped in the wind to reveal what had to be a woman's gown beneath. Her movements were halting and uncertain, as if she were weak or confused. Her hesitation allowed the lower figure to continue closing the gap between them. Her pursuer was certainly a man, for he was dressed in armor, though without a helmet. His dark hair was cut short and his limbs looked dark against the white stone and the pale blue of his billowing cape.

Beside me, Davus stirred and opened his eyes. "What…?"

"He's chasing her," I whispered.

"No, he's trying to stop her," Hieronymus said.

The twilight played tricks on my eyes. The harder I stared at the distant drama on the rock, the more difficult it was to discern the crabbed movements of the two figures. It was almost easier to watch their progress from the corner of my eye.

Davus leaned forward, suddenly alert. "That looks dangerous," he offered.

The woman paused and turned her head to look behind her. The man was very close, almost near enough to grasp her foot. "Did you hear that?" whispered Hieronymus.

"Hear what?" I said.

"She shrieked," agreed Davus.

"That might have been a seagull," I objected.

The woman put on a burst of speed. She gained the summit of the rock. Her cloak blew wildly about her. The man lost his footing and scrambled on the rock face, then recovered and scurried up after her. For an instant they merged into a single figure; then the woman vanished, and only the man remained, his figure outlined against the leaden sea beyond.

Davus gasped. "Did you see that? He pushed her!"

"No!" said Hieronymus. "He was trying to stop her. She jumped!"

The distant figure knelt and looked over the precipice for a long moment, his pale blue cape thrashing in the wind. Then he turned about and climbed down the rock face, not straight down the way he had come but angling toward the nearest connecting section of the city wall. As soon as he was close enough he leaped from the rock onto the battlement platform. He stumbled when he landed and apparently hurt himself. He broke into a run, limping slightly and favoring his left leg. There was no one else on the platform, the Massilians having earlier moved all their men to the other side of the city to deal with the assault from Trebonius's battering-ram.

The limping runner reached the nearest bastion tower and disappeared into the stairwell. The base of the tower was hidden from view. There was nothing more to see.

"Great Artemis! What do you make of that?" asked Hieronymus.

"He pushed her," Davus insisted. "I saw him do it. Father-in-law, you know how keen my eyes are. She tried to cling to him. He pushed her away, over the edge."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said Hieronymus. "You were asleep when I explained to Gordianus. That's the Sacrifice Rock, also called the Suicide Rock. He didn't chase her up the face of it. She went there to kill herself, and he tried to stop her. And he very nearly did-but not quite!" The hard lines around his mouth suddenly loosened. He covered his face. "Father!" he moaned. "Mother!"

Davus looked at me with a puzzled frown. How could I explain the scapegoat's misery?

I was saved from the attempt by the arrival of a breathless slave, a young Gaul with a red face and unruly straw-colored hair. "Master!" he cried to Hieronymus. "Men downstairs! The First Timouchos himself, and the Roman proconsul! They demand to see… your visitors." The slave cast a wary glance at Davus and me.

That was all the warning we had. The next moment, with a great tramping of feet, soldiers emerged from the stairway onto the rooftop terrace, their drawn swords gleaming dully in the gloaming.