A Point of Law

11

Did Fulvia really strip naked right atop the rostra in front of the whole public?” Julia wanted to know.

“Only half naked. I think stripping to the waist as a display of grief is a Greek custom.”

“When did Fulvia turn into a Greek? She only did it because she thinks she has plenty to show off.”

“Now that you mention it, the condition wasn’t at all unbecoming, though pity wasn’t the reaction she evoked.” Julia and I had encountered one another at our house, where I had gone to get my bath gear. She had just come from Callista’s to change clothes for an afternoon ceremony at the Temple of Vesta. Then it would be back to Callista’s to work on that code.

“You were eager enough to escort her home, I hear.” She looked radiant and deceptively benevolent in Vestal white.

“And a good thing I did. Listen to what I learned there.” As usual, Julia couldn’t stay angry when she was hearing really scabrous gossip and shady intrigue. She seemed thoroughly edified by my recitation.

“What an indiscreet pair,” she said, shaking her head. “And what does Curio intend by this ludicrous charade?”

“Not so ludicrous,” I told her. “He has the whole City believing he was almost assassinated, and I’d believe it, too, if I hadn’t seen the evidence and heard what Asklepiodes had to say. With the elections just the day after tomorrow, the sympathy vote could just push him over the top in a tightly contested election.”

“Sad to say, that is the most innocent explanation you can think of.”

“Unfortunately. And I am now sure that he had some knowledge of Fulvius’s murder. But was it prior or post, and was he personally involved?”

“Would Fulvia marry her brother’s murderer? That would be rich even for her.”

“Not everybody knows what everybody else is doing in this tangle of deceptions,” I sighed. “So far we have Fulvius, the Marcelli, Octavia, Curio, Tribune Manilius, and even Fulvia herself, and every one of them may be playing a different game. Some of them may not be involved at all, although I wouldn’t put any money on that proposition.”

She looked at the satchel of towels, oil flasks, and scrapers on the table. “Which bath are you going to? The Licinia?”

“No, the one near the old Senate house. The other senators will be gathering there, and I want to sample the climate. Have you made any further progress on the code?”

“Two more characters. Some whole words are turning up, though it’s too soon to try to make any sense out of the documents. It’s the most enthralling work I’ve ever done. I’d still be there if I didn’t absolutely have to go to the temple this afternoon. Callista thinks we can have it broken by nightfall.”

“Wonderful. Send word to me as soon as you have them translated. I’m afraid I have no idea where I’ll be.”

“Wherever it is, go easy on the wine. You need all your wits about you just now.” She swept out like a white cloud.

“Big chance of that,” Hermes said, when she was gone.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m thinking of reforming.” Hermes wisely said nothing.

It was still only early afternoon, which seemed unbelievable so eventful had the day been. Men were just beginning to gather at the baths. The one I favored was just off the Forum. Although it was less luxurious than the newer balnea, it was favored by men of power in Rome, the senators and the untitled but wealthy equites.

For a change, I soaked in the hot bath and just listened to them talk for a while. Naturally, almost all the talk was about Fulvia’s performance that morning, and the “attack” on Curio. Naturally, Fulvia got the bulk of the attention. Some claimed to be shocked and scandalized; some were merely amused. All agreed that she had made a fabulous sight, and those few who hadn’t been there were much aggrieved at having missed the show.

“What’s this about Curio being a champion of the plebs?” asked a crusty old senator. “I thought he was one of us!” Us being the aristocrats, the optimates, the men who sometimes styled themselves boni, the best.

“That’s what I thought,” said another. Apparently, Curio’s defection to Caesar’s camp was so recent that many senators hadn’t gotten the news yet.

“Oh, yes,” an eques affirmed. “It seems he’s as two-faced as Janus. He’ll spend his year pushing Caesar’s interests if he gets elected.”

“And now it looks as if he’s marrying Clodius Pulcher’s widow,” said a young senator, who wore a dreamy expression. “It’s going to be a little hard on his dignity when he gets up to interpose his veto, knowing that we’ve all seen his wife naked.”

“He doesn’t seem to be a man easily embarrassed,” said the eques.

“Who tried to kill him?” I threw the question out at random, my eyes half shut, as if I were almost asleep. I didn’t want to take part in the conversation, but I was curious to hear opinion taken from the common store. Sometimes this sort of thing can be more revealing than the informed opinion of insiders.

“Same bunch who killed that fellow, what’s-his-name, Fulvius,” the young senator opined.

“I’ll wager it’s Pompey’s doing,” said the eques. Pompey was not at all popular with men of his class, who tended to favor Caesar.

“Why?” asked the old senator. “Aren’t Pompey and Caesar still pretending to be friends? Since that dog Clodius was killed, Caesar’s had no flunky to run the city for him. Young Curio’s father was a good man. He was one of us! This boy won’t be near the rabble-rouser Clodius was. Why should Pompey want him dead?”

“Besides,” the young senator put in, “if there’s one thing Pompey knows how to accomplish well, it’s killing people. He wouldn’t send incompetents to have a man done away with. He’d send a few of his old centurions, men who know how to do their master’s bidding and keep their mouths shut about it afterward.”

“Whoever it was,” said a voice I recognized, “they certainly got that wild woman excited.” Sallustius Crispus lowered himself into the bath. I hadn’t seen him come in. “She might have gotten another riot going except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” asked the eques.

“Didn’t anybody notice?” Sallustius said, grinning. “She never said just who she wanted killed-because she didn’t know.”

“Sounded to me like she wanted the heads of the whole Senate hung up on the Rostra,” the young senator said.

“A rhetorical excess, I’m sure.” Sallustius caught sight of me then, or pretended to. “Why, Decius Caecilius, I seem to run into you wherever I go.”

“He’s standing for praetor,” somebody said. “There’s no getting away from a candidate.”

“He’d wear his toga candida in the bath, if he could get away with it,” said another, amid general laughter. That was fine with me. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to be taken too seriously. Gradually the talk turned to other things. As I expected, Sallustius was there when I resumed my clothing.

“All right, Sallustius, you’ve been dying to say something. What is it?”

“Our friend Curio, of course, is saying nothing about the men who attacked him, save that they were inept. His friends and supporters, however, are not so reticent.”

“Oh? What are they saying?”

“That it was not Curio’s enemies who attacked him, that it was Caesar’s enemies.”

“I see. Supporting Caesar has exposed him to attack from the vile and underhanded optimates, eh?”

“Oh, yes. Very much so. And what a brave man he is to have survived the attack. How becomingly modest to act as if it were a trifling brawl, instead of the Homeric combat his friends are describing this very day. I saw him just a little while ago in the Forum, his head wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage.”

I had to smile. Curio’s little charade seemed to be working splendidly. Had I not so inopportunely sent Asklepiodes to tend to him, he probably would have had himself carried to the Forum on a litter, looking ready to expire but proclaiming himself to be prepared to take office and serve the People of Rome despite his near-mortal injuries.

We walked out of the dressing room and out into the pillared arcade that fronted the balnea. Beyond the steps, between the walls of two temples, we could see a small part of the Forum, including the old sundial from Syracuse. People continued to climb the steps in search of a bath, many of them senators. I was obliged to nod and greet most of them in passing but managed to handle our conversation in the meantime.

“So this raises not only his own standing, but Caesar’s as well?”

“As if he needed it. You escorted Fulvia home, did you not? How did you find Curio?”

“Just as she described him: poor man was at death’s door, bleeding like he’d been beheaded. I was in the act of sticking a denarius under his tongue when he revived and begged to return to his public duties.” I was probably enjoying this too much. I have a tendency to do that. Sallustius certainly took it wrong.

“I see. Then you have finally got off the fence and declared for Caesar? Good choice. You won’t regret it.”

“Nothing of the sort! And don’t go around telling anybody that I’m in Caesar’s camp because I’m not!”

He winked. “Of course, I understand perfectly.” Sometimes I truly hated the man.

“So how do you interpret this business?” I asked.

“I find myself wondering a few things. For instance, how did these attackers know to ambush Curio outside Fulvia’s door?”

“They intend to marry. It’s no secret and one really doesn’t expect a woman like Fulvia to wait until the vows have been made and the hymns to Hymenaeus have been sung.”

“That is so,” he said, nodding sagely. “Yet a good many people have not yet heard of these proposed nuptials. Most of us were still under the impression that Clodius’s widow was to marry Marcus Antonius, even now earning laurels in Gaul. Most of Curio’s friends do not yet know. How did his enemies come to learn of it?”

“I’m sure I haven’t the foggiest,” I told him. Guarding Curio’s secrets was no concern of mine, but something made me unwilling to communicate anything to Sallustius.

“In fact,” he went on relentlessly, “last night I attended a meeting of, shall we say, the inner circle of Caesar’s supporters here in Rome at the house of Caius Antonius the quaestor and brother of Marcus Antonius. Do you know him?”

“Who can avoid knowing the brothers Antonius? They’re always either committing some crime or prosecuting somebody else for doing the same. For a pair of disreputable drunks, they’re a lot of fun, most of the time. Your meeting must have been enjoyable.”

“Oh, it was all very serious for a change,” he said. “We discussed how we were going to manage the voting now that Caesar’s men are here. A great many of those soldiers have never even seen Rome, much less voted in an election here, so there was much discussion about how to see that all runs smoothly. Curio was there, among others.”

“I would expect him to be, now that he’s changed sides.”

“Yes, just so. After the meeting, a crowd of us walked through the City, each man leaving the group as we neared his home. As it happened, we passed right by Curio’s door. He left us there, nowhere near the Clivus Victoriae. He gave us no indication that he feared attack either.”

“No doubt he didn’t wish to besmirch his future bride’s reputation.” I said this with a straight face.

“That must have been it. Once we were safely away, he tiptoed his way through Rome’s night-darkened streets and was seen by his enemies, who have a batlike ability to find their prey in the dark. They decided to let him spend a last night with his beloved before attacking, possibly as a courtesy.”

I spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness. “The world teems with mysteries. Personally, I wonder how the ocean stays where it is. Why doesn’t it run off the edge of the world?”

“You should ask that Alexandrian woman you’ve been visiting. She is said to be a great scholar.”

Trust Sallustius to jab at you from an unexpected direction. Talking with him was like fighting with a left-handed swordsman. I thought I kept my face impassive, being well schooled in that art, but he was as perceptive as he was devious.

“We’ve discussed mathematics and language,” I said. “The subject of cosmology has never come up. Now that you mention it, I must remember to ask.”

“She’s a great beauty, too. I’ve attended her salon on a number of occasions. Your taste in women is, as always, impeccable.”

“Oh, she and Julia are great friends. Whatever poor reputation I have stems from my young and foolish days.”

“Really? Since Fulvius made his denunciation three days ago, everyone assumes you seduced, or were seduced by, Princess Cleopatra.”

“She’s just a girl. Besides, she’s royalty and I am a mere Roman senator. And a plebeian at that.” I thought I was restraining my temper admirably.

“Oh, come now, Decius. Nothing is beneath the dignity of Egyptian royalty, everyone knows that.”

I glanced at the angle of the sun. It was just past midafternoon. The old sundial we looted from Syracuse two hundred years before would show the hour to be the sixth, possibly the seventh. It always gave the time incorrectly, but it would be somewhere in that region.

“Sallustius, I am sure that this is taking us someplace, but I can’t imagine where.”

“I would truly love to have your personal account of Catilina’s conspiracy. I believe you know things nobody else does.”

“You’ve asked me about it often enough.”

“Suppose I had something to trade? Something of great interest to you right now? Something of vital importance to your career and possibly to your continued existence? Might that not be worth your helpful cooperation?”

I considered this. It did not come unexpectedly. Collecting secrets was the breath of life to Sallustius. Trading them was his passion. He would not make such a proposition idly. I knew he must truly believe he had something worth my granting him an interview about that unhappy experience. He knew the value of information the way a slave trader knew the value of his human livestock.

“All right,” I said after due consideration. “If you truly know something I don’t know already, you shall have your interview. But it will have to be after this business is settled and the elections are over.”

“That is understood,” he said, nodding and grinning like an ape. “You’ll have a few days between the election and the day you assume office.” Like everyone else, he knew that, barring death or conviction, I would be elected praetor.

“Done. What do you know?”

“Let’s find a quiet place to talk.”

We left the steps of the balnea and passed between the two temples into the Forum. A short walk brought us to the Temple of Saturn. On this day and at this hour it was deserted except for its slaves, who were busy decorating it for the upcoming Saturnalia celebrations. The archaic, blackened image of the god, holding his golden sickle, his legs wrapped in woolen bands, ignored us as we entered the dimness of his home.

“This is where it started, by the way,” I said.

“What started?”

“My involvement in Catilina’s conspiracy.”

“In the Temple of Saturn? But of course,” Sallustius said. “You were Treasury quaestor that year. How could I have forgotten?”

“That’s for later. What do you have for me?”

We walked past the ornate podium that held military standards. In some years they stood like a dense forest, topped with eagles, boars, bears, spread hands, and other emblems of military units great and small. That year it consisted mainly of empty sockets. So many units had been activated that the only standards left were those of obsolete organizations, the phalanxes and maniples of previous centuries. One section had been covered with a black cloth. There had stood the eagles lost by Crassus at Carrhae. The cloth would remain, an emblem of dishonor, until the eagles were taken back from the Parthians.

Beyond this podium was a broad, marble desk used by the Treasury quaestors and their staffs on days of official business. Ranged around it were wooden chairs with wicker seats. We pulled out two chairs and sat, alone in the quiet dimness of the old temple. Only faint sounds of activity made their way through the open doors.

Sallustius arranged his toga, took his time getting comfortable, laced his fingers over his small but distinguished paunch, and began. “Does it ever strike you, Decius, how few the great families have become?”

“This is oblique, even for you. Get to the point.”

“Bear with me. I am a historian, and I take a long view of things. Like most of your class, you are a man of direct action and only take heed of what lies directly in front of you at the moment. You pay little attention to what stretches far behind and of what lies ahead.”

I sighed. This was going to take awhile. “I may be more perceptive than you think, but tell it as you like.”

“The great old patrician families, the Cornelii, the Fabii, and such, have been dying out generation by generation. They are infertile. More and more they rely on adoption. Or else they fall into poverty because patricians are barred from trade and business. Their only legitimate sources of income come from the land, which is no longer adequate. Public office is expensive, as you know all too well. The Senate takes its new members mainly from the wealthy equites now,” Sallustius began.

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”

“Of course not. Everybody knows this. They just don’t take the trouble to extrapolate the consequences. Rome is a Republic, Decius, but it is far from being a democracy. Roman voters are profoundly conservative, and for centuries they have elected their leaders from a tiny clique of families. New Men like Cicero can be discounted. They have been too few to matter.

“The resulting order has been rough but relatively stable. There have been challenges-such as the upheaval of the Gracchi, the rebellion of Sertorius, Catilina’s abortive coup-but overall the order of things has been stable. But that order has been upset over the last three generations by a succession of military strongmen: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and now Caesar have arisen to upset the order of things.

“It is our own fault, of course. We give our generals godlike powers within their theaters of war and their provinces. Then we expect them to come meekly home and behave like Republican statesmen. It is human nature to love power once one has tasted it, and few have tasted of power as deeply as Caesar or Pompey. Men hate to give power back to whoever bestowed it. They want to keep it for life, and they want to pass it on to their sons as if it were any other inheritance.

“Marius was a jumped-up peasant, he died mad and his children amounted to nothing. Sulla produced twin children late in life. He was old and dying and he knew it. He could have no important part in the upbringing of his son so he reluctantly but sensibly retired to private life after years of absolute power.”

“Considering Sulla’s proclivities,” I said, “it’s remarkable he produced any heirs at all.”

Sallustius shrugged off this non sequitur. “Pompey is another man of no family. His father came from nothing, and his sons are of no consequence. He has had a remarkable career, but it’s over, and he has no future did he but know it.

“Caesar is the man of the hour. His family is incredibly ancient-all the way back to Aeneas and the goddess Venus, if you care to believe his propaganda, but still the most ancient of all Roman families by any interpretation. He is a patrician, one of the few left in Roman politics. He is immensely popular with the commons. He is the most astoundingly successful general since Scipio Africanus. He is now rich beyond imagining. How old is Caius Julius?”

The sudden question took me a little aback. “About fifty, I think.”

“Exactly. Julius Caesar is fifty years old, and he has no heir. He has-what? — ten, perhaps fifteen vigorous years left to him? He has attained the years where men begin aging fast. If Calpurnia were to present him with a son tomorrow-a great unlikelihood since she is here in Rome, not pregnant, and he is in Gaul-he might live to see the boy perform his manhood ceremony, perhaps see him off to his first military tribuneship. He will never live long enough to guide a son’s career to the higher realms of imperium.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my wicker-bottomed chair. “What’s all this talk of heirs have to do with anything? Only monarchs need to worry about passing their powers on to heirs.”

Sallustius nodded solemnly. “Exactly. Caesar’s probable heir is at the center of your problems.”

I was beginning to seriously doubt his sanity. “Are you talking about young what’s-his-name? Little Caius Octavius?”

He spread his hands in a gesture of satisfaction. “Who else? He’s about twelve years old and a precocious twelve at that. Already proven himself as a public speaker by delivering his grandmother’s eulogy. You missed that, Decius, but I can tell you that it went down very well with the commons. When Caesar comes home next year or the year after, he’s going to keep that boy close and teach him all he needs to know about being a Caesar. His real father is dead; his stepfather is an old man who will be more than amenable to the adoption.”

“Being Caesar’s heir, even were it to happen, won’t make him or anyone else a prince,” I said.

“You are behind the times, Decius. It will mean exactly that.” Sallustius said this flatly, without flourishes and without his customary insinuation. He said it like an historian adding a fact to a book. “What is a prince, anyway? A prince is a human being with a pedigree, like a champion racehorse. The pedigree of the Julii is the highest to be had. That family is surrounded by a unique aura that separates it even from the other patrician gens.”

I was persuaded but unconvinced. “Ancient is the word for them. How many great Caesars have their been? Not many in recent centuries. Caesar’s father was the first of that family to reach the consulship in ages.”

“But the commons have never lost their reverence for them. It was why they were happy to have Caesar as Pontifex Maximus when he was little more than a boy.”

“He bribed his way into that office!” I protested.

“Of course, but it pleased the people no end. They like knowing that a Julian is arbitrating between them and the gods. And,” Sallustius leaned forward for emphasis, “if they respect the Julian men, they absolutely adore the women. Why this should be I don’t know. It must be some religious impulse every Roman absorbs with his mother’s milk. You weren’t in Rome when Caesar’s daughter died, were you?”

“No, I was still in Gaul.”

“You’ve never seen such a spectacle. She died in childbirth, as so often happens to Julian women-” Realizing the thoughtlessness of his words, he stopped abruptly. Sallustius had forgotten he was talking to someone married to a Julian. “Forgive me, Decius, I did not-”

I waved it off. “Please continue.”

“Very well. When Julia died, Pompey did not have to feign his mourning. He truly loved the girl and was heartbroken. But you cannot imagine how the people reacted. I have never seen anything like it. They dared to bring her body here for cremation.” He pointed through the doorway. “Right in the middle of the Forum, where the kings were cremated in the old days. They put her ashes in a grave on the Campus Martius, among the heroes of Rome. No woman has ever before been so honored. The people were honoring neither Pompey, (her husband) nor Caesar (her father). It was purely for love of Julia. Although they barely knew her, she was the most beloved woman in all Rome.”

He leaned back again. “This boy, this Octavius, comes from that family. His grandmother was a Julia. The day will come when his ancestry will be important.”

“Before he gets my support, he’d better have a lot more to offer than he has now,” I grumbled, wondering where all this was leading.

“But will your support be of any value to him?” Sallustius asked.

“Eh? Explain yourself.”

“I know, Decius, that you are a man without personal vanity, and that your own ambitions are modest, limited to praetorian office.”

This was not quite accurate. I fully intended, someday, to be consul. I just wanted it to be in a year without turmoil, allowing me to busy myself with routine duties such as presiding over the Senate and making speeches nobody would have cause to remember. I certainly did not deceive myself into thinking I was a great leader of legions. In the severely limited range of my ambitions, Sallustius evaluated accurately what my family considered my political laziness.

“Nonetheless,” he went on, “you can hardly imagine a time when your opinion and support will not carry weight because of who you are: a Caecilius Metellus.”

“It goes without saying.” I was not as complacent as I was trying to sound. I had grave fears for the future of my family, but I did not want to give them voice in front of one of Rome’s less discreet persons.

“Your family’s constant trimming and fence-mending have earned it a great many enemies. They married a daughter to a son of Marcus Crassus, they married another to a son of Pompey, they married you to Caesar’s niece, all while opposing these men in the Senate and the assemblies. I realize that they have done all these things in order to avoid making powerful, implacable enemies, but the time is past for such tactics.” Sallustius asked, “You are familiar with the old saw about there being three categories of friends?”

I quoted: “My friend, my friend’s friend, my enemy’s enemy.”

“It is your family’s mistake that in holding to this course they have sought to be none of these things. It has made them everybody’s enemy.” I was about to protest, but he held up a hand. “Bear with me, please. You’ve been away from Rome too much in recent years, and the great men of your family seem to listen only to each other.

“I, on the other hand, listen to everybody. I go everywhere in Rome, from the lowest lupanar and drinking club to the houses of the greatest men. I even attend intellectual salons like those of your new friend Callista. And it may not seem likely to you, but I spend most of my time listening, not talking.”

“That is difficult to picture,” I acknowledged.

“That is because you are too easily swayed by personalities and surface appearances,” said Sallustius. “Unlike your elders, you make friends and enemies far too easily and often for the wrong reasons. For-what? twenty years? — Titus Milo has been one of your closest friends. For about as long, Clodius was your deadliest enemy. Why is that? The pair of them were never more than political gangsters with not an ounce of moral difference between them.”

“But I like Milo,” I explained. “I always have. Whereas I detested Clodius from the moment I laid eyes on him.”

“And that,” he said, with exaggerated patience, “is why you’re such a political imbecile.” Sallustius wasn’t the first to say this, so I took no offense. “Men like Caesar and Curio don’t allow such petty considerations to influence the clarity of their political aims.”

“I suspect that this is why the Senate will never appoint me dictator,” I said.

“Decius, I would hate to lose you. Aside from being a good prospect as a Caesarian, you are certainly one of the more interesting and unusual figures in our public life. But I fear you will not be among us for long if you fail to acknowledge the desperation of your peers. All of them: your family, the Claudians, both Marcelli and Pulchri, the Cornelians and Pompey, and the rest, they are all second- and third-raters. And they have been fighting and plotting and bleeding themselves white against each other! Now in Caesar, they are up against a man of the first class, and they have no idea what to do. They are all so jealous of each other that they will never agree on a policy. They have no man of comparable worth to rally behind. In their blind panic they will bring on a civil war they cannot win.”

“It needn’t come to that,” I said. “I know Caesar well. He is arrogant and ambitious, but he is not reckless. He has little personal respect for the Senate, but he is respectful of its institutions. He did not initiate this series of extraordinary commands. Marius began that more than half a century ago. Sulla, Pompey, and others have taken full advantage of them; Caesar has just been better at it. In following precedent, he’s adhered strictly to the Constitution. I don’t believe that he will take up arms against the Senate. He is no Sulla.” Even as I said it, I had doubts. What did I really know of Caesar? What did anybody know? “I don’t feel like arguing about this. I seem to have this same argument with my wife every day lately.”

“You should listen to her,” Sallustius said. “She’s a Caesar.”

“So she may be descended from a goddess, but she isn’t one herself, anymore than her Uncle Caius Julius is a-Did you say you’ve been everyplace these months I’ve been away?”

“I was wondering how long it would take to work its way into your brain. I was going to let you have one more good rant before repeating it. I knew you would take more satisfaction in working it out for yourself.”

“And did your researches among Rome’s political plotters take you to the house of Marcus Fulvius?”

“Oh, yes. And it was a very inspiring setting for mapping out the glorious future of Rome, with its patriotic wall decorations and, well, you’ve been there I understand.”

“I have. Were you invited or did you just barge in after your inimitable fashion?”

“I was invited to dinner, along with several other senators and equites prominent in the assemblies. Curio was there, by the way. He was still with the optimates at the time, but was perceived to be wavering.”

“I take it that this assemblage was not random.”

“By no means. I noted at once that all the guests formed, you might say, a community of predicament.”

I mulled over what I knew of Marcus Fulvius and Curio so unalike in most ways. “Would indebtedness be the common denominator?”

“Very good! Yes, our host was most commiserative. He lamented that this was how a few wealthy men and bankers had gained such undue influence in Roman political life. Office is so ruinously expensive these days, and the only way a man of modest means can hope to be of service to the Senate and People is to go into debt.”

“Might I hazard the speculation that he had an answer to this vexing problem?”

“But of course. And there was none of that Catilinarian foolishness; no suggestion that you should go out and murder your father or set fire to the Circus. Marcus Fulvius and his patrons had a simple and somewhat drastic solution: cancellation of debts.”

“Stop.” I put out a hand. “Just hold it there for a moment. We have been talking thus far about reactionary aristocrats. A blanket cancellation of debt is radical beyond the most outrageous of radical policies. Even the Gracchi couldn’t manage it when they were trying to save the ruined farmers. Lucullus signed his own political death warrant when he tried to alleviate the tax-debt burden of the Asian cities. How did this nobody from Baiae propose to do what nobody has yet managed?”

“Oh, there would have to be proscriptions, of course. Unlike Sulla’s, though, these would fall most heavily upon the equites, particularly the bankers. The Senate and the bulk of the commons would hardly suffer at all. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds and not all that repugnant. After all, do you know anybody who really likes bankers?”

“Only a dictator can proscribe.” I was beyond astonishment.

“Proscription is nowhere in the Constitution, although it happens when a tyrant seizes power. So there is nothing that says it is a power reserved solely for a dictator. A really powerful cabal could carry it off.”

“Sallustius, surely you could not have believed that this-”

“Did I say I believed him?” He looked truly insulted. “Give me credit for some political good sense. I know a crackpot when I see one. When I hear one, at any rate.”

“And yet he had backing.”

“Certainly.”

“I know already that the house he lived in belonged to Caius Claudius Marcellus.”

“Really? I did not know that, although it’s not much of a surprise. I would have thought one of the other Claudii though. Caius is not the most ardent of them. His brother and cousin are far more forceful.”

“They’re also the most dismal of conservatives. Where did all this radical claptrap come from?”

“A good question. I pondered it at great length, as it occured.” He leaned back in his chair, and I prepared myself to sit through a lecture. Sallustius would have to show off his political acumen. I would just have to let him. His knowledge of Roman political life, both high and low, was comprehensive. And he was no fool.

“First of all, any who took this scheme seriously had to suffer from a political blindness exceeding even that of your family. They think they are still fighting the social struggles of two hundred years ago, patrician against plebeian, nobiles against peasants. Back then the equites formed a tiny class of prosperous farmers who could afford to show up at the yearly muster with a horse.

“But the equites have been quietly growing in wealth and power, and now they are, in fact, the real power brokers of the Republic. If you want to stand for high office, they are the people who can lend you the money to do it. Once you are in office, it is understood that you are in a position to do them favors. Who, for instance, will be collecting the revenues for all those new provinces Caesar has been adding to our Empire?”

“Publicani, of course. The tax farmers.”

“Exactly the people Lucullus alienated to his own political hurt. Caesar will not make that mistake. He knows where the power lies in Rome. He secured his own position through the assemblies not the Senate. The optimates think of themselves as Rome’s rightfully privileged class. They see ranged against them the populares, whom they perceive as a penniless rabble led by demagogues like Clodius and Caesar. They forget that the populares also include most of Rome’s millionaires. Their well-bred contempt for mere money precludes their giving this bloc serious consideration.”

I thought this over. “So Pompey and his supporters are out. Pompey is far from politically astute, but he understands the power of the equites. He rose from that class himself.”

“Oh, Pompey would never touch anything as foolish as this. And Caesar is not only friendly toward them, he is extraordinarily reluctant to see citizens executed. He’ll kill barbarians in droves, but he is reluctant to see even his mortal enemies killed.”

“So who?”

“Aren’t you interested in knowing what subject was not discussed?” asked Sallustius.

My patience was thinning fast, but he had a point. I was being slow that day. “All right. Did he discuss an attack on the Metelli?”

“Didn’t breathe a word of it. In fact, he hinted heavily that your family would be one of the many great ones who would be solidly behind him. After all, what he proposed was a return of the ever-popular Golden age, when Rome was ruled by the best men, when proper aristocrats drew their modest wealth from the good soil of Italy, when commoners knew their place, and base tradesmen did not flout their ill-grubbed money before their betters.”

“Does anyone really believe there was ever such a time?” I asked. “Well, I suppose Cato does. You don’t suppose-No, even Cato isn’t that loony, and he all but slapped Fulvius in the face when the man confronted me. So what brought about this change?”

“I am guessing that Fulvius changed patrons,” Sallustius said. “None of that crowd who have been howling for your blood were present when I visited his house. They seem to be mostly old Clodians, not at all the sort who would want a restoration of the old aristocracy, much as they might despise bankers and moneylenders.”

“All right,” I said, throwing up my hands. “What are you telling me? I am thoroughly confused, and my time is running short. I go on trial tomorrow, and I would really like to be able to demonstrate that I am not guilty of murder.”

“It’s the boy, Decius.”

“That child is all of twelve years old! Just being able to deliver a competent eulogy doesn’t qualify him for high-stakes political intrigue!”

“So who is behind him?” Sallustius said, as insinuatingly as always. “You know Cicero’s dictum: A cui bono? To whom goes the benefit? Who is behind him? Who stands to gain if he becomes Caesar’s heir? Who would absolutely not want to see Fulvius’s silly plan come to anything? Assuming, as we both do, that the various Claudii Marcelli bankrolled him and put him up to it in the first place as a means to undermine Caesar, who would be in a position to know what was going on in that house?”

A few things fell into place. “Octavia.”

He nodded. “The boy’s sister and wife of Caius Claudius Marcellus. Who was their father?”

“The elder Caius Octavius.”

“And what do we know about him?”

“He was praetor a few years back,” I said, searching my memory. “I believe he was the first of his family to reach the praetorship. He did a decent job of governing Macedonia as his propraetorian province. Nobody accused him of corruption.”

“Yes, by all accounts a good and honorable man. Do you know who his forebears were?”

“My wife keeps excellent track of these things,” I said. “I don’t.”

“The family is from Velitrae, in the Volscian country. His father was a banker of that city. He married his son to Atia, the daughter of Caesar’s sister, who was the wife of Atius Balbus, another banker of Velitrae. Balbus was of great aid to Caesar in his penurious years. So Caesar’s probable heir and his sister’s are the grandchildren of bankers on both sides. Think of it: An attack on bankers, an attack on Caesar’s power base-these things would not be to the advantage of Octavia’s little brother.”

“So you think she subverted Marcus Fulvius, drew him away from her husband and the other Marcelli? But how?”

He slapped his hands against his knees and rose from his chair. “I didn’t say I knew everything. I’m just telling you where you should be looking. You are the one who is supposed to be good at this sort of thing.”

I rose as well. “I thank you for this information, Sallustius.” I tried not to make it sound too grudging. “This has been most illuminating, and you shall have your interview.”

“If you live,” he said cheerily.

We went outside and stood for a moment in the shade of the great portico. Off to the east end of the portico we could see the whole length of the Forum. Out there, near the meeting place of the comitia, I saw a man with his head turbanned in bloodstained bandages, surrounded by a crowd of belligerent-faced men, some of them wielding staves and cudgels.

“Curio has acquired protectors,” I noted.

Sallustius smiled benignly. “Are you familiar with the story of Pisistratus?”

“All I remember is that he was tyrant of Athens.” We walked down the steps and turned toward the Forum.

“He was a politician and soldier of some account, but merely one among many such. One day he appeared in the agora heavily bandaged, and claimed that he had been set upon by ruffians in the hire of the aristocrats. He petitioned the assembly to be allowed a bodyguard of armed men, and this was granted in an access of antiaristocratic fervor. Somehow this bodyguard kept growing until Pisistratus completely overawed the citizenry and eventually made himself tyrant, which position he enjoyed for a good many years.”

Sallustius turned to me and smiled again, less benignly this time. “It is the opinion of all rational historians that the wounds suffered by Pisistratus were self-inflicted.”

“Our friend Curio would never do anything so underhanded,” I asserted. Then we both had a good laugh over that one.

Sallustius wandered off and left me with some heavy thoughts to ponder. I shook hands and cadged votes bemusedly for a while, assessing the possibilities in the light of this new evidence, if evidence it was, and not just some fancy of Sallustius, who was never above playing his own political games.

The sun was just touching the rooftops on the west side of the Forum when a Greek slave boy ran up to me.

“You are the Senator Metellus?” he asked with a heavy Alexandrian accent.

“I’m one of them. Decius the Younger by name.”

“My mistress, Callista, sends you this.”

He handed me a folded piece of papyrus. I opened it and saw a single, oversized Greek letter: Delta. Below that, in small, neat letters, was a single Latin word: Done.