A Point of Law

12

I found the two of them, Julia and Callista, relaxing amid a great litter of papers and scrolls, looking absurdly happy and satisfied with themselves. They were celebrating with a bit of wine, which they were drinking from, of all things, Thracian rhytons; those strange drinking horns made of silver with the bases in the form of animal or human heads. Callista beamed at me and handed me one. Its horn part was delicately fluted, the base representing a ram, its curling horns and dense wool exquisitely molded.

“Bit of a departure from philosophical simplicity,” I noted. I took a sip and tried not to wince. It was one of those Greek wines flavored with resin that I have always found disagreeable.

“They were a gift from a Thracian nobleman who attended a course of my lectures at the Museum,” Callista said. “I only bring them out for special occasions.”

“Well, if this isn’t a special occasion,” I said, “then I don’t know what constitutes one. Breaking a code is a unique sort of accomplishment.”

“I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed anything so much,” she said, with apparent sincerity.

“What have you learned?” I asked.

Julia took up a small sheaf of papers. “We could have hoped for more. No names of the conspirators were used, probably for security’s sake, but probably also because they were scarcely needed, since only a tiny circle of plotters were involved. Also they are not dated. Again because the participants would know when they were written and received. These were never intended for future reference.”

“Marcus Fulvius intended to use them in the future,” I said.

“How so?” Julia asked.

“That he intended to use them at some future date I deduce from the fact that he didn’t destroy them after reading, which is what you usually do with incriminating documents. As to his motive, since he intended to be a great man, he may have wanted them for his memoirs, which he fancied would have an audience. Or, more likely, he may have intended to use them for blackmail purposes, or as insurance in case the others should someday turn against him, as I now believe they did.”

“I never would have thought of those things,” Callista admitted, “yet I find your logic impeccable, and your grasp of the various possible alternatives comprehensive. Most people who have not been trained in philosophy and logic form a single opinion, usually based on prejudice or emotion, and adhere to it stubbornly.”

“This is what makes my husband the-singular sort of person he is,” said my loving wife.

“But he employs his gift in a unique way,” said Callista. “Give me a problem of mathematics, of the nature of the universe, of natural history, or the nature of beauty, and I will bring to bear upon it all the resources of five hundred years of philosophical thought, from Heraclitus to the present day. But, confronted with the problems of human passion, of ambition, greed, lust for power, jealousy, and simple stupidity, I am as helpless as a child. Such things do not yield to analysis and philosophical rigor.”

“That,” Julia told her, “is because you have lived your life in an elevated world of the mind, where thought is the highest joy. Decius, to the contrary, is intimately familiar with all these things.”

“Well, what do we have here?” I asked, a little put out at Julia’s fulsome praise of the philosophical world. I had spent some time at the Museum of Alexandria and so had she. Among the teachers there we had found no shortage of pettiness, jealousy, and ambition.

“We’ve sorted these into what seem to be chronological order,” Callista said crisply. She took a sheet from Julia. “This one I’ve put first because the original showed signs of awkwardness in using the cipher. The ones I’ve assigned a later date show far greater assurance in the execution.”

“That makes sense,” I allowed. I took the sheet and read. It began without the usual preamble: “From so-and-so to his esteemed friend so-and-so, greeting.” Instead, it got down to business in the first line.

Our supporters are in place and have their orders. They will assist you in any way you wish, as in locating and inviting the subjects for each of your meetings, accompanying you to the Forum, etc. From receipt of this message you are not to approach us in public or in private. If you encounter one of us in a public place, there can be no more than an exchange of civilities. In public, for now, we are mere acquaintances whose families are vaguely connected. For your first gathering you will invite the following men whose sympathies we deem to be in accord with our program:

There followed a list of seven names. Those I recognized were low-level senators, two of them relatively well-known malcontents who continualy courted attention by berating the greatest men. They were tolerated because of tradition and because we liked to let the public think that the Senate is an assembly of equals, as in the good old days. When the plebs saw nonentities like these haranguing Caesar or Pompey, Cato or Cicero, to his face, right up on the Rostra, it gave everyone a sense of participation and the comforting and very deceptive feeling that Rome was in no danger of succumbing to tyranny.

“The next few,” Callista said, “are very brief and mostly list the guests he is to invite to each new meeting.” She showed me these and each of them gave a list of seven names, along with assurances that all was proceeding splendidly.

“Always seven names,” I muttered.

“What was that?” Julia queried.

“Wait awhile,” I said, studying the lists. “Things are beginning to shape up.”

“I love it when he’s like this,” Julia said.

“He is communicating with his muse,” Callista affirmed.

I ordinarily resent it when people talk about me as if I were not present, but this time I was too preoccupied to take umbrage. As the messages progressed according to Callista’s chronological table, the names of the senators and others got less safe. More prominent men began to show up, men known to have reservations about the trend of Roman politics, but not radical. Some names began to be repeated. These must have been the ones inclined to fall in with Fulvius’s crackpot scheme. I mentioned this to the two women.

“That makes sense,” Callista commented.

“The equites,” I said, “at least those whose names I recognize, are not in the banking or moneylending fraternity. Most seem to be members of prominent business families. These are probably men who have squandered their wealth and are in danger of being degraded from equestrian status.”

“I notice,” said Julia, “that while some of these names are prominantly anti-Pompey or anti-Caesar, none are famously pro-Pompey or pro-Caesar.”

“Very astute, my dear. No, these are mostly malcontents, those perpetually jealous of the great men but adhering to none of them. You may also notice that none of Cato’s patriotic little band are here either. And this despite the fact that Fulvius’s walls were decorated with their favorite historical patriots.”

Julia thought about that for a moment. “Those men are veritable ancestor worshippers, but they are also against any sort of tyrant.”

I put down the papers for a moment and gestured to a nearby slave, who refilled my rhyton. I no longer even noticed the resinous taste. My mind was working like one of those German ale vats, where little clumps of spirit-inspired particles swarm around like bees.

“Do you recall what I told you about the wardrobe Hermes and I found in Fulvius’s house?” I looked around. “By the way, where is Hermes? I haven’t seen him all afternoon.”

“He said he had to go locate some people, and he’d catch up to you later. As I recall you found some equestrian tunics, some senatorial tunics, a plain, white toga, and a toga praetexta.”

“Very good. At the time this told me that the man had vaunting, presumptuous ambitions. He was ready to assume a seat in the Senate and curule office. What escaped me at the time was what was not there.”

“This being?” Julia queried.

“He had no toga candida and no toga trabea.” I caught Callista’s quizzical look and elucidated. “The candida is the specially whitened toga we wear when standing for office. The trabea is a striped robe worn by augurs and some orders of priesthood.”

“He could have had the plain toga whitened,” Julia said.

“That would have left him with no toga for everyday purposes: Senate meetings and sacrifices and such.” More and more in those days, Roman men were discarding the toga except for formal occasions.

“So what do you deduce from this?” Callista wanted to know.

“First of all, that he expected to get a Senate seat, and even curule office, without standing for election.”

“Only a dictator can place a man in the Senate without election. At the very least it takes a vote of the full Senate.”

“Exactly.”

“Why not a priestly robe?” Callista asked.

“Most colleges of priesthood are filled by co-option. A priesthood is held for life. On the death of, say, an augur, the College of Augurs meets and votes in a new member. Likewise with most other priesthoods. A flamen can be appointed by a dictator, but they have to be patricians, and Fulvius didn’t qualify. Certain positions, such as Pontifex Maximus, are elective. But once elected, the pontificate is for life. The men behind Marcus Fulvius promised him a Senate seat and a curule office without having to stand for election. They couldn’t make him an augur or a pontifex, so they didn’t bother making the offer.”

“So somebody intended to become dictator,” Julia said, “and Marcus Fulvius was going to help him do it. But who? Pompey’s supporters have been trying to get a dictatorship for him as long as I can remember, but Fulvius approached none of them.”

“The Claudii Marcelli,” I said, “have been fomenting political hysteria in Rome. They’ve got everybody thinking that we are about to be tyrannized by either Caesar or Pompey. And they’ve been successful in this. Nobody seems to notice that Caesar is a prodigiously successful and ambitious but meticulously constitutional proconsul, and Pompey is a used-up old man content to rest on his laurels. They have us all drawing our swords against phantoms.”

“And they planned to overthrow the government with a clown like this Fulvius?” Julia said, incredulous.

“He’s just the one we’ve discovered,” I told her. “They didn’t put in this much planning, hire Aristobulus to concoct their code, and then kill Fulvius just to control one man to agitate among the debtors and malcontents. They must have other agents, probably far more important than Fulvius.”

“You said something about there being seven names on each list,” Callista said. “What is the significance of this?”

“The meetings were conventional dinner parties,” I explained. “His triclinium was set up for it, with all those patriotic paintings. The couches were arranged according to strict form, as to location and size. For centuries we’ve always followed the custom of nine at dinner. He would have adhered to that. Seven guests each time. Fulvius made eight. Who was the ninth man?”

“This will bear some thought,” Julia said. “What did you learn at the baths?”

I told them about my little foray, and what Sallustius had told me about the meeting he had attended at the house of Fulvius.

“Sallustius was holding something back,” Julia said. “He didn’t give you the names of the other attendees.”

“Even Sallustius can be discreet at times. He knew that if he named names and I used this in a prosecution or denunciation, each of them would know which gathering it was and who had blabbed. That could mean death or permanent exile for him. And he went to only one dinner party, so he could not have known that one of the guests was a permanent fixture at these meetings. The significance would have escaped him.”

Julia scanned the names, her lips forming each one as she read it, barely voicing them. “What other names do we not see on these lists, now that we are thinking in negatives? I don’t see either Curio or Manilius. These were written well before Curio declared for Caesar, and he was known for his indebtedness. Why not him? And Manilius was a tribune. Who better to rouse the mob against the moneylenders? They would have seemed natural targets for this scheme.”

“I am not satisfied with Fulvia’s story that she had nothing to do with her brother while he was in Rome. She might have known about Curio’s defection ahead of time and told him. As for Manilius, he’s shown no signs of exceptional radicalism. Curio says the two of them cooperated during his tribuneship.”

“There is the matter of that estate he suddenly came into,” Julia pointed out.

“The Claudii Marcelli have plans, and some of them are even constitutional. It’s never a bad idea to have a Tribune of the People in your pocket. It’s done all the time.”

“Or,” said Callista, “either one of them could have been the ninth man.”

Julia smiled at her. “Now you’re beginning to think like a Roman.”

“By next year,” I went on, spinning out my speculations, “or maybe the year after, I believe they intend to declare both Caesar and Pompey to be enemies of the state and get the Senate to name one of themselves dictator. That one will name one of the others his Master of Horse.”

“How can they do that?” Julia said, heatedly.

“I don’t know, but they will provoke Caesar in some fashion, offer him some insult that he can’t allow to pass. They want to force him into a move that they’ll be able to take before the Senate as proof that the state is under attack and call for an Ultimate Decree of the Senate.”

“I don’t understand,” Callista said. “I thought a dictator was a usurper, like a Greek tyrant. And what is this-cavalry commander?”

“Among us,” Julia explained, “dictator is a constitutional office. In time of deadly national danger, such as a foreign invasion, when our division of powers is too slow and clumsy to meet the emergency, the Senate can direct the consuls to name a dictator.

The dictator in turn names another man to be his Master of Horse. This is an ancient title for his second in command, who will carry out his orders.”

“The dictator,” I went on, “has full imperium. He does not share it with a colleague, and his acts are not subject to tribunal veto. He is attended by twenty-four lictors, the number of both consuls combined. The dictatorship is what we call an ‘unaccountable’ office. Alone of all Roman magistrates, when he leaves office he cannot be called to account for his acts. He can order anything, including the execution without trial of citizens. He can declare war on his own initiative. There is no limit to his power save one.”

“What is that?” Callista asked.

“Time. A dictatorship is held for six months, and then the dictator must step down. Sulla’s dictatorship was unconstitutional. It was a military coup. There weren’t enough senators in Rome to pass a resolution of dictatorship. Once in power he doubled the size of the Senate to pack it with his flunkies, and then had them keep voting him back in as dictator. He held the office for three years and didn’t step down until he was too sick to go on. This sort of thing is why we so seldom appoint a dictator.”

“It would take great fear to make the Senate do it now,” Julia said.

“People are ripe for it,” I pointed out. “You’ve heard all the scare talk, seen all the line drawing that’s been going on. Agitation to cancel debts and perhaps massacre the bankers and money lenders would add fuel to the fire nicely.”

“But something happened,” Julia said.

“Yes, something caused Fulvius to swerve from the path that had been laid out for him and instead attack the Metelli through me.”

“Look at this one,” Callista said, handing me a translated page. “It is one of the last.”

You are to stop this foolishness. Your support is withdrawn. We have called back our men, and they will no longer aid you. Render an accounting for your actions at once or face the consequences.

“This does sound impatient,” I said.

“And this is the last one.” Callista handed me the page.

I am sending you more slaves for your household and more men for your protection and support. They are rough, but trustworthy. As long as you remember the terms of our bargain and adhere strictly to them, you will achieve your ambitions and will have nothing to fear from me. Do not try to contact me. I will send someone for you should we need to meet.

“This last message differed from the others,” Callista said. “It is written in a woman’s hand.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. The differences are quite distinct.”

“Fulvia?” Julia said.

“Not Fulvia, though she is probably involved. This was written by Octavia.”

“Octavia?” Julia said.

I told them about the heavy hints Sallustius had dropped concerning the wife of Caius Claudius Marcellus and her little brother.

“When I met with her yesterday,” I paused. Could it have been just yesterday? “When I talked with her yesterday, she was a little too emphatic in proclaiming that she had cut her ties with the Julian family, that she thought Julius Caesar was a potential tyrant, that she had nothing to do with the Fulvians, that she had no knowledge of her husband’s affairs, that she hadn’t even seen her brother since he was an infant, and she didn’t follow City gossip. Is such a thing believable?”

“Not in our family,” Julia said. “I think Sallustius is right. He’s a weasel, but he knows his subject. Caius Marcellus does nothing without her knowledge. She knew all about this plot, and she even learned their code. She knows what futile bunglers her husband and his kinsmen are. She knows that Julius Caesar is destined to be the greatest man in Rome, and she wants to make her brother his heir.”

She said this with a bitterness that surprised me. Then I understood that she had hoped that a son of ours would be Caesar’s heir. It seemed that the gods had other plans.

“So Octavia subverted the plot?” Callista asked. “How could she do this? What lever did she apply to move Fulvius more to her liking?” Even in asking this she used an analogy from Archimedean mechanics.

“It’s unlikely that she was able to promise him greater rewards than he already expected,” I said. “So it must have been blackmail.”

“She couldn’t have accused him of political scheming,” Julia said. “Everybody does that anyway.”

“No, Octavia threatened to expose him for the murder of Aristobulus. The Marcelli wanted the Greek out of their way, and they wanted to bind Fulvius more tightly to themselves, so they sent him to do their dirty work.”

“What proof?” Julia asked.

“It must have been the ring. The Marcelli wanted the ring back. It was the only thing that connected them to Aristobulus. Fulvius killed Aristobulus and delivered the ring. Octavia got hold of it and showed it to Fulvius. She’ll have had some sort of written evidence connecting him to the crime, but she concealed the ring in the desk her husband lent to Fulvius. Anytime she wanted, Octavia could have some ambitious friend, Curio, for instance, accuse him and demand an investigation. The iudex appointed to investigate would get an opportune tip as to where to find the ring. Those men who caught Hermes and me going through Fulvius’s belongings, it was the ring they’d come for. The Marcelli weren’t concerned about the papers because they were in cipher. But Octavia wanted that ring back.”

“And where did Octavia get those men?” Julia asked. “She cultivates her reputation for virtue the way Hortalus cultivates his fish ponds.”

“She got them from Fulvia. One way or another, those two women have been plotting together. Clodius’s widow has retained some control over his supporters, who are Caesarians to a man. It may have irritated Fulvia that her brother was working with the other side. Octavia presented her with a way to control him.”

“How could she have exposed him without incriminating her husband?” Julia asked.

“Either the Marcelli have very carefully kept their own hands clean,” I said, “or else she just didn’t care. Remember our conversation here yesterday when I mentioned that Caesar wanted Octavia to divorce Caius Claudius Marcellus and marry Pompey? I had assumed that she was mortally offended and detested Caesar for demanding that she leave her husband. It was probably Caius who refused.”

“Why did she set Fulvius to attack you?” Callista wanted to know.

“I’d like to believe I’m important enough to be at the center of all this,” I said, “but the sad truth is, I’m nothing. But my family is still extremely influential in the Senate and the assemblies, and they’re turning more and more against Caesar. She had a tool in Marcus Fulvius, and she set him to undermining the Metelli. I was standing for curule office and was a convenient target. I was just back from a foreign command, and nothing is more common than to accuse such a man of corruption overseas. Remember, he had that fine pedigree to flaunt before the public just prior to election time. We speculated that he might have been fishing for a tribuneship by acclimation. If Fulvia had all the old Clodians primed to agitate for him in the consilium plebis, they might have carried it off. Then he’d be untouchable for a year.”

“But how would he have produced his witnesses?” Julia asked.

“Oh, he might have had some people lined up to commit perjury, and it may have been enough just to throw the election into disorder. He might have accused me of bribing away his witnesses or murdering them or something. Enough to get me barred from the election anyway. That would mean one less Metellus holding an important office next year. But something went wrong. The Marcelli, never quick-thinking men, realized what he was up to. Octavia got her slaves out of the house, maybe even warned Fulvius. He put on a dingy, old freedman’s toga and tried to get away, but they caught him and killed him. Then they dumped him on the steps of the basilica.”

“Do you think the various Marcelli, Marcus, Caius, and Marcus, actually killed him with their own hands?” Julia wanted to know. I explained to them Asklepiodes’s analysis of the wounds, and the conclusions I had drawn from them.

“Decius Caecilius,” Callista said, with what seemed to be unfeigned admiration, “I believe you have invented a whole, unique subset of philosophy! Have you ever considered writing a book about this? I am sure that you would be much in demand for lectures at the Museum in Alexandria.”

For a moment I wasn’t certain that I had heard her correctly. “Are you serious?”

“I am always serious about philosophical matters,” she assured me.

I glanced toward Julia. She was looking away, intently studying the fretwork that tastefully graced one of the walls.

“I shall have to give that some thought,” I said. “After all, I’ll have to have something to do during the occasional exile from Rome.” Another thought occurred to me. “Speaking of philosophical things, Callista, I’ve always wondered why the ocean doesn’t run off the edge of the world, taking Our Sea with it, out through the Gates of Hercules.”

“The world is a sphere,” she asserted, “floating in space, so there is no place for the ocean to run off to. This was proven by Eratosthenes almost two hundred years ago.”

“I see. Well, that answers that.” It made at least as much sense as a symbol for nothing.

“Getting back to our problem,” Julia said. “Do you think the Marcelli killed Fulvius with their own hands, and more to the point, can you prove it?” My Julia was always the practical one.

“I simply cannot believe,” Callista said, “that your political intrigues can get this complicated! It makes the struggles of the old Greek city-states seem laughably simpleminded.”

“It wasn’t intended to be this way,” I told her. “This was to be a rather ordinary power play, but it got out of hand. These are not very acute people. As Sallustius characterized them: a crew of second raters. They tried something too difficult for them to control; one of them didn’t even know that his own wife was in the other camp and spying on all their doings. They chose a badly flawed tool in Fulvius, and everybody lied to everyone else and to me. What should have been a clean, discreet operation turned into a tangled mess that called for murder and then a cover-up, which, in turn, called for a false accusation against me. And all this was begun by men of consular standing. It’s really very depressing.”

“However this turns out,” Julia said, “I am going to write to Caesar this evening. He has to know what is going on behind his back here in Rome.”

“Probably a good idea,” I agreed. “But I have a feeling that very little goes on in Rome that Caesar doesn’t know about. I assisted him with his correspondence back at the beginning of the war, remember? He has more friends sending him news and gossip than Cicero. But do go ahead. It will at least set his mind at ease about us. I’ll send him a full report after I’ve wrapped up this business.”

“Why, Decius!” Julia said happily. “I believe this is the first time you’ve acknowledged that Caesar is the real authority in Rome.”

“It seems inevitable now,” I admitted. “I’ve seen too much of the quality of the men ranged against him. Don’t celebrate prematurely though. By the time I write that report, I’ll be praetor, or I’ll be in exile. The first prospect is the ideal one; the second is better than the third.”

“What is the third?” Callista asked.

“Third, I’ll be dead and won’t get a chance to write the report.”

For a while we discussed my best course of action. I was to go on trial in the morning and we went over my defense, the most likely attacks I would face, and my best counterattacks. Julia’s mind for this sort of political-judicial warfare was as fine as that of any professional lawyer in Rome. She lacked only the rhetorical training to be a first-rate advocate. That, and the fact that women couldn’t argue in court.

It was well past dusk when Hermes arrived.

“Where have you been?” I demanded.

“Finding people. We’ve come to escort you home.” He was quite unabashed, and I didn’t feel like berating him as he deserved. Besides, he usually knew what he was doing.

“Who is we?” I asked.

“Some friends.”

Julia and I rose. “Callista,” I said to the Alexandrian, “I cannot thank you enough. I sought an advisor and found a friend. If all goes well tomorrow and the next day, I shall be one of next year’s praetors. It may be that I will be praetor peregrinus, in charge of cases involving resident aliens. If in that office or in any other way I can be of assistance to you, please do not hesitate to call upon me.”

Julia gave her a parting embrace. “My husband is not always perfectly rational, but he means that. And please don’t wait to have some sort of problem to call on us.”

“Just knowing that I have the friendship of the two of you is more than adequate recompense for this small service, which truly was not a service but a pleasure. The thrill of intellectual accomplishment is its own recompense.”

We stepped outside into the dimness. “What a gracious lady,” Julia said. “For once I can only commend your judgment in seeking out a foreign woman.”

“That’s good of you, my sweet. Hermes, who are all these men?” I could just make out the forms of some twenty or thirty men crowding the street. One held a small torch that did not yield enough light to reveal more than that. The others brought out torches and ignited them from that one. Soon I could see an abundance of military belts and high-strapped, hobnailed military boots, and men with hard limbs and harder faces, all deeply tanned.

“Evening, Senator, my lady,” said young Burrus, decurio of the Tenth Legion.

“Hermes, I can’t have this!” I protested. “These are all Caesar’s men! I won’t have people thinking I’m taking Caesar’s side against the others, that I’m-” I mumbled the last few words because Julia placed her fingers across my lips.

“Decius,” she said, “be quiet.”

“You put him up to this!” I said, astonished.

“I didn’t have to. We discussed how to keep you from getting yourself killed with this absurd neutrality, and Hermes suggested this. I concurred.”

“The time is past for neutrality,” Hermes told me, this boy who used to carry my bath implements and run my errands. “Let people say what they will. These men are here by their own choice whether you want them or not, and they will keep you safe in spite of yourself until this business is over. Remember, in the City they aren’t Caesar’s soldiers, they are citizens and voters and they can do as they like.”

I sighed, knowing defeat when it was staring me in the face. I was as much in Caesar’s camp now as if I had been in his army in Gaul.

“Let’s go home,” I said.