Down These Strange Streets

BEWARE THE SNAKE An SPQR Story by John Maddox Roberts

John Maddox Roberts is best known for his acclaimed twelve-volume SPQR series of historical mysteries, detailing the adventures of a young Roman aristocrat who keeps getting entangled with murder and other nefarious doings in the dark underworld of Ancient Rome. The SPQR series consists of The King’s Gambit, The Catiline Conspiracy, The Temple of the Muses, The River God’s Vengeance, and eight other novels. In addition to the SPQR books, the prolific Maddox has written fantasy series such as the five-volume Stormlands sequence (consisting of The Islander, The Black Shields, and three others), science fiction series such as the two-volume Spacer sequence (Space Angel, Window of the Mind), and the three-volume Cingulum series (The Cingulum, Cloak of Illusion, The Sword, the Jewel, and the Mirror); contemporary detective novels (A Typical American Town, The Ghosts of Saigon, Desperate Highways); eight Conan novels; a Dragonlance novel; novels in collaboration with Eric Kotani and under the name Mark Ramsay; and stand-alones such asCestus Dei, The Strayed Sheep of Charun, Hannibal’s Children , and King of the Wood. His latest novel is The Year of Confusion, the new SPQR mystery.

Everyone knows that some snakes can be deadly. As Decius Caecilius learns in the SPQR story that follows, sometimes the problem is knowing one when you see it.

YOUNG HEROD ONCE TOLD ME THAT HIS PEOPLE ABHOR SERPENTS. IT seems to have something to do with his people’s fall from a sort of Golden Age, in which the serpent is mysteriously implicated. This is the sort of primitive superstition one must expect from barbarians. Civilized people, by contrast, think the world of snakes. We revere and esteem them. Snakes enhance the prophecies of oracles and facilitate contact with the gods of the underworld. It is difficult to imagine civilized life without snakes. Egyptian kings had cobras on their crowns, while Mercury and Aesculapius bear serpent-wound staffs. The very spirit of a place is symbolized by a pillar with a snake coiled around it.

To be sure, one occasionally encounters the odd asp, adder, or cobra, which carry deadly venom, but that is just the gods’ way of reminding us that their gifts are often double-edged. It keeps mortals on their toes and prevents them from growing too complacent.

It is true that certain people carry this reverence for serpents too far. Some families, including very respectable ones, keep a family snake and consult with it on all matters of importance. Personally, I consider this a rather un-Roman practice. It’s more like something Greeks would do. But nobody in Italy is as mad about snakes as the Marsi, the mountain people who live around Lake Fucinus, east of Rome.

Which brings us to the day the Marsian priest came calling.

“WE HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THAT OUR SNAKE IS IN ROME.” THE MAN wore a saffron-colored toga and a ribbon of the same color around his brow.

“I see. I don’t suppose it crawled here on its own?”

“Of course not! She was stolen and we want her back!”

So the gender of the snake was established. We were making progress already. I glanced down at the letter of introduction the priest had brought. Its message was characteristically bald and laconic.

Decius Caecilius, the bearer of this letter is Lucius Pompaedius Pollux, high priest of the temple of Angitia. He is my client and he has a problem and I can think of no man more fit than you to solve it for him. Below the brief text was appended, instead of a seal, the signature Caesar, Pontifex Maximus. Since he invoked his office as pontifex, this was to be treated as a religious matter.

“Has there been a ransom demand?” I asked.

“Ransom?” Pompaedius looked scandalized. “You think this is some sort of kidnapping?”

“I don’t see why not. Distinguished personages are often held for ransom. People have been doing it since Homer. No reason why the same can’t be done with a beloved snake.”

“Senator, the Serpent of Angitia is a sacred being of the utmost religious importance, not some sort of—of animal!”

“And I would never suggest such a thing,” I assured him. “It is simply that I can assist you better if I can establish some sort of motive for this unique theft. The motive for theft is usually profit of one sort or another. If not money, then what?”

He pondered this for a moment. “Power.”

“What?” I said, brightly.

“What is it you Romans say about the Marsi?” he asked.

I could think of several sayings we had said about the Marsi, all of them uncomplimentary, but I knew the one he meant. “That we have never triumphed over you, and have never triumphed without you.”

“Precisely.” He seemed to think he had answered something.

In the old days, we had fought several wars with the Marsi, and they had made us regret it. A very tough, disciplined, military people, to be sure. We much preferred to have them as allies. They had stood fast with us against the incursions of the Gauls and had not wavered when Hannibal all but destroyed Rome. Our last fight against the Marsi had been a generation before this time, when they had joined with the rebelling allied cities of Italy in demanding their citizenship rights. The war had been bloody, but once the rebels knew they could not win, the Senate had acknowledged the justice of their demands and granted them citizenship. I thought of the Marsian soldiers I had seen with our legions. They wore distinctive helmets, usually crested with serpents in fanciful coils and loops, often in threes.

“Are you telling me that this serpent embodies the martial valor of your people?” I hazarded.

“Very much so. When the Marsi first became a people and founded Marruvium on the lake, they prayed and sacrificed to Angitia, asking her to grant them a token of her approval and her patronage of our city and our people. On the tenth day of the rites, a great serpent emerged from the lake. The people built a temple to Angitia on that spot and built a sanctuary for the serpent in its crypt. The serpent is the protector of the people. As long as she is in her sanctuary and healthy, Marruvium is safe and the Marsi will be victorious. Should word get out that she is gone . . .”

“You mean the Marruvians and the Marsi in general are unaware that their snake has been purloined?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “If her disappearance should become common knowledge, I fear there could be widespread panic. In these unsettled times, with so many of our men serving in the armies, there could be disaster. Thus far, only the priesthood of the temple know.”

“Of what breed is she? What does she look like?”

“The sacred serpent of Angitia belongs to a breed known only near the lake, called a swamp adder. They are black on the head and back, with a white belly. Of course our serpent is an especially magnificent specimen, about five feet long and as big around as your arm.”

“An adder? Then she is poisonous?”

“Decidedly. The swamp adder is deadlier than any Egyptian cobra or asp.”

“A brave thief, then.”

He shrugged. “Venomous serpents are easily handled, if one has the skills.”

“And why do you think that your sacred snake is in Rome?”

“When the theft was discovered, I pledged all of the personnel of the temple to silence and secrecy, and then I sought an omen from the goddess.”

“I am guessing that this involved snakes,” I said.

“What else?” he said, seemingly astonished.

“What else, indeed? And how did the goddess answer your entreaty?”

“First, we gathered several score of wild snakes from the lands adjacent to the temple, all of them belonging to lines known to us for generations.”

“One wouldn’t want to consult with foreign snakes,” I concurred.

“Of course not. After fasting for a day and a night, we performed all the proper sacrifices and sang the prayers in the original Marsian language, which has not been spoken for many generations. Then—”

I know all too well the tedium of hearing a man expound upon his favorite subject, which is of no interest to oneself, so I interrupted. “And what omen did you receive?”

“Oh. Well, at the moment the rite was finished, all kept silence in anticipation, and immediately there came a loud clap of thunder from the west. Clearly, the goddess wanted us to search to the west to find our serpent, and Rome lies to the west of Marruvium.”

“Couldn’t be clearer,” I agreed. “Yet there remains the matter of who snatched your snake and precisely why. What were the circumstances surrounding her disappearance? In what sort of confinement was she kept? I presume she was not permitted to just slither freely about the grounds?”

Again he looked pained. “She has a sanctuary beneath the altar.”

“What is it like? How large is it?”

He seemed puzzled at these questions. People often do when I interrogate them. My method of gathering evidence in small increments from as many sources as possible in order to get at the essence of what really happened left most people utterly mystified. The more charitable opined that I had invented a new school of philosophy. Those of a magical disposition think it is some sort of sorcery. I just consider it good sense, but I can convince few of my peers that this is the case.

“It is circular, earth-floored, naturally, but strewn with fragrant cedar bark. There are a number of statues of the present serpent’s revered ancestors, on small pedestals.”

I was tempted to ask him how each new holy snake was chosen, since snakes do not have offspring one at a time, but I was afraid that he would answer. “And how is the sanctuary accessed?”

“By a single passageway, quite narrow, that descends from a doorway pierced through the stairway ascending to the portico and altar.”

“And this is the only ingress or egress available to either human or serpent?”

“It is.”

“And is the access by way of a stairway, or by an inclined ramp?”

“It is a slanted floor. There are no stairs. Is this somehow significant?” He was getting impatient. I was used to that.

“It is indeed. A snake might have trouble ascending a stair, but not a ramp. Might it not have simply wandered off on its own? It must get dreadfully boring down there. One can only spend so much time contemplating the images of one’s ancestors. I know this. In my own atrium are the death masks of dozens of my Metellan ancestors, and a more sour-faced pack of patriotic villains is difficult to imagine. If I had to look at them all the time—”

“Senator!” Pompaedius hissed, rather like his missing reptile. “We need to find the sacred Serpent of Angitia! I do not think you appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

Sometimes if I needle someone sufficiently I can trick him into saying something intemperate, something more revealing than he had intended. Not this time, it seemed.

“Lucius Pompaedius, I will find your snake. I fully appreciate how crucial this is, not because of the importance of the Marsi, or because of their goddess and her reptilian consort, but because I have been instructed to do so by Caius Julius Caesar, and keeping Caesar happy is of utmost importance to all sane Romans.”

That evening, I consulted with my own household authority on religion, my wife, Julia.

“Angitia?” she said. “She’s the one to sacrifice to if you’ve been bitten by a snake.”

“If you can make it from Rome to her temple on the lake,” I observed, “you will have recovered anyway.”

“She has a shrine here in Rome,” Julia said. She pondered the business for a while as she picked at dinner. “I think we should have a household snake. Some of the best families have them. The Claudians have always kept snakes.”

“The Claudians,” I observed, “are a family of insane hereditary criminals.”

“Appius Claudius the Censor wasn’t insane or a criminal,” she objected.

“A single, outstanding exception to an otherwise inflexible rule,” I said. The estimable Appius had been brother to my old enemy Clodius, who had been both criminal and insane, and that was only the start of it. “No snakes for us. Neither the Caecilians nor the Julians have been serpent fanciers. In any case, I think it is unfitting for holy icons to crawl out of a swamp. Sacred tokens should fall from the heavens, like the Palladium and the sacred shields of Mars.”

“Only one of the sacred shields fell from the sky,” Julia pointed out. “The rest are counterfeits to fool thieves and jealous gods.”

“We are getting away from the problem here,” I said. My head was beginning to hurt. “Your uncle Caius Julius wants me to find a snake. Rome is a rather large city, and it seems to me a snake must be fairly easy to hide. Any long, narrow space or container would do. Snakes can arrange themselves in compact coils, so a basket or jar would suffice. Where to begin?”

“A good place might be the snake market,” Julia suggested.

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” I wondered.

So the next morning Julia and I, accompanied by one of her girls and my freedman Hermes, set out for this exotic destination. Since Julia was going along, we had to have a litter, of course, instead of walking on our own perfectly good feet. Well, my feet had fallen somewhat short of perfection by that time. In fact, just getting about the city was enough effort for me.

The snake market was just off the Forum Boarium, not far from the northern end of the Circus Maximus. The old forum was bustling with livestock. Everywhere you looked there were pens for cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, goats, and donkeys and hutches full of rabbits. There were beautiful specimens for sacrifice and others, less attractive, for eating, some of these specially fattened on olive pulp. There was a section for poultry: peacocks, chickens, cages of songbirds. One area was devoted to exotics: monkeys, gazelles, Egyptian ibises, cheetahs, and so forth. It was fashionable for the wealthy to adorn their estates with such creatures. It was noisy and smelly, and I was grateful that our house was on the other side of the city.

“I think it’s down this street somewhere,” I said, directing the litter slaves. I knew my native city intimately, but there were still a few parts of it I had never visited, and the snake market was one of them. This was because I had never been in the market for a snake.

“Ah, here we are.” We had come to a large shop with a striped awning above its portico. Spelled out in mosaic on the doorstep was the legend Sergius Poplicola, Purveyor of Fine Snakes.

The possessor of this imposing name greeted us at the door, his eyes going wide at the sight of our fine carriage and my senatorial insignia. “Welcome, Senator! Welcome, my lady!”

I took both of his hands in a hearty politician’s handshake. “My friend Sergius, I am here to see you about a snake.”

“Of course, of course, please come inside.” He bustled within, clapping his hands and calling for his slaves to step lively. The interior was spacious and cool, with open skylights. Here and there about the floor were small pits, their bottoms strewn with cedar shavings. Over all hung the scent of fragrant cedar, but beneath it there was a slight but disagreeable musky odor. Snakes, no doubt. While the slaves set up chairs and a table and loaded it with refreshments, I examined a large clay pot from which came a rustling noise. I peered within and saw that it was half full of grain, barley, and wheat by the look of it, and it swarmed with mice.

I took one of the chairs and accepted a cup of wine. It turned out to be an unusually fine Cretan, powerful enough to put anyone into a buying mood. “I am looking for a very particular snake,” I began.

“But naturally,” said Sergius. “Whether you need a snake for divination, for communication with the chthonian gods, for keeping the pantry free of mice, for eating, for whatever purpose, rest assured I have just the snake for you, and as many of them as you may require.”

“For eating?” Julia said.

“Certain of our African snakes are esteemed as delicacies,” he assured her.

“Oh, we’ve been to Egyptian banquets,” I told him. “It’s just not what one expects to see in Rome.”

“Rome is a very cosmopolitan city,” he reminded me.

“So it is. No, snakes for the table are not on my agenda today, nor for the pantry, but a snake for the altar, that is different. Do you happen to have a swamp adder on the premises?”

“A swamp adder?” He seemed taken aback. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a cobra? We have plenty of those, of several varieties, in fact.”

“Who buys cobras?” Julia asked, seemingly intrigued.

“The Isis cult is growing quite popular in Roman territory, my lady. Cobras are an absolute necessity for the rituals of Isis. If you have visited Egypt you have observed that the cobra, along with the vulture, is prominently featured on the uraeus crown of the pharaohs, since adopted by the Ptolemys. The cobra goddess, Wadjet, has been the patroness of the royal family since earliest antiquity.”

Here was another man about to launch into an oration on his favorite subject, so I took quick action to forestall him. “Is there some sort of problem with the swamp adder? It is, after all, native to Italy, not some exotic foreign breed. Rather prolific around Lake Fucinus, I hear.”

“Decidedly so. There is a reason the Marsi need a goddess of their own just for snakebite. Do you know much about venomous serpents, Senator?”

“Only that I don’t like them much.”

“Well, people think that cobras and asps and such are terribly deadly creatures. In truth, they are fairly easy to avoid, and their venom, while quite dangerous, will seldom kill a healthy adult. Their victims are usually the very young, the very old, and the infirm. Often, snakebitten people simply frighten themselves to death because they believe all snakes to be deadly.”

“Really?” I said. This was fascinating.

“Absolutely, Senator. I know of many cases in which people have died after being bitten by perfectly harmless snakes. For this reason, the common ratsnake that farmers keep in their barns for vermin control have probably killed more people than all the cobras in Egypt.”

“I see. But the swamp adder actually lives up to its reputation?”

“Beyond question. Its venom is more than powerful enough to kill a man in a few moments. In fact, the Marsi have an annual ritual in which a bull is sacrificed by placing it in a pit with a large swamp adder. It is a rather small pit, so it doesn’t take long for the bull to annoy the adder and be bitten. The priests of Angitia draw a great many omens for the coming year according to where the bite or bites are located on the bull, whether it staggers for a while, or has violent convulsions, or just drops down dead. The best omen is if the bull falls down dead instantly from a single bite.”

“What does this signify?” Julia asked.

“That nothing much will happen in the coming year. The Marsi consider this a good forecast.”

“As should we all,” I affirmed. “Is the serpent used in this rite the sacred specimen kept in Angitia’s temple?”

“Oh, no. There is too much danger of the snake being injured or killed, as sometimes happens when the bull falls. That is a portentous event in itself, meaning disaster to come. No, an adder is captured wild in the swamp by a team specially trained for this hazardous activity. If it lives, it is released back into the swamp, bearing the prayers of the people along with messages for their dead.”

“I see. So I take it you don’t have a swamp adder?” I said.

He shook his head. “Neither I nor my staff are that brave. You are aware, I take it, that almost all of the snake charmers you see in the markets and at festivals are Marsian? They never use swamp adders for their performances. They would never touch one except for religious purposes. You aren’t really looking to buy one, are you, Senator?”

“No, I just need to learn about them. Matters of state between Rome and the Marsi, as it were.”

“Actually,” Julia said, “I am quite interested in purchasing a house snake, one for family consultation, although I suppose it would do no harm if it catches mice as well. Could you show us your stock?”

Needless to say, we went home with a snake, a small, green creature of no great distinction that I could see. It came with a supply of cedar shavings and careful instructions as to its care and feeding, housed in an Egyptian basket artistically plaited from papyrus fiber. Julia seemed almost as delighted with the basket as with the snake.

“Have we learned anything?” Hermes said as we wended our way back toward the Subura.

“Other than that I am an indulgent husband?”

“We already knew that, dear,” Julia said, gloating over her purchase.

“I am a bit puzzled,” I said, running a few things through my mind. “Pompaedius acted as if the handling of venomous serpents is a simple business, yet Poplicola told us that it takes a specially trained team of Marsi just to catch one for the bull sacrifice.”

“Maybe it’s catching one in the swamp that’s the tricky part,” Hermes said. “Maybe they live in packs out there. The sacred snake sounds domesticated.”

“Pompaedius,” I mused. “Wasn’t that the name of the man who led the Marsi in the Social War?”

“Quintus Pompaedius Silo,” Julia said. “He is said to have held Cato out of a high window by his heels, when Cato was about ten years old.”

“Should’ve dropped the little bugger on his head,” I observed. “I remember the story now. He was in Rome drumming up support for Marsian citizenship rights, and little Cato refused to take his oath or some such. I always thought it was something Cato’s supporters made up to make him sound patriotic instead of just an insufferably rude little twit.”

“Do you think it’s significant?” Hermes asked. “For all I know, Pompaedius is as common a name in Marsian territory as Cornelius is in Rome.”

“Probably nothing,” I said. But in truth I was not so sanguine. Religion and politics are inseparable, which is why the founders of the Republic wisely made priesthood and omen-taking a part of public office. That way it can be kept under control, after a fashion. But Caesar himself had decided that this silly business was worth pursuing. Of course, he was obliged by ancient custom to aid a client who was in Rome with a problem. “How did a Marsian named Pompaedius become Caesar’s client?” I wondered aloud.

“If I recall correctly,” Julia said, “most of the Marsi were clients of Livius Drusus. But then he was murdered.”

“He championed the Italian allies in the Senate, didn’t he?” It was coming back to me. Drusus had tried to get citizenship for all our Italian allies, but word got out, whether truthfully or not, that they had all secretly pledged to enter his clientele if he was successful in making them citizens. That would have made him too powerful, and his enemies had him assassinated. Typical politics for that generation. For any generation, if truth be told.

“That’s right,” Julia said, “but in the Social War, his brother was killed leading a Roman army against the Marsi, and the Livii repudiated their patronage.” Julia’s knowledge of the great families was far more comprehensive than my own. “After all the fuss died down and they were citizens, the Marsi took clientage under the Pompeius family, and when Pompey Magnus was killed, Caesar offered them patronage. His support in that part of Italy was weak, so he courted the Marsi. With them in his clientele, the other people of the central mountain district followed.”

“That sounds like Caesar,” I said. “They sent a good many young men to serve in his legions. I wonder what he promised them in return?”

“Nothing but the proper mutual obligations of patron and client, I am sure,” Julia said. She probably believed it.

Hermes spoke up. “Didn’t you say Angitia had a shrine in Rome?”

I had completely forgotten it. “Where is it, Julia? We ought to see if anyone there knows anything.”

“It’s just a tiny place near the grain market,” she said. “I don’t know if it even has a permanent staff. There is some sort of ceremony at the time of the Martialis, and people leave offerings there to protect them from snakebite. That’s as much as I know.”

The Martialis is a harvest festival and signifies the close of the agricultural year. A good time to ask the favor of a snake goddess to protect the granaries from mice. It made sense. I told the litter slaves to carry us to the grain market, and they complied with sour looks. Litter slaves always think that every direction is uphill.

We passed by the great plaza of the grain merchants with its spectacular statue of Apollo and turned down a tiny side street. Other than a small fountain at its entrance, there was nothing to distinguish it from Rome’s thousands of other little streets.

“How did you know of this place?” I asked Julia.

“My grandmother brought me here when I was a little girl. It was when Caesar departed for Syria. Aurelia believed that the entire Orient is carpeted with venomous serpents and she came here to sacrifice for his protection.”

“She was a pious woman,” I agreed. “When I was with Caesar in Gaul, she used to write him long letters detailing the sacrifices she had provided to protect him from enemies, from drowning, from accident, from scurrilous gossip and slander, and on and on. Caesar said she was single-handedly supporting all the animal sellers and priests in Rome.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Julia protested.

“Not by much. I used to read those letters to him. He complained that he was ruining his vision with all the writing he did, so he had none to spare for his mother’s letters. She had incredibly tiny handwriting. Lavish though she was with sacrifices, she was stingy with paper, and crowded as much as she could onto a single sheet. To this day, it pains my eyes to think about those letters.”

“You never run out of things to complain about,” she observed.

“I’ve lived a tragic life,” I told her as the litter slaves set us down, gasping and puffing abundantly, despite the paltriness of the effort they had expended.

The shrine was at the very end of the street, which in turn wasn’t much more than an alley between two grain warehouses. The few doors of the flanking buildings looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years. The door to the shrine was flanked by low-relief pilasters wound with sculpted snakes. The paint was faded and flaking away. The door itself stood open. In the usual fashion of Italian temples and shrines, the portico sat atop a dozen or so narrow, steep steps.

“It looked better than this when I came here with Aurelia,” Julia said.

“We all looked better thirty years ago,” I told her. I was about to step inside when Hermes placed a hand on my arm and turned to Julia.

“What’s on the other side of this door?” he asked. I knew I was getting old. This was an elementary precaution I should have taken without conscious thought. When I was younger and my wits sharper, I would have sent Hermes through first.

“I didn’t go inside,” she said. “I stayed out here with some slave women while Grandmother went in. I don’t know if there was a priest inside or if she just made her sacrifice and came back out.”

Blood sacrifices are usually made on an altar before a temple, not inside. But there was no altar before the entrance. Sometimes food offerings were left at the feet of the deity’s image, incense burned, that sort of thing. “Is anyone here?” I shouted. There was silence from within. I looked at Hermes and jerked my head toward the doorway. He put a hand on the hilt of the sword he wore concealed beneath his clothes and strode through the doorway. Hearing no sounds of violence, I followed. Something about that open door bothered me. Thieves would not hesitate to rob the sanctuary of a foreign goddess.

Inside it was very quiet and smelled as temples usually smell—of many years of incense and the smoke of lamps, torches, and candles. No fires were burning at this time, but there were other scents beneath that of the smoke and incense. Julia’s shadow fell across the doorway.

“Don’t come in yet!” I urged her. “Do you smell that?”

“Something’s dead in here,” Hermes noted.

“And I smell cedar,” Julia said.

“Right, “I said. “There’s a snake in here somewhere and if it’s one of those damned swamp adders, we have a problem. Julia, what sort of sacrifice did Aurelia bring that day?”

I could hear the frown in her voice. “It was a long time ago. She had a small cage or basket of some sort.”

“She was bringing mice,” I said. “That’s how you sacrifice to Angitia. You feed her snake. It should have a pit or crypt of some sort here, like the one in the big temple at Lake Fucinus. The sacred snake got out of that one. This one may have as well.”

“Something’s dead,” Hermes persisted. “Maybe it’s a dead snake.”

“We can always hope.” My eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom. I moved my feet very carefully. Even a torpid and inoffensive snake will whip around and bite if something touches it unexpectedly. The shrine was little more than a long, narrow room. At its far end was a statue of a benevolentlooking woman, her shoulders draped with snakes, more snakes wound about her feet. The statue was slightly smaller than life size. Smaller than life size for a mortal woman, anyway. You never know about goddesses.

“The smell is coming from there,” Hermes said, pointing toward a gaping square opening in the floor before the statue. With great trepidation, I made my way to the edge of this ominous aperture. It was perhaps ten feet on a side, its rim slightly raised. The gloom made its bottom all but totally obscure. I could make out some sort of shapeless mass on its floor, five or six feet down.

“Hermes,” I said, “go fetch torches. Be careful. That snake could be anywhere.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Hermes said with great sincerity. He edged his way back to the doorway, shuffling his feet as if he could shoo the swamp adder away. Once he was at the door, I heard the patter of his sandals as he ran to find us some sort of illumination.

“What’s down there?” Julia said.

“We’re about to find out. I didn’t want you to come in. That snake could be anywhere.”

“The priest said there was a ramp leading down to the sacred serpent’s crypt,” she pointed out. “I don’t see any such ramp here. The sides look quite sheer.”

“What has that to do with anything?” I said, exasperated. “I didn’t want you to come in! Is that too much to ask?”

“Yes, it is,” she said. Well, she was a Caesar.

Hermes returned with commendable alacrity, accompanied by a pair of linkboys. These juvenile torchbearers usually slept through the day in order to spend their nights illuminating the way of citizens through Rome’s benighted streets. Hermes didn’t caution them to watch out for the snake. Any snake biting a linkboy wasn’t biting him, I suppose.

“This is better,” Julia said. With a bit of light, the little shrine was much more cheerful. The walls were covered with old, smoke-smudged frescoes of scenes from, I presumed, the myths of Angitia and her fellow Marsian deities. Needless to say, snakes featured prominently.

I gestured to the boys. “Come over here. Hold your torches over this pit and be very, very careful.”

Mystified, they did as I ordered. When their light flooded the pit one of the boys gasped and would have dropped his torch had I not grasped his hand. “Steady. It’s just a dead man. You’ve seen plenty of those.”

“Not like that one!” said the other boy, a bit older. Roman street boys were a hard lot to shock, but I was forced to acknowledge that this was a bit more than the usual alley corpse.

Julia turned away and gagged, and she was as unflappable as the rest of her family. When she had her composure back, she asked, “Is that the priest who came to you about the snake?”

“The yellow toga and headband are the same,” I said. “Otherwise it’s hard to tell.”

“I think of saffron as more of an orange than a yellow,” she replied, now fully in control of herself.

The dead man who lay on the carpet of cedar bark and shavings was bloated and almost purple. His skin was covered with giant blisters like fistsized, semitransparent bubbles. Yet the unmistakable scent of death was rather faint.

“Hasn’t been dead long, though he’s looking rather poorly,” I remarked.

“Should I fetch Asklepiodes?” Hermes asked, understandably eager to be away.

“I think not,” I said. “His specialty is wounds and death caused by weapons. Poisons and venoms are not in his realm of expertise.”

“Poplicola, then?” he said, hopefully.

“He’d just try to sell Julia another snake. Let’s review what we have here. A priest of Angitia came from the Marsian country to ask me to find his snake. Today, in the shrine of Angitia, we find a priest of Angitia, possibly the same man, dead from what looks like the bite of a serpent that fully lives up to its reputation.” I pondered a moment. “Correct that: We have a corpse in the clothing of a priest of Angitia. It could be almost anybody.”

“You’re very tiresome when you get this way, dear,” Julia reminded me.

“We are in a holy shrine,” I said, “dealing with a goddess and sacred snakes. This is a religious matter. Hermes, go find Caesar and ask him if he would be so good as to come here on a matter of some urgency. Tell him I require his expertise as pontifex maximus. He is probably in the Domus Publica.”

“Do you think Caesar will be able to help?” Julia said when Hermes had dashed off.

“Probably not, but I want him to see this. It’s not every day we see a murder as unique as this one in Rome.”

“Murder? Surely this was an accident.”

“Then where is the snake?” I asked her. “It didn’t crawl out of there unaided after biting the unfortunate priest or whoever he was.” I looked around me. Between the small torches and my eyes adjusting to the gloom, I could see tolerably well. It was quite a small space, only a single room with no access save the narrow doorway. The floor was completely bare and the walls featureless except for some faded paintings that depicted what I presumed to be scenes from the cult of Angitia. I was unfamiliar with the myths but there was a woman resembling the statue, a bull, and a great many snakes.

“It could be under the body,” Julia pointed out. “Poplicola said the bull sometimes falls on the snake.”

“Foretelling disaster,” I noted. “I wonder if being crushed by a falling priest is a similarly dire omen. And if so, is it just for the Marsi or for anyone in the vicinity?”

We were but a short distance from the Domus Publica in the Forum, so it was not long before we heard the tramp of twenty-four lictors preceding the Dictator in great pomp. We went to the doorway and saw that the great man had indeed arrived, followed by a mob of gawking Forum layabouts (some of them my fellow senators). Crowds always followed Caesar around in those days, just to see if anything should happen, I suppose. He wore his pontifical regalia along with his usual gilded laurel wreath and triumphator’s robe. Hermes stood behind Caesar, but the man to his right caused Julia to gasp.

“It’s Pompaedius!” she whispered. “He’s alive!”

I was not entirely surprised. “I am sorry to have interrupted your day, Caesar, but matters here require your presence.”

“Nonsense, Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said jovially. “You always find the most bizarre murders for our entertainment. What is it this time?”

“If you will come inside, Caesar and Pompaedius, but please, no others. It is already quite cramped enough.”

Caesar entered. “And how is my favorite niece today?” he said to Julia, as always the soul of courtesy.

“A bit upset, I’m afraid. The dead priest is in the most deplorable condition.”

“Priest?” Caesar said, leaning over the pit. The linkboys gaped at the Dictator’s splendor. They were certainly getting an eyeful that day.

“Well, we think he was a priest,” Julia said. “He’s in the robes of Angitia’s priesthood, anyhow. In fact, we thought it was Lucius Pompaedius here. I see now that we were mistaken.”

Caesar straightened. “May I know the meaning of this?”

“It is precisely that meaning that I have been trying to ascertain,” I told him. “Perhaps your client Pompaedius can enlighten us.”

“This man has died from the bite of a swamp adder,” the priest said. “That much is clear. It must have been he who purloined the sacred serpent. You all bear witness to how the goddess has punished him for the sacrilege.”

“And his identity?” I asked.

“Just some imposter,” Pompaedius said. “All the priests of Angitia wear the saffron toga, but only I, the high priest, am entitled to this.” He touched the yellow fillet encircling his brow.

“I see.” Caesar turned to me. “Decius, as you should know, in my office of pontifex maximus I pronounce judgment on all matters pertaining to the state religion. Bring me a problem involving Jupiter, Juno, Saturn, Mars, and I can sort it out for you. Quirinus and Janus fall within my realm of authority. I do not pronounce on matters concerning foreign deities. For that, one usually consults with the quinquidecemviri and they in turn consult the Sybilline Books. Typically, this is done when the fate of the state is involved, and I fail to see such a matter here.” Caesar could lay on the sarcasm when he wanted to.

“Actually, Caesar, I am afraid that I stooped to a subterfuge,” I admitted. “Your presence here is required in your capacity as the supreme magistrate.”

Caesar looked annoyed and began to reply when Julia said, “Everyone be very still.”

“Eh?” I said with my usual quick wit.

Very slowly Julia raised her arm and pointed toward the statue’s feet. “One of those snakes is alive.”

“By Jupiter, so it is,” I said, eyeing the slowly wriggling form with horrified fascination. “The light in here is too uncertain to determine coloration, but I am willing to hazard a guess that this is a swamp adder.”

“Somebody kill that thing,” Caesar said with distaste in his voice. He never did like snakes.

“Caesar, you cannot!” Pompaedius protested. “That is the sacred Serpent of Angitia!”

“That does present us with a problem,” Caesar said. “I wouldn’t want my Marsian troops to hold me responsible for killing their holy snake.”

“Please, there is no danger,” Pompaedius said complacently. With great solemnity he walked around the pit and stood a pace from the statue, to which he bowed and muttered something while holding his hands forth, palms down. This told me that Angitia was worshipped as an underworld deity. I was getting quite an education in religious matters that day.

His devotions completed, Pompaedius turned his attention to the snake. He extended his arms toward it and began wiggling his fingers rhythmically, edging closer with tiny steps. The snake stared at his hands and seemed enthralled. I watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. It always makes me uncomfortable to see someone performing magic.

Very slowly, the fingers of his right hand slowed and then stopped their wriggling. His left continued the spell-casting. Then he moved his right hand gradually toward the snake’s head until it was behind the flaring base of the wedge-shaped skull. Julia gasped when he grasped the thing by the neck. At least I’m pretty sure it was Julia. I don’t think it was me.

Pompaedius straightened. The snake, which was indeed a huge, fat specimen, tried to wrap itself around him, but he somehow arranged it in graceful loops draped from his shoulders with a terminal coil around his waist. He cooed into the place where a snake doesn’t have an ear and the thing seemed to relax.

“And I thought draping a toga properly was an exacting task,” I observed.

“You see?” Pompaedius said, ignoring me. “All is well. Divine justice has been served. I will take the sacred serpent back to her home by the lake, and the luck of the Marsi will be restored.”

“With quite a bit of prestige accruing to you,” I observed.

“Well,” he said modestly, “it will certainly do me no harm. I must thank you, Senator, for locating her so conscientiously. I am in your debt, as are all the Marsi. And to you, Caesar—”

“Caesar,” I said, “I wish to arrest this man.”

“What!” cried Pompaedius. “What is this outrage?”

“This man is the imposter. That’s Lucius Pompaedius in the pit there.” Caesar looked at the repulsive corpse bemusedly.

“But I am Lucius Pompaedius!”

“So you are,” I agreed.

“Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said, “philosophical paradoxes have never been your style. Can you not speak plainly?”

I took Caesar’s letter from the place in my toga where I stash things and unrolled it. “Caesar, yesterday when this man came to me I was struck by his name.”

“Pompaedius?” the priest said. “My ancestor was indeed a leader of the uprising against Rome, but we have been loyal citizens for many years, and loyal supporters of Caesar as well.”

“Not your family name, but the appended name, Pollux.”

His eyes shifted ever so briefly toward the doorway. “The dioscuri are patrons of Rome, and my parents gave me the name in token of our loyalty.”

“Commendable,” I said. “But it is also customary to name twin boys Castor and Pollux. Pollux is always given to the senior twin, as Pollux was the immortal brother of the two, fathered by Zeus upon Leda, with Castor fathered by Tyndareus and therefore mortal.”

“That’s one version of the myth,” Caesar said. “There are others.” Sometimes Caesar strayed into pedantry.

“I do not speak of the myth but of the naming custom. The dead man down there is Lucius Pompaedius Pollux, firstborn of the twins. This man who has assumed that name is Lucius Pompaedius Castor.”

“But why?” Julia wanted to know.

“He said it when he called on me yesterday,” I told her. “Power. Prestige. He planned to return to Marruvium as a veritable triumphator. By now his priests have spread the word that the sacred serpent has been stolen, and the whole Marsian countryside will be in a fine lather over it. He will return on horseback with the snake draped over him like Caesar’s purple robe and take his brother’s place, no doubt with a bloodcurdling story about how his jealous brother Castor tried to betray the Marsi by stealing their snake, only to have Angitia, aided no doubt by himself, strike the criminal down for his sacrilege.”

“How did he lure his brother here in order to kill him?” Julia said.

“He didn’t. He killed him in the sanctuary of Angitia at the lake. Easy enough to do for a man as expert with venomous snakes as this one. All he had to do was distract his brother, get him to look in the wrong direction, then jam the serpent’s head into some vulnerable spot. Quite ingenious, really. Pompaedius, did you actually use the sacred snake for this purpose, or did you catch a scaly accomplice in the marshes?” I was rather curious about this. Novel methods of homicide have always fascinated me.

“However it was done,” I went on, “he loaded the rapidly bloating corpse onto a wagon and brought it to Rome. The distance isn’t all that great. This shrine and its alley are so obscure that he could easily unload the corpse at night, without being seen. He left the snake there among its sculpted fellows, knowing that as long as it wasn’t hungry, it would not leave its cool, dark sanctuary with its familiar scent of cedar. That way he knew he could impress his highly placed Roman friends with his snake-charming skill. And indeed we were all impressed. With this done, he paid his call on Caesar, who sent him to me.”

“He is mad!” Pompaedius hissed. “What proof is there?”

“I don’t need proof,” I told him. “The question is, have I convinced Caesar?”

“He is correct,” said Caesar. “You will not be tried before a jury. I am Dictator and I can have you executed right here, should I choose to do so. Arrest him, Decius Caecilius.”

I reached for the priest without thinking and began the old formula, “Lucius Pompaedius Castor, come with me to—” Then he thrust the snake’s head at me.

Julia later told me that I leapt backward with a cry like a frightened girl, but I remember no such thing. Pompaedius began backing away, hissing in his reptilian fashion, holding the deadly head at arm’s length, threatening whoever stepped close.

“Lictors!” Caesar shouted. Instantly the doorway filled with his attendants, holding their fasces like weapons.

“Look out!” Julia cried. “He has a snake! And he’ll use it!” The lictors flattened themselves against the walls, eyes gone wide.

Pompaedius made a dash for the door. Just as he stepped through it a foot stuck out, catching his ankle. With a whoop, the priest went tumbling. I saw the soles of his sandals for an instant, and then he was gone. There came a meaty crash, then a howl of horrified agony.

“Nasty tumble, that,” I remarked. “Those steps are steep.”

“I don’t think the fall made him bellow like that,” Caesar said. “Let’s go see.”

We went to the doorway and then out to the portico. Hermes was nursing a sore ankle. “Haven’t done that since I was a boy,” he said, “but it still works.”

Pompaedius was still convulsing and flopping about, but he was probably already dead. His flesh was swelling and darkening, the skin beginning to sport huge blisters. The people who had been gawking panicked and jammed the alley with their bodies, trying to flee. They thought this might be some new and horrible disease, and they wanted no part of it. Several were trampled, but I think none fatally.

For a while we watched bemusedly. We could see about half of the snake protruding from beneath the body, wriggling weakly. Then it was still.

“It’s always about power, isn’t it, Caesar?” I said. “Whether you get it with politics, legions, money, or snakes, power is power.”

Hermes borrowed a lictor’s fasces and levered the body over. “The snake’s dead. He crushed it when he fell.”

“Bad luck for the Marsi,” I observed.

“I’ll have a lustrum performed and endow Angitia’s temple,” Caesar said. “That will satisfy them that the curse is lifted.”

“But their sacred snake is dead,” Julia said.

Caesar shrugged. “They’ll find another. There are always other snakes in the swamp.”

These things happened on two days of the year 709 of the City of Rome, during the third Dictatorship of Caius Julius Caesar.