Oracle of the Dead

2

The trouble was not long in starting. The first evening ended without either the fleeing priests or the mysterious access to the underground river found. The temple and its compound afforded fairly comfortable lodgings for me and the members of my entourage I chose to assist me. The rest I packed off to the villa where I was staying. It was an exceedingly luxurious establishment, built by Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, and one which he had hinted he might leave to me in his will. He lay even then on his deathbed so I knew the will would be read soon.

The next morning, people began calling upon me. I sat on the temple portico in my curule chair, which was draped with the customary leopard pelts, my lictors ranged before me with their fasces. First to arrive were a gaggle of white-robed priests of Apollo from several nearby temples. They were all Greek, of course. Apollo is a god respected by Rome, but he is not native to Italy and was imported from Greece. Thus his principal sacerdotes are Greek and his rituals are performed in the Greek fashion. Personally, I found him quite respectable, unlike some of the truly lunatic deities that had wormed their way into Italy in recent years. For some reason, despite having a perfectly good set of gods to see to their needs, Romans and other Italians were unreasonably enthusiastic about adopting new gods from all over the world, principally from Asia, where they breed gods like livestock. Many of these alien deities were so scabrous and their rites so scandalous that the censors expelled them from Rome with some frequency.

“Noble Praetor,” began the leader of this delegation, one Simonides. “We have come to ask of you what has been done about the atrocious murder of our beloved colleague, Eugaeon?”

“The investigation proceeds apace,” I assured him. “In fact, I suspect certain others of your colleagues of this murder.”

“That is out of the question,” he said, scandalized. “No priests of Apollo would ever do violence to one of their own!”

“Say you so? I’ve never noticed that any sort of person, given a motive, was ever backward about committing murder, priests included. You haven’t seen any of these furtive clergy, have you? My men have been searching all over for them.”

“None of them has appeared at our temples,” Simonides said. “We fear that they have been murdered as well.”

“Really? Maybe I should send someone down the tunnel to see if they’ve come bobbing to the surface. Who do you think would want to murder a whole temple staff?”

“The accursed followers of Hecate, of course!” snarled another of them.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “they are about the only people in the vicinity I do not suspect. They were with my party from the time we said good-bye to Eugaeon until the moment he surfaced. I do not see how they could be culpable.”

“Do you know that all of them were with you, all of the time?” asked Simonides.

“Well, no. But they are being interrogated by one of my most merciless investigators.” The description fitted Julia pretty well.

“They will speak if you use rigorous methods,” advised Simonides. “They are no better than slaves, anyway. Use torture on them.”

“You speak rather harshly for the priest of the god of enlightenment,” I noted.

“They are the enemies of all mankind!” cried yet another devotee of Apollo. “They practice sorcery, necromancy, and all manner of black arts. Many of us have felt their curse.”

“Yet you all look healthy enough. I take it this enmity between your temples goes back a long while?”

“For many centuries, Praetor,” Simonides affirmed. “Once there were many sanctuaries of Hecate in this vicinity, but the worship of the proper gods prevailed, and one by one they were obliterated. Now all that remains is the oldest of them all, the shrine of the Oracle of the Dead. From that foul tunnel the foreign goddess spews forth her vile lies, to lead the good people of Italy astray.”

“I can concur that she speaks in a puzzling fashion, but whether she lies I do not yet know. Rest assured that the malefactor or malefactors shall quickly be brought before me, tried, and judged.” After a few formalities they stalked off, not at all reassured or satisfied. I had judged many difficult cases, and never were all parties satisfied; often as not none of them were. That is just how people are.

People of all stations in life began to congregate near the double temple. This usually happens when some remarkable crime has occurred. People come to gawk, though what it is they expect to see is a mystery to me. Nonetheless, they gather, and soon the peddlers show up to sell things to the gawkers, and the mountebanks arrive to entertain the gawkers and the peddlers, and the whores join the throng to service the gawkers, peddlers, and mountebanks. By noon we had a full-blown market in progress.

Despite the holiday atmosphere, I could not help but feel an ugly undercurrent in the crowd. It is a thing common to Italian towns, which are always ridden with factionalism, one district against another, rival supporters of the Blues or the Greens in the Circus, or any other of the justifications for strife the human animal delights in. When Hermes rode in after another futile sweep for the vanished priests, I told him to circulate among the crowd and find what he could sniff out. This was perfect work for Hermes, who would always rather idle his time away at a festival than do serious work for me.

I was eating my lunch from a small table next to my curule chair when Hermes came back, redolent of too much wine but at least not reeling from it. “It’s the townspeople against the folk from the countryside,” he informed me. “In the towns, Apollo is the favorite god in these parts. They are incensed that Eugaeon was murdered and they think Hecate’s devotees did it.”

“I saw a delegation of Apollo’s priests this morning,” I told him. “They told me of their suspicions in no uncertain terms.”

“The country people, on the other hand, favor Hecate. She’s been in these parts for a long time and they think of her as a native deity, not Thracian. That’s the local Campanians and Samnites, of course. They still think of the Greeks as newcomers. They regard Eugaeon’s untimely demise in the Styx as a desecration of their holy river.”

“Let’s not refer to it as the Styx, shall we? It’s a powerful word and it makes me uneasy. Besides, except for being underground, it doesn’t agree with any of the descriptions of that river. I never heard of heat and foam and turbulence associated with the Styx.”

“As you wish. Anyway, we may expect rioting between the factions before long.”

“They’d better not riot here,” I said. “I have imperium, after all. I can call up troops to suppress insurrection.” It was true, but I dreaded taking such a step. I had a feeling that, in the very near future, any Roman official with troops under his command was likely to get thrown into the upcoming struggle between Caesar and the Senate. I hoped to be safely out of office before the break came, and I would use Pompey’s law imposing a five-year period between leaving consular or praetorian office and taking up a proconsular or propraetorian governorship in the provinces. Those governors and their armies would also be thrown into the fray.

“So much for the Greeks and Samnites and such,” I said. “What about the Romans we’ve settled here? Are they taking sides, too?”

“So it seems. Most of them have intermarried with the locals by now and they’ve taken up the local cults.”

“Ridiculous,” I said. “Have you ever heard of Romans rioting and going at each other’s throats over rivalries between Jupiter and Mars, or Venus against Juno?”

“No,” Hermes said. “But they certainly fight over everything else.”

“That’s irrelevant,” I said. “There are plenty of worthwhile things to fight about. Fighting over religious differences is absurd.”

Sure enough, the next delegation I received consisted of followers of Hecate, an odd mixed group of small merchants and prosperous farmers. They were very irate over the pollution of their sacred river and the damage that this murder might do to the prestige of their Oracle.

“My friends,” I said to them, “I am not a pontifex to pronounce upon matters of religion. In any case, our pontifexes are in charge only of the state religion of Rome. Yours is a local cult and I have neither knowledge nor authority to deal with your problems. I am a magistrate, and I will discover who committed this murder. Matters of ritual contamination you must sort out for yourselves.” They, too, left looking quite unsatisfied.

Next came a delegation of local merchants of the more prosperous sort, some of them heads of local guilds, like my friend Plotius. Their spokesman was one Petillius, a man who owned a great many properties in Cumae, Pompeii, and other towns in the vicinity.

“Noble Praetor,” he began, “we are terribly concerned with the damage this scandal is likely to do to the prosperity of our region. People come here from all over Italy and even from overseas to consult with the Oracle. We fear that this matter may curtail the customary pilgrimage this year.”

“I take it that you own a number of inns where these travelers are accustomed to stay?”

“Why, yes, many of us own such properties.”

“And taverns, eating establishments, and other businesses catering to the transient trade?” I inquired.

“Yes, Praetor. This matter could be very bad for us.”

“I dare say. Well, my friends, I have a feeling that, all too soon, this little matter of a murdered priest may be remembered fondly as a mere diversion in the good times.”

“Ah, Praetor,” Petillius said, shaking his head ruefully, “there is nothing that such men as we can do about the rivalries of great men. We can only hope that our homes will be treated gently in the strife to come. That is for the future. This, however, is immediate. Something must be done.” He was, of course, a practical man, as were they all. The looming catastrophe that seemed so imminent to me, and so potentially fatal for myself and my family, was to these men a remote matter, and no more controllable than storms and earthquakes and other forces of nature, such as that volcano smoking so ominously nearby.

“And something shall be done,” I assured him, as I had been assuring everybody lately. “Being done right now, in fact. My men are searching and questioning all over the district. The killer or killers will turn up soon. I expect cooperation from you as well. You locals are the most likely to spot these fleeing priests and I want them reported instantly should they be seen. I will deal very harshly with anyone who seeks to conceal them or hide any evidence from me.”

“Of course you shall have our fullest cooperation, Praetor. Nobody wants these murderers found more sincerely than we.”

“See that it is so.” This another group went off, not truly happy. I wasn’t pleasing anyone much that day.

It is in times like this, when some shocking event shatters the customary calm of a district, that the true nature of men’s relations with one another come out. The peace between rival groups begins to crack like poor stucco, revealing the rotten timbers beneath. Old grudges, thought to be forgotten, come suddenly to mind. Trivial or even imaginary slights and insults loom large, and thoughts of revenge and retribution prey upon men’s minds. Add to that the general tension caused by impending war in Italy, and we had the makings of a full-scale civil brawl on our hands, and all of it set in motion by a death that, however bizarre, had not even been proven to be murder.

I gestured for Hermes to come to me. “Hermes, are you sober enough to do a little more snooping?”

“Are you implying that I am drunk?” he said, swaying slightly.

“Nothing of the sort. Just curtail your intake for a while. We need to know something more. I know that Pompey is powerful here in Campania. He settled many of his veterans here. See what the locals feel about Caesar, and how the lines are drawn hereabouts.”

He went off to snoop and doubtless drink some more. The settlement of the Campanian lands had been a thorny one, much disputed in the Senate and fought over for years. Pompey had wanted the land to settle his veterans, who had served for many years and needed farms to retire to. His enemies in the Senate fought this, both because they wanted the land for themselves and because they knew it would give Pompey a strong power base near to Rome. Back then Pompey and Caesar had been friends, Pompey was married to Caesar’s daughter, and Caesar had worked hard to get Pompey the land settlement. In time he had succeeded, and now the countryside was full of Pompey’s veterans, each man with his arms hung above the hearth, ready to flock to the eagles at Pompey’s summons.

Technically, the struggle was between Caesar and the Senate, but here in Campania the Senate counted for little. Here the lines were drawn between the supporters of the great men of the day, and none were greater that year than Caesar and Pompey. In this territory, barely two generations under Roman control, all such loyalties were mutable. Eventually, Hermes returned.

“There aren’t very many of Pompey’s men in the immediate vicinity. Most of them settled to the north of here. The few I found to talk to don’t seem to care much about Apollo or Hecate.”

“That’s something of a relief. One more faction in this business would have been one too many.”

The presence of all those Pompeians had been a disturbing factor in my otherwise pleasant stay in Campania. Pompey had assured that, should Caesar prove recalcitrant, he could stamp his foot and raise an army. There were those in the Senate, chiefly of the most extreme aristocratic faction, urging him to stamp that foot. The rest of the Senate was more wary, feeling that they could negotiate with Caesar, but the times were bad ones for moderates and fence-sitters. We were drifting into another age of warlords. Sad to say, the Roman soldiers of that day felt their strongest allegiance to their generals, not to Rome. For a general who consistently led them to victory and loot, they would do almost anything.

Pompey’s veterans were such men, but I did not fancy their chances against Caesar’s troops, who had been fighting hard in Gaul for years. Pompey’s veterans were getting old and were long out of practice.

“There are those two legions training up near Capua,” I mused.

“What have they to do with this murdered priest and the troubles here in the south?” Hermes wanted to know.

“Eh? Oh, nothing. The thought of Pompey’s veterans set me thinking about the disposition of our soldiers and which way they might go if it comes to a break between Caesar and the Senate.”

“They’re new troops training for a war in Syria,” Hermes said. “They have no set loyalties and I suspect they’ll follow whoever the Senate sends to take charge of them. I don’t think they’ll be much threat to Caesar.” We had both spent a lot of time with Caesar’s army in Gaul, and knew all too well what a savage lot they were. Caesar had been leading them for eight years and they were his, body and soul. He had become their patron and they were his clientela.

As the day’s business was about to end, Julia came to report her findings. “I’ve spent all day with Iola and the rest of the Oracle’s staff.”

“I don’t suppose they confessed to complicity?”

“Not likely.”

“Pity. It would make things so much easier.”

“If only life were as simple as you wish it. No, but I have been learning a great deal about the Hecate cult, about its origins and history. It is quite fascinating.”

“I am sure. Anything about murderous enmity between the cultists and the priests of Apollo overhead?”

She sighed. “You are so single-minded when you are on an investigation, Decius. I wish you would give some time to culture and study.”

“All in good time, my dear. When I retire, I plan to write many long, boring books, perhaps even look into this philosophy business. Brutus and Cicero and some others of my acquaintance seem to set great store by it.”

“By the way, we are invited to dinner at the house of Marcus Duronius.”

“Excellent,” I said. “I’ve heard that he sets a splendid table.”

She poked my expanding waistline. Rather harder than necessary, in fact. “You should spend less time at the table and more in the gymnasium. This easy life is softening you.”

“The demands of office do not permit me much time for the gymnasium,” I told her. The derisive snort she made was quite expressive.

“I’m off to confer with some of the other priestesses nearby. I’ll meet you at the Villa of Duronius at dinnertime. Do try to show up sober.”

Sometimes I didn’t think that Julia trusted me. And I knew why she was suddenly concerned with my physical fitness. She expected me to spring to arms at Caesar’s call and join his army. Well, I had already been in Caesar’s army and wanted nothing to do with it. She thought Pompey was a prize villain and that the Senate was doing Uncle Caius Julius insufficient honor. Personally, I couldn’t see a fig’s worth of difference between Caesar and Pompey, and the Senate had already voted Caesar more honors than he’d earned. If he’d been denied a few of his demands, that was just the rough-and-tumble of Roman politics as they were in those days.

That evening, with just Hermes accompanying me, I arrived at the Villa of Duronius, quite sober. Well, mostly sober, anyway. Like most villas in that part of Italy, it was sprawling and spacious. Duronius was a wine importer and banker, a formula for riches if ever there was one. The company proved to be an entertainingly mixed lot, chosen to make for good conversation. For dignity, there was my distinguished self. For wealth, we had our host, Duronius. For beauty, there was an intriguing lady of Stabiae named Sabinilla. For wisdom, a philosopher of local repute named Gitiadas. For wit, there was the rising young playwright Pedianus, whose reputation for comedy was growing. For low good humor, we had Porcia, a corpulent freedman’s daughter and owner of many commercial properties all over Campania. In Rome it was rare for women to appear unescorted at a dinner party, but it was quite common in Campania. Women could own businesses and had property rights equal to those of men. It wasn’t necessary to be a widow to wield control over their own fortunes, and even married women could manage their own finances independently of their husbands. It was all very un-Roman.

There were others, but I have forgotten their names. The banquet was arranged in the Roman fashion, but the Campanians of that time did not always observe the Roman custom of no more than nine diners at any one dinner. For one thing, they thought it unworthy of a rich man to entertain so few guests. In time, Julia arrived and we were conducted to the table. As ranking magistrate, I had the place of honor at the right end of the center couch. Our sandals were removed by servants and our feet sprinkled with perfume. Garlands were distributed and we were ready to get down to business. Before the first course was brought in, our host made an announcement.

“My friends, today we shall observe the ancient custom of the district: before we begin, we must appoint a Master of Ceremonies, to set the order of the banquet, to mix the wine and water, and to determine the direction of dinner conversation. I nominate our most distinguished guest, the Praetor Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.” There was much applause and cheering. This was another Campanian oddity. Ordinarily, a Master of Ceremonies was appointed for the Greek symposium, the after-dinner party when the women had withdrawn and the men got down to the serious business of drinking.

“My host and friends, I thank you for the honor, but I confess I am unsuited for such an office,” I said firmly. “The Master of Ceremonies should not be chosen for official dignity, but for taste, elegance, and wit. I propose our renowned playwright, Pedianus.” All agreed that this was an excellent choice. Personally, I intended to be far too inebriated by the end of the banquet to direct much of anything. Let the boy try to keep his wits about him while the wine flowed as it does only in Campanian revelries.

A servant placed a wreath of ivy on the young man’s head and another draped a purple mantle over his shoulders. A third placed an ivywreathed wand in his hand. He stood and declaimed, “My host, great Praetor, honored guests, you do me honor, and I shall in return strive to provide you with an agreeable evening. These rules I decree: One, while guests may be served in order of rank and distinction, there shall be no difference in the quality of the items presented.” Everyone agreed that this was an excellent rule. “Two, the wine shall be mixed at one measure of water to two of wine.” He caught my look. “Make that one measure of water to three of wine.” That was still too much water for my taste, but anything stronger would be considered scandalous. “Three, I forbid all discussion of serious matters. I will hear no debate about Caesar and Pompey. The measures of the Tribune Curio shall not be breathed.”

“What about the murder of the priest Eugaeon?” somebody asked.

He grinned. “That’s not serious. That is gossip. We must have gossip.” Amid much laughter he gestured grandly and the first course was brought in. It was the customary egg course, with the eggs dyed in astonishing colors and painted in fanciful patterns. Some were encased in gold leaf hammered to an incredible thinness. We were supposed to eat these, gold and all. Some were still in their shells, and when cracked open these proved to contain the sort of party favors esteemed by wealthy hosts: perfumes, pearls, gems, golden chains, and so forth. While the ladies made delighted sounds I tried to figure out how they had gotten those items inside the shells, but to no avail. I could see no hole or seam in the complete shells. Maybe, I thought, they just fed the things to the chickens and ducks and this was the result.

More substantial courses followed, each accompanied by the appropriate wines, all of which were uniformly excellent. Between courses we had entertainment, their order directed by Pedianus. There were reciters of poems and dancers, jugglers and tightrope walkers, even an astonishing woman who balanced on her hands while using her feet to shoot a bow and arrow with great accuracy.

In past generations, it had been a custom in Campania to have gladiators fight at banquets. In some houses, this was still done. But I have never felt that blood goes well with food. The munera form the proper venue for such carnage. Thankfully, our host seemed to agree.

For a while we spoke of this and that, the upcoming races, events overseas, the latest omens, and so forth. Julia got the fashionably ragged local philosopher Gitiadas to expound upon a theory that the world is round like a ball, which would have been rather interesting had it not been so absurd. He said something about the circular shadow cast upon the moon during a lunar eclipse, which made no sense whatever.

“Praetor,” said the abundantly endowed Porcia, “are you making any progress on the murder of the priest?” She popped a honeyed fig into her mouth, making her multiple chins jiggle.

“I confess it is perplexing,” I told her. “The priest is dead, the other priests have disappeared, and the devotees of Hecate either cannot or will not help. My biggest headache is figuring out how he got into the river in the first place.”

“Praetor,” said our host Duronius, “the neighborhood is full of the wildest rumors. Of those here, only you and your wife were actually there when the body appeared. Perhaps you could tell us exactly what happened.”

“Of course, but I cannot tell you exactly what happened, only what I observed.” At this I saw the philosopher Gitiadas nod approvingly. So I gave them a perhaps overly lurid recitation of my experience, trying to make it as entertaining as possible. Julia then told the tale as she and the other women experienced it. Her account was much more respectful of the holiness of the site and stressed their awe at the surroundings and the uncanniness of the Oracle. Some of the company had visited the Oracle personally, and agreed that their experiences had been much the same, minus the corpse.

“You had an uncommonly straightforward answer from the Oracle, contradictory though it seemed,” said the beautiful Sabinilla. She wore a white-blond wig that could only have been made from German hair. Her gown was of transparent Coan cloth and she had a cat’s appearance of bonelessness as she lounged on the couch. “I asked her if my husband would recover from his illness and she said, ‘Follow the sun to Vulcan’s pool.’ Later, a physician told me that if we had gone west to Sicily, there is a healing hot spring at the base of Aetna where my husband might have been cured, but by that time he was dead so it wasn’t much help.” Others agreed that they had been given similarly confusing answers that sometimes proved to make sense in retrospect.

“My men have not yet found an access to the river where the priest’s body might have been thrown in. It is most vexing.”

“Praetor,” said Gitiadas, “I confess I have never visited this Oracle and her mysterious tunnel, so much of this is new to me. You say that the water bubbled violently as if boiling, but it felt no more than warm?”

“Yes, that is how it was.”

“Bubbles are merely air moving through liquid. When water boils, air forms somehow and moves upward to the surface, by a process much debated among scholars. Other than by the boiling process, in order to make bubbles, air must somehow mix with the water from this layer of air in which we breathe, which exists above the level of the sea. If the water of the subterranean river has no access save the cave of the Oracle, where are all those bubbles coming from to make it froth so violently? The river must touch the air somewhere very near the spot where it enters the cave.”

This was amazingly good sense, and I couldn’t imagine why I had not thought of it before. I suppose one must be a philosopher to deduce things so logically. It gave me much to think about, and I fear I was rather withdrawn company for a while. Eventually the best wine came out-a Cretan vintage I had never heard of-and I got back to my duties as a guest.

“Does anyone know,” I asked, “why the cult of Hecate has lasted so long in these parts while it has died out almost everywhere else in Italy?”

“Hecate has the Oracle,” Porcia said, “but the Oracle was there before Hecate.”

“That’s just an old tale,” Sabinilla protested.

“Oh, tell us about it,” Julia urged.

“Well,” Porcia began, “we Campanians hold ourselves to be the original people of these parts, and we regard the Greeks and Romans as newcomers, but truth is there were people here even before we came here from somewhere else. I’ve heard them called Aborigines, but that’s just a name the Greeks gave them. They called themselves something else. It’s said they were great magicians, and they used to have all of Italy and the islands to themselves. They built their temples of huge stones and you can still see some of those here and there. It’s said they carved that tunnel down to the river, and they had the Oracle, or some sort of god, in that place. The temple above was built by their descendants on top of an even older one, before the Greeks changed it to their liking.”

I remembered the sense I’d had that the decorations of the temple covered older, cruder figures, and the carvings around the tunnel entrance had struck me the same way. About the Aborigines I was more Skeptical. Certainly, some sort of people inhabited Italy before the first Latins arrived, and I had seen some of those temples and monuments of ponderous stones as large as any the Egyptians had utilized that Porcia spoke of. But it seems to me that all the defeated and subjugated people in history somehow acquire the reputation of having been great sorcerers. I find myself wondering how, if they had such potent magic at their command, they always got themselves conquered by unmagical but soldierly people. To carve and move big stones all you need is a lot of time, a lot of manpower, and an odd idea of what it is the gods want.

“Personally, I don’t believe any of that,” Stabinilla said.

“Oh,” I asked. “Why is that?” I wondered if she shared my own doubts.

“The Aborigines were nothing but savages, like Gauls or Germans. There are none of those giant stone monuments here in Campania, or anywhere else in Italy that I ever heard. Whoever cut that tunnel had skill and good tools. I don’t think it could be older than the earliest Greek settlers. They had the skills and tools necessary. They knew how to survey and how to mine. No pack of primitives drove that tunnel straight down to an underground river.”

“I don’t care what you say,” Porcia put in. “Even a mathematician from Alexandria couldn’t find that river so far down. It was sorcery.” Then she went on in a lower voice, “But there’s some even stranger tales about that place.”

“Such as?” Julia asked.

“Well, there are some old tales that say the tunnel wasn’t driven down from the surface. Some think it was carved upward, from below.” There were gasps and mutters from around the table. People made gestures to avert evil. Talk of the underworld always makes people uneasy.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose it is relatively easy to find the surface from the river, compared to going the other way.”

“And the precise alignment on the solstice?” Julia asked.

“Well, underworld demons would know how to do something like that, wouldn’t they?” Porcia said. I couldn’t argue with that.

“What do you think, Gitiadas?” Julia asked.

“Here we only speculate,” the philosopher said. “We are presented with certain remarkable facts: a tunnel carved with great precision in alignment with a celestial event, an underground river with no known source or effluent, and the appearance of a corpse therein. From these things we can spin theories both natural and supernatural, but our speculations have little value, because we are not in possession of enough facts from which to draw informed conclusions.”

“You make uncommonly good sense, for a philosopher,” I commended, while Julia rolled her eyes, as she often did when I spoke with learned persons. “What we need is more basic facts. We need to know where that river comes from. We need to know who had it in for the priest and perhaps all the priests.”

“We also must dismiss those things that are facts but are nonetheless irrelevant to the case at hand. Too many facts can be as inimical to clear thought as too few.”

“Exactly!” I said. “Personally, I don’t care if that tunnel lines up with moonrise on the anniversary of Cannae. Nor does it matter if it was carved out by the Aborigines, the Greeks, or our host’s grandfather. The circumstances of this murder are both immediate and local, and we need to concentrate on these matters, not upon ancient tales.”

“Most astute,” Gitiadas commended. “And, one must ponder certain other matters concerning this killing.”

“Such as?” I queried.

“Well, there must be a motive for the slaying.”

“Mmmm. Here we are confronted with an embarrassment of riches. People are killed for a great many reasons. Speeding up an inheritance is a classic motive. Revenge is another and forms a whole subcategory in itself. An insult may be a call for vengeance, or a tit-for-tat killing as is common in blood feuds. I’ve known many killings to result from jealousy and more from political rivalry. Killing during a robbery is common, and manslaughter can be the result of an accident, as when a blow meant merely to chastise results in a broken neck or crushed skull. I could go on all evening on the subject of motive alone.”

“Then,” said Gitiadas, “you must eliminate all save those that may apply in this case. Another factor must be the means of murder, be it a weapon or an opportune circumstance.”

“People are killed with everything from swords to chamberpots,” I observed. “Daggers, garottes, spears, bricks, clubs-I even knew a woman who strangled her victims with her own hair. This is, I believe, the only case where the weapon was a sacred river.”

“If he was drowned,” Julia said. “That hasn’t been proven yet, nor whether it was murder at all, rather than an accident.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I would be inclined to believe the death the result of an accident, if a rather bizarre one, save for one fact: the disappearance of the other priests. That makes it smell of foul play.”

“Has it occurred to anyone,” said the playwright, “to wonder why, of all times to carry out a murder, the perpetrator or perpetrators chose a day upon which the shrine was visited by a Roman praetor?”

“And one famed for his successful criminal investigations,” Duronius put in.

“Ah! Most excellent points,” said Gitiadas. “What says the praetor to this?”

“Socratic method, eh?” I said, letting him know that I was not entirely ignorant of philosophical matters. I pondered the question, which was indeed a good one. “First off, they did not know we were coming. The visit was suggested in idle conversation and we set off forthwith. The killing must have been plotted well in advance and had to be carried out at a specified moment. It seems that they could not alter their plan.”

“Quite logical. And the sudden appearance of the body in the river-do you think that it was intended or an accident?”

“I can hardly think that someone who wished to carry out what must have been a rather difficult murder should have intended that the victim appear before our very noses,” I said.

“The goddess took a hand in it,” Porcia said with great conviction. “She was offended that someone would pollute her sacred river with a dead body, so she threw it up before the praetor’s party. She wishes justice from you, sir.”

I was about to rebuke her for dragging the gods back into the matter, but I saw Julia nodding agreement and held my tongue.

“Oh, rubbish,” said Stabinilla, coming to my rescue. “The gods don’t interfere in human affairs as petty as a mere murder, unless it’s patricide, and even then I rather doubt it. I have half a dozen neighbors I’m pretty sure helped their fathers along into the afterworld, and they are doing just fine. As the praetor said, people get tired of waiting to inherit.” For the first time I noted the understated elegance of her jewelry. Unlike most Campanian women, she did not favor ostentatious amounts of gold and precious stones and pearls. Instead, her bracelets, earrings, and necklace were of bronze-but it was not plain metal. It was the old Etruscan work, in which the surface was covered with minute beads of bronze so close set that they give the piece an exquisite texture. It is said that only children had a touch delicate enough to set the bronze beads in place for soldering, and that it could not be done past the age of twelve. The art of making this jewelry has been lost; it was only in recent years that Romans had begun to appreciate it, and the old pieces were eagerly sought after.

“You’re one of those Skeptics, I take it,” said Porcia.

“Are you a follower of Aenesidemus?” Gitiadas asked, apparently referring to some philosopher of that school.

“Never heard of him,” Sabinilla said. “But I believe in good sense. I like to see evidence. If you buy a horse, do you just listen to the seller blather on about the perfection of this beast he wants you to buy? No. You go look at the horse. You check its teeth and punch it for wind. You examine its legs and hoofs for evidence of illness or injury or poor breeding.”

“You can’t know everything by empirical observation,” Julia said.

“Who wants to know everything?” Stabinilla countered. “I just want to be clear about the things that affect me personally.”

“I merely meant,” Julia said, “that there are such things as instinct, and inspiration, and divine revelation.”

“Difficult concepts to use in court,” I said. “Evidence works better there, although imaginative vituperation and character assassination can be more persuasive.”

“Not to mention showing off your scars,” Julia commented drily. In those days any man in public life was expected to be a soldier and it never hurt to remind a jury of one’s honorable service. In these recent, decadent times many men practice law who never lifted a sword.

“Also excellent legal technique. Look at this,” I said, hiking up my tunic to show the huge furrow that slanted from my left hip diagonally down almost to the knee. “Got that when I was run over by a British chariot. That one’s won me many a favorable verdict. Not a lawyer in Rome can match it, not even Marcus Antonius, and he’s been cut and stabbed and speared more times than all the heroes in the Iliad combined.” The other guests murmured admiration at the spectacular scar, but Julia just rolled her eyes again and turned away. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen it before.

This little entertaining moment was interrupted when Hermes appeared at the entrance to the triclinium. He made his way around the couches and stood by my side. As highest-ranking guest and a serving magistrate, I was of course given the “consul’s place,” the right end of the center couch, where it was convenient for a man on public service to receive and dispatch messengers, for a Roman official was never off duty.

“Praetor,” Hermes said in a low voice, “we’ve found the other priests.”