The River God

12

Even before the sun rose, the morning was one of furious activity.

I was somewhat surprised to see the other aediles arrive in the early gray light, accompanied by their slaves and their crowds of clients. It transpired that almost all parts of Rome were readily accessible if you didn’t mind taking a circuitous route or using a boat. As they gathered, I was sitting at a table outside the temple, scribbling away on my message to Caesar by the light of several lamps I had dragged outside.

Since I was writing to Caesar in his capacity as Pontifex Maximus, arbiter of all matters concerning Roman religious practice, and since I intended for this letter to be read by the Senate and the various priestly colleges, I wrote in a far more formal style than I usually employed. I found it no easy task to remember all those obscure cases and tenses that had been drilled into me as a boy, many of them leftovers from archaic Latin and never used except in religious matters and in certain types of poetry.

When I finished what seemed to me a creditable document, I handed it to my staff of secretaries and ordered them to make copies of it until I ordered them to stop. They had arrived only minutes before, still yawning and scratching.

“Jupiter protect us!” wailed a voice in the dimness. “Metellus is toiling by lamplight! Surely this is an omen sent by the gods!” This was the occasion of much raucous laughter. The speaker was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the curule aedile. He walked up to my desk, followed by his own pack of fiunkies.

“Why, Lepidus, I hardly recognized you without your fat backside planted in your folding chair.”

“No markets today,” he said, beaming. “I decided to come lend a hand to you poor, sweating drudges. Surely you were expecting me.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t a Senate messenger call on you last night?”

“I’ve been here all night.”

“Decius! This devotion to duty is astounding! Anyway, the interrex has summoned an emergency meeting of the Senate to be held in the Temple of Jupiter tonight before sundown. All the aediles are to assess the condition of the City and submit a report.”

“Fine idea,” I said, “but you can just about see it all from here.” I was thinking that a Senate meeting was just what I wanted.

“Odd sort of fiood, isn’t it?” Lepidus said. The growing light was making the spectacle visible. “All that water just sitting there, more like a lake than a rampaging river. I’ve seen fioods that tore whole buildings from their foundations. I don’t think this one is going to be so bad. Maybe the water will just recede and there will just be some mopping and bailing to do.”

“This fiood,” I told him, “has turned the entire lower part of Rome into a vast chamber pot. And it’s going to stay right there until Helios dries it up.”

“Is that true? Well, my house is right on top of the Quirinal, well away from it all.”

“Lepidus, civic virtue like yours is what made Rome the greatest power in the world.”

“Here comes Cato,” he said, ignoring me. “This should be fun. What do you think he’s here for?”

“He’s here to confer with me,” I told him.

Again I received a stare of round-eyed wonder. “Cato conferring with you? Truly, this is a day for miracles! Let it not be an omen!” He accompanied this old formula against evil with an elaborate traditional hand gesture. There was more laughter from his stooges.

Cato had indeed arrived, and he was not alone. He had at least twenty men with him, most of them young equites or junior senators. I recognized few of them by sight for they were not members of the set with whom I socialized most. They were all stern-faced men with close-cropped or shaven scalps. Ancestor worshippers to a man, I thought; stoics and defenders of old Roman virtue. Their sour faces were scarred and graced with gaps where teeth had been knocked out, and their knuckles were swollen and broken. These were men who trained hard on the Campus Martius and brawled hard in the streets. I might not invite them to my parties, but they were just the sort of men I wanted at my back that day.

Cato shouldered Lepidus aside. “Hail, Aedile!” he shouted. Lepidus and his lackeys strolled off, smirking and tapping their temples to indicate what they thought of Cato’s soundness of mind.

“I have to get this message off right away, Cato. Give me your opinion.” Baldly, I told him of the condition of the sewers and how I was going to use their horrid state to convene a religious court.

“Unsanctified corpses in the sewers! Infamous!” Cato yelled. “No wonder the gods have forsaken us!” Then, in a quieter voice, “So you are going to prosecute them for sacrilege if you can’t get them for corruption? That is most ingenious, Decius Caecilius.”

“I have my moments. What do you think of this letter?” I handed him a copy, and he began to mumble, reading the words to himself. He had gotten no more than halfway through it before he threw it down. “You moron! Did you learn absolutely nothing from your teachers of style and composition?”

“Better men than you have praised my prose style!” I said, offended.

“This is not some trivial, chatty missive full of gossip and politics! This is a document touching sacerdotal matters to be read by the Pontifex Maximus! You’d better let me show you how this is done.” He slapped the table with a calloused palm, producing a sound like a snapping board. Cato practiced hard with sword, shield, and spear almost every day. “Attend me!” he bellowed to the scribes. “Set this down exactly as I dictate, or I’ll have the hides off your backs!” They jumped at the noise, grabbed fresh sheets, dipped their reed pens, and watched him with rapt, worshipful attention. They never behaved that way with me.

In a slow, sonorous voice, Cato began to translate my letter into the old-fashioned Latin he adored, using forms that had been ancient in the days of Numa Pompilius, the rolling vowels and clanging consonants sounding like a battle hymn. The crowd gathered around the temple silenced to hear the performance, even the ones who didn’t know what it was about and scarcely understood the archaic words. It was almost worth getting up early to hear, and he received a handsome round of applause when he had finished.

We quickly scanned the copies for mistakes; then I sealed the best of them into a copper message tube and handed it to the horse messenger, bidding him ride like the wind for Caesar’s winter camp in Gaul, where I judged Caesar and his army would be for at least another ten days, if I knew Gaulish weather. With luck, decent road conditions, and good, grain-fed horses, he could be back with Caesar’s reply in eight days. Caesar’s system of relay stations was incredibly quick and efficient. This was not so that he could keep in contact with the Senate, which he despised and ignored, but so that he could trumpet the news of his latest victories in the Forum.

We then dispatched foot messengers with copies to the heads of the various priestly colleges, to the tribune of the people, and one to the interrex. I would have given much to see Scipio’s face when he read it.

“Now you must read this. It was among the records I took from the Tabularium two days ago. I only found it late yesterday afternoon, and I’ve discovered quite a bit since then. Do you remember an aedile named Lucilius?”

He took the rolled up papyrus. “Quite well. I thought the man very promising, the sort of conscientious official we rarely see any more. He disappointed me, though. Died quite squalidly.” He began to read loudly, but his voice lowered as consternation replaced his usual expression. He handed it back. “All right. Tell me about this.”

Then Cato sat by me, and we began some serious plotting. I gave him a quick account of my findings of the past few days. He said nothing while I spoke, but I could tell by his various nods and snarls at events and names that he was paying attention and had deep feelings about at least some of it.

“It may not have been such a good idea to send Metellus Scipio a copy of the letter,” he said, when I was finished. “Not only is he implicated in this, but he is interrex. The powers of that office are not entirely clear. They are certainly not those of a dictator, he has no imperium, and he can’t command armies and won’t go out to govern a province; but in civil matters he is in a better position than any pair of consuls. He has no colleague to obstruct him, and some authorities maintain that an interrex can even override a tribunician veto. He might take action against you.”

“I don’t believe he will.”

“Don’t count on family loyalty,” Cato warned. “He is a Metellus by adoption, not by birth.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that. I think he will comply for three reasons: First, he is prouder of his heritage as a Scipio than of his adoption as a Caecilian-”

“That is perfectly understandable,” Cato said.

“-and everyone expects a Scipio to act as a savior of the Republic. Second, he will be stepping down soon anyway and isn’t likely to abuse the powers of the office at this late date. Third, I don’t think he was directly involved anyway.”

“I am glad to hear it, but why don’t you think he’s one of the conspirators? Lucilius seemed to think he was.”

“The morning after the insula collapsed, Scipio came to observe; and at that time he was eager for me to bring charges against the builders. He even saw it as a good case for his son to make his reputation as a lawyer. It was only the next day, after Messala had been at him, that he came to try and discourage me. I suspect that he was unaware that inferior materials bought at his estate downriver were being used illegally here in Rome. It’s going to be an embarrassment, but he has an out. He can produce some conniving steward who was selling the goods and salting away the profits and have the man publicly executed.”

“That could make a good midday entertainment at your Games,” Cato pointed out.

“I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe we could get rid of all the criminals that way: build a big, fake insula in the arena, one with no walls, so they can be seen. Have it collapse and crush them all to death. Pure poetic justice. The audience would love it.”

“That has possibilities. Wouldn’t they die too quickly, though? They deserve something lingering.”

“I’m not as traditional as you are, Cato. Just find the guilty parties, try them, condemn them, and execute them, that’s how I do things. Besides, we need to arrest them before we can dole out punishments, so let’s stick to that. We must move very quickly if we’re to bag them. I want you to grab the freedman, Justus, and hide him in your own house. He’s by far our best witness, and I’m only hoping that he hasn’t been killed already. He may not like testifying against his patron, but he’ll do it to save himself from execution.”

“It will be done.” Cato beckoned a pair of his high-born brawlers forward, and I told them how to find the salvage yard.

“It should be above water,” I told them, “and he will almost certainly be there because people will be buying wood to build barges or shore up endangered buildings. If not, he almost certainly lives nearby. Find him and arrest him on my authority. He already knows I want his testimony.”

“Take him to my house,” Cato told them, “and sit by him with swords in your hands until I relieve you. Don’t let him get away, and don’t allow anyone near him.” They saluted and ran off.

“I want the Trans-Tiber and points west combed for the slave-priest Harmodias. He can identify the killers of the big slave I entrusted to his care, and he can tie Messala to that deed.”

Cato snorted. “You know Messala kept his own hands clean.”

“If I can implicate enough of his friends and slaves and freedmen, he will have a large task weaseling out of it. But you’ve named the biggest task: getting verdicts against the aristocratic likes of Valerius Messala Niger and Aemilius Scaurus.”

“Scaurus!” Cato said scornfully. “When I was praetor two years ago, he was tried in my court for gross corruption in his administration of Sardinia. Acquitted, of course, because he bribed the jury, but there was no question as to his guilt. He extorted money far in excess of the required taxes; he accepted bribes for all of his judgments in court; he executed wealthy men just to lay his hands on fine art works they owned! I remember one fellow in particular that Scaurus charged with treason and executed summarily just because he owned a famous statue of Venus tying up her-”

“Actually,” I said, wanting to interrupt this particular train of thought, “since he’s already been acquitted of those deeds, I think we should concentrate on his death trap of a theater.”

“And that’s another thing!” Cato said, just working himself up to the proper pitch of righteous indignation. “That theater is a disgrace to Rome!” He pointed toward the huge structure, which was clearly visible from where we stood. “In the first place, theaters should never have been allowed in Rome! They are impious, degenerate, foreign institutions and they weaken and corrupt the youth of Rome. Even if they must be built for a particular set of Games, they are supposed to be torn down immediately afterward. Yet there sits the theater of Aemilius Scaurus, years after its construction, and all so that the greedy villain can rent it out for filthy profit!” He was in full-powered rant now.

“In the year of my praetorship, I protested that abomination to the censors-”

“One of whom was Valerius Messala,” I pointed out.

“Yes, you are right.” He wiped a hand down his face. “The gods will make a desolation of Rome, and we deserve it.”

“Let’s get back to making our case if you don’t mind,” I said. “It looks like there shouldn’t be much of a problem crossing the river if you use the embankment south of the Sublician, then cross there. A team of men on horseback and foot should be able to find Harmodias. Like everyone else, he may be expecting everything to stop for the duration of the fiood.”

“I’ll see to it.” That was the good thing about Cato. He got things done and didn’t waste time with a lot of frivolous objections. He saved his pigheadedness for public debate.

“Our toughest enemy to beat will be Messala. He’s rich; he’s infiuential; he’s Pompey’s close supporter. The testimony of men as lowly as Justus and Harmodias won’t mean much against such a man, but as censor he was to have assigned publicani to scour the drains and sewers. This he did not do, and I am going to charge him with sacrilege for it.”

“Excellent.”

“Last time I saw Caninus,” I said, “which was right here, he was with a pack of Plautius Hypsaeus’s men. Hypsaeus was praetor the same year you were, wasn’t he?”

“No, the year before. He was praetor of the foreigners, and never in the City. Out taking bribes from barbarians, no doubt. He’s thick as thieves with Scaurus.”

“Even thicker,” I said. “I got these from Lucilius’s widow. Look at them.” I handed him the notes the woman had given me. He frowned and muttered as he plowed his way through the verbiage and crude handwriting.

“Asiatic style. I detest it. Well, the oration itself might have proved competent, but this list of names will be invaluable. I see our friend Hypsaeus right here. I never knew he owned a brickworks, but it shouldn’t surprise me. How many senators these days make their money decently, from their crops and rents?”

I sighed. “Alas, too few. Hypsaeus is protected by his gang, but we can get him. He’s out of office, and his hirelings will desert him when we put the pressure on. The rest of the names are mainly builders, public contractors, and so forth, low-level people who can be dealt with easily.”

“Your friend Milo will be happy,” Cato commented. “Not only is his name not on the list, but Hypsaeus is his rival for next year’s consulship.”

I gazed upward. “I fear they are both to be disappointed.”

“What?” He shot a suspicious glance at me. “What do you mean? Do you know something?”

“Let’s just say I have a premonition about who is going to be consul next year.”

“You Metelli think you are the secret masters of Rome,” he growled.

“Let’s get down to business,” I said. “The sun is already up. If we move fast, we can have a case to cast before the assembled Senate this evening. There will be an uproar, but with this fiood they’ll be terrified of how the populace will react when it’s found that there would be only minor damage if not for senatorial neglect.”

“They’ll be in a mood to toss some of their colleagues to the wolves,” he agreed.

“The tribunes will all be there. I want you to talk to them. Get them to convene a meeting of the Plebeian Assembly. I want you to harangue the Assembly and get them to vote me the power to levy all the labor, resources, and money I need to thoroughly cleanse every inch of the drainage system. And I want it paid for out of the public treasury. And I want a permanent commission appointed for the purpose of disaster relief, with resources to supply temporary shelter and rationing for displaced persons.” Suddenly my mind was buzzing with ideas. “One of the priestly colleges or brotherhoods could be given that job. Politicians and magistrates come and go yearly, but the priesthoods last forever.”

“I will do it.” He was looking at me with an expression I’d never expected to see on his face: respect. “Decius Caecilius, you are going to have the most eventful aedileship in recent memory, if you can survive it.” He wheeled and strode away, barking orders at his followers like a general preparing for battle. In a way, that was what he was doing.

For a few minutes the other aediles crowded around me, wanting to know what was going on. Suddenly and unexpectedly, it seemed that they were looking to me for leadership. I didn’t waste the opportunity. I snatched a piece of papyrus from a scribe and scrawled a crude map of my beloved, beautiful, awful old City. This I divided into sections, giving each aedile one to subdivide among his helpers. I saw Acilius standing by with his men and ordered him to provide a detailed report on the condition of every cloaca, tributary sewer, and drain hole in the City and have it ready by afternoon.

The State freedman smiled and gestured to one of his slaves. The man withdrew from his satchel a thick scroll, which Acilius presented to me. “What do you think I have been doing these last two years?”

“You see?” I cried, loud as Cato. “Somebody here has been doing his duty! I charge you all to go and do the same! Meet me on the terrace before the Temple of Jupiter one hour before sundown and have your reports ready!”

“At once, Aedile!” they chorussed, dashing off to do something useful, instead of fretting endlessly over actors and chariot races and public banquets.

I stood there for a while, savoring the moment. I felt better than a general with six victorious legions out killing barbarians.

A few minutes later, Hermes arrived, puffing and sweating like an Olympic runner.

“We got it boxed up,” he panted, when he had breath. “Old Burrus is escorting it out to the country estate, says he’ll see it stowed away, and nobody will get a look at it.”

He sat down, and while he caught his breath, I told him about the statue’s provenance. “It was Scaurus’s safety precaution,” I said. “He wanted to make me look like one crook accusing another. It could have worked, too.”

“Tell me something,” Hermes said. “Why did they kill Folius and his wife? They were all together in it, weren’t they? Living in each other’s money chests, doing the trade in trashy building materials, all of them making each other richer than they were already-who turned on Folius and why? It’s where all this started, as far as we’re concerned, with that insula coming down and us finding the two of them under it all. They were doing so well. How did they fall out?”

The temple slaves were bringing out breakfast unasked. They laid out bread and honey and sliced fruit on the table, along with watered wine. I sat and gestured to Hermes to sit with me.

“That is a very astute question.” Somehow I knew that this was the right time to broach the most delicate subject that lay between us. “Hermes, someday soon I will grant you your freedom. Instead of master and slave, we will be patron and client. You will have every right and privilege of citizenship except that of holding office.”

He covered his astonishment by gulping some wine and smearing a cake with honey. “I always expected that, someday.”

“These last few days you have pleased me greatly. I intend to keep you close to me in future years as I rise in office. If you will live up to the promise you have shown lately, you can look forward to becoming one of the great men of the Republic.”

Now he was truly embarrassed. “I never-I mean, I-”

“You know Tiro, who was once Cicero’s slave and is now a freedman. Senators and foreign kings court him. That could be you. Anyway, I tell you this by way of warning. Keep this up, but conduct yourself prudently. Too many men use their servile origin as an excuse to be worthless. Watch, listen, think, and act wisely. You may have a distinguished future ahead of you.”

I watched him hard. He swallowed, fumbled with his cup, but said nothing. I nodded with satisfaction. “You are silent. Yet another good sign. Very well, we will say no more about this for a while, but I want you to bear this firmly in mind.”

“I am not likely to forget it,” he said.

“You asked about Folius and his wife. That we may never know for certain, but I have been thinking about it. You remember how I have taught you to anticipate your enemy by trying to think like him?” Hermes nodded. “It works as well in this sort of investigation. I found myself pondering this: Suppose I were a criminal conspirator and I had found a useful tool, say, a man from Bovillae, perhaps a neighbor who had great ambition and no scruples, whose career I could push to my own great profit? And suppose further that I brought this unscrupulous man to Rome and set him up in one of my profitable enterprises? Then suppose I found that, after a mutually profitable partnership, this man showed himself to be a madman, a murderer capable not only of embarrassing me, but of destroying our whole, beautiful business?”

“You’d want to get rid of him,” Hermes said. “You mean the habit the Folii had of torturing and killing slaves? That might be a little rich for aristocrats, but it’s legal.”

“To our shame, yes. But I think it was getting beyond that. Andromeda gave us a hint. Folius and his wife were getting entirely out of control in their love of blood and pain.”

I sat back and scratched my unshaven chin. The old scar was itching abominably, the way it usually did when I hadn’t shaved for a while. “There is something wrong with such people. Most of us have a natural desire to witness combat and strife, and our customs provide the circus and the arena where these things may be displayed in an orderly, lawful fashion, where the blood that is shed is that of malefactors and the volunteers who wish to fight for their own satisfaction or profit or glory.”

I shook my head. “But that is not enough for certain people. These must torment innocent, powerless people. And such persons are never satisfied but must progress from atrocity to atrocity. I think that the Folii had degenerated to the point that they were about to do something irrevocably unforgivable. They had outlived their usefulness. Either Scaurus or Messala decided they had to go.”

“But take down a whole insula and more than two hundred people?” Hermes said. “Why? It’s not as if killing two people is that hard to accomplish!”

“That is something I intend to learn before the day is out,” I told him. Then for a while we went over plans for the evening meeting. I was ready to set off for a tour of the fiooded areas when a messenger came running down the slope of the Aventine behind the temple.

“Aedile Metellus?” the man asked, halting before the table.

“You’ve found me.” I took the message he handed me and read quickly. After a formal greeting the message was brief:

We must discuss the condition of my theater, which I am now inspecting for damage from this fiood. Please come at once. This need not detain you long, but I must speak with you. Below was appended the name: M. Aemilius Scaurus.

“What happened to his trip to Bovillae? Wasn’t he concerned about his fig trees?”

“It was grape vines,” I said, handing a tip to the messenger, who saluted and trotted off. “Either he went there and returned at a gallop, or he never went at all.”

“Whichever it is, he’s a fool to think you’d step into so transparent a trap.” He chuckled, but I said nothing. Hermes looked at me with growing alarm. “He is a fool to think that, isn’t he?”

“Under ordinary circumstances he would be, but I am feeling rather foolish just now.”

“Wait a moment! Just a short time ago you were lecturing me like a Greek schoolmaster about virtues such as prudence, discretion, and so forth. You do remember that, don’t you?”

“Those,” I told him, “are the desirable qualities of a man of humble station who would rise in the world and earn the esteem of his fellow citizens. I, on the other hand, was born an aristocrat. I don’t have to behave that way. Look at young Marcus Antonius. He’s a very capable soldier from a noble family, so he is destined to be a great man despite the fact that he’s an irresponsible fool and a bit of a maniac. That wouldn’t work for you.”

“But have you no regard for your own life?”

“A reasonable regard. But we live in times that reward boldness that borders upon the foolhardy. I think I’ll go see what’s on Scaurus’s mind.”

Hermes knew better than to argue. “Let’s get some reinforcements first.” He looked out over the river. “The bridge is still passable. I can run over to the Trans-Tiber and go to the ludus. Statilius will be happy to rent you five or six of his boys for the day. I can be back with them in an hour or less.”

“That would be no good,” I told him. “I don’t want a standoff. Not only would he not attack me, he wouldn’t admit anything either. I need all the evidence I can get if I am going to convict a man like Aemilius Scaurus.” I glanced toward the angle of the sun. The morning was warming nicely. “Well, at least we will have a fine day for a little boat trip on a backed-up sewer. Let’s go see if we can catch a ride.”