The River God

4

We were walking back across the Forum when Festus caught up with me.

Now that the fighting was over, a couple of praetors had come out with their lictors to make arrests. A number of men lay about groaning, trying to crawl away, or just lying inert. I couldn’t tell if any particular gang had emerged victorious, but that really wasn’t the point. It is seldom possible to determine the winner in a brawl. The idea is to disrupt civic life and cow and terrorize the citizenry so that nobody dared stand for office against the gang leaders or the politicians they supported. The elections themselves were usually decided by bribery. I never said the Republic was perfect.

“Patron!” Festus shouted. Then, correcting himself, “I mean, Aedile!” He was an officious little man, son of one of our country stewards, come to the City and prospering as an oil merchant. He was one of the men I had sent to check on the troublesome drains.

“Yes, my friend?” I said, gesturing broadly. One of the rewards of clientage was being recognized publicly by a high official. Festus basked in the attention.

“Aedile, the state freedman Acilius wants you to come at once. He has something he says you must see.”

“He does, does he?” I had been looking forward to an hour or two at the baths, free of official worries. “This freedman summons a high official like a household slave?”

Festus smiled obsequiously. “He says it’s very important, sir.”

“Oh, well. What’s an aedile anyway? Just a glorified errand boy at everyone’s beck and call.” I went on in this fashion for some time. I did a lot of complaining that year. While I lamented the woes of the aedileship, we walked to the Forum access to the Cloaca Maxima, first and biggest of Rome’s sewers.

This access was covered with a shrine in the form of a miniature temple dedicated to Venus Cloacina, she who oversees the purity of Rome’s water. Inside this diminutive sanctuary, a steep staircase led down to the great drain. The distance was not far, for the tunnel lies just beneath the surface of the streets, angling downhill to the river. The stairwell was lined with tiny niches in which burned oil lamps. By the time we reached bottom, my eyes were almost accustomed to the dimness. The air was cold after the unseasonable warmth of the open air.

I was always uneasy intruding in this subterranean realm. There seemed something unnatural about this aqueous city beneath the City. It took an effort to maintain my air of official dignitas as we entered the small landing, its walls painted with ancient murals depicting half-forgotten gods and demons; snake-haired harpies with bulging eyes; long-nosed, donkey-eared, Etruscan death guides; and creatures that had no names in the whole vast nomenclature of Roman religion. Most prominent among them was the ferryman common to most religions, the one who takes the shades of the dead across the river Styx.

His near-double was waiting for us. Tied up to the miniature landing was a barge built like a small riverboat, painted black but decorated with the serpents, ox skulls, and red dogs traditionally associated with underground deities carved in low relief all around the sides, twined with painted myrtle and cornel shoots. Chained in the stern of the barge was an old slave whose white hair reached his elbows, bearded to the waist, clutching a long pole in hands like twisted claws. In the lamplight, his deep-shadowed eyes glittered like obsidian. In the subterranean gloom, he was as sure sighted as an owl, but he would have been struck blind by sunlight.

This ancient apparition was, naturally, known as Charon, and he had been a sewer bargeman since my father was a boy, condemned for some long-forgotten crime to ply the dark waters and never return to the surface.

“Welcome, Aedile,” said Acilius, who stood on the landing with a couple of his assistants. “If you will accompany me in the barge, I will show you a few things that demand your immediate attention.”

“Splendid,” I said, stepping into the craft and seating myself on one of its benches. “There’s nothing to liven up a fine afternoon like a boating expedition in a sewer.”

Actually, that stretch of the Cloaca Maxima was not at all objectionable, Many people never realize that the Forum was once a swamp, and the original cloaca was a simple canal dug to drain it. In time, the channel had been lined with stone to make it permanent; then it was roofed and paved over back when Rome had kings. Those old kings had built well; and after four hundred years, the stonework was as solid as ever, needing no upkeep at all.

“Roman engineering at its best!” I exclaimed, admiring the great, beautifully fitted tufa blocks overhead and to both sides. Here the water was relatively fresh, but that did not last long. Soon we came to the first of the public latrines situated directly over the sewer. Luckily for us, Charon, with his long pole, was adept at avoiding these conveniences, so we were spared being the targets of descending missiles. At intervals we passed lower arches, where smaller sewers contributed their outfiow to the greater stream.

The air began to grow dense as the water grew thicker. Soon we were plowing through a horrid scum through which unpleasant bubbles rose and burst, like the bubbles of fermentation in a wine vat. I withstood the stench manfully. It was little worse than some of the fouler alleys of the Subura where the inhabitants dumped their slop jars and kitchen refuse into the streets and where the muck would suppurate through a hot, rainless summer until just passing by such an alley could be lethal to one not native to the district. The Cloaca Maxima had a long way to go before it would be that bad.

“Fine prospect, eh?” Acilius said exultantly, as if this were his own, personal triumph.

“It’s not exactly boating on the Bay of Baiae,” I said, not to be intimidated, “but it smells better than a Gallic town that’s been under siege for a month or two.” This put him in his place nicely. Being a freedman, he had never served with the legions, whereas soldiering was the primary duty of my own class. Like the rest of them, I often pretended that I enjoyed the horrid business.

“Six years ago,” he went on, “this water was nearly clean all the way to the Tiber.”

“So what has happened in the last six years?” I asked, with a sigh. Some men cannot simply state what is on their minds. First, they have to unburden themselves of a whole philosophical system.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing?” Here it comes, I thought.

“Exactly! Nothing has been done by the last censors or the last five sets of aediles to care for these drains and sewers, the very lifeblood of the City!”

“I would have used a more suitable anatomical metaphor, but I get your point. Is the structure in danger?”

“Aedile, as far as I can tell, this system has not required repair to the structure since it was built. Even the smaller, later sewers that drain the lesser valleys are perfectly sound and will last another thousand years, barring a truly terrible earthquake.”

“Well,” I hazarded, “there are rather more people in the City than there used to be. Pompey’s veterans who couldn’t get land settlements, for instance, and they’ve brought in countless slaves that were a part of their loot. And all the manumitted slaves who-”

“Still not enough to strain the system,” he said, impatiently. “And most of the new population have taken up residence in the new districts outside the walls, the Trans-Tiber and the Campus Martius. No, Aedile, what we have here is plain neglect.” He turned to our boatman. “This one,” he said, pointing to a low arch from which black fiuid fiowed sluggishly.

“Hold your breath,” Hermes muttered.

“Don’t worry,” Acilius said, “we won’t be going far.”

The light of our torches barely pierced the foul haze within the sewer. Drain openings overhead shot occasional beams downward, but the water was too clogged and murky to refiect anything. We heard occasional slithers and splashes, for there are creatures that prefer such an environment. Eventually the prow of the boat nudged something and would go no farther.

I squinted ahead but saw nothing but a shapeless mass before us. “Give me a torch.” Hermes passed me one, and I held it out over the prow. It wasn’t much improvement. I could make out nothing but a hulking mass of indescribable rubbish. I thought I could make out a few broken pots, a bone or two, but the great mass had crumbled, melted, rotted, or otherwise metamorphosed into a form of matter unknown to the philosophers of Alexandria. The stench that emanated from it was as palpable as a brick in the face.

“Careful,” Acilius warned. “Even here, you could set it afire.”

“That could only improve things,” I said. I removed the torch from dangerous proximity though. “How did this come about, and how extensive is it?”

“It came about through long neglect of the sewers, coupled with widespread violation of the ordinances against dumping trash in the drains. Everything people are too lazy to carry to the dumps outside the walls gets thrown down the nearest drain. The objects that will not fioat build up in the channel until they form veritable reefs, then everything piles up against them, and high water from the heavy rains just heaps it up higher. You asked how extensive this problem is?”

“I did,” I said, as if either of us needed reminding.

“Every last sewer in Rome is like this, Aedile. Only the main channels of the largest sewers are clear: the Maxima, the Petronia, and the Nodina. Those follow the courses of old creeks and have a relatively steady fiow, and even their bottoms are getting full of nonbuoyant refuse. The smaller, tributary sewers are clotted just like this one, all of them. And it’s not just broken furniture and kitchen trash, Aedile. There are a great many corpses down here.”

“Corpses?” I knew that something more potent than garbage had to account for that smell.

“Oh, yes. The poor use the drains to dispose of aborted or unwanted infants. And people often want to be spared the expense of burying their dead slaves or the inconvenience of hauling them to the pits outside the Esquiline Gate. And these are not just the slaves of contractors and factory owners, either. Slaves of the wealthy sometimes find their way down here, and, of course, the occasional murder victim.”

“Infamous!” I said, meaning it. Not that murder was so great a crime, and the exposure of unwanted infants was lawful if distasteful, but to deny proper burial even to the lowliest was impious and could draw down the wrath of the gods. “The whole City could suffer for this!”

“I’d say it was suffering right now,” Hermes said, gagging.

“We’ve seen enough, let’s get away from here,” I told the boatman. He began to pole us back toward the main channel. Soon we were breathing what seemed to be, by contrast, almost clean air. I ordered Charon to take us to the river.

“Who is responsible for scouring out these channels?” I asked.

“Like most such work,” Acilius said, “it is done on a basis of public contracts let every five years by the censors, then overseen by the aediles. A thorough cleaning of the whole system should have been undertaken, at latest, two years ago, during the censorship of-”

“Don’t tell me,” I interrupted. “It was Messala Niger and Servilius Vatia. Didn’t those two do anything while they were in office?”

“Not much,” Festus commented. “But what’s new about that? You were back from Gaul while they were in office, weren’t you, Patron?”

“They’d been sitting for about six months when I returned. They were supposed to get the public contracts settled in their first month or two, then conduct the census and purge the senatorial lists, and wind up with the lustrum. When my father and Hortalus were censors, they got the whole task done in their first six months.”

“Not every Roman magistrate is as energetic and conscientious as your father, Patron,” Festus observed. “And Vatia Isauricus was awfully old, you’ll recall.”

“Messala was lively enough,” I said. “And still is, for that matter. I may have to speak with him.” One more thing to look for in those documents I’d bribed away from the Tabularium.

Ahead of us, the half circle of the river portal seemed as bright as the rising sun. Charon nudged the boat alongside the raised walkway that formed an elongated landing. The old boatman squinted, dazzled by the clear light. We disembarked and walked toward the light. The tour of the sewer had been so oppressive that I had to restrain myself from breaking into a run.

Moments later we were standing by the river, filling our lungs with clean air, blowing like so many porpoises to clear our heads of the nauseous miasma. The daylight seemed incredibly clean and clear.

“You will do something about this, Aedile?” Acilius asked.

“Decidedly. What we just saw is a menace to the health of all Romans and an affront to the gods. Why”-I gestured toward the river before us-”Father Tiber himself must be insulted that the unburied dead are committed to him.”

“He doesn’t look too happy as it is,” Hermes said. “Look, he’s risen since we crossed this morning.”

He was right. The waterline was noticeably higher than that morning. “Come along, Hermes. We need to speak with the rivermen.” I dismissed the rest of the party with further assurances that I would do something about the condition of the sewers, although just what was unclear even as I promised it.

We had emerged into daylight with the Aemilian Bridge to our right. Turning left, we passed under the Sublician Bridge, walking along the great westward bend of the river. Beyond the Sublician lay the river wharves, where the barges up from Ostia unloaded their cargoes then reloaded them with the products of Rome and the inland farm country to be taken down to the harbor for export.

This was one of the liveliest, most active districts of the City, most of it outside the walls. The natives spoke a river dialect all their own, and a score of foreign languages could be heard. Sailors from every nation touched by the sea coming upriver to trade or see the sights are among our most numerous visitors. The factors of many foreign companies had their offices along the wharves.

Foreign tongues were not the only alien sounds to be heard. The cries, roars, bellows, and squawks of exotic beasts and birds were everywhere, as cages from Africa, Egypt, Spain, Syria, Phrygia, and places even more remote were brought in for the gardens and estates of the rich and, more often, for the hunts in the Circus. There were lions and leopards, peacocks, ostriches, bears, bulls, racing horses, zebras, camels, and even stranger creatures.

About as many slaves were being unloaded for the markets, but they walked off the barges under their own power and were far quieter than the beasts. This was a sight I found far less agreeable than that of odd animals. I am quite aware that civilization cannot exist without slaves, but some limits should be observed. There were far too many slaves in Rome already, and the recent wars had fiooded the markets with even more, so cheap that even poor households could afford a few.

The great bulk of the slaves were sold to the vast latifundia of Sicily and southern Italy before they ever saw Rome. The others were, for the most part, the better looking and more skilled captives destined for household service. There were beautiful young women and boys for the houses of the wealthy and the brothels, trained masseurs for the baths, artists, cooks, and so forth, plus a few stalwart young warriors to be trained as gladiators. These last seldom had to be chained or coerced and usually faced their fate cheerfully. Raised as tribal warriors, the prospect of being given their keep and no duties except to train and fight suited them well enough. Being set to labor would have been an unthinkable disgrace.

But I was not there to enjoy the sights. We walked along the wharves until we came to a stretch of the river walk paved with colorful mosaic, where a stout, baldheaded man sat at ease behind a stone table, shaded by a yellow awning and attended by a secretary. He rose when he caught sight of me and raised an arm.

“Good day, Aedile! What brings you to the wharves this fine afternoon?”

“Good day, Marcus Ogulnius!” I called to the wharf master. He was a publicanus charged with collecting import duties, docking fees, and so forth. A bit of each transaction stuck, lawfully, to his fingers, so he was a rich man. I didn’t see much of him because, strictly speaking, his office came under the purview of the curule aedile as regulator of markets. “I’ve come to confer with knowledgeable men about the state of the river.”

“If you’d come a day later there might have been none for you to confer with,” he said. “When this lot of barges is finished unloading, they’ll be headed back to Ostia; and we’ll see no more for a while. I’m amazed they made it here today with this current. This evening I’ll pack up my office and move to higher ground for the duration.”

“That bad?” I said. “I saw that the river was rising, but we’re still far from fiood stage.”

“Cast your eyes up there, Aedile. Look at the Janiculum.” I gazed toward the hilltop where the red fiag fiew as it had for centuries, to be lowered only if an enemy approached the City. The long strip of scarlet cloth stood almost straight out, its tip snapping back and forth in a blurring motion. “That wind’s from due south, straight out of Africa. Here in Rome it just makes for some nice, warm days in a season when it’s usually still cold. But it’s blowing full blast on the mountaintops, and it’s melting the snow.”

“I heard something of the sort earlier today,” I allowed.

“Well, you can believe it. You’ll soon be getting word of mountain towns destroyed by fioods and wiped out by avalanches. The snows this winter were the worst in living memory, so I’m told. Those snows and this sirocco make for a bad combination, sir. The river’s about to rise faster than anyone’s seen it rise, and this bend of the river right here’s going to catch the worst of it. It always does.”

“Have any precautions been taken?” I asked him.

He shrugged, surprised. “What can be done about a fiood? When Father Tiber decides to get out of bed and move about, you’d best get out of his way.”

“Sound advice.”

He thought for a while. “There were some engineering works supposed to be undertaken awhile back to keep the river in its banks, but they never got past the planning stage. Of course, that was under the censors-”

“Servilius Vatia and Valerius Messala!” Hermes and I chorused together.

The wharf master looked at us strangely. “That’s right.”

A thought occurred to me. “You obtained your public contract from them, did you not?”

“Renewed it, actually. I’ve held this post for more than twenty years, and my father had it before me.”

“It is done by open bidding, is it not?”

“Assuredly. It’s all in knowing the job. There’s others would like to have it, but my family’s done it for so long that I know to the last sestertius what it’s worth to the State and what it’s worth to me. Anyone who tries to underbid me is a fool who doesn’t know the work and will bollix it up, costing everyone. The censors know that, sir, and they renew my contract every five years accordingly.”

More likely, I thought, he has grown so rich that no one who wants the office could bribe the censors half so well as he. I didn’t hold it against him. He was an honest man by most men’s standards and collecting revenues for the river traffic was too important to the State to be left to a fool or an amateur.

“How long do we have, do you think, before the low parts of the City are fiooded?”

He rubbed his chin. “Some predict the river walk will be ankle deep by morning, and that’s why I’m clearing out tonight. It could be up into the Forum Boarium and in the Circus by next morning. Personally, I don’t think it’s going to be all that quick, but I’m not taking any chances.”

“Wise move. What about the warehouses and the boats?”

“The river people have known this fiood was coming for more than a year. They’ve taken precautions. Goods have been stored up higher than usual. Anything made of wood’s likely to be lost though.” He shrugged again. “Nothing that can’t be replaced. Inside the City”-he jerked a thumb back over his shoulder toward the city wall that rose behind him- “that, I’m not responsible for. But I hope your house is on high ground.”

“High enough,” I told him. Something was tickling away at the back of my mind, some business that I had previously had planned for the wharf area. That was my greatest problem-I had too many things crowding my mind, each demanding my attention. Then I remembered.

“Do you know of a barge owner named Lucius Folius?”

“Certainly. He owns at least a hundred barges on the river. I heard he was killed in that insula collapse yesterday.”

“He was, along with his wife and his whole household. Has anyone been acting for him here, a factor or a business partner? Someone is going to have to take over his operations.”

“No one’s showed up yet, but it’ll take awhile in any case. I know he had a factor downriver at Ostia to handle the overseas part of the trade. All the river trades have their headquarters at Ostia. Like I said, nothing’s going to come up from Ostia for a while.”

“He can come by road,” I told him. “I’m going to send a summons. I have questions about Lucius Folius that need answering. What sort of trade did he engage in?”

“At this end, it was mostly general cargoes: slaves, worked metal, oil, some livestock, and paying passengers. Light loads for the most part. A lot more comes into Rome than goes out of it.”

“And what did he bring in?”

“He had some fish barges, Rome being a great consumer of sea fish. The usual wines and exotic slaves for the great households. That was at the Ostia end. He also brought in a good deal of cargo from along the river. I’d estimate that at least half of his imports were picked up at the wharves between here and Ostia.”

“Agricultural products, I take it?”

“For the most part. And building materials.”

My neck prickled in that old, familiar fashion, and I felt a little smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Building materials, you say?”

“Absolutely. I won’t say that he had a monopoly on the stuff-a lot comes in through the landward gates-but I’d wager that more than half of the timber and brick and roofing tile, sand and mortar and so forth, that came up by river arrived in his hulls.”

“Stone? Marble? Lead and bronze for roofs?”

Ogulnius shook his bald head. “No, those things are used mainly for the big public projects-the temples and porticoes and the restoration works. In the last ten years, 90 percent of that material’s gone into Pompey’s big theater and its complex out on the Campus Martius. The great men like Pompey mostly contract independently for work like that, use their own slaves and freedmen, and buy directly from the quarrymen. I heard Pompey just bought his own quarries and workers outright to spare himself the trouble of going through middlemen. He bypassed the wharves here and built his own up past the Island, where he could unload near his project.

“No, Aedile, men like that would not deal with the likes of Lucius Folius, unless they were putting up housing for the workers. Even then they’d deal directly with the building contractors, not with a man who hauled brick and mortar.”

“You’ve been of great help, Marcus Ogulnius,” I commended him.

“Always happy to be of service to Senate and People,” he said, beaming. They had certainly been a source of profit to him.

We reentered the City near the Sublician Bridge, just off the Forum Boarium of which Ogulnius had just spoken. It, along with the nearby Circus Maximus, lay on the lowest ground within the walls and was thereby the area most vulnerable to fiooding.

Here, just a few hundred paces from the rising Tiber, nobody seemed to be taking any action. All the gossip I overheard was about the brawl in the Forum earlier that day. On a whim I went over to one of the stall keepers, an old fellow from across the river who sold kids and smelled very much like his merchandise. When I asked whether he and the other market people were preparing for a fiood, he merely looked amused.

“The river’s always rising, sir. Sometimes it fioods; sometimes it don’t. Not much we can do about it either way.”

I found this to be the general attitude. Several people pointed out to me that it hadn’t rained recently. Mountain snow meant nothing to them.

“I hope they’ve got the horses out of the City,” Hermes said, pointing to the huge establishments of the racing factions situated near the Circus. Like most Romans, he didn’t care if the rest of the City washed away or burned down as long as it didn’t interfere with the races. A few hundred drowned citizens was a prospect he could face with equanimity. A loss of several hundred fine chariot horses was a tragedy beyond imagining.

“They’re all out in the pastures this time of year,” I assured him. “The season doesn’t start until the Megalensian Games next month.” As if I needed to remind him when the racing season started. I didn’t need to be reminded either since I would be in charge of a major portion of this year’s Games. There were days when I thought of little else.

“That’s a relief,” he said. “What now?”

I contemplated the geography of the City. My own house, while not far up the slopes like the more fashionable mansions, lay high enough to have escaped the last couple of fioods. “Are any of the baths on high ground?” I mused.

“None I can think of,” Hermes answered.

“Then I’d better get a bath now. They may be out of commission tomorrow.”

“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll run and get your bath things.”

“First go up there,” I pointed up the slope of the Aventine to the Temple of Ceres no more than a hundred paces away. “Find a messenger, tell him to get a horse and whatever else he needs for a dash to Ostia, and report to me at my usual bathhouse. Then to my house. Tell Julia I’ll be late again, and find out if the documents from the Tabularium have been delivered. Bring back a skin of decent Falernian, and don’t drink any on the way. I’ll know if you’ve diluted it.” He looked offended and trotted off. Julia’s dowry had provided me with a better quality of wine than I had been used to maintaining. Keeping the boy’s hands off it was a full-time job.

I made my way slowly to my favorite balneum, located near the Temple of Saturn. Really large bathhouses were just beginning to be seen in Rome, but this was an older establishment and rather modest. It was handy to the Forum and was frequented by many senators. It charged a bit more than others of the same quality, making it more exclusive. Besides providing a decent bath, it was a good place to pick up political gossip.

I did a bit of meeting and greeting in the Forum; and by the time I got to the balneum, Hermes was there with the skin, towels, scented oil, and my scraper.

“Julia was concerned,” he reported, as he relieved me of toga, tunic, and sandals. “She had heard about the riot in the Forum and was worried that you might have been involved. I assured her that we watched the whole thing from the Tabularium, and she was relieved.”

“Did she know about the coming fiood?”

“Hadn’t heard a word of it. Cassandra told her that fiood water has never reached the place as long as she’s been a slave there.”

“Why is it,” I said, bracing myself for the torture of the cold pool, “that everyone in Rome finds out about the most foolish rumors instantly while staying blissfully oblivious of momentous news?”

“Must be a trick the gods played on us,” he said. “Like when they gave what’s-her-name the gift of prophecy but made it so that nobody would ever believe her.”

“Cassandra,” I informed him, “daughter of Priam. Yes, that may be it. Gods do things like that sometimes. They have a sense of humor, you know.”

I decided that since this might be my last chance for some time, to go for the full treatment. So I went out into the exercise yard, and while Hermes helped me oil up I sought out a suitable training partner. A number of the younger senators were wrestling, some of them with considerable brutality, in the sand pit. Older ones contented themselves with rolling in the sand to get a good coating. The smell of overheated bodies coated with cheap olive oil was pungent, but after those sewers I scarcely noticed.

“Decius Caecilius!” shouted a loud voice. I turned and saw a handsome, ox-muscled young man swaggering his way toward me. “I’ll try a few falls with you.” It was Marcus Antonius. He had recently returned from a stint with the army of Aulus Gabinius in Syria and Egypt, where Antonius had won great distinction as a soldier. He had come back to Rome to stand for quaestor that year, not bothering to campaign for the office because Caesar wanted him for his staff in Gaul and the Centuriate Assembly would simply name him and send him off without a ballot. Things always came easy to young Antonius.

“You won’t break my nose again?”

“As long as you don’t grab me by the balls like last time.”

Within a few seconds, he had me pinned to the ground with an arm twisted behind me and his knee against my spine.

“You’ve been away from the legions too long, Decius,” he said, letting me up. “When you were first back from Gaul, it took me twice that long to pin you.” Then he yelped as I grabbed his heel in both hands and heaved upward with my whole body. He landed on his back, and the breath went out of him in a great whoosh.

“Never underestimate age and treachery,” I warned him. “Youth and strength are no match for them.”

“I’ll remember,” he said, launching himself from the sand like a Hyrkanian tiger, catching me around the waist and making me fiy.

Some time later we limped from the pit, completely covered with sweat, oily sand, and clotting blood, most of the latter still pouring from my nose. True to his word, he hadn’t quite broken it. Hermes began efficiently stripping the mixture from my skin with the bronze scraper, snapping the accumulation with a practiced fiick of the wrist into the box provided for the purpose. Antonius’s slave was doing the same for him.

After all the violent activity, the cold bath felt almost good. The tepid bath was better yet, and the hot bath was like ascending to Olympus. The Falernian helped, too. It was considered bad form to drink at the baths, but I was never terribly conventional and compared to Antonius I was the soul of decorum. The young man was swiftly living up to his family’s reputation as a pack of violent criminals. He was enormous fun, though, and consequently very popular.

“When do you depart for Gaul?” I asked him.

“Not for another nine months,” he said unhappily. “Everyone insists I have to wait until after the elections. I don’t see why. It’s not as if there’s any question about my getting the quaestorship.”

“It’s because there’s been too much fiouting of the rules already, and it makes people uneasy. First Pompey gets all his commands without working his way up the cursus honorum, then Caesar gets an unprecedented five-year command, which it looks like he’s going to have extended. It looks bad. If a mere quaestor just starting out his career can ignore the rules, people will start thinking it means a return to the bad old days with Romans fighting Romans for position and power.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “We have to keep up appearances for the sake of the mob, as if the Senate and its old-fashioned rules still had any use in the real world.” He downed another slug of unwatered wine.

I sighed. How typical of an Antonine. They were as bad as Claudians. Worse, even.

A patter of sandaled feet announced the arrival of my messenger. Bare feet are the rule in the balneum, but a messenger is exempted from most of the rules of protocol. This one wore the livery of the guild: a brief, white tunic that left one shoulder bare; a round, brimmed hat with little silver wings attached; high-strapped sandals with silver wings on the heels; and a white wand. At this time the messengers were an independent company working on a State contract, much like the lictors.

While he waited I dictated a letter to the quaestor at Ostia, requiring him to find Lucius Folius’s factor in that city and deliver him a summons to report to Rome for questioning. Hermes copied the message on a wax tablet and held it out for me to stamp with my signet ring. Then he closed the wooden leaves and tied them together.

“Ride hard and you will be in Ostia well before dark,” I said, as the messenger tucked the tablet into his satchel made of waterproof sealskin. He knew perfectly well how long it took to make the fourteen miles from Rome to Ostia, but he was accustomed to people giving him unneeded advice. He saluted and ran off, silver fiashing from his winged heels.

“What’s this about?” Antonius asked, so I told him about the late Lucius Folius and the trouble his near-anonymity was causing me.

“Folius? I think I’ve met that bastard. He’s from Bovillae, I think. Was, I should say. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, he was a client of my uncle’s. The fellow was more than my uncle could stomach, and he let him know that he was unwelcome.”

“Antonius Hybrida found someone too vicious for his taste?” I said, aghast.

Young Antonius laughed heartily. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” His uncle, Antonius Hybrida, was as depraved a rogue and bandit as ever left high office in Rome to go on to do even worse things in the provinces. Cruel and corrupt, he was the epitome of all things Antonian.

“Actually, it wasn’t Folius so much as that iron-plated bitch of a wife he had. Rome’s a better place today for her passing. Once, when they had Hybrida in their house for dinner, she said the duck was overdone, or something of the sort, and she had the cook dragged in. The poor fool was a Greek, trained in Sybaris, cost a fortune. She had a big slave jam the whole duck down the man’s throat, then she had him trussed up to a triclinium wall and fiogged to death in front of the guests. Spattered blood on everyone’s best clothes.”

My jaw dropped. “Was this in Rome?“

“In a house Folius rented on the Quirinal. It was too rich even for Hybrida, but typical of those climbers who come here to weasel themselves in with the better people. Folius’s wife thought it would impress the great Romans that she would kill an expensive slave just because he’d spoiled dinner. Hybrida let them know that here in Rome we punish our slaves decently, in private. I think he sent them the laundryman’s bill the next day.”

It was a shocking story, to be sure. Behavior such as he had described was the sort we ascribed to Orientals and other barbarians. The punishment of slaves was, of course, left to their masters, and legally this included the right to infiict death; but for a master to do this capriciously or over a trifiing fault was depraved behavior. To do it publicly, in front of guests, was the very final word in poor taste.

I took my leave of Antonius and dried off. I passed on the massage tables. I still had much to do while the sun shone. My wrestling bout with Antonius had, for some reason, set me pondering upon the way Lucius Folius and his unpleasant wife had died.