The River God

6

We were all but staggering with fatigue by the time we reached my doorway. Inside, Julia rushed forward to greet me, then stood back.

“Decius, where have you been?” Her expression was almost comically horrified.

“The Puticuli,” I told her. “Actually, I feel rather lucky. That’s usually a one-way trip for those who go out there.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I want to hear about this.” She all but snatched my toga off, sending me spinning. She tossed it to a slave and said, “Take this up to the roof and spread it out on the arbor to air. Decius, take that tunic off and put on a clean one. We have guests.”

“Guests? I wasn’t expecting any.” She hustled me into our bedroom, yanked my tunic off over my head, opened a chest, drew out another, gave it a shake, drew it down over my head, settled and belted it, all with amazing speed and talking the whole time.

“How can you expect anything? It’s still dark when you leave the house in the morning, and it’s dark before I see you again. I’ve had slaves out looking for you all evening, but they couldn’t locate you.”

“It’s been a busy day, as they’ve all been lately. Who is here?”

“Your father, for one, and some other distinguished men. They were about to leave in a bad temper, but I refilled their cups and persuaded them to stay just a little while longer.”

“Just what I needed,” I said. “Father in a good temper is unpleasant enough. Who are the others?”

“You’ll see for yourself, won’t you?” she said, impatiently. “Now stop wasting time.” With a palm at my back, she pushed me into the triclinium, where my father and the others sat sipping wine around a brazier of glowing coals, brought in to take the chill off the air. Even if the African breeze was melting the mountain snows, Roman evenings were still cool at that time of year. With him were two other Metelli, Scipio and Nepos, and a man I recognized from the Senate meetings he had presided over a few years previously.

“About time,” Father groused. “You haven’t been out carousing as usual, have you?” My father, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Elder, who had held every public office including the censorship, still treated me as a child even though I held office. Legally it was his right to do so, since he had never seen fit to go through the manumission ceremony that would have granted me full adult status. By law, I married and held property only at his whim. This was yet another of those quaint old customs that cause me to wonder how we Romans ever amounted to anything in the world.

“Your son is an incredibly busy man,” said Marcus Valerius Messala Niger. “Especially since, unlike too many of our aediles, he is so attentive to the duties of his office.” This from a man who, as I was rapidly learning, had used his own offices only to enrich himself at sore cost to the citizens. I hated to think what his provincial administrations must have been like. He was a burly, balding man with a ready smile and blue eyes that twinkled merrily.

“We all remember what it was like to be an aedile,” Nepos said. His presence was almost as great a puzzle as that of Messala. He was a lifelong adherent of Pompey’s, making him the only prominent member of my family who was not of the anti-Pompeian faction. Here was yet another evidence of the family’s new tilt.

I took a cup from the table and tried to get some of the taste of the Puticuli out of my mouth. “What brings such distinguished visitors at this odd hour?” I asked. “Not that you would not be welcome at any hour, of course. And such an oddly assorted company, too.”

“A number of things,” Father said. “Surely you have not forgotten that the three of us”-he indicated himself, Scipio, and Nepos-”are all contributing substantially to your Games?”

“I could hardly forget. Speaking of which-” and I told them about Milo’s pet thugs. They listened carefully to the list of names, nodding with enthusiasm.

“This is splendid news,” Scipio said. “I’ve seen all of those men fight, and they’re at the top of the first rank. Celer will have the best funeral games ever.”

“And to get them so cheap!” Father gloated.

“Clodius will be enraged,” said Messala. “He’ll say these are Milo’s games.”

“Forget Clodius,” Nepos advised. “He’s just Caesar’s dog, and Caesar is kicking in for Decius’s munera, as his wedding present for his niece. Now, if you would like something really unusual to liven up the proceedings, I know two senators who’ve fallen out over some mutual accusations of bribery. They’re eager to fight it out, and they’ve told me they’ll volunteer to fight in your munera, Decius.”

I thought this intriguing. Men of high rank sometimes contended as gladiators to get around the laws against dueling. Since the fights were religious observances, voluntary sacrifices, so to speak, they could not be prosecuted for it afterward.

“I forbid it!” Father said, emphasizing his words with a chopping motion of his hand. “It is infamous that senators and equites are seen performing in public! There has been too much of that lately, and I will not be a party to such scandalous behavior.” What a spoilsport.

“When Scipio Africanus celebrated his funeral games for his father and uncle,” Metellus Scipio said complacently, “all the combatants were free men who volunteered to honor the dead and Africanus himself. There were senators, centurions, and other ranking soldiers among them, as well as the sons and other high-born warriors of allied chieftains.” He was never slow to remind people of his glorious ancestors.

“That was a hundred and fifty years ago,” Father objected, “before the rules of the munera were settled as they are now. And those Games were not celebrated at Rome, but at Cartago Nova.”

Valerius Messala seemed highly amused. “Besides, there are no Romans of such distinction to honor in this generation.” A subtle jab at both the Scipios and the Metelli. “Anyway, I know the two you mention, and they are both fat and unskilled. It would be laughable, and we can’t have the citizens laughing at senators. We give them too much to laugh about as it is.”

Father held his silence sullenly. He always hated it when someone agreed with him for the wrong reason. So do I, for that matter. I hadn’t expected to find Messala such an agreeable sort. Admittedly, my taste in these matters was not shared by many. I’d liked Catilina, too. I don’t consider this to be a lapse of judgment on my part. Often, the very worst men are the most likable, and the upright and incorruptible ones the most repulsive. Marcus Antonius and Cato are two excellent cases in point.

“So much for the Games,” Father said. “They shall be celebrated, and they shall be a success. My boy, I understand you have wasted the bulk of two valuable days looking into the collapse of a single, shoddily built insula.”

“Your boy,” I informed him acidly, “spent the morning in a sewer and the evening in a charnel pit. Activities, you will agree, in which I seldom indulge on normal days. My office, however, demands it.”

“Your office involves the whole City,” Father said, “not the prosecution of a single crooked builder. Assign a client or freedman to investigate the matter and get on with your job!”

“I am not investigating a single builder,” I said, trying to rein in my temper. “I am investigating what looks to be vicious corruption suffusing the whole residential building trade in Rome.” I did not want to argue openly in front of a nonfamily outsider, but Father was forcing the issue. This was extraordinarily tactless of him. Old age was catching up with him at last, I decided.

“The late Lucius Folius was the builder of that insula,“ said Valerius Messala. “I know because he was awarded his licenses and contracts during my censorship. It seems he’s been killed by his own greed, like a character in a Greek play.”

I had been expecting something like this. I said nothing about the murdered slave. “Sometimes the gods dispense justice. But no contractor builds only a single house.” I thought of the stack of archival documents in my study and decided that I had better not mention them to these three. Of course, it was likely that Messala already knew all about them. To change the subject, I said, “Does anyone besides me and the rivermen know that Rome is about to be fiooded?”

“I’ve heard some talk of it,” Father said. “It happens every few years, and there’s nothing much we can do about it.”

“It’s going to be worse than usual this year,” I informed them, “because the drains are going to be all but useless. They haven’t been scoured in years, and the water could stand in the lower parts of the City for weeks, and then we’ll have pestilence on top of everything else.” I looked at Messala as I said this. He looked back blandly.

“You are too easily alarmed. Even if we’re inconvenienced for a while, it’s no catastrophe,” Nepos insisted. “The forums are easily evacuated, the temples and basilicas are built well up on their platforms, and only the poorest people have their homes on low ground. Give them fine Games when it’s all over, and they’ll forget all about their troubles. Concentrate on that.”

There was a small commotion from the direction of my gateway, but I ignored it. Doubtless some petitioner, I thought. An aedile’s lack of privacy was not as extreme as that of a tribune of the people. At least we were allowed to close our doors. But in an office that concerned the public weal, the public was not shy about expressing its wants.

“The hour grows late,” Messala said, “and we should not detain the aedile. He has work to attend to.”

“Right, right,” Father said, shaken from his grumpy reverie. “Decius, there is something you should know, since it concerns both the family and your tenure of office.”

At last they were getting to it. “I confess I was puzzled by the presence of so distinguished a gathering. Two ex-censors and a pontifex, no less. May I assume this has something to do with our family’s growing warmth toward Pompey?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself!” Father barked. “We have to get this awful year done with first.”

“And the great difficulty with this year,” Messala slid in smoothly, “is that the past election scandals have yet to sort themselves out. We’ve been forced to appoint an inter-rex“-he nodded toward Scipio-”and it looks as if we shall have to continue the Interregnum for some time to come.”

“Is there a constitutional limit on the period of an Interregnum?“ I asked. “I confess that I’ve never looked into it.”

“Cicero and Hortensius Hortalus have researched the matter, and there seems to be no limit that’s ever been spelled out.”

“The real limit,” Scipio said, “is that it’s such a disagreeable office. There is great prestige, of course, since the Senate only chooses interreges from among the most distinguished members, but”-he threw up his hands in disgust- “you have all the duties and responsibilities of both consuls, only no imperium and no province to govern afterward. It’s a great burden.”

When the Republic was founded, we expelled our kings, and Rome has been very hostile to the concept of monarchy ever since. Only two very ancient offices survive with the title “rex“ in them: the interrex, the “king-between,” and the Rex Sacrorum, “King of Sacrifices.” Neither office is invested with any real power for the very good reason that no Roman would confer power on anyone called a king of any sort.

“For that reason,” Scipio went on, “I will step down from this office at the end of next month.”

“Will the consuls be able to assume office at that time?” I asked.

“Not without violence,” Father said. “Valerius Messala will take up the Interregnum. There will, of course, be a pro forma vote in the Senate, but it is foregone. No one else really wants the office in a year as disorderly as this one.”

Messala smiled. “One does what one must in the service of the Senate and People.”

“The consuls,” Father continued, “when they finally do assume office, will have no more than half a term. Forget about them. They are nobodies. It is next year we must be prepared for.”

“Scipio hinted at something of the sort yesterday,” I said.

“Exactly.” Father rubbed at the great scar that all but halved his face. “The City is in chaos, and this disorder must be suppressed before civic life can return to normal. It’s tearing the Empire apart. There is only one man with both the military prestige and the popularity to do the job, and that’s Pompey.”

“You can’t be proposing a dictatorship!” I objected. “Not after all our family’s opposition to him!”

Father favored us with one of his very rare smiles, the sort he allowed himself only after pulling some superlatively underhanded bit of political chicanery. It was a ghastly sight. “Not precisely. What we are going to do is make Pompey sole consul for next year. Full imperium and no colleague to overrule or interfere with him.”

I let the political implications sink in, saying nothing. Pompey would be virtual dictator except in one all-important factor: A dictator held an unaccountable office. Not only did he have full imperium, but he could not be called to account for his actions when he stepped down from office. As sole consul, Pompey would have a free hand to take whatever corrective measures he pleased, but he could not abuse the office because he would be an ordinary citizen when he stepped down and could be sued for his actions by any other citizen. Pompey would take only the necessary measures because he was a truly gifted administrator, when he wasn’t besotted by military glory.

“Excellent,” I said at last. “It’s an inspired compromise.” Barbarians, with their traditions of monarchy or tribal wrangling, never understand that our Republic was powerful, not because of our rigid adherence to principle, but because of our ability to compromise.

Father nodded. “I knew you’d catch on quickly. You are a Caecilius Metellus after all, in spite of all appearances.”

“Pompey has agreed to appoint a colleague as soon as he has restored the peace,” Nepos said. “His colleague will be our current interrex, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica.” He gestured grandly as the imposing name rolled off his tongue. Scipio bowed modestly.

“It’s the perfect choice,” Messala pointed out. “Pompey is the most glorious soldier of the age and immensely popular with the masses; but he has no family, and you know how the people are about names. Once Pompey has restored order, he will have a colleague who combines two of the greatest names. The clan of Caecilius Metellus is famed for its moderation and for its opposition to Pompey, thus allaying fears of a tyranny. The name of Scipio is synonymous with ‘Savior of the State.’ In fact, Pompey will retire to the country and leave Metellus Scipio to preside. I think we can look forward to a much happier and more orderly Rome.”

“I approve,” I said, nodding brightly, waiting for the axe to fall.

“There will be much to be done once the City is set to rights,” Father said. “We’ve decided to get the Plebeian Assembly to prorogue your office at the end of the year.”

Cold talons of horror gripped my heart. “You can’t mean you want me to be aedile for another year! I’ve held this office for only three months, and I’m ready to fall on my sword!”

“Oh, it will be much more agreeable than this year’s tenure,” Messala said, smiling. “You won’t have to put on another set of Games; you can leave that to the other aediles. Pompey has promised to put his own freedmen at your disposal. They are extremely capable. They’ve been sorting out the grain situation for the last two years.”

“Think how popular it will make you,” Father said. “Everyone will know what a sacrifice you’ll be making. You’ll have your praetorship for the asking.”

“And,” Nepos put in, “it will be one more year you won’t be spending with Caesar in Gaul.”

This caught me up short. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe another year in office wouldn’t be so bad after all. Of course, these three clearly wanted me to exercise that office according to their wishes, but we could see about that when the time came.

“This bears thinking about,” I said. “I’d have no objection to cooperating with Pompey, so long as his powers are limited and constitutional. I’ll have no part of a dictatorship.”

“Use your head,” Father said disgustedly. “What need would he have of you or anyone else if he was dictator? He could order anything he wanted in that case, and not a thing any of us could do about it. This way, we keep our authority and we help to guide Pompey’s actions, and that is important. Fine soldier and governor that he is, Pompey is a political jackass. He needs us more than we need him.”

I looked at Valerius Messala. “And what do you get out of this?”

He arched his eyebrows. “Why, the satisfaction of being of some modest service to Rome.”

I nodded. “So you’re Pompey’s middleman in this, eh? Putting together a Caecilius Metellus-Pompey coalition to dominate Roman politics?” I cut a look at Nepos. Messala would have approached the family through its only member in Pompey’s camp.

“It is what Rome needs,” he said, unapologetically. “Your family forms the single most important bloc in the Senate. You are also vastly infiuential in the Centuriate Assembly. Pompey is also strong in the Centuriate Assembly, and he is the darling of the Plebeian Assembly. It would be an unbeatable combination.”

“Caesar has strong support in all three bodies,” I pointed out.

“Caesar will be tied up in Gaul for years to come,” Nepos said. “Much can happen to him. He could die there. If he loses just one battle, all his popularity will be gone. In the meantime, we will be preeminent in Rome.”

“Please,” Messala said, “you speak as if Caesar and Pompey were rivals. They are close friends. Do they not say so themselves, often and publicly?”

“Save that for the rostra,“ I advised him. “We all know that those two will be at swords’ points before much longer. Two such men will crowd Rome intolerably.”

“That’s for the future,” Father said. “Our concern is getting Rome through this year and the next.” Abruptly, he stood. “We must be going. Important as you like to fancy yourself, my son, we have many other calls to make. Good evening to you.”

I walked them to the door, only to find Julia sitting in the atrium with Asklepiodes, their heads together, deep in conversation. They stood when the great men walked in, both of them bowing formally. The four acknowledged them perfunctorily and walked out, on their doubtless nightlong mission of arm twisting. This was how much of the business of the Senate was done. The loud fioor debates were usually just the final stage.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight,” I said to Asklepiodes when they were gone. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting out here.”

“Your gracious lady has been wonderfully attentive,” he assured me.

“Let me offer you a late dinner, at least. I, for one, am famished.”

“I’ve already given orders,” Julia said. “The triclinium?“

“In my study,” I told her.

We retired to the little room off the small courtyard with its tiny pool and fountain. A goatskin bag of documents from the Tabularium sat on the fioor next to my desk. Moments later, my slaves laid out cold chicken, boiled eggs, sliced fruit, bread, pots of oil and honey, and cups of watered wine, lightly spiced and heated.

“A bit Spartan,” I said, by way of apology, “but I eat when I can these days. Never time for a proper dinner.”

“This is splendid,” he assured me. “I would rather help you and eat on the fiy than put in any ordinary day’s work followed by a lavish banquet. You’ve no idea how bored I get.” He spoke and ate rapidly, interrupting his words for small bites of food and sips of wine. He was an excitable little man for a philosopher.

“Ah, you’ve learned something!” I said. “Did the bodies display signs of foul play?”

“I couldn’t say,” he said, dipping bread in a mixture of oil and garum. “I didn’t see them.”

“Eh?”

“It seems there are no bodies.”

“Just a moment,” I said. “I distinctly remember bodies. Two of them. Lucius Folius and his wife. I couldn’t be mistaken.”

“Oh, certainly there were bodies; I have no doubt of it.” He vastly enjoyed my perplexity, as usual.

“Perhaps you had best describe your mission, in sequence and in detail.”

“Excellent idea. Well, from the ludus I went to the Libitinarii quarter near the Temple of Libitina. A bit of questioning got me to the establishment of one Sextus Volturnus, where the bodies had been taken from the destroyed insula. Upon questioning, the proprietor informed me that the bodies in question had been claimed.”

“By whom?” I asked.

“An heir presented himself, a certain Caius Folius, from Bovillae.”

“Young Antonius told me Folius was from Bovillae,” I said.

“It seems that the heir was in some haste to remove the bodies for burial in their ancestral town. He had them loaded on a cart and taken away.”

“Did this heir claim the bodies of any of the household slaves?”

“I didn’t think to ask. Excellent wine, by the way. Julia has improved your cellar.”

“Did this Caius Folius present any proof as to his identity?”

Asklepiodes’s eyebrows went up. “I did not think to ask that either. Is it customary?” He chewed an olive and spat the pit into a bowl that was rapidly filling with fruit peels and cheese rinds. “My old friend, you sent me there to examine the bodies, not to play the role of a State freedman.”

“Just so,” I said. You had to let Asklepiodes do things his own way. He could be as temperamental as a Greek tragedian. “It’s unfortunate that you couldn’t get a look at them.”

“And yet my visit was not entirely unfruitful.”

“How so?” I asked patiently.

“I spoke with the undertaker’s assistants. These men had the task of washing the bodies, disguising injuries, dressing hair, applying cosmetics, and so forth, to make them presentable for the funeral. They are highly skilled and, in their own way, are nearly as knowledgeable about wounds as many surgeons and physicians. I asked them about the condition of the bodies of Lucius Folius and his wife.”

“And?”

“Those who’d washed the bodies informed me that there were no cuts or severe abrasions. They might almost have died of suffocation like so many of the others, except that there were no signs of struggle.”

“Struggle?” I said.

“Yes. Suffocating people, unless unconscious, usually fight frantically, striking and kicking against whatever obstacle is pinning them down. When the medium is a relatively unyielding building material such as wood, stone, or brick, there is often extensive laceration of the hands, feet, elbows, and knees.”

“That makes sense.” I shuddered even to contemplate so hideous a situation. It makes death on the end of a Gaul’s spear seem pleasant by comparison.

“The hairdresser told me that there were no lacerations of the scalps, and he detected no shifting of the skull bones beneath the scalps. Had the bodies been dropped into the basement to land on their heads hard enough to break their necks, strongly depressed skull fractures would certainly have been the result.”

“So,” I said, “their necks were broken before they dropped into the basement.”

“Exactly. This is confirmed by another curious factor.” The wine had warmed him, and he was slipping into his enthusiastic teaching mode.

“Tell me about it.” Asklepiodes was always interesting, even when he carried on to excessive length.

“You must understand, here I speak of an area that is not within my realm of expertise. As physician to the gladiators, I am accustomed to treating wounds almost immediately after their infiiction. However, I have studied the writings of scholars dealing with every aspect of medicine, attended lectures by all the greatest physicians, held long and extensive discussions with many of them, so I am not entirely unacquainted with the subject of postmortem medical study.”

“This being?” I inquired.

“The study of the changes that take place in a body after death. There are few experts on the subject.”

“I can well imagine,” I said. “Most people pay a physician to make them well again, not to keep track of how they rot.”

“It is a popular misconception that bodies merely decay immediately after death,” he said.

I thought of the Puticuli. “From recent experience, I can assure you that they rot.” I poured myself another cup.

“So they do, and we are in the habit of burning corpses within a day or two of death for that reason. But there is a quite regular and predictable sequence of stages through which corpses pass in the progress of bodily dissolution, and much may be inferred from these. The Libitinarii informed me, for instance, that the bodies of Lucius Folius and his wife were discolored on the dorsal surface. That is, there were deep purple, bruiselike discolorations of the back, the buttocks, the rear surface of the thighs, and so forth.

“This postmortem condition is common and is called ‘lividity.’ The learned Simonides of Antioch has written extensively of this condition, and it seems to come about thus: During life, blood is distributed somewhat evenly throughout the tissues and organs of the body. It is also under a certain amount of pressure. We have all seen how blood oozes from a minor cut, pours freely from a larger blood vessel, and when an artery is severed, will actually spurt for several feet. The exact mechanism by which this occurs is a matter of considerable philosophical dispute.

“Upon cessation of life, this pressure and distribution cease, and the blood settles to the lowest part of the body. In the case of a supine individual, such as the late couple, that would be the rearmost area of the body. Living blood is bright red. When the body is dead, it quickly turns rust colored, then an almost blackish brown, resulting in the bruise color.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I’ve been in command of details when we had to gather Roman dead from a battlefield a day or two after the fighting. If a man died lying on his side, that side was dark, the other was pale. And once I saw the body of a man who had fallen head down into a well and drowned that way. His head and shoulders had turned almost black.”

“Exactly the phenomenon I mean. Simonides has written in some detail of the progression of this condition, with allowances for the time of year, bodily dissolution being far more rapid in hot weather than in cold. Degree of lividity can tell one with an experienced eye how long the deceased has lain in the same posture dead.”

“And your conclusion?”

He held up an admonitory finger. “Bear with me yet a little longer. The corpse handlers told me that the necks of both were broken quite cleanly, a severing of the neck vertebrae usually characteristic of a sharp, twisting action. A blow shatters the bones and hanging pulls them apart. It takes a rather freakish accident to wring the neck in such a fashion. I have seen it when, for instance, a charioteer is thrown headfirst into the spokes of a competitor’s vehicle. In the absence of any other injury to the head, I can only conclude that someone grasped the chin and the back of the skull of each victim and twisted violently.”

“And would this feat require great muscular strength?” I asked him. This was exactly the train of thought my wrestling bout with Antonius had set in motion.

“If the victims were soundly asleep, with all muscles perfectly relaxed, any person of moderate strength could have accomplished it, provided he had been instructed in the proper technique.”

“And is there a special technique?”

“Allow me to demonstrate.” He rose and fiexed his fingers.

“Easy, now,” I cautioned him. “You’ve had a bit to drink and your control may not be all it should be.” Asklepiodes loved to demonstrate obscure and exotic means of killing people. More than once he had infiicted minor injuries upon me doing this.

“I shall be delicate,” he assured me. “Now, an inexperienced person seeking to break a neck in this fashion will grasp the head thus.” He placed his left hand on the back of my head and with his right grasped my lower jaw, my chin in his palm and his thumb and fingers curling around the mandible. “In this way, when pressure is applied-” he began to twist and my jaw slid sideways until it creaked.

“Ow!” I cried, never having mastered that Stoic attitude so admired by my contemporaries.

“You see? Done this way, the lower jaw can dislocate before pressure has been applied sufficient to disjoint the vertebrae. It is much better to grasp the head thus.” He left his left hand where it was, and repositioned his right higher, so that the heel of the palm lay athwart the upper jaw, his thumb curling around my cheekbone. This time, when he twisted, my lower jaw moved little and I quickly felt the strain on my neck. I slapped the table in a wrestler’s surrender, and he released me.

“You see?”

“Clearly,” I admitted. “You think this is how it was done?”

“I could say with certainty if I had been able to examine the bodies myself, but the description I had from the Libitinarii leads me to believe so. Keeping in mind that I have only secondhand descriptions to go on, but acknowledging that these descriptions came from knowledgeable sources, my conclusions are as follows: Lucius Folius and his wife were murdered in their bed, while asleep, by a person accomplished in the technique of snapping a neck swiftly and silently. They lay in that position, dead, for not less than four hours before the house collapsed and they were precipitated into the basement.”

“Wonderful!” I commended him. “That is just the sort of information I wanted. Will you swear to this in court?”

“With the disclaimers and hedges I have already specified, of course. But you must realize that there is no evidence now. The bodies, even the house, are all gone.”

“Evidence doesn’t mean that much in court,” I assured him. “A really loud voice helps a lot. A forceful assertion carries more weight than quiet evidence.” I told him about the switch pulled on me with the house timbers and the murder of the big slave.

“It sounds as if someone is cleaning up after himself,” he said cheerily. “That slave, though, sounds like a fine candidate for the murder of the master and mistress.”

I nodded, but there was much doubt in my mind. “That was my own thought, but there is much about that household that gives me pause. Let me tell you something that young Antonius related to me.” So I told him about the unfortunate cook and of the neck rings and punishment marks I had seen on the dead slaves at the disaster site.

Asklepiodes shook his head and clucked. “How distasteful. Of course, as a Greek, I am quite prepared to believe Romans capable of any sort of enormity, but this seems the very epitome of bad taste.”

“I have a feeling that until I have some idea of who was doing what in that house, and for what reasons, I will never get to the bottom of this. And it is plain that someone is making it his business to ensure that I learn nothing. In any case, your aid has been inestimable, as always.”

“Then,” he said, rising, patting his belly, and belching all at the same time, “I will take my leave of you now. Please convey my compliments to your lady, together with my apologies that I could be of no greater aid in her difficulty.” With that enigmatic utterance, he left my study. I walked him to the gate, where his slaves waited patiently beside his litter.

I longed to go over the documents sent from the Tabularium, but dim lamplight would be too much for my aching eyes, and I was weighed down by a dreadful fatigue. In our bedroom I found Julia waiting up for me. I undressed and lay down beside her.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

So I told her all the events of my long, long day. She laughed when I told her of my boat ride in the sewers, turned her face away in revulsion when I described the Puticuli, and sharpened attentively when I related my conference with the family elders and Messala.

“Then it’s true?” she said. “Your family is going over to Pompey?”

“They’ve struck a reasonable compromise,” I said. “No reason to put too extreme an interpretation on it.”

“That isn’t how it sounds to me. It sounds to me as if there has been a decisive and irreversible shift in policy.”

“There is no such thing as an irreversible policy,” I insisted. “Not in Roman politics, anyway. And they are right. We need a period of powerful central authority to straighten out the City, and there is no man for the job except Pompey. Even I can see that, and you know better than anyone how much I loathe the man.”

“Yes, this is something of a change for you,” she said suspiciously. “Why this sudden cessation of hostility toward Pompey?”

I laced my fingers behind my head and marshaled my thoughts. This was something that had been stewing in my mind since Gaul. The faint flicker from the tiny night lamp danced over the new frescoes Julia had commissioned for the walls-the fanciful, elongated architectural and vegetation designs that had lately come into fashion.

“Pompey is through,” I said. “I can see that now. For years I worried about him and Crassus. I thought someday it would come to civil war between the two of them. Now Crassus is a senile old fool, headed for his death in Parthia, if he even gets that far. Pompey is getting no younger and neither are his soldiers. They haven’t fought a decent war in years. If he calls, they’ll rally to him; but they’ve grown fat and idle on the farms he wrangled for them in Campania and Tuscia. He’s no longer the threat I once thought him to be. Since his last consulship, he’s overseen the grain supply and accomplished what everyone thought was impossible: rooted out corruption and put the whole business on an efficient basis. He has the right combination of ability, prestige, and popularity to restore order in the City.”

“Somehow,” she said, “I don’t feel that you look forward to a rosy future for Rome and the Empire, with or without Pompey.”

“Caesar is now in command of the largest Roman army since Marius and Sulla fought it out more than thirty years ago. If things go well for him in Gaul, he’ll come back rich, prestigious, and backed by an experienced army fresh from victory. It is a dangerous combination. The people love Caesar, but the Senate is growing alarmed. If they get frightened enough, they’ll back Pompey against Caesar, and they’ll be backing a loser, as they’ve done so often in the past.”

“Caesar will never take up arms against Rome!” she said indignantly.

“Nobody ever takes up arms against Rome,” I pointed out. “Every would-be Alexander claims to be the savior of the Republic. The other man is the one with ambitions to be tyrant; you know that as well as I. Well, we’ll know soon enough.”

“If Pompey takes a firm hand,” she said, “it could be the end for your friend Milo.”

I had thought of that. “Yes, but he’ll have to squash Clodius and the others, too. Milo is my friend, but this gang warfare is tearing Rome to pieces, and it must end. I hope Milo will accept honorable exile and not fight it out to the finish.”

Her voice softened. “You have been undergoing a change of heart, haven’t you? Which way will you go when the time comes?”

“That will depend upon the times,” I told her, “and the times are changing rapidly. There is no way to make a decision just yet, but I won’t let my family determine it. Nepos has gone his own way and done well enough out of it.”

“Right. And just how did Valerius Messala come to be steering the family policy of the Metelli?”

“That has my head spinning just now,” I said. “The Valerians are a great and ancient family, patricians as noble as any Cornelian or Julian, but the man’s a schemer. I think he senses a weakness in my family, and he is moving in.”

“Weakness?” she asked, astonished. “Yours is the most powerful plebeian family in the history of Rome!”

“In sheer numbers, yes. In the Senate and the Assemblies, in officeholders and in clientele, we are powerful. But the leadership is weakening. Celer and Pius are dead, Nepos is Pompey’s man, and Scipio is adopted and seems to prefer his old name to the one Pius gave him. And I’m afraid Father is failing.”

“How is that?”

“Tonight he wasn’t acting like himself. He allowed intrafamily squabbling in there tonight, and we’ve always maintained unity in front of strangers. I think old age has finally caught up with him.”

“It happens to everyone if they live long enough. It’s time for you to take your place in the family councils. Make that the price of accepting a second aedileship.” Julia was nothing if not practical.

“I’ll consider it. Now, what were you talking about with Asklepiodes?”

Caught unawares, she stammered, “I–I-” then, calming, “I asked him about a certain treatment my great-aunt Aurelia recommended: fresh honey and fennel seed mixed with powdered shell of owl’s egg.”

So that was it. I might have known. We had been married less than two years, but Julia was already tormented by an old family fear. It was the famous infertility of the Caesars. Men and women, they had few children; and of these, perhaps one in three lived to see their fifth year. Julia had already miscarried once and was certain that she shared the family curse. She was her father’s only living child. Julius Caesar at that time had only a single daughter from his multiple marriages.

“Julia, Asklepiodes specializes in wounds suffered by men whose profession it is to infiict such wounds. The special conditions of a woman’s fertility are the domain of witches and midwives, not physicians and surgeons.”

“I know that,” she said. “It should tell you how desperate I am. I spoke with him mainly because he is such a sweet and reassuring man, and it is not his profession to be so, as you point out. He told me that time was the best remedy, but he did recommend an Alexandrian woman named Demetria”-I was about to object, but she silenced me-”and no, she is not some country wise woman. He assures me that she is a highly educated physician and philosopher who has studied at the Museum. Alexandrians are much more liberal in these matters than we are. I intend to seek her out tomorrow.”

“Well,” I said reluctantly, “if Asklepiodes recommends her, she must be acceptable. See her if you will, but I think he was right the first time. You just need to give it some time; you’ll see. Remember the family you’ve married into. We Caecilians became so powerful by outnumbering everybody else.”

She turned over and placed her head on my chest. “All right,” she said sleepily. “I promise not to worry for a while. But I’m still going to see Demetria tomorrow.”

If she said anything more, I do not remember it because I was sound asleep in another instant.