The Sacrilege

Chapter VI

The next morning, at the house of Celer, I eyed the callers most closely. Clodius was not there, nor was Nero. Neither was Caesar, but he might have been busy divorcing his wife. I saw my kinsman Creticus and went to pay my respects. He wasn't much of a figure as the senior members of my family went, but he had once stood up to Pompey and came out on his feet, for which I respected him greatly.

"Decius, good to see you," he said. "Odd business the other night, wasn't it?" Nobody in Rome was talking about anything else.

"What does Felicia tell you?" I asked. Felicia was the daughter of Creticus.

"She just takes a smug attitude and claims she can say nothing while hinting she knows things we men can only dream about. What's your wife say?"

"I'm not married, Uncle," I said. He wasn't Father's brother, but I had always called him that. He was actually a second cousin, or perhaps it was a third.

"Lucky you. Well, my money is on Clodia as the instigator, and Felicia and Clodia are as close as two women can be, but I can't get a thing out of the girl. I've told her husband to put a stop to it, but the boy dotes on her and won't say a word to offend her."

The boy was the younger Crassus, and it was true. His love for Felicia was the talk of Rome. They had been united in a typical political marriage, but some people are just meant for each other. When she died he built her the most splendid tomb ever seen in Rome.

"When it comes to Clodia," I said, "it is often best not to inquire too closely."

"Jove has spoken," he vowed. Our conversation was interrupted when Celer beckoned for me to join him. I went over, and he excused the two of us from a knot of magistrates and foreign ambassadors. We walked not merely to a private corner of the atrium but all the way out into the peristylium, where we could be sure even the slaves wouldn't overhear.

"Decius," he said, "I'm taking you off all political duties. I have a job of investigation to be done, and I know you're the best for that. Your father acts like it's unworthy, but he takes a real pride in your accomplishments. When I broached my problem at the family council last night, he recommended you as the one to appoint."

"I am flattered," I said. I had not been informed that a family council had been called, but I didn't amount too much in those days.

"Here is the task: You know what everybody knows about the profanation of the rites of the Good Goddess by my odious little brother-in-law. Today the college of the pontifexes meets to officially declare the charge of sacrilege. That means nothing. All they can do is turn it over to the courts. A trial will be-messy. I would rather not see it happen. As for Clodius, it would not bother me greatly if the little swine were to die on the cross. But I don't want my wife involved. Do you understand?"

This was discomforting. "I understand, sir. But I cannot guarantee that I will be able to-"

He grabbed me by the upper arm, painfully. "Decius, find out what happened. Find out who was responsible, compile evidence, but keep Clodia out of it! Do you understand?"

"Perfectly, sir," I said. It was not the first time I had been told to suppress evidence. It was the first time the demand had come from my family, though. It seemed odd, since they should have known better than anybody else that I couldn't do it. It was not that I was especially honest, or that I did not want to act as demanded. It was just that some mischievous genius in me made me ferret out the truth and make it public. It was another part of that faculty Asklepiodes and I had discussed. One thing I could be sure of. My father had no illusions about me. If he had recommended me for the job, he understood what might come of it.

The truth of the matter was that this caused me no great crisis of conscience. The profanation of the Bona Dea ceremonies seemed ludicrous rather than shocking. I did not classify mere scandal as crime, whatever the pontifexes might think. Besides, she was not really one of the official state deities. When someone was trying to poison me, the indignation of some highborn Roman ladies seemed a small matter, indeed.

"What is to be my official capacity in all this?" I asked him.

"Oh, say that you're acting on my behalf as Consul-elect."

"I can't do that! Granted you'll win the election, but if you assume the authority so far ahead of time, people will regard it as high-handed. They'll vote against you out of spite."

"You're not going to be making speeches to the Centuriate Assembly," he said testily. "You're going to be questioning in the houses of Senators, discreetly and in privacy. They know how these things work."

"Where should I start?"

"You're the investigator. I leave it up to you."

I took a deep breath. "I will have to question Clodia."

He glared from beneath his bristly eyebrows. "If you must," he all but muttered. "Just keep my admonitions in mind."

"Well," I said, "I'll be about it." I dreaded confronting Clodia, but the chance of doing Clodius a bad turn was too good to miss.

I didn't question Clodia first, though. I left Celer's house and made for the Forum, with Hermes dogging my steps. The day was blustery and the law courts had moved indoors. I found Cicero in the Basilica Porcia, the oldest of our permanent law courts. He had been listening to a defense conducted by one of his students and readily stepped aside with me into one of the aisles. I briefly sketched my commission from Celer and asked Cicero's opinion, wanting to be sure of my legal ground.

"Since no official investigator has been named, you may do what you like as an interested citizen. Celer, of course, has no authority, and I suspect that he is motivated primarily by personal interests."

"Keeping Clodia out of it, you mean?"

"Not that any involvement of hers matters greatly," he added rather hastily. "If she had anything to do with it, the pontifexes may reprimand her, but no more. The sacrilege was committed by Clodius, who as a man was forbidden to look upon the rites. If formal charges are brought, they will be against him alone."

"That sets my mind at ease, a little," I said.

"Has Celer indicated his preference for a colleague?" Cicero asked, changing the subject rather abruptly. He was a politician, and power interested him far more than ritual matters.

"He asked me to broach the matter to Mamercus Capito," I told him.

"Now disqualified."

"Decidedly. The main contender now seems to be Lucius Afranius," I said. "Did I just hear you groan, sir?"

"I groan because I am not a philosopher," Cicero said, "and only a philosopher could look upon Lucius Afranius without groaning. The man is a nonentity."

"I think that's what Celer likes about him," I admitted.

"These times call for firm direction from our Consuls. I shudder to think of Afranius in such a position."

"It will essentially be a one-man administration, and Celer will be the man," I said. "You must admit that his withdrawal of opposition to the Pompeian demands was a wise political move, however much he may have disliked it."

Cicero shook his head. "No, no, I mean no disrespect to your kinsman, but he is too firm an adherent of the aristocratic party. It was foolish to oppose the triumph, that is obvious. But the settlements for the demobilized veterans are another matter entirely. This involves land, and lowborn men getting control of it, a thing that horrifies the extreme aristocrats. And it means a landed power base for Pompey, whom the aristocrats hate. Believe me, Decius, by this time next year Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer will be firmly aligned with the extreme end of the aristocratic party."

It did not escape me that Cicero spoke of the "extreme" aristocrats. He was an adherent of that party himself, despite the fact that many of its leaders openly snubbed him. Cicero had an ideal of a Republic led by the "best" men, who would be drawn from the prosperous and propertied classes of free citizens, who would educated, patriotic and concerned with the welfare of the state. It was a fine ideal, but Plato had had such a concept and had not had conspicuous success in convincing his fellow Greeks to adopt it as a governing principle.

I would never claim that I had more than a fraction of Cicero's intellectual capacity, for he had the finest mind I have encountered in my long lifetime. But he had a certain blindness, an almost naive belief in the inherent capacity of aristocrats to govern.

I was born an aristocrat, and I had no illusions about my class. Aristocrats are persons who possess privilege by virtue of having inherited land. They prefer rule by the very worst of aristocrats to that by the most virtuous of commoners. They detested Pompey, not because he was a conqueror of the Alexandrine mold who might overthrow the Republic, but because he was not an aristocrat, and he led an army of the Marian type that was not composed of men of property.

At the time of which I write, my whole class was engaged in a form of mass suicide by means of political stupidity. Some rejected our best men for reasons of birth, while others, like Caesar and Clodius, curried favor with the worst elements of Roman society. Most wanted a return to their nostalgic image of what they thought the ancient Republic to have been: a place of unbelievable virtue where an aristocratic rural gentry lorded it over the peasants. What they got was our present system: a monarchy masquerading as a "purified" Republic.

Cicero was right about Celer, though. Within a year he was back among the most extreme aristocrats, opposing the land settlements for Pompey's veterans.

"It is not surprising that they dislike the idea of Pompey having a powerful private army settled near Rome," I said. "I find the idea rather upsetting myself."

"I am not so easily terrified," Cicero said. "With the Asian menace settled, there are no glorious campaigns in the offing. He will have no interest in the sort of desultory combat that Hibrida is bungling so terribly in Macedonia."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that, for now, Pompey must stay home and devote himself to politics. The very concept is ludicrous, Pompey is a political dunce. He held most of his military commands without holding any of the offices required by the constitution. He was made Consul by force alone. He has no experience of civil administration or the real politics of the Senate. The man's never even served as quaestor! You'll be a more effective Senator than Pompey, and you've had less than a week's experience as Senator."

It was an odd sort of compliment, if compliment it was. At least I was now fairly certain that I would not be hauled into court for snooping.

I now had some people to call upon. I decided to begin at the very site of the enormity. I went to the house of Caius Julius Caesar, whose wife, we were given to believe, must be above suspicion. The house of the Pontifex Maximus was a sizable mansion, one of the few residences in the Forum, adjacent to the palace of the Vestals.

The gatekeeper let me in and conducted me through the atrium, where the household slaves went about in the gingerly fashion that bespoke uncertainty in their lives. Doubtless they were wondering which of them would stay with the master and which would accompany the divorced mistress. I noticed that the male statues still wore palls. The sun had broken through the clouds and I was conducted to the enclosed garden, where the roof-tiles still dripped musically. In a corner stood a small statue of Priapus, covered by a scarlet cloth. In front, the cloth hung from the god's outsized phallus like a ludicrous flag.

"May I help you?" I turned to see that a woman had come into the garden. I did not recognize her, but I was greatly taken by her wheat-colored hair and large gray eyes, and by the sound of her voice.

"I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger," I said. "I need to speak with the Pontifex Maximus."

"He is not here at the moment," she said. "Is it a matter in which I might be of assistance?" Her grammar and diction were perfect. Her poise was elegant, her manner open and helpful without being obtrusively familiar. In a word, patrician.

"I am engaged in an investigation of the recent, ah, unpleasantness at the rites of Bona Dea in this house." She did not look pleased. "On such a matter," she said, "who has the authority to question the Pontifex Maximus?"

This was an embarrassingly penetrating question. "This is not an interrogation, my lady. I've been instructed by one of the most distinguished members of the Senate to make an informal inquiry, not to bring charges, mind you, but merely to:"

"Metellus Celer," she said.

"Eh? Ah, well, you see, you are not totally incorrect in this, but actually:" It has never been my habit to babble, but this woman had caught me completely off guard. "Who did you say you were?" I asked.

"I did not say. I am Julia." This narrowed things somewhat. She belonged to the fifty percent of gens Julia that were female.

"I knew that Caius Julius had a daughter, but I had thought she was: well, I had the impression that she was, shall we say, younger."

She kept her face patricianly impassive, but I sensed that she was laughing inwardly at my ridiculous discomfiture.

"Caius Julius is my uncle. I am Julia Minor, second daughter of Lucius Julius Caesar."

"I see. I knew you had to be one of those Julias. I mean, I should say: how did you know it was Celer?"

"You are a Caecilius Metellus and he is the husband of Clodia Pulcher."

"You have a very well-developed faculty of deduction," I said.

"Thank you. I take that as a compliment, considering its source. You are famed for that very faculty."

"I am?" I said, not sure whether to be flattered. "Yes. My uncle speaks of you often. He says you are one of the most interesting men in Rome."

"He does?" I was truly astonished. I knew Caius Julius only slightly. It had not occurred to me that he spoke of me, with or without approval.

"Oh, yes. He says there's no one like you for snooping and prying and drawing deductions. He says your skill merits classification as a branch of philosophy." I did not believe that she was deliberately flattering or gulling me. She seemed as open and honest as anyone I had ever met. Of course, no one was more aware than I of my susceptibility to attractive women.

"I have always avoided philosophy," I told her, "but who am I to dispute definitions with such a master of the rhetorical arts?"

Finally she smiled. "Exactly. Well, I am sorry that Caius Julius is not here to speak with you, but I am pleased to have met you at last." She made to leave, but I did not want her to go.

"Stay, please," I said.

"Yes?" She was a little puzzled, as was I.

"Well." I groped for words. "Perhaps you could help me. Were you here that night?"

"Only married ladies attend the rites of Bona Dea. I am not married."

"I see." I was inordinately pleased to know that she was not married. "How wonderful. I mean, I am not happy that you were not here." My words were getting tangled again.

"I didn't say I was not here, just that I did not attend the rites."

"Ah. Well, it is a rather large house."

"You're going about this all wrong, you know. I fear that you disappoint me."

"I fail to understand," I said.

"Just going into great men's houses and asking direct questions. That's no way to get to the bottom of this matter."

I was a little crestfallen. After all, who was famed for this sort of thing?

"Well, it is a little different from investigating a throat-cutting in the Subura. Could you suggest a better method?"

"Let me help you."

"You have already very kindly made that offer," I reminded her.

"I mean, let me be your helper in this investigation. I can go places you cannot."

This took me greatly aback. "Why should you want to do that?"

"Because I am intelligent, well-educated, personable and bored to a state of Medea-like madness. I've followed your career for years by way of gossip among women and table discussion among my father and his brother and their friends. It is just the sort of activity I feel drawn to. I can go places you cannot. Let me help you." In true patrician fashion she demanded this as her right, but I could detect a pleading tone in her voice.

"This is most unexpected," I said. Immediately, though, I could see the advantages of such an arrangement. Among other things, it meant that I would see more of Julia. "But let's discuss it." She sat on a stone bench and patted the place beside her, which was only slightly damp. "Sit here with me." I looked around the garden. "We are not chaperoned.

Will your family think this is correct?" The men in noble old families could behave like goats or worse, but their women had to be chaste, or at least perceived as such.

Caesar's wife, etc.

"Gaze over my left shoulder," Julia said. "Do you see a shadow lurking beneath the colonnade?" I complied. "I see such a shadow."

"That is my grandmother, the lady Aurelia. Rest assured, if she sees anything untoward, she will interpose herself between me and dishonor. She has the eyes, the instincts and the claws of a bird of prey."

"Oh, good. Now we can plot. Just how would you go about being my assistant?"

"Colleague, if you please."

"Very well." This concession cost me nothing. "Most of the highly married ladies in Rome were here that night. I shall call upon some of them and pump them for information."

"Aren't they forbidden to speak of the rites to one who is not an initiate?"

"Certainly. But some of the most scandalous ladies of Roman society were there, women known for their indiscretions. Besides Clodia, I know that Fulvia and Sempronia were there, along with that whole lot from Lucullus's household: his wife Claudia and his ward, Fausta the daughter of Sulla, and your cousin Caecilia, the wife of the younger Marcus Crassus. If I can't get information out of some of those women, I'll take vows and become a Vestal."

"That would be valuable," I admitted. "But if your grandmother over there were to hear of you being in the company of any of those ladies, she would open her veins."

"I will be suitably cunning. I can contrive to run into them at some innocuous location-the baths, for instance."

In those days, there were several baths in Rome exclusively for women. The thought of Julia soaking in the caldarium with any of those notorious ladies instantly filled my head with distracting images.

"That seems safe enough," I allowed. "But stay away from Clodia. She is a truly dangerous woman, whereas the others are only mildly wicked. I have Celer's permission to question her myself, not that I expect to get much out of her. How will you get in touch with me?"

"Have you a slave you can trust?"

"I have a boy named Hermes, but he is a duplicitous rascal."

"Then I will send someone to you when I have something of worth to report."

"I would like to know one thing. Why are you doing this? Besides being bored, I mean."

"I find that quite sufficient reason. And, like most decent Roman women, I detest Clodia."

"That's intriguing. Most of the men feel the same way about her brother. Just keep clear of her."

"That will not be difficult. I am afraid of her."

"And well you should be. Personally, she terrifies me. She if far subtler than Publius." I debated telling her about the poisoning attempt, but restrained myself. I was being far too trusting as it was. I rose from the bench.

"I will take my leave, then, and hope to hear from you soon." She saw me out with all the usual courtesies, most of them, I presumed, for the eyes of the dragonlike grandmother.

I walked away greatly bemused. It might be wondered that I would even consider trusting someone from the family of Caesar. A major reason was that I wanted to trust her. This tendency to confuse desire with reason has landed me in more trouble than I care to remember. Nonetheless, my instincts, which were sometimes reliable, said that she was sincere.

In a way, it was not a good time for me to be so distracted, for my next stop was the house of the man I genuinely feared. Marcus Licinius Crassus and I had crossed paths more than once, and although our relations were cordial for the moment, I did not mistake this for any sort of permanent arrangement.

Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was believed to be the richest man in the world, and his house did nothing to dispel the belief. It was not far from the house of Celer, on a broad stretch of ground that had once belonged to several enemies of Sulla's. Crassus had eliminated the owners for the Dictator and was given their estates as a reward. He had demolished the old structures and had built his own palace, surrounded by spacious grounds landscaped by the best Greek artists and populated with the most sumptuous statuary imaginable. The whole collection was something of an oddity in Rome, for Crassus had actually bought most of his treasures. He had acquired little of it decently through inheritance and almost none of it as loot from foreign wars. This was still a rather new concept in Rome, where we associated great purchasing power with wealthy equites and freedman.

Making money was a passion with Crassus, almost a sickness. Many of his contemporaries strove for power, believing that wealth would come to them as the natural concomitant of power. Crassus was the first Roman to understand that wealth was power. Others struggled for years to obtain high military commands so that they could win loot and glory in foreign lands. Crassus knew that he could buy an army at any time.

I was suspicious of Crassus at this time. Of course, it was all but impossible not to be suspicious of him. He was involved in so many intrigues, most of them involving money, that it was unthinkable to sort through them all. We all knew that he had dealings with Ptolemy the Flute-Player, the putative King of Egypt. But Ptolemy always needed money, so it was natural for him to court Crassus. Crassus was angling in the Senate for a war with Parthia. We had no particular quarrel with Parthia, but it was the last really rich nation on our borders and he wanted a chance at it before Pompey got it. Pompey's single-minded pursuit of military glory matched Crassus's passion for money. They hated each other, but they could cooperate on occasion.

My reasons for calling on him were a bit devious. Ordinarily I took pains to avoid Crassus, but I was curious about his political orientation, which might well have shifted while I was away from Rome. Most especially, I was unsure of his attitude toward Clodius. My quasi-official status gave me the opportunity to pry.

I found him in his atrium with a pack of cronies. They watched him when I entered to see what attitude they should take. He smiled and came to me with hand out-stretched, so they relaxed. Crassus could be as jovial as Lucullus when it suited him, but his good-fellowship never extended as far as his eyes. We exchanged the usual greetings and he asked after my father's health. I glanced around the room and did not see his son, the younger Marcus Crassus.

Briefly, I explained to him my mission, and he nodded his understanding of its political subtleties.

"Messy business," he said. "I quite understand Celer's concerns about Clodia. That woman never brought any man anything but trouble."

I did not point out his own sinister dealings with the woman. It was a part of such unspoken truces as lay between me and Crassus that such things remained unspoken until hostilities broke out afresh.

"Then you can understand my difficulty," I said. "I can't very well confront Felicia directly"-I did not mention my agreement with Julia, naturally-"and Marcus the Younger would be gravely insulted if I approached him, but as paterfamilias, you could handle these matters." I expected no help from him. This was for the sake of form.

"I shall be more than glad to," he lied jovially.

"What do you think Clodius was doing?" I asked.

"Just another of his idiotic pranks, no doubt. What genuine mischief could he accomplish at a women's religious ritual? His ideas of fun are as harebrained as his political ideas."

This was new. "I hadn't heard that he had any political thoughts. Thoughts of any nature whatever, for that matter."

"Say you so? That's right, you've been out of Rome this past year, haven't you?"

"Enlighten me," I said. "I know he wants to be tribune if he can switch his status to plebeian, but I had thought that he had no purpose in mind except to make trouble."

"Trouble is the very word. He has become a man of the people, you see. He plans to make the grain dole a permanent right of every citizen, free of charge."

"That is radical," I said, my mind turning over the possibilities. The grain dole had been around from earliest times as an emergency relief measure. It had been instituted in the days when the farmers of the countryside had taken refuge within the walls of Rome in times of siege. It was revived frequently in times of famine or other want, and sometimes as a celebration to mark an important occasion. Every citizen had his name enrolled on the dole. In fact, the old expression "receiver of the dole" meant "citizen" and was used as such even by the wealthiest of us, who would never actually have to apply for relief.

"That's not the worst of it. He's already canvassing among the plebian tribal assembly, promising to pass this outrageous legislation if they will elect him tribune." I was stunned. This was beyond the most outrageous excesses of our electoral process. Ordinarily, one devoted years of service to the public, and then demanded election as a reward, never omitting to cite one's distinguished ancestry. No one had ever thought of promising the electorate favors after being elected. Even Caesar had not come up with that one. This thought led me into some speculation, which was interrupted by Crassus. "And he is siding with Pompey on the land grants."

"That is at least consistent," I observed. "If you're going to curry favor with the mob so outrageously, you might as well get the veterans on your side."

"My thought exactly. I find myself wondering if he plans to ask Pompey for a few of those veterans. A man as important as Clodius intends to be needs a proper escort."

"A private army? He already has a great mob of ex-gladiators and street brawlers."

"Pompey's veterans would add a certain tone, not to mention demonstrating solidarity between the two." This sounded reasonable enough, but I suspected it to be pure malice on the part of Crassus. He wanted to cast suspicion on his old rival. As if I needed encouragement to be suspicious of Pompey.

"And," Crassus went on, "I've noted that Pompey has lent him some Etruscan soothsayers. Tame soothsayers are always an advantage to an ambitious man."

"I didn't know that Pompey was cultivating the entrail-examiners." All our haruspices in those days came from Etruria.

"Oh, very much so," Crassus assured me. "You know the common people hold them in awe. And there are certain, shall we say, military-political advantages to a power base in Tuscia." He used the common Latin word for the old Etruscan nation. There were, indeed, advantages to a power base there, considering that you had only to cross the Tiber to be in Tuscia. The very Trans-Tiber district lay on Etruscan land. Tuscia had been a part of the Roman hegemony for a long time, but like many of our allies, its people were an independent lot and considered us upstarts.

And the Claudians had Etruscan blood, although they always claimed to be Sabine in origin. In recent years there had been a veritable mania for things Etruscan. People claim Etruscan descent whose ancestors came to Italy as slaves two generations ago. Others pay absurd prices for authentic Etruscan art, and there is a thriving trade in forgeries. Now that the people are all but extinct, there is something romantic about them that was not apparent when they were around to plague us. Back then we still remembered that they had once lorded it over us as kings and we had little love for them. Their primary reputation lay in the fields of magic and soothsaying, which always struck me as an easy way to make a living without actually having to do anything.

I had a few more questions to ask, but we were interrupted by the arrival of none other than Caius Julius Caesar with his whole retinue.

"I fear I must take my leave, Decius," Crassus said. "The Pontifex Maximus and I have a little business to discuss." He lowered his voice as if letting me in on a deep secret. "I've just about persuaded him to let me have the first plebeian vacancy in the college of pontifexes."

"Then please accept my congratulations in advance," I said. I did not doubt that he was telling the truth, but I also did not doubt they had far more serious business than mere sacerdotal honors. Caesar had debts. Crassus had money. It didn't take Aristotle to figure out the connection there.

As I walked away from the house of Crassus, I pondered the connections between Caesar and Crassus. What I needed, I decided, was a good, unbiased source for rumor, gossip and calumny. And I knew just where to go to find it.