The Tribune's curse

11

A native-born Roman knows the moods of the Forum far better than he knows the moods of wife, children, and close relatives. After all, from childhood he has spent a considerable part of nearly every day there. That is why, when we must be away on foreign service, or even while we are escaping the heat and crowding of the City in a country villa, there is something in us that longs for the Forum. Despite our imperial posturing we are still a village people. Our ancestors lived their entire lives within hailing distance of the Forum. In those days, it was not only the assembly place. It was also the only market in Rome as well as the place where most religious ceremonies were performed. It is impossible to exaggerate the centrality of the Forum in the life of every Roman.

These thoughts passed through my head as I walked toward it the next morning, nursing my almost unprecedented number of cuts and bruises. My problem, I decided, was that I had been away too long. I had lost that ineffable sense of what the Forum was feeling and thinking. Nearly three years of the City’s experience had escaped me, and letters from friends had given me only the barest idea of what had been going on.

Conducting an investigation in Rome was largely a matter of discovering correspondences and linkages. Ordinarily, my sense of these things was extremely acute, but now everything was off: my timing, my judgment, my ability to sense the life and experience of the City. I was sure that, had I been in the City continuously these last three years, I would have arrived at the common point shared by all these events long before.

Amid such ponderings I reached the Forum itself, and I knew that its mood was ugly. That much of my sensitivity was functioning. The day before the mood had been vehement. Today it was dark and brooding. People weren’t shouting; they were muttering. The senators on the steps weren’t arguing so much as hissing at one another like a nest of disturbed vipers.

In front of the curia I saw a very distinctive conveyance: a huge litter draped with colorful curtains, its poles of polished ebony tipped with golden lions’ heads with jewels for eyes. Over its roof a golden vulture spread sheltering wings. It was the litter of the Egyptian ambassador, Lisas. A dozen magnificently clad bearers stood by the poles, patient as oxen.

As usual, a number of senators stood around on the steps of the curia. These were men with committee meetings to attend or juries to organize or, often as not, just senators with nothing else to do. I walked into the midst of one such group and jerked my head toward the litter.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Old Lisas showed up about an hour ago,” said a man named Sulpicius. “He looked like a man under death sentence. Demanded to see Pompey at once. The two of them are in there now.”

“Must be bad news out of Egypt to get that fat pervert up this early,” said another.

“When is there ever any good news out of Egypt?” Sulpicius snorted.

Then a praetor named Gutta spoke up. “Plenty of good news for Gabinius.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Haven’t you heard? Word has it old Ptolemy paid him ten thousand talents to reinstall his fat backside on the throne. Took three battles to do it, but the Flute-Player’s king now, and Gabinius comes home a rich man.”

“I knew Gabinius had restored Ptolemy,” I said. “I heard that as soon as I returned to Rome. I thought it was all rather bloodless. Who was he fighting?”

“It was one of the princesses who raised a rebellion. Had a lot of the Alexandrians on her side, too. Which one was it?” Gutta scratched his head, suffering from the usual Roman difficulty in keeping Egyptian dynastic politics sorted out.

“Cleopatra?” I asked. “She’s awfully young, but she’s the only one in the whole family with any brains.”

“No, it was one of the others,” Sulpicius said. “Berenice, that’s the one.”

“Berenice?” I said. “I know her. The woman can’t plot her next party, much less a rebellion.”

“She married a fellow named Archelaus,” Sulpicius said, “a Macedonian whose father was one of Mithridates’ generals. A real soldier, so they say.”

I thought I remembered him: one of the hard-faced professionals who kept the degenerate Macedonian dynasty on the throne of Egypt, supporting whichever of the claimants treated them best.

“Here comes Lisas now,” Gutta said.

I looked up toward the entrance of the curia and saw Pompey coming out with Lisas on his arm. He was patting the ambassador’s shoulder as if to reassure him. Lisas parted from the consul and descended the steps, mopping at his face. His makeup was running in streaks, even though the morning was chilly.

I went up the steps to meet him. “Lisas, what’s happened?”

“Ah, my friend Decius! In the middle of the night, a terribly disturbing dispatch arrived from Alexandria.”

“Old Ptolemy’s croaked, eh?” I said, unable to imagine that anything else would upset Lisas so deeply. “Well, it happens to them all, and there are plenty of-”

“No, no, no!” He waved his purple-dyed scarf in agitation. “It is not that at all! My master, King Ptolemy Dionysus, is in excellent health. But, it became necessary for him to put Princess Berenice to death to punish her for her unfilial rebellion.”

“That’s sad news,” I commiserated. “The woman was just a pawn. What happened to Archelaus?”

Now he waved the scarf dismissively. “Oh, the usurper died in the last battle with Gabinius. He was of no account.”

“I see. But, sad though this news may be, surely it is nothing unusual. Anyone who tries to seize a throne must expect death as the price of failure.”

“Even so, even so,” he said, wringing his hands, covered as they were with perfumed oil and inflamed lesions. “Great as was my affection for the princess, I understand that His Majesty had no choice in the matter. No, there were-more severe consequences.”

“Ah.” Now we were getting to the real news. “What manner of consequences, if this is not a matter of diplomatic secrecy?”

“On, no. I thought it best to come at once and inform the consul Pompey. I believe he will address the assembled Senate on the matter soon, although there is little to be done about it now.”

“Lisas,” I prodded gently, “what’s happened?”

“As you may have learned, Berenice had some degree of support from the people of Alexandria, including some of the leading citizens.”

“I’ve been out of touch,” I told him. “Did these Alexandrians take it ill that Ptolemy killed his daughter?”

“I am afraid so. There was rioting.”

“We have that here in Rome from time to time. And was King Ptolemy forced to execute some of these Alexandrian supporters of Princess Berenice and the usurper?”

“Only the ringleaders,” he said hastily, “and the closest and most immoderate of their adherents.”

“How many?”

“Oh, some three or four, perhaps as many as five thousand.” He blotted again at his runny face. He did not look well at all. Seeing him in full daylight for the first time in years, I realized that poor Lisas was not going to be with us much longer. Even his heavy makeup could no longer disguise his ghastly color and the sores that covered his skin. “It happened more than a month ago. Contrary winds kept all the vessels in port until just a few days ago.”

“Well,” I said, “this is going to be difficult.” Like Pompey, I patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll work something out, but perhaps you’d better prepare yourself to serve a new king.”

“I thank you for your support,” he said, “but I am too old for that now. I will not outlast King Ptolemy.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” I advised. I wanted to speak with him some more, but senators began to crowd around, eager to know what was going on, and I had to leave him there and get on with my day.

Egypt had been a problem for us for a hundred years. With its docile, priest-ridden peasant population and its absurd Macedonian royal family, we could have annexed it at any time, but we didn’t want to. Egypt was just too rich. Put a Roman governor there with an army, and he’d make himself king and raise a rebellion, as had Sertorius in Spain. No Roman trusted another with that much wealth and power. So we propped up one idiotic weakling after another, as the Ptolemaic dynasty grew more degenerate with each passing generation.

And now this rebellion and its aftermath. I would have liked to believe that it meant the old drunk was showing some steel in his spine at last, but it sounded more like the vicious, peevish gesture of a frightened tyrant who feels his throne crumbling beneath him.

And if Lisas said five thousand had been executed, ten thousand was a more likely number. And he’d said leading citizens, which meant men with close business ties to Rome. This was going to be serious.

“Way for the praetor!” somebody shouted. I saw a file of lictors clearing a path for Milo, and I pushed my way over to him.

“Decius!” He smiled, but perfunctorily. He, too, had caught the mood of the Forum. “Anything to report?”

“Several things. Do you have a little time?”

“Not much, but Pompey’s given the murder first priority, so go ahead.” In his usual fashion, he kept walking as we talked. I gave him a quick rundown of the previous day’s work.

“I knew that business about the Furies was too good to be true. But where did that bastard go after he came down from the wall?”

“That’s what I must find out.”

“Work on it. For the moment, we’ll just keep this business about the men who jumped you to ourselves. A couple of bodies were found by the fire watch this morning. They weren’t mine or Clodius’s. Maybe the other two lived. It’s not important. Who hired them is.” Killings were not a major concern in Rome in those days, as long as arson was not involved.

“That’s another matter I intend to find out about.”

“What’s going on over at the curia?” He asked. “Why is old Lisas in town so early?”

I gave him a quick rundown of the situation, and he shook his head.

“That’s it for the Flute-Player, then. We’ve all grown heartily sick of him and his whole disgusting family.”

“I always found him rather entertaining,” I said.

“That’s right, you missed the big show, didn’t you? It was the first year you spent in Gaul, when Gabinius and Calpurnius Piso were consuls. For years, Ptolemy had been passing around bribes, trying to get the Senate to ratify him as king of Egypt. Finally got it the year before when Caesar was consul, but he’d squeezed the Alexandrians a little hard for bribe money, and they kicked him out, so he came here to get support for his return. The aristocrats were for it; the commons were against. Are you following this?”

“It’s simple enough. What happened?”

“Well, the Alexandrians sent a delegation to ask the Senate to renounce Ptolemy and put Berenice in his place.”

“How did they fare? I hope they brought plenty of bribe money.”

“They never even got here. Ptolemy got wind of the mission and hired a pack of outlaws down in the South. They ambushed the delegation right outside Brundisium and massacred the lot.”

This was shocking even to my jaded sensibilities. “That’s brazen behavior even for a Ptolemy!”

“The tribunes were in an uproar over it-denounced the aristocrats as a bunch of corrupt money-grubbers supporting a vile barbarian tyrant and murderer-all very true, by the way. After that, support for Ptolemy faded.”

“He obviously struck a deal with the consul Gabinius,” I said. “Ten thousand talents, so I hear.”

“It took him awhile to get all that silver together, but it was well spent. Clodius got a piece of it, too.”

“Clodius? How?”

“He was tribune that year, remember?”

“How could I forget? It was the main reason my family wanted me out of Rome.”

“Calpurnius got Macedonia for his proconsular province. Gabinius was to have Cilicia, but Clodius rammed through a law giving him Syria instead, putting him in a position to help Ptolemy as soon as he could get the bribe money together.”

“And people wonder how we’ve conquered half the world,” I said. “With politics like ours, who stands a chance against us?”

“It’s what makes us unique,” he agreed.

Something struck me. “Crassus could make use of this. He might pass up his war with Parthia and use this as an excuse to take Egypt instead!”

“Possible,” Milo said, “but not likely. For one thing, to do that without permission from the Senate would be tantamount to declaring war against Rome. For another, he’s not quite sane these days, as I’m sure you noticed. Taking Parthia is not just a fixed goal with him; it’s an obsession. He’s talked about nothing else for years. A saner man might have a go at Egypt, but not Crassus. Pompey would love to do it, but he lacks the courage to defy the Senate. Caesar would do it and make it look as if the Senate had given him permission.”

“I hope you’re right. The last thing we need just now is war over Egypt.”

By this time we had reached the basilica where Milo was holding court. Pompey had cleared his docket for the murder investigation, but that was just a gesture to calm the crowd. Milo had less than two months left in office and much business to tie up. There was already a crowd assembled there waiting for him to sort out their problems.

“Get back to me as soon as you have a credible suspect for Ateius’s murder. Time is getting short.”

“You’re not the first to remind me,” I said. I took my leave of him and wandered around the Forum for a little while, soaking in the feel of the place. By eavesdropping discreetly, I determined that the murder of the tribune was still the prime subject of conversation. The news from Egypt hadn’t spread and probably would not. It was a matter of great interest to the Senate, but foreign affairs occupied little of the attention of the average Roman, unless there was a war in which we were involved.

Three years ago. That, I thought, had certainly been a busy year. Gabinius had been consul. So had Calpurnius Piso, who had ordered the suppression of the foreign cults. Aemilius Scaurus had been aedile, defraying the costs of his office by letting some of those foreigners off for a consideration and putting on his extravagant Games. In fact, far too many of the events of that year seemed to have led to the fateful happenings of this year.

I pondered my next move. Whatever I was going to do, it seemed to me that I had better get it done before nightfall. The streets were getting dangerous for me.

I had always found the Capitol a good place to think, so I climbed the winding road to its summit. Before the Temple of Jupiter, the ashes of the morning sacrifice still smoldered. I went into the temple and studied the serene face of the god for a while, not trying to concentrate, just letting my thoughts wander. The smell of smoke recalled to my mind the destruction of the temple almost thirty years before in a fire caused by lightning. The augurs determined that Jupiter had destroyed the temple because he had been displeased with it, so it was rebuilt with even greater magnificence. Many of its treasures had been destroyed, though, including the Sibylline Books.

Once again I felt that featherlike tickling somewhere in the rear of my mind. I did not force things, but let my memory bring up such facts as I knew concerning the famous books of prophecy.

The sibyls were Greek in origin-that I remembered. There used to be many of them; now only a few remained. They were somehow connected with Apollo, and were given to ecstatic utterance that sounded like gibberish to most people, but which, supposedly, could be interpreted by qualified priests as the will of the gods. The sayings of some of these sibyls had been written down in nine books that, somehow, made their way to Italy.

Legend had it that, during the reign of the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, the celebrated books were brought to Rome and offered to him for sale. He considered the price exorbitant and refused, whereupon the sibyl had burned the books one by one, each time offering him the remaining books at the same price. Tarquinius, as poor a businessman as he was a king, agreed when there were three books left. These he deposited in a vault below the temple, where they were consulted from time to time. They were popularly believed to contain prophecies of the whole future history of Rome.

I considered this to be among the silliest of all our ancient beliefs, but many believed in the books implicitly. It had been these books that Lisas had told me Crassus used as an excuse to prevent the Senate from sending Ptolemy back to Egypt with a Roman army to support him.

And who was the sibyl who had sold the books, on such favorable terms, to Tarquin the Proud? Why, Italy’s most famous prophetess, of course, the Sibyl of Cumae. I whirled and strode from the temple. I was bound for the burying fields east of the City and the house of that expert on all things mystical, Ariston of Cumae.

I knew before i reached the door that I had arrived too late. There is something about a house in which nobody lives that makes it indefinably different from an inhabited place. I walked between the cypresses, oppressed by the smell of death that permeated the air of the whole district, wondering if I would find more death within the modest house. Out here no dogs barked; no chickens squawked or crowed; there were no friendly, familiar sounds.

For the sake of form I rapped on the door and waited a reasonable interval. Then I tugged on the door, and it opened easily.

“Ariston!” I called. Nothing. I went within. All was quiet, and the place showed signs of having been vacated hastily. The modest furnishings were still there, but these consisted of only a table or two and some crude beds-nothing worth carrying off on a journey.

I came to an upper room with a large window facing south. This was Ariston’s study, for it received the best reading light and it contained a cabinet with honeycomb cells that must have held Ariston’s books, but they were gone. Of course, he would not have left those. The kitchen contained no food, just a large water jar, half-full, and some melon rinds.

Ariston and his slaves had left without ceremony and in haste. Had he left in fear? And, if so, of whom was he afraid? Did he fear that I would return with more questions to discern his guilty secret? Or was he afraid of the same violence that had been visited upon his erstwhile student, Ateius Capito? I suspected that it was the latter. If so, I could scarcely blame him. Being caught up in the power games of the great Romans was like being trapped between the stones of a great mill.

I could find nothing of any interest within, so I went back outside, closing the door behind me. Another promising lead had been eliminated. There were not even any neighbors I could question. It would have been of some use to know whether he had started packing the moment I left his house, or when he got the news of Ateius’s death.

All the way back through the gate and into the City, I pondered this turn of events. Crassus, a pontifex and an augur, but not one of the Board of Fifteen charged with authority over the Sibylline Books, had taken it upon himself to consult them on the question of Rome supporting Ptolemy. To do so he would have needed some sort of interpreter, and who better to perform that service than the famous authority Ariston of Cumae, a man who hailed from the home of the sibyl herself?

So Crassus had suborned the interpretation he wanted from Ariston. There was the possibility that the Books really had said that we should not back Ptolemy with an army, but somehow I doubted it. Crassus had a way of getting what he wanted. Ariston had responded to bribery or threats. He lived simply in Rome, but for all I knew, he had been buying a fine estate for his retirement down in Cumae. Or perhaps he had just wanted to stay alive-a perfectly understandable motive. It was unlikely that I would learn anytime soon. I had neither time nor resources to scour Italy for a fleeing magician.

I turned my steps southward, wending my way toward the Via Sacra. There remained one site I had not yet visited in my double investigation.

The house of Ateius Capito was even more thronged than it had been on my previous visit. This time, instead of petitioners, the street outside was crowded with the sort of idlers who continually haunt the nightmares of those who must administer the City: the perpetual malcontents who seem to do no work, but are available at all hours to shout, argue, and riot. A couple of the remaining tribunes were there to keep them in a state of spirited outrage.

True to a unique tradition of Rome, all the nearby walls had been slathered with that unique institution of the Latin race: graffiti. Daubed in paint of every color were slogans such as Death to the aristocrats! and The shade of Tribune Ateius calls out for blood! and May the curse of Ateius fall on Crassus and all his friends! All of this was scrawled wretchedly and spelled worse. Rome has an extremely high rate of literacy, mostly so that the citizens can practice this particular art form.

Men nudged one another as I approached, casting one another significant glances, as such men are wont to do. I have no idea what it is that they hope to convey by these gestures, but they seem to enjoy the exercise. Perhaps it gives them a feeling of importance.

“You are not welcome here, Senator,” said a tribune I recognized as Gallus, the cohort of Ateius in his strenuous efforts to deny Crassus the Syrian command.

“Why do I need to be welcome?” I demanded. “I have been appointed iudex with praetorian authority. That calls for no welcome.”

“You’re one of them!” yelled a meager-faced villain.

“One of what?” I said. “One of the citizens?”

“You’re an aristocrat!” the man shouted back.

“Oh, shut up, the lot of you!” I shouted. “I wasn’t appointed by just any praetor! I was appointed by Titus Annius Milo! I imagine that name is known to you.” Now their growling died down. They may not have been among Milo’s adherents, but like most of Rome’s street toughs, they feared him.

“No need for a riot,” Gallus said reluctantly. “What do you want here, Senator?”

“I want to speak with Ateius’s Marsian friend, Sextus Silvius.”

The men nearest the door looked at one another. “He’s not here,” one of them said.

“Is that so? Where might he be?”

“We-we don’t know. Some of the tribune’s closest friends have left the City. When a tribune can be murdered, who is safe?” The man looked to the others for agreement and support. I realized that they were at a loss how to act. The leaders of Ateius’s little factio had disappeared.

“They were probably murdered as well!” said another of the door crowd. The grumbling rose.

I turned around. “Tribune Gallus! I wish to speak with you in privacy. Come with me.”

“You have no authority to order me, Senator,” he blustered, for the sake of his audience. “But, unlike the factio of Crassus and Pompey and the rest of the aristocrats, I respect the institutions of Rome.” He addressed the crowd. “My friends, I will return as soon as I have straightened this man out.”

We walked down the street, out of sight and hearing. A few streets away there was a little park surrounding a shrine to the genius loci of the district, here represented in the traditional fashion as a sculpted snake climbing a stubby column. Withered garlands draped its base, and pigeons pecked at the offerings of bread and fruit left by the people of the neighborhood. I took a seat on a stone bench, and Gallus sat beside me.

“Tribune, in the emergency meeting called by Pompey after the departure of Crassus, you said that you had no foreknowledge of the outrageous behavior of Ateius that day.”

“And I spoke nothing but the truth,” he insisted. Here, away from his crowd, he spoke reasonably, as one public servant to another. “After the lustrum I went to the Temple of Vesta with Pompey and my fellow tribunes, and we all swore this before her fire.”

“Very well. I need to know certain things about the tribune Ateius.”

“I knew him only in our shared public functions,” he said, apparently anxious to distance himself from the man.

“That is, principally, what I need to know. On what matters did the two of you cooperate?”

“Why, on denying Crassus the Syrian command, of course. Everyone knows the harm that will be done to Rome if he-”

“What other business?” I pressed.

“There was no other business. Not for Ateius Capito!”

“Do you mean to say that the two of you spent almost an entire year in office doing nothing but opposing Crassus?”

“Nothing of the sort! Why, I worked with Peducaeus on getting the river wharfs rebuilt, and petitioning the pontifex maximus to extend Saturnalia for an extra day and reform the calendar, which has gotten into dreadful shape, and there’s the whole business of the agrarian laws and the land commissioners to be sorted out-”

I held up a hand to stanch the flow of words. Everybody was complaining about overwork these days.

“I can see that you’ve exhausted yourself in service to the People, as every tribune should. Did Ateius Capito concern himself with none of these pressing matters?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, no. It was only Crassus, as far as Ateius was concerned.”

“What about all the petitioners who mobbed his home? How did he keep their support?”

“The vast bulk of those people do nothing but take up a tribune’s time. Often as not, they just want an important ear to hear their complaints. If they do have real problems, they are usually so petty that they can be solved by a freedman with a few coins to pass around. Ateius’s staff handled those. The few with substantial grievances to address, Ateius passed on to the other tribunes. He wasn’t very popular among us.”

“Didn’t that strike anyone as odd? The office of tribune is just one step on a man’s political career. Any man of sense uses it to make contacts, do favors that will profit him later on, even, perhaps, enrich himself a bit, within legal limits. How was Ateius supporting his rather expensive office if all he did was alienate the richest man in the world?”

“Ateius came of a substantial equestrian family; you’ve seen his house.”

“Oh, come now, none of that! You know as well as I that if he wasn’t doing profitable political favors for important people, he had to be buying the support he needed. That requires a great deal more than the fortune of a substantial equestrian family. Whose money was he spending, if not his own?”

“He was passing out the silver rather freely,” Gallus said. “But I was not about to ask. The possible sources are rather limited, you know.” The last words were mumbled, as if he was reluctant to say even this much.

I knew exactly what he meant. Crassus certainly wasn’t financing his own opposition. That left the two men with the most to gain from the elimination of Crassus: Pompey and Caesar. The conference at Luca the previous year had supposedly patched up their differences, but nobody mistook it for anything but a temporary political expedient, to keep things at home quiet while two of the Big Three were engaged in foreign service and the third was occupied with the all-important grain supply.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Capito? Any unusual visitors he may have had, foreigners who may have been seen with him, any other odd behavior?”

“Senator, I rarely saw him except in the Forum when we dealt with that single issue. I was far too busy to socialize with him. His enthusiasm for foreign religions and sorcery was well-known, but public life in Rome is ridden with crackpots.”

“All too true. Well, Tribune, I thank you for your cooperation.” We both stood.

“This is a vicious business,” Gallus said. “I hope you find who murdered him. He was a tribune and shouldn’t have been touched while he was still in office.” He adjusted the drape of his toga. “Aside from that, I’m glad the bastard’s dead.”

I went back to the Forum, stopping on the way to snack at the stands of some street vendors. With commendable moderation, I washed it down with nothing stronger than water.

I hailed a few friends as I crossed the Forum, but I did not stop, instead climbing the lower slope of the Capitol to the Tabularium, the main archive of the Roman State. There I located the freedman in charge of the Censor’s records.

“How may I help you, Senator?” he asked. He was surrounded by slaves who actually looked busy for a change, that year being one in which the Census was taken.

“I need the records pertaining to the late tribune Caius Ateius Capito’s qualifications for office.” The fitness of candidates to stand for office coming under the purview of the Censors, Capito would have deposited a statement of his age, property, and military and political service with them. The man went off, shaking his head at this unreasonable imposition on the time of a busy, busy official. It was getting to be an old story.

I waited for him amid the rustlings and cracklings of papyrus, the rattlings of wooden binders containing wax tablets, the thumpings of lead seals as the slaves and freedmen went through the motions of the most notoriously tedious job required by the constitution. It was a good thing we only had to do it every five years.

“Here you are, Senator,” the archivist said, handing me a small roll of papyrus. I unrolled it and read.

There was not much to it. Ateius stated that he possessed the minimum property required for equestrian status, that he had been enrolled in the equestrian order by the Censors Cornelius Lentulus and Gellius Publicola, fifteen years before. He had served with the legions for the required number of campaigns, under Lucullus, Metellus Creticus, Pompey, and Philippus, he of the famous fishponds. Most of his service had been in the East, I noticed-Macedonia and the wars with Mithridates and Tigranes and their heirs, for the most part, plus the bandit-chasing that inevitably takes up so much of an army’s time in that part of the world, even when it is nominally at peace. Perhaps, I thought, it was during these years that Ateius acquired his taste for strange, foreign religions and magic. The Eastern world is rank with sorcery.

Of previous electoral offices he had none, but then none are required to hold the office of tribune. He had, however, served on the staffs of several serving officials, in the purely informal fashion that prevailed in those days. There was no need for him to list them in his declaration to the Censors, but, like so many of our lesser political lights, he seemed to feel compelled to boast of his associations with the mighty. One of these jumped out at me immediately: three years previously, he had served as assistant to the aedile Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, provider of wonderful Games and scourge of all vile cultists who could not pony up his price.

I returned the scroll to the surly freedman and went out onto the portico atop the broad steps of the Tabularium. The view of the Forum was a good one that day, the clear light of winter bringing out the whitened togas of the candidates, who were doing what I should have been doing. The next year’s praetors and consuls, the aediles and tribunes and quaestors, were out there-hardly an honest man among them, to my way of thinking. Always excepting Cato, of course, who was standing for praetor. He was the one incorruptibly honest man in public life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand Cato.

I descended the steps. I had lost my most promising lead, but the absence of Ariston made my thoughts drift back to that other suspect foreigner, Elagabal. Elagabal was from Syria. Ateius Capito had served in Syria under more than one proconsul. The connection was tenuous, but it was there. Roman men with ambitions for public office had to serve in a specified number of campaigns, and that meant going wherever there was a war. I had served in Spain and Gaul, but had the timing been different, I might have served in Syria instead. But now I remembered something Elagabal had said just as I left his house that I realized I should have followed up on, only I had failed to understand its implications.

The house was unchanged, and I hoped that I would not find it deserted, as I had the house of Ariston. Over its door brooded the serpent swallowing its own tail, and I now remembered that I had seen a ring in that shape on the finger of Ateius the one time I had spoken with him. At my knock, the hulking guard opened the door.

“Bessas, fetch your master.” The man glared for a moment, then disappeared within.

“Why, Senator Metellus, I was not expecting to see you again so soon. Please, come in.” He smiled, but the smile showed a certain strain. I followed him up the stairs to the roof garden. “May I inquire what brings you back?”

“The other day, after I spoke to you, I visited with Eschmoun and Ariston, and I found them both to be much as you described them: Eschmoun a relatively harmless fraud and Ariston a scholar of high reputation.”

He gave a self-deprecating little bow. “As you see, I am no liar.”

“Today, I went back to the house of Ariston, and he had fled without a trace.”

His eyes went wide. “Can it be that the man has a guilty conscience?”

“That or a wholesome fear of death. Above your door there is a symbol painted-a serpent in the act of swallowing its tail. What does this signify?”

He looked puzzled but did not hesitate. “It is a very common symbol in many parts of the world. It means creation and eternity. I have seen examples in the art of Egypt and Greece, as well as in the East.”

“I see. Ateius Capito wore a ring in that shape. Might he have received this from you?”

“By no means. As a dabbler in mystical things, such a trinket might have caught his eye almost anyplace, even in the jewelers’ stalls here in Rome.”

“That may be it. Now, Elagabal, just before I left here on the occasion of my last visit, you said something: you said that soon I would be an important official-”

“And so you shall be,” he assured me, looking relieved. He thought we were back to negotiating a bribe.

“And you said that you had found that previous acquaintance made such an official more approachable. Had you previous acquaintance of the aedile Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, who was charged with expelling the foreign cults?”

“Why, yes, long before he held that office.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. When was it?”

“It was about ten years ago, when Aemilius served as proquaestor in Syria under Proconsul Pompey.”

“I see,” I said, hearing one of the names I most feared. “How did you happen to meet him?”

“You must understand, General Pompey was much occupied with affairs in the northern part of his province and with the final stages of the war with Mithridates. The southern part of his dominions he therefore left in the charge of his subordinates. Aemilius Scaurus was charged with settling the dynastic disputes of the princes of Judea. It was said, later, that Aemilius Scaurus-how shall I say-that he allowed certain of these princes to be excessively generous toward him.”

“Took bribes, eh? Well, no surprises there. What was your part in all this?”

“When the proquaestor was in Damascus on his way to Judea, he consulted with me on the very peculiar religion of that part of the world. I had great difficulty in explaining to him the concept of monotheism.”

“I have problems with that one myself. Doesn’t seem natural. Was Ateius Capito with him?”

“That I could not say. He had a number of wellborn young men on his staff. And at that time, if you will forgive me, Roman names sounded much alike to my untrained ear.”

“That’s odd. They sound very distinctive and individual to us. So, was this the extent of your acquaintance with Aemilius Scaurus?”

He nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, until I moved to Rome. In the year of his aedileship, when I was unjustly accused of practicing forbidden rites, I went to him and reminded him of how I had aided him when we were in Syria.” Elagabal nodded again. “He was most accommodating.”

“I can well imagine.” I rose to leave. “I have other places to go now. Elagabal, if you have told me the truth, you may expect to find me a friend when I am in office. But this investigation is by no means over. Do not take it into your head to imitate Ariston and leave Rome. He dwelled without the gates, and for him, escaping was easy. I have left word with the gate guards to allow no foreign residents to leave until I am finished.” What a laugh. As if those louts could bestir themselves to stop a blind donkey from wandering out. Besides, they could be bribed with the smallest coins. I suspected that Elagabal was aware of this, but he had the good manners not to smile.

“I wish only to serve you,” he protested, “and to spend the rest of my days in the greatest city in the world, under benevolent administrators.”

I left him with some more important facts in my possession, but they were facts I would almost have preferred not to know. Too many of the wrong people had too much in common: Aemilius Scaurus, Ateius Capito, and Pompey, and all of them were tied together by Syria, the province just assigned to Crassus. Crassus, who, if he failed, would leave the East wide open to Pompey, who had been there before. Once again, he would have military glory, wealth, and a great army behind him. Caesar would have Gaul and the West, with immense armies of his own. The two of them would be the last players on the big game board, poised for a final, catastrophic civil war. And smack between them: Rome.

I didn’t even want to think about it.