The Tribune's curse

6

Of course, I told Julia all about it immediately. We hadn’t been married long, but I had already learned the futility of keeping anything secret from her. We sat in the small garden, and I sent the slaves away, out of earshot, for whatever good that might do. Julia looked somewhat aghast when I told her about the compromising of the Secret Name, but she quickly recovered her patrician aplomb.

“I think it’s very wise of you to tell me this, Decius, even though you were expressly forbidden to do so by such high authority.”

“Of course it’s wise to tell you, my dearest, but I don’t think the matter will remain secret for long, in any case.”

“Why not?”

“Except for my aunt and Claudius, every man there this morning was a senator. There is no way such men will keep a juicy bit of political gossip like that quiet, not if they see the slightest chance of using it to their own political advantage.”

“You have a low opinion of the Senate.”

“I am a senator. I rest my case, my little white Falernian heifer.”

“The mantle of Cynicism sits ill on your shoulders,” she said. “Cynicism is Greek, and you are always saying that you detest Greek philosophy.”

“Even a Greek may be correct once in a while, my little jug of vintage garum.”

“And stop devising ridiculous endearments!” she snapped.

“It’s just a sign that I’m deep in thought. This is by far the strangest investigation I have ever been handed. I’m not sure even where to begin. I would like to go and lean on Ateius Capito. His invulnerability is a legal fiction, but the supporters of tribunes can be extremely violent these days.”

“Will the people support him after what he did?”

“Yes, they will. The shock is over, and he will be out of office soon, anyway. The Assemblies have spent the last twenty years fighting tooth and nail to restore the tribunician powers stripped away by Sulla. They’ll rally even to this fool if they see a threat to the institution.”

“Do you think he is in hiding?”

“I don’t know. Supposedly, if he does not keep himself accessible to the plebs, he forfeits his office. But who pays all that much attention to the laws anymore? My guess is, he’s hiding right at home, behind a heavy bodyguard.”

“Leave him alone, then. Milo’s thugs might force you a way in, but a street riot is no way to conduct an investigation.”

“I did not contemplate such a thing. No, I’ll have to be more decorous. I need to find someone not connected with the Senate, who is knowledgeable concerning the old religions, the mystery cults, that sort of thing.”

“A rather large subject,” she said, “but you probably needn’t concern yourself with the Eastern sort, the slave cults, and other such nonsense. I’ll make inquiries among my friends. Some of them are dreadfully superstitious. They trade the names of their magicians the way they do those of their jewelers or their perfumers. What will you do?”

“I’ll look into the records of the aedile’s office, to begin with. They have the task of expelling magicians from the City. I won’t waste much time with it. I suspect that the bulk of them are nothing but mountebanks, and that goes for the ones your lady friends frequent as well.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? But please recall that some of them are priestesses of very respectable cults and can be expected to know things to which very few men are privy, especially senators, who care far more about war and politics than about religion.”

“I knew being married to you was going to come in handy.”

“Something else strikes me,” she mused. “Crassus himself is a pontifex. Do you think he had any idea of what was being used to curse him?”

I thought back over the scene at the gate. “I don’t think so. If he had, he probably would have turned right around and gone home. Surely even his lust for loot has limits.”

“So one would think.”

Soon I was back in the Forum, but this time I wasn’t wearing my candidus. Instead, dressed as an ordinary citizen, I went to the end of the Forum where the men standing for the office of quaestor were lounging about, cadging votes. Among them was Faustus Sulla, looking uncomfortable the way an aristocrat always does when he has to go about the low-bred process of vote-grubbing. Near him was the younger Marcus Crassus, who looked much more at home. He grinned engagingly when I walked up. We went through the usual, overdone public greeting.

“Taking the day off, Metellus?”

“Yes, but not willingly. Not much longer until the elections, anyway. Will you be joining your father in Syria to be his quaestor?” Like me, he was almost certain of election. Nobody could outbribe a Crassus.

“No, I’ll be with Caesar in Gaul. My brother Publius will be leaving Caesar’s army early next year to take some Gallic cavalry to Father’s war with Parthia.”

“Lucky you. I spent my year in the Treasury.”

“Safe but unprofitable,” he said. “I hear Caesar’s doing rather well.” In peacetime a general’s quaestor was little more than a paymaster, but in a great war he could get rich. Besides disbursing pay for the troops, he let contracts to businessmen supplying and serving the army, divided and accounted for the loot, and sold prisoners to the slave traders who followed the army like a bad smell. A bit of every transaction could stick to his fingers, and I had no doubt that the younger Marcus Crassus had been an apt student of the elder.

“Your father’s campaign certainly had an ill-starred beginning.”

He shrugged. “It takes more than maledictions mumbled by a swine of a tribune to frighten the old man. Spells and curses are how our nurses make us behave when we’re children. They have no place in the real life of men of affairs. If magic were any real use, how did we ever whip the Etruscans? And why does everyone push the Egyptians around with impunity? Everyone says they’re great magicians.”

“An astute observation. So your father didn’t act as if this curse was anything especially menacing?”

“No. Why do you ask?” His eyes sharpened on me, bright with suspicion.

“I’ve been charged to investigate the incident.” This much at least I could admit to. “You’re probably right, and it’s nothing but a lot of mumbo-jumbo to impress the masses.”

“The curse is nothing. The insult-well, that’s another matter. The second that viper steps down from office, I’m going to be waiting there with my flagrum. My slaves will tell you that I don’t wield it with a light hand when I’m annoyed. I’ll flog him from here the whole length of the Via Sacra and out of the City.”

“That’ll serve him right,” I commended. “Well, I have to go and catch up on some paperwork. Good luck, Marcus.”

He shrugged again. “All this is a waste of time if you ask me. I’ve bought the office already.”

Spoken like a true Crassus, I thought.

My steps next took me south through the Forum Boarium and past the Circus Maximus to the Temple of Ceres. There, amid the archives of the aediles, I found one of the year’s plebeian aediles, a man named Quintus Aelius Paetus, who never achieved any greater distinction that I ever heard about. He lifted an eyebrow when he saw me come in.

“Starting work a little early, aren’t you, Metellus?”

“I have no intention of assuming office one minute too early,” I assured him. “I’m here to look something up.”

“Ah! Here I can be of aid.” He turned his head and bellowed over his shoulder: “Demetrius! Come in here!”

A middle-aged slave came from the back. “Sir?”

“The honored senator Metellus, soon to be your supervisor, has something he wants to look up. Assist him.”

“Certainly. How may I help you, Senator?”

“I haven’t been here in a few years. I don’t recall seeing you before.”

“I have been here most of my life, but usually in the back rooms. I became head archivist last year. What might you be looking for?”

“I need to examine records concerning aedilician investigations or expulsions of sorcerers and priests of non-State cults.”

“Let me see,” Demetrius mused. “We have several centuries’ worth of such documents. I take it you do not wish to view them all?”

“Just the most recent will do,” I informed him. “When was the last such suppression?”

“Three years ago, when Calpurnius Piso and Gabinius were consuls,” said the slave. “You may recall that Piso was very keen to expel the Egyptian cults from Rome.”

“Actually, that was my first year with Caesar in Gaul. We were more concerned with the Gauls and Germans than with the Egyptians.”

“As generally happens in such operations, the expulsion took in foreign cults as a whole, including those of Italy outside Rome.”

“Then that is what I’m looking for. I’m not interested in the market women who tell fortunes or the poisoners or abortionists we’re always expelling from the City-just the major practitioners of magic and advocates of non-Roman gods. I’m especially interested in the Italian cultists, although I suppose the Egyptians will bear looking at.”

“I take it this has something to do with that business at the gate two days ago?” Paetus asked.

“Yes, the pontiffs want to know where Ateius got that elaborate curse. They’ve charged me to investigate.”

“What’s the authority?” he asked. “A pontifical investigation is rare. I’m not even sure of its legality.”

“This is informal, of course. I’m standing for aedile and will have access to the records after the elections, anyway.”

“With your family, I suppose you can take the election for granted,” he said enviously. “Well, I don’t see why not. Demetrius, the archives are at the noble senator’s disposal.”

“Who was charged with the task of routing the Egyptians?” I asked the slave.

“The curule aedile Marcus Aemilius Scaurus.”

“He must have been a busy man,” I said. “I’ve been to the baths he built that year, and they’re magnificent. I hear the same of his theater.”

“It was a remarkable tenure of office,” Demetrius said.

“His Games were of unmatched splendor,” Paetus said, “even by the standards Caesar set. Pity the poor Sardinians. They’re having to pay for it all, now.”

“Squeezing them pretty hard, is he?” I asked.

“Sardinian property owners he’s extorted are already in town, lining up prosecutors. He’ll be up before the courts the minute he sets foot inside the gates.”

“I’m always out of town when the best shows are on,” I groused.

“Of course, he had the leisure to plan his Games and build his baths and round up all the mountebanks,” Paetus said. “He was curule. He could sit around in the markets half the day and assess fines. Plebeian aediles have to spend all day inspecting every street, warehouse, and foul tenement in the City.” He seemed to be a man with a lot of grievances.

“If you will come with me, Senator,” Demetrius said. I followed him into the musty warren of rooms beneath the temple proper. Aemilius had been a curule aedile, while the temple was the headquarters of the plebeian aediles, but the records of both were kept there.

“Since it was a recent year,” Demetrius said, “the records will be easy to find.”

I wasn’t looking forward to going over the documents in a tiny room by the smoky light of an oil lamp and was much relieved when the slave showed me to a room with a large, latticed window through which I could see the imposing superstructure of the Circus Maximus.

“I shall be back in a few minutes, Senator,” Demetrius said. He disappeared into an adjoining room, and I heard him giving instructions to some other slaves.

I sat at a long desk, groaning as my knees bent, all too aware that, if I sat too long, I would probably be unable to get up. Still, it was pleasant to sit there, listening to the clamor of the market below and the screeching axles of the chariots in the Circus, where the horses were being exercised. A few minutes of this, and Demetrius returned with a slave boy, each of them bearing a basket laden with papyrus scrolls and wooden tablets.

“Here they are, sir,” he announced. “All still in one place, luckily.”

“Would you happen to have a list of that year’s magistrates handy?” I asked him.

He turned to the slave boy. “Bring my writing kit and some scrap papyrus.” The boy went away, and I began arranging the documents on the table. When he returned, Demetrius took his reed pen and began writing down the names of the serving magistrates of the third previous year, neatly and from memory: consuls, praetors, aediles, tribunes, and quaestors. “Do you need the promagistrates serving outside of Rome?” he asked. “I’ll have to look some of them up.”

“No need,” I assured him. “I can see you’re going to be invaluable to me next year.”

“I look forward to it,” he said, apparently without irony. “Will there be anything else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I will leave Hylas here with you. If you should need anything, he will see to it.”

I thanked him and set to work. The boy named Hylas sat on a bench. After a while I became aware that he was staring at me.

“What is it?” I asked.

The boy blushed. He appeared to be about twelve years old. “Excuse me, sir. Are you a charioteer?”

This was a new one. “Nothing so exalted, I am sorry to report. I am a mere senator. What causes me to resemble the racing gentry?”

“It’s just that, well, the only men I’ve ever seen bruised up like that are charioteers who’ve been in wrecks.”

“Am I that colorful?”

“The whole side of your neck and half your face are purple,” he reported.

“Sometimes,” I told him, “the gods are demanding. Now, I have work to do.”

Scanning the list of magistrates, I saw immediately the one name I knew I would find: Clodius. He was one of the tribunes, and the main reason I was out of Rome that year. He had been another busy man. Besides his scandalous legislation to distribute grain to the people free of charge (his promise to do so had secured him the election), he had worked furiously to get Cicero exiled, to get the proconsular provinces of Macedonia and Syria for the year’s consuls, and to do more besides. It seemed unlikely, however, that he would be concerned with the aediles’ persecutions of foreign cults.

The earliest dated document of the year was an instruction from the consul Piso to investigate and scourge from the City the Egyptian cults, which were distracting citizens from observance of the State religion and, more seriously, sucking money from Rome to Egypt.

Next, Aemilius Scaurus reported on the proliferation of Egyptian temples in Rome, in the surrounding municipia, and in Italian towns as far afield as Capua and Pompeii. Most of them were dedicated to the Isis cult. This caused me some amusement. Having spent some time in Egypt, I happened to know that the cult of Isis and Osiris was just about the dullest, most respectable religion imaginable. The whole College of Vestals could attend the Isis ceremonies for years without being exposed to the mildest impurity.

Now, the Egyptians had some truly scabrous cults, but they kept the good stuff at home, to themselves. What these guardians of public morals really needed was to attend one of the festivals of Min or Bes, gods who delivered their worshipers a good time.

Once the unfortunate followers of Isis had been dealt with, the aediles turned their attention to other cults and to magicians practicing solo. The tally of names looked like one of Sulla’s proscription lists, although they probably weren’t as profitable to those denouncing them. I thought it might be amusing to find out how many of these men were still practicing in the City. That would tell me how many had been able to bribe their way out of the ban.

I noted that most of the names were foreign. Some were Etruscan, many were Marsian, and the rest were Greek, Syrian, and so forth. I was willing to bet that many were ex-slaves with fake names and accents. For some reason, those who believe in magic are always ready to credit exotic foreigners with greater power in these matters than their own countrymen.

“Listen to these,” I said to young Hylas. “Hezzebaal the Paphlagonian, Chrysanthus of Thebes, Cinnamus of Lydia, Euscios the Arab, Ugbo the Wonder-Worker-Ugbo! What sort of name is that? It sounds like a dog gagging.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Senator. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s what we educated people call a rhetorical question. It doesn’t call for an answer. Can you write?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Excellent. I want you to copy this list of names for me while I study these other documents.”

The boy took the reed pen, and I gave him the scrap of papyrus with the list of magistrates. Carefully and with great concentration he began copying the names in a blocky, workmanlike hand. Like so many young slaves he had the name of one of the famous pretty boys of antiquity, but he wasn’t an especially attractive youth-not that my tastes run that way. He was snubnosed with protrudingupper teeth, but he seemed to be intelligent. I have always been willing to overlook ugliness in a slave if he has some redeeming quality.

“Be sure to copy the descriptions as well,” I admonished.

“I am doing that, sir,” he said dutifully. Next to each name were a few words describing the putative magician’s speciality: “necromancer,” “spirit medium,” “astrologer,” “summoner of Eastern gods,” and so forth. One was described, alarmingly, as “raiser of corpses.”

Besides these practitioners there were organized cults whose supposed indecent practices were catalogued in some detail. There were the usual ecstatic dancing, public fornication, self-mutilation, drug-induced intoxication, unnatural acts with animals, mass flagellation, and loud music. I have always objected to loud music myself.

I found a certain unworthy pleasure in reading about these supposedly disgraceful practices adjacent to that list of prominent public men. I was familiar with many of those men, and knew some of them to be addicted to things far worse than any attributed to the religious libertines. The difference was, they were senators while these cults attracted slaves, freedmen, the lowest of the proletarii, and the resident foreigners.

This is nothing new, of course. We are always anxious to protect the lower orders from vices that we ourselves practice with great enthusiasm. We know that we have the inner, philosophical strength to resist carrying our pleasures to excess, while the childlike masses are apt to be corrupted by them.

Follow-up reports gave details of suppression and expulsion. Most of the leaders were foreigners and were simply banished from Rome. Some of these were branded so that they would be unwelcome anywhere in Roman territory. The way our Empire was growing, these unfortunates might soon have to take up residence somewhere around the headwaters of the Nile or in the land of the Seres, where silk comes from.

The ones who could claim Roman citizenship were mostly let off with an admonition, any repetition of their scandalous behavior to be dealt with sternly. I had every expectation that these people had also proven able to come across with a few thousand sesterces to make the aedile’s life more comfortable and help defray the onerous burdens of his office. It was an unspoken but well-recognized fact of political life that cult leaders could deliver substantial bloc votes come election time.

When the reading and copying were done, I tipped young Hylas with a sesterce and turned away discreetly while he disposed of it somewhere about his person. Slaves, especially small ones, must resort to certain subterfuges in order to prevent larger slaves from acquiring their wealth, and it is often inadvisable to wonder too much about where our money has been.

With my papyrus tucked into my tunic, I left the temple, thinking about the man now looting Sardinia, and others of his sort. From what I had learned of him so far, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was nothing unusual, just a typical Roman politician of the times. At some time he had been a quaestor, doing scut work for the government, perhaps accompanying some general and profiting from it, making valuable political and commercial contacts in the process. He had then been elected to the aedileship and had not stinted himself on largesse to the populace with his Games and his theater and his baths. Undoubtedly he had gone deeply into debt to do this, besides squandering whatever wealth he had inherited.

Riding on the great popularity of his aedileship, he stood for praetor the very next year and won the office handily. Then he had been given a propraetorian province, Sardinia, which he was now looting so merrily. It had become common practice, and it did much to ruin the Republic. Provinces that had been Roman territory for centuries were treated like newly conquered nations, with extortions and oppressions that would shame an Oriental potentate.

The provincials had recourse in our courts. Cicero had made his legal reputation prosecuting a man named Verres who had given Sicily a sacking that was breathtaking even in that jaded age. The Sicilians had come to Cicero because they had been very pleased with the honesty of his own administration of the western part of the province when he was quaestor there under Peducaeus.

Not that even Cicero hadn’t come back from provincial administration well-off. There were plenty of ways to accumulate money that were considered legitimate, if not exactly high-minded: there was nothing wrong with accepting handsome “gifts” from contractors; people currying favor were always happy to sell land, property, and artworks at extremely favorable rates; and any overage in the revenues might be divided among the promagistrate and his assistants. Plus, never forget, today’s quaestor might be tomorrow’s praetor, consul, even Dictator, administering provinces, commanding armies, and making policy for the Empire. It was always advisable to be fondly remembered by such people.

One thing was certain: an aedile always needed money, and a suppression list like the one tucked into my tunic was a matchlessly handy way to raise cash.

I returned home to find Julia glowing.

“Decius!” she bubbled, first rushing to embrace me, then drawing back at my involuntary groan of pain. “Oh! I’m sorry, I forgot. But guess who was here a few minutes ago!”

“Uncle Julius, back from Gaul?”

“No! A man from the Egyptian Embassy! He arrived in a litter carried by Ethiopians with feathers in their hair and big scars carved in patterns all over their bodies. He wore a huge black wig and a white kilt made of linen so stiff that it crackled when he walked, and he had on all sorts of gold and jewelry.”

“I am familiar with Egyptian fashions,” I told her. “What was the brunt of this dignitary’s mission?”

Cassandra appeared with a tray bearing cups and two pitchers, one of wine and one of water. I reached for a cup, but Julia got it first, added extra water, then handed it to me.

“He brought this,” she said, beaming. She held up a papyrus, beautifully decorated with Egyptian drawings in colored ink and gilding. It was an invitation, praying that the “distinguished senator Metellus” and his “goddess-descended lady Julia” attend a reception being given in honor of King Ptolemy’s birthday.

“I’m just distinguished while you’re goddess-descended?” I said.

“I am a Julian, while you’re a mere Caecilian,” she told me, as if I didn’t know. “I’ve been so hoping for this! It’s the day after tomorrow. What shall I wear? How shall I do my hair?”

“My dear, I trust your patrician instincts in this. I just ask that you do not-do not, I say, consult with Fausta.”

We meandered into the triclinium, where the slaves laid out our dinner. It was a rare dinner at home for us, and while we ate, Julia went on happily about the upcoming party at the embassy. While I tried to look bored, I was cheered by the prospect. Lisas gave wonderful entertainments, and I was in need of such. After the dishes were cleared away, I steered the conversation toward more serious things.

“Did you get to circulate among your lady friends today?” I asked Julia.

“I started out at the new baths this morning,” she reported. At the time it was the custom for women to use the facilities in the morning, men in the afternoon. “And after that I went to the perfume market and the jewelers’ market, and then to the Temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitol.”

“The Temple of Juno?”

“Every month at this time the patrician ladies gather there to practice the songs for the Matronalia.”

“I see.” Another of those women’s things I was going to have to get accustomed to. “And did this activity reap a rich reward?”

“Well, first off, everybody has an astrologer. But you aren’t interested in astrologers, are you?”

“As it happened, references to astrology were about the only occult things left out of Ateius’s curse.”

“I thought so. Once I’d cleared away the clutter of abortionists and fortune-tellers and so forth, I kept turning up three names: Eschmoun of Thapsus, Elagabal the Syrian, and Ariston of Cumae.”

“Ariston of Cumae? That doesn’t sound like a magician’s name. It sounds more like a professor of rhetoric.”

“Nonetheless, a good many well-born women regard him as an infallible seer and spirit-guide. He is supposed to be on familiar terms with the powers of the underworld.”

“It might have been worse. At least he’s not Ugbo the Wonder-Worker. And what business have these ladies with such powers?”

“A number of things. Communicating with dead relatives, who give them guidance during difficult times, and underworld spirits are supposed to be good at spying. The women ask what their husbands are up to.”

“Hmm. No wonder the Senate is always trying to drive them out of the City. Speaking of which-” I took the papyrus from inside my tunic and spread it on the table. “Just as I thought. All three of them are on the list of foreign magicians supposedly driven out of Rome three years ago.”

“What is that?”

So I explained to her about Aemilius Scaurus’s somewhat conditional zeal in suppressing the foreign cults.

“Then why are they still here?”

“Presumably, they were able to come up with Aemilius’s price.”

“That is a disgraceful way for a Roman official to carry on,” Julia said.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll be an aedile myself next year. I may have to accept the occasional handout from a questionable source, too.”

“But surely you would never deal with people as loathsome as these?” she said.

“Oh, I would never do that,” I murmured.

“Look. By all three names it says, ‘trafficker with the chthonians.’ None of the others has that particular description.”

I took the list and examined it. “You’re right. What a pity Aemilius Scaurus is in Sardinia and I can’t touch him. I’d love to question him as to why he let these three slide. Oh, well, I can do the next best thing, which is question the men themselves.”

“They’re an oddly assorted lot,” she noted. “A man from an old Carthaginian city with a Carthaginian name-Eschmoun was a god of Carthage, I believe-a Syrian, and an Italian Greek.”

“It does sound odd,” I agreed. “But then, they could be three slaves born within brick-throwing distance of this house, tricked out in foreign clothes, beards, and fake accents. That’s a pretty common dodge with frauds. Did you happen to find out where these three exotic specimens live?”

“Of course. Which will you begin with?”

“Whichever of them lives nearest. I have a suspicion that I won’t be up to much walking tomorrow.”