The Tribune's curse

7

Elagabal the Syrian, it turned out, had his dwelling in the northern part of the Subura, near the Quirinal. This was a relief because, as I had predicted, I awakened in even worse shape than the day before. Amid much loud groaning I was once again massaged and shaved and shoved out the front door. I dismissed my solicitous clients and trudged through the cheerfully raucous morning bustle of my district. Here and there people recognized me and called out congratulations or wished me good fortune. Yes, it was good to be back in Rome, even in the poorest district.

There was no mistaking the house of Elagabal when I came to it. The facade was painted red, and flanking the doorway were a pair of man-headed, winged lions. Over the door was painted a serpent swallowing its tail. Not your typical, cozy little domus. It was two stories, and a trellis ran around its upper periphery, draped with climbing plants spangled with multicolored flowers.

When I tried to enter, a hulking brute stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. He had a black, square-cut beard and suspicious little eyes flanking a nose like a ship’s ram.

“Do you have business with my master?”

“Is your master Elagabal the Syrian?”

“He is.”

“Then I do.”

The man stood, unmoved. Perhaps the little exchange had been too complicated for him. While he sought to sort out its nuances, someone spoke up from behind him.

“This man is a senator. Let him in.”

The hulk stood aside, and I passed within. I found myself in an atrium that had been converted into something resembling a ceremonial temple entrance. Several statues stood there, in human form but in very stiff poses.

“I apologize for Bessas. He defends my privacy with great skill but little wisdom.” The man was thin with a vaguely Eastern cast of countenance, wearing a long robe and a pointed cap. His beard was likewise pointed.

“I take it that I address Elagabal?”

“At your service,” he said, bowing with the fingers of one hand spread over his breast.

“Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, senator and current candidate for next year’s aedileship.”

“Ah, a most important office,” he said.

“One with which you’ve had some official dealings, I understand.”

“Is this an official visit, Senator?” he asked.

“Of a sort.”

He appeared unapprehensive. “Official or social, there is no need to be uncomfortable. Please accept the hospitality of my house. If you will follow me, we may be comfortable above.”

We went up a flight of stairs and came out onto a splendid little roof garden, some of the plantings of which I had seen from the street below. At the corners, orange trees stood in great earthenware pots, and the trellises arched overhead so that, in summer, they would provide shade. Now, in November, the growth had been trimmed back but was still luxuriant. In its center a tiny stream of water bubbled in a delightful little fountain. There were few parts of Rome with sufficient water pressure to get even that much water up to what was, in effect, the third floor of a building.

At Elagabal’s gesture I took a seat at a little table, and he sat opposite me. Moments later a young slave woman appeared with a tray set with the expected refreshments, along with some strips of flat bread strewn with granules of coarse salt.

“If you will indulge me in a custom of my country, bread and salt form the traditional offering to a newly arrived guest. It is the ancient token of hospitality.”

“I am familiar with the custom.” I took one of the strips of bread and ate it. It was still hot from the oven and astonishingly good. The serving girl stood by silently. She was barefoot, wearing a simple wrap of scarlet cloth fringed with yellow yarn that covered her from armpits to knees. Bangles at wrists and ankles were her only adornments. Her heavy, black hair was waist length, and she kept her gaze demurely down, with none of the offhand insolence you so often see in Roman slaves. Maybe these Syrians were onto something, I thought.

Unlike many Romans I have a certain crude regard for other people’s customs, and I knew that, in the East, one did not bring up the subject of business immediately. To do so was a sign of rudeness and ill breeding.

“The gods in your atrium,” I said, choosing a mundane subject, “which of them is Baal?”

He smiled. “They all are.”

“All?”

“Baal in my language just means ‘Lord.’ In my part of the world, we seldom or never use the actual names of our gods. This practice is so ancient that those names have sometimes been forgotten. So we address each deity by his best-known aspect or his location. Thus Baal Tsaphon is Lord of the North, Baal Shamim is Lord of the Skies, Baal Shadai is Lord of the Mountain, and so forth. A goddess is Baalat, which means, of course, ‘Lady.’ ”

“I see. Is this true of all the lands east of Egypt?”

“To an extent. In the various dialects Baal is honored. To the Babylonians he is Bel, to the Judeans El, to the Phoenicians and their colonies, Bal. The word forms a part of many names. My own name translates, from very archaic language, as ‘My Lord Has Been Gracious.’ Baal is also a part of the Carthaginian name best known to you Romans: Hannibal.”

“Fascinating,” I said. He seemed to be a learned man, not the wide-eyed fanatic I had half expected. “I have never been to that part of the world-no farther east than Alexandria.”

“Perhaps your duties will take you to my homeland someday. Even now your proconsul Crassus wends his way thither.”

“It is concerning something touching that expedition that my errand brings me here this morning.”

“I am far from the high ranks of power, merely a humble priest. But whatever poor knowledge I have is at your disposal; this goes without saying.”

“Undoubtedly you know of the scandalous act of the tribune Ateius Capito upon the departure of Crassus?”

He raised his hands in an Eastern gesture imploring protection from baleful powers. “All Rome has heard of this! I rejoice that I was not there when it happened. Such a curse contaminates all who witness it. He is lucky to be a serving official of Rome. In my own land he would be subjected to the most terrible punishments for such an offence to the gods.”

“I am pleased that you appreciate the gravity of the act. I have been commissioned to investigate this sacrilege.”

“I am flattered to be called upon. But the curse, as it was repeated to me, involved none of the Baalim. This is the plural form,” he added, although I had guessed the meaning already.

“Even so, it is thought that foreign influence may be present.”

“Ah,” he said, ruefully. “And your Roman officials are always wary of the corrupting influence of foreigners, despite your habit of packing the City with them in the form of slaves.”

“Precisely. Three years ago, during the aedileship of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, there was a purge of Rome’s foreign cults. Your name was on the list of those to be driven from the City, yet I find you still here. How comes this about?”

He made a truly comprehensive gesture involving hands, shoulders, neck, and head, indicative of all things unknowable and unavoidable, combined with all things eminently mutable and subject to arbitrary change, ever altering, yet ever remaining the same. I have never known a people as eloquent in their gestures as the Syrians.

“The honorable aedile and I came to an agreement whereby I was to remain in the City, so long as I refrain from any unnatural practices and do not disturb the neighbors.” He smiled broadly. “You have said that you stand for that same office, and surely so eminent a gentleman as yourself will have no difficulty in securing it. I do trust that we shall be able to come to a similar understanding?”

So he thought I was here soliciting a bribe. He knew his Roman officials, all right.

“That’s as may be,” I said vaguely, knowing how strapped for money I would soon be, “but just now I am more concerned with that curse. The list of foreign priests to be sent away listed you and two others as ‘traffickers with the chthonians.’ How does this refer to you?”

He quirked an eyebrow upward. “Chthonian? That is not a word I encounter every day. Greek, is it not? Indicating things of the underworld?”

“Yes. In Rome, our chthonians mostly came to us by way of the Greeks and Etruscans. We Romans were a rustic lot. Our gods were those of the fields and rivers and the weather.”

“I see. This must account for your fondness for pastoral poetry.”

“Please,” I said. “I regard pastoral poetry as one of the blights of this age. Epic is the only worthwhile verse form as far as I am concerned.”

“Spoken like the scion of an heroic people. Now, as to the chthonians, some of the Baalim are lords of the underworld and have as their servants whole legions of imps ever eager to torment the living. These can deliver to my-my associates,” he chose a legally innocuous term, “certain valuable services, always protective and always secured by means of perfectly respectable ceremonies, I assure you.”

“But none of these deities were named in the tribune’s curse?”

“None.”

“Two other such traffickers were named along with you on Aemilius’s list: Eschmoun of Thapsus and Ariston of Cumae. What can you tell me about them?”

Another gesture, this time contemptuous. “As for Eschmoun, you will waste your time talking with him. He is a fraud from Africa, of mixed Libyan descent. He claims to commune with the underworld through a serpent that resides in a golden egg. What he actually does is bilk wealthy ladies of large sums of money by bringing them messages from their dead husbands, children, and other relatives. He is exceptionally good at discerning what it is that his clients long to hear. He has purloined the name of a Carthaginian god and taken upon his shoulders the mantle of power still clinging to that thankfully destroyed city.”

“ ‘Thankfully’?” I said. “You have no esteem for Carthage? And yet were the Punic people not relatives of yours?”

He grimaced. “Distant kin at the very most. The Phoenicians founded Carthage many centuries ago, and the Punic race worshiped the Baalim, but their practice grew very degraded even as the city grew rich and powerful. As you are aware, they performed the most frightful acts of human sacrifice.”

“They were barbarians, however well they dressed,” I said.

“Even so, their practices must have given some satisfaction to their gods, for those deities blessed them with many victories. In the end, of course,” he added hastily, “the gods and arms of Rome prevailed, praise be to all the Baalim.”

“It was a rough fight,” I admitted, “but it made soldiers of us.”

I was putting it mildly. The First Punic War alone had been twenty-four uninterrupted years of solid campaigning-land battles, sea battles, and sieges. The Carthaginians had thrashed us far more times than we beat them, but in the end we were a matchlessly warlike, military nation for good or ill. Before, we had just fought our Italian neighbors and expanded our territory incrementally in the peninsula. But we won Sicily from Carthage, and with it our first taste of empire. By the end of the Third Punic War, we had holdings in Spain, Gaul, and Africa, and Carthage was a pile of rubble.

“Ariston is another matter. He is a very deep scholar of the ways of gods and spirits. Many aspiring scholars and historians consult him on these matters.”

“And what sort of cult does he lead?”

A shrug. “I was unaware that he had any such. Of course, men involved in arcane studies often excite malicious and fearful rumors. Perhaps some superstitious or malevolent person gave false information against him.”

“That may have been it.” I stood. “Well, I thank you for your help and hospitality. I am sure that I shall be able to report that you had nothing to do with the tribune’s scandalous behavior.” I was sure of nothing of the sort, but neither was I under oath.

“I rejoice in meeting you, Senator,” he said as he led me back to his door. “Soon you will be an official of great authority, and I have learned that previous acquaintance makes one such far more approachable.” He was still expecting to bribe me. I said nothing to discourage his assumption.

It was a fairly lengthy walk to the house of Eschmoun, which was just off the old Forum Boarium, in a block of tenements that were foul even by Roman standards. Beside his doorway were painted all sorts of trashy mystical signs, and I was sure I would find a filthy, wild-eyed loon within. What I found instead was the well-appointed town house of a man of considerable means.

Eschmoun himself was a plausible, smooth mountebank, as described by Elagabal. The rogue proudly displayed his mystical egg, a handsome object of smooth gold the size of a child’s head. I had to take for granted the residence within of the holy serpent. Eschmoun, too, tried to bribe me, and again I ignored the attempt, while leaving the impression that I might be back sometime. His occult knowledge clearly extended only to his confidence spiel, and fleecing wealthy, gullible ladies is far down on my list of intolerable offenses.

It was another long walk to the dwelling of Ariston, and I stopped on the way for lunch and a brief rest. I was loosening up, and walking had become moderately tolerable. Passing through the Forum, I saw Milo returning from his morning court. I asked him if anything had been heard from our eccentric tribune.

“Not a word or a sighting since the curse,” he informed me. “He has a gang surrounding his house, but no petitioners have been able to get through to see him.”

“Then he can be impeached,” I said.

“If someone is willing to bring charges. And if he can be located. The house may be empty. The populares are concerned for the institution of the tribuneship. If he’s disappeared, they may be pretending to protect him from assault to prevent a wider scandal.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that the bugger’s hanged himself.”

“He didn’t strike me as so obliging a man.”

So I continued on my walk, all the way to the Esquiline Gate and out of the City. This was one of the most undesirable districts of Roman territory, where the poor were buried. Besides the depressing clay tombs of the poor, a part of the district included the notorious “putrid pits,” where the poorest of the poor, the unclaimed slaves, and foreigners and dead animals unfit for salvage were thrown into lime pits. In the hot days of summer, the wind blowing from that quarter carried an utterly appalling stench. It was none too fragrant in winter, for that matter.

In more recent years, Macaenas has covered over these pits and replaced them with his beautiful gardens. For this civic improvement I can almost forgive his being the First Citizen’s crony.

The learned Ariston actually lived in a house not far from these notorious pits. It was a two-story affair standing by itself, like a country villa, only much smaller. Its only plantings consisted of a small herb garden, and its only neighbors were some very modest tombs and a few small shrines.

At least his doorway and walls were devoid of magical images, I noted with some relief. My tolerance for supernatural paraphernalia has never been high. The slave who answered my knock at this unadorned portal was a middle-aged man. When I announced my name and mission, he ushered me inside, where an undistinguished woman his own age was sweeping. Ariston didn’t seem to share Elagabal’s taste for attractive, docile young serving women. Stoic, probably. Minutes later a man entered the atrium.

“Yes, what may I do for you?” No extravagant signs of welcome or offers of hospitality, just this rather abrupt greeting. The man had a tangled, gray beard with matching hair, and he wore Greek clothing. I took this for an affectation. Cumae was once a Greek colony, but it had been a Roman possession for two hundred years.

“You are Ariston of Cumae?” I asked.

“As it happens, yes. Aside from being a senator, what distinguishes you from the rest of the citizenry?” Obviously, this fellow was going to be difficult. Maybe he was a Cynic rather than a Stoic.

“My commission, which is to investigate the curse delivered by the Tribune of the People Marcus Aemilius Capito. Living where you do, you might not have heard of the affair.”

“I’ve heard. I live here by choice; I’m not an exile on some island. Come along, then. I have to look at my garden.”

I followed the peculiar specimen back outside. “I rather thought you lived here because you were driven from the City three years ago by the aediles.”

“Nonsense. I’m a Roman citizen; I can live anywhere I like.” He stooped to examine a sickly looking plant.

“Then why here? Most don’t consider it a desirable district.”

He gestured toward the surrounding tombs and the pillars of smoke ascending from the lime pits. “The neighbors here are quiet and don’t bother me much. That way they don’t disturb my studies.”

“You’re sure it’s not because proximity gives you the opportunity to commune with the dead?”

He straightened and glared from beneath tangled brows. “Most of those interred here were ignorant fools whom death has improved in no way whatever. Why should I want to talk with them?”

“Report has it that necromancy and trafficking with the chthonians are your specialties,” I said, undeterred.

“There is a difference between being a scholar of these things and being a fraudulent sorcerer,” he informed me with great dignity.

“And yet you enjoy a great reputation among my wife’s more superstitious lady friends, who can scarcely be accused of scholarship.”

His face clouded. “And what if I sometimes sell them the occasional charm or counsel them concerning the fate of the dead? Even a scholar has to eat.”

“I quite understand,” I said with patent insincerity.

“Listen, Senator,” he said, nettled, “Marcus Tullius Cicero himself does not scorn to come to me with questions about obscure gods and ancient religious practice. He has come here many times in the course of his researches and has asked me to read the drafts of his writings on the ways of the gods, solar and lunar, earthly and chthonian.”

This actually was most impressive. A man as deeply learned as Cicero would not allow anyone to edit his work except a scholar of equal credentials. I made a mental note to question Cicero about the man.

“Then you must indeed be what you say. That being the case, you are probably an authority on the extraordinary and alarming deities invoked by Ateius Capito some few days past.”

“I am. And if there is one thing I hate, it is the performance of dangerous, exacting rituals by an amateur!”

“You mean the curse was not well-done?”

“Oh, he carried it off well enough. Magical practice, on the level of ritual, is simply a matter of memorization; and if there is one thing every politician can do, it is memorize. The schools of rhetoric teach little else.”

“I knew that conventional temple ritual works that way. The flamines and pontifices have to memorize interminable formulae in languages nobody understands anymore. Is it the same with sorcery?”

“Oh, yes.” He lost some of his irascibility as he launched into his favorite subject. “The greatest difficulty may be encountered in assembling the very specialized apparatus and materials required to carry out a particular ritual. If, for instance, your ceremony requires the mummified hand of an Egyptian pharaoh, it isn’t something you can just pick up in the stalls around the Forum. You might have to travel all the way to Egypt to secure such a thing, and even then it can be difficult to distinguish such a hand from the appendage of a lesser person.”

“I can well imagine. The Egyptians are sharp traders.” I said this with considerable conviction, having been there.

“Even with something as simple as herbs and other plants,” he gestured to his well-kept garden, “it is best to grow your own. That way you are sure of purity and authenticity.”

I found myself fascinated despite my skepticism. It is always interesting to hear a real expert expound upon the arcana of his realm.

“How do men of learning such as yourself acquire these-these objects and assure yourselves of their quality?” I was remembering the nameless things Ateius had tossed into his brazier.

He glanced at me shrewdly. “If you need leopards for the shows you will be giving, how do you expect to get them? They aren’t sold in the Forum Boarium.”

“I’ll contact one of the hunting guilds in Africa Province.”

“And you will probably do this through the propraetor governing Africa, will you not? And is he not a man who was once an aedile himself, required to do exactly the same thing?”

“I see where this is leading. There is a sort of brotherhood of magicians who know how to contact one another and trust each other’s honesty and expertise?”

He actually smiled. “Exactly! Throughout the lands around the sea, there are scholars like myself, practicing sorcerers, priests of many deities, all able to call upon one another at need. It takes a lifetime to build up such an acquaintanceship, but it is an invaluable resource.”

He walked to a small marble bench beneath a stately cypress and sat. While we had been talking, the slave woman had brought out a pitcher and cups. I sat by him and accepted one.

“So, what did you mean when you said that Ateius is an amateur, even though he performed his curse competently?”

He brooded for a moment. “Sorcery, the deepest practice of magic, is a terribly serious business. I do not speak here of the petty magics practiced by witches. I mean the summoning of the often malevolent spirits of wasteland and underworld. It is not sufficient that this work be done by knowledgeable persons. It should be approached only by those who possess great strength of character, inner fortitude, and true nobility of soul.”

“And why might this be?”

“Because one who is easily corrupted by the temptations of power will be instantly and utterly corrupted by the beings whom the greater gods have driven into the wasteland or beneath the earth. The practice is intensely dangerous to the practitioner. Cicero is a splendid man, and deeply learned, but he knows better than to practice any of the arcane arts we have discussed. Not only does he consider them ignoble, but he is very aware of his own weaknesses in this area.”

This was a shrewd comment. I admired Cicero above all other Romans of the day, but I, too, had seen how his thirst for power and distinction had lessened him. Once a young orator with all of Cato’s rectitude and none of Cato’s repulsive bigotry, he had over the years acquired an unseemly self-importance and a querulous indignation at being thwarted and denied the highest levels of influence and prestige. How interesting to learn that he recognized this himself.

“I take it that Ateius Capito is not such a man?”

“He is not.”

“Then you know him?”

“I do. Like many another, he has come to me over the years for instruction, which I imparted to him freely, as I do to all serious students. I daresay that some of the obscure deities he invoked are ones he learned from me.”

“And you taught him these things knowing him to be a man of poor character?”

He snorted. “Those names possess little power in themselves. They have been largely forgotten, not suppressed. The Romans came to a respect for the chthonians late in their history, but it was not so for the other Italian peoples-the Samnites and Campanians, the Falisci, the Sabines, the Marsi, the Paeligni, the Umbrians, above all the Etruscans. And I need hardly point out that southern Italy was largely Greek until a short time ago. My own home city of Cumae was founded as a Greek colony more than a thousand years ago, and my ancestors knew all those people well. In fact, the people of this peninsula have been more intimate with the underworld than all the rest of the world together.”

“I’ve had some experience with the local witch cults,” I admitted. It was an episode I preferred not to think about.

“Then you have some understanding of this. Well, Ateius Capito was a rising young politician and a minor scholar. He was agreeable, as politicians usually are when they want to be; he was quick and intelligent. But I soon discerned that he wanted the knowledge I had to impart in order to gain political advantage over his opponents, as such men often do.”

This caught me by surprise. “He was not the only man in Roman politics who has come to you?”

“Far from it. Power is power to them. When I was still living in Cumae, I was even consulted by the Dictator Sulla, who was famously attached to magical things, attributing all his successes to a unique relationship with the goddess Fortuna. He was also, I might add, easily duped by frauds. A man who is incredibly astute in his chosen field is often an utter fool in another.

“But whether intelligent and statesmanlike or merely grasping, such men care only for power, not for knowledge. A genuine scholar, like a philosopher, cares only for knowledge.”

I had my reservations about that. “When did Ateius last come to you?”

“Let me see, it could not have been in this year; his office has kept him far too busy for that. He came rather frequently beginning about four years ago, but his visits became fewer as he realized that I was not going to impart to him any genuinely fearsome secrets. I suppose he was last here about eighteen months ago, and then he was so preoccupied with his campaign for the tribuneship that his visit was at best perfunctory.”

“And what was he after that last visit?”

“Words and names of power, what else? He wanted me to help him influence the election! Absurd!” He snorted, above all such petty considerations as he was.

I had been wondering how to lead into the crux of my investigation without giving too much away, and this provided me with an opportunity.

“There are some in our higher pontifical offices,” I said delicately, “who suspect that he may have employed just such words or names.” I could not be more specific than that. “Would you know if he did?”

His look was frosty. “If he did, he learned none such from me!”

With this rather conditional denial he rose, and taking his cup, he walked into the nearby field, studded with its humble graves. He stopped at one of them, a mere stone marker crudely carved with a name. Beside the stone was a clay pipe that led into the ground below. Into this pipe Ariston emptied his cup.

“This one was a terrible drunkard,” he said. “He murdered his wife and children, then hanged himself. If he doesn’t get a drink from time to time, he disturbs the neighborhood.” He favored me with a less frosty glance. “It doesn’t pay to underestimate even dead men.”

We walked back to his house, and there I took my leave of him. “I thank you for your cooperation. This has been most informative. I may need to call upon you again.”

“Feel free to do so. Please give my regards to Cicero. Tell him it has been too long since I have seen him.” With that, he went back inside.

I began to walk back toward the City. As I made my way homeward, I reflected that this extraordinary investigation was bringing me into contact with some decidedly odd people. In the course of a single day, I had interviewed a priest of Syrian gods, a mountebank with a magical egg, and now a proud scholar-philosopher and friend of Cicero who was not above selling the occasional spell, charm, or cantrip to gullible customers. Rome is a city of such incredible variety. No wonder I have always hated to be away from her.

That evening, I discussed my findings with Julia, while she displayed, for my horrified edification, the clothing and adornments she had purchased for the reception at the Egyptian Embassy.

“I think Eschmoun sounds the most promising,” she said. “What do you think of these earrings?” She held them up to her delicate lobes.

“Lovely,” I said, a sudden pain shooting through my head. “Emeralds go so well with your eyes. Why Eschmoun? The man is nothing but a mountebank.”

“That is why I suspect him. He convinced you so easily that he is just a cheap trickster. That means he is hiding deep secrets. What about these green-tinted pearls?”

“They go well with the emeralds. No, I am not entirely satisfied with Ariston of Cumae.”

“Cicero’s friend? He seems to have been open and cooperative.”

“That means little. Every villain who knows his business knows how to seem open and cooperative.”

“But you pride yourself on spotting these subterfuges,” she pointed out. “This gown is half silk. Shall I wear it?”

I didn’t even want to think of what it cost. Half silk! “Please do. What he said didn’t rouse my suspicion. What he didn’t say did.”

“How subtle. Do go on.” She admired herself in a polished silver mirror.

“He was on Scaurus’s exile list, but he is still in Rome. Well, just outside the City, but you know what I mean. Elagabal as much as admitted that he secured his own situation with a substantial bribe and would be all too happy to perform the same tribute to me. So did Eschmoun.”

“And did you ask Ariston?”

“You don’t ask a citizen a question like that except in court or at least with a praetor’s authority, as an appointed iudex. No, a certain indirection was called for.”

“Are you sure he’s a citizen?” She tried pushing her hair into a pile atop her head.

“The Cumaeans have had full citizenship at least since Marius’s day, maybe before. If he’s really a Greek, he must be one of the last Cumaean Greeks alive. The place was taken over by the Campanians centuries ago.”

“You rarely hear about Cumae, except for the sibyl. Everybody knows about the Cumaean sibyl. Well, we already know Scaurus went easy on the accused citizens.”

“I’m sure he required hefty payments from them, though,” I said. “And that’s what bothers me. Here is a prestigious, but penurious, scholar, reduced to selling spells, living frugally in a humble house on what has to be absolutely the cheapest real estate in all of Roman territory. What did he bribe Scaurus with?”

This, finally, took her mind off her preparations. “That is a good question. Might it have been the bribe itself that impoverished him?”

“That’s a thought, but he spoke as if he’s lived there for longer than just the last three years. I’ll have to ask Cicero.”

“Do that,” she advised. “Do you think Cicero will be at the embassy tomorrow?”