The Year of Confusion

11

“You let him get away?” Julia said witheringly.

“I didn’t let him get away,” I protested. “Hermes did.”

“The man ran like a gazelle,” Hermes said defensively. “I was catching up to him at first, but he vaulted the field walls without slowing down a bit. I had to take them slower. In the end I ran out of wind, and he didn’t.” We were back at the house. It was late afternoon.

Julia looked from one to the other of us as if at a pair of not-too-bright children. “And that doesn’t tell you something?”

“Enlighten us,” I said, nettled.

“It means he’s probably a highly trained athlete. Maybe even a professional. If so, he probably trains at a gymnasium. There are only a few in Rome. Check them all. Someone may know him.”

“I was about to suggest the same thing,” I said. She just snorted disgustedly. “All right, what else are we missing? Does the torture and death of Postumius suggest anything to you?”

She thought about that for a while. “Your friend Felix was right. It went on far too long just for information extraction. Whatever he knew, he must have spilled at the first threat. He had no sense of honor or loyalty, and what was anyone going to do to him that could be worse than what was coming? Someone was very, very displeased with Postumius.”

“You have a gift for understatement,” I commended, “but where does that leave us? Men like Postumius always have enemies. People resent being cheated, and sometimes they get carried away in their eagerness for revenge. It went far beyond mere punishment, but a touchy sense of honor causes some people to lose their sense of proportion.”

“That suggests patrician involvement,” Julia said. “Plebeians rarely have so extreme a sense of honor.”

“Back to Fulvia again,” Hermes said. “She may be shameless and scandalous, but you just can’t get more patrician.”

“That is true,” Julia concurred, “and she is just the sort to enjoy such a thing. She probably made use of a pair of hot pliers herself.”

“Let’s not make unwarranted assumptions,” I cautioned. “Just because you dislike Fulvia is no reason to place her in that room, wielding torture instruments with style and panache.”

“You are hopelessly naive. The woman is evil.”

“What of that? I’ve known a great many evil women in this city.”

“So you have,” she said ominously. It had been the wrong thing to say. She rose. “I am going to the evening ceremony at the Temple of Vesta. After that, I am joining Servilia and some other ladies for dinner and gossip. I’ll see if I can get anything useful from Servilia.”

“Excellent,” I said, happy for the change of subject. “If you see Brutus while you’re there, see if you can pump him about this transmigration of souls stuff. Something about what he’s been saying doesn’t add up.”

“I’ll do that. This has been a long day for you two. Don’t go out carousing. Get to bed early and look into the gymnasiums first thing in the morning.” She went out, followed by two of her serving girls.

“Between Julia and her uncle,” I said, “throwing in this mysterious assassin and the conspiracy that seems to surround him, I’m at a loss to know who terrifies me more.”

The next morning we set out to make the rounds of the gymnasiums. As Julia had said, Rome had only a few at the time. Recently the First Citizen has tried to revive interest in Greek-style athletics, but back then Roman men usually exercised at the baths, or went to the Field of Mars for military exercises like drilling and javelin-throwing or to the ludus for sword practice. The gymnasiums were patronized mainly by Greeks or people from Greek-influenced parts of the world.

The first we tried was located just outside the Lavernalis Gate, at the southwestern extremity of the city. It was always easier to find spacious, inexpensive land outside the walls than within, so if you needed generous grounds, that was where you went. Your place was likely to be destroyed if an enemy invaded, but that hadn’t happened for a generation, not since the Social War in Sulla’s day.

This one was located in a pleasant grove of plane trees and tall pines. In its forecourt was a fine statue of Hercules, the patron of athletes. A large field to one side offered facilities for those sports requiring space: running, the discus, and the javelin. Inside, it consisted simply of a long exercise yard floored with sand, where men and boys went through a number of exercises under the supervision of instructors. Here they vaulted, wrestled, and tossed the heavy ball.

In one corner a pair of burly men practiced pugilism. For sparring they wore leather helmets and their forearms were thickly wrapped with leather. Their hands were wrapped in padding as well. In a real bout their hands would be wrapped in hard leather straps, perhaps featuring the bronze caestus. They were finishing their bout as we came in, the trainer separating them with his staff. They removed their helmets and one of them wore the small topknot that identified a professional boxer.

It was easy enough to separate the Romans from the Greeks and would-be Greeks. The former wore loincloths and sometimes tunics while exercising. The latter worked out naked. The head trainer, carrying a silver-topped wand, saw us and approached.

“How may I help you, Senator?” He was sixty if he was a day, but as lean and hard as a legionary recruit after his first six months in the training camp, and he moved with an athlete’s springy grace. He made me ashamed of myself. I made a mental note to go to the ludus or the Field of Mars every day from now on until I was in good shape and the flab was gone from my waist. Julia was right.

“We are looking for an outstanding runner, a man about twenty-five to thirty years of age, medium height, dark hair, spare build. He is probably a native Roman.”

“Except for the Roman part you’ve described most of the best runners I know. Some are younger, of course.”

“This one is exceptionally good at vaulting while running full speed,” Hermes put in.

“That narrows it.” He scratched in his grizzled beard. “A couple of years back a man trained here for a while. Ran like the wind and loved cross-country racing. That calls for lots of vaulting, of course. He answered your description, too. A Roman. What was his name, now? Domitius, that was it, Caius Domitius.”

The man had been using the praenomen Caius, not that it meant much, but it was a possibility. “Do you have any information on him?” I asked. “Any records?”

He shook his head. “If he’d been a member who paid by the year or the month we’d have some record of him, but he just came in and paid by the day for use of the facility. Half the men who come through here are day users.”

Hermes had been scanning the athletes in the yard. “Did he work with a particular trainer?”

“He mostly worked out alone, like most cross-country runners, but I know he worked with at least one for technique drill. Let me see.” He whistled loudly and all activity stopped. Everyone looked puzzled as he crossed the yard, calling the trainers to him. When they were gathered he talked to them in a low voice.

“He doesn’t seem very curious about these questions,” Hermes noted.

“He’s a foreigner,” I said. “Ionic Greek, by his accent. Aliens are usually reluctant to delve too deeply into what looks like Roman trouble.”

The head trainer returned with another man, this one small and thin, the classic build of the long-distance runner. He was sandy-haired and had blue eyes, his skin deeply tanned.

“This is Aulus Paullus. He worked with the man you are asking after.”

The euphoniously named man nodded. “What do you need to know, Senator? I’m afraid I can’t tell you a lot. He wasn’t here long.” His accent was pure Latium: from the district around Rome. I took this as a good sign.

“First off, was the man a real Roman?”

“Talked like he was born within the pomerium, which is unusual for a long-distance runner. They’re usually from the rural areas or work as messengers for the big estates. City boys more often train for the dashes. You have to be able to endure a lot of pain to be a distance runner.”

“Yes, we urban people are soft and degenerate,” I agreed. “Do you have any idea of his status? Was he born free or a freedman?”

He thought about that for a while. “He spoke well, when he spoke at all. I think if he was born a slave, he must’ve been schooled with the master’s children.”

“But he didn’t speak much?” I asked.

“Mostly he was saving his wind for running.”

“Do you know if he competed in any of the major games?” Hermes asked. I should have thought of that.

“If you mean the Olympics or the Isthmian or any of the great ones in Greece, I don’t think so. Everyone who competes in those brags about it for the rest of his life, and Domitius never mentioned it.”

“There was a time,” the head trainer said sourly, “when only full-blooded Hellenes could compete in the great games. Now Romans can compete.”

“There was a time,” Hermes said, “when foreigners couldn’t be Roman citizens, too. Times change.”

“Let’s stick to the subject at hand,” I admonished.

“Sorry, Senator,” the head trainer said.

“Did he mention competing in games around here?” I pressed on.

“He said a couple of times a year he went south to run in the Greek games at Cumae. Most of the Greeks in Italy live down south. Didn’t mention taking home any prizes, though.”

“Are there any such games held at or near Rome?” I asked.

“None that feature cross-country running,” the head trainer said. “There’s an informal meet held at the Circus Flaminius on the calends of every month. Nothing official, no prizes or palms or wreaths awarded, but most of the serious athletes attend, to keep in practice for the major games. But the running events are all of the stadium sort. No long-distance races.”

They had no more to offer, and I thanked them. Hermes and I made our way to three other gymnasiums but none had any better prospects.

“So you think this Domitius is our man?” Hermes said as we lounged in the baths just off the Forum.

“It isn’t much,” I said, “but it’s the best lead we’ve got.”

“Domitius is a patrician name, isn’t it?”

“Only the ones surnamed Albinus, and that family is almost extinct, though their plebeian branch is still prominent. The rest are all plebeian. The Domitius Ahenobarbus and the Domitius Calvus families are plebeian. And there are plenty of plebeians named just plain Domitius.”

“Good. We don’t need more patrician involvement in this. It’s too bad there’s no long-distance running at the Flaminius on the calends. We might have caught him there.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I told him. “If he’s an enthusiast about Greek athletics, he might show up anyway, to watch the others compete. When is the calends?”

He shrugged. “Is this one of the thirty-one day months?”

“I’ve forgotten. It’s not that far off, but I hope we get this cleared up before then. Caesar was never a patient man and lately he’s become even less so.”

“Do you think Asklepiodes is right and Caesar is ill? What’s going to happen if he just drops dead?”

“I don’t like the prospect,” I admitted. “Everybody dies and Caesar is no exception, but if he dies now, the sort of men who will contend over the government fill me with dismay. Cicero is the best of them, but he has no real influence anymore, he’s just a senior voice in the Senate. It will be the likes of Antonius and Lepidus, maybe Cassius, and he’s not a bad man, just too reactionary. Sextus Pompey could return to Rome and have a try. With Caesar dead nobody would stop him and it would be civil war between him and Antonius inside a year.” I shook my head. “It’s a bad prospect.”

“So what happens if Caesar lives?” Hermes asked.

“Not good, but better. I don’t care about his building and engineering projects, but I’d like to see him finish his government reforms and his reordering of the constitution. Sulla did that and it’s served us well for a long time. If Caesar would do that and back down from office, handing off his powers as he retires, we just might make it through the next few years without a war of Roman against Roman and emerge with a stable political order. If he accomplishes that, Caesar’s name will live forever.”

“And if he dies soon?”

“He’ll be forgotten in a few years,” I pronounced, “just another failed political adventurer.” A fat lot I knew.

* * *

The man in question was recruiting manpower for his upcoming war. Most of the veterans of the long wars in Gaul had been given their discharges, though many were eager to rejoin the standards. Caesar had proven that he brought victory and loot, the two most important things to a Roman soldier. He was brilliant and he was lucky, and the latter was the most important qualification a general could have. Give a legionary a choice between a strong disciplinarian who is also a skilled tactician and a commander who is lucky, and he will pick the lucky one every time. To his soldiers, consistent good luck such as Caesar displayed was a sure sign that the gods loved him, and what more than that could one ask?

The legions numbered First, Second, Third, and Fourth since ancient times had been under the personal command of the consuls, and all four fell to Caesar’s command as dictator. It was these legions he was bringing up to full strength. The time was long past when a large army could be raised from the district around Rome, so Caesar was combing all of Italy and Cisalpine Gaul for recruits and sending them to his training camps. Most of these were located in Campania, since that district was extremely fertile and could support the troops, and because there were still wide public lands there, unclaimed by our greedier senators and equites, though they were hard at work on that problem. Good land never stayed out of aristocratic hands for long.

I, personally, thought that Caesar had finally taken on too great a task. Fighting brave but ill-organized Gauls was one thing; Parthia was quite another. Parthia was a vast, sprawling empire, and heir to the Persian Empire of the Great Kings. Of course, that was part of Parthia’s charm, as far as Caesar was concerned. Only Alexander had ever conquered Persia, and Caesar would inevitably be dubbed the new Alexander, should he succeed in doing the same.

Unfortunately, King Phraates was no Darius. Darius had been a palace-bred monarch who brought his harem with him on campaign and ran at the first reverse in battle. Phraates was a hard-living soldier-king. His Parthians were tough horse-archers recently off the eastern steppes who had invaded the empire and reinvigorated the tired old Persian blood.

Romans have always excelled in open battle, where we can close with the enemy and defeat him hand-to-hand. The Roman soldier with pilum and short sword is unmatched at this sort of combat. We are also preeminent at engineering and siege warfare. Unfortunately, the Parthians refused to oblige us by fighting our way. They are nomadic bowmen and think hand-to-hand combat undignified. At Carrhae they rode around the legions of Crassus in circles, pouring in volley after volley of arrows. The Romans crouched under their shields and waited for them to run out of arrows. Thus it had always happened before, but not this time. The Parthians brought up camels loaded with arrows and the storm never stopped. The Roman army couldn’t fight and it couldn’t run, so it died. A small band under Cassius managed to cut their way free and escaped. A pitiful remnant surrendered and was marched off into slavery.

If Caesar had some plan to negate this little advantage he wasn’t telling me about it, nor anyone else. He seemed to assume that his legendary luck would overcome anything. This was another reason I was determined not to follow him into any more of his military adventures. I had rolled the dice too many times to believe that good luck lasts forever.

That day he was on the field of Mars reviewing a cohort of his new troops that had marched in from Capua the evening before. They were bright in new equipment and their shields shone with fresh paint. Something looked odd about them and it took me a moment to realize that their helmets were made of iron instead of the traditional bronze. They had been made in the Gallic armories Caesar had captured in the war. The Gauls are the best ironworkers in the world.

I was not surprised to see a large number of senators standing about, observing. Besides the general Roman fascination with all things military, they were all curious about the latest manifestation of Caesar’s ambitions. They commented on equipment, on drill and discipline, on the alacrity with which the men obeyed orders conveyed by voice and trumpet. On command the soldiers advanced and hurled their pila, then drew their swords and charged upon their invisible enemy. Senators and other veterans in the crowd tut-tutted and lamented the decline in strength and fortitude since the days when they were legionaries in service against Jugurtha or Sertorius or Mithridates.

Some commented that the shorter, wider sword carried these days was not as effective as the old one, while others said that it encouraged aggressiveness, since a man had to get closer to use it. Someone thought it odd that men so young had weapons adorned with silver. Someone else said that Caesar issued them expensive weapons so they’d be less likely to drop them and run, raising a general laugh.

I had been hearing talk of this sort all my life, the old-timers forever denigrating the new recruits. In truth, they looked like excellent material to me, and sore experience had given me a good eye for soldiers. Most were just young and inexperienced, but there was a good salting of grizzled veterans among them. These would provide a steadying influence when the arrows started to fly and slingstones rang from the fine iron helmets. They would probably prove to be as good as any other soldiers Rome had fielded.

Caesar was resplendent as usual, sitting in a leopardskin-draped curule chair upon the big, marble reviewing stand dressed in his triumphal regalia complete with golden wreath. This time I saw a new touch to his turnout, and I was not alone.

“He’s wearing red boots!” said a scandalized old senator.

“What’s wrong with that?” demanded an idler. “Caesar can wear anything he wants!”

“Not red boots,” the old man insisted. “There was a time when only kings of Rome were allowed to wear them.”

Caesar’s impressive footwear resembled the thick-soled buskins worn by actors on the stage, elaborately strapped and pierced, and topped with spotted lynx skin. They would have been merely a showy affectation had not the color been an affront to the Senate, as I had no doubt was Caesar’s intention.

“He’s asking for trouble, isn’t he?” Hermes said in a low voice.

“He’s done little else for the last ten years,” I affirmed. “He adds a bit more royal glitter to his appearance from time to time, testing the waters. If the Senate is outraged, so what? Just so the people stay behind him. That’s where his power lies.”

“You think he really intends to be king?”

“I’ve tried to deny it for a long time,” I said, “but those boots may be a bit too much. He’s outdone the consuls of the past. Now he wants to outdo Alexander. What’s the one thing left that will place him unassailably ahead of every Roman who has ever lived?”

“King of Rome. But there have been kings before.”

I shook my head. “They were petty kings, lording it over an Italian city-state still being regularly whipped by the Etruscans. With Parthia added to his conquests and Cleopatra making him Pharaoh, he’ll effectively be emperor of the world.” I shrugged. “Well, never let it be said that Caesar lacks ambition.” I shut up when I saw a little band of senators heading my way. I plastered a silly smile on my face but I was too late. Cicero was among them, and he was steeped so deeply in the rhetorical arts that no nuance of facial expression escaped him.

“So, do you believe now, Decius?” Cicero said, gesturing toward the podium. Brutus and Cassius were with him, as on the day when Caesar had rebuked Archelaus. Lucius Cinna, Caesar’s former brother-in-law, was with them, and some others I did not know as well.

“What Caesar wants and what he can accomplish are not the same thing,” I said.

“Then it behooves us all,” Cassius said, “to assure that he does not accomplish his ambitions.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” I asked him.

He glanced at Cicero, but Cicero didn’t catch it. “Roman patriots have always found ways to frustrate the designs of tyrants.”

“Let me know as soon as you’ve found a way,” I told him.

“At least his soldiers look fit for battle,” Brutus said, changing the subject clumsily.

“So they do,” Cicero agreed, “and perhaps this war of his will be the best thing for all of us. It will keep him out of Italy for some time, perhaps a few years. Much can happen in that time.”

“And much will, I’ve no doubt,” said Cinna, “but not an election. Not as long as Caesar is dictator in perpetuity. All offices with imperium will go to men nominated by Caesar and confirmed by his tame assemblies. We’ll have tribunes of the plebs, but their power of veto is suspended while he is dictator, and what is a tribuneship without the veto? All they can do is propose the legislation he has already laid out for them.”

That was the real reason for the resentment of these men. Caesar was frustrating their own ambitions and humbling their pride. Except for Cicero, they were all men from the great families, men who thought high office to be their natural right, inherited from their ancestors. I had been such a man myself, once. When men prate of things like patriotism, you can be sure that self-interest is at the root of it.

“Caesar is not immortal,” Brutus said, a pronouncement that could be banal or fraught with meaning, depending on how you looked at it.

“He thinks himself godlike,” Cicero said lightly. “Let us hope that his fellow deities see fit to call him to join them soon.” The rest laughed, but without much humor.

They turned back toward the City gate and left me pondering. “Cassius is plotting something,” I said to Hermes, “but he doesn’t want to talk about it in front of Cicero.”

“I caught that,” he said. “But why, do you think? They all seem to be of a mind on the subject of Caesar and his power and ambition.”

“He could be planning something desperate, and Cicero is not a man you want to involve in desperate action. He’d lose his nerve at the last minute. He acted decisively and against popular opinion once in his career, when he put down the Catilinarian revolt. He’s been conservative and vacillating ever since. He’d be the weak reed in any conspiracy.”

“What is Cassius up to?”

“I don’t want to know.” It was all a great distraction. I had other things on my mind.

That evening Julia filled me in on what she had learned the previous night.

“Servilia is definitely on the outs with her dear little Brutus, and she doesn’t really approve of his friends lately, Cassius and Cinna and that lot.”

“Why not? They positively reek of nobility and old-fashioned Roman virtue.”

“I think it’s because they’re so vehemently anti-Caesarian. I, on the other hand, am most definitely in the Caesarian camp so she feels she can confide in me. She wants Brutus close to Caesar and wishes he’d go back to his old moneylending habits. She loathes the business as ill-bred, but at least it’s politically neutral.”

“Anything about the astrologers? The exotic woman in particular?”

“No, and every time I tried to bring the subject up-discreetly, of course-nobody seemed much interested. Atia was there and she had a whole collection of omens from all over Italy. She must employ people just to collect them. So everybody was talking about a two-headed goat born in Bruttium and an eagle that snatched a child in Cumae and a statue of Scipio Africanus in Nola that wept blood.”

“And what did these ladies discern from such prodigies?”

“That something dreadfully important is going to happen.”

“Something dreadfully important is always going to happen. What of that?”

“They all believe that it will concern them personally.”

“Did they say why, other than that this lot never needs much excuse to see the will of the gods at work in all their doings?”

“They were noticeably reticent on that point.”

“Because they fear what they say to you will get back to Caesar?”

“Most likely.”

“At least Atia should be in your camp, since she wants her vaguely Caesarian brat to inherit. She may want to call upon you privately soon.”

“In fact, as we were leaving she asked if she might do exactly that tomorrow after the morning ceremony at Vesta’s.”

“Do you patrician women do anything that doesn’t revolve around that temple?”

“It’s convenient. Common women get together at the corner fountain or the laundry to meet and gossip. The rich freedwomen and wives of the equites gather at the expensive shops on the north end of the Forum. We have the Temple of Vesta. To be terribly honest, very few even pay attention to the ceremonies except on special days.”

“I always thought it must be something like that. Like senators at the baths in the afternoon.”

I told her about our barely productive visit to the gymnasia, then about the military review on the Field of Mars. Her face fell when I told her about the boots.

“He’s giving his enemies a sword to use against him, isn’t he?” she said.

“I’m afraid so. Everything else they’ve been able to swallow, albeit with poor grace: the triumphal regalia, the ivory staff, the wreath-they’re all the things we allow a triumphing general, although only for a day. But the trappings of royalty? That’s different. The day he shows up in the Senate wearing a diadem there will be a revolt.”

“Do you think he’ll go that far?”

“I fear that the day isn’t far off,” I assured her.

One of Julia’s slaves came in. “There is a messenger outside. He says he bears a missive for my mistress from Callista of Alexandria.”

My eyebrows went up. “What might this portend?”

“I can think of a very easy way to find out,” Julia said. “Send him in.”

The messenger was dressed in the tradition of his guild in a white tunic that exposed one shoulder, brimmed red hat with the silver wings of Mercury attached, sandals with similar wings, and a wing-topped wand twined with serpents. He handed Julia a rolled and sealed letter. I tipped him and told him to wait in the atrium in case she should wish to return a reply. Julia unrolled the thing and read it for an unconscionably long time.

“Well,” I fretted, my patience at an end, “what is it?”

“Don’t rush me, dear, you know I don’t like that.”

So I snapped my fingers at a slave and the well-trained man instantly refilled my cup. It was, as I recall, an excellent Massic.

“It begins with the usual pleasantries. She calls me her sister and says that I have not called upon her in far too long, that she has missed my company dreadfully, yet she doesn’t overdo these formalities the way so many women do. She is a woman of the most exquisite taste.”

“I daresay,” I muttered.

“She invites us to a salon to be held the evening after tomorrow and apologizes for the short notice.”

“Aha!” I said, my ears pricking up finally.

“Aha what?”

“Just aha. Do go on.”

“She says that some astronomers of her acquaintance will be attending.”

“This sounds promising. Perhaps she’s found out something for us.”

“But here is the most interesting part. She says that at sundown, the whole group will go to a small banquet at Cleopatra’s villa.”

“Interesting, indeed. What is the woman up to?”

Julia smiled. “I just can’t wait to find out.”