The Year of Confusion

2

The next few days I spent arguing or fleeing as whole delegations of aggrieved citizens came to protest about the new calendar. At first it was businessmen, whose rents or other income were customarily calculated by the month, concerned about the phantom months so blithely dismissed by Caesar. Furthermore, word got about with incredible swiftness and soon the priests of a hundred temples descended upon Rome, furious that festivals had to be delayed or eliminated altogether, and what was I going to do about it? Then there were the officials of towns who depended upon the crowds of celebrants who came to town for those same festivals every year and left a great deal of money in their passing.

Like Roscius, there were many prominent men who had planned munera for December to honor their deceased ancestors, that being the traditional month for such obsequies, and the commons were furious at being cheated out of these shows, which had become as popular as any of the official games.

Then there were the heirs. The law was quite strict concerning the waiting time between the death of a propertied man and the day his heirs could claim their inheritance. A good many were supposed to lay their hands upon the old man’s money and property during those three missing months, and their patrimonies and all bequests were now in a state of uncertainty. Naturally, they all blamed me.

From a position of great esteem, I had suddenly become the most unpopular man not just in Rome, but in the whole of Italy. Naturally, I took my distress to Caesar who, just as naturally, was highly unimpressed.

“They will grow used to it,” he told me. “Just wait them out.”

“They won’t grow used to it anytime soon,” I said. “And then it will be too late for me. I am being threatened with massive lawsuits by men who believe that I have cost them a fortune.”

“They cannot sue. You have broken no law.”

“Since when has that meant anything to rich men faced with the prospect of growing less rich? They want to hurl me from the Tarpeian Rock then drag me on a hook down the Tiber steps! There is no greater crime than costing rich men money!”

“They’ll make it all back in the next year,” Caesar insisted.

“They don’t understand that! Our old calendar was unwieldy and difficult to understand, but it was customary and people were used to it. Now they have to learn something new. People hate to have to learn something new.”

“All too true,” Caesar sighed. “A new calendar, a new constitution, a new vision of Rome and the world, people balk at these things. They must be guided by those of us who have vision.”

“You’re getting philosophical again,” I warned. “They don’t want philosophy. They want their money and their amusements. Withhold these things from them and they withhold their favor, and that is something even a dictator must avoid.”

He sighed. “Send the worst cases to me. I will somehow find time to hear their complaints and satisfy them. I have truly momentous matters demanding my attention, but I suppose I must deal with these people, if you can’t.”

If this last was supposed to shame me, it was one of Caesar’s rare failures. I didn’t care in the least if he considered me incapable. The less work he saddled me with the better, as far as I was concerned. Of course, he’d just find something else for me to do.

Senators had little rest during Caesar’s dictatorship. He thought an idle Senate was a breeding ground for plotters and that senators owed Rome service in return for their privileged status. In truth, the Senate had grown disgracefully lethargic in the previous years. Except for occasional military or governing duties, both of which were expected to be profitable, few senators felt inclined to bestir themselves on behalf of the state.

With Caesar in charge, we were allowed no such lassitude. Every man who wore the senator’s stripe had to be ready at all times to undertake demanding duties and to travel to any part of our empire to perform them. From overseeing repair work on the roads of Italy to curbing the behavior of a client king to planning a giant banquet for the whole citizenry, we had to be ready to carry out his orders at once. The senators didn’t like it, but they also disliked the prospect of being dead, which was a distinctly likely alternative.

So I continued to press the advantages of the new calendar upon a sullen public, and Caesar was able to placate or intimidate the worst complainers. I thought the worst was over when, on the first day of the new year and the new calendar, Hermes came to me with distressing news.

“There’s been a murder,” he said without preamble.

“I believe there is a court to handle just such cases.”

“It’s a dead foreigner.”

“That narrows it. Let the praetor peregrinus handle it.”

“A dead foreign astronomer,” he told me.

I knew things were going too well. “Which one?”

“Demades.”

I sighed mournfully. “Well, he’s too old for it to be an aggrieved husband. I don’t suppose he just wandered into the wrong alley and got his throat cut for whatever was in his purse?”

“I think we’d better go look,” he said.

“It’s the first day of the year,” I told him. “I should go sacrifice at the Temple of Janus.”

“You never bothered to before,” he pointed out.

“That’s irrelevant. Today I’d rather sacrifice than go see some old dead Greek.”

“You want to wait until Caesar orders you to?”

He was right. Caesar held those astronomers in high esteem and would take the murder of one as a personal affront. “Oh, well. I suppose I must. Who brought the news?”

He called in a slave from the Temple of Aesculapius, identifiable by the little serpent-wound staff he carried as a sign that he had permission to leave the temple enclosure. I questioned him but the man knew only that Demades was dead and he had been sent to summon me. He insisted that there was no slave gossip about the matter. I sent him back with word that I would be there soon and turned to Hermes.

“How is it possible there’s no slave gossip? Slaves gossip about everything.”

“Either he’s keeping quiet about it, or the body was somehow discovered before the slaves found out about it and the high priest has kept anyone from seeing anything.”

“That’s not good,” I said. “I’m hoping for a simple, casual murder. I may be disappointed. Well, I’m often disappointed, I should be used to it. Come on, let’s go have a look.”

So we left the house and made our way through the City and across the Forum. This being the first of January, the new magistrates would be taking office. In ordinary years, this was a rather festive occasion, but since the new officeholders were for all practical purposes Caesar’s appointees, there wasn’t much excitement.

We went down the Vicus Tuscus toward the river and passed the Temple of Janus, god of beginnings and endings, busy with the usual sacrifices and ceremonies of the new year. I learned that the ceremonies were rather confused since the previous year had ended so abruptly and the priests had not even had time to conclude the year-end ceremonies. I decided that it would be a bad idea to present myself at the Temple of Janus that day after all.

Then we passed the City end of the Aemilian Bridge and through a vegetable market, all but empty at that time of year, and out the Flumentana Gate in the ancient wall and up the Vicus Aesculeti along the river bank to the Fabrician Bridge and across it to the Tiber Island. The high priest of the temple came to meet us, with Sosigenes right behind him.

“Senator,” the priest began, “the sacred precincts of Aesculapius have been polluted by blood! I cannot express my outrage!”

“What’s so outrageous?” I asked him. “Aesculapius is the god of healing. People bleed here all the time.”

“But they are not attacked and killed here!” he cried, still in high dudgeon.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? Anyway, it wasn’t one of your priests or your staff who died, so I hear. It was a foreigner.”

“There is some solace in that,” he agreed.

“Senator,” said Sosigenes, “my friend, Demades, whom you know, is the victim.”

“So I understand. Please accept my condolences. Now, if you would be so good, please lead me to the murder site. I wish to view the body.”

So we walked down toward the “stern” of the island, where I had first met the astronomers in conclave. There we found a little group of men clustered around a recumbent body, which had been decently covered with a white sheet. Most of the men were astronomers, but I recognized some who were not, including a senator whose presence surprised me: Cassius Longinus.

“I didn’t expect to find you here, Cassius,” I said.

“Hello, Decius Caecilius,” he said. “I take it Caesar has appointed you to investigate this matter?”

“I came before he had the chance.” I had known Cassius for some time. We were on friendly terms, though we had never been close. He detested the dictatorship of Caesar and made no attempt to hide it. “What brings you here to the Island?” I asked him. “No illness in the family, I hope?”

“No, as a matter of fact I came here this morning to consult with Polasser of Kish.” He nodded toward the man in Babylonian attire, who bowed back. “He is the most distinguished astrologer now in Rome and has been casting a horoscope for me.” I caught the faint expression of derision on the face of Sosigenes. He considered the whole Babylonian astrology business to be fraudulent.

I squatted by the body. “A good thing Demades wasn’t your astrologer. Has the purification been performed?”

“It has,” Sosigenes said. “There are priests here qualified to purify the dead.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “People do tend to die here. Hermes, remove this shroud.” He grimaced with distaste, but complied. For such a bloody-minded wretch, Hermes was finicky about touching the dead.

Poor old Demades was not looking his best, which is often true of the dead. He was all but unmarked, but his head lay at an odd angle. Somehow, his neck had been cleanly snapped. I could see no other wound, and he had the waxy pallor of one who has been dead for several hours.

“Hermes,” I said, “go get Asklepiodes. He should be in town.” Hermes hurried off, eager as always to visit the gladiatorial school where my old physician friend lived. There was something about that broken neck that bothered me.

“Might this have been an accident?” I said.

“A fall severe enough to have broken his neck should have left him badly bloodied.” Cassius said. He gestured around us. “And there’s no place to fall from around here. I suppose a strong wrestler could have done it easily enough.” Although still young, Cassius had seen enough slaughter not to be disturbed by a common murder. He had seen an entire Roman army exterminated at Carrhae and had barely escaped with his life. “What do you think, Archelaus?” He addressed thus a man who stood near him, a tall, saturnine specimen whose dress and grooming were Roman despite his Greek name.

“I’ve seen necks broken that way with the edge of a shield, and once in Ephesus I saw a pankration where a man broke his opponent’s neck with a blow from the edge of the hand.” He spoke of the roughest of all the Greek unarmed combative sports, in which the fighters are permitted to kick, gouge, and bite.

“Decius,” Cassius said, “this is Archelaus, a grandson of Nicomedes of Bithynia. He is here in Rome on a diplomatic mission on behalf of Parthia.”

I took the man’s hand. “Good luck. Caesar has every intention of resuming the war with Parthia.” The man’s status was clear to me now. He was a nobleman of a Roman province that had been an independent kingdom under his grandfather. The king of Parthia would not wish to send a deputation of his countrymen, who would be treated with hostility in Rome, so he sent a professional diplomat instead, one conversant with Roman customs. I had known others like him.

“I have every hope of effecting a reconciliation,” he said, his expression belying his words. Rome did not forgive a military defeat, and a humiliation like Carrhae could not be wiped out with words and treaties. Rather than speak of this hopeless subject I turned back to Cassius.

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a follower of the astrologers.” Cassius was as old-fashioned a Roman as you could ask for, and among our class we believed the gods spoke in lightning and thunder and the flight of birds and the entrails of sacrificial animals. Astrology and other forms of fortune-telling were the province of bored, high-born ladies.

He looked sheepish, an oddity on his scarred, craggy face. “Actually, this is not for me. A certain high-placed Roman who must remain nameless sent me to consult with Polasser of Kish.”

“Not-” but I knew better than to pronounce the name. It made a sort of sense. Caesar believed all sorts of odd things and he was obsessed by what he thought of as his destiny. He wanted to put Alexander in the shade and he wanted assurance of that from the gods. Sometimes, he came dangerously close to counting himself among their number.

“Why have you sent for this Asklepiodes?” Archelaus wanted to know.

“He is the foremost authority in the world on wounds,” I told him. “I am hoping he can enlighten me on how this man met his death.” I hadn’t given up on the hope that it might prove to be an accident. It would make my life so much simpler. By now all the other astronomers had assembled around the corpse of their colleague and I addressed them. “Does anyone here know if Demades had an enemy or anyone with ill will toward him?”

To my surprise, the yellow-turbanned Indian cleared his throat. “I know of no one who bore him personal enmity, Senator,” he said, speaking Greek in an odd, singsong accent, “but he was rather vehement in his denunciations of the astrologers, of whom there are a number here.”

“This was a mere academic dispute,” Sosigenes objected. “If scholars settled their arguments with violence there would be none left in the world. We argue endlessly about our own fields of study.”

“I’ve known men to murder one another for the most trifling of reasons,” I informed them. “I have been charged with this case and I may wish to question each of you separately or severally. Please do not be offended if I ask that you all stay where I can find you. I should take it very ill should anyone be seized with a need to visit Alexandria or Antioch. I should hate to have to dispatch a naval vessel to fetch you back at public expense.”

“I assure you, Senator,” said Sosigenes, “no one here has anything to hide.”

“If only I had a denarius for every time I’ve heard that assurance,” I muttered.

“Did you say something, Senator?” Sosigenes asked.

“Just that I am so glad to know that nobody here could be responsible.”

“Decius,” Cassius said, “I have other things to attend to. If I may borrow Polasser for a short while, I will leave you to your duties.”

“By all means,” I told him. The three men went off together and I returned my attention to the corpse. Shortly after this, Asklepiodes arrived on a litter accompanied as always by his silent Egyptian servants. Hermes walked behind the litter. The little Greek took me by the hands, smiling broadly.

“A lovely day for a murder, is it not?” he said. Over the years he had become increasingly morbid. I suppose his calling demanded it.

“But is it a murder?” I asked. “It is for this very reason I’ve asked for your help once more. I cannot for the life of me figure out how this man came by his death.”

“Well, let’s have a look at him.” He examined the dead man for a while. “Poor Demades. I knew him slightly. We attended some of the same affairs and lectures.” This came as no surprise. The members of Rome’s small Greek intellectual community all knew each other.

“When you saw him did he mention enemies or any particular fears he might have had?” I asked.

“No. He scarcely spoke at all and when he did it was of astronomical matters. These people are very tightly focused and take little note of anything outside their particular field of study. He would take offense if someone asked him to cast a horoscope and complained that few understood the distinction between astronomy and astrology.”

“Yes, I understand that to be the source of raging controversy hereabouts. Do you think he may have met with an accidental death?” I asked hopefully.

He gestured for his servants to turn the body over. He examined the back of the neck and felt the severed bones, frowning. At last he straightened. “I do not think it was an accident, but I must confess the nature of this injury has me mystified. I have never seen anything quite like it.” This must have been a painful admission for Asklepiodes, who seemed to know everything about the human body and how it might be injured.

I told him of the speculations of Cassius and Archelaus. “Do you think there might be anything to that? Might the murderer be a professional lurking at the Statilian school?”

He shook his head. “A wrestler’s hands would have left distinctive marks on the neck. Likewise, a shield edge would have marked the back of the neck. As to the blow with the edge of the hand”-he wafted his own hand in a gesture of uncertainty-“I think not. It is more plausible than the other two, but the displacement of the vertebrae in this case is of a different nature. Somehow the vertebrae just below the skull have been offset from right to left. These small marks”-he touched two roundish red marks above the break, and two identical marks below it-“I have never seen anything like them. I fear I must ponder this for a while.”

“Please do. Caesar is going to be terribly vexed that someone has done away with one of his pet astronomers. Do you think there is anything further to be learned from the corpse?”

“The only evidence is the injury to the spinal cord, and now I have seen that, there is no further need for examination.”

“Then I will turn him over to his companions.” I turned to Sosigenes, who still stood by with a few of the Alexandrians and Greeks. “Will you undertake his rites?”

“Of course. He has no family here, so we will perform the ceremonies and cremation today. I shall have his ashes sent to his family in Alexandria.”

“Very well then.” I cast a last look at the late astronomer. “Why couldn’t you have been killed in some routine fashion?” I asked him. Sensibly, he remained silent on the matter.

* * *

That evening I described the day’s events to Julia.

“It was probably a foreigner,” she said.

“Why?”

“Romans kill each other all the time, but they use the simplest means: a sword or dagger, a club, something crude and basic. Women sometimes employ poison. You’ve investigated scores of murders. How often were you unable to understand how the victim had died?”

“Only a few times, and usually that was because I was overlooking something obvious. If an expert like Asklepiodes is stymied, what hope have I?”

“None,” she said succinctly. “So for the moment you must forget about how and apply yourself to why. Why would someone want to kill a man like Demades, who from all appearances was a harmless astronomer?”

“That’s exactly what I have been asking myself. By the way, there was another curious matter on the island this morning.” I told her about Cassius and his odd errand and his diplomat friend.

“I do not understand why Caesar lets that man run around loose,” she said. “He is rabidly anti-Caesarian and does not care who knows it.” One of the few faults she would acknowledge in her uncle was his misplaced leniency.

“Maybe he’d rather have his enemies right where he can see them, not behind him professing friendship while they sharpen their knives for him.”

“Perhaps so, but the men he has pardoned and called back from exile! Any other man would have had the lot of them executed.”

“Maybe he wants a reputation for kinglike clemency.”

“Now you’re talking like them,” Julia said ominously. “They’re always saying Caesar wants to make himself king of Rome. They even interpret his mercy toward themselves as evidence of royal ambition.”

“Well, I for one don’t think he wants to be king,” I assured her. “He’s already dictator of Rome, and that makes him more powerful than any king in the world.”

Even so, Caesar’s power was not absolute. After conquering Gaul he had crushed his Roman enemies one after the other at Thapsus and Munda and many other, less famous fights. Nevertheless, there were still old Pompeians at large, some of them with considerable forces at their disposal.

“I think it strange that Caesar is so determined to prosecute this war with Parthia while so much is still unfinished at home,” I said. “I know he wants to take back the eagles that were captured at Carrhae, but there is no rush about that. Yet when Caesar speaks of war he is always serious.”

“Always,” she acknowledged. “So what does this Archelaus hope to accomplish?”

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “He is being paid to undertake this mission. Whether or not it succeeds, his pay is the same.” I left unsaid my own suspicions about Caesar and his ambitions. The reputation of Alexander the Great had lain over the heads of ambitious military men for almost three hundred years. Each of them longed to surpass Alexander, and Alexander’s conquests had been in the east, not the west. What was conquering Gaul compared to conquering Persia? And Parthia was the inheritor of the Persian Empire. If Caesar could conquer his way into India, then his empire would extend from the Pillars of Hercules to the Ganges and he would have outconquered Alexander the Great. His would be the new reputation for would-be conquerors to best.

Without a doubt, Caesar planned to establish a reputation at which rivals could only despair.

* * *

The next morning I confronted the man himself in his new Basilica Julia, which was to outshine all the other great buildings of Rome. Caesar looked an unlikely Alexander that morning. The Macedonian boy-king had accomplished his feats while very young. The years of war had aged Caesar terribly, and he was not all that young to begin with. I suppose he was about fifty-five that year and he looked older than that. I had seen Crassus just before he set out for Parthia, and the old moneybags had looked half dead. Caesar had lost none of his energy nor any of his mental acumen, but I did not think him fit for the rigors of campaigning. Oh, well, Caesar had surprised us before. Maybe he could still do it, or perhaps he would sit sensibly in Antioch and leave the actual fighting to his fire-eating subordinates like Marcus Antonius. He could let Cleopatra levy troops for him, not that Egyptians are good for much. He intended to accomplish it all somehow.

“How was my astronomer killed, Decius?” he asked bluntly.

“And a gracious good morning to you, Caius Julius,” I said, nettled. “I am working at that very question. He seemed a harmless old drudge, hardly worth killing, and his neck was broken in some mysterious fashion.”

“Yes, Cassius mentioned it. I want to know who killed him, Decius, and why. I want to know all about this very soon.”

“You seem to be taking it to heart,” I noted.

“He was working on the new calendar. That is my project, Decius, and whoever killed him was indirectly attacking me.”

How like Caesar. “You don’t think it might have been personal, then?” I said. “Perhaps a jealous lover or husband?”

“Would it matter?” he said, and I suppose to him it did not. The slightest shadow cast upon the personal dignitas of Caesar, inadvertent or not, was not to be tolerated.

“That calendar is no more popular than it was a week ago,” I told him.

“They will get used to it,” he assured me. “Soon something else will come along to distract the public.”

“Let us hope so.” At that time, Caesar was rapt in admiration for his new building, and indeed it was magnificent. The vast, vaulted ceiling soared high overhead. I had never believed that an interior space could be so high. I had toured some of the immense buildings of Egypt but even in their mind-numbing hugeness they always felt cramped inside with their forests of squat columns and they were dark and gloomy. This building was spacious and bright, illuminated by its generous clerestory. Its walls were faced with colorful, costly marble, its metalwork was gilded, its entrances unprecedentedly wide, and its porches capacious. All this magnificence was his gift to the people of Rome for their public use. All he wanted in return was that they should worship him even more than they already did.

I went out into the City with only Hermes attending me. During my years of office holding, I had usually been accompanied by dozens or even hundreds of supporters, and I had never liked it. I much preferred to roam about by myself or with only one or two attendants. Julia thought this was very unworthy of me, that a Roman of importance should have a following. She never convinced me. Besides my personal convenience, it was not a good time to be showing off too much importance. Important men were dying in great numbers during those years. My years of public importance were behind me. I was a humble private citizen though a member of the Senate and that was how I liked it. I had salted away enough of a fortune to live comfortably and I needed no more: no more wealth, no more offices, no more honors.

I did, however, need to keep on Caesar’s good side, so I set about my investigation with vigor. That is to say, I put Hermes to work.

“Go to the home of last year’s praetor peregrinus,” I instructed him. “Find his secretary and learn if Demades ever came before his court, or any of the other astronomers Caesar brought from Alexandria, in any capacity whatsoever.”

“I’ll give it a try,” he said, “but don’t get your hopes up. Last year the courts were pretty chaotic, what with praetors out of Italy commanding armies for or against Caesar. I doubt the praetor peregrinus spent more than a month or two in Rome.”

“Still, it’s a possibility. Maybe Demades had an argument with a citizen. I need to find some sort of motive in his death.”

“What will you be doing?”

“I’m going to visit Callista.”

“Will that sit well with Julia?” he said dubiously.

“Julia and Callista are great friends,” I told him.

“What difference does that make?” he said.

“Run along and see what you can find out,” I said, shutting off discussion.

I turned my own steps toward Callista’s house in the trans-Tiber district. Callista was a teacher of philosophy and a leading light of Rome’s Greek intellectual community. This made her a great curiosity in Rome where women were rarely teachers, though they were quite common in Alexandria. She was also one of the most beautiful women in Rome, which may have been why Hermes thought Julia might be suspicious. Of course, I was only answering the call of duty-and on behalf of her beloved uncle-so she had no cause for complaint.

The truth was, I seldom needed much of an excuse to call upon Callista. Besides her great beauty she was gracious and astoundingly intelligent. Though it pains me to say it, I had been involved with so many bad women that it was a great pleasure to have dealings with a good one.

Her beauteous housekeeper, Echo, led me inside the house, where Callista sat by her pool. When I was announced she looked up with genuine delight. Callista never faked her affections and would have considered such a thing philosophically unworthy. She lacked the capacity for any sort of deceit, a very un-Greek quality, in my estimation.

“Senator Metellus! This is a pleasure and an honor. You haven’t called upon me in far too long!”

“The service of Rome has kept me too busy,” I said pompously. “Besides, the intellectual quality of your company intimidates me. Cicero is more on your level.”

“You are too modest. And how is Julia? I haven’t seen her in at least a month.”

“She is quite well and I am sure that she will call soon,” I said. As soon as she found out that I had been here. They were friends, but there are limits.

“And how may I be of service?” She gestured me to a chair by a little table and she sat across from me while servants brought refreshments.

“I am investigating a murder at the particular behest of Caesar, and since the victim may have been among your circle of acquaintances, I thought you might be able to tell me something about him.”

“A murder? And it was someone I know?” She was genuinely shocked.

“You may have known him. Demades, one of the astronomers who has been working with Sosigenes on the new calendar. Asklepiodes told me that he was sometimes to be seen at gatherings of the Greek philosophical community, so I immediately thought of your salon.”

“Poor Demades! Yes, I knew him, although not very well, I confess. For a philosopher he was not very loquacious.”

“Asklepiodes has attested to his reticence.”

“And he was interested in little except astronomy.”

“Again, exactly what Asklepiodes told me.”

“Of course the subject of astronomy comes up from time to time at my gatherings, but there is far more discourse on other subjects. He took little part in those discussions.”

“Could you tell me when you last saw him?”

“Let me see, it was the evening of the last day of the year just ended. He had more to say because the new calendar was about to go into effect. There were several of the astronomers present at that meeting.”

“Do you recall which ones?”

“Sosigenes, of course. Some of them were foreigners, which surprised me. There was a pseudo-Babylonian who argued for the merits of astrology, and an Arab who knew a great many things about the stars unfamiliar to me, and a fascinating man from India who spoke for a long time on the transmigration of souls. Marcus Brutus found this enthralling, because he has been studying the philosophy of Pythagoras, whose theories involve just such metamorphoses.”

“Brutus was there? He was here the first time I called upon you, years ago.”

“Oh, yes. He has attended nearly every meeting since he returned to Rome.”

Brutus was another of those enemies of Caesar who had been unaccountably recalled from exile. Caesar treated the whole thing as a boyish lapse of judgment. He always showed a great affection for Brutus, whom I only saw as a rather tedious drudge. Perhaps it was because of Caesar’s old liaison with Servilia, Brutus’s mother. There were even rumors that Caesar had fathered Brutus, but I never credited these. In any case, Brutus had philosophical pretensions and was often to be found at such gatherings.

“What other Romans were present?” I asked. “It might help to know with whom he mingled in his final days.”

“Do you think this might be relevant?”

“One never knows. Sometimes a murder is casual, as when a thug stabs a victim to make it easier to lift his purse. Other times the murder is hired and a professional takes care of it. In neither case would my question be to the point, but I have found that in most cases the killer was someone known to the victim, very often a spouse or close relative. You see, there must be close emotional attachment for one to feel betrayal severely enough to kill. Or the killing is the result of a business dealing gone bad, or of someone impatient for an inheritance. In all those cases there is some close connection between murderer and victim. The idea is to discover what the nature of the connection might be.”

Her eyes sparkled. “This is so fascinating! I have said before that you should organize your theories of detection into a study and write them down. You could found your own unique school of philosophy.”

“‘Detection’?” I asked. “It’s a good word, but I fear that nobody else’s mind works like mine. Such a study would be a dismal failure, and philosophers would consider the study of evil or aberrant behavior to be unworthy. They like to concentrate upon the sublime.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Nobody thought like any philosopher until the philosophers began to propound, and then they changed the ways people thought. And physicians study the illnesses and injuries of the body, so why not the workings of evil in the human mind and the behavior that results from it?”

Now that I think of it, I suppose that may be exactly what I have been doing these last few years as I idle away my time under the reign of the First Citizen. I have no gift for writing philosophical tracts, however, and instead inscribe these memoirs of my adventures during those dying years of the Republic.

“I shall consider it. Now, do you remember any other Romans present that evening?”

“Let me see. Brutus’s wife, Porcia, was with him, still dressed in mourning for her father.” Porcia was the daughter of Cato, who had committed suicide at Utica rather than endure the rule of Caesar. I never envied Cato anything save the manner and nobility of his death.

“Lucius Cinna was there, though I believe he came only because he was visiting with Brutus. He had never been here before and took little part in the discussion.”

Cinna was another recalled exile. He was the brother of Caesar’s first wife, Cornelia. That was another Caesarian connection, but could easily be a coincidence. Caesar had been married at least four times that I knew about, and had a whole horde of noble relatives. Almost any gathering of the senatorial class would have a few of them.

She named a few others, but they were persons of no consequence, just the usual equestrians who took up philosophy instead of politics. Then something struck her.

“Wait a moment. There was another Cinna there.”

“One of Lucius’s brothers or uncles? Which one?” The Cornelii were about the only patrician family that was very numerous. The others had dwindled and most had become extinct. Somehow the Cornelians retained their ancestral vigor.

“This wasn’t a relative. He just had the same cognomen. Somebody remarked upon it.”

I tried to remember other men of that name. “Was it Cinna the poet?” He had just taken office as Tribune of the Plebs, but in a dictatorship he was all but powerless.

“Yes! Brutus seems to think rather highly of him, but I confess that much of Latin poetry escapes me. I am well studied only in the Greek.”

“He’s a nobody as far as I know. Just another climber beginning a political career. He’s not one of the patrician Cornelii. I don’t even know his praenomen or nomen. Do you recall them?”

She shook her head. “He was introduced only as ‘Cinna.’”

“Did he take much part in the talk?”

“We spoke of poetry for a while and he and Brutus expounded rather well upon the verses of Cato.” She referred not to Cato the senator but Cato the poet of Verona, who taught the eminent poet Catullus, who in turn is not to be confused with the one-ell Catulus who was Caesar’s colleague as consul. Sometimes I think half our problems are caused by our repetition of names.

“And when the astronomers began to argue over the relative merits of astronomy and astrology he weighed in vociferously in favor of astrology. He used some poetic metaphor to demonstrate that astrology is wonderfully poetic, whereas astronomy is coldly rational.”

“Which do you favor?” I asked her for no good reason except that I loved to hear her talk and did not wish our interview to end.

“Would that I were learned in both. Most often I am inclined toward astronomy, because it is indeed coldly rational. Like your own specialty of detection, it is based upon observable phenomena. Philosophers like Sosigenes go out every clear night and make observations of the stars and planets. They track their movements, note their risings and settings and watch for the occasional spectacles such as meteors and comets. These they set in context and thereby seek natural explanations for their nature and behavior, eschewing the supernatural.

“Yet, I cannot deny the emotional appeal of astrology. It is in some strange fashion intensely satisfying, being able to read a human being’s destiny in the arrangement of the stars at his birth and the movements of the planets and the moon through them in all subsequent life. It is irrational, but rationality is only a part of human existence. Philosophers must keep their minds open to all possibilities, so it may be that Sosigenes and the astronomers are wrong and the astrologers are right, or even that the truth lies between the two. The syllogism is a useful analytical tool, but it is a great mistake to take it for reality.”

“You echo my very own thoughts on the matter,” I said, wondering what in the world a syllogism might be. As if in response, Echo the housekeeper appeared. I almost made a witty remark upon this, but wisely held my tongue. I was in the presence of one to whom my sharpest wit would appear oafish.

I had never known Echo to be other than as dignified and gracious as her mistress, but her eyes sparkled and she seemed breathless, as if she had just come from a tryst with a lover, an unlikely thing so early in the day. “My lady, the dictator Caesar has come to call upon you.” That explained it. Caesar had that effect on women of whatever station. That, and being the most powerful man in the world, could turn any slave woman’s head. Free women too, for that matter.

Callista, imperturbable as always, acted as if this were an everyday occurrence. “Show him in, Echo, and see to the comfort of his lictors.”

Caesar swept in and on his arm was none other than Servilia, mother of Marcus Brutus. I wondered if Caesar was reigniting their old flame. Servilia was a few years older than Caesar, but she looked many years younger, and still one of Rome’s great beauties.

Callista stood, as did I. “Dictator, you do me too much honor. Lady Servilia, it has been too long.”

Servilia embraced her lightly and they exchanged a social kiss on the cheek. “You must have had an interesting morning,” Servilia said. “Here we find you with Rome’s most eccentric senator.” I wasn’t sure how to take this. The Senate contained some genuine lunatics.

“Decius Caecilius is a remarkable investigator,” Caesar said. “So what if his methods are unorthodox? He is looking into the death of a Greek scholar and I’ll wager that is what brought him here.” Very little escaped Caesar.

“I find that the senator has the most penetrating intellect in Rome,” Callista said, “save only for your own.” This was the highest possible praise, for Callista never stooped to flattery. Caesar acknowledged it with a slight inclination of his regal head. The gesture was made more impressive by the gilded laurel wreath he wore, to hide his baldness. He was not without his vanities.

“Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said, “you have duties and I will not detain you.”

I know when to take a hint. I took my leave of Callista and Servilia and Caesar and went outside. Caesar’s twenty-four lictors crowded Callista’s little courtyard sipping wine from small, tasteful cups, trying not to ogle the surpassingly beautiful girls who served them. Like Fausta, Fulvia, and Clodia, Callista had only beautiful servants, and all of Callista’s were women or young girls. Whereas with the others it was a matter of sensuality, with Callista it was a matter of pure Greek aesthetics. She would not have ugliness around her. Despite this concentration of pulchritude, there had never been a hint of scandal or unseemly behavior from her household.

I went to a lictor named Flavius, who had been one of my own lictors during my praetorship. “What brings Caesar across the river?” I asked him.

“Now, Senator, you know we are forbidden to discuss our magistrate’s affairs.”

“Not even a bit of gossip?” I wheedled.

“It would mean my hide on the curia door if I talked,” he said, taking a sip. “Not that there’s anything to talk about,” he amended hastily.

I gave it up for a bad job and left. I had a lot to think about.