The Year of Confusion

6

“It was most enthralling,” Julia told me the next morning. “Callista met us right after the ceremony-she’s a foreigner so of course she couldn’t take part-Servilia was there, with a sizable bodyguard, and Atia, with an equal number.”

I was being shaved, always a delicate procedure with my rather battered and scarred face. “Did Callista hint at what business Caesar and Servilia had with her the day I visited?”

“She and Servilia were both being intriguingly discreet about it. They just barely acknowledged knowing one another. Anyway, we all got into Servilia’s litter-it’s a rather large one, you know.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“Callista is very unaccustomed to traveling in a litter, would you believe it? She says she always walks. It’s some sort of philosopher’s austerity, I think. I can hardly imagine walking everywhere in Alexandria, but if she lives at the Museum like so many of the professors she doesn’t really need to go much of anywhere, I suppose.”

“And this marvelous conveyance took you where?” I prodded.

“You’re trying to rush me again, dear. Don’t do that.”

“Sorry.”

“So the four of us were carried across the river into the Trans-Tiber and up the slope of the Janiculum almost to the top, where the flag flies. There are hardly any dwellings up there, it’s mostly just the ruins of the old fort, but there are a few new houses since even the Trans-Tiber is getting crowded these days. We stopped at a beautiful little house surrounded by an exquisite garden full of fruit trees and flowering shrubs. At least they will be flowering in the spring. They’re rather bare right now but the proportions of the garden are beautiful.”

I relaxed in my chair. She would get around to what I wanted to hear in her own good time.

“So,” she went on, “we went inside and were greeted at the door by the most amazing woman.”

“Amazing how?” I asked.

“To begin with, she wore a gown that seemed to be made of a single long strip of fabric wound several times around her. It fit very closely, but was really quite modest and incredibly graceful. It was made of a very thin cotton dyed in bright colors. The lady herself was rather dark but quite beautiful in an exotic fashion, with huge black eyes. Her hair was black, too, parted in the middle and gathered behind and very long, almost to her heels. Her hands were painted with henna in very intricate patterns. She had dots and stripes painted on her face in red and blue.”

“I think I will recognize her in a crowd now.”

“Don’t be facetious. She bowed in the most charming manner-used her hands and arms, feet, head, all moving at once. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What else? Was she tall, short, plump?”

“She was quite, well, quite feminine. Very small, but formed like some extremely ancient concept of Aphrodite. Rather full breasts and hips but with a waist I think my hands could have spanned. All this was very obvious because her gown was so tight. Oh, and it left her navel exposed.”

“Anything unusual about her navel?”

“She had a huge ruby or garnet in it. Wherever she comes from, they must artificially stretch a girl’s navel, the way some people stretch the earlobes or lips to wear jewelry.”

“So it’s safe to say that she’s not some runaway Greek slave woman. I suppose that would have been too simple.”

“Servilia introduced us and told her what we wanted. Ashthuva led us into a quite spacious room lit by what seemed hundreds of lamps and candles. Its walls and ceiling were painted all over with constellations, marvelous to see.”

“What was the style of painting?” I asked her.

“That’s an odd question. Well, the treatment of the familiar figures, the lion, the Capricorn, and so forth, looked rather Greek.”

“Were these paintings new or had they been there for a while?”

She thought about it. “Now that you mention it they looked rather fresh. I could still smell the paint, and the ceiling wasn’t smudged with lamp soot. But then the whole house looked new, as well as the plantings in the garden.”

“Very good. What next?”

“On one wall she had a bookcase. It was in the honeycomb style, but much larger than usual because it held star charts instead of ordinary scrolls. She asked us the birth dates of those whose horoscopes we wanted cast, and she went to the case and drew out several of the charts and took them to a broad table. She unrolled some of them and weighted their corners with little linen sandbags.”

I started to say something but she hurried on. “And before you ask, the charts gave every appearance of being quite ancient. They weren’t made of papyrus or parchment, and they were in a style that was not Greek or Roman or Egyptian. In fact, they resembled no style of art I have ever seen. And the writing was utterly incomprehensible, just tiny squiggles attached to long, straight lines. Yet the constellations were perfectly recognizable, once you understood the stylization of the art.”

“Who went first?”

“Atia. She gave Ashthuva young Octavius’s birth date and time and Ashthuva went over a sheet that seemed to be some sort of conversion table. I could make out a column that listed the Roman consuls of the past fifty or so years, and next to it a list in Greek of the Olympiads and the successive archons of Athens and next to that a column of writing in that odd language from the charts. It was pretty clear that this was her way of translating Roman and Greek dates into her own system. It was not ancient like the charts and it was written on very fine parchment.”

“Quite clear,” I commended. “There was no nonsense with braziers and arcane things burning? No purification ritual or mysterious libations?”

“None of that, and what if there were? We have plenty of those things in our own religion.”

“Yes, but it seems to make more sense when we do it.”

“Anyway, astrology is not a religion. How could it be? It makes no provision for the will of the gods, nor of their mutability. It involves no sacrifices or appeals to higher powers. It simply deals with human destiny as it is determined by the positions of the stars and planets at the moment of birth and their relations and juxtapositions as they change throughout life.”

“You sound very taken with this business,” I noted with more than a bit of alarm.

“I find something very satisfying in it. It is as rigorous as the study of Sosigenes, it merely applies these things to human life, while the astronomers simply study celestial phenomena without regard to the doings of humanity, as if the stars were above such things.”

“I suppose so. Still, it seems unnatural. No taking of omens, no sacrifices, no prayers. Why are these stars telling us about our destiny when we’re doing nothing for them?”

She rolled her eyes upward in a long-suffering gesture. “Why do I bother?” She took a deep breath. “To continue, and please try not to interrupt unless you have a truly pertinent question.”

“I promise.”

“Ashthuva told us that what she would do that night constituted only a preliminary casting, that each horoscope would require much longer study and detailed analysis.”

And cost more, I thought without saying it.

“She explained how the sign of Octavius’s birth was affected by the planets of that moment, which was ascendant, which was actually within the sign, how the phase of the moon affected all these things. It was quite fascinating.”

I hoped the woman foretold an early death for the brat, but I was disappointed.

“She said that Octavius had a most remarkable congregation of signs at his birth, that he would rise unprecedentedly high in the world and would be served by the best and most loyal people.” She caught my expression. “All right, go ahead.”

“How can she go wrong predicting a bright future for a highborn woman’s only son? It’s what any fortune-teller would have done.”

“You are such a Cynic. She told Atia she would have a much more detailed horoscope prepared for her in a few days. Then she did yours.”

I felt a slight shiver. I always hated this sort of thing. I have always been content to meet my bad fortune as it comes, without having to anticipate it. What good fortune I have enjoyed has always come as an agreeable surprise. “Go on.”

“Well, first of all, she predicted no future greatness for you.”

“It would be a stretch, at my age. If I were going to achieve greatness I’d have done it long before now.”

“But she did say that you would live a very long life, full of incident and adventure. She said you would die very old and very sad.”

“If I achieve great age I suppose I can anticipate great sadness at the end of it, though I think relief would be more in order. Anything else?”

“She asked Callista, but Callista said she was just there to observe, and that inquiring about the future would violate her philosophical principles.”

“How did that sit with Ashthuva?”

“She seemed to accept it with great serenity. In fact, if I had to choose a word to describe her other than ‘exotic’ it would be ‘serene.’”

“Servilia asked nothing?”

“No. It was clear that she had been consulting with Ashthuva for some time. We will be going back to have our own horoscopes cast in a few days.”

The barber patted my face dry and I got up. “Well, my dear, your expedition has been extremely informative and helpful. Keep close to these women and let me know what you learn. I’m off to the Tiber Island. I need to check out some information I picked up last night.”

“Picked up where?” she wanted to know.

“Oh, well, you know how it is. I had to interrogate one of Rome’s shadier characters so I had to go to a low place to find him.”

“Public service is so demanding,” she said sweetly. This boded ill.

If only it were public service, I wanted to say. It was Caesar’s personal service. I’ve never liked being someone’s flunky, though I’ve had to play the role often enough in my life.

I rounded up Hermes and we made our way to the island. There was no Senate meeting that morning, for a welcome change. Caesar was overseeing the layout of the huge new Forum he was planning. It was to be an expansion of our ancient Forum. He planned to condemn and level an area of several blocks of land adjacent to the Forum and build an ambitious new facility with a vast open space surrounded by multistoried terraces to be used for business, government, religion, and even entertainment. It would be roomy and orderly and rational, unlike our cramped, irregular, monument-studded, old Forum.

I suspected that it would prove to be just as unpopular as his new calendar, with its impeccable rationality. We Romans like some things to be chaotic and disorderly. As a people we have always been martial and disciplined in war and government and sternly observant in religion. So it pleases us to leave some things in their naturally irregular state, especially if we are used to them that way.

At the Tiber Island I asked for the high priest and he arrived with his usual show of impatience. “Yes, Senator?”

“I won’t take up much of your time. Do you employ a clerk here named Postumius?”

He looked puzzled. “We did, but I have not seen him in several days. I assumed he had sought more congenial employment elsewhere. Is it important?”

“I believe so. Where did he work?”

“In the accounting department, where we catalogue donations to the temple. The overseer is Telemachus.”

“I’ll trouble you no further. Where may I find Telemachus?”

The accounting department turned out to be a cavernous room at the north end of the island, stuffed with dedications and donations of every imaginable sort, from fine sculpture to good old-fashioned sacks of money. Several clerks worked there under the watchful eye of an old man who had spent his life at the temple, first as a slave, now as a freedman.

“Postumius?” he said to my question. “Certainly, Senator. He showed up early last year seeking employment. You will recall that after the great flood during your aedileship, there was terrible sickness in Rome. We lost a few of our clerks and their replacements had not all been satisfactory. This man demonstrated that he was very good with numbers so I took him on.”

“And was he satisfactory?”

“He would have been had he applied himself to the work, but he proved to love chariot races more than accounting.”

As he talked we walked around in the vast, dim room. I saw, besides the usual statues, pieces of obsolete armor, farm implements, stones carved with archaic lettering, documents, a few chariots, a sundial, bags of fragrant substances, potted plants long dead, even what appeared to be the spar and sail of a ship. It looked like an auctioneer’s yard after the breakup of a very old estate.

“It is the bane of all temples,” Telemachus said. “Donations of money are one thing, but dedications are quite another. People think they are honoring the gods by dedicating these things, but sometimes I wonder whether the gods truly appreciate it all. Once a thing has been dedicated to a god, it cannot be sold or thrown away. They accumulate and clutter the temple precincts. Some years ago, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi became so crammed with armor dedicated by the Greeks after a few centuries’ worth of victories that they hit upon the idea of using it for landfill at the building of a new stadium. Since the stadium was also dedicated to the god, it was adjudged not to be impious.”

“I know the problem,” I said, commiserating. “I worked in the Temple of Saturn when I was quaestor. It looked like the hoard of a pack of thieves down in the crypt.”

“Precisely. Perhaps you could apply to Caesar. As pontifex maximus perhaps he could provide us with a solution that would be satisfactory to both the god and the temple.”

Everybody thought Caesar could solve their problems.

“I’ll mention it to him. Maybe he can excavate a new storeroom below this one. That would keep it within the temple precincts.”

“An excellent idea. You will have my gratitude.”

“Now, about Postumius?” I prodded.

“The man was always sneaking out to go to the Circus and the stables. He was constantly trying to get the other clerks to engage in bets on horse races. It was affecting the work here, which was unsatisfactory enough to begin with. I had to dismiss him. Slaves are much better than free-born citizens or freedmen for this sort of work. They can be confined, and there is an array of punishments available to correct their behavior. Had it not been for the shortage of skilled accountants I never would have hired him.”

“It is a great bother,” I agreed. “When did you dismiss him?”

“About a month ago.”

“Did he seem greatly distressed at losing his position?”

“Not at all. He was quite insolent about it, in fact. He hinted that he no longer needed to do any such work and was moving on to something better.”

“I thank you, Telemachus. You have been of great help to my investigation.”

“Investigation? Is this something to do with the killings?”

“I have every confidence that it is,” I told him.

Hermes and I went outside and made our way to the area where the astronomers lived. Its fine terrace, recently the site of Polasser’s murder, had an excellent view of the north end of the Circus Maximus, the end where fine statues of four-horse chariots stand above the gates through which the racing chariots enter the field.

“Picture yourself standing here,” I said.

“Why?” Hermes wanted to know. “I am standing here.”

“Picture yourself,” I said again, “standing here looking out at this view and you are in congenial company. What do you talk about?”

“The races,” he said without hesitation. He was a true Roman.

“Exactly. You speak of your mutual interest in racing and, no doubt, gambling. Then, with this common interest established, you go on to other things, such as your work.”

“So Postumius strikes up a conversation with Polasser about racing,” Hermes said. “Then he learns from Polasser about astrology, most particularly about how highborn Romans, especially women, are enthusiastic about it.”

“There you are. And if there is one thing my life and experience have taught me, it is that one rogue will always recognize another. I will wager that not too many conversations occurred before Polasser learned that Postumius was a professional gambler and not an honest one, and Postumius learned that Polasser concocted favorable horoscopes for anyone who would pay him.”

“So it wasn’t long before they devised the fraud to profit from trading in grain futures. It must have been mainly Postumius’s doing. Polasser was an amateur fraud. Postumius was a real professional.”

“That is my thinking. Come, let’s talk with Sosigenes.”

We found him on the observation terrace with its arcane instruments, alone for a change. After the usual greetings we sat at a table and got down to the business of the day.

“How well did you know Polasser?” I asked first.

“Not terribly well. He was highly recommended by Danaos of Halicarnassus, who was a very distinguished astronomer.”

“‘Was?’” I queried.

“Yes, he died about three years ago. It must have been just after he recommended Polasser, because the news of his death reached Alexandria about the time Polasser came to the Museum.”

Hermes raised his eyebrows and cut a look at me but I made a signal to say nothing. “And what did you think of him once he arrived?”

“He knew his astronomy quite well and was keen to work. His observations were always reliable. That was one reason I brought him here with the others.”

“Did his devotion to astrology ever get in the way of the work he was doing for you?”

“I would have preferred that he not use our time and instruments for that purpose, but his transgressions were not sufficient to secure his dismissal. I had no cause for complaint with the work he did on the calendar. He said that the new calendar would actually make the work of astrologers much easier since it will establish everyone’s birth date with precision.”

“But it’s only Rome’s calendar,” I pointed out.

“Caesar seems determined to make it the whole world’s calendar,” Sosigenes said.

“I can’t argue with you there. What do you think of Polasser’s Babylonian pose?”

“Well, I suppose it isn’t impossible that he was from Kish. There are Greeks everywhere.”

“I thought Kish was just a heap of ruins somewhere on the banks of the Tigris.”

“The Euphrates, I believe,” Sosigenes said.

“Oh. Well, I always get those two rivers confused.”

“At least it is still a place. There may still be a village there. It is near Babylon. His choice of dress is a bit harder to explain, except perhaps for his enthusiasm for the ancient Babylonian art. You have been to the Museum, Senator. You know that a good many-eccentric persons live and work there.”

“Loony a pack as I’ve ever run across,” I agreed. “What did Polasser do when he wasn’t looking at stars and drawing up horoscopes? Did he have any daytime activities?”

“He was very fond of the Hippodrome. Overfond, I thought.” The Hippodrome is Alexandria’s equivalent to the Circus Maximus, and a much finer building, though not quite as large.

“How do you mean, overfond?” I asked.

“Such diversion is suitable upon occasion, and every Greek is enthusiastic about athletic competition, some passionately so. Polasser took, shall we say, more than a philosopher’s interest in the chariot races. He was difficult to find on any day devoted to the races, both in Alexandria and here in Rome.”

“I see. You are aware that here in Rome everyone proclaims allegiance to one of the racing factions? And that these factions are distinguished by colors: Green, Blue, White, and Red?” He nodded. “Did Polasser seem to care greatly which of these factions won?”

“He never spoke to me about it if he did,” Sosigenes said. “It would be unlike a Greek anyway. As I understand it you Romans are practically born into your chariot factions. A Greek, on the other hand, supports the competitor from his own city or community. But in Alexandria the horses and drivers come from everywhere and people take sides according to a number of causes, and some just gamble.”

“Was Polasser often short of money and did he borrow heavily?” He looked surprised. “If he was not interested in the colors, then his interest in the races was that of a gambler. It has been my experience that men who gamble a great deal lose a great deal. I myself am a fine judge of horses and charioteers, yet even I lose occasionally.” Hermes made a strangled noise which I ignored.

“He never came to me for money, perhaps from a sense of decency, but I overheard some of the others advising each other not to loan Polasser money because he could never repay. It was all distressingly unphilosophic.”

“I suppose sometimes even philosophers give way to their base instincts. Did he owe Demades money? Or was there any other source of enmity between the two?”

“They barely tolerated one another,” Sosigenes said. “I cannot imagine Demades loaning money to Polasser, or Polasser asking.”

We talked a while longer but learned nothing more of value. I thanked Sosigenes for his aid and took my leave of him. As we crossed the terrace where Polasser had died Hermes saw something on the pavement, stooped and picked it up to examine.

“What have you found?” I asked.

“Have a look.” He tossed it to me and I turned it over in my hand. It was a brass coin larger than a silver denarius and twice as thick, stamped with odd writing on both sides. “Where do you think it came from?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “People come here from all over the world and make offerings. It could be from Sogdiana, for all I know.” Naming one of the remotest countries of my sketchy knowledge, I knew only that Alexander had passed through there. I tucked it into the purse I carried in a fold of my tunic. You never know when something may prove to be of value.

“What do we know now?” Hermes said. “It is pretty certain that this Danaos of Halicarnassus was probably already dead when Polasser wrote himself a glowing recommendation and put Danaos’s name to it. Maybe he killed him. We know that Polasser and Postumius were in together on the scheme to fleece grain speculators. That gives a number of people a reason to want Polasser dead. Postumius may have run to avoid the same fate.”

“A Roman would have simply stabbed Polasser, or bashed his head in with a brick.”

“We don’t know that he restricted himself to defrauding Romans,” Hermes pointed out.

“True. Yet Demades was killed the same way. What was the connection?”

Hermes thought for a while. “Perhaps the aggrieved party killed Demades by mistake, then came back the next day to get the right man.”

“That’s a possibility. It does seem unlikely that a man in Greek dress could be mistaken for one dressed like a Babylonian, but if it was dark enough it’s possible. And the killer may have been a hired foreigner. But somehow I think not.”

“Why?”

“Polasser had access to some of Rome’s richest, highest-born people, and some of her most foolish. A man like Postumius must have drooled at the thought of fleecing them. I think the two of them must have had something else going. The grain speculators were just practice. Maybe they just didn’t understand that those wealthy people are also some of the most murderous in Rome.”

My next call was upon Callista. Echo showed us to the courtyard where we found Callista going over a great pile of scrolls with the assistance of a secretary. She looked up at us and smiled. “I regret not bringing my whole library from Alexandria. I always tell myself that I am going to send for it, but then I tell myself, why bother since I am going to return soon? Of course, I always put off going back. I’ve been in Rome almost ten years. Please be seated.”

We did as bidden and a girl brought wine and snacks. “Why do you stay here, Callista?” I asked between bites. “Personally, I hope you never leave, but I’ve been to Alexandria and it’s a wonderful place. For a philosopher, Rome must seem a dreadful backwater to one accustomed to the Museum.”

She thought a while. “Rome is many things. I have never seen grandeur and slums in such proximity and extremity anywhere else. It is an intensely vulgar emporium for every sort of money-grubbing and the amusements of the people are profoundly trivial. The ruling classes are not merely bloody-minded and grasping but they practice their power games on a scale, to the best of my knowledge that is the greatest in all of history.”

“Well,” I said, taken somewhat aback, “it’s not all that bad, is it?”

She smiled brightly. “You don’t understand. This is what I like about Rome. It is the most exciting place in the world to be at this moment. There is more going on in any one day in Rome than transpires in a century in most cities. In many ways Alexandria is enthralling, almost magical, but the atmosphere is also stultifying. The king or queen is a god and all pay them obeisance. Even the greatest people are little more than slaves. The only political life is palace intrigue, in which every petty noble fancies himself to deserve a throne.”

“There are the street riots,” I reminded her. “Don’t forget the street riots.” I had been in a few of those myself. I’d been the cause of two of them.

“Yes. It is a pity that the closest the people ever get to political life is rioting. As a Greek this saddens me. We Greeks have always taken a lively part in the political life of our cities. Not always wisely, but with passion.”

“I thought philosophers were supposed to be above such things,” I said. “Philosophical detachment and all that.”

“I have never been as detached as that,” she said, “and I think it is a mistake to divorce oneself from the common experience. A philosopher is not defiled by association with people who have to live their lives in the real world, as far too many of my colleagues profess to believe.”

“I’ll give you no argument there,” I said. “What is all this?” I gestured to the pile of writings on the table.

“I am trying to identify the writing I saw on that woman’s astrological charts last night. I’m sure I have seen it before, but I cannot remember where. That means I must have seen it when I was a child. Clearly it is from the east, but where in the east I cannot say. That is why I wish I had my whole library. I might have a sample of that writing somewhere.”

“So you couldn’t make out her nationality?”

She shook her head. “I have never seen anyone quite like her. She is quite dark, as I suppose Julia told you, but very different from a Nubian or Ethiopian. Her features are very small and fine, and her hair very straight. She has an elaborate vocabulary of bodily gestures, but they are unlike any I know. Her accent is very peculiar.”

“What about her astrological procedure?” I asked.

“Quite conventional. I would have expected from her appearance that she might have some unique interpretation of the signs, but it was just as it has been for centuries since the art came out of Babylon.”

“What do you make of that?”

“Either she learned the art since coming from her homeland, or the art spread from Babylon in all directions and is practiced identically in lands we have never heard of.”

“Did she strike you as being credible? I ask this because I am investigating a fraudulent scheme that involves falsified horoscopes.”

“Oh? You must tell me all about that, but as for the woman, I confess that I am not sure. I spoke of her odd gestures. It is amazing how much we interpret from the language of gestures. Here in the west we share the greater part of our vocabulary of gestures. A Greek, a Roman, a Spaniard, or a Gaul can converse and share a large amount of their unspoken communication. We recognize things like passion or untruthfulness as much through interpretation of these signs as through the words we hear. There will be differences between peoples, of course, but we share more than we differ.”

“I think I understand,” I told her. “When I have been speaking with a Gaul for some time, I am pretty confident whether he is lying to me, or angling for favors, or is afraid of me. Germans are much harder to read. They are more alien to us than Gauls.”

“You have it exactly,” she said. “I have seen the same thing in Alexandria, where black slaves are brought from the interior. When they are newly arrived their habitual gestures are as strange as anything else about them. A nod may mean dismay rather than agreement. Where we look for hands folded together they wave to the side instead. A shrug of the shoulders may denote happiness, and fear may be expressed by slapping the chest with the palms. That is how it was with Ashthuva. I observed her closely, but when she spoke everything was just enough off-key to prevent me from making a confident evaluation of her truthfulness or motivation.”

Echo appeared and announced the arrival of a group of people whose names I recognized vaguely as being among Rome’s intellectual elite, which is to say people without political significance. I rose to go and she apologized for having discovered so little.

“Callista, I cannot imagine anyone I would rather have studying this matter. Your knowledge is matched only by your breadth of insight.”

“You are far too kind. Oh, I must clarify something. In this unspoken language of gesture, which includes things like posture, physical address, attitude, and so forth, there is one exception to the cultural division.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“The language of sexual allure and seduction. Ashthuva was using it last night.”

“But you were a group of women except for the escort-not Julia?” I was aghast, but she laughed almost girlishly.

“Oh, no, Senator, have no fear on that account. Ashthuva was trying to seduce me.”