The Catiline Conspiracy (6 page)

"Then let me cheer you up. Come with me."

He led me to a small room equipped with a single table and two small dining-couches. Next to them was a bronze basket filled with glowing-red stones that had been heated in a baker's oven. This provided heat without smoke, for which I was grateful. The afternoon had grown cool. The table was furnished with cups and a pitcher of wine and snacks of the simplest sort: olives, nuts, dates and figs. This represented not a philosopher's love of simplicity but rather a busy man's lack of time for any sort of ostentation.

We drank each other's health and passed a few pleasantries between us. Then Milo spoke in his usual, direct fashion.

"Much as we always enjoy each other's company, I take it that this is by way of being an official visit?"

"Not precisely. That is to say, it doesn't involve my present office. I've come upon evidence of a possible conspiracy against the state, and I am not sure what to do with it. I know of no one totally trustworthy in whom to confide."

"Except me." He smiled.

"You come closest," I admitted.

"Then tell me about it."

Milo was not a man with whom to prevaricate, or speak in circumlocutions or innuendo. I told him exactly what I had found and where I had found it. I told him my reasons for not going to the Consuls or
praetores
. He listened with great concentration. Milo did not have the most brilliant mind I ever encountered; that laurel would have to go to Cicero. But I never knew a man who could think harder than he did.

"I can understand your urge to caution," he said when I had finished. "So you suspect a plot against the state?"

"What else could it be?" I asked.

"I know that you have fears that Pompey will make himself king of Rome, but somehow I don't see him arming a few hundred scruffy supporters to hold the gates for him. If he truly wanted to, I think he could bring his armies to Italy and walk into the city unopposed."

"There are plenty of others, besides Pompey," I pointed out. "Men who once commanded legions and know they will never have the chance to do so again. Men who have been disappointed in their bids for high office. Men who are desperate. Who else?"

"The weapons you describe would not be much use in arming soldiers for the field, but they are just the thing for fighting in a city. No heavy shields or armor, no long pikes, no bows or arrows. They
might
be used as you fear, but there is another possibility."

"I would be glad to hear of it," I said.

"Decius, you have allowed these fears of overambitious generals to dominate your thinking. Those men have learned from what happened in the days of Marius and Sulla. I think that, in the future, they will do most of their fighting outside of Italy. But there are other men who have no ambition to command great armies and lord it over the provincials. These men want to control Rome itself, just the city. Such a cache as you describe would be of great use to one of those."

"And who," I said, "might this person be?"

"Clodius Pulcher comes immediately to mind," he said.

"And you would be another. No, it is tempting, and that makes me even more skeptical. There is nothing in the world I would love more than to impeach Clodius before the Senate. It would rid the Republic of a despicable cur and, incidentally, make my name in politics. For that reason, I can hardly believe that the gods have dropped this opportunity in my lap. I will not, of course, suggest that you might have had anything to do with this."

"Give me credit for greater subtlety. Then let us go back to the idea of a malcontent itching for a coup. It wouldn't be just one malcontent. They have a way of finding one another and talking about how unjustly they have been treated."

"Why the Temple of Saturn?" I asked him.

"It is a good location, near the Forum. It has, as you found out, disused storerooms nobody ever looks into. The treasury is always securely locked but the temple itself is open. It will only be one of several caches, you know. Keep an eye on the one in the temple and see if there are more deposited there in the next few days. But don't let anyone see you do it. I would hate to hear that you were found dead in the street one morning, like poor Manius Oppius." He would have known of the murder within minutes of the body's being found. I only hoped that he had not known of it before.

"I passed by the murder scene this morning," I told him. "I took charge until the
Iudex
Octavius arrived. Do you know anything about the man?"

"He was a banker, like a lot of that family. I didn't know him, but I know plenty of people who owed him money."

"There will be no shortage of suspects, then," I said.

I took the dagger from beneath my tunic and un-wrapped it. "This is what he was killed with. Have you ever seen one like it?"

He turned the knife over in his hands, ran his thumb along the carved serpent. Then he shook his head. "It's no national type I know of. Not even very good work. If I were going to murder a man, I'd probably go to a market, pick up a thirdhand weapon like this from a junk dealer, use it once and leave it where it was or toss it into the nearest storm drain." He handed it back to me. "Sorry. I suspect that whoever used this picked it because it could not identify him."

I rose. "I thank you, Milo. I still haven't decided what to do, but you have given me some things to think about."

"Stay for dinner," he urged.

"Alas, I am having dinner with the Egyptian ambassador. Ptolemy the Flute-Player is in trouble again and is cultivating every official in Rome for support. He comes here so often we ought to make him a citizen."

"Well, I won't try to keep you from a good party." He rose as well and put his hand on my shoulder as he walked me to the door. "You recall what I said about how malcontents find each other?"

"I do."

"If you really want to find out if some of them are plotting to overthrow the state, let them find you. They are always looking for others like them. Don't be too obvious, but let fall a few comments about how no good offers for
post-quaestor
appointments have come your way, how your highly placed and jealous enemies are thwarting your ambitions for higher office. You know how they talk. But let them think that it is they who are suborning you." He thought for a while. "You might drop some of these words where Quintus Curius may hear them."

At the door I took my leave and thanked him again. As usually happened when I had discussed something with Milo, I felt that I had been vouchsafed a special insight, making simple what had seem a thorny, difficult problem. He had a way of cutting through the dross and the distractions to reach the core of the matter. He was not bothered by the useless fears, the ethical considerations, the nonpertinent inconsequentialities that cluttered my own mind. His fixation on the acquisition and exercise of power was as intense and single-minded as those of Clodius, Pompey, Cicero, Caesar and the rest, but he was far more likable than any of them, even Caesar, who could be incredibly likable when he wanted your support.

For instance, why had I not thought of Quintus Curius? He was a penurious malcontent of the first order, a man known to have committed half the crimes on the law tables and suspected of the rest. If anything truly villainous was being plotted in Rome, he would be involved. A few years previously, the Censors had expelled him from the Senate for outrageous behavior. He came of an old and distinguished family, and so naturally thought that he was entitled to wealth, high position and public esteem. He was one of those men who simply could not understand how a new man like Cicero could have become Consul.

I went to my home in the Subura to put on my best toga, thinking of how I might establish a link with Curius. It should not be difficult. The social life of Rome, like its political life, was dominated by a rather small group of men and women. Since I was dining out almost every evening, it should not take me more than a few days to make the necessary connections. The opportunity was to come far sooner than I had hoped.

The house of the Egyptian ambassador was located outside the city walls, on the Janiculum. This gave it almost the aspect of a country villa and allowed the ambassador to lavish his guests with entertainments restricted or forbidden within the walls. The politics of Egypt formed a source of endless entertainment for Romans. The huge, rich nation of the great river was ruled, to use the term loosely, by a Macedonian family that had adopted the quaint Egyptian custom of legitimizing one's reign by marrying one or perhaps more of one's close female kin. This family had an almost Roman paucity of names, all the men being named Ptolemy or Alexander, and all the women Cleopatra or Berenice. (There was an occasional Selene, but that was usually a third daughter. By the time you were down to marrying a Selene, your claim to the throne was shaky, indeed.) At least one of them, named Ptolemy, deposed his older brother, also named Ptolemy, married his brother's wife, Cleopatra, who was also sister to both of them, and then, just to make clean sweep of it, married her daughter and his niece), also named Cleopatra.

The last of the legitimate Ptolomaic line had been Ptolemy X, a Roman client, who claimed the throne by marching his troops into Alexandria and marrying his elderly cousin and stepmother, Berenice, whom he assassinated within twenty days. The Alexandrians, who had been fond of that particular Berenice, promptly killed him. Needing a Ptolemy, lest the natural order of things be shaken, they found a bastard, Philopater Philadelphus Neos Dionysus, better known as
Auletes
, the flute-player, for his realm of greatest competence. At the same time, for incredibly complicated dynastic reasons comprehensible only to Egyptians, they made his brother king of Cyprus. Since that time, several cousins had laid claim to the throne of Egypt. Since it was generally understood that the legitimate king in Egypt was the one who had Roman support, all of them, cousins, ambassadors and frequently the Flute-Player himself, were in Rome, passing extravagant bribes and entertaining lavishly. This was a source of great fun and profit for us Romans, and I was a frequent guest there, as was every man likely to reach high office.

The villa itself was a wonderful mishmash of architectural motifs, with Greek sculptures, landscaping in the Roman fashion, Egyptian lotus and papyrus pillars, shrines to the Roman gods, to the Divine Alexander, to Isis and a horde of animal-headed Egyptian divinities. There was a beautiful fishpond in the gardens with a huge obelisk in its center, and another pond full of crocodiles, presided over by a loathsome crocodile-headed god named Sobek. There was a rumor in the city that the Egyptians fed these huge reptiles on un-claimed corpses they obtained by bribing the attendants at the public burial pits, but I never saw any proof of this.

The ambassador at that time was a fat old degenerate named Lisas, an Alexandrian. Alexandria was virtually a nation in itself, the most cosmopolitan of cities, and Lisas was typical of its inhabitants: a nameless mixture of Greek, Egyptian, Nubian, Asiatic and Jupiter alone knows what else. It is a blend of races that produces exotically beautiful women and some of the ugliest men to blight the face of the earth. Of Alexandria it is said that few cities are so beautiful, but it must be viewed from a distance.

Lisas greeted me in his usual fashion, all smiles and oil. "My friend, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger! How your presence brightens this house of the king! How generous of you to look with favor upon my humble invitation! How splendid of you..." He went on breathlessly in this vein for some time.

"And most pleased I am to be here," I assured him. The smells drifting from within almost made up for the scent in which he was drenched. Effusively, he led me inside and announced me to the guests, of which there were some thirty or so. Since large-scale currying of favor was the whole purpose of the embassy, Lisas did not restrict himself to the Roman custom of inviting no more than nine guests for dinner--"not fewer than the Fates, nor more than the Muses," as some wit or other once said.

The gathering ran the gamut of social and political life, with as many elected officials as he could persuade to come, some fashionable poets and scholars for dignity, and a sprinkling of clowns for levity. There were a number of women noted for beauty and social graces and for less reputable accomplishments. It looked like a good party.

The musicians played exotic instruments such as harps and sistra, garbed in pleated Egyptian linen, while dancers, clad in less of the same material, clapped and gyrated, swinging their weighted braids orgiastically. The servitors were all black Nubians dressed in animal skins and paint. Many of them were carved with ritual scars and had their teeth filed to points. These offered the thick, sweet wines of Egypt as well as the more palatable vintages of the civilized world.

These evenings were always leisurely, beginning early and running far later into the night than was the Roman custom. The thoughtful Lisas maintained a whole corps of linkboys and guards to escort his guests safely to their homes.

The atrium where the guests assembled was a large, circular room, drawn from no architecture with which I was familiar. Its floor mosaics depicted a menagerie of Egyptian fauna, with crocodiles and hippos disporting themselves among water and reeds, ostriches, cobras and lions frolicking in the desert, vultures and hawks soaring through the skies. The wall paintings depicted Nile pygmies fighting a battle with long-beaked cranes. Travelers insisted that these tiny folk actually existed, somewhere near the source waters of the great river, but I never saw any.

I did see one thing that interested me. The beautiful Sempronia was present. She was one of those infamous women of whom I made mention earlier. That is to say, she was educated, outspoken, independent, intelligent and rich enough to carry it all off. She was of matronly years but still one of Rome's great beauties, combining a fine-boned, aristocratic face with that arrogance of bearing that Romans find most admirable. Her husband, Decimus Junius Brutus, was a busy drudge who took no interest in his wife's doings, and the two had not lived together in years. She was also on the best of the terms with Rome's lowest and most prodigal reprobates, finding them far more stimulating company than her husband's respectable friends.