The Triumph of Caesar (12 page)

Brutus flashed a lopsided smile. In Africa, after a crushing defeat, Cato first tried to commit suicide by cutting open his belly.

"It's my understanding," said Cicero, "that the African Triumph will chiefly celebrate the victory of Roman arms over King Juba of Numidia."

"Who went down fighting the good fight along with Uncle Cato." Brutus sighed. "Well, whatever else we may say of Caesar, the old boy won the war fair and square, didn't he? And saw fit to let you and me keep our heads, eh, Cicero? What about you, Gordianus? Not a military man, are you?"

"Gordianus has a son who's been serving under Caesar for quite some time," said Cicero. "You may have heard of him: Meto Gordianus."

"Numa's balls, not the fellow who wrote those memoirs for Caesar?"

"My son took Caesar's dictation, yes," I said.

Brutus snorted. "Dictation, eh? Caesar probably wasn't even in the tent while your boy was scribbling away. Give credit where it's due, old man. Everybody knows those memoirs were written by a shadow. And, by Hades, they certainly did their job! From the way those memoirs tell it, the poor Gauls didn't stand a chance. Quite a tale, all blood and thunder and beat my Roman chest. Pumped up Caesar's prestige with the common folk, eh? Made him look invincible. Scared the piss out of Cato, I can tell you. 'Wouldn't want to go up against that bloodthirsty madman,' quoth my doomed uncle. Well, bugger me! The father of great Caesar's ghost, sitting right here. This is quite the literary gathering, isn't it? Cicero's written his latest book especially for me, did you know? Been sending me chapters.
A History of Famous Orators,
dedicated to yours truly. Celebrating a dead art, I suppose. Who needs orators when the courts are closed and the Senate's a shadow? Nonetheless, my name shall enjoy immortality on the dedication page of Cicero's great opus."

Cicero smiled. "I have no doubt that you shall achieve immortality by your own actions, Brutus."

"Really? I don't see how. A hundred years from now, I doubt that anyone's likely to remember who was governor of Cisalpine Gaul in the year of Caesar's quadruple triumphs."

"You're still a young man, Brutus. And Caesar—" Cicero glanced at me, then looked back to Brutus. "Caesar won't live forever."

"Ah, yes, and what will come
after
Caesar?" said Brutus. "People are already speculating about that. What does that tell you? We've begun to think just the way people think when they live under a king. We're not worrying about the next election or who's liable to get himself exiled for corruption or how to keep a foot in a game. We're wondering, 'How long will the old fellow live, and who will be his heir?' For shame!" Brutus tossed back his wine and held out his cup for the slave to refill it.

Wine, soothing the weariness of the journey, had loosened his tongue. He turned to Rupa and smiled. "It was my ancestor, also named Brutus, who founded this little thing we call a republic. Did you know that, big fellow?" He paused, as if expecting Rupa to answer, though he had been told when introduced that Rupa was mute. "Republic—comes from two fine old words,
res
and
publica:
the people's state. You're a fellow citizen, I suppose, being Gordianus's son by adoption?"

"That's correct," I said.

"Where were you born, big fellow? Somewhere quite exotic, I'll wager."

"Rupa is Sarmatian."

"Indeed, you come from the very ends of the earth, from the mountains where the sun rises! What's that line from Ennius? You know, Cicero, his epitaph for Scipio?"

Cicero raised his voice to a ringing orator's pitch. " 'The sun that rises above the eastern-most marshes of Lake Maeotis illumines no man my equal in deeds!' " Far from being chagrined by his friend's loose tongue, he seemed to be as intoxicated as Brutus. This was not the Cicero I knew.

"That's right," said Brutus. "And you, you big Sarmatian fellow, you must have actually
seen
Lake Maeotis, though I'll wager you haven't a clue who Scipio was. No matter! That's the point, really. What a remarkable thing is this republic, eh? It grows and grows, spreading across the whole world, from the Pillars of Hercules to Lake Maeotis, laying down roads and building cities, establishing courts of law, securing the sea lanes, and rewarding its best and brightest with the greatest prize on earth, Roman citizenship."

"And enslaving a vast multitude in the process," I commented. Rupa had been enslaved, before he gained his freedom.

"I shall not debate the natural necessity of slavery, at least not here and now," said Brutus. "That's a book for Cicero to write; one of many, now that he's retired. The law court's loss will be the reader's gain! My point, if I may return to it, is the end of our republic, and everything it stands for. As I said, it was my ancestor who founded this thing." This was an exaggeration—the Brutus of ancient times hardly drove the Tarquins out of Rome single-handedly—but I let it go. "Over four hundred and fifty years ago! The republic has served us for many, many generations. The republic has made us masters of ourselves and masters of the world. As Brutus knew it would. How he loved the republic! No effort was too Herculean, no sacrifice too great to ensure its survival. Do you know what he did, Sarmatian, in the very first year of the republic, when he got wind of a conspiracy to bring back the king?"

Rupa shook his head.

"Brutus declared that any man involved in such a plot must die. Then a slave brought him proof that his own two sons were involved in the plot. Did he make an exception for them? Did he spirit them out of the city or destroy the evidence or pardon them? No, he did not. He had every royalist conspirator arrested. The guilty were lined up and forced to kneel, and the lictors chopped their heads off, one by one. Chop, chop, chop! Brutus watched the beheading of his own two sons, and the historians tell us he never flinched. And afterward, he rewarded the slave who had informed on them by granting the man citizenship—making him the first slave ever to become a Roman citizen. A precedent that has worked to
your
advantage, my Sarmatian friend!"

Brutus sat back, held out his cup for another refill, and drank it down. Talking had made him thirsty. "And that, fellow citizens, is a tale of true republican virtue. What man today could claim to be as brave, as resolute, as decisive as my forefather?"

"Perhaps his descendant," suggested Cicero, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper.

Brutus the founder had killed his own sons for the sake of the republic. Might another Brutus dare to kill his surrogate father for sake of the same
res publica
? And might Cicero, Rome's greatest advocate and orator, be just the man to persuade Brutus to do it?

"But what's this?" Brutus tossed his empty cup to a slave and picked up the astronomical documents Cicero had laid aside upon his arrival. He perused the notations, a bit bleary-eyed. "Symbols for Capricorn and Cancer, Virgo and Libra . . . those are clear enough. But what are these extraordinary nonsense words? Egyptian months? Mesore, Phamenoth, Pharmouthi, Thoth, Phaopi, Tybi, Hathyr, Mecheir, Epiphi, Choiak, Pachon, Payni. Quite a mouthful! And all these columns of numbers . . ." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and laid the documents aside. "What are you up to, Cicero, helping our dictator with calculations for his new calendar? I do hope he's not intending to saddle us with Egyptian months, along with an Egyptian queen. Really, that
would
be the last straw! 'Shall we dine on the Ides of Tybi?' 'Meet me in the Forum two days before the Kalends of Thoth.' "

He threw back his head and laughed.

"Actually, Gordianus brought these," said Cicero. "They appear to be the pet project of a mutual friend. A friend who no longer has need of a calendar, alas."

The time seemed right to depart. I rolled up the documents and handed them to Rupa. I asked Cicero to convey my farewell to his napping bride. I wished Brutus a good stay in Rome, and I took my leave.

VIII

"Tomorrow!" said Bethesda, standing in the front doorway with her arms crossed. Her tone was adamant, her posture imperious. Hand her a flail and a crook, I thought, and put a nemes crown with a rearing cobra on her head, and she could pass for Egyptian royalty.

"You're right," I said. Even standing outside the house, I caught a whiff of the odor of putrefaction that was beginning to emanate from the body in my vestibule. "I shall organize a procession for tomorrow. We'll have him cremated outside the Esquiline Gate."

Bethesda nodded, satisfied that her point had been taken, and stepped aside to allow me to enter.

The odor was stronger in the vestibule, but not overpowering. Nonetheless, I could see how my wife, being at home all day, had reached her limit.

"Did anyone come to pay their respects while I was out?"

"No visitors."

"Ah, well, I'm not surprised. With all these preparations for Caesar's triumphs beginning tomorrow, I suppose everyone's too busy. Only Fulvia came, then, and she didn't even know Hieronymus; her condolences were merely a pretext to question me. Ah, Hieronymus." I gazed down at his face. "You amused them, seduced them with your charm, spied upon them . . . and now, it seems, they've forgotten about you."

"No visitors," Bethesda repeated, "but some messengers did come. They brought these." She bent down to fetch a few pieces of parchment that had been tossed haphazardly in the corner near the door, as if they were bits of refuse. Bethesda had little respect for the written word. There was also a wax writing tablet among the messages.

"Bethesda, these are notes of condolence. They were brought for Hieronymus. You should have laid them upon his bier."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow and shrugged.

"I suppose I'm lucky you didn't burn them."

"Won't they be burned tomorrow, along with Hieronymus?"

"Yes, but only
after
I've read them."

"Who are they from, then?"

"This one's from Cicero. He told me he'd sent a message. 'The laughter and erudition of our learned friend from Massilia will be sorely missed in these trying times,' and so on."

"And the others?"

"Here's one from Antony. Cytheris added a note. She says she wants to provide the singers and mimes for the funeral procession; friends of hers, I imagine. And these others . . ."

I scanned the names of the senders. They were all persons whose names appeared in Hieronymus's reports. These were the people he had visited, whose trust he had sought to cultivate with an eye toward uncovering any threat they might pose to Caesar. Did the fact that these people had sent condolences make them any more or less suspicious? Surely the person responsible for Hieronymus's death would have sent condolences along with everyone else.

Here was a note from Caesar's young grandnephew, Octavius, who was about to turn seventeen; he included an epigram in Greek, probably from a play, though I didn't recognize it. Here was a note from the sculptor Arcesilaus, with whom many years ago I had shared cherries from the garden of Lucullus; it was his statue of Venus that was to adorn the new temple built by Caesar. Here was a note from a new playwright in town, Publilius Syrus, who paraphrased the last lines of Ennius's epitaph for Scipio, from which Cicero had recited earlier: "If any mortal may ascend to the heaven of immortals, for you let the gods' gate stand open."

And here, upon a very heavy piece of parchment rimmed with an embossed border of a repeating lotus leaf pattern, was a note from the queen of Egypt:

To Gordianus, with fond remembrance of our meeting in Alexandria. I have discovered that the late Hieronymus of Massilia was a member of your household, and it is to you I should send a message of condolence. Now you are here in Rome, and so am I. We live in a very small world. But the realm of the afterlife, where I shall reign as Isis in splendor, is vast and eternal. May our mutual friend be guided there swiftly to enjoy his reward.

I laid the notes amid the flowers piled upon the bier. Still in my hand was the wax writing tablet.

I untied the strings of the wooden cover panel. The reusable wax surface contained not a message of condolence, but two questions, below each of which space had been left to scratch a reply. I felt a bit like a pupil being handed a test by his tutor. The name of the sender was not included, but the tablet obviously came from Calpurnia. The first question read:

To whom have you spoken? Reply using initials only.

That was done easily enough. The second question read:

Have you discovered anything to indicate that
he
should not take part in tomorrow's event? Send your reply at once.

In other words, had I discovered anything to indicate an immediate danger to Caesar? I considered how to answer. If something untoward occurred, Calpurnia might hold me accountable, even if Caesar was unharmed. But I had discovered no clear and present danger to Caesar. "No," I wrote. The word looked small and inadequate amid the blank space she had left for my reply.

I rose before daybreak the next morning. The family, appropriately garbed in our darkest clothing, gathered to share a simple meal of mourning, consisting of black bread with black beans.

Had it been entirely up to me, I would have given Hieronymus the simplest possible ceremony. But since Cytheris, with her connections in the performing world, had volunteered to provide the traditional mourners, musicians, and mimes, as well as some sturdy young slaves to carry the bier, it would have been churlish to refuse her offer. Amazingly, the entire troupe showed up on time. It was a good thing Bethesda had prepared extra food, since they all expected to be fed.

An hour after daybreak, our little procession set out. We took a roundabout route, walking up and down the streets of the Palatine so as to pass by various houses where Hieronymus had been an invited guest. If the inhabitants were not awake before we passed by, the screeching mourners and the musicians with their rattles, flutes, horns, and bells surely roused them from bed. Pedestrians paused and curious onlookers peered from windows to watch the mime, trying to guess whom he was impersonating. The fellow had met Hieronymus only once at one of Cytheris's parties, but he was remarkably gifted; wearing one of Hieronymus's favorite tunics, he produced an uncanny simulation of my friend's posture, gait, hand gestures, facial expressions, and even his laugh.