Marcus Aurelius Betrayed (17 page)

Aurelius returned to the subject of the meeting. “I was distressed, as were you, by the execution of an innocent person, the slave Ganymede, and also by the charge
of judicial murder lodged against the Prefect’s stepson. I understand you had no choice as a Roman judge but to bring him to trial. Since the Prefect of Egypt has referred the case to me --an
appellatio
to the Emperor -- I have little choice but to entertain it. I have therefore called Calvus to Rome for consultations and his stepson here for trial.

“But first, tell me what you think happened. I am still not quite clear on that. Was the Prefect the intended victim? Or was it the person who actually died, Pudens? And who do you think is the poisoner?”

“I don’t know the answer to those questions,
domine
. I didn’t have the opportunity to complete the investigation. For instance, I have not been able to question three participants in the orgy – the missing librarian Philogenes, the shady antique dealer Isarion or the the Prefect’s aide, Serpentinus. So I can’t really assess their motives. Also I would like to question Pudens’ assistant, Claudius Celer. He was either transferred out of Egypt back to Rome or fled in fear. In the end, the Prefect effectively cut off my investigation and ordered me out of Egypt.

“As far as Claudius Celer is concerned, if he is in Rome, I can continue my investigation here. But he hasn’t shown up at the Imperial Post headquarters in the City. I’ve checked.”

Aurelius thought a bit. “I can see it would be useful to find Celer. So I will assign the Praetorian Guard to help you. They can comb the City and find him. I want you to direct their efforts.”

“That’s a good idea and I will direct them.”

“Good,” answered Aurelius, swallowing down a tranquility pill with a drink of mulsum. “Now I have to
keep an independent mind since the trial of Secundus is coming to my court, so let’s talk about something else -- our childhood, for instance.”

Severus smiled as memories came back. “Another thing I remember besides playing ball with you was when you told the other chicks that you slept on the floor. I even tried it once myself, but didn’t like it.”

Aurelius smiled. “I remember that too. When as a child I first studied philosophy, I thought I should adopt the habits of a philosopher, so I wore a rough cloak and slept on the floor. My mother didn’t like it at all and though I was reluctant she finally persuaded me to sleep on a small palette covered with hides. I was a serious child, you see. And that seriousness was one of the reasons the Emperor Hadrian, who was a family friend and used to visit us even after my father died, picked me out to be educated and trained to become the Emperor. Involuntarily, I should add.”

“You didn’t want to become Emperor?”

“I was appalled. And I’ve always carried something of a grudge against Hadrian because of it. I became one of his projects to improve the Empire. He took hold of my life and turned it to what he wanted. You see, Severus, I really wanted to be a writer of history books.” Aurelius smiled, almost ruefully. “I still take notes from my readings for some future day, which probably will never come, when I can write those books.”

“But you can be a great Emperor. A philosopher on the throne. Just as Plato envisioned.” Severus quoted the famous words of Plato. “States flourish if philosophers rule or if rulers are philosophers.”

“I sometimes think that there are few better positions than Emperor to put philosophy into practical use,”
replied Aurelius, “as long as I take care not to be dyed in the purple. However other times I’m not so sure. Being Emperor by its very nature can be incompatible with leading a philosophic life. Ruling sometimes must betray philosophy.”

He looked directly at Severus, with an expression now more knowing and realistic than rueful.

“So don’t expect Plato’s Republic.”

XXVI

THE SEARCH FOR CLAUDIUS CELER

“T
he Praetorian Guard?” exclaimed Vulso, when the next day in chambers Severus told him about his conference with the Emperor. “We’re supposed to work with those arrogant
effeminati
?”

His words and tone expressed both the resentment of members of the Urban Cohort who were looked down on by the Praetorian Guard as socially beneath them and the scorn of a veteran of the legions who looked down on the Praetorian Guard as militarily incompetent.

“There won’t be a problem,” said Severus, who understood the long standing rivalries and frictions. “The Emperor has personally instructed the Praetorian Prefect that there’s to be harmonious cooperation in this matter.”

Vulso snorted. “There have been times, you may recall, judge, when it was the Praetorian Guard that instructed the Emperors.”

“That was more than 60 years ago. Nowadays, the Guard is loyal and obedient. Both Praetorian Prefects
are career officials devoted to the regime and to the Emperor. There won’t be any problems.”

“I hope you’re right,” replied Vulso doubtfully because Severus’ brush off was somewhat tendentious. They both knew, as did everyone else, that just two years before, upon their accession, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, like all other Emperors before them since the time of Claudius, first met with the Senate and then went directly to the camp of the Praetorian Guard. There they addressed the troops and promised a special donative of 20,000 sesterces per man, almost 10-years pay. Only then did the new Emperors receive the support and acclamation of the Guard. So while the Praetorians might now be loyal and obedient, as Severus phrased it, they first had to be generously paid off for their compliance.

A little while later a Tribune of the Praetorian Guard showed up at the judge’s chambers in the rooms behind the colonnades inside the Forum of Augustus. He parked a detachment of guardsmen in the forum itself. On duty at the palace, guardsmen were required to wear civilian togas, with their swords concealed underneath, in conformity with the traditional policy and practice of the Emperors to display Republican forms of government instead of imperial realities. No one was more congenially attached to this policy than Marcus Aurelius. But here, away from the palace, the Tribune and guardsmen were in full dress uniforms – red tunic, square red cloak, wearing the new style helmets, with bars of reinforcement strips replacing the crests, and shields displaying the insignia of the Praetorian Guard – a scorpion. It was the horoscope sign of the Emperor Tiberius, one of the founders of the Guard.

But whether in civilian or military dress, all the guardsmen were paid three times the salary of a legionary and had only 3/5 the length of service. Just as agreeably, their service was spent mostly in cosmopolitan Rome and not in camps on wild and dangerous frontiers, though in the current crisis of war with Persia, part of the Guard was actually at the front with one of the Prefects and the co-emperor Lucius Verus.

The Tribune introduced himself as Publius Cornelius Naso, with his voice emphasizing ‘Cornelius’, an old distinguished Roman family name. Arrogance was unabashedly on display.

Severus ignored it. “We have a job to do, as you know. We must find a certain Claudius Celer, an official of the Imperial Post. He left his position in Alexandria, either expelled or fled in fear, supposedly to come back to Rome. But he has not turned up at the Imperial Post offices here.

“The first step, therefore, was to ask people who know him at the Imperial Post where he lives and where he might be. We have done that already and found that he lived with his family in an apartment in the Subura. But he and his family are not there and neighbors don’t know where they are. Celer told the neighbors he was moving, but did not say where.”

Cornelius was doubtful. “Counting slaves and foreigners and visitors, there are probably around two million people in the City at any time. How are we supposed to find one person?”

“We search. Talk again with his colleagues at the Imperial Post, with their neighbors in the Subura and probe more deeply. Start today and report to me every
few days or so. I want to know everything about Celer, who his friends were, what his interests are, what he might be doing now. If he’s not working at the Imperial Post, what could he be doing to earn a living? And include information about his wife and the children as well. Are they in school? Where?”

Cornelius saluted and left.

Two days later Cornelius returned in a bad mood with a report of no progress. “We found out nothing. No one will talk to us.”

“In that case,” suggested Severus, “try bribery.”

“Bribery? How much should we pay?”

“20,000 sesterces per person might work,” replied Severus with a straight face.

“20,000 sesterces? But that’s the same amount that each guardsman was paid when the new Emperors acceded to…. Oh, I see, you’re joking, aren’t you?”

Severus didn’t answer. Cornelius first looked like he was going to be indignant, but then broke out in a huge laugh. “Oh yes, judge, 20,000 sesterces per person. That’s very good. I must tell it to everyone. 20,000 sesterces.” He chortled, saluted and left in a good mood.

XXVII

ARTEMISIA TAKES SEVERUS TO THE SAEPTA JULIA MARKET

T
wo days later, a warm, sunny beautiful afternoon, while the search for Claudius Celer was still in progress, Artemisia came by Severus’ courthouse in the Forum of Augustus. She asked him to walk with her up the Via Lata – ‘Broadway’ – to the Saepta Julia marketplace.

“What for?” he asked. “We usually shop at Trajan’s Market right next door. Why do we have to go to the Saepta? It’s up by the Pantheon.”

“There’s something I want to show you there. Besides on a beautiful afternoon like today it will nice just to walk there.”

Severus saw something in his wife’s demeanor. She showed a sort of curious self-satisfied smile, as if to say, in the common expression, that she ‘had Jupiter by the balls.’

“And by the way,” she added, “put on a plain toga, not your judicial toga.”

He just gave her a quizzical look. Now he was intrigued.

They walked up the Via Lata, Severus in a plain white toga, Artemisia in a pale blue stola, with an orange belt. Broadway was crowded with afternoon activity, a motley street crowd of strollers, shoppers, bustling workers, idlers and street loungers, messengers darting in and out of the crowd, school children returning home, the whole gamut of every day life, from elegance to riff-raff, from senators to slaves. There were plenty of litters, but they caused a lot of the traffic jams, making walking a more desirable and certainly faster way of moving, even if not so ostentatious. Still pedestrian traffic was thick enough to cause rubbing of elbows and rushing people bumping into each other, as crowds thickened and thinned like the action of waves. The din was palpable. And the shops lining the street and in the porticoes were all busy as were the entrepreneurs set up on the sidewalks -- barbers and doctors, food vendors hawking their cakes and sausages and snacks and drinks, street musicians, rhetoricians and haranguing hucksters, magicians, fortune-tellers, beggars and lunatics.

Severus and Artemisia stopped at a street-side taverna with a counter facing the sidewalk. They had a snack of salt and pepper chickpeas and cups of mulsum, honeyed white wine, while standing on the street by the counter, observing people. Then they continued along still enjoying the vibrancy of street life, though not enjoying other people brushing too closely by them in their hurried and oblivious rush to get wherever they were going. Still they reached the Saepta Julia in good time.

The Saepta – the ‘enclosure’ – was a quadroportico, a four-sided columned building enclosing a large rectangle almost 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide. In the time of the Republic it had been a meeting place for voting assemblies and ballot booths. When the Empire came, Augustus substituted gladiatorial shows for democratic elections, and later it became what it was now – a large marketplace with especially expensive and elegant shops inside, along with art works decorating the walkways and the interior square and buildings. The inside shops were high-class and very costly. Citrus wood tables with ivory legs, tortoise shell decorated divans, Corinthian bronzes, crystal vases, fluorspar bowls, antique chalices, exquisite jewelry, emeralds set in gold, large pearls, jasper, sardonyx, statuary by famous artists and every other type of item that could attract wealthy buyers ready to spend money. Merchandise that could fetch a high price, whether it was worth it or not, was the fare inside the Saepta Julia.

“So what have we come to buy?” asked Severus suspiciously, as they entered through the portico facing the Via Lata and headed toward the more expensive inner shops.

“We’re not here to buy, so much as to look. And at one shop in particular. An antiques store, and it’s just down this lane. I found it this morning when I came with my friend Valeria. She wanted to buy a citrus wood table, but the store next door drew my attention. There it is,” she pointed.

It was an antiques store she pointed at. In front were displayed Egyptian style items -- statues, boxes, bowls.

Severus saw the sign outside. “The Golden Ibis,” he read out loud. “Antiques from Egypt.”

The name jogged his memory.

“You weren’t in the ‘The Golden Ibis’ when we were in Alexandria,” Artemisia said, “but I was. It was one of the two antique shops I visited.” Severus raised his eyebrows. “It was the one owned by Isarion,” she said.

“Isarion? You don’t mean the Isarion who was at the Prefect’s orgy. The one who left for Rhodes before we could talk to him. The one we never found?”

“That’s exactly who I mean. And what’s more, I talked to him yesterday inside that shop. I told him I had been in a shop in Alexandria with the same name. He acknowledged that The Golden Ibis in Alexandria was also his shop, as was a ‘Golden Ibis’ in Rhodes. He’s the Isarion you’ve been looking for. And he may even be there right now.” Her smile told it all. Severus was stunned and pleased at the same time.

But Isarion was not inside, though an obsequious clerk in an Egyptian headdress recognized Artemisia from earlier in the day and showed her and her husband the expensive gold and faience encrusted mosaic box she had showed interest in that morning.