The Catiline Conspiracy (11 page)

Over the next week, there were four more murders. All the victims were
equites
. Even for Rome, this was something unusual and the city was abuzz. One was bludgeoned, one had his throat cut, one was stabbed and the fourth was found floating in the Tiber, drowned. This last may have been accidental, but after five clear murders, nobody was ready to believe that.

The usual wild ideas made the rounds. Soothsayers offered murky revelations. But the city was not really alarmed. In fact, the general attitude was one of quiet satisfaction. The
equites
were not popular. They lacked the prestige of the
nobiles
and the senatorial class and they did not have the numbers of the commons. Too many people were in debt to them. They had wealth and comfort and thus were envied. There was still much hard feeling over the
Praetor
Otho's infamous action in reserving for the
equites
the fourteen rows of theater seats behind those traditionally reserved for the Senators and the Vestals. Overall, the general feeling in the city was that a few murders were just what that upstart class needed.

One of the murdered men, named Decimus Flavius, was a director of the Red faction in the circus. I decided to investigate him first, for no better reason than that the Caecilii were traditionally members of the Red faction, although the rest of the Metelli were Whites. Both of these factions were dwindling as the Blues and Greens came to dominate the races. The Greens had become the faction of the common man, while the Blues were the faction of the aristocratic
optimates
, their clients and supporters. Most of the
equites
were also Blues. These two factions would occupy facing sections of the circus and engage in great shouting matches before the races. Riots were still rare at that time, though.

The logical place to find out about Flavius was the Circus Maximus, and so on the morning after the murder was reported I made my way down from the Forum to the ancient Valley of Murcia between the Aventine and Palatine hills. Here was where Tarquin the Old had laid out Rome's racecourse when the city was still little more than a cluster of villages atop the seven hills. The place was so ancient that nobody could remember why its Temple of Consus was underground.

The Circus Maximus was the largest structure in Rome, a huge building complex housing everything necessary for getting four chariots, each with four horses and a charioteer, onto the sand in time for the race. This is not as simple as one might think. Horses were brought from as far away as Spain, Africa and Antioch. They were trained for a minimum of three years. The charioteers began their training in childhood and losses were high, so there had to be a steady supply of them. Chariots were made as light as possible to make them faster, so they had to be replaced constantly. Charioteers and horses needed a special diet. There were slaves to care for the chariots and harness, slaves to care for the charioteers, and immense numbers of slaves to care for the horses, cleaning out their stalls, seeing to their exercise, grooming them and doctoring them. There were even slaves who did nothing but talk to the horses to keep them contented and run alongside them on the way to the races, cheering them and raising their spirits.

Wherever Rome went, the circus went, and the factions maintained headquarters wherever there was a circus. It was not unusual for a single faction to maintain a stud of eight or ten thousand stallions to keep a single, small province supplied. In short, the circus was the largest institution in our empire. And the Circus Maximus was the largest such building in the world. Its lowest courses of seats were of stone, but the rest of the building was wooden. When filled to capacity with more than 200,000 spectators, the timber superstructure emitted the most alarming squeaks and groans, although it had never collapsed. There was always talk of building a permanent structure of stone, but no steps had been made in that direction. I think the populace just liked the rickety old place, even if it was the most significant fire hazard in the city. The arches beneath the stands constituted a minor forum, with shops and stalls selling everything from sausages to the services of inexpensive prostitutes. It was said in Rome that, should anything be stolen from you, all that you had to do was loiter around the Circus Maximus for a while and someone would offer to sell it to you. The citizenry had never conceived quite as much affection for the Circus Flaminius, which lay outside the old city walls. It was not as large and was only a little more than 150 years old.

When I arrived at the circus, it was bustling with activity. There would be races in just a few days, and those who were to participate in the preliminary procession were rehearsing. The slaves who bore the images of the gods practiced hoisting the platforms to their shoulders and marching in step to the music of horn, lyre and flute. Small, gilded chariots drawn by tiny ponies bore images such as thunderbolts, owls, peacocks and so forth, the attributes of the gods. These charming vehicles were driven by children who, for some reason, had to have both parents living. These white-robed little boys put their ponies through their paces with great seriousness. The musicians set up a great din and wild-haired women with tambourines danced like maenads in honor of Bacchus. A group of men in plumed helmets and scarlet tunics, bearing spear and shield, went through a slow, solemn war dance while behind them a pack of men dressed as satyrs, with goat tails attached to their rumps and huge, red phalluses to their loins, performed a bawdy parody of the same dance. All that was missing was the crowd in the stands.

On the sand, horses were being exercised, allowing them to grow accustomed to the racecourse and its immense environs. I walked along the whole length of the course, beside the
spina
, which had not yet acquired the crowd of statues that graces it now. At each end were the spikes tipped with seven gilded eggs marking each of the seven laps of a race, one egg being removed to mark each lap. This was before the water-spitting dolphins were added to aid the spectators in keeping track of how fast they were losing their money.

The sand, specially imported from Africa, was continually raked smooth after each batch of chariots rattled by. I was gladdened to see that the sand was its accustomed tan. When Caesar was
aedile
, he had spread green-tinted sand in the circuses, the color of his faction. He had achieved this remarkable effect by mixing pulverized copper ore with the sand. Past the
spina
, and careful not to be trampled by the practicing charioteers, I crossed the track and passed out through the open end of the great stadium where the starting gates stood open.

Beyond these gates was the stable area, almost as large as the circus itself. Since White and Red were the oldest factions, their stables and headquarters were nearest the circus. Red headquarters was a six-story building the size of a tenement built directly above their brick stables. The stables themselves were three-storied; two above ground and one below, connected by ramps broad enough for a pair of four-horse chariots to pass. The timber and plaster building above was painted, naturally enough, red. Outside were statues of famous horses from the stables, and the facade was decorated with plaques bearing the names of hundreds of others, listing the victories of each. The smell of horses was overwhelming, but it was more agreeable than many scents the city had to offer.

The office of the directors took up most of the second floor of the timber structure. It was spacious and rather luxuriously appointed, for a place of business. Entering this building was like stepping into another world. There were shrines to gods I had never seen before, and the walls bore enigmatic inscriptions and decorations, all having to do with the rites of the racing guild. Slave, freedmen and freemen, they all belonged to the guild and took part in its rituals. Within the guild, the various specialists had their own subguilds, shrines and even temples. That of the charioteers was especially fine and they got the most splendid, as well as the most frequent, funerals.

As I entered the office, slaves were setting up a crudely carved statue of a woman seated sideways on a horse, holding a key. The man supervising the work wore the clothes of an
eques
and noticed my interest.

"Epona," he said. "A Gallic horse-goddess. Some of our breeders in transalpine Gaul sent her as a gift."

"What is the key for?" I asked.

"It's a stable key, I think." He turned to me and introduced himself. "I am Helvidius Priscus, one of the directors of the Reds. How may I be of service to the Senate and People?"

I have often noticed this quality in Romans; an ability to recognize a public official. As a mere
quaestor
I had no lictors and no insignia of office and I dressed like a private citizen, but this man knew that I was some sort of official. I did not flatter myself that he remembered my face from the election. In that great mob it would take a twenty-foot statue of Jupiter to register a memorable impression. I was elected because I had announced my name in candidacy and the clients of the Metelli outnumber any other voting bloc. The lower offices are our birthright. The higher ones we have to fight for like everyone else.

"I am here to inquire into the murder of Decimus Flavius. I am Decius Metellus."

"The
quaestor
! Welcome, sir, you honor our establishment. I apologize for the clutter and rush, but we are getting ready for the next races, as well as picking the stallions to run in the festival of the October Horse. Please, come this way." I followed him into a broad room, one wall of which was mostly open to a balcony overlooking the circus gates. In the wide esplanade between, grooms from every nation walked their horses, talking to them in languages the beasts understood.