The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (55 page)

I went at once to Symmachus’ house, and, so great was my concern, bribed the slave to obtain a meeting swiftly. Symmachus, however, laughed at my anxiety and dismissed it. The slave who had died was known to be a frequenter of wineshops, one whose love of drink had several times before caused him to be late returning to the house after running an errand. That he had delayed in a wineshop once too often, and paid dearly for it was a sorrow to his master, but it was not cause for suspicion, since the city has always been much troubled with thieves and robbers. Neither was it suspicious that a slave of the Anicii should have found the body, for the Anicii have many slaves, and the house of Paulinus stood not far away from that of Symmachus himself.

I was in part reassured by this, but as I was about to take my leave, I thought to ask Symmachus on what errand the dead slave had been sent.

“He was carrying a letter,” said Symmachus. When he saw how much this alarmed me, he laughed and added, “There was no harm in it! It was only a note to my friend Claudius, ordering provisions for the prefectural games.” And he dismissed me with the air of one who has conferred a great favour just by listening.

I departed in anger and doubt, at one moment ashamed because my groundless alarm had caused me to appear a fool in front of my patron, at the next wondering if I should turn back and beg Symmachus to take steps to protect himself. I was still in this uncertain ardour of mind when I arrived at the house of Eutherius, which stood across the Tiber from that of Symmachus, not too far away.

I had by then visited the former chamberlain privately, according to his own invitation, and we had spoken together
of Julian Augustus, and of the wars between Romans and barbarians. Finding him kindly and intelligent and possessed of a prodigious memory, I had asked him about the reign of Constans Augustus, as I was becoming convinced that I needed to expand the scope of my history to include rulers who preceded Julian. Eutherius had replied that Constans and his fate were matters of too much substance to deal with quickly, and had invited me again. When I was admitted to his house on this occasion, however, he at once noticed my agitation, and instead of resuming our historical discussions, asked what had transpired to distress me.

When I had recounted the matter, Eutherius, too, was troubled, perceiving, as I had, the danger inherent in a letter, however innocent its subject. “Do you remember,” he asked me, “the letters by which Dynamius destroyed Silvanus?”

I replied that I remembered them very well. Dynamius had removed the original text of some of Silvanus’ letters with a sponge, leaving only the signature, and had written instead other words which implied that Silvanus was planning treason. His plot was eventually discovered, but not before many men died.
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“Yet, surely,” I said, “since that matter became so notorious, anyone investigating such letters now would scrutinize them more closely. It is impossible to sponge away writing so completely that it leaves no trace at all upon the parchment.”

“Perhaps,” replied Eutherius. “Yet if the letter carried by the prefect’s slave dealt with provisions for the games, it may well have spoken of supplying weapons and men to fight, or made arrangements for the payment of large amounts of gold. An unscrupulous scribe could, by adding only a few words here and there, make it appear that it concerned more
serious contests than those of the arena. Moreover, Symmachus’ enemies know that at present he is vulnerable to slander. He is not in favour at court. He has protested excessively about the removal of pagan monuments from Rome, and Valentinian Augustus is not only pious, but also much influenced by the bishop of Mediolanum
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, who considers Symmachus his most formidable opponent. If your patron is wise, he will fear his enemies.”

I replied that Symmachus possessed far too lofty an opinion of himself to be cautious, and I became still more agitated than before. Perceiving this, Eutherius urged me to be patient, and declared that we should investigate the matter further to learn whether we had just cause for our alarm.

“And how should we do that?” I asked. “Symmachus dismisses the whole affair, and it is pointless to go to the Anicii. As well Odysseus should go to the Cyclops to inquire whom next he wishes to devour!”

“We must discover how the prefect’s slave died,” said Eutherius. “If he frequented wineshops, his friends will know which taverns were his favourites. Someone in such a place may well have seen him there on the day he died, and provide us with information about the circumstances of his death. What was his name?”

I replied that I had never heard it, and objected that we were unlikely to learn anything of the dead slave from his friends. Slaves will tell you nothing, except when they are put to the torture, at which they will tell you anything.

Eutherius, however, said, “It is true that slaves would refuse to speak freely to you or to me, since they would fear to be tortured if the matter came to judicial investigation – but to another slave they will be more talkative.” And he ordered his steward to summon two of his own people.

Presently the two slaves Eutherius had sent for appeared, a man and a woman unremarkable in appearance, and the eunuch related to them the subject of our enquiries and promised to reward them well for any information they might obtain concerning the dead slave. He sent the man, whose name was Sannio, to Symmachus’ house with a gift of spices for the kitchen, and the woman, Aenis, to the house of Anicius Paulinus in the guise of a pedlar. Then, seeing my surprise and perplexity at this proceeding, he turned to me and said, “It is true that we will learn only the gossip of the kitchen – but that should at least include the dead man’s name and something more about the circumstances of his death.”

I told him that I understood as much, and that my surprise was rather that he should take so much trouble on behalf of Symmachus, a man he barely knew.

“I have been his guest,” he told me. “And I loathe these fortune-hunting informers. I have seen far too many of them succeed, to the corruption of justice and to public loss.”

This sentiment I entirely agreed with and admired, and I reflected that since I, too, hated informers, and since I was moreover a member of Symmachus’ circle and more closely bound to him than was Eutherius, I ought to be more active in my own enquiries. Besides, it struck me that if Symmachus were under an obligation to me he would be compelled to become more generous in his patronage. I therefore took my leave of Eutherius, telling him that I would go and speak to Symmachus’ friend Claudius, who was to have received his letter. The eunuch approved this, and asked me to return to his house when I had done so, saying that by that time he should have reports from his two slaves.

Accordingly I set out to visit Symmachus’ friend Claudius, by whom I supposed he meant Claudius Adelphius, a man of high rank whose house stood near the Appian way, on
the other side of the city. On arriving there after a long walk, however, I found the mansion emptied of people, and almost the sole remaining slave, a feeble old man, informed me that the master with the rest had just then gone out to the baths.

Unwilling to waste the journey, and fatigued by the long walk across the city, I hastened to look for Adelphius in the Baths of Caracalla, which were not far away.

On entering the lofty and resounding bath-house, my ears were assailed by a clamour from the massed ranks of Adelphius’ slaves, who were busily crowding the common people back out into the street. In the centre of the changing room stood Adelphius, fanning himself with his left hand so as to show off his many rings, and crying out dolefully, “Oh, such a filthy mob! Where, where are my attendants?”

I made my way over and greeted him. He gazed at me menacingly, unsure whether to recognise me or not. I reminded him that I was a client of Symmachus’, and asked him if he had received the prefect’s letter.

“What!” he cried, “Symmachus sent me a letter about you?”

I explained that, on the contrary, the letter concerned arrangements for the prefectural games.

“What, another one!” he exclaimed. “Give it to me, then!” And he snapped his fingers to summon a slave to take it.

I denied that I had a letter, and – seeing his look of indignation – explained that I was merely inquiring as to whether he had received one the day before, as the slave who had carried it had been found murdered, and we did not know whether he was killed before or after he delivered the letter.

“It must have been before, because I received no letter yesterday,” Adelphius said irritably. “And indeed, I wondered at it, for I’ve received a letter from the prefect every other day this month. He might well save himself the ink. I
have already told your patron that I will inform him as soon as my brother arrives in Rome, and then the two of them can make whatever arrangements they like about the prisoners.”

“Prisoners?” I asked, full of misgiving.

Adelphius sighed as though I had unjustly hauled him into court to defend his patrimony. “The Frankish prisoners of war my brother acquired in Gaul, whom your patron wishes to purchase for the arena! And no, I do not know how many of them are left. Your patron must discuss it with my brother. What a tiresome business it is to be the friend of a prefect! Oh, the misery of wealth!” And he informed me, unasked, how much land and how many estates he possessed, and lamented the intolerable burdens placed upon him as the inheritor of such riches.

I thanked Adelphius and – since I saw that he had appropriated the Baths of Caracalla for his private use that afternoon – departed. Tired as I was, I tried to hire a sedan chair outside the baths, but those whom Adelphius had expelled earlier had already taken them all.

When at length I arrived back at Eutherius’ house, I was much comforted to be greeted hospitably and seated upon a couch and given wine, though I was ashamed that I, a former soldier, had become so weary merely from walking about Rome. I thanked Eutherius and asked to hear his news.

It seemed that the female slave had been refused admittance to the house of Anicius Paulinus, but the male slave Sannio had accomplished his errand successfully. Symmachus’ murdered slave had been given the fanciful name of “Achilles” on account of his swiftness of foot. The household had purchased him when he was still a boy, and Symmachus had frequently employed him as a courier. According to the report current in the kitchens, his body had been found near the house of Anicius Paulinus that morning. Anicius had ordered someone to notify the prefect
of the city, who had duly had the body collected, and only then realized that it was his own slave. Achilles’ body now lay in Symmachus’ house, anointed for the funeral. It had been stabbed four times, and was to be buried that evening.

“The other slaves,” said Eutherius, “found nothing unbelievable in the suggestion that Achilles delayed in a tavern after delivering the prefect’s letter, and was murdered because of some quarrel there. Several people pointed out that he would not have been in the vicinity of Paulinus’ house unless he was returning from one of his favoured taverns, as the house of Claudius Adelphius lies in the other direction.”

I objected that he could not have been murdered on the way back from delivering the letter, since Claudius Adelphius denied having ever received it, and I recounted what I had learned in the Baths of Caracalla. I added that it seemed to me that a courier was unlikely to delay in a tavern before delivering his message, though he might well do so afterwards. I found it ominous that the letter was missing, the more so as it concerned a party of Franks who were to fight. Though that bold and warlike nation has more than once plagued the Roman state as enemies, still many Franks serve in the armies of the empire, and they are always eager to join in Roman intrigues. In particular, Arbogast, the most prominent of those commanding in Gaul, was a Frank and suspected of aspiring to a more lofty station – as indeed he later proved by his conduct.
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“Then the matter is not yet resolved,” concluded Eutherius. And after adopting and then rejecting several measures, we decided at last to pursue inquiries at the taverns the slave Achilles had favoured, and, if that failed, to try again to question the slaves of Anicius Paulinus. Eutherius once more proposed his slave Sannio as a suitable person to make
inquiries, though he suggested that I accompany the man to the taverns, since, as he said, Sannio might otherwise prove forgetful of the questions he was meant to be asking. “A fine and intelligent man,” he told me, “but overly fond of wine.”

I loathe wineshops and the other amusements of the rabble, yet in the hope of doing a service to Symmachus, I agreed, and accordingly Sannio and I set off. It was by then early in the evening.

Sannio at once displayed intelligence to justify his master’s opinion of him, for, after regarding me for a little in silence, he suggested that I should claim that I was seeking to learn what had become of something-or-other I had been sending to Symmachus by means of the dead slave. “For,” he said, “unless you claim an errand, the tavern keepers will be suspicious. No one will believe that a learned gentleman like you would go into a cheap slave wineshop just for a drink.” I approved the good sense in this suggestion, and we adopted it.

Accordingly, when we reached the first of the taverns Achilles’ friends had named – a squalid place, of the sort the Roman mob most love, a haunt of dice-players and street-corner whores – Sannio called out a cheerful greeting to the sullen hostess, and told her that Symmachus’ slave Achilles might have lost a book of mine while in the tavern, and that I would pay generously anyone who restored it to me.

At the mention of a book, the barefoot patrons of the establishment regarded me as if I were some barbarian king come into their midst, but the landlady made a disgusting sound by drawing back the breath into her nostrils, as is common among the mob, and told us that Achilles was dead – “Murdered in the street!” she cried loudly, in Latin so vulgar and uncouth that I could barely understand it. “Not four blocks from here; I heard about it this morning!”