The Tribune's Curse (29 page)

“Ateius,” Pompey said, “you are to have a rare experience. You are going to attend your own funeral tomorrow in my theater, where you will have a chance to explain to your assembled supporters why it is not you on the pyre, but some unfortunate slave who resembled you in size and build.” He signaled his lictors. “Take them away. Keep them under close watch. I want them alive tomorrow.”

The lictors dragged the two out, both of them too paralyzed by terror to use their own feet.

“Lisas,” Pompey said, “I will not lay hands upon you, but you are no longer welcome in Rome. Tell Ptolemy to send us another ambassador, one with a long list of favors Ptolemy is eager to perform for us.” With that, Pompey and his lictors swept out.

Milo looked at me. “Are you ready to go?”

“I’ll be along shortly.”

Milo left with his lictors. Lisas and I were alone, Lisas looking more like a corpse than a man.

“Lisas, you didn’t send those thugs to kill me, did you?”

He shook his head. “It was Silvius; he slipped out after we heard that you had been appointed
iudex
. No one was looking for Silvius at that time. You are too famous for your specialty. I rejoice that they failed.”

“Why the crocodile?”

He shrugged. “They came in that morning, and I concealed them as we had agreed. Ateius told me he intended to kill the slave and disfigure him so that the populace would think their tribune was murdered. This would make him safe and throw Rome into turmoil at the same time. I thought,
I have been accused of
throwing men to my crocodiles for so long, might it not be amusing to try it?
”

“What will you do now?”

“I must go and compose a letter to my king.”

“Why not deliver your message personally?”

He shook his head. “It was such poor timing that you reached the climax of your investigation at the same time the news came from Alexandria. Pompey and the Senate might have been inclined to smooth things over otherwise. Now, as the intermediary, I must take the full blame for how things have fallen out. I am too old for that, and I am tired of life, anyway.”

“I shall miss you,” I said. He was a strange man, but I couldn’t help liking him.

“Leave me now. I hope the balance of your life will be prosperous.” He knew better than to hope it would be peaceful.

So I took my leave of Lisas. Word came to us later that he retired to his chambers, wrote out his letter to Ptolemy, and took poison.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, R
OME WAS
treated to a rare spectacle. The surly crowd assembled for the funeral and riot; then Pompey appeared and exposed Ateius and Silvius to them and explained, with great sarcasm, how they had all been duped. Derisively, he put a torch to the pyre, giving the nameless slave a fine send-off. Then he led the whole mob back to the Forum, where a court was convened and the two men were condemned on all three counts. I gave a summary of my investigation, and Pompey addressed the jury. There was no need for rhetorical flourishes. As Cicero used to say, the facts spoke for themselves.

The men were taken up to the top of the Capitol and hurled from the Tarpeian Rock; then their shattered but still-living bodies
were impaled on bronze hooks and dragged down to the Sublician Bridge, where they were cast into the river.

After these odd events Rome settled down like a man trying to wait out a bad hangover. A few weeks later I was elected aedile, and new scandals occupied the attentions of the people. The gods accepted their sacrifices again, and Rome, at least, seemed to be out from under the curse. Not Crassus, though.

For my part, I knew I was going to miss Lisas. He was an amusing companion, he served his king loyally, and he threw the best parties ever seen in Rome.

These things happened in the year 699 of the City of Rome, in the second consulship of Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives.

(Definitions apply to the year 695 of the Republic.)

Arms
Like everything else in Roman society, weapons were strictly regulated by class. The straight, double-edged sword and dagger of the legions were classed as “honorable.”

The
gladius
was a short, broad, double-edged sword borne by Roman soldiers. It was designed primarily for stabbing.

The
caestus
was a boxing glove, made of leather straps and reinforced by bands, plates, or spikes of bronze. The curved, single-edged sword or knife called a
sica
was “infamous.”
Sicas
were used in the arena by Thracian gladiators and were carried by street thugs. One ancient writer says that its curved shape made it convenient to carry sheathed beneath the armpit, showing that gangsters and shoulder holsters go back a long way.

Carrying of arms within the
pomerium
(the ancient city boundary marked out by Romulus) was forbidden, but the law was ignored in troubled times. Slaves were forbidden to carry weapons
within the City, but those used as bodyguards could carry staves or clubs. When street fighting or assassinations were common, even senators went heavily armed and even Cicero wore armor beneath his toga from time to time.

Shields were not common in the city except as gladiatorial equipment. The large shield
(scutum)
of the legions was unwieldy in Rome’s narrow streets but bodyguards might carry the small shield
(parma)
of the light-armed auxiliary troops. These came in handy when the opposition took to throwing rocks and roof tiles.

Balnea
Roman bathhouses were public and were favored meeting places for all classes. Customs differed with time and locale. In some places there were separate bathhouses for men and women. Pompeii had a bathhouse with a dividing wall between men’s and women’s sides. At some times women used the baths in the mornings, men in the afternoon. At others, mixed bathing was permitted. The
balnea
of the republican era were far more modest than the tremendous structures of the later empire, but some imposing facilities were built during the last years of the Republic.

Arval Brotherhood
One of Rome’s many priestly colleges, the Arvals were twelve men chosen from distiguished senatorial families. Their rituals were obscure, but were concerned with nature and agriculture. Their most important annual ceremony was in honor of Dea Dia, a goddess of fields and crops.

Basilica
A meeting place of merchants and for the administration of justice.

Campus Martius
A field outside the old city wall, formerly the assembly area and drill field for the army, named after its altar to Mars. It was where the popular assemblies met during the days of the Republic.

Centuries
Literally, “one hundred men.” From greatest antiquity, Rome’s citizens had been organized into centuries for military purposes. They assembled by their centuries for the yearly muster
to be assigned to their legions. Since this was a convenient time to hold elections and vote upon important issues, they voted by centuries as well. Each man could cast a vote, but the century voted as a whole. By the late Republic, it was strictly a voting distinction. The legions had centuries as well, though they usually numbered sixty to eighty men.

Chthonian
From a Greek word meaning “underworld,” the chthonian gods and demons were those of the underworld. Their services were held in the evenings and animals sacrified to them were black. In praying to them, the hands were held out with palms downward.

Circus
The Roman racecourse and the stadium that enclosed it. The original, and always the largest, was the Circus Maximus. A later, smaller circus, the Circus Flaminius, lay outside the walls on the Campus Martius.

Compluvium
An opening in the roof of a Roman house through which rain fell to be gathered in a basin called the impluvium. Eventually, it became a courtyard with a pool.

Conscript Fathers
A form of address used when speaking to the Senate. Cicero used it almost exclusively.

Curule
A curule office conferred magisterial dignity. Those holding it were priviledged to sit in a curule chair—a folding camp chair that became a symbol of Roman officials sitting in judgment.

Curia
The meetinghouse of the Senate, located in the Forum, also applied to a meeting place in general. Hence Curia Hostilia, Curia Pompey, and Curia Julia. By tradition they were prominently located with position to the sky to observe omens.

Cursus Honorem
“Course of Honor”: The ladder of office ascended by Romans in public life. The Cursus officer were quaestor, praetor, and consul. Technically, the office of aedile was not part of the Cursus Honorem, but by the late Republic it was futile to stand for praetor without having served as aedile. The other public offices not on the cursus were Censor and Dictator.

Equestrian
Eques
(pl.
equites
) literally meant “horseman.” In the early days of the military muster soldiers supplied all their own equipment. Every five years the Censors made a property assessment of all citizens and each man served according to his ability to pay for arms, equipment, rations, etc. Those above a certain minimum assessment became equites because they could afford to supply and feed their own horses and were assigned to the cavalry. By the late Republic, it was purely a property class. Almost all senators were equites by property assessment, but the dictator Sulla made senators a separate class. After his day, the equites were the wealthy merchants, moneylenders, and tax farmers of Rome. Collectively, they were an enormously powerful group, equal to the senators in all except prestige and control of foreign policy.

Families and Names
Roman citizens usually had three names. The given name (praenomen) was individual, but there were only about eighteen of them: Marcus, Lucius, etc. Certain praenomens were used only in a single family: Appius was used only by the Claudians, Mamercus only by the Aemilians, and so forth. Only males had praenomens. Daughters were given the feminine form of the father’s name: Aemilia for Aemilius, Julia for Julius, Valeria for Valerius, etc.

Next came the nomen. This was the name of the clan (
gens
). All members of a
gens
traced their descent from a common ancestor, whose name they bore: Julius, Furius, Licinius, Junius, Tullius, to name a few. Patrician names always ended in
ius
. Plebeian names often had different endings.

Stirps
A subfamily of a
gens
. The cognomen gave the name of the stirps, i.e., Caius Julius Caesar. Caius of the stirps; Caesar of
gens
Julia.

Then came the name of the family branch (cognomen). This name was frequently anatomical: Naso (nose), Ahenobarbus (bronzebeard), Sulla (splotchy), Niger (dark), Rufus (red), Caesar
(curly), and many others. Some families did not use cognomens. Mark Antony was just Marcus Antonius, no cognomen.

Other names were honorifics conferred by the Senate for outstanding service or virtue: Germanicus (conqueror of the Germans), Africanus (conqueror of the Africans), Pius (extraordinary filial piety).

Freed slaves became citizens and took the family name of their master. Thus the vast majority of Romans named, for instance, Cornelius would not be patricians of that name, but the descendants of that family’s freed slaves. There was no stigma attached to slave ancestry.

Adoption was frequent among noble families. An adopted son took the name of his adoptive father and added the genetive form of his former nomen. Thus when Caius Julius Caesar adopted his great-nephew Caius Octavius, the latter became Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus.

All these names were used for formal purposes such as official documents and monuments. In practice, nearly every Roman went by a nickname, usually descriptive and rarely complimentary. Usually it was the Latin equivalent of Gimpy, Humpy, Lefty, Squint-eye, Big Ears, Baldy, or something of the sort. Romans were merciless when it came to physical peculiarities.

Fasces
A bundle of rods bound around with an ax projecting from the middle. They symbolized a Roman magistrate’s power of corporal and capital punishment and were carried by the lictors who accompanied the curule magistrates, the
Flamen Dialis
, and the proconsuls and propraetors who governed provinces.

Fetiales
A priestly college whose most important duties concerned treaties and war. The Fetiales declared war at a special ceremony, at which one of their number cast a spear into enemy territory. In later years, when enemies were too far away, a piece of ground near their temple was designated enemy territory and the spear was cast into it.

First Citizen
In Latin:
Princeps
. Originally the most prestigious senator, permitted to speak first on all important issues and set the order of debate. Augustus, the first emperor, usurped the title in perpetuity. Decius detests him so much that he will not use either his name (by the time of the writing it was Caius Julius Caesar) or the honorific Augustus, voted by the toadying Senate. Instead he will refer to him only as the First Citizen. Princeps is the origin of the modern word “prince.”

Floralia
A springtime festival in honor of the goddess Flora, in which her protection was invoked on behalf of fruit blossoms. It involved a number of unusual practices. Upper-class women and prostitutes sounded trumpets at one point, and actresses performed nude on stage.

Forum
An open meeting and market area. The premier forum was the Forum Romanum, located on the low ground surrounded by the Capitoline, Palatine, and Caelian Hills. It was surrounded by the most important temples and public buildings. Roman citizens spent much of their day there. The courts met outdoors in the Forum when the weather was good. When it was paved and devoted solely to public business, the Forum Romanum’s market functions were transferred to the Forum Boarium, the Cattle Market near the Circus Maximus. Small shops and stalls remained along the northern and southern peripheries, however.