John Roberts - The King Of Sacrifices

A steward greeted me in the atrium and disappeared into the interior of the vast house to announce me. A few minutes later a splendidly handsome and stately woman appeared.

"Decius Caecilius, how good of you to come! And this must be the handsome grandson of whom I hear such brilliant reports!"

"I don't know who you listen to, Livia, but if you've heard that he's anything but a lazy troublemaker your spies should be crucified."

"But so many of them are your relatives."

"All the more reason to nail them up," I grumbled. Of all the many intriguing and dangerous women I have known in my long life, Livia was the most perilous, the subtlest, and the most intelligent by a tremendous margin, and I knew Cleopatra, who may have been the most powerful as well as the best educated woman who ever lived. I always accorded Livia the highest respect.

"Come along, my husband is in his study. I do hope you’ll be able to help him. He has great confidence in you."

This should be good, I thought.

We found Octavius sitting at a desk attended by secretaries, apparently absorbed by weighty matters of state. At our arrival he stood and extended his hands.

"Ah, my old friend Decius Caecilius Metellus, I am so pleased that you've found time to visit me." With his spindly body and his large head with its unruly hair, he rather resembled a thistle.

"Always happy to be of assistance to the Senate and People," I said pointedly. The irony sailed right past him.

"As all good men should be. Please, sit down, Senator. And this would be the youngest to bear your ancient name? What a splendid example of Roman youth."

I was beginning to regret having brought Paris. The less these people noticed him, the better. I found myself falling into these lapses of judgement as I aged. Not that my discernment had ever been worthy of praise. I feigned creakiness as I lowered myself into a chair and sat with my hands resting atop my stick. A slave brought in a tray bearing a platter and cups.

"Please, take something, my friend. It's a long walk up the Palatine."

The platter held fresh figs. The cups held plain water. His pose of plainness and austerity had been concocted for him by Livia. Even his banquets were Stoic affairs, featuring only peasant food. I could easily picture him sneaking off afterward, to gorge in private upon imported delicacies arid rare wines.

"Thank you, no. I must take a care for my digestion, you know." Paris kept a straight face. He showed real promise.

"I see." He nodded commiseratingly. "My own health is rather uncertain." He was famously cold and wore two tunics even in summer, three or even four in winter, all under a great blanket of a toga. I think his inability to get warm was the result of perpetual fear. Like all tyrants he lived in terror of plots and poison.

Livia hovered nearby, her eyes always fixed adoringly upon her husband. I wondered if she bothered to do that when there were no witnesses.

"My husband has worn himself out in service to the state and the people," she intoned.

To my credit, I did not gag. "It seems I am here to take some of that burden upon my own aged shoulders," I said. "What might be the nature of this difficulty?"

"Ah, yes, well-esteemed Senator, you are aware of my concern for the declining morals of the citizenry, are you not?"

I said nothing, just raised my eyebrows.

"Well," he went on, "things have reached a shocking state. Senator, just shocking. The Roman family is not what it was in the days of our ancestors and the strength of character that made Rome great throughout the world has reached such a state of degeneracy that the very best of our families are dying out-yes, dying out, because our young men prefer dissipation and foreign vices to marrying and starting families!"

"How could I fail to notice?" I said. "You made that speech to the Senate last month."

"Proving, if any proof were needed, the seriousness of the problem!" Pedantic little twit.

"I hope you will not think I am boasting," I said, "but my own life has not been one of perfect probity. In fact, the words 'scandalous,' licentious,' and even 'degenerate' have been bandied about in company where my name was mentioned."

"That was when you were younger, Decius," Livia said. "You have acquired the respectability of venerable years. The follies of youth are quickly forgotten." The woman's political acuity was astounding.

"I have not given up the habit of folly," I told her.

"Excellent," she said, smiling. I knew then that I had said the wrong thing.

"I am sure you are aware," Octavius told me, "that the position of Rex Sacrorum has been vacant for some time?"

"Naturally," I said. "It's been vacant for most of my lifetime." The King of Sacrifices is a very ancient office, tremendously honorable, but surrounded by as many taboos as that of the Flamen Dialis. Usually, the position went to some doddering senator too old to mind the restrictions on his behavior. Such a priest rarely lasted more than a few years and then the office was vacant again.

"I had a candidate, eminently qualified, together with the concurrence of the Senate and the pontifical colleges."

"So I heard. Some jumped-up new patrician of yours, isn't he? Scandalous thing, if you ask me; making new patricians for the first time since Romulus."

The First Citizen reddened. "Decius Caecilius, you are perfectly aware that this was a measure necessary to restore the State! By ancient law many offices and priesthoods require patricians, and there were no longer enough of them to go around! In the days of Camillus there were more than a hundred patrician families. By the time of my first consulship there were no more than fourteen. Something had to be done."

"You were yourself offered that honor," Livia put in, "and your descendants."

"The gens Caecilia Metella has been the greatest of the plebeian families for centuries," I said peevishly. "I would not change that status. It is no honor for me and it would shame my ancestors." He began to puff up like Aesop's bullfrog but just then a significant detail penetrated my age-and-wine-fogged mind. "Your pardon. First Citizen, but did you say you ‘had' a candidate for Rex Sacrorum? I know that one as well trained in the arts of rhetoric as you are does not employ tenses haphazardly."

"The fellow's dead," Livia said.

"Ah, now we approach the heart of the matter." I leaned forward, chin atop my cane. "Am I safe in assuming this new-minted patrician did not choke to death on an olive stone?"

"He was murdered," Octavius said, seeming almost upset by it.

"No doubt you can find a replacement," I reassured him.

"Not as easy as you might think," he muttered, "even for me. However, replacing him is not the problem. It is the murder. It is going to cause a scandal!"

This raised my eyebrows. "Not only a murder, but a scandal, eh? I do hope none of your relatives are involved." I suppose it was rather unfair of me to refer, even obliquely, to his daughter's scandalous life, but when was he ever fair to anybody?

"No, for which I render the gods due thanks. But for years now I have bent my efforts toward restoring respect for the traditional Roman family, and now this!" He smote his fist upon his bony knee in vexation.

"And now what?" I prodded.

"We think it was somebody in his family who did him in," Livia said. "His wife, perhaps, maybe a daughter or one of the other relatives. There were things about him… we did not know when we chose him for the position." I did not miss the significance of the "we." Octavius made few decisions without consulting her and rumor had it that he never made a move without her permission.

At last this was getting interesting. "What sort of things?"

"I will not countenance slanderous hearsay," her husband said, primly. "Such rumors may be baseless and are no better than the anonymous denunciations during the proscriptions!" What a hypocrite.