John Roberts - Mightier Than The Sword

The wonderful thing about being Aedile is that you get to spend your days poking through every foul, dangerous, rat-infested, pestilential cellar in Rome. Building inspection is part of the job, and you can spend your whole year just prosecuting violations of the building codes, never mind putting on the Games and inspecting all the whorehouses, also part of the job. And I'd landed the office in a year when a plebeian couldn't be Curule Aedile. The Curule got to wear a purple border on his toga and sat around the markets all day in a folding chair, attended by a lictor and levying fines for violations of the market laws. No, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus got that job. Well, he never amounted to anything, so there is justice in the world, after all. Mind you, he got to be Triumvir some years later, but considering that the other two were Antony and Octavian, he might as well have been something unpleasant adhering to the heel of Octavian's sandal.

And the worst thing was, you didn't have to serve as Aedile to stand for higher office! It was just that you had not a prayer of being elected Praetor unless, as Aedile, you put on splendid Games as a gift to the people. If you gave them enough chariot races, and plays and pageants and public feasts and Campanian gladiators by the hundred, then, when you stood for higher office, they would remember you kindly. Of course the State only provided a pittance for these Games, so you had to pay for them out of your own pocket, bankrupting yourself and going into debt for years. That was what being Aedile meant.

That was why I was in a bad mood when I found the body. It wasn't as if bodies were exactly rare in Rome, especially that year. It was one of the very worst years in the history of the City. The election scandals of the previous year had been so terrible that our two Consuls almost weren't allowed to assume office in January, and the year got worse after that. My good friend, Titus Annius Milo, politician and gang leader, was standing for Consul for the next year, as was the equally disreputable Plautius Hypsaeus. Milo's deadly enemy and mine, Publius Clodius Pulcher, was standing for Praetor. Their mobs battled each other in the streets day and night, and bodies were as common as dead pigeons in the Temple of Jupiter.

But that was in the streets. Another plebeian Aedile, whose name I no longer recall, had charge of keeping the streets clean. I resented finding them in my nice, peaceful if malodorous cellars. And it wasn't in one of the awful, disgusting tenement cellars, either, uninspected for decades and awash with the filth of poverty and lax enforcement of the hygienic laws.

Instead, it was in the clean, new basement of a town house just built on the Aventine. I was down there inspecting because in Rome honest building contractors are as common as volunteer miners in the Sicilian sulphur pits. My slave Hermes preceded me with a lantern. He was a fine, handsome, strapping young man by this time, and very good at controlling his criminal tendencies. Unlike so many, the basement smelled pleasantly of new-cut timber and the dry, dusty scent of stone fresh from the quarry. There was another, less pleasant smell beneath these, though. Hermes stopped, a yellow puddle of light around his feet spilling over a shapeless form.

"There's a stiff here, Master."

"Oh, splendid. And I thought this was going to be my only agreeable task all day. I don't suppose it's just some old beggar, come down here to get out of the weather and died of natural causes?"

"Not unless there's beggars in the Senate, these days," Hermes said.

My scalp prickled. There were few things I hated worse than finding a high-ranking corpse. "Well, some of us are poor enough to qualify. Let's see who we have."

I squatted by the body while Hermes held the lantern near the face. Sure enough, the man wore a tunic with a senator's wide, purple stripe. He was middle-aged, bald and beak-nosed, none of which were distinctions of note. And he had had at least one enemy, who had stabbed him neatly through the heart. It was a tiny wound, and only a small amount of blood had emerged to form a palm-sized blot on his tunic, but it had done the job. Three thin streaks of blood made stripes paralleling the one that proclaimed his rank.

"Do you know him?" Hermes asked.

I shook my head. Despite all the exiles and purges by the Censors, there were still more than four hundred Senators, and I couldn't very well know all of them.

"Hermes, run to the Curia and fetch Junius the secretary. He knows every man in the Senate by sight. Then inform the Praetor Varus. He's holding court in the Basilica Aemilia today and by this hour he's dying for a break in the routine. Then go find Asklepiodes at the Statilian School."

"But that's across the river!" Hermes protested.

"You need the exercise. Hurry, now. I want Asklepiodes to have a look at him before the Libitinaru come to take him to the undertaker's."

He dashed off, leaving the lantern. I continued to study the body but it told me nothing. I sighed and scratched my head, wishing I had thought to bring along a skin of wine. Not yet half over, and it was one of the worst years of my life. And it had started out with such promise, too. The Big Three were out of Rome for a change: Caesar was gloriously slaughtering barbarians in Gaul, Crassus was doing exactly the opposite in Syria, and Pompey was sulking in Spain while his flunkies tried to harangue the Senate into making him Dictator. Their excuse this time was that only a Dictator could straighten out the disorder in the city.

It needed the straightening, although making a Dictator was a little drastic. My life wasn't worth a lead denarius after dark in my own city. The thought made me nervous, all alone with only a corpse for company. I was so deeply in debt from borrowing to support my office that I couldn't even afford a bodyguard. Milo would have lent me some thugs but the family wouldn't hear of it. People would think the Metelli were taking the Milo side in the great Clodius-Milo rivalry. Better to lose a Metellus of marginal value than endanger the family's vaunted neutrality.

After an hour or so Varus appeared, escorted by his lictors. Junius was close behind, his stylus tucked behind his ear, accompanied by a slave carrying a satchel full of wax tablets.

"Good afternoon, Aedile," Varus said. "So you've found a murder to brighten my day?"

"You didn't happen to bring any wine along, did you?" I said, without much hope.

"You haven't changed any, Metellus. Who do we have?" His lictors carried enough torches to light the place like noon in the Forum. The smoke started to get heavy, though.

Junius bent forward. "It's Aulus Cosconius. He doesn't attend the Senate more than three or four times a year. Big holdings in the City. This building is one of his, I think. Extensive lands in Tuscia as well." He held out a hand and his slave opened the leaves of a wooden tablet, the depressions on their inner sides filled with the finest beeswax, and slapped it into the waiting palm. Junius took his stylus from behind his ear and used its spatulate end to scrape off" the words scratched on the wax lining. It was an elegant instrument of bronze inlaid with silver, befitting so important a scribe, as the high-grade wax befitted Senate business. With a dextrous twirl he reversed it and began to write with the pointed end. "You will wish to make a report to the Senate, Praetor?"

Varus shrugged. "What's to report? Another dead Senator. It's not like a visitation from Olympus, is it?"

Yes, the times were like that.

"I've sent for Asklepiodes," I said. "He may be able to tell something from the condition of the body."

"I doubt he'll be able to come up with much this time," Varus said, "but if you want, I'll appoint you to investigate. Make a note of it, Junius."