John Roberts - The Year of Confusion

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “People come here from all over the world and make offerings. It could be from Sogdiana, for all I know.” Naming one of the remotest countries of my sketchy knowledge, I knew only that Alexander had passed through there. I tucked it into the purse I carried in a fold of my tunic. You never know when something may prove to be of value.

“What do we know now?” Hermes said. “It is pretty certain that this Danaos of Halicarnassus was probably already dead when Polasser wrote himself a glowing recommendation and put Danaos’s name to it. Maybe he killed him. We know that Polasser and Postumius were in together on the scheme to fleece grain speculators. That gives a number of people a reason to want Polasser dead. Postumius may have run to avoid the same fate.”

“A Roman would have simply stabbed Polasser, or bashed his head in with a brick.”

“We don’t know that he restricted himself to defrauding Romans,” Hermes pointed out.

“True. Yet Demades was killed the same way. What was the connection?”

Hermes thought for a while. “Perhaps the aggrieved party killed Demades by mistake, then came back the next day to get the right man.”

“That’s a possibility. It does seem unlikely that a man in Greek dress could be mistaken for one dressed like a Babylonian, but if it was dark enough it’s possible. And the killer may have been a hired foreigner. But somehow I think not.”

“Why?”

“Polasser had access to some of Rome’s richest, highest-born people, and some of her most foolish. A man like Postumius must have drooled at the thought of fleecing them. I think the two of them must have had something else going. The grain speculators were just practice. Maybe they just didn’t understand that those wealthy people are also some of the most murderous in Rome.”

My next call was upon Callista. Echo showed us to the courtyard where we found Callista going over a great pile of scrolls with the assistance of a secretary. She looked up at us and smiled. “I regret not bringing my whole library from Alexandria. I always tell myself that I am going to send for it, but then I tell myself, why bother since I am going to return soon? Of course, I always put off going back. I’ve been in Rome almost ten years. Please be seated.”

We did as bidden and a girl brought wine and snacks. “Why do you stay here, Callista?” I asked between bites. “Personally, I hope you never leave, but I’ve been to Alexandria and it’s a wonderful place. For a philosopher, Rome must seem a dreadful backwater to one accustomed to the Museum.”

She thought a while. “Rome is many things. I have never seen grandeur and slums in such proximity and extremity anywhere else. It is an intensely vulgar emporium for every sort of money-grubbing and the amusements of the people are profoundly trivial. The ruling classes are not merely bloody-minded and grasping but they practice their power games on a scale, to the best of my knowledge that is the greatest in all of history.”

“Well,” I said, taken somewhat aback, “it’s not all that bad, is it?”

She smiled brightly. “You don’t understand. This is what I like about Rome. It is the most exciting place in the world to be at this moment. There is more going on in any one day in Rome than transpires in a century in most cities. In many ways Alexandria is enthralling, almost magical, but the atmosphere is also stultifying. The king or queen is a god and all pay them obeisance. Even the greatest people are little more than slaves. The only political life is palace intrigue, in which every petty noble fancies himself to deserve a throne.”

“There are the street riots,” I reminded her. “Don’t forget the street riots.” I had been in a few of those myself. I’d been the cause of two of them.

“Yes. It is a pity that the closest the people ever get to political life is rioting. As a Greek this saddens me. We Greeks have always taken a lively part in the political life of our cities. Not always wisely, but with passion.”

“I thought philosophers were supposed to be above such things,” I said. “Philosophical detachment and all that.”

“I have never been as detached as that,” she said, “and I think it is a mistake to divorce oneself from the common experience. A philosopher is not defiled by association with people who have to live their lives in the real world, as far too many of my colleagues profess to believe.”

“I’ll give you no argument there,” I said. “What is all this?” I gestured to the pile of writings on the table.

“I am trying to identify the writing I saw on that woman’s astrological charts last night. I’m sure I have seen it before, but I cannot remember where. That means I must have seen it when I was a child. Clearly it is from the east, but where in the east I cannot say. That is why I wish I had my whole library. I might have a sample of that writing somewhere.”

“So you couldn’t make out her nationality?”

She shook her head. “I have never seen anyone quite like her. She is quite dark, as I suppose Julia told you, but very different from a Nubian or Ethiopian. Her features are very small and fine, and her hair very straight. She has an elaborate vocabulary of bodily gestures, but they are unlike any I know. Her accent is very peculiar.”

“What about her astrological procedure?” I asked.

“Quite conventional. I would have expected from her appearance that she might have some unique interpretation of the signs, but it was just as it has been for centuries since the art came out of Babylon.”

“What do you make of that?”

“Either she learned the art since coming from her homeland, or the art spread from Babylon in all directions and is practiced identically in lands we have never heard of.”

“Did she strike you as being credible? I ask this because I am investigating a fraudulent scheme that involves falsified horoscopes.”

“Oh? You must tell me all about that, but as for the woman, I confess that I am not sure. I spoke of her odd gestures. It is amazing how much we interpret from the language of gestures. Here in the west we share the greater part of our vocabulary of gestures. A Greek, a Roman, a Spaniard, or a Gaul can converse and share a large amount of their unspoken communication. We recognize things like passion or untruthfulness as much through interpretation of these signs as through the words we hear. There will be differences between peoples, of course, but we share more than we differ.”

“I think I understand,” I told her. “When I have been speaking with a Gaul for some time, I am pretty confident whether he is lying to me, or angling for favors, or is afraid of me. Germans are much harder to read. They are more alien to us than Gauls.”

“You have it exactly,” she said. “I have seen the same thing in Alexandria, where black slaves are brought from the interior. When they are newly arrived their habitual gestures are as strange as anything else about them. A nod may mean dismay rather than agreement. Where we look for hands folded together they wave to the side instead. A shrug of the shoulders may denote happiness, and fear may be expressed by slapping the chest with the palms. That is how it was with Ashthuva. I observed her closely, but when she spoke everything was just enough off-key to prevent me from making a confident evaluation of her truthfulness or motivation.”

Echo appeared and announced the arrival of a group of people whose names I recognized vaguely as being among Rome’s intellectual elite, which is to say people without political significance. I rose to go and she apologized for having discovered so little.

“Callista, I cannot imagine anyone I would rather have studying this matter. Your knowledge is matched only by your breadth of insight.”