John Roberts - The Year of Confusion

“Do you recall which ones?”

“Sosigenes, of course. Some of them were foreigners, which surprised me. There was a pseudo-Babylonian who argued for the merits of astrology, and an Arab who knew a great many things about the stars unfamiliar to me, and a fascinating man from India who spoke for a long time on the transmigration of souls. Marcus Brutus found this enthralling, because he has been studying the philosophy of Pythagoras, whose theories involve just such metamorphoses.”

“Brutus was there? He was here the first time I called upon you, years ago.”

“Oh, yes. He has attended nearly every meeting since he returned to Rome.”

Brutus was another of those enemies of Caesar who had been unaccountably recalled from exile. Caesar treated the whole thing as a boyish lapse of judgment. He always showed a great affection for Brutus, whom I only saw as a rather tedious drudge. Perhaps it was because of Caesar’s old liaison with Servilia, Brutus’s mother. There were even rumors that Caesar had fathered Brutus, but I never credited these. In any case, Brutus had philosophical pretensions and was often to be found at such gatherings.

“What other Romans were present?” I asked. “It might help to know with whom he mingled in his final days.”

“Do you think this might be relevant?”

“One never knows. Sometimes a murder is casual, as when a thug stabs a victim to make it easier to lift his purse. Other times the murder is hired and a professional takes care of it. In neither case would my question be to the point, but I have found that in most cases the killer was someone known to the victim, very often a spouse or close relative. You see, there must be close emotional attachment for one to feel betrayal severely enough to kill. Or the killing is the result of a business dealing gone bad, or of someone impatient for an inheritance. In all those cases there is some close connection between murderer and victim. The idea is to discover what the nature of the connection might be.”

Her eyes sparkled. “This is so fascinating! I have said before that you should organize your theories of detection into a study and write them down. You could found your own unique school of philosophy.”

“‘Detection’?” I asked. “It’s a good word, but I fear that nobody else’s mind works like mine. Such a study would be a dismal failure, and philosophers would consider the study of evil or aberrant behavior to be unworthy. They like to concentrate upon the sublime.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Nobody thought like any philosopher until the philosophers began to propound, and then they changed the ways people thought. And physicians study the illnesses and injuries of the body, so why not the workings of evil in the human mind and the behavior that results from it?”

Now that I think of it, I suppose that may be exactly what I have been doing these last few years as I idle away my time under the reign of the First Citizen. I have no gift for writing philosophical tracts, however, and instead inscribe these memoirs of my adventures during those dying years of the Republic.

“I shall consider it. Now, do you remember any other Romans present that evening?”

“Let me see. Brutus’s wife, Porcia, was with him, still dressed in mourning for her father.” Porcia was the daughter of Cato, who had committed suicide at Utica rather than endure the rule of Caesar. I never envied Cato anything save the manner and nobility of his death.

“Lucius Cinna was there, though I believe he came only because he was visiting with Brutus. He had never been here before and took little part in the discussion.”

Cinna was another recalled exile. He was the brother of Caesar’s first wife, Cornelia. That was another Caesarian connection, but could easily be a coincidence. Caesar had been married at least four times that I knew about, and had a whole horde of noble relatives. Almost any gathering of the senatorial class would have a few of them.

She named a few others, but they were persons of no consequence, just the usual equestrians who took up philosophy instead of politics. Then something struck her.

“Wait a moment. There was another Cinna there.”

“One of Lucius’s brothers or uncles? Which one?” The Cornelii were about the only patrician family that was very numerous. The others had dwindled and most had become extinct. Somehow the Cornelians retained their ancestral vigor.

“This wasn’t a relative. He just had the same cognomen. Somebody remarked upon it.”

I tried to remember other men of that name. “Was it Cinna the poet?” He had just taken office as Tribune of the Plebs, but in a dictatorship he was all but powerless.

“Yes! Brutus seems to think rather highly of him, but I confess that much of Latin poetry escapes me. I am well studied only in the Greek.”

“He’s a nobody as far as I know. Just another climber beginning a political career. He’s not one of the patrician Cornelii. I don’t even know his praenomen or nomen. Do you recall them?”

She shook her head. “He was introduced only as ‘Cinna.’”

“Did he take much part in the talk?”

“We spoke of poetry for a while and he and Brutus expounded rather well upon the verses of Cato.” She referred not to Cato the senator but Cato the poet of Verona, who taught the eminent poet Catullus, who in turn is not to be confused with the one-ell Catulus who was Caesar’s colleague as consul. Sometimes I think half our problems are caused by our repetition of names.

“And when the astronomers began to argue over the relative merits of astronomy and astrology he weighed in vociferously in favor of astrology. He used some poetic metaphor to demonstrate that astrology is wonderfully poetic, whereas astronomy is coldly rational.”

“Which do you favor?” I asked her for no good reason except that I loved to hear her talk and did not wish our interview to end.

“Would that I were learned in both. Most often I am inclined toward astronomy, because it is indeed coldly rational. Like your own specialty of detection, it is based upon observable phenomena. Philosophers like Sosigenes go out every clear night and make observations of the stars and planets. They track their movements, note their risings and settings and watch for the occasional spectacles such as meteors and comets. These they set in context and thereby seek natural explanations for their nature and behavior, eschewing the supernatural.

“Yet, I cannot deny the emotional appeal of astrology. It is in some strange fashion intensely satisfying, being able to read a human being’s destiny in the arrangement of the stars at his birth and the movements of the planets and the moon through them in all subsequent life. It is irrational, but rationality is only a part of human existence. Philosophers must keep their minds open to all possibilities, so it may be that Sosigenes and the astronomers are wrong and the astrologers are right, or even that the truth lies between the two. The syllogism is a useful analytical tool, but it is a great mistake to take it for reality.”

“You echo my very own thoughts on the matter,” I said, wondering what in the world a syllogism might be. As if in response, Echo the housekeeper appeared. I almost made a witty remark upon this, but wisely held my tongue. I was in the presence of one to whom my sharpest wit would appear oafish.

I had never known Echo to be other than as dignified and gracious as her mistress, but her eyes sparkled and she seemed breathless, as if she had just come from a tryst with a lover, an unlikely thing so early in the day. “My lady, the dictator Caesar has come to call upon you.” That explained it. Caesar had that effect on women of whatever station. That, and being the most powerful man in the world, could turn any slave woman’s head. Free women too, for that matter.