John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

“That will do. Now, has your cult any knowledge of the tunnel leading from the Temple of Apollo to the subterranean river?”

“We have-long suspected such a thing,” she said uncertainly.

“How so?”

“The adepts of our religion can detect disturbances in our communications with our goddess. We felt that someone was conducting ceremonies concurrent with our own, to destroy our communion with Hecate.”

This was exactly the sort of supernatural drivel I was hoping to keep out of my investigation, but it seemed to be unavoidable. “Had the staff of Apollo’s temple threatened you?”

“Never directly. There has always been a policy of strict silence between us.”

“Indirectly?”

She was silent for a while. “While the priests themselves would never speak to us, the people of the district who follow their god made no secret of their hostility.”

“Yes, I’ve heard a bit about the local religious rivalries. But that’s been going on forever. Were there any threats, serious threats, quite recently?”

“No, Praetor, there were not.”

I had to take her word for it, but I held my reservations. It was not in her best interests to admit that she had a good reason to kill the priests. I dismissed her and sat brooding for a while.

“What are you thinking?” Julia asked at length. It was a question I heard often from her. Usually, I kept a store of innocuous answers in readiness for it. This time, though, I saw no particular reason to prevaricate.

“The girl saw the priests go down into their tunnel carrying torches and lamps. We found none down there. Not only the bodies but the whole chamber had been tidied up. It suggests that a number of people conspired in the murders. Yet so far as we have been able to ascertain, no parties of visitors arrived while we were consulting with the Oracle. It suggests that the murderers were already in the temple.”

“Then you should put the whole temple staff to the question,” she advised.

“I am not ready to go to such an extreme yet. Perhaps only one person was required to administer the poison or whatever method was used. Accomplices could have come in later, while we were scouring the countryside.”

“You are too softhearted to be a praetor,” she said, not without affection.

The local historian arrived just in time for lunch. Scholars have a way of doing that. His name was Lucius Cordus, and he was a small man with ink on his fingers and eyes permanently asquint from constant reading, even by lamplight. After exchanging the customary amenities, we sat at a table set up beneath my canopy. It was laid with a plentiful lunch, to which Cordus applied himself as if he intended to do it full justice. I waited until he was replete and well lubricated with wine before broaching the matter of the day.

“How may I be of service to the noble praetor?” he said, when the edge was off his appetite.

“I am told that you are the foremost authority on the history of this district.”

“I would not style myself so,” he said modestly. “I have some small knowledge of the subject, and what I know is of course at your service.”

“You are familiar with the events of recent days here at the temple?”

“Several versions of them, in fact. I could not say which if any are correct. As a historian, I am all too aware of the mutability of information.”

“Facts can be slippery indeed,” I agreed. “What I need to know is something of the history of these two oddly juxtaposed holy sites.”

“Ah, this is a fascinating subject,” he said, taking a quick bite of cheese and bread, and washing it down with an even quicker swig of his wine.

“I take it the tunnel of the Oracle is far older than the temple?”

“By a great margin. As you may have discerned, there have been at least three temples on the site, possibly more.”

“I’ve noted that the foundation blocks are quite different from Campanian stonework, and that the Greek temple was adapted from an earlier one of Campanian style.”

“Exactly,” Cordus agreed.” It is my theory that the tunnel was dug at the same time that the Cyclopean stones of the foundation were put in place. The method of stonecutting seems to be the same. Whether these great stones supported an earlier temple, or were just a platform for the image of a god, or were for some other purpose entirely, we cannot know. It dates from long before the art of writing came to Italy. The earliest writings I have found, inscribed in a very archaic Campanian dialect, speak of the tunnel as being ancient even then. There is one curiosity, though.”

“What might that be?” I asked him.

“There is no mention of an Oracle, nor of an association with Hecate. The subterranean river is mentioned, but is not called the Styx.”

“Interesting, indeed,” I said. “Have you any idea when these ideas became associated with the location?”

“The Greeks came to southern Italy about seven hundred years ago. Some were Dorians, others Achaeans and Corinthians. First they settled in the east, founding Brundisium, Then up and down the eastern coast, then into the Bay of Tarentum, finally through the strait of Messina to found the towns of this district. Those were wild and dangerous times, and the sea swarmed with pirates, so they built inland roads to connect their settlements. Soon all of southern Italy was known as Magna Graecia. I do not think that Hecate moved in down there before this time, because her devotees are Greek, as are her ceremonies and all of the terminology used in her worship.” He shook his head. “No, I think that tunnel was there for many centuries before the Greeks came. And there is another discrepancy.”

“And that would be?” I asked, fascinated. At least this fellow did not drone on endlessly like so many scholars of my acquaintance.

“Hecate is not an oracular goddess. Oracles are usually associated with snakes and there is no snake cult here. She is one of the true Greek autochthonoi, but she doesn’t speak to petitioners. Only here. In fact, I have found no mention of her Oracle here earlier than about three hundred years ago, and that was only in the form of a reference to the sacrifice of black dogs, her traditional tutelary animals.”

“Do you believe the Oracle could be fraudulent?”

“I hesitate to make pronouncements concerning the doings of the immortals. If it is fraudulent, it has succeeded longer than most. The human will to believe is a powerful thing.”

I sat back in my chair and mused. “So, we have a tunnel of great antiquity, of unknown purpose, which may have lain unused until the cult of Hecate moved in.”

“Needless to say, the writings are very fragmentary, but I can hardly believe that something so remarkable would escape more frequent mention. As for local traditions, I would grant them no credence whatever. Anywhere peasants live, they create mythologies around their district and their ancestors, often mutually contradictory. Few people are trained in the art of rigorous thinking.”

“So it would seem,” I agreed. “What of the Campanian temple erected atop the foundation?”

“The Campanians pushed their territory southward and reached this area about the same time as the Greeks. Before, there had been only the primitive settlements of the Aborigines.”

“You believe the Aborigines really existed?”

“They must have. There are many burials that predate the people we have been discussing. Whether they were the people of legend I cannot say, but the burials I have examined indicate a very low level of culture. They built nothing in stone that has survived.”

“So, things got lively here between Greeks and Campanians around the time Romulus and Remus founded Rome.” The official date of that event was some 704 years before this time.