John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

“Not until after the elections. I’ve been sent down to sort out the matter of the Campanian lands.”

“Good luck with it,” I said. “Nobody has been able to sort out that mess as long as I can remember. Too many conflicting interests.”

“The only conflicts are those of greed,” he said, taking a cup from a servant, draining it at a gulp, and holding it out for more. “And it may not be a problem much longer. Pompey wants that land to settle his veterans and the Senate is looking to Pompey to save their necks from Caesar. He’ll probably get what he wants.”

“What has them panicked this time?” I asked.

“Caesar wants to stand for consul in absentia.”

“I know all about that. Why not let him?”

“It flouts all traditional law!” Cato barked. “Since the days of Romulus, any man on foreign service who wished to stand for consul has had to return to Rome to stand for office.” His pseudo-Catos growled agreement. They were good at growling.

“Would it hurt to bend the law just a little, just this one time?” I said, knowing how it would enrage him.

“The law isn’t something you can bend and trim to suit the occasion. Who knows where it could end!”

“This course could end in civil war,” I pointed out.

“What of it?” said one of his sycophants. “Pompey is the greatest general in the world, and his soldiers are the most numerous and the most loyal. He will crush Caesar like a gnat.”

“Pompey’s been away from the wars for a long time,” I said. “His soldiers have been living at ease while Caesar’s have been fighting almost constantly for eight years. I agree it won’t be much of a match.”

“Time enough to worry about war if it comes,” Cato said. “I have another message for you. Pompey wants this business that’s upsetting the district settled quickly.”

“Oh?” I said. “And has the proconsul of the Spanish provinces some sort of authority over the praetor peregrinus ?” I realized that Pompey had spies in this area and they had fast horses if he was keeping up with events here almost as they were happening. During the time he was proconsul of the Spanish provinces, the Senate had allowed him to govern those provinces through his legates while he remained in Italy to oversee the grain supply. His proconsular status forbade him to enter Rome, so he lived in a villa south of the City.

“He has a vested interest in southern Campania,” Cato said. “His clientela is vast in this region and he wants nothing upsetting the peace here.”

“Is that so?” I said, feeling my face growing red. Or maybe that was just the wine. “A pack of dead priests should be of no concern to him.”

“Oh, but he finds it of great concern. That temple is one personally endowed by Pompey. That makes those priests his clients.”

I found myself gaping foolishly and quickly stuffed a fig into my mouth to give it some occupation. Then I washed it down with some undiluted wine and said, in the quietest voice I could manage, “Why have I not heard of this? The priests never mentioned such a thing. I do not see Pompey’s name engraved on the pediment.”

“Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, ” Cato said, giving that honorific a sarcastic twist, “has no need to aggrandize his name through so trifling an act. He’s built whole cities and temples the size of sports stadiums.” He held out his cup for a refill. Cato was another believer in undiluted wine, probably the only taste we shared. “This temple has for generations been under the patronage of the Pedarii, a very ancient patrician family.”

“The Pedarii?” I said. “I’m no genealogist, but I thought that family died out before Hannibal learned to use an elephant goad.” I remembered the name only vaguely, from some poems about the early days of the Republic.

“They are very distinguished,” Cato said, “but fallen into poverty long ago, and unable to support senatorial pretensions.”

“So Pompey has a stake in this business?” I suppressed a groan. “Next you’ll be telling me Caesar’s family donated the land or paid for the statue.”

“Eh? Why should I say such a thing?”

“Never mind. You’ve made my life sufficiently complicated, thank you.”

“Sometimes you make no sense, Metellus.”

That evening, Cato and his coterie went on to Cumae, which he had chosen as the headquarters for his mission. Capua was a much larger city, and closer to Rome, but he reasoned that it was too faction-ridden and too dominated by great Roman landlords. Whatever he lacked, and it was much, Cato had sound political instincts.

That evening I invited the historian, Lucius Cordus, to dinner. Since I didn’t want a lot of political and social blather to dominate the conversation, the only other diners were Julia, Hermes, and the philosopher Gitiadas. I had come to appreciate his incisive intelligence. Five was an almost scandalously small number of participants at an important man’s dinner, but I considered this simply an extension of my workday.

After the first courses and a bit of small talk, I got down to business. “Lucius Cordus, what can you tell us about the Pedarii? They were once prominent in Rome, but I thought they had long since died out. Today I learned that a remnant still live here and are patrons of the Temple of Apollo.” I had already told Julia of what Cato had told me.

“Ah, the Pedarii,” Cordus said. “In fact, that name has turned up in my recent researches on your behalf, Praetor. It seems that one Sergius Pedarius, a half-legendary figure, was a comrade-in-arms of the Brutus who was the first consul, after the Etruscan kings were expelled from Rome. The family was prominent during the early years of the Republic, but never consular.”

“Was Sergius a praenomen or a nomen?” I asked him. By our generation, the name Segius was used only as a nomen, but far back in history, it had been a praenomen.

“It was a praenomen. The Pedarii were never connected with the gens Sergia,” Cordus informed us. “At some point in history, about the time of the First Punic War, the Pedarii were afflicted by a series of catastrophes. Their lands were flooded, many of their livestock died. Then, in a pestilence that afflicted most of Italy, their district was especially hard-hit, and many of the family members perished, along with their slaves and peasant tenants. In those days, senatorial families were nowhere near as wealthy as they are now. The survivors sold their lands and moved south, to the land of some distant relatives. Here they prospered modestly and were esteemed for their status as patricians, but they never returned to Rome, where once they had been great.”

“As Romans among Greeks and Campanians,” I said, “their situation must have been precarious.”

“Although as Romans they weren’t part of the local conflicts,” Cordus said, “and by endowing the temple as soon as they had a bit of surplus wealth, they acquired the status of local patrons, though there are many families far wealthier.”

“I shall have to meet with the heads of the family,” I said. “I wonder why they have not presented themselves before this? Usually all the most prominent people present themselves to the Roman praetor upon his arrival.”

“Perhaps,” Julia opined, “they are embarrassed to show themselves, having become so humble since their family’s heroic origins.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But they shall hide no longer. I want to see them.” Something else occurred to me. “Cordus, yesterday young Vespillo and I visited the putative mundus on the property of Porcia. Do you know anything of it?”

“It is one of several such in the vicinity. I believe that it is the largest and the oldest. According to the local legend, Baios, the steersman of Odysseus, descended into it to visit the underworld and ask the shade of King Agamemnon whether he should found his city nearby-but you know already what I think of such legends.”