John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

Yet, I reflected, it might have been worse. A messenger hurrying like that from the north would have had me in a cold sweat. That would have meant bad news from Rome. A few moments later, the messenger was pounding up the stairs. “Praetor Metellus?” I admitted that I was he, and the man handed me a leather scroll tube. “From the duumvir Belasus of Pompeii.”

I opened the tube and shook out the scroll it held. While I was reading it, Hermes returned with his wet, knotted rope. “Just under three cubits,” he reported. “Even closer than I’d thought. Of course, three cubits of solid stone is a lot of rock, but it’s no wonder the Hecate cult figured the Apollo people were up to something. They must have heard a lot of scrapes and clinking over the years. Stone carries sound.”

“Another little piece,” I said.

“What do you have there?”

“A message from the duumvir of Pompeii. There has been a murder. The victim is a foreigner.”

“Why is he writing you about it? You judge court cases involving foreigners. You don’t get involved in every murder where a foreigner is involved until it comes to court.”

“He thought I would want to know about it because the dead man, a Syrian, had a case on the docket, to be tried when I should go down to Pompeii to hold court. It was to be the last town I was to visit before leaving Campania.”

“And you were delaying it to stay in Campania as long as you could, eh?” Hermes said, grinning.

“Of course.”

“Are you going to go look into it?”

“I might as well. It will put some distance between me and Pompey, anyway. Get some of the men together and get them mounted. I won’t be holding court so the lictors can stay here. This will be a flying visit, I don’t need any of my official regalia.” I went inside to tell Julia, who was predictably put out.

“You just want to get away and have some fun,” she complained.

“Anything wrong with that?”

“It’s undignified. You can just send Hermes or one of the others.”

“Then I wouldn’t get to have any fun. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day.” I left before she could marshal an argument.

Traveling on horseback and not slowed by a huge entourage and women carried in litters, we made Pompeii in a few hours. As always, the countryside was beautiful, the fine road lined with stately pines and excellent tombs.

Pompeii was another of those Oscan towns, once a part of the Samnite League, that had chosen the wrong side in the Social War and was besieged by Sulla. When the war was over, a large group of legionaries had been settled there and it now had the status of colonia . Latin had replaced the former Oscan dialect, and the inhabitants were now Roman citizens, the only sensible thing to be.

We approached the town from the northwest, but rather than enter through one of the northern gates, I swung around the city to the east and we rode along the wall until we reached the southeastern corner, where we came to a huge construction project. I had heard something of this and was curious to see it. It was a stone amphitheater, an architectural innovation pioneered in Campania. It was accomplished by, in essence, taking two ordinary theaters, getting rid of the stage, orchestra, scena, and so forth, and sticking them together face-to-face. The result was a huge oval of seats arranged in tiers, with an arena in the middle.

It had been begun almost twenty years previously by two local moneybags named Valgus and Porcius as a gift to the town, and had been in use for much of that time, but so great a project takes time and the finishing touches were just being completed. As I have said, Campania is gladiator-mad and the Pompeiians were determined to have the very best venue possible for their munera . In this they had succeeded handsomely.

We dismounted and walked over to tour the fabulous building. At this time Rome, a far larger and richer city, had no such permanent building. Until just a generation previously, we had held the Games, including munera, in the Forum, where temporary bleachers were erected. Men who wanted to stage especially splendid and extravagant spectacles built wooden amphitheaters, usually on the Campus Martius, which were to be torn down at the conclusion of the festivities. Up until this time, nobody had been willing to undertake the ruinous expense of erecting a stone amphitheater large enough to hold all the adult male citizens of Rome, and the citizens would want nothing less.

This new Pompeii amphitheater, by contrast, was far larger than the town needed. Since, unlike the chariot races, slaves, foreigners, children, and women were not supposed to attend the fights (although women got around that rule pretty easily), this place could absorb not just the locals but the whole countryside and several neighboring towns. This was source of huge pride for the Pompeiians, since it put such a large district under obligation to them. They attended the spectacles as the guests of Pompeii.

What we could see as we approached was a semicircular stone wall, perhaps thirty feet high, consisting of a series of high arches. It was impressive, but gave no true sense of the size of the place. A number of men were carving and painting decoration on the walls. A stairway slanted up the side of the wall and we mounted this. Its top ended in a platform. We crossed this and looked down. The tiers of seats stretched away from us in an enormous oval in a series of descending wedges separated by stairways. Each section was crossed by two walkways that allowed access to the other sections. The low walls of these walkways were themselves finely decorated with paintings of fighters, victors holding aloft laurel wreaths and palms and other symbols one associates with the Games. On the terrace where we stood were the masts that on the days of the spectacles would support a vast awning that could be adjusted to allow for the movement of the sun across the sky, providing shade on even the hottest days. Apparently the awning itself, which would consist of thirty or forty wedge-shaped pieces of sailcloth, was stored away someplace when not in use.

A master builder was there, supervising the placement of the last few blocks. We walked over to him and I complimented him on the incredible stonework.

“Truly, Praetor,” he said, “it was finished years ago, but an earthquake last year damaged a lot of the stone and the decoration has weathered. This is really a restoration project, paid for by the duumvir Valgus.”

“The original builder with his colleague Porcius?” I asked.

“His son, now holding the same office. Would you like to see the building?”

“Very much so. Please lead on.”

So he took us through the whole wonderful structure, explaining how the designers and architects and engineers had solved numerous problems involving weights and stresses and the problems of getting twenty thousand spectators seated and out of the building as quickly and efficiently as possible. They had even had the foresight to plant plane trees all over the plaza separating the amphitheater from the town proper. These trees, now mature, were not only very handsome additions, they provided shade for the vendors who set up their stalls to supply the needs of spectators during intermissions in the shows.

Rome had larger venues: the Circus Maximus and the Theater of Pompey, for instance, but the Circus was not so well designed and the theater was no more than a very large Greek building of the ordinary type. This was something new and I could only wish that Rome had a structure as fine. I thanked the builder and we went back to our horses.

“Well,” I told the men. “I wouldn’t have missed that, but it isn’t getting any work done, so let’s go find this duumvir Belasus.”