John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

“Despite your support, which was admirable, Cicero ended up in exile,” I noted.

He shrugged. “Sometimes a man must pay a price for his patriotic actions. At least he escaped death, which a good many senators wanted to inflict upon him.”

“Things may get rough. I don’t know for sure how many are involved in this and some may not come along quietly.”

Cato gestured toward the men who followed him. They all looked supremely tough. So did Cato. “We don’t object to a little bloodshed. Speaking of which, I heard you got shot with an arrow.”

So I entertained him with the tale of my close brush with death. He and his men thought the whole affair was funny. I have said that Cato was humorless, but he did find amusement in things like pain and suffering. At the end he nodded with approval.

“That’s the way to handle wounds: get back to the gymnasium as soon as you’re back on your feet. A Roman on public service can’t let something as trivial as being skewered by an arrow slow him down. You’re just lucky that arrow wasn’t poisoned.”

I shuddered to think of it. “Apparently it didn’t occur to my enemy to poison the arrows. About the only serious lapse in an otherwise excellent plan of mass homicide.”

I sent for Hermes and he appeared within moments. “Hermes, take some men and go arrest the woman Porcia. Search her house thoroughly and bring back anything you find interesting. Put her under close guard in one of the rooms here. That means a permanent suicide watch.”

He grinned. “So she’s one of them after all, eh? I’m off!” He ran down the steps, calling out names, calling for horses. In moments he and a dozen other armed men were mounted and pelting down the road toward the villa. Then Cato surprised me.

“You’ve raised that one well. He’d make fine material for the army and even the Senate. It’s too bad he’s a freedman and barred from office. He’s better quality than half the men in the Senate.”

I was dumbfounded. For once, Marcus Porcius Cato had said something absolutely correct and sensible. “I’ll tell him you said so. Coming from you, it will mean a lot to him.”

“War is coming. When it comes, if you don’t have a position for him, send him to me. I’ll have command of at least one legion. I’ll give him a centurionate.” In those days it was still possible for an exceptional man to be appointed centurion without spending years in the ranks first.

“I will keep that offer in mind,” I said, “but I expect that I’ll have plenty of use for him.”

Cato favored me with one of his rare smiles. “Of course, you’ll be taking the field yourself.” Cato always assumed that I was as military-minded as he was, and that I would look forward to wielding command. I had won a certain military distinction, but it was almost all against my own inclinations. He could never understand that. I certainly was not about to send Hermes to serve with Cato, no matter in what capacity. Not that Cato wasn’t a good commander, but I knew he would sacrifice his army and himself over some point of principle that meant nothing to anyone else.

“All right,” Cato said, “you’ve just taken your first extralegal step. I take it we are to expect more?”

“Far more,” I assured him. He meant that I had no power of arrest here and the arrestee was not a foreigner.

“Good,” Cato said.

Early in the afternoon, Pompey arrived. He was in full military fig and accompanied by a rather large bodyguard, around fifty mounted men. This was because of what I had written to him:

If you would like to see the end of this, come to my court as soon as you can. Bring some of your men. There may be trouble.

He heaved himself from his saddle a little more adroitly this time, but he was still struggling with his weight. There was a two-inch gap between the front and back plates of his bronze cuirass. I took him to the terrace where our strategy session was still in progress. By this time I’d had a larger table brought out to accommodate our expanded numbers. He exchanged greetings with Julia, Cato, and some others. I gave him an abbreviated briefing on my findings and plan.

“I always thought it was unreasonable of Pedarius not to let me just go ahead and pay for the restoration of the temple,” Pompey said. “I wouldn’t have insisted on putting my name on the pediment.”

“Poor men can be prouder than rich ones,” I told him. “This one was so intent on preserving the dignity of his patrician name that it led him into some foolish choices.”

“I hope he hasn’t made me look foolish along with him,” Pompey said ominously.

“You wanted this district to be quiet. When this is over it should be and you can concentrate on your recruiting.”

“When do things start?” he wanted to know. “My time is limited.”

“Almost everyone has arrived at my summons,” I said. “We should be able to begin tomorrow. If all goes well, it should be over tomorrow, too.”

A prodigious crowd had gathered for the opening of my court the next morning. Actually, I use the word “court” advisedly. I was going to do something quite contrary to long-established Roman court practice. Perhaps if I had had more time and manpower, I might have called down some jurists from Rome to put it on a more conventional footing and make sure that the precedents were followed, but I had neither the time nor the resources.

A Roman praetor is not supposed to bring charges himself. He does not prosecute or defend. He presides in majesty over the arguments of lawyers and the deliberations of juries. He takes no part himself except to see to it that the proper forms are followed, that the jury’s decisions are correctly arrived at, and at the conclusion he delivers his judgment in accordance with the findings of the jury. This was going to be very different.

My dais had been arranged so that Pompey and Cato sat beside me, my curule chair slightly elevated above theirs. Pompey had his own curule chair, spectacularly draped with tiger skins. Cato did not hold an imperium office and his chair was an ordinary one, slightly lower than Pompey’s. My six lictors and Pompey’s twelve made an impressive sight ranged before the dais, the polished wood and steel of their fasces shining in the morning sunlight. Just to add to the drama, Pompey had provided a pair of trumpeters with their great cornus curling over their shoulders.

I had Hermes make sure that everyone was present. It is always embarrassing to call a witness only to find that he is absent. It breaks the rhythm of the proceedings and makes the caller look foolish. He returned a while later to report that everyone was present. Just in front of my chair was a table, and it bore the documents I would need for my case.

In the forefront of the crowd were many of the most prominent persons of the district, and in the forefront of these were the various praetors, duumviri, dictators (yes, some towns called their elected headman dictator), and so forth of all the nearby towns. Ranged behind them were priests, guild chiefs, and other persons of consequence, many of them just plain rich. Those local lawyers looked at me with curiosity mixed with fear and anger. They knew that something here didn’t smell right.

When I judged that the level of tension had reached the right pitch, I signaled the trumpeters and they blew a long, ringing blast. Instantly, the crowd fell silent. I stood and gathered my purple-bordered toga about me in the manner approved by all the best rhetoric instructors.

“Citizens!” I said, pitching my voice in outdoor-oratory mode, and flattering them somewhat since by no means all of them were citizens. “For some time now, this district has been afflicted by a most distressing series of murders. All the priests of the Temple of Apollo,” here I gestured grandly toward that building, “a slave of that temple named Hypatia, a Syrian merchant of Pompeii named Elagabal, the wealthy widow Sabinilla, and now, I have learned, the patrician patron of the temple, Manius Pedarius, have been murdered!”