John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

“Noble Praetor,” began the leader of this delegation, one Simonides. “We have come to ask of you what has been done about the atrocious murder of our beloved colleague, Eugaeon?”

“The investigation proceeds apace,” I assured him. “In fact, I suspect certain others of your colleagues of this murder.”

“That is out of the question,” he said, scandalized. “No priests of Apollo would ever do violence to one of their own!”

“Say you so? I’ve never noticed that any sort of person, given a motive, was ever backward about committing murder, priests included. You haven’t seen any of these furtive clergy, have you? My men have been searching all over for them.”

“None of them has appeared at our temples,” Simonides said. “We fear that they have been murdered as well.”

“Really? Maybe I should send someone down the tunnel to see if they’ve come bobbing to the surface. Who do you think would want to murder a whole temple staff?”

“The accursed followers of Hecate, of course!” snarled another of them.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “they are about the only people in the vicinity I do not suspect. They were with my party from the time we said good-bye to Eugaeon until the moment he surfaced. I do not see how they could be culpable.”

“Do you know that all of them were with you, all of the time?” asked Simonides.

“Well, no. But they are being interrogated by one of my most merciless investigators.” The description fitted Julia pretty well.

“They will speak if you use rigorous methods,” advised Simonides. “They are no better than slaves, anyway. Use torture on them.”

“You speak rather harshly for the priest of the god of enlightenment,” I noted.

“They are the enemies of all mankind!” cried yet another devotee of Apollo. “They practice sorcery, necromancy, and all manner of black arts. Many of us have felt their curse.”

“Yet you all look healthy enough. I take it this enmity between your temples goes back a long while?”

“For many centuries, Praetor,” Simonides affirmed. “Once there were many sanctuaries of Hecate in this vicinity, but the worship of the proper gods prevailed, and one by one they were obliterated. Now all that remains is the oldest of them all, the shrine of the Oracle of the Dead. From that foul tunnel the foreign goddess spews forth her vile lies, to lead the good people of Italy astray.”

“I can concur that she speaks in a puzzling fashion, but whether she lies I do not yet know. Rest assured that the malefactor or malefactors shall quickly be brought before me, tried, and judged.” After a few formalities they stalked off, not at all reassured or satisfied. I had judged many difficult cases, and never were all parties satisfied; often as not none of them were. That is just how people are.

People of all stations in life began to congregate near the double temple. This usually happens when some remarkable crime has occurred. People come to gawk, though what it is they expect to see is a mystery to me. Nonetheless, they gather, and soon the peddlers show up to sell things to the gawkers, and the mountebanks arrive to entertain the gawkers and the peddlers, and the whores join the throng to service the gawkers, peddlers, and mountebanks. By noon we had a full-blown market in progress.

Despite the holiday atmosphere, I could not help but feel an ugly undercurrent in the crowd. It is a thing common to Italian towns, which are always ridden with factionalism, one district against another, rival supporters of the Blues or the Greens in the Circus, or any other of the justifications for strife the human animal delights in. When Hermes rode in after another futile sweep for the vanished priests, I told him to circulate among the crowd and find what he could sniff out. This was perfect work for Hermes, who would always rather idle his time away at a festival than do serious work for me.

I was eating my lunch from a small table next to my curule chair when Hermes came back, redolent of too much wine but at least not reeling from it. “It’s the townspeople against the folk from the countryside,” he informed me. “In the towns, Apollo is the favorite god in these parts. They are incensed that Eugaeon was murdered and they think Hecate’s devotees did it.”

“I saw a delegation of Apollo’s priests this morning,” I told him. “They told me of their suspicions in no uncertain terms.”

“The country people, on the other hand, favor Hecate. She’s been in these parts for a long time and they think of her as a native deity, not Thracian. That’s the local Campanians and Samnites, of course. They still think of the Greeks as newcomers. They regard Eugaeon’s untimely demise in the Styx as a desecration of their holy river.”

“Let’s not refer to it as the Styx, shall we? It’s a powerful word and it makes me uneasy. Besides, except for being underground, it doesn’t agree with any of the descriptions of that river. I never heard of heat and foam and turbulence associated with the Styx.”

“As you wish. Anyway, we may expect rioting between the factions before long.”

“They’d better not riot here,” I said. “I have imperium, after all. I can call up troops to suppress insurrection.” It was true, but I dreaded taking such a step. I had a feeling that, in the very near future, any Roman official with troops under his command was likely to get thrown into the upcoming struggle between Caesar and the Senate. I hoped to be safely out of office before the break came, and I would use Pompey’s law imposing a five-year period between leaving consular or praetorian office and taking up a proconsular or propraetorian governorship in the provinces. Those governors and their armies would also be thrown into the fray.

“So much for the Greeks and Samnites and such,” I said. “What about the Romans we’ve settled here? Are they taking sides, too?”

“So it seems. Most of them have intermarried with the locals by now and they’ve taken up the local cults.”

“Ridiculous,” I said. “Have you ever heard of Romans rioting and going at each other’s throats over rivalries between Jupiter and Mars, or Venus against Juno?”

“No,” Hermes said. “But they certainly fight over everything else.”

“That’s irrelevant,” I said. “There are plenty of worthwhile things to fight about. Fighting over religious differences is absurd.”

Sure enough, the next delegation I received consisted of followers of Hecate, an odd mixed group of small merchants and prosperous farmers. They were very irate over the pollution of their sacred river and the damage that this murder might do to the prestige of their Oracle.

“My friends,” I said to them, “I am not a pontifex to pronounce upon matters of religion. In any case, our pontifexes are in charge only of the state religion of Rome. Yours is a local cult and I have neither knowledge nor authority to deal with your problems. I am a magistrate, and I will discover who committed this murder. Matters of ritual contamination you must sort out for yourselves.” They, too, left looking quite unsatisfied.

Next came a delegation of local merchants of the more prosperous sort, some of them heads of local guilds, like my friend Plotius. Their spokesman was one Petillius, a man who owned a great many properties in Cumae, Pompeii, and other towns in the vicinity.

“Noble Praetor,” he began, “we are terribly concerned with the damage this scandal is likely to do to the prosperity of our region. People come here from all over Italy and even from overseas to consult with the Oracle. We fear that this matter may curtail the customary pilgrimage this year.”

“I take it that you own a number of inns where these travelers are accustomed to stay?”