John Roberts - A Point of Law

“Are you serious about building a new tabularium? ” Hermes asked, crumbs falling from his lips.

“If I build anything, that’s what it will be. The City really doesn’t need a new temple. Pompey’s Theater will hold most of the population. We don’t need a new bridge. What we really need is an efficient way to store records. But I doubt I’ll ever be rich enough to do it.” I took a sip of wine and winced at its bite. “Actually, I think this whole practice has gotten out of hand.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, great men go out and loot the world. Then they come back home and build great monuments to themselves and slather their names all over them and then bask in the honor of it all.”

“Hasn’t it always been that way?”

“Yes, and that’s the problem. We’re lords of the world, and we still act like the big frogs of little Greek city-states, putting up statues of ourselves and calling it immortality.”

“But what else are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s wasteful. There ought to be something better we could do with our loot. As it is, what we end up with are cheap slaves and expensive monuments, the occasional spectacle, and public banquets.”

“You like spectacles and public banquets.”

“Doesn’t everybody? But they’re unproductive.”

“Now you’re talking like a merchant. This isn’t helping to solve our problem.” He handed his now-empty bowl to a boy who added it to a stack of them he held nested in one arm.

“Sometimes you have to get your mind off the problem if you’re ever going to get it solved.”

“I’ve been considering something,” Hermes said, now handing his empty cup to a little girl who was gathering them.

“Tell me.” I gave her my own crockery.

“The day before yesterday, when we went on our little burglary expedition, we wondered why there were no slaves in the house. I said they’d probably belonged to whoever lent Fulvius the house.”

“I remember.”

“We now know that the house was owned in turn by Octavius and Caius Marcellus. They’ve probably gone back to their own households. Octavius is dead, so the slaves are unlikely to be his. I can go back to the house of Marcellus. I might be able to induce some of them to talk.”

“Octavia impressed me as the sort of woman who keeps the household staff confined to the house and hard at work at all hours.”

“There are ways,” he assured me. Having been a slave himself, he knew all about these things.

“Then go there.” I divided my money with him for a bribe fund. “I am going to Callista’s. If I’m not there when you are done, look for me in the Forum. I’m to be tried tomorrow and the election is the day after, so I have to act like a defendant and a candidate, making friends and collecting votes.”

I found Callista in her courtyard, surrounded by stacks of books and four or five assistants-and Julia. My wife seemed to have developed a special sense for detecting when I was about to call upon an attractive woman.

“How goes the work?” I asked.

“Wonderfully!” Callista said, with a flushed expression most women reserve for activities of a more intimate sort. “I’ve made a reliable interpretation of at least six of the Greek letters!”

“Just six?”

“With these, I’ll have the rest figured out in no time!” she cried happily.

“No time is exactly what I have,” I told her.

“Nonsense,” Julia said. “We have all day today, and tonight if need be. That’s plenty of time.”

“So, what have we learned?”

“I’ve conferred with a number of scholars here in Rome,” Callista said, “and several of them have lent me their relevant books.” She gestured to the heaps of papyrus leaves and scrolls that overloaded her desks and tables. She took up a tiny scroll and held it like a trophy. “This one proved to be extremely important.”

“How so?”

“It’s from the collection of Xenophanes of Thebes. He is the architect who designed Pompey’s theater complex on the Campus Martius. Being an architect, he is an avid scholar of geometry. This book is by a Pythagorean philosopher named Aristobulus.”

“I’ve met Pythagoreans,” I told her. “There are even a few senators who follow that sect. They are very boring people, with all their talk of transmigration of souls and their stupid dietary practices.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Decius,” Julia said. “Just listen.”

“I apologize. Please go on.” I knew better than to ignore that tone of voice.

“Aristobulus,” Callista continued, “is a scholar of the symbolic use of numbers and symbols. He is an advocate of a concept called the ‘unknown quantity.’ It is an extremely obscure and arcane field of study. Pythagoreans, with their mystical leanings, are about the only scholars who give it any serious attention. As far as I know, Aristobulus is the only one now working on the problem.”

She had lost me again, but I thought I understood her drift. “You think this has something to do with that-what did you call it? — that ‘symbol for nothing?’ ”

“Aristobulus uses the delta as his shorthand symbol for the unknown quantity. It is only a short step from that to a symbol for nothing at all.”

“This is making me dizzy,” I said, “but I trust your comprehensive knowledge of your field.”

I took the little scroll from her hand. It was finely made, enclosed in a leather tube with an ivory tag depending from one of the terminals. Written on the ivory in tiny, precise Greek letters, was the name of the author: Aristobulus of Croton.

My scalp prickled. Croton. Where had I heard that name spoken recently? Since this business had begun, my days had been so packed with events that I was beginning to lose track of who had told me what. To a Roman public man, educated to commit vast quantities of minutiae to memory, the sensation was disorienting.

“Decius?” Julia said. “You’re getting that look again.”

“What look?” Callista asked.

“The hit-on-the-head-with-the-sacrificial-hammer look,” my wife elucidated.

“I think he looks like a Dionysian reveler in a state of ektasis , the mind completely out of the body.”

“Isn’t that something like enthousiasmos?” my loving Julia inquired.

“No, that’s possession by the god. He’d be much more lively.”

“Instead of talking about me as if I weren’t here,” I said, “you could give me some help. I’m trying to remember where I heard Croton spoken of recently.”

“There was some question whether you were here,” Julia said. “And how can we help you remember? We weren’t there when it happened.”

“Let’s consider how the subject might have arisen,” Callista said. “For what is the city of Croton famed? It was the home of Pythagoras, naturally.”

“Let’s see”-Julia mused-“Croton? Athletes. Jewelers.”

“That’s it! The day before yesterday, Hermes and I found a seal ring in Fulvius’s desk. The lapidary I consulted said that the carving on the stone was in the style of the Greek cities of southern Italy. He was pretty certain that it was from Croton.”

“I love this sort of logic!” Callista said happily. “I know that applied logic is rather disreputable, but I find this exhilarating. But what is this about a ring?”

So I told her about this minor theft. What with murder and burglary and conspiracy and intrigues of one sort or another, it occurred to me that the felonies were beginning to pile up.

“If this conspiracy was hatched in Baiae as you think,” Callista said, “where originates the connection with Croton? The two towns are not close.”