John Roberts - The River God

The air began to grow dense as the water grew thicker. Soon we were plowing through a horrid scum through which unpleasant bubbles rose and burst, like the bubbles of fermentation in a wine vat. I withstood the stench manfully. It was little worse than some of the fouler alleys of the Subura where the inhabitants dumped their slop jars and kitchen refuse into the streets and where the muck would suppurate through a hot, rainless summer until just passing by such an alley could be lethal to one not native to the district. The Cloaca Maxima had a long way to go before it would be that bad.

“Fine prospect, eh?” Acilius said exultantly, as if this were his own, personal triumph.

“It’s not exactly boating on the Bay of Baiae,” I said, not to be intimidated, “but it smells better than a Gallic town that’s been under siege for a month or two.” This put him in his place nicely. Being a freedman, he had never served with the legions, whereas soldiering was the primary duty of my own class. Like the rest of them, I often pretended that I enjoyed the horrid business.

“Six years ago,” he went on, “this water was nearly clean all the way to the Tiber.”

“So what has happened in the last six years?” I asked, with a sigh. Some men cannot simply state what is on their minds. First, they have to unburden themselves of a whole philosophical system.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing?” Here it comes , I thought.

“Exactly! Nothing has been done by the last censors or the last five sets of aediles to care for these drains and sewers, the very lifeblood of the City!”

“I would have used a more suitable anatomical metaphor, but I get your point. Is the structure in danger?”

“Aedile, as far as I can tell, this system has not required repair to the structure since it was built. Even the smaller, later sewers that drain the lesser valleys are perfectly sound and will last another thousand years, barring a truly terrible earthquake.”

“Well,” I hazarded, “there are rather more people in the City than there used to be. Pompey’s veterans who couldn’t get land settlements, for instance, and they’ve brought in countless slaves that were a part of their loot. And all the manumitted slaves who-”

“Still not enough to strain the system,” he said, impatiently. “And most of the new population have taken up residence in the new districts outside the walls, the Trans-Tiber and the Campus Martius. No, Aedile, what we have here is plain neglect.” He turned to our boatman. “This one,” he said, pointing to a low arch from which black fiuid fiowed sluggishly.

“Hold your breath,” Hermes muttered.

“Don’t worry,” Acilius said, “we won’t be going far.”

The light of our torches barely pierced the foul haze within the sewer. Drain openings overhead shot occasional beams downward, but the water was too clogged and murky to refiect anything. We heard occasional slithers and splashes, for there are creatures that prefer such an environment. Eventually the prow of the boat nudged something and would go no farther.

I squinted ahead but saw nothing but a shapeless mass before us. “Give me a torch.” Hermes passed me one, and I held it out over the prow. It wasn’t much improvement. I could make out nothing but a hulking mass of indescribable rubbish. I thought I could make out a few broken pots, a bone or two, but the great mass had crumbled, melted, rotted, or otherwise metamorphosed into a form of matter unknown to the philosophers of Alexandria. The stench that emanated from it was as palpable as a brick in the face.

“Careful,” Acilius warned. “Even here, you could set it afire.”

“That could only improve things,” I said. I removed the torch from dangerous proximity though. “How did this come about, and how extensive is it?”

“It came about through long neglect of the sewers, coupled with widespread violation of the ordinances against dumping trash in the drains. Everything people are too lazy to carry to the dumps outside the walls gets thrown down the nearest drain. The objects that will not fioat build up in the channel until they form veritable reefs, then everything piles up against them, and high water from the heavy rains just heaps it up higher. You asked how extensive this problem is?”

“I did,” I said, as if either of us needed reminding.

“Every last sewer in Rome is like this, Aedile. Only the main channels of the largest sewers are clear: the Maxima, the Petronia, and the Nodina. Those follow the courses of old creeks and have a relatively steady fiow, and even their bottoms are getting full of nonbuoyant refuse. The smaller, tributary sewers are clotted just like this one, all of them. And it’s not just broken furniture and kitchen trash, Aedile. There are a great many corpses down here.”

“Corpses?” I knew that something more potent than garbage had to account for that smell.

“Oh, yes. The poor use the drains to dispose of aborted or unwanted infants. And people often want to be spared the expense of burying their dead slaves or the inconvenience of hauling them to the pits outside the Esquiline Gate. And these are not just the slaves of contractors and factory owners, either. Slaves of the wealthy sometimes find their way down here, and, of course, the occasional murder victim.”

“Infamous!” I said, meaning it. Not that murder was so great a crime, and the exposure of unwanted infants was lawful if distasteful, but to deny proper burial even to the lowliest was impious and could draw down the wrath of the gods. “The whole City could suffer for this!”

“I’d say it was suffering right now,” Hermes said, gagging.

“We’ve seen enough, let’s get away from here,” I told the boatman. He began to pole us back toward the main channel. Soon we were breathing what seemed to be, by contrast, almost clean air. I ordered Charon to take us to the river.

“Who is responsible for scouring out these channels?” I asked.

“Like most such work,” Acilius said, “it is done on a basis of public contracts let every five years by the censors, then overseen by the aediles. A thorough cleaning of the whole system should have been undertaken, at latest, two years ago, during the censorship of-”

“Don’t tell me,” I interrupted. “It was Messala Niger and Servilius Vatia. Didn’t those two do anything while they were in office?”

“Not much,” Festus commented. “But what’s new about that? You were back from Gaul while they were in office, weren’t you, Patron?”

“They’d been sitting for about six months when I returned. They were supposed to get the public contracts settled in their first month or two, then conduct the census and purge the senatorial lists, and wind up with the lustrum . When my father and Hortalus were censors, they got the whole task done in their first six months.”

“Not every Roman magistrate is as energetic and conscientious as your father, Patron,” Festus observed. “And Vatia Isauricus was awfully old, you’ll recall.”

“Messala was lively enough,” I said. “And still is, for that matter. I may have to speak with him.” One more thing to look for in those documents I’d bribed away from the Tabularium.

Ahead of us, the half circle of the river portal seemed as bright as the rising sun. Charon nudged the boat alongside the raised walkway that formed an elongated landing. The old boatman squinted, dazzled by the clear light. We disembarked and walked toward the light. The tour of the sewer had been so oppressive that I had to restrain myself from breaking into a run.

Moments later we were standing by the river, filling our lungs with clean air, blowing like so many porpoises to clear our heads of the nauseous miasma. The daylight seemed incredibly clean and clear.