John Roberts: The River God

There had been few survivors, and those had been carried off to the Tiber Island, where such aid as could be provided would be given them and their screams and groans would not add to the uproar.

“Way!” came a lictor’s bellow. “Way for the Interrex! “ A double line of lictors pushed their way into the plaza, shoving the mourners and gawkers aside with their fasces . Behind them came the man who had all the power and prestige of a consul but not the title or the proconsular appointment. There had been such scandals and riots and lawsuits over the previous year’s elections that the consuls had not been allowed to take office yet, so an interrex had been appointed to preside in their place. This one happened to be a kinsman of mine, the resoundingly named Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica.

“How many dead?” he asked me.

“About fifty so far,” I told him, “but we’ve only cleared away the upper stories. There’ll be more. Do you think this rates a day of mourning?” Metellus Scipio was a pontifex as well and could declare one.

“If the list of dead is outrageously high, or if someone of note is found in there, I’ll call for one in the Senate. It seems rather pointless, though. This year has been so bloody already that the whole City should be wearing black togas and growing beards.”

“All too true,” I said, “but I’m going to bring charges against whoever built this atrocity. A brand-new insula has no business collapsing without an earthquake. There hasn’t even been time for termites to get at it.”

“At least there wasn’t a fire,” he observed. When such a building collapsed upon cooking and heating fires, the resulting fiames could spread all over the City.

“A little blessing from Jupiter,” I said. “It happened just before dawn. No fires lit yet, and the night-lights all burned out.”

“Tragic,” he mused, “but it could have been worse. Find out who’s responsible, and bring me his name. You’re going to be too busy to prosecute, but we can find one of the rising young family members to hand it to. My younger son can use the experience.” Naturally, he would try to use the catastrophe for family political advantage; we did that sort of thing all the time. It was his next revelation that stunned me.

“By the way, speaking of my children”-he looked around to be sure that no one was eavesdropping-”keep this to yourself for a while, but the family has agreed that my daughter is to marry Pompey.”

“Are you serious? We’ve been fighting Pompey for years!” I was more than a bit put out that I hadn’t been let in on the deliberations. Despite my age, dignity, and experience, the elders of my family still thought me too young and unreliable to attend their councils.

“It’s been decided that it is time to renegotiate some alliances.”

He didn’t have to spell it out for me. The family had decided that Caesar was now the more dangerous man.

“But Pompey’s supporters have been calling for a dictatorship! We’re not going to support them, are we? I’ll go into voluntary exile first.”

He sighed. “Decius, if you only knew how many of the older men have been calling for your exile anyway. No, don’t go all dramatic on us; we’re going to work something out that will satisfy everyone.”

“I’ve heard that sort of talk before. I believe in the principle of compromise, but if you’ve figured out an office between consul and dictator, I’d love to hear about it.”

“Give it time,” he said. “Just find out who’s responsible for this,” he made a broad gesture toward the heap of rubble, “and let the higher councils deal with Pompey.”

Pompey was proconsul of both Spanish provinces that year, but they were peaceful so he let his legates run them while he stayed in Italy to oversee the chaotic grain supply- and, it seemed, to negotiate an advantageous marriage.

I should have expected it. A similar bout of fence-mending a few years before had resulted in my betrothal and eventual marriage to Julia, Caesar’s niece. I shuddered to contemplate how Julia would react to this change in the family position.

All through the day the public slaves labored over the wreckage, loading the rubble onto carts to be hauled out to one of the City’s refuse dumps, most of them landfills to create level ground for the ever-expanding suburbs beyond the ancient walls. These slaves were not actually owned by the State, which owned relatively few slaves at this time. They were owned by the publicanus , who held the contract for this sort of work. The carts and oxen were his as well.

The man himself stood by one of the carts, making notes with a stylus on a wax tablet, apparently keeping a talley of the carts and their loads. He was a big, tough-looking specimen, as unskilled labor contractors often are. Their slaves are the dregs of the market, sometimes criminals or insurrectionists sold off in gangs by foreign kings. He nodded curtly as I approached him.

“Good day, Aedile. Some mess, eh?”

“Very much so, and I find myself wondering why.” I rapped a fiat facing brick. “Everything is new and seemingly sound.”

“Looks so, doesn’t it?” He handed the tablet to a secretary and took one of the bricks from the cart. Pinching off a bit of mortar, he squeezed it between a thick finger and thumb, where it crumbled to powder. “Cheap mortar, for one thing, but that’s not why it fell. See, they always make the part above ground look good, else how are they going to get tenants to move in? But I’ll wager that when we get to the basement, we’ll find rotten timber and not enough of it. The upright supports are supposed to be spaced no more than an Egyptian cubit apart, but I’ve seen them spaced so you can lie down comfortably between them. The foundations won’t be dug deep enough, and they’ll be resting on river mud instead of a man’s height in gravel, as the code requires. Where you can’t see it readily, the builders cut every cost they can.”

“Disgraceful,” I said, disgusted but far from shocked. “How do they get away with it? Why don’t all the buildings collapse?”

He gave me a smile of genial cynicism. “Usually they don’t last long enough. How often does an insula like this last as long as ten years before a fire gets it? And who’s going to notice the code violations then?”

“Every builder in Rome should be fiogged in the Circus,” I said.

“Well, that’s the aediles’ job, isn’t it?” His implication was clear: Every one of my predecessors in office had been bribed to look the other way when these death traps had been erected.

“I may need you to testify in court,” I told him.

“Always at the service of Senate and People,” he said with that marvelous, toadying humility that only large, brutal men can display when dealing with superiors.

“Your name?”

“Marcus Caninus, sir.”

“And you received your contract from?”

“The Censor Valerius, sir.” This was Marcus Valerius Messala Niger, the consul of some seven years previous and still censor the year before I took this burdensome office.

I looked around for Hermes, my personal slave, who carried all my writing materials and was supposed to be standing by to take notes. As usual, he was nowhere to be seen. I began to stalk around the site, plotting his punishment.

Eventually I found him standing by one of the rubble carts, this one piled with wooden beams. He was amusing himself with an ancient Roman pastime, carving his name on the timbers. Every wall, monument, and tree in Rome bear these blessings of widespread literacy. The graffito is the only art form we did not steal from the Greeks or the Etruscans.