John Roberts - The Tribune's curse

I thrust my way through the press to Cato’s side. “The betting is five to three that he doesn’t make it alive past the Golden Milestone,” I said. “It’s ten to one and climbing that he doesn’t get to the City gate on his feet.”

“I loathe the man,” Cato said with some degree of understatement, “but a Roman magistrate should be allowed to depart for his province without interference.”

“They just shouldn’t be allowed to take office, eh?” I said, studying the fine new scar on his forehead. In the elections of the year before, he had tried to stop Pompey and Crassus from standing for consul. In the subsequent riot he had been badly injured.

“It was Crassus’s hired thugs who started the brawl,” Cato said, stiffly.

“I’m sorry I missed it.” I sighed.

“You’d have been in your element.” He looked uphill. “Here they come.”

A hush fell over the great mob as the procession made its way down the steeply sloping Capitoline Street. First came two files of lictors, twelve in each file. One file, Pompey’s, wore togas. The lictors of Crassus wore red tunics cinched with broad, black leather belts studded with bronze-field dress for lictors accompanying a promagistrate in his province. Behind them strode the consuls.

“Pompey is with him,” Cato said, relieved. “He may make it to the gate yet.”

It was a splendid gesture on Pompey’s part. He had set aside his personal animosity to see his colleague safely out of Rome. Pompey was still an immensely popular man, and his presence just might avert violence. Close behind Pompey, I saw an enormous man who had a mustache in the Gallic fashion. He wore a toga the size of a ship’s sail, so I knew he was a citizen. I had never before seen a Roman citizen wearing a mustache.

“Who’s the hairy-lipped giant?” I asked.

“Lucius Cornelius Balbus,” Cato said. “He’s a close friend of Pompey and Caesar. He soldiered under Pompey against Sertorius. Pompey gave him citizenship as a reward for heroism.” Of course, I had heard the name, and Caesar had spoken to me of him often, but this was the first look I’d had of him. He was from Gades, in Spain. The people around there are a mixture of Carthaginian and Greek and Gallic, with the latter predominating and probably accounting for his lip adornment.

The year’s praetors walked behind the consuls, and I saw Milo and Metellus Scipio and a few others I knew. One of the Censors, Messala Niger, was with them, but his colleague, Servilius Vatia Isauricus, was not. Vatia was very elderly and probably had stayed home. I saw a man come from the crowd and fall in beside Milo. It was his brother-in-law, the almost equally handsome Faustus Sulla.

“Senators!” Cato called. “Let us fall in behind the serving officials. We must not allow the dignity of public office to be molested by an unruly mob.” Nicely put , I thought. Nothing to indicate support for Pompey or Crassus, whom everyone knew to be among his personal enemies. Cato stepped forth fearlessly, muttering out of the side of his mouth: “Decius, stay close to me. Allienus, Fonteius, Aurelius Strabo, and Aurelius Flaccus, come to the front.” He called for others, assembling all the Senate’s most notorious veteran street brawlers; there was no lack of such men in that august body. When a man like Milo could make it all the way to praetor, you can imagine what the back benches were like.

Slowly, we walked behind the men with the purple borders on their togas. There was still grumbling from the crowd, and Crassus made a show of ignoring it, but the presence of Pompey kept things from getting violent. I almost thought they were going to pull it off.

The first disturbance came before we were out of the Forum. As if by magic the crowd parted before the lictors, and there stood the tribunes Ateius and Gallus with their staffs ranged behind them. Ateius raised a palm and cried out: “Marcus Licinius Crassus! As Tribune of the People, I forbid you to leave the City of Rome!”

“Stand aside, Tribune!” Pompey shouted in a parade-ground voice that cracked through the Forum like a stone from a catapult.

Ateius pointed at Crassus. “Arrest that man!” The tribunal assistants surged forward, but the lictors closed ranks. With a few brisk strokes of the fasces , Silvius and his companions were laid out on the pavement. People cheered this rare entertainment.

Abruptly, another man rushed at Ateius. “Let our consul proceed, idiot!” he cried, even as he punched Ateius in the mouth.

“This man has laid violent hands upon a tribune!” Ateius screamed. “This is sacrilege!”

“Trebonius is a tribune, too,” Milo shouted. “Can’t do a thing about it. He’s sacrosanct.”

Purple in the face, growling like a dog, and bleeding slightly from the lip, Ateius whirled around and pushed his way into the mob. Shakily, his men got to their feet and hustled off after him.

The procession continued on its way. The little farce seemed to have put everyone in a better mood. There were no cheers, but the threatening noises had subsided to a few rude shouts and derisive laughter aimed at Crassus.

“I think he’s going to make it to the gate,” someone said from behind me.

“I hope so,” I said fervently. “I’ve bet a hundred and fifty sesterces he’d get all the way out of the City.” The senators who had bet he wouldn’t even make it out of the Forum alive were already paying the winners, sour faced and with one more grudge against Crassus to add to the rest.

We marched all the long way to the ancient Capena Gate, which gave onto the Via Appia. Crassus was going to travel the Appia all the way to its end, in Brundisium. Thence he was going to sail to Syria, so eager was he to get there fast. A man who would set sail in November was capable of any folly.

Ateius was waiting for him upon the city wall atop the gate.

“What’s that fool up to?” Cato said, as mystified as the rest of us. The procession and the whole following crowd, as well as the multitude that had been waiting by the gate all morning, stood goggling at this unwonted spectacle.

Ateius was transformed. Not only did he stand in this rather unorthodox spot, but he had discarded his toga for a bizarre robe striped red, black, and purple, bordered with Greek fretwork in gold thread, and spangled with embroidered stars, scorpions, serpents, and other symbols, many of them unfamiliar to me. The left side of his face was painted red like that of a triumphator , the right side painted white. On his head was a close-fitting cap covered with what looked like a multitude of tiny bones. Before him a fire burned in a bronze bowl mounted on a tripod. The flames were an ugly green.

“Hear me, Janus!” Ateius cried. Conventional enough so far , I thought, despite the strange getup . When we invoke the gods, we always invoke Janus, god of beginnings, first. “Hear me, Jupiter Best and Greatest! Hear me, Juno, Minerva, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars, Neptune, and all the Olympians! Hear me, Bellona, Ops, Flora, Vulcan, Faunus, Consus, Pales, Vertumnus, Vesta, Tiberinus, the Dioscuri, and all the gods of the City, the river, the fields, and the woodlands of Rome! Hear me, the Unknown God!” A comprehensive but not unusual invocation , I thought.

It was an unprecedented display. Ateius belonged to no priestly college I was aware of. He was not performing his ceremony, whatever it was, at a temple, shrine, or other sacred site. Still, despite its boldness and effrontery, nobody sought to stop him. It was not that any authority restrained us. It was just that, as Romans, we were terribly reluctant to interrupt a ritual in progress. From earliest youth we were drilled in the rule that a rite must be performed from beginning to end without interruption and without mistake. Ateius was taking advantage of our unthinking adherence to ritual law.