John Roberts - The Tribune's curse

“Is he a Senate messenger?” Julia asked me in the sudden hush.

“Of praetorian rank,” I told her. “The highest.”

The man went straight to Pompey and spoke to him in a low voice. The consul’s face was a study in consternation.

“Do you think it’s a battle report?” Julia said breathlessly. “A disaster?”

“He’s not carrying a dispatch case,” I pointed out. “Whatever his message is, it’s a short one.”

Pompey raised a hand and snapped his fingers, a military signal you could hear through the whole villa. “All senators to me!”

“Wait here,” I told Julia. I hustled over to him along with about two dozen others. Milo already stood next to Pompey, and we gathered close to him, knowing that it boded no good. Like an ebbing tide, those of no official standing drew back toward the walls, leaving the men in the variously striped tunics and togas standing as it were on an island in the center. Lisas looked on with anxiety, but also with a sort of gloating anticipation. A real catastrophe would be the perfect capstone to his party.

“Senators,” Pompey said, “I have just received news of the gravest importance. The Tribune of the People Caius Ateius Capito has been discovered, murdered.”

“Hah!” said a vinegary old senator named Aurunculeius Cotta. “Serves the bugger right!” He was a well-known adherent of the aristocratic party. There were many murmurs of agreement.

“My sentiments to perfection,” Pompey said, drily. “But the man was a tribune, and at this moment the commons are in a frenzy, assembling in the Forum and ready to burn the City down. We have to go there at once and calm them, or there will be a riot such as Rome hasn’t seen in a generation.”

I went to Julia. “We’re in for a riot. Don’t try to go back home tonight. Stay here or with friends in the Trans-Tiber. Hermes!”

“Here, Dominus!” He was this formal only when he knew the situation was serious.

“You have your stick?”

“Right here.” He patted the rather indecent bulge in the front of his tunic. “I’ll guard your back.”

“No, stay with Julia. I want her-”

“Take him,” Julia urged. “I’ll go to Grandmother’s summer house; it’s just a short walk from here.”

“I’d forgotten about that place. Yes, go there. I’ll arrange with Lisas for an escort.” Even if the rioting spilled out of the City and across the river, no mob would ever have the courage to assault Aurelia’s property.

“You’re exaggerating the danger,” she said.

“Not in the least. A tribune has been murdered. That hasn’t happened in nearly thirty years, and the last time the mob rioted for three days without letup.”

“And I thought your life would be a little quieter away from Gaul.” Like the other wives present, she made no motion to embrace or kiss me. Such a public display would have been unthinkable for a woman of her breeding. Sometimes I think we carry this business of gravitas too far.

“Of a certainty,” Lisas said when I spoke to him. “I am already assembling my soldiers. They cannot pass through the gates, but I shall provide my guests an escort to any place they choose on this bank of the river. Of course, the lady is welcome to stay here if she so chooses.”

“I am most grateful,” I assured him. “I shall not forget.” He appeared about to faint at the prospect of receiving my gratitude, and I left him there, my mind set much at ease. The embassy guards were all hard-bitten Macedonians-not an Egyptian in the lot.

“Lictors to the fore!” Pompey shouted as we assembled in the courtyard. With the consular and praetorian lictors in a double file, we made a formidable procession.

“March!” Pompey called, and we set off with Pompey in front, Milo behind him, the other praetors there behind Milo. We lesser senators followed in a gaggle. Behind us strolled a fairly substantial force of bodyguards, mostly ludus -trained slaves like Hermes, forbidden to bear arms but handy with fists and clubs. I was all too aware that they would be little protection against attack by a real mob.

However, I also knew that Milo’s crowd would be there in the Forum, and Pompey’s many clients, and the personal followings of the other important men, and these might be able to hold the mob at bay long enough for us to escape, should worse come to worst.

We passed across the bridge and through the gate, where the guard saluted us. Pompey paused there for a moment.

“Can you see anything?” he called up to the men atop one of the gate towers.

“No fires, Consul,” the man answered.

“Good. Things haven’t properly started yet.” He led us off across the Forum Boarium, past the ghostly bulk of the Circus Maximus, and then around the base of the Capitoline Hill. The Tuscan Street would have been more direct, but this brought us out at the Basilica Julia, which had a more commanding view over the Forum and offered a better escape route up to the Temple of Capitoline Jove, should the worst happen. Either way, the walk was all too short.

“When we get to the basilica,” Pompey said, “I want the lictors in a line halfway up the steps. Senators at the top of the steps, serving magistrates nearest me. Milo, I trust your boys will be there?”

“They have their orders for situations like this, Consul,” he said. “Every man will be there, in place, to give us the best protection. The question is: which way will Clodius jump?”

The same question had been running through my own head. “Clodius won’t want a riot unless he controls it, and nobody will control this mob once it loses its head,” I said.

“Metellus is right,” Pompey said. “Milo, I don’t want anything to break out between you.”

“I won’t start anything,” Milo said.

We had been hearing the roar of the crowd ahead from the time we entered the Forum Boarium. The noise abated as we went into the Basilica Julia through a rear door and crossed its cavernous interior, inhabited only by the night cleaning crew of public slaves who huddled in the corners, wide-eyed with fear. Then we walked out onto the colonnaded portico, and the full roar of the mob struck us.

Beside me I heard a senator mutter, “A white boar to Hercules if I get through this night alive.”

For my part, I was ready to pledge a whole herd of bulls to Jupiter. The Forum was a seething, storm-tossed sea of people, alight with waving torches, further illuminated by the bonfires that, for some unknown reason, mobs always feel compelled to ignite. The fires were fed with furniture and building materials plundered from all the nearby buildings. At least they were burning on the pavement and hadn’t yet spread to the houses and public buildings, but that was just a matter of time. A mindless mob is always happy to burn its own homes and shops, only to wake up when the hysteria has passed and look for someone to blame for its own beastly behavior. That part is usually good for another riot, one with more bloodshed than arson.

The lictors took up their station on the steps, standing shoulder to shoulder, their fasces held at a slant across their chests. Some of the mob caught sight of them, and then of the knot of dignitaries on the terrace at the top of the steps. As word spread, an extraordinary motion, something like the way water moves when it is disturbed, swept through the crowd. A bit at a time, starting at the forward fringes and amid little concentrations here and there, the inchoate, antlike swarming began to assume a common direction, and then the whole mass was surging toward the basilica, except for those who had already secured points of vantage on the bases of monuments or who hung, apelike, from the great statues and monumental columns.