John Roberts - The Tribune's curse

“That’s a law seldom observed,” I noted. Women weren’t supposed to attend them, either. That didn’t stop them from going.

“It was enforced this time,” Demetrius said. “So many people came in from the countryside to see them that everyone had to get entry passes months in advance and show proof of citizenship.”

“I suppose it makes sense,” I said. “If the whole purpose of an aedile’s munera is to win votes, why waste them on people who can’t vote in the first place?”

While we were going over the accounts, the aedile Paetus showed up.

“Back again, Metellus? What’s all this?” I told him, and he pulled up a bench. “I’ll give you a hand. Do you plan to prosecute him next year for the Sardinians? It’ll make your reputation if you can pull it off.” He picked up a tablet with an elaborate seal and opened it, then let out a low whistle. “Rather generous contribution from Ptolemy, here. The old drunk was really spreading the money around that year. I wish I’d been in a position to have some come my way.”

“Let me see!” I snatched it from him. “Hah! Two talents toward the expenses of his Games, as a loving token from the king of Egypt, Friend and Ally of Rome.”

“Nothing illegal about it,” Paetus reminded me. “He put it in the public record.”

“But it’s evidence. Anyway, while I’m sure Scaurus deserves flogging and exile, he’s not really the one I’m after. Keep looking,” I told the others.

Paetus shook his head. “What shows that man put on. The first hippos ever seen in Rome. Do you have any idea of the expense involved in bringing hippos to Rome? Took a whole ship converted into a big fish tank for each beast. Crocodiles, too. First ever shown in public.

“Crocodiles, eh?” I said. Today, everyone was dropping these little tidbits in my lap. “You don’t get hippos and crocodiles from Gaul, now, do you?”

“No, but his timing was right,” Paetus went on. “That year and the next, if you were a man of influence and there was any favor old Ptolemy could do for you, it was done. The Alexandrians kicked him out, but he could get anything he wanted from his upriver estates: gazelles, lions, leopards, elephants. All he wanted was your vote and your influence. If he hadn’t been so strapped for ready cash, he would have bought the whole Senate. Lucky for Aemilius Scaurus he was able to tap Ptolemy that first year, when he still had some of his treasure.”

By midafternoon we had reduced the heap of documentation to enough scrolls and tablets to fill a bushel basket. I borrowed a temple slave to carry the basket, and with the slave following me I went to the Grain Office to make my report.

The lictor rapped on the door with the butt of his fasces , and when the doorkeeper opened it, we went inside without waiting for permission. The hairless, eunuch majordomo came into the atrium, all indignation, but I cut him off before he could speak a word.

“Get Lisas!” I barked. Squawking and wringing his hands, the eunuch hustled off. Minutes later, Lisas appeared.

“Why, Senator Metellus! and Praetor Milo! What an unexpected pleasure!” He was trying hard, but even his skills could not hide the deathly gray of his face. It was not entirely attributable to his progressive diseases, either. “What brings you-”

I brushed past him. “We will speak with you presently.” With Milo and his lictors behind me, I went out into one of the side courtyards. At the crocodile pond I surveyed the torpid animals, which didn’t seem to have moved since I had last seen them, the night the supposed body of Ateius Capito was discovered. I walked around the periphery until I found the animal Julia had pointed to that night. It still had the bit of gold wire wrapped around a fang in its upper jaw. “Here’s the one,” I said.

Milo took off his purple-bordered toga and tossed it to a lictor. Then he fearlessly vaulted the railing into the ankle-deep water on the border of the pool.

“Praetor!” Lisas squawked, beside himself with anxiety. “Those are wild creatures! They will-”

Milo ignored him. He clamped one hand over the creature’s muzzle and wrapped his other arm around its body just behind its front legs. Then, with no more effort than most men would display in lifting a large dog, he hauled it upright. The monster thrashed a bit, but the cool November weather seemed to have sapped its energy.

Milo hauled the thing over to the edge of the pool, and I reached out for the golden glint. I managed to get the wire between my fingernails and slowly worked it loose from the tooth. When it came out, I saw that a tuft of purple-and-black threads was twisted into the end of the wire that had been in the animal’s mouth. With a surge of his whole body, Milo flung the great beast into the water, and it disappeared beneath the water with a lazy wave of its tail.

Lisas did not try to bluster as Milo climbed out and resumed his toga. “Let’s go back inside,” I said.

In the great audience room Lisas sat. “How may we resolve this?” he said wearily.

“My fat old friend,” I said sadly. “You had better speak swiftly and to our great satisfaction, if you value your life.”

“Oh,” he said, almost managing a smile, “I don’t value my life very highly these days.” He sighed deeply, almost buried his face in his hands, then stiffened his spine and sat upright. “But I must still serve my king. What would you have of me?”

“The men you hide in this villa,” Milo said, “Ateius and Silvius. They must go back with me to Rome to stand trial.”

“My friends,” Lisas said, “this is an embassy. By treaty, I am not bound to surrender anyone to you. This is Egypt.”

“Matters have moved beyond the stage of public embarrassment, Lisas,” I told him. “You have been in collusion with Ateius Capito for at least three years, from the time he agreed to become King Ptolemy’s agent in Rome.” Lisas said nothing, and I went on. “On behalf of Aemilius Scaurus, he approached Ptolemy for bribe money, found out just how much money Ptolemy had to spread around, and let it be known that he would be Ptolemy’s servant, for a price. What did Ptolemy buy him with? A villa near Alexandria? A big estate in the Delta with hundreds of peasants to work it for him?” Still, Lisas said nothing.

“There was one service Ptolemy needed more than any other. He wanted to prevent Crassus from getting the Syrian command. When Ptolemy was here in Rome, Crassus publicly humiliated him by coming up with that patently fake reading of the Sibylline Books. He knew that Crassus was greedy beyond all other Romans. Ptolemy could deal with Pompey; he could deal with Caesar. He could not and would not deal with Crassus.”

Still Lisas held his silence.

“But even the most heroic efforts of Ateius Capito and his confederates were in vain. However many votes he could buy with Ptolemy’s money, Crassus could buy more. If Ptolemy hadn’t had to pay Gabinius so much to put him back on the throne, maybe he could have managed it, but that was not to be. I must admit, though, that the curse was an amazingly clever device. It robbed Crassus of whatever Roman support he had left. And who knows? It might even be a perfectly good curse. If anything ever got the gods’ attention, that ceremony did.”

Lisas sighed deeply once more. “It seemed so fitting. Crassus thwarted His Majesty with a false reading of the prophetic books, and His Majesty revenged himself with the curse of a suborned tribune.”

“Was it Ateius’s idea?” Milo asked him.

Lisas nodded. “He was very enthusiastic about it. He had always wanted to produce a truly potent curse, and now he would have the-the resources to do it.”

“Because he knew that Ariston of Cumae was corruptible. He knew because Crassus himself had bought the man to advise him on his fraudulent reading of the Sibylline Books. With Ptolemy back in power in Alexandria, he had the money to buy a really unique curse from Ariston, one that contained the ultimate name of power.”