Steven Saylor - A murder on the Appian way

"But surely it can't have been both ways. It must have been one or the other."

"Must it?" said Cicero. "What if there was no ambush at all? What if the two parties happened to meet on the Appian Way entirely by accident? Does that strike you as credible?"

"Perhaps. But people pass on the road all the time without someone ending up dead."

Caelius laughed. "He has a point!"

Cicero pressed his fingertips together. "But accidents happen. A man can't always control his slaves, especially gladiators who've been trained to protect him and to react at the first hint of danger. Tiro, make a note: Milo needs to free certain of his slaves, who might otherwise be compelled to give testimony under torture. Slaves can be tortured, but not freedmen. If worse comes to worst…" "If it comes to a trial, you mean," I said.

Milo grunted. Cicero tapped his fingertips against each other. "It's my conviction that Milo will yet be elected consul. He deserves no less for his service to the state! Still, we must be prepared for less happy possibilities."

"A trial for murder, you mean. What would Milo have to fear from the testimony of his slaves?"

Cicero considered the question. "Gordianus makes a good point. If Milo waits and frees the slaves at the wrong time, it could look bad. The earlier the better, I think."

"You can always say they were manumitted out of gratitude, as a reward," Caelius suggested. "They saved his life, after all."

"Did they?" I said..

"Well, that's what we'll say," said Caelius, looking at me as if I were a simpleton.

I shook my head in disgust. "You're only talking about appearances, aren't you, and nothing more? About this or that hypothetical version of what might or might not have happened, and whether people will believe it. You might as well be writing a comedy for the stage."

"Better a comedy than a tragedy," quipped Caelius.

Cicero looked at me thoughtfully. "We are advocates, Gordianus. This is what we do."

I shook my head.

Cicero saw that I was not satisfied. "How shall I put this?" he said. "Your nature is different from mine. Truth has a different meaning to you; you seem to think it matters in and of itself. But the truth you crave is an illusion! Chasing after Truth is a fit pastime for Greek philosophers who have nothing better to do, but we are Romans, Gordianus. We have a world to run."

He studied me for a long moment, and saw that I still resisted. "Gordianus! The next few days and months are absolutely critical to the survival of everything decent and honourable that remains in this city. You saw what they did yesterday — the madness, the destruction, the wanton desecration. Can you picture yourself in that mob? Surely not! Can you imagine what Rome would be like if people of that ilk were allowed to rule? A nightmare! Surely you can see where your own interests lie."

I studied each of their faces in turn — Gicero radiant with purpose, Tiro busy with his stylus, Caelius looking sombre but ready to grin, and Milo thrusting out his jaw like a stubborn boy spoiling for a fight.

"But what really happened on the Appian Way?" I said.

I received only blank stares in reply, before Cicero smoothly moved on to some other subject and then quickly, graciously, firmly made it clear that my visit was at an end.

I left Cicero's house without a satisfactory answer to my question — and indeed, with no clear idea of why he had summoned me. Cicero himself didn't appear to know exactly what he wanted from me, but seemed merely to be feeling me out. I had a vague sense of opposing forces marshalling their powers, and wondered exactly where I stood in the scheme of things.

The siege at the house of the interrex Marcus Lepidus continued the next day, and the next, and the next, with the partisans of Scipio and Hypsaeus continuing to demand immediate consular elections.

Temples and business interests in the Forum closed their doors. Every day, great crowds came to gawk at the charred ruins of the Senate House. Some wept, some cheered; fights and shouting matches were common. Some of the visitors laid flowers on the steps, as if it were a sepulchre, in honour of the man who had been cremated there. Others scattered the flowers and trampled on them

Affairs of state came to a standstill.

Life continued, however. Bethesda sent her slave girls down to the markets to buy the things she needed for dinner. It took them longer than usual, as they had to search harder, but they returned with full baskets. Belbo went to fetch a pair of shoes that I had sent out to be repaired, and reported that work went on more or less as usual in the street of the shoemakers. People went about the day-to-day business of gaining a livelihood and feeding themselves, but with a sense of dreadful suspense. Rome had the distracted air of a man on a dark, unfamiliar path, doggedly pushing on, fretfully looking over his shoulder, waiting for something terrible to happen.

Eco came to visit each day. "They're all three mad if they think that the fellow still has a chance of being elected consul," he said, when I told him about my peculiar interview with Cicero, Caelius and Milo. "But Cicero is right about one thing: the Clodians went too far when they burned the Senate House. They lost the sympathy of the people in the middle. Murder's an outrage, but fire scares the wits out of people."

"Fire is a symbol of purification," I suggested.

"Maybe at a funeral, or in a poem. But when you start burning down buildings, fire stands for ^discriminate destruction. Purifying the state may sound like a lofty idea in a speech, but not when people start getting burned. When reformers turn violent, they scare people."

"So that anyone with anything to lose prefers things to stay as they are."

"That's one result."

"Then maybe Milo does stand a chance to be elected consul."

"Never. He's tainted by Clodius's death."

"About which we still don't have any concrete details," I said, worriedly rubbing my chin. "So you think the voters will make Hypsaeus and Scipio consuls? But aren't they tainted, as well? They had-the support of Clodius, and now people are frightened of the Clodians."

"Yes, but Hypsaeus and Scipio are seen as being their own men. They weren't associated with the burning of the Senate House."

"But they're rabble-rousers nonetheless! Look at the blockade their supporters have thrown around Lepidus's house! Surely they're no more acceptable to the people in the middle than Clodius was."

Eco looked at me thoughtfully. "If Milo's out… and if Hypsaeus and Scipio are also out…"

"Don't say it!"

But he did. "People will turn to Pompey."

Pompey was much on the minds of many people in those days, including his old ally Milo.

On the fifth and final day of Lepidus's term as interrex, a trio of radical tribunes held a contio down in the Forum. Eco and I attended.

A contio is a public open-air meeting. Though it may have a feeling of informality, it is a function of the state and is governed by specific rules. Only certain people may speak at a contio, they must address a specific topic, and so on. Most importantly, only certain officials may hold a contio. The consuls may do so, for example. So may the tribunes.

Rome had no consuls for the time being. But there were ten tribunes, as usual. Some of them were keeping very busy.

The funeral of Clodius, or rather the gathering in the Forum to hear Clodius eulogized and to burn his corpse, had been a contio, or at least had started out that way. It had been called by the tribunes Pompeius and Plancus. I had seen both of these men at Clodius's house on the night of his murder, in the anteroom where the politicians had gathered to assess the disaster. The next day these two led the procession around the Palatine and down to the Forum. It was their speeches which inflamed the mob. Pompeius and Plancus were the same tribunes who had blocked the appointment of an interrex at the beginning of the new year, and had thus pushed back the scheduling of elections at a time when Milo felt confident of victory.