Steven Saylor - A murder on the Appian way

"Interesting? When you go back to Rome, you can tell all your drinking friends that you saw the very spot where the bloodshed began."

"What makes you think we're from Rome?"

He raised an eyebrow as if to say that our origins were all too obvious to a country dweller like himself. "So, do you want to see the place or not?"

"Are you offering to be our guide?"

"Why not? I've been the priest at this altar for twenty years, and I know everything there is to know about these parts. Of course, I would require a small gratuity, for the upkeep of the altar…"

I narrowed my eyes and looked at Eco. "What do you think?"

Eco stroked his chin. "I suppose it might be interesting. We're not in too much of a hurry."

"Oh, it will only take a moment," said Felix. "I can't leave the altar for long."

I pretended to consider, then finally nodded. "Very well. Come along with us."

Davus, Eco and I kept our horses to a slow walk, so that the priest, on foot, could keep up. Past Bovillae the road began a steady ascent. The wooded hillside rose on our left and sloped downward on our right. Despite the increasingly jumbled landscape, the road that Appius Claudius had built continued steady on its course, as smooth and broad as ever.

"So you saw the inn already," said our guide. "Did you nodce the new doors and shutters? You should've seen the place right after the battle — like a crone with her eyes and teeth plucked out. And all those bodies lying about!"

"Did you see the battle yourself?"

"I heard the fighting when it started up the hill, and knew that something was up. Then I saw them come running past — you can see a bit of the road from the altar — that fellow Clodius stumbling and tripping, practically carried along by his men, five or six of them, and then a little later those two monsters lumbering after them-Eudamus and Birria."

"You recognized them?"

"Who wouldn't? I never miss a gladiator show when I get the chance to see one. For religious purposes, you understand. The games started as funeral rites, you know. They're still a sacred institution."

I didn't care to argue the point with a priest "Were Eudamus and Birria the only ones who came after Clodius and his men?"

Felix snorted. "Now wouldn't that make a legend — the two gladiators who laid siege to the inn at Bovillae and conquered it all by themselves! No, they weren't the only ones. A whole army came down behind them."

"An army?"

"Perhaps I exaggerate."

"How many men, then? Ten, twenty?"

"Maybe more than that."

"Then Clodius was greatly outnumbered?"

"You could say that"

"And the siege at the inn — did you see that as well?" "Well, not exactly. Not while it was happening. I stayed at the altar, of course, to protect it." "Of course."

"But everyone knows how it turned out. Marcus the innkeeper slaughtered, and that scoundrel Clodius and his men lying dead in the road."

"Scoundrel?"

The priest looked up at me sidelong and clicked his teeth. "I mean no offence, citizen. You were a partisan of the fellow?"

"No. Our hostess at the inn had a different opinion of Clodius, that's all. Say what you please about him."

"Then I'll go ahead and call him a scoundrel, if you don't object."

"You preferred Milo?"

Felix raised an eyebrow. "I'm a priest of great Jupiter. I keep my thoughts on higher things than the squabbling of petty politicians up in Rome. But when a man commits sacrilege as blatantly as Clodius did, the gods are bound to strike him down sooner or later."

"Sacrilege? You mean the time he disguised himself as a woman to sneak into the rites of the Good Goddess in Rome, with the objective of making love to Caesar's wife even as the rites were being performed?" This had been one of Clodius's most infamous escapades.

"That was indeed a terrible sacrilege," said the priest. "Clodius should have been stoned for that, but he managed to bribe the jury."

"A failure of earthly justice," said Eco, nodding in agreement but with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "And a lapse of heavenly justice, too. When I was a boy, everyone told me that any man who dared to violate the rites of the Good Goddess would be struck deaf) dumb and blind. But Clodius was the same after he sneaked into the rites as he was before. I wonder why the Good Goddess spared him. Did his gown and makeup fool her? Or was she as charmed by Clodius as Caesar's wife was?’

The priest refused to be needed. "Of course she spared him — so that he could meet a more horrible fate these ten years later, here at Bovillae! Do you think it's only a coincidence that the battle began right in front of the Good Goddess's shrine on the Appian Way? Fauna had a hand in his fate, you can be sure." The priest nodded gravely, daring Eco to refute his logic. "But that wasn't the man's only sacrilege, or even the wont. Up in Rome I don't suppose you've heard much about what Clodius did to the grove of Jupiter here on Mount Alba, or the way he treated the local Vestal Virgins."

"Our hostess at the inn mentioned something about it," I said, "but the story's new to me."

Felix shook his head. "You'd think such crimes would be brought to light when a man runs for public office, but I suppose people were ready to elect Clodius praetor without giving a thought to his religious offences in these parts. I'll tell you, then. It all had to do with that gigantic villa of his up on the hill. It was a simple enough place to start with, but that wouldn't do. He had to keep expanding it, turning it into his private fortress. His property came right up against some of the most sacred parts of the mountain — the grove of Jupiter, the Temple of Vesta, the House of the Vestal Virgins. When he needed more land, Clodius somehow got the property lines redrawn. He claimed a large part of the sacred grove — which he then proceeded to chop down for lumber! And he had the Vestals evicted from their house, which he then dismantled stone by stone to add a wing to his own villa — using the old mosaics and statuary for decorations! Look, there's the new house of the Vestals over there, on the left; you can just glimpse it through the trees. At least he left the Temple of Vesta alone, but that's small recompense for what he did to the grove. To my mind there's no more impious act than doing harm to a sacred tree, and Clodius ordered them cut down by tens and twenties!"

"But how did he manage to lay claim to these sacred properties?"

"How should I know? I'm only a simple priest, assigned to a single altar. Who knows what sort of threats and bribes he made? Men like that will stop at nothing to get what they want." He looked at Eco. "Do you doubt me now, young man, when I say that the gods were at work when Clodius was struck down?"

' "The gods are at work in all things," I said, to mollify him, "even in our chance meeting, and this conversation. So, you saw the flight to the inn, but not the battle itself"

"But I could hear it from the altar. Cracking and crashing and screaming!"

"How long did this go on?"

"Hard to say. Not too long. Then a lot of yelling, and things fell quiet for a while. Then the old senator and his daughter came down the hill in their litter."

"You mean, after Eudamus and Birria and Milo's men had gone back up the hill," I said.

"No. The senator went by, and it wasn't until quite a bit later that Milo's men started back up the hill with the prisoners."

"Prisoners?" I frowned.

"Five or six of them, I'd say."

"How could you tell they were prisoners?"

"Because their hands were bound! They were all huddled together, looking scared out of their wits, with Milo's men surrounding them and Eudamus and Birria prodding them on with an occasional jab to their behinds."

"But who were these prisoners? Clodius's men?"