Lindsey Davis - A dying light in Corduba

Optatus was still niggling about the way I had to work. 'I was taking you to task, Falco.'

'About what I do?'

'For all I know, when we converse in this friendly fashion, you are laying traps even for me!'

I sighed. 'Rest assured. If there is a conspiracy, by the time the Quinctii started trying to arrange their cartel, you were on very bad terms with them. Only men who look amenable are invited on their friendly trips to Rome. Let's be fair to the Quinctii though; they may be honest as daisies.'

'So you like to be fair!' he observed drily.

'I've been caught out too many times! But I don't believe you were ever invited to join any price-fixing; you disapprove too strongly of corrupt practices.'

Maybe I was being stupid. Maybe Marius Optatus was so utterly disgruutled by what had happened to him that he was the moving spirit behind the plot Anacrites had wanted to investigate. He had just told us he was saving hard and harbouring ambition. Perhaps I had been underestimating his importance here.

'I'm flattered,' said Optatus. 'So you will concentrate your efforts on the young ladies' handsome friend, Falco?'

'The charming Tiberius does pose one fascinating puzzle. If the Quinctii are villains, they appear to have everything well sewn up. But even so, the proconsul has sent Quinctius Quadratus on hunting leave.'

'So what, Falco? He is a sporting type. He loves hunting; in a young man of promise that goes down well.'

I smiled wisely. 'In a young man who has just started a major public role, this phrase has other connotations. He's not hunting at present, is he?'

'He's enjoying himself in every way.'

'Quite. Flirting with Aelia Annaea and Claudia. What a bastard.'

'And he is influencing their brothers,' Optatus told me. 'Particularly young Rufius Constans; Quadratus has made himself the boy's mentor.'

'That sounds unfortunate! But listen: I was telling you about hunting leave; you have to be aware of the subtleties here. In the army it's called "being sent up country". In civic life it's a different term, but same result: your quaestor is not actually expected to hunt. He can loaf on his father's estate, attend the gymnasium, entertain women – whatever he likes, just so long as he doesn't show his face. The fact is, at least temporarily, the proconsul has shoved this twinkling star out of the way.'

Optatus looked pleased. He immediately saw that for the Quinctii and their ambitious plans this could be a disaster. The Senate might have been bought and the Emperor bamboozled, but here the proconsul had a mind of his own. Against all the odds, not everything was going right for Quinctius Attractus and his son. Apparently there was a black mark on a list somewhere, against the name of Tiberius Quinctius Quadratus.

Maybe Laeta had sent me to Baetica to be the man who turned the mark into a line drawn right through the name. 'What happens now, Falco?'

'That's easy,' chortled Helena sleepily from her place beside the fire. 'Marcus has the kind of job he likes: he has to find a girl.'

'In order to disgrace one or both of the Quinctii,' I explained quietly, 'I have to link them to Selia, the dancing girl from Hispalis I mentioned to you before. She helped get a man killed in Rome – and someone almost certainly hired her.'

For once it was Optatus who laughed. 'I told you before! You won't find many of those girls in Baetica; they all sail off to make their fortunes in Rome!'

Well, that was good. It should be easier to identify the one who had sneaked back to Spain.

Lindsey Davis

A Dying Light in Corduba

I managed a grin, then followed it with a compromise: 'I need you! You've been summing up my job for me pretty accurately. How about being poked on to a seat at the theatre next to me?' I gave her my hand again, and we hurried together the way the procession had gone. Fortunately I possessed skills which most urban informers lack. I am an expert tracker. Even in a completely strange city I know how to trace a Parilia procession by following the newly deposited animal dung.

My experiences in Baetica already warned me that when I caught up with the priest and magistrates I might detect an equally pungent smell.

I hate festivals. I hate the noise, and the wafts of lukewarm pies, and the queues at the public lavatories – if you can even find one open. Still, coming to Corduba on the Parilia could prove useful as a study of town life.

As we hurried through the streets, people went about their business in a pleasant mood. They were short and stocky, vivid evidence of why Spanish soldiets were the Empire's best Their temperament seemed level too. Acquaintances greeted each other with a relaxed style. Women were not accosted. Men argued over kerbside space for tying up wagons in a lively, but non-violent way. Waiters in wine bars were friendly. Dogs yapped, then soon lost interest. All this seemed everyday behaviour, not some holiday truce.

When we reached the theatre, we found events were unticketed because the religious stuff was public and the dramatic scenes had all been paid for by the decurions, members of the town council; they, the Hundred Men, had the best seats, of course. Among them we picked out Annaeus Maximus again, and from his position he was a duovir, one of the two chief magistrates. If Corduba was typical, the Hundred Men controlled the town – and the duovirs controlled the Hundred Men. For conspirators, that could be very convenient.

Annaeus was the younger of the two landowners I had met in Rome, a square-faced Spaniard with a wide girth, giving me maybe fifteen or twenty years. Coughing slightly in the wafts of incense as the pontifex prepared to slaughter the calf and a couple of lambs, Annaeus was the first to rush forward to greet the governor. The proconsul had arrived direct from his palace, escorted by lictors. He was wearing the toga I had seen him in, not a military breastplate and cloak; ruling the senatorial provinces was a purely civic office.

In fact his role we soon saw, was as a figurehead on somebody else's ship. The cream of Corduba had welcomed him as an honorary member of their own tightly knit topnotch Baetican club. He sat on his throne in the centre of the front rows of seats around the orchestra, flanked by well-dressed families who gossiped and called out to each other – even shouting to the pontifex in mid-sacrifice – as if the entire festival was their own private picnic.

'It's sickening!' I muttered. 'The Roman proconsul has been swallowed up by the ruling families, and he's become so much a part of the local clique it must be hard for him to remember that the Roman treasury pays his salary.'

'You can see how it is,' Helena agreed, only a little more mildly. 'At every public occasion the same few men are in charge The same faces cluster in the best positions. They're terribly rich. They're completely organised. Their families are linked intimately by marriage. Their ambitions may clash sometimes, but politically they are all one. Those people in the front-row seats run Corduba as their hereditary right.'

'And in Gades, Astigi and Hispalis it's going to be the same – some of the faces will match too, because some of the men will be powerful in more than one place. Some must own land in several areas. Some will have taken rich wives from other towns.'

We fell silent for the sacrifice. In acquiring foreign provinces, the plan was to assimilate local gods into the Roman pantheon, or simply add them to it if people liked to keep lots of options. So today at the Parilia ceremony two Celtic deities with unintelligible names received a lavish sacrifice, then Jupiter was allowed a slightly weedy lamb. But the Baeticans had been wearing Roman dress and speaking Latin for decades. They were as Romanised as provincials could be. And like the patricians of Rome, keeping a rigid grip on local politics through a small group of powerful families came as naturally as spitting.