Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'Of course. They're all friends or acquaintances. Most of them have known Meto since he was a little boy.'

'But you can't be intending for all of them to walk through the Forum with us, and then come back here for dinner!'

'Of course not. This is only the general reception. People are invited to come and enjoy themselves, to get reacquainted with the family, to see Meto in his toga, to leave when they wish—'

To eat you out of house and home! Look, over there!' A man with a grey beard who looked vaguely familiar — the association was not pleasant, and I seemed to recall that we had been on opposite sides of some litigation — was hovering stealthily over a little serving table, dropping stuffed grape leaves into some sort of pouch inside his toga.

Eco laughed. 'Isn't that old Festus? You remember, he came over once saying he wanted to consult you about a lawsuit pending against him, and we never saw that little Alexandrian vase again.'

'No.' I frowned, shaking my head. 'That is not Festus.'

Eco cocked his head. 'Ah, I have it. Rutilius — his own brother brought suit against him, accusing him of thieving from him. The scoundrel never denied it; instead, he wanted us to dig up something horrible and scandalous about his brother, so as to even the score.'

I shook my head. 'No, it's not Rutilius, either, but probably someone just as awful. Surely you wouldn't have invited either of those two to Meto's party! Oh, the indignities I've had to put up with over the years to keep our bellies full! I'm just glad I'm away from it all now. And I'm glad you're young and hard-shelled enough to see your own way through the snares and traps of this city.'

‘You trained me well, Papa.'

'I wish I had trained Meto half so well.'

'Meto is different from me,' he said. 'And different from you.'

'I worry about him sometimes, about his future. He's still such a boy—'

'Papa, you must stop saying that. Meto is a man now, not a boy.'

'Still — oh, now this is too much! Look, now that wretched man has begun pilfering the honeyed dates! There won't be any for the other guests. You see, you've invited far too many people — neither of us can even remember who that man is, though we're both sure we don't like him. This is why it's a mistake to have people serve themselves. If we were all seated with slaves doing the serving—'

'I suppose I should do something, 'said Eco. 'I'll go and ask the fellow if he's murdered any wives or poisoned any business partners lately.'

With that he ambled towards the old greybeard, who gave a start and jumped back from the table when Eco touched his shoulder. Eco smiled and said something and led him away from the food. The jump must have dislodged the man's hidden cache, for a string of stuffed grape leaves and honeyed dates began to drop from his toga, leaving a trail behind him on the floor.

A hand touched my shoulder. I turned and saw a shock of red hair, a spangling of freckles across a handsome nose, and a pair of bright brown eyes looking into my own. The next moment I was locked in a mutual embrace, then held at arm's length while Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus looked me up and down.

'Gordianus! The country life most certainly agrees with you — you look very fit indeed!'

'And the life of the city must agree with you, Rufus, for you never seem to age at all from year to year.'

'I am thirty-three this year, Gordianus.'

'No! Why, when we met—'

‘I was about the same age that your son Meto is now. Time flies, Gordianus, and the world changes.' Though never enough for my taste.'

We had first met years ago in the house of Caecilia Metella, when Rufus was assisting Cicero in his defence ofSextusRoscius. He had been only sixteen then, a patrician of ancient lineage, politically precocious and secretly infatuated with his mentor, Cicero. Not surprisingly, the infatuation had come to nothing, but Rufus's more practical ambitions had led to a successful career. He had been one of the youngest men ever elected to the college of augurs, and as such was frequently called upon to read the auspices and pronounce the will of the gods. No public or private transaction of importance takes place in Rome, no army engages in battle, no marriage is consecrated without consulting an augur. I myself have never had much faith in reading messages into the flights of birds and divining the will of Jupiter from a flash of lightning across the sky. Many (or most) augurs are mere political hacks and charlatans, who use their power to suspend public meetings and block the passage of legislation, but Rufus had always seemed quite sincere in his belief in the science of augury. He, too, had been involved in the scandal of the Vestal Virgins, for it was Rufus, as a religious colleague, whom the Virgo Maxima had first summoned for help when Catilina was discovered in the House of the Vestals. Rufus had called on Cicero, and Cicero had called on me. As I have remarked before, Rome sometimes seems a very small town indeed.

'I'm glad you've come, Rufus. There are very few faces from the Forum that I miss seeing from day to day, and yours is one of them. I mean it,' I said, and I did, for Rufus had always been a young man of unusual integrity, soft-spoken but passionate in his beliefs and driven by an intensity that was not immediately apparent from his good-natured manner. His natural sense of justice and moral equanimity often seemed out of place among the self-serving oratory and ceaseless back-stabbing of the Forum. 'But what's this?' I said. 'You're wearing a candidate's toga.'

Rufus pretended to dust himself, for the natural woollen colour of his toga had been rubbed with chalk to make it a harsh white, as is the practice of men running for office. 'That's because I'm running for praetor this year.'

'Then I hope you win. Rome needs good men to run the city and give out justice.'

'We shall see. The voting will take place tomorrow, just after the balloting for the consular election. Normally the election for praetors and the election for consuls take place on different days, of course, but with the postponement of the consular election — well, it will be an insanely busy day. Caesar, too, is running for a praetorship, as is Cicero's brother, Quintus.'

'I suppose you're still allied with Cicero,' I said, then saw from his face that I was mistaken.

'Cicero…' Rufus shrugged. 'Well, you know the circus act he performed last summer in order to win the consulship. Blowing smoke from his mouth and jumping through hoops — though it came as no surprise to see him resorting to the most outlandish tricks to get himself elected. Over the years he's reversed his positions on virtually every issue, yet his rhetoric stays the same — as if rhetoric gave a man consistency, rather than principles. I find myself uncomfortable in his presence these days. I read the auspices on the day he took office — not officially, but for my own satisfaction — and they portended a year full of deceit and treachery, perhaps even disaster. Ah, Gordianus, I saw the look that just crossed your face: you have no faith in the auguries. Neither does Cicero, who thinks they're merely tools that men like himself can use to manipulate the masses. And manipulate he does, shamelessly. Hypocritically turning his back on the children of Sulla's victims who seek redress, railing against the Rullan land reform, the way he handled that riot over special seating for equestrians in the theatre, and now this postponement of the elections — you haven't been in the city long, have you?'

‘I arrived only last night.'

'Utter chaos. Voters arriving after hours or days of hard travelling only to find that the election day has been indefinitely postponed — imagine! Angry farmers from up in Etruria camping out on the Field of Mars, lighting camp fires that could burn down the city — and when the praetors ride out to warn them, the farmers pull out the rusty old swords they used to carry for Sulla! It's enough to make me want to drop out of the praetor's race. And all because of this preposterous notion of Cicero's that Catilina is set to slaughter half the Senate if he doesn't win the consulship. And now, as if to prove he has no sense of shame or decorum left at all, Cicero insists on going about the Forum wearing that absurd breastplate—' 'What's this?'