John Roberts - The Sacrilege

"He didn't go to the house of Clodius, master."

"Whose, then?" I demanded.

"He went to the house of your kinsman Metellus Celer."

I did not really believe that Celer would try to kill me. We were on good terms, and he and my father were close. I had not forgotten who his wife was, though. But it had been years since Clodia had last tried to have me killed, and I could not think why she would try to do away with me now. Her only possible reason would be that she thought I threatened her brother, for whom she had a more than sisterly fondness.

These things were much on my mind as I prepared for the day. This time, I did not neglect to tuck my dagger and my caestus into my tunic. Best to be safe. Accompanied by Hemes, I set out for Celer's house. I had no intention of confronting him with Nero's doings. In the first place, I did not yet have confirmation that any murder attempt had taken place. I would wait and watch.

I stopped at a corner barber's stall for a shave, then proceeded on toward the Palatine. I was at the base of the hill when I met a well-dressed procession headed toward the Forum, a grim-faced Celer at its head. He did not spare me a glance, and I was not about to attract his attention. I had seen that look before, in Gaul, and it usually meant that traitors were about to be executed. I fell in with the crowd of clients. I noticed that Caesar was there as well, equally grim-faced. I spotted my cousin-by-adoption Scipio Nasica the pontifex and stepped to his side.

"What's happened?" I asked him in a low voice.

"We don't know," he said, equally quiet about it. Everyone looked as if something terrible had happened. "A messenger came during the morning call. He took Celer and Caesar aside and spoke to them in private. Then they came out looking like they do now. Celer announced that an extraordinary meeting of the Senate has been called and has said nothing more."

My spine tingled. Ordinarily, this meant a major military disaster. I wondered where it had happened. Antonius Hibrida had turned in a string of defeats in Macedonia, so that should not come as a surprise. Perhaps the Germans were on the march again. I shuddered at the thought. The last time they had terrorized all Italy, and it had taken Gaius Marius to defeat them. Despite all his posturing, Pompey was no Gaius Marius.

The Forum had that look it always gets when everyone knows there is bad news in the air. Instead of the usual drifting, shifting mass, people gathered in tight little knots, each one feeding the other's ignorance with rumors and omens. I overheard talk of military disaster, civil war, invasion by foreign enemies, plague, famine, earthquake, and wondrous visitations by the Olympian deities, all before we reached the steps of the Curia.

Senators were bustling up the steps, eager to find out what had transpired. The lictors of the magistrates stood leaning on their fasces, trading omens like everybody else. As we reached the steps, Caius Julius left our little procession to speak with a matron so hatchet-faced she made him and Celer look cheerful by comparison. I asked my companions who this might be, and someone identified her as Caesar's mother. This was strange indeed. Roman women, however prestigious, were not supposed to take part in political matters.

Inside, the Curia vibrated with a low buzz, everyone apprehensive but also eagerly curious to know what had happened. Down in front, where all the greatest men were, stood the Consuls and the senior magistrates, the pontifexes and the Princeps. Something seemed decidedly odd about this group. Some of them, the Consuls in particular, looked amused.. There was an aura of barely suppressed hilarity among them, until Caesar joined them and they resumed their stony faces. The Consuls took their curule chairs and the rest of us sat on our benches. When all was properly ordered, Hortalus stood to address the Senate.

"Conscript fathers," he intoned, "I must address you on a grave matter." His voice to the ear was like honey to the tongue. "Last night, here in this sacred city of Quirinus, a most heinous act of sacrilege was perpetrated!" He paused for effect, and he got it. This was the last news anyone was expecting to hear. Serious offenses against the gods were rare, and usually involved unchastity in a Vestal Virgin. I noticed, however, that Hortalus had used the rare word sacrilegium. Sexual relations with a Vestal was always referred to as incestum.

"Last night," Hortalus went on, "during the ancient, holy and most solemn rites of Bona Dea, an impostor was discovered spying upon this ritual, which is forbidden to all men! It was the quaestor Publius Clodius Pulcher, who entered the house of the Pontifex Maximus by stealth, dressed as a woman!"

The Curia erupted into total uproar. There were calls for trial, calls for death. Mostly, there was just jabbering and whooping, and I did my share of it. I jumped around like a boy, clapping my hands with sheer joy.

"Now we'll be rid of him!" I said to someone near me. "Now he'll be condemned and given some awful ritual punishment, buried alive or pulled apart with red-hot pincers or something." It was a cheering thought, but my neighbor dampened it.

"He'll have to be tried first. Sit down and let's see what the pontiffs and lawyers say."

I hadn't thought of that. Cicero had gotten himself in plenty of trouble by urging the Senate to condemn the Catilinarians without jury trial, and no one had forgotten that. I sat. The Senators would be cautious about prosecuting him, worse luck.

The Consul Calpurnianus stood and held up a hand for silence, which he finally accomplished.

"Conscript fathers, before we can even discuss action, we must have some definitions so that we know what we are talking about. The distinguished Princeps Quintus Hortensius Hortalus has used the word 'sacrilege.' I will ask another distinguished jurist, Marcus Tullius Cicero, to explain this term for us."

Cicero stood. "In earlier times, 'sacrilege' was defined as the stealing of objects consecrated to a god, or deposited in a consecrated place. In more recent times, this word has been extended to cover all damage or insults done to the gods and to sacred places. If the conscript fathers so direct, I shall be most pleased to prepare a brief listing the sources and precedents for the legal charge of sacrilege."

"Caius Julius Caesar," said Calpurnianus, "as Pontifex Maximus, is it your judgment that this offense merits the name of sacrilege?"

Caesar stood and walked before the Senate as if he were officiating at his father's funeral. He pulled a fold of his toga over his head, solemn as a tragic actor.

"I do so judge it," Caesar intoned, "and it is to my unutterable shame that this unspeakable act should happen within the house of Caesar." This was the first time I heard him refer to himself in the third person, an annoying habit with which we were to become all too familiar.

"Then," said Calpurnianus, "with the concurrence of the Senate, I shall direct the praetor Aulus Gabinius to go with his lictors to the house of Clodius and place him under arrest."

"Just a minute, now!" shouted a Senator named Fufius, a notorious lackey of Clodius. "Publius Clodius is a serving Roman official and cannot be arrested or impeached while he is in office!"

"Oh, sit down and stop talking like an idiot!" barked Cicero. "Clodius is a mere quaestor, with no more imperium than brains. What's more, he has not yet gone to his place of duty to take up his office, and this offense has nothing to do with the discharge of official business."

"And let us not forget," said Metellus Nepos, all bland malice, "that during the Catilinarian emergency, serving Roman officials, including a praetor, were arrested. Might not a charge of sacrilege be as serious as one of treason?" This, of course, had nothing to do with Clodius but was aimed directly at Cicero, who had ordered those arrests.