John Roberts - The Sacrilege

"Closer to two hundred."

"Oh, the elevated and patriotic motives of our Senators," I said.

"You'll see worse than that in the Senate, if you live," Father said. By this time we were at his gate.

"Could you send a slave to my house?" I asked. "My boy, Hermes, should be there by now with my toga. Have him meet me at the surgery of Asklepiodes. He knows where it is and bring me a tunic."

Father popped his fingers and a slave came to take my instructions. The man ran off and we continued with every Roman's favorite subject.

"Where does Caesar stand on these questions?" I asked.

"As a popular, he is for giving the land to the veterans, but he favors the ager publicus in Campania. A bit farther from Rome, but the best farmland in Italy."

"They don't seem connected, do they? What have those two concocted between them? I think it must be behind all this."

"They both argue that their settlements will strengthen the state," Father said while I dripped on the tiles of his atrium. "Be a reservoir from which to draw soldiers for future generations. All that sort of talk."

In spite of everything, I managed a short laugh. "What pap! We all talk about the fine old times of the founding fathers and the virtues of the Italian peasant, backbone of the state. Does anyone really believe we can conjure those times back, like some necromancer raising the dead to prophesy? How long will those stalwart veterans last on their idyllic little farm plots, Father? How long before they sell up and leave the land to join the urban mob here in Rome? What peasant, however hard-working, can compete with latifundia the size of small countries and worked by thousands of slaves?"

"They might last for Pompey's lifetime," Father said. "That's long enough for his purposes."

"How very true."

"And what would you do?" he asked, his face getting red. "How would you change things?"

"Break up the latifundia for a start," I said. "Forbid the importation of new slaves and the selling of Italians into slavery. Tax those plantations until the owners have to sell off land."

"Tax Roman citizens?" Father bellowed. "You're mad!"

"We're dying by inches as it is," I insisted. I usually didn't talk like this, but I was very tired and had lost a lot of blood. "I'd pay the owners a small, very small, indemnity and repatriate those slaves right out of Italy. They're the root of most of our problems. The fact is, we Romans have grown too damned lazy to do our own work. All we do anymore is fight and steal. We have slaves to do all the rest."

"This is wild talk," Father said. "You sound worse than Clodius and Caesar combined, far worse."

I laughed again, this time quietly and a little shakily. "I'm no radical, Father," I said. "You know that. And I'm not going out into the streets to rabble-rouse, if only because I know how futile it would be. Reform or reaction, all they mean is Roman blood in Roman streets. We see enough of that as it is."

"See that you curb your tongue, then. Talk gets you killed as efficiently as action, these days."

"I don't suppose," I said, "that I could talk you out of a litter and some bearers to take me to my physician?"

"All that bad, is it? Oh, very well." He called to another slave and there was some scurrying about. The old man was mellowing with age. Time was when he would have lectured me half the day about how he had marched for fifty miles in full armor with wounds far worse. Maybe he had. I never claimed to be especially rugged.

The ride to the Statilian ludus was a bit hazy. The sun kept getting brighter, then dimmer. I think only the fortification of that excellent Caecuban kept me from passing out. As it was, the gods sent me visions. I thought I saw the goddess Diana, in her brief hunting tunic, bow and quiver, but then she became Clodia, and she was laughing at me. Clodia had laughed at me before, with good reason. I was about to tell her what a scheming slut she was when I realized that it was not Clodia but Fausta. She said something that I could not understand, and I tried to ask her to repeat it, but then I saw that it was not Fausta but her brother, Faustus. The metamorphosis had been subtle because the twins were so alike. He was reaching something out to me in a beringed hand, but that did not seem right, because soldiers rarely wear a great many rings, especially large poison rings. Another transformation had occurred. Now it was Appius Claudius Nero, and he was holding something, something he urgently wanted me to take, trying to speak despite the puncture in his throat and the dent in his brow.

Then a huge shadow reared up behind Nero. It was a four-footed beast towering over him, and its great paw descended, crushing him before he could give me whatever it was. I looked up and saw that the beast was Cerberus, the guard-dog of the underworld. I knew this because, unlike ordinary dogs, he was gigantic and had three heads. They were not dog heads, though, but human heads, like one of those hybrid Egyptian deities. The head on the right was that of Crassus, regarding me with those cold blue eyes. That on the left was the jovial head of Pompey. The one in the center was in shadow and I could not recognize it, but I knew that this one was the master of the other two, else why was he in the center? Then someone else was in front of Cerberus. This was Julia, and she, too, was reaching out for me. Her hand touched my shoulder.

"Decius?" Asklepiodes gripped my unwounded shoulder lightly and shook me. His face wavered in my vision, then solidified.

"I really would have preferred Julia," I said.

"What?" His elegantly bearded Greek face showed concern. "I was not expecting to see you again quite so soon, Decius." He turned and shouted something over his shoulder. A pair of gladiators came and lifted me out of the litter as lightly as if I had been an infant and carried me to the physician's quarters, where his servants efficiently stripped and washed me as he examined my wounds.

"Up to your old activities again, eh? Are those human teeth marks I see on your face?"

"Actually, they belong to a rodent, a species of weasel, or perhaps a stoat." His poking and prodding elicited the usual flares of agony. This was the part he liked.

"Well, I can stitch and patch you up enough to keep you alive and relatively mobile, but the ladies will shun your company for a few days. Speaking of ladies, who is Julia?"

I averted my eyes as the silent slaves brought in horsehair sutures, wickedly curved needles and ornate bronze pliers.

"I was confused. I had a vision on the way here, and the last thing I saw was a lady of my acquaintance named Julia."

"She must be exceptional, since you seem to prefer her company to mine despite your manifest need for my attentions. What sort of vision? I am not especially skilled in the interpretation of dreams, but I know of some skilled practitioners not far from here."

"It wasn't a real dream, but a sort of waking vision. I was aware of what was going on around me while it happened." I spoke mainly to take my mind off his activities. I am not among those person who believe that all their dreams are of great significance, and wish to tell you all about them, at great length. I rarely remember them, those I do remember are usually duller than my waking life, and such visions as the gods have given me have usually come to me under just such circumstances as these: wounds, blood loss or severe blows to the head.

I related my vision to Asklepiodes, and he sat facing me with chin in hand, murmuring occasional wise noises. When I had finished, he resumed his horrid labors.

"The appearance of persons with whom you have recently been involved is not at all unusual, even in the common or nonportentous dream," he said. "But the appearance of a mythical beast is always of the highest significance. Does Cerberus have a significance among you that he does not have among Greeks?"