Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

They were tall but scrawny and looked half-starved. Hailing from the homeland of Alexander the Great had not improved their luck in life. Most were blondish with good bone structure, though no one would call them beauties because their manners were so uncouth. They knew no better.

They stared at me as if I was something novel. I said I wanted to apologize for our brother-in-law messing them about. He was up from the country and a numbskull anyway. They pulled faces, agreeing the last part. Uninvited, I sat down with them, which they allowed. I expect they were bored. Any distraction was fine, until the next mark wandered along and responded to their catcalls.

I made it straightforward. I said I would buy them all an early lunch if they would talk to me. I saw raised eyebrows (they pared their brows to tiny charcoal lines) but none disagreed when I called over the waitress. I asked for wine and water, telling her to bring as much good food as the Brown Toad could come up with. I had few hopes, but it turned out there was a large pot of meaty stew bubbling on a brazier inside, which someone’s grandma came in and made every day for the staff. The waitress openly expressed her unease about Faustus finding out, with him being a magistrate. Whispers had circulated through all the bars that while he was constantly around they should be careful.

I said if he didn’t know, he couldn’t fine anybody. Besides, his own fiancee was paying today, and I gave her the “fair man” story. We had a little extra conversation, because the grandma normally never gave the whores anything; they were visitors, like street pigeons. I put money on the table. In her own time the dreamy waitress served up steaming food bowls and a basket of bread. The Macedonians fell upon this fare as if they hadn’t eaten properly since they sailed out of Thessalonica.

I sighed gently to myself. Thinking like my mother, I reckoned that if only they all sat down to a decent meal together every day, while they were socializing they might decide to cooperate and better their lives.

I had wine as well, to show I was not snooty. After a sip I left most of it. There are limits.

While the others ate, I talked to them and discussed their way of life. Their initial wariness faded. I guessed I was the first person who expressed any human interest in them since they came to Rome. This was so because, at the end, one of them complimented me on not being standoffish.

By the time we finished, I knew their existence was terrible. What I learned was intriguing.

Unlike the Dardanians, their trip to Rome had been far from self-motivated. They were all slaves. Most had been sold to dealers by their own relatives, or people to whom relatives owed money. Dragged off to Delos, the filthy Greek island where thousands of slaves came onto the market every day even nowadays, they had been purchased by a Roman dealer who transported them here, then sold them on to a pimp to be run as prostitutes. It had always been their end destination. No one had ever intended them to do needlework or hairdressing. No one bothered to lure them with that pretense.

They lived in, and operated out of, a local district just south of the Ten Traders. It lay close by, at the start of the Viminal Hill. From what I could tell, theirs was a smaller version of the big brothel area in the Second Region, the Caelian, around the Amphitheater and Nero’s Great Market. That was one of the most densely occupied parts of Rome; it was crammed with bars, stalls, barbers, cheap souvenir shops and barracks for soldiers on temporary assignment here. The Second Region was thus an ideal spot for brothel owners to colonize, so it was grim. I had worked on the Caelian recently, but tried to stay on the opposite side of the hill.

These girls had a base up here, from which they were sent out to cruise nearby streets. Their sordid home district was called the White Chickens.

What the Macedonians also told me was that, as I had already realized, there were two levels of tavern prostitution. Individual waitresses who had genuine jobs serving drinks could be hired for a casual bunk-up. It worked happily or unhappily for them, depending on their work premises. But there were also professional whores.

The professionals lived in brothels of various sizes, some of them rooms in otherwise normal properties. Perfectly respectable people would hire out a space on an hourly basis and think nothing of it. Prostitutes had pimps or they had mothers-who were not maternal according to high Roman ideals and, in fact, were rarely related to them at all. The girls’ work was organized by these people, who treated them ruthlessly. They either suffered long, soulless hours in cubicles, or they could be sent out to cruise the streets.

They were slaves. They were constantly watched, frequently beaten, brutalized by their pimps, poorly clad, poorly fed, given no relief from misery. Most of the money they earned was immediately taken away from them by their pimps or brothel mothers. They would work until their dingy charms no longer attracted clients, or until they died. If they managed to stay alive but were no use, they would be cast out like so many enfeebled slaves and would die anyway, on the street or under a bridge or beaten up by louts. Even the hospital of Aesculapius on Tiber Island, which generally gave a refuge to old, dying slaves, tended to reject prostitutes.

“You will never earn enough to buy your freedom and give up this life?”

They stared at me as if I was mad for even suggesting it.

Now they were talking freely, at my urging they revealed more about how brothels like those in the White Chickens operated. Some were directly owned by a pimp or procuress, who installed girls to work there, and occasionally boys too. Others were owned by property agents who hired out rooms to independent workers as direct subtenants. As we discussed more details, there was giggling about the kinds of men who paid for sex, which led to variants-for instance, fine Roman ladies visiting incognito for a thrash with a gigolo. Further laughter followed, as the Macedonians harped on about such women coming back for more.

We all chortled at the thought of Roman fathers not knowing that their children had been sired in the stews, then the talk swung to the risk that women thrill-seekers might afterward find themselves in trouble; a pregnancy meant their adventures would become public knowledge. They would have to get rid of it. At least the well-to-do could afford a quick solution, we agreed.

One of the girls, Chia, went rather quiet at this point.

I made a face at a girl with a mole sitting near me, who replied behind her hand that I was right; Chia could be expecting. She looked to be the youngest. I could see she was extremely anxious. She frowned a lot, moved jerkily, picked at her cuticles.

It would be her first time. That was bad enough for most women. But the worst problem for Chia was that soon it would prevent her from working. The pimp would beat her and give her no pocket money, so she was liable to starve. Even if she came through and managed to produce a child, there was nowhere to keep it, no one to look after it. The poor mite would be a slave anyway, probably taken away by the pimp as soon as it was saleable. Masters of that type don’t hesitate to separate mothers and babies-and they do not sell slave babies to be nicely taught to read and write as docket clerks or secretaries. Girl or boy, it faced abuse.

None of us spoke to Chia about her predicament. That did not make us unsympathetic. I picked up a silent understanding that first she had to be sure she was pregnant, then she must face up to it and decide what she wanted to do. After that, if she wanted help, she could ask.

Finally, I tackled my reason for approaching them. “You know that some bodies have been found at the Garden of the Hesperides. One is a woman.”