Valerio Manfredi - The Ides of March

Romae, ante diem VIII Idus Martias, hora prima

Rome, 8 March, six a.m.

The day dawned grey. The winter sky was heavy, leaden, the morning a mere hint of light filtering through the vaporous mass spreading over the horizon. Sounds were muffled as well, as dull and sluggish as the clouds veiling the light. The wind came down the Vicus Jugarius in uncertain puffs, like the laboured breathing of a fugitive.

A magistrate appeared in the square at the south end of the Forum. He walked alone, but the insignia he wore made him recognizable all the same, and he was advancing at a brisk pace towards the Temple of Saturn. He slowed in front of the statue of Lucius Junius Brutus, the hero who had overthrown the monarchy nearly five centuries earlier. At the feet of the frowning bronze effigy, on the pedestal bearing his epitaph, someone had scribbled in red lead: ‘Do you slumber, Brutus?’

The magistrate shook his head and continued on his way, adjusting the toga that slipped from his narrow shoulders at every flurry. He walked quickly up the temple steps, past the still-steaming altar, and disappeared into the shadows of the portico.

A window opened on the top floor of the House of the Vestals. The virgins who maintained the sacred fire were busy with their duties, while the others were preparing to rest after their night-long vigil.

The Vestalis Maxima, wrapped all in white, had just left the inner courtyard and turned towards the statue of Vesta, which stood in the centre of the cloister, when the earth began to shake beneath her feet. The goddess’s head swayed to the right and then to the left. The moulding behind the fountain cracked and a chunk broke off, falling sharply to the ground, the sound amplified by the surrounding silence.

As the Vestal raised her eyes to the wind and clouds, dull thunder could be heard in the distance. Her eyes filled with foreboding. Why was the earth trembling?

On the Tiber Island, headquarters to the Ninth Legion, which was stationed outside the city walls under the command of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the last shift was going off guard duty. The soldiers and their centurion saluted the Eagle and returned in double file to their quarters. The Tiber flowed turbulently around the island, her dark, swollen waters rising to wash over the bare branches of the alders that bent at her banks.

A high-pitched, broken scream punctured the livid silence of dawn. A scream from the residence of the Pontifex Maximus. The House of the Vestals was practically adjacent and the virgins were thrown into panic. They’d heard the scream before, but each time it was worse.

Another scream and the Vestalis Maxima went to the door. From the threshold she could see the bodyguards, two enormous Celts, flanking the door of the Domus. They were apparently impassive. Perhaps they were accustomed to the screams and knew where they came from. Could they be coming from him? From the Pontifex himself? The sound was distorted and mewling now, like the whine of an animal in pain. Hurried footsteps could be heard as a man approached the door carrying a leather bag and made his way past the two Celts, solid and still as telamons. He slipped into the front hall of the ancient building.

The rumble of distant thunder still sounded from the mountains and a stiff wind bowed the tops of the ash trees on the Quirinal. Three trumpet blasts announced the new day. The Vestalis Maxima closed the door to the sanctuary and gathered herself in prayer before the goddess.

The doctor was met by Calpurnia, the wife of the Pontifex Maximus. She seemed quite frightened.

‘Antistius, at last! Come this way quickly. We haven t been able to calm him down this time. Silius is with him.’

Searching through his bag as he followed her, Antistius pulled out a wooden stick covered with leather and entered the room.

Lying on an unkempt bed and dripping with sweat, his eyes staring at nothing, his mouth drooling while his teeth were clenched tight and bared in a snarl, was the Pontifex Maximus, Dictator Perpetuo, Caius Julius Caesar, in the throes of a seizure. The brawny arms of his adjutant, Silius Salvidienus, held him down.

Calpurnia lowered her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to see her husband this way and turned to the wall. Meanwhile, Antistius got on to the bed and worked the wooden stick between his patient’s teeth until he could force them apart.

‘Keep him still!’ he ordered Silius. ‘Still!’

He extracted a glass phial from his bag and placed a few drops of dark liquid on Caesar’s tongue. In a short while, the seizures began to let up, but Silius didn’t release his hold until the doctor signalled that he could ease Caesar back down on to his back. The adjutant then gently covered him with a woollen blanket.

Calpurnia drew closer. She wiped the sweat from Caesar’s brow and the drool from his mouth, then wet his lips with a piece of linen soaked in cool water. She turned to Antistius.

‘What is this terrible thing?’ she asked him. ‘Why does it happen?’

Caesar now lay in a state of complete prostration. His eyes were closed and his breathing was laboured and heavy.

‘The Greeks call it the “sacred disease”, because the ancients believed it was the doing of spirits — demons or the gods. Alexander himself suffered from it, so they say, but in reality no one knows what it is. We recognize the symptoms and can only try to limit the damage. The greatest danger is that the person suffering an attack will bite off his tongue with his own teeth. Some have even been suffocated by their tongues. But I’ve given him his usual sedative, which fortunately seems quite effective. What worries me is the frequency of the attacks. The last one was only two weeks ago.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Antistius, shaking his head. ‘We can’t do any more than we’ve already done.’

Caesar opened his eyes and slowly looked around. He then turned to Silius and Calpurnia.

‘Leave me alone with him,’ he said, gesturing towards the doctor.

Silius shot a puzzled glance at Antistius.

‘You can go,’ said Antistius. ‘There’s no immediate danger. But don’t go too far. You never know.’

Silius nodded and left the room with Calpurnia. He had always helped and supported her and was her husband’s — his commander’s — shadow. Centurion of the legendary Tenth Legion, a veteran with twenty years’ service, he had salt and pepper hair, dark, damp eyes, as quick as a child’s, and the neck of a bull. He followed Calpurnia out like a puppy.

The doctor put his ear to his patient’s chest and listened. Caesar’s heartbeat was returning to normal.

‘Your condition is improving,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t interest me,’ replied Caesar. ‘Tell me this instead: what would happen if I had such a fit in public? If I fell to the floor foaming at the mouth in the Senate or at the Rostra?’

Antistius bowed his head.

‘You don’t have an answer for me, do you?’

‘No, Caesar, but I understand you. The fact is that these attacks don’t give any warning. Or not that I know of.’

‘So they depend on the whims of the gods?’

‘You believe in the gods?’

‘I am the Pontifex Maximus. What should I tell you?’

‘The truth. I’m your doctor and if you want me to help you, I have to understand your mind as well as your body.’

‘I believe that we are surrounded by mystery. There’s room for anything in mystery, even the gods.’

‘Hippocrates said that this illness would only be called the “sacred disease” until its causes were discovered.’