The Sacrilege

There is a belief among us that the only respectable life is agriculture. Probably because it is the dullest life imaginable. Of course, there is no virtue in working the land. The virtue lies in owning the land. How instructing an overseer to boss a gang of slaves returns a man to the realities of tilling the soil escapes me, but many swear by it.

"I have an investigation to conduct, Father," I said. "I can't just break it off to go watch slaves spread manure under grape vines."

"Your wishes are of no importance," he said.

One of the most infuriating provisions of Roman law is the one conferring lifetime authority upon the paterfamilias. You can be the gray-haired commander of legions and conqueror of provinces, but if your father is still alive, you are still, legally, a child.

"It's a matter of state security," I insisted.

He gave a short, humorless laugh. "That business about the rites of that foreign goddess?"

"There is far more to it that that," I said with some urgency.

"Go on," he said, still walking from long habit at the standard legionary pace.

I gave him a somewhat truncated account of my findings to date, along with some speculations as to their significance. I did not identify Julia. He would assume that any woman who shared my taste for snooping must be unworthy.

"So you suspect Pompey is behind it, eh?" He said this grudgingly, but I could tell that his interest was piqued. Like the rest of the aristocratic party, he hated Pompey and feared that the man would crown himself king of Rome.

"No one else is so bold. He is the one who has a pack of tame Etruscan priests."

"And," Father mused, "he wants to settle his veterans on public lands in Tuscia."

"He does?" I said. This was new to me.

"Yes, as you would know if you ever paid any attention to important public business instead of crawling through every sewer in the city."

"I've only been in the Senate for a few days," I said.

"That does not excuse you. And you realize that your vaporings are built upon the words of some of the most degenerate people in Rome?"

"I always take that into account," I said. A sudden inspiration struck me.

"Tell me, how did Capito stand on the question of settling Pompey's veterans?" At this question Father actually stopped in his tracks and stared at me as if at some wonderful apparition sent by the gods. I wiped blood from my upper lip with the back of my caestus. My nose was bleeding inside and out from Clodius's bite.

"There may be something in your mad sophistry after all. Capito opposed the settlements most violently."

"So does more than half the Senate. What was Capito's particular objection?" We were nearing Father's house by this time. We presented an odd spectacle, I must admit: the dignified Censor in his toga praetexta and I, who looked like the receiver of the second-place award in a munera. And the subject was politics, as always.

"He claimed it would upset the public order and give Pompey a power base near Rome and so forth; everyone says that. But the real reason was that his family leases a huge tract of the ager publicus in Tuscia, an area that will be cut up into farm plots for Pompey's veterans if the legislation goes through."

I gri

"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 co

"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.