The place was not palatial, but it was better than the house I lived in when I began my political career. In truth Rome had few truly splendid houses in those days. Even the very wealthy men like Hortalus and Lucullus spent lavishly on their country villas but maintained fairly modest establishments in the City. Voters took it ill when a senator chose to live like a prince. In the City the rule was to spend freely on public works and stingily on yourself. Lucullus had made himself unpopular by building himself a pretentious mansion in the City after his Asian victories. He quickly demolished it and turned the grounds into a public garden, thus restoring his popularity with the plebs.
The triclinium was spacious, with excellent furnishings, as if Fulvius had expected to do a fair amount of entertaining there. The wall-paintings were fine and new, the subject matter patriotic rather than the more fashionable mythological themes. One wall featured the Oath of the Horatii, another the colorful story of Mucius Scaevola, a third was Cincinnatus at his plow. The fourth wall was pierced by the door so its decoration was floral.
“Odd decoration for a dining room,” Hermes observed. “Where are the feasting gods and goddesses and the satyrs chasing nymphs?”
“Perhaps Fulvius wanted to encourage serious dinner-table discussion,” I hazarded. “Nymphs and satyrs are frivolous. Just ask Cato.” Cato’s prudery was the butt of jokes wherever Romans met.
“If he has old patriots decorating his bedroom we’ll know there was something strange about the man,” Hermes observed.
“Actually I’m more interested in his papers than in his taste in interior decorating. Let’s see what he used for a study.”
Not every house had a study. Some men just kept their papers in a chest and did all their reading and writing in the peristyle or a garden. It was commonly thought that reading by any light other than direct sunlight would ruin your eyes. Some sought to further preserve their eyesight by having trained slaves read to them. Some kept secretaries to take dictation and never personally set hand to pen.
Fulvius, as it occurred, had used his bedroom for this purpose. One side of it opened onto a small balcony overlooking the street. This was a common arrangement in multistory houses such as this one. The ground floor contained the atrium, kitchen, and dining room, and opened onto the central garden. It was the public part of the house. The second floor held the family’s sleeping quarters, and the third floor was for storage and slaves’ quarters. The balcony was another feature common to such houses. It offered a quick escape in case of a fire. All Romans went in dread of fire, and those who lived in the towering insulae were the most fearful of all.
The door to the balcony was flanked by a pair of large, latticed windows and beneath one of these was his desk. It was a very fine one, Egyptian work of ebony inlaid with ivory. Next to it was a wooden honeycomb that held scrolls, rolled papers, and wax tablets. A silver-mounted horn tube held reed pens, and a fine crystal stand held different colors of ink in little pots shaped like lotus flowers.
Lying on the desk, half unrolled as if put down in the midst of reading, was a book whose excellent parchment was supple and slightly ragged at the edges, a clear sign that this was a favorite work, often read. It appeared to be a speech or collection of speeches arguing points of law. Such books were the inevitable texts for training aspiring lawyers.
Folded on a cupboard next to the desk lay his wardrobe. Among the tunics, most bore the narrow purple stripe of an eques, but two had the broad stripe to which a senator was entitled. There were two togas. One was white, doubtless the one he’d worn when berating me in the Forum the previous day. The other was the toga praetexta, with the broad purple border of curule office.
“He came prepared,” I remarked. “And he certainly had confidence. He expected admission to the Senate and a curule chair. Like that Greek athlete who showed up at Olympia with his statue already made. At least he didn’t lay in a supply of tnumphator’s robes. I suppose even his presumption had limits.”
“Look at this,” Hermes said. Accomplished thief that he was, he’d found a small drawer cleverly hidden among the decorative carvings of the desk. It held a signet ring; a massive thing of solid gold, its surface oddly but attractively granulated. Its large stone was pure sapphire with a Medusa head carved intaglio. It looked to me like Greek work. I examined it briefly and tossed it back to him.
“The man was full of surprises, wasn’t he? Can his correspondence be less interesting?” I began to pull papers out and spread them on the desk. “Well, I might have expected it,” I said disgustedly.