Hermes leaned with his elbow on the railing in front of the Tabulanum, his chin cupped in one palm, looking like one of the Greek gods pondering the fate of mortals. He had grown into a truly handsome young man.
“It seems to me,” he began, “that the last few years everyone is for either Caesar or Pompey. Marcellus hates Caesar. But Octavius? Like you, he married Caesar’s niece. Then he gave his daughter in marriage to Marcellus.”
“Octavia,” I said, “claims that she has cut her ties to the Julians, but she is lying. Why?”
“Let’s consider it,” he said, “but let’s not think on empty stomachs.”
“Excellent idea.”
We went down to one of the little side streets off the Vicus Iugarius where one of our favorite food stalls was located. At the counter we got steaming bowls of fish stew laced with garum and cups of heated sour wine, heavily watered and lightly spiced. It was eye-opening food, guaranteed to leave you wide awake and ready to face the most tedious Senate meeting. Hermes and I took our breakfast outside and dished up the sour, vinegary stew with pieces of flat bread.
“Are you serious about building a new tabularium?” Hermes asked, crumbs falling from his lips.
“If I build anything, that’s what it will be. The City really doesn’t need a new temple. Pompey’s Theater will hold most of the population. We don’t need a new bridge. What we really need is an efficient way to store records. But I doubt I’ll ever be rich enough to do it.” I took a sip of wine and winced at its bite. “Actually, I think this whole practice has gotten out of hand.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, great men go out and loot the world. Then they come back home and build great monuments to themselves and slather their names all over them and then bask in the honor of it all.”
“Hasn’t it always been that way?”
“Yes, and that’s the problem. We’re lords of the world, and we still act like the big frogs of little Greek city-states, putting up statues of ourselves and calling it immortality.”
“But what else are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s wasteful. There ought to be something better we could do with our loot. As it is, what we end up with are cheap slaves and expensive monuments, the occasional spectacle, and public banquets.”
“You like spectacles and public banquets.”
“Doesn’t everybody? But they’re unproductive.”
“Now you’re talking like a merchant. This isn’t helping to solve our problem.” He handed his now-empty bowl to a boy who added it to a stack of them he held nested in one arm.
“Sometimes you have to get your mind off the problem if you’re ever going to get it solved.”
“I’ve been considering something,” Hermes said, now handing his empty cup to a little girl who was gathering them.
“Tell me.” I gave her my own crockery.
“The day before yesterday, when we went on our little burglary expedition, we wondered why there were no slaves in the house. I said they’d probably belonged to whoever lent Fulvius the house.”
“I remember.”
“We now know that the house was owned in turn by Octavius and Caius Marcellus. They’ve probably gone back to their own households. Octavius is dead, so the slaves are unlikely to be his. I can go back to the house of Marcellus. I might be able to induce some of them to talk.”
“Octavia impressed me as the sort of woman who keeps the household staff confined to the house and hard at work at all hours.”
“There are ways,” he assured me. Having been a slave himself, he knew all about these things.
“Then go there.” I divided my money with him for a bribe fund. “I am going to Callista’s. If I’m not there when you are done, look for me in the Forum. I’m to be tried tomorrow and the election is the day after, so I have to act like a defendant and a candidate, making friends and collecting votes.”
I FOUND CALLISTA IN HER COURTyard, surrounded by stacks of books and four or five assistants—and Julia. My wife seemed to have developed a special sense for detecting when I was about to call upon an attractive woman.
“How goes the work?” I asked.
“Wonderfully!” Callista said, with a flushed expression most women reserve for activities of a more intimate sort. “I’ve made a reliable interpretation of at least six of the Greek letters!”
“Just six?”
“With these, I’ll have the rest figured out in no time!” she cried happily.
“No time is exactly what I have,” I told her.