“What’s this about Curio being a champion of the plebs?” asked a crusty old senator. “I thought he was one of us!” Us being the aristocrats, the optimates, the men who sometimes styled themselves boni, the best.
“That’s what I thought,” said another. Apparently, Curio’s defection to Caesar’s camp was so recent that many senators hadn’t gotten the news yet.
“Oh, yes,” an eques affirmed. “It seems he’s as two-faced as Janus. He’ll spend his year pushing Caesar’s interests if he gets elected.”
“And now it looks as if he’s marrying Clodius Pulcher’s widow,” said a young senator, who wore a dreamy expression. “It’s going to be a little hard on his dignity when he gets up to interpose his veto, knowing that we’ve all seen his wife naked.”
“He doesn’t seem to be a man easily embarrassed,” said the eques.
“Who tried to kill him?” I threw the question out at random, my eyes half shut, as if I were almost asleep. I didn’t want to take part in the conversation, but I was curious to hear opinion taken from the common store. Sometimes this sort of thing can be more revealing than the informed opinion of insiders.
“Same bunch who killed that fellow, what’s-his-name, Fulvius,” the young senator opined.
“I’ll wager it’s Pompey’s doing,” said the eques. Pompey was not at all popular with men of his class, who tended to favor Caesar.
“Why?” asked the old senator. “Aren’t Pompey and Caesar still pretending to be friends? Since that dog Clodius was killed, Caesar’s had no flunky to run the city for him. Young Curio’s father was a good man. He was one of us! This boy won’t be near the rabble-rouser Clodius was. Why should Pompey want him dead?”
“Besides,” the young senator put in, “if there’s one thing Pompey knows how to accomplish well, it’s killing people. He wouldn’t send incompetents to have a man done away with. He’d send a few of his old centurions, men who know how to do their master’s bidding and keep their mouths shut about it afterward.”
“Whoever it was,” said a voice I recognized, “they certainly got that wild woman excited.” Sallustius Crispus lowered himself into the bath. I hadn’t seen him come in. “She might have gotten another riot going except for one thing.”
“What’s that?” asked the eques.
“Didn’t anybody notice?” Sallustius said, grinning. “She never said just who she wanted killed—because she didn’t know.”
“Sounded to me like she wanted the heads of the whole Senate hung up on the Rostra,” the young senator said.
“A rhetorical excess, I’m sure.” Sallustius caught sight of me then, or pretended to. “Why, Decius Caecilius, I seem to run into you wherever I go.”
“He’s standing for praetor,” somebody said. “There’s no getting away from a candidate.”
“He’d wear his toga candida in the bath, if he could get away with it,” said another, amid general laughter. That was fine with me. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to be taken too seriously. Gradually the talk turned to other things. As I expected, Sallustius was there when I resumed my clothing.
“All right, Sallustius, you’ve been dying to say something. What is it?”
“Our friend Curio, of course, is saying nothing about the men who attacked him, save that they were inept. His friends and supporters, however, are not so reticent.”
“Oh? What are they saying?”
“That it was not Curio’s enemies who attacked him, that it was Caesar’s enemies.”
“I see. Supporting Caesar has exposed him to attack from the vile and underhanded optimates, eh?”
“Oh, yes. Very much so. And what a brave man he is to have survived the attack. How becomingly modest to act as if it were a trifling brawl, instead of the Homeric combat his friends are describing this very day. I saw him just a little while ago in the Forum, his head wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage.”
I had to smile. Curio’s little charade seemed to be working splendidly. Had I not so inopportunely sent Asklepiodes to tend to him, he probably would have had himself carried to the Forum on a litter, looking ready to expire but proclaiming himself to be prepared to take office and serve the People of Rome despite his near-mortal injuries.
We walked out of the dressing room and out into the pillared arcade that fronted the balnea. Beyond the steps, between the walls of two temples, we could see a small part of the Forum, including the old sundial from Syracuse. People continued to climb the steps in search of a bath, many of them senators. I was obliged to nod and greet most of them in passing but managed to handle our conversation in the meantime.