“And a fine afternoon to you, Marcus Porcius. I think it’s time to break for lunch. Will you join me?” My lunch was already laid out beneath an awning nearby. A praetor usually has guests, so there was always at least enough for twenty people on the tables. As soon as I left the podium, the fair went back to full roar.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said, as we took our seats. No couches for an informal luncheon like this.
“I didn’t expect to find you presiding over a country fair.”
“Sometimes these things happen. Are you on your way to Sicily?” He had served as praetor a few years before, during the consulship of Domitius and Claudius.
“Not until after the elections. I’ve been sent down to sort out the matter of the Campanian lands.”
“Good luck with it,” I said. “Nobody has been able to sort out that mess as long as I can remember. Too many conflicting interests.”
“The only conflicts are those of greed,” he said, taking a cup from a servant, draining it at a gulp, and holding it out for more. “And it may not be a problem much longer. Pompey wants that land to settle his veterans and the Senate is looking to Pompey to save their necks from Caesar. He’ll probably get what he wants.”
“What has them panicked this time?” I asked.
“Caesar wants to stand for consul in absentia.”
“I know all about that. Why not let him?”
“It flouts all traditional law!” Cato barked. “Since the days of Romulus, any man on foreign service who wished to stand for consul has had to return to Rome to stand for office.” His pseudo-Catos growled agreement. They were good at growling.
“Would it hurt to bend the law just a little, just this one time?” I said, knowing how it would enrage him.
“The law isn’t something you can bend and trim to suit the occasion. Who knows where it could end!”
“This course could end in civil war,” I pointed out.
“What of it?” said one of his sycophants. “Pompey is the greatest general in the world, and his soldiers are the most numerous and the most loyal. He will crush Caesar like a gnat.”
“Pompey’s been away from the wars for a long time,” I said. “His soldiers have been living at ease while Caesar’s have been fighting almost constantly for eight years. I agree it won’t be much of a match.”
“Time enough to worry about war if it comes,” Cato said. “I have another message for you. Pompey wants this business that’s upsetting the district settled quickly.”
“Oh?” I said. “And has the proconsul of the Spanish provinces some sort of authority over the praetor peregrinus?” I realized that Pompey had spies in this area and they had fast horses if he was keeping up with events here almost as they were happening. During the time he was proconsul of the Spanish provinces, the Senate had allowed him to govern those provinces through his legates while he remained in Italy to oversee the grain supply. His proconsular status forbade him to enter Rome, so he lived in a villa south of the City.
“He has a vested interest in southern Campania,” Cato said. “His clientela is vast in this region and he wants nothing upsetting the peace here.”
“Is that so?” I said, feeling my face growing red. Or maybe that was just the wine. “A pack of dead priests should be of no concern to him.”
“Oh, but he finds it of great concern. That temple is one personally endowed by Pompey. That makes those priests his clients.”
I found myself gaping foolishly and quickly stuffed a fig into my mouth to give it some occupation. Then I washed it down with some undiluted wine and said, in the quietest voice I could manage, “Why have I not heard of this? The priests never mentioned such a thing. I do not see Pompey’s name engraved on the pediment.”
“Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus,” Cato said, giving that honorific a sarcastic twist, “has no need to aggrandize his name through so trifling an act. He’s built whole cities and temples the size of sports stadiums.” He held out his cup for a refill. Cato was another believer in undiluted wine, probably the only taste we shared. “This temple has for generations been under the patronage of the Pedarii, a very ancient patrician family.”
“The Pedarii?” I said. “I’m no genealogist, but I thought that family died out before Hannibal learned to use an elephant goad.” I remembered the name only vaguely, from some poems about the early days of the Republic.
“They are very distinguished,” Cato said, “but fallen into poverty long ago, and unable to support senatorial pretensions.”