“So Pompey has a stake in this business?” I suppressed a groan. “Next you’ll be telling me Caesar’s family donated the land or paid for the statue.”
“Eh? Why should I say such a thing?”
“Never mind. You’ve made my life sufficiently complicated, thank you.”
“Sometimes you make no sense, Metellus.”
That evening, Cato and his coterie went on to Cumae, which he had chosen as the headquarters for his mission. Capua was a much larger city, and closer to Rome, but he reasoned that it was too faction-ridden and too dominated by great Roman landlords. Whatever he lacked, and it was much, Cato had sound political instincts.
That evening I invited the historian, Lucius Cordus, to dinner. Since I didn’t want a lot of political and social blather to dominate the conversation, the only other diners were Julia, Hermes, and the philosopher Gitiadas. I had come to appreciate his incisive intelligence. Five was an almost scandalously small number of participants at an important man’s dinner, but I considered this simply an extension of my workday.
After the first courses and a bit of small talk, I got down to business. “Lucius Cordus, what can you tell us about the Pedarii? They were once prominent in Rome, but I thought they had long since died out. Today I learned that a remnant still live here and are patrons of the Temple of Apollo.” I had already told Julia of what Cato had told me.
“Ah, the Pedarii,” Cordus said. “In fact, that name has turned up in my recent researches on your behalf, Praetor. It seems that one Sergius Pedarius, a half-legendary figure, was a comrade-in-arms of the Brutus who was the first consul, after the Etruscan kings were expelled from Rome. The family was prominent during the early years of the Republic, but never consular.”
“Was Sergius a praenomen or a nomen?” I asked him. By our generation, the name Segius was used only as a nomen, but far back in history, it had been a praenomen.
“It was a praenomen. The Pedarii were never connected with the gens Sergia,” Cordus informed us. “At some point in history, about the time of the First Punic War, the Pedarii were afflicted by a series of catastrophes. Their lands were flooded, many of their livestock died. Then, in a pestilence that afflicted most of Italy, their district was especially hard-hit, and many of the family members perished, along with their slaves and peasant tenants. In those days, senatorial families were nowhere near as wealthy as they are now. The survivors sold their lands and moved south, to the land of some distant relatives. Here they prospered modestly and were esteemed for their status as patricians, but they never returned to Rome, where once they had been great.”
“As Romans among Greeks and Campanians,” I said, “their situation must have been precarious.”
“Although as Romans they weren’t part of the local conflicts,” Cordus said, “and by endowing the temple as soon as they had a bit of surplus wealth, they acquired the status of local patrons, though there are many families far wealthier.”
“I shall have to meet with the heads of the family,” I said. “I wonder why they have not presented themselves before this? Usually all the most prominent people present themselves to the Roman praetor upon his arrival.”
“Perhaps,” Julia opined, “they are embarrassed to show themselves, having become so humble since their family’s heroic origins.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But they shall hide no longer. I want to see them.” Something else occurred to me. “Cordus, yesterday young Vespillo and I visited the putative mundus on the property of Porcia. Do you know anything of it?”
“It is one of several such in the vicinity. I believe that it is the largest and the oldest. According to the local legend, Baios, the steersman of Odysseus, descended into it to visit the underworld and ask the shade of King Agamemnon whether he should found his city nearby—but you know already what I think of such legends.”
“Not to mention that the underworld is not very far down. I tossed in a stone and heard it strike just moments later. There was an altar nearby and someone had left the usual offerings of bread and wine, but also some small arrows. Does this mean anything to you?”
“Arrows?” He considered for a while. “This is very odd, and I had been thinking upon this very subject.”
“You had?” I said, surprised.
“Yes. You see, in our Temple of Apollo, he is depicted with a bow and arrows.”
“ ‘Apollo the Far-Shooter,’ ” I said, “as he’s described in the Iliad and elsewhere, as in the story in which he and his sister slaughtered the children of Niobe.”