Roman Games(25)
“Only five. One man, three women, and a boy.”
“Nonsense! Bound to be more. You keep at it, then. Don’t stop short. See what else you can nose out. The emperor likes you, you know. You can make a name for yourself with this case.”
“If that is your wish, sir. My hope is that the other slaves, the ones who aren’t atheists, can be exonerated. I’m ready to vouch for them myself if need be.”
“What?” Fulvus looked up in astonishment. So did his friends. “Exonerate? Slaves? Yes, well, something to think about. Now, is that all, my dear Pliny?
Pliny made no move to leave. “I mean it, sir. They had nothing to do with this murder.”
“You’ve made yourself quite clear. I said, we’ll see. Just you do your job.” Irritation rose in his voice. He turned his face away. “Orfitus, fill my cup like a good fellow. Good day, vice prefect. Look in again, won’t you, when you have more to report.”
As he left the building, Pliny’s stomach was churning. He was not ordinarily an excitable man, or so he believed. He had chosen a dull profession—or it had chosen him—because it imposed a wall of paper between himself and the sweaty emotions of real people. If he were investigating a charge of unjustified disinheritance or the distribution of assets among the offspring of a man who had been married four times; if he had been faced with a suspicious codicil or a questionable signature—here Pliny felt himself capable and sure-footed. He was not a stupid man. But this! Bloody daggers, sexual perversion, murderous fanatics, secret symbols scrawled on walls, a louche and slippery filius familias, a concubine catatonic with fright. He felt like a man standing on a pitching deck, grasping vainly for a handhold.
The crowd streamed out of the Theater of Marcellus and Martial patted his grumbling stomach. It was a long, hot walk to the Baths of Titus, but that was his hunting ground. He wouldn’t leave without a dinner invitation from some rich booby. He had lived more than thirty years in Rome since emigrating from Spain, a young man full of hope and poetry. In all that time he hadn’t had to stand in a bread line yet, although he had come close more than once.
Outside the baths, hucksters, street performers, and food-stalls filled a broad courtyard. Inside rose a vast, echoing fairy-land of brilliant mosaics, high coffered ceilings, wide windows that flooded the spacious rooms with afternoon sunlight; and everywhere, priceless works of art, though here, as elsewhere in the city, the new golden statues of Domitian the God effaced all else. Martial paid his copper coin and went in.
The Baths of Titus, built by Domitian’s elder brother during his brief reign, was only the latest of the great imperial thermae provided by emperors to the Roman people at enormous expense. The shouts of happy citizens disporting themselves, men and women together, filled the vast echoing complex. There was method to this philanthropy. It had not taken the emperors long to learn the profound truth that people who are warm and wet do not, as a general rule, riot in the streets. In this democracy of nudity even the poorest Roman could, for an hour every day, imagine himself to be a little king; could forget for a moment that elsewhere a real king, in a real palace, held the power of life and death over him.
Martial undressed in one of the large changing rooms and stowed his things in an open cubicle. Other bathers posted slaves to guard their belongings; Martial had nothing worth stealing.
Beyond, all was bare flesh. Here respectable citizen and cruising libertine, rich man and poor man, male and female met as equals.
Martial went first to the caldarium to luxuriate in the steam. Adjacent to the steam room lay the exercise court, from where the poet, who never exercised himself, could hear the grunts and groans of men swinging lead weights, of ball players tossing a medicine ball in a three-cornered game of catch, of wrestlers and runners. On his other hand, were the massage rooms. From here echoed the slap of hands on oiled shoulders and the shrill voice of the hair-plucker, calling his trade.
When he was red as a mullet, Martial went on to the tepidarium and from there into the frigidarium, where he dove into the cold pool with a great splash and a boy’s happy shout, and swam vigorously for a minute or two.
The baths cultivated the mind as well as the body. Beside the swimming pools and gymnasia, there were libraries, art galleries, and a large and beautiful recitation hall, where people, back in their clothes again, could beguile the hours, listening to a play or a poetry reading. Hither, in his threadbare tunic, went Martial.
Instantly a circle gathered round him, already chuckling. He was among friends. He knew their names, knew their foibles, knew they’d take insults from him that they wouldn’t have taken from anyone else. He whirled from one to another, leering, mugging, improvising.