Saturnalia(10)

“Clodius isn’t going to have a tribuneship,” I said. “It sounds something more like a reign.”

“We got Ninnius Quadratus in as tribune,” the butcher said. “He hates Clodius. Terentius Culleo won as well, and he’s supposed to be a friend of Cicero. But they won’t be able to do much. Clodius’s gang rules the streets in most districts and they have the Via Sacra, and that means the Forum.” Everyone agreed that this gave Clodius an unfair and nearly unbeatable advantage.

If this all seems confusing, it is because Rome had two sorts of politics in those days. The great men like Caesar and Pompey and Crassus wanted to rule the whole world, and this meant they had to spend much of their time away from Rome. But Rome was where the elections were held that determined everyone’s status and future. Many communities had Roman citizenship; but if they wanted to take part in the elections, they had to journey all the way to Rome in order to vote. Thus, voting power remained a virtual monopoly of the City populace.

Hence, men like Clodius and Milo. These contended for control of the City alone. Each of the great men needed representatives to influence the elections, by force if need be, and watch out for their interests while they were away. The politics of the gangs and the City districts each controlled were as complicated as those of the Senate and the Empire. The gangs of Clodius and Milo were by no means the only ones, merely the most powerful and numerous. There were dozens of others, and these operated within a complex web of shifting alliances.

All of this was greatly aided by the fact that Rome was not so much a single city, like Athens, as it was a cluster of villages within a single continuous wall. In very remote times, it really had been seven separate villages atop seven distinct hills. As the villages gained population, they grew down the sides of the hills until they merged. The Forum back then was their common pasture and marketplace. This is why the ancient and revered hut of Romulus is not near the Forum, nor even on the Capitol, as one would think. Rather it stands amid several other sacred sites at the foot of the Palatine near the cattle market. That is probably all there was to Rome when he founded it.

The result is that Romans identify themselves as much with their districts, or ancestral villages, as they do with the City. Only outside of Rome do they really think of themselves as Romans. My neighbors were Suburans, who took pride in their famously noisy, raucous district where, they contended, all the toughest Romans were bred. They looked down upon the Via Sacrans, who thought they were holier than anyone else because they dwelled along the old triumphal route. The two districts had a famous traditional street fight at the ritual of the October Horse. And they were only two districts among many.

These things, plus the fact that Rome had no police, made gang control of the streets possible, and I would have had it no other way. It is all gone now. The First Citizen gives us peace, security, and stability; and most people these days seem happy to have them at long last. But in accepting them, we gave up most of what made us Romans.

It didn’t occur to me at the time. I was concerned mainly with getting through the next few weeks alive and trying to decide where to wait out the next year. I loved Alexandria, but people there wanted to kill me. Gaul was to be avoided at all costs. It was full of Gauls, and now there would be Germans and Caesar fighting them. There was fighting in Macedonia as well. I had spent too much time in Spain and was bored with the place. There were always the family’s rural estates, but I detested farming as much as I did the military life. Perhaps I could get posted with Cicero’s brother in Syria. It sounded like an interesting place, if the Parthians would just keep quiet. It would bear thinking about.

I rubbed my smooth-shaven jaw, detecting the usual stubble along the jagged scar left by an Iberian spear years before. It has defeated the efforts of barbers ever since.

“Hermes,” I said, “I have an errand for you.”

He looked around uneasily. “You don’t intend to go wandering around alone, do you? Here in the Subura’s fine, but nowhere else. Get Milo to lend you some of his gladiators as a guard.”

“I’m touched by your concern, but if my neighbors are right I should be safe enough in daylight. Clodius is being a jovial man of the people again. I want you to run to the house of Lucius Caesar and find out if the Lady Julia Minor is home. Her last letter was from Cyprus months ago. If she’s here, I want to call on her.”

Hermes set off at the slow amble that was his usual pace except when heading for a dice game, a gladiator fight, the races, or a meeting with some unlucky family’s pretty young housemaid.