Saturnalia(14)
Then I saw a man haranguing a goat vendor. The speaker wore a senator’s tunic like mine, but his toga was plain. He held out his hand and the vendor sullenly handed over a number of coins. Collecting fines in the market meant this must be one of the plebeian aediles. The curule aediles wore a toga with a purple stripe.
“Pardon me, Aedile,” I said, walking up behind him.
He turned, his eyes automatically going to the purple stripe on my tunic. “Yes, Senator? How may I …” Then, at the same instant, we recognized one another. “Decius Caecilius! When did you get back?” He stuck out his hand and I took it, managing not to grit my teeth. It was Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, a man I detested.
“Just yesterday. Your rank suits you, Lucius. You’ve lost weight.”
He made a face. “Wretched office. I never have time to eat, and I spend my days crawling all over buildings looking for violations of the construction codes. It keeps me in shape. Ruinously expensive, too, since the sums contributed by the state were laid down about three hundred years ago and prices have gone up since. We have to make up the difference out of our own purses. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that the year’s almost over.” Then he laughed jovially. He really did not understand how much I disliked him. “When will you stand for aedile, Decius?”
“In about five years, if I live that long. That’s when I meet the age qualification.”
“Start borrowing for it now,” he advised. “What brings you to the cattle market? I’d never come here if the job didn’t call for it.”
“I was wondering where the fortune-tellers had got to. They’re not in the Forum, and I don’t see them here either.” I felt a tug at the hem of my toga and looked down. A kid was nibbling on it. I jerked it away from the little beast and determined that no serious damage had been done. The kid looked disappointed and went to join its nanny.
“We ran them out of the City back at the first of the year,” Bestia said. “You know what a passion for order Caesar has. As consul and pontifex maximus he made it our first order of business to drive them outside the gates. They can’t even come into the city to shop without a permit from one of the aediles.”
“Where are they now?” I asked.
“They’ve pitched their tents out on the Campus Martius by the Circus Flaminius. I thought you were one of those people who don’t believe in omens. What do you want with a fortune-teller?”
“It always pays to be careful,” I told him. Bestia was one man with whom I definitely did not wish to discuss an investigation.
“Well, that’s where you’ll find them. Come on, admit it: You’ve got some well-born lady pregnant and you need to arrange for an abortion.”
“You’ve guessed it. Caesar’s wife.”
He hooted. “And she’s supposed to be above suspicion!” After four years Romans still found Caesar’s incredibly pompous and hypocritical pronouncement hilarious. We were laughing less and less at Caesar though.
I thanked him and left. Bestia had been neck deep in Catilina’s crackpot conspiracy and had almost certainly been involved in murder. He’d gotten away clean, though, because he’d been acting as Pompey’s spy within the movement. There was little use in striking a pose of moral superiority. It was all but impossible to accomplish anything in Roman public life without having to deal with odious men like Bestia. He wasn’t even among the worst of them.
It was a long walk out to the Circus Flaminius, but who minds walking after days at sea and on horseback? I left the City proper through the Porta Carmentalis near the southern base of the Capitol. This is the spot where the Servian Wall has two gates within a few paces of each other, but only one of them could be used because the other was opened only for triumphal processions.
I wasn’t looking for any fortune-teller in particular, but I needed to test the atmosphere of a world that was almost entirely unknown to me: the strange underworld of the witches.
Italian witches came in three sorts that I knew about. There was the saga, or wise woman, who was usually a fortuneteller and learned in herb lore and occult matters. They were seldom perceived as malevolent and the authorities periodically drove them from the City only because they sometimes predicted political events and the deaths of important men. These predictions could easily come true, considering how superstitious the citizenry were, and how heavily Rome relied on rumors for information.
Next there was the striga, a true witch or sorceress. These women were known to cast spells, lay curses, and use the bodies of the dead for unclean rites. They were much feared and their activities were strictly forbidden by law.