The King's Gambit(20)
Publius had a difficult problem of precedence to contend with, having both a visiting prince and a Consulelect among his guests. Had Hortalus been in office, the right-hand position on the central couch would have been his by right, but Publius had given that place to Tigranes as a distinguished foreign guest. Hortalus had the next-highest place, in the center of the middle table, with Publius taking the left end.
The rest of us were seated in no particular order, since birth and office were so oddly mixed in this group. I had the upper position on the right-hand couch, putting me next to Tigranes, with Claudia to my right and Caius Julius next to her. Opposite us on the third couch Curius, Catilina and Cicero reclined. It was still a new custom for women to recline with the men at dinner, but Claudia was nothing if not up-to-date. In earlier days, women sat in chairs, usually next to their husbands. Nobody on this occasion seemed upset by Claudia’s presence on the couch. I certainly wasn’t. The banquet itself was perfectly decorous, probably out of respect for Hortalus’s status as Consul-elect.
There were no flamingos’ tongues or dormice rolled in honey and poppy seed or other culinary curiosities such as delighted Sergius Paulus. To begin, the servers brought in various appetizers: figs, dates, olives and the like, along with the inevitable eggs. Before anyone reached for these, Hortalus intoned the invocation to the gods in his matchless voice. Then we all set to.
“Ever since I reached Italy,” Tigranes said to me, “every dinner has begun with eggs. Is that a custom here?”
“Every formal dinner begins with eggs and ends with fruit,” I told him. “We have an expression, ‘from eggs to apples,’ meaning from beginning to end.”
“I’ve heard the expression, but I never knew what it meant.” He eyed a dish of hard-boiled pheasant’s eggs doubtfully. Apparently, eggs were not esteemed among his countrymen. He found the next courses more to his liking: roast kid, a vast tuna and hares boiled in milk. Throughout this there was little but small talk. The latest omens were discussed, as usual.
“Four eagles were seen atop the Temple of Jupiter this morning,” Hortalus said. “This must portend a good year to come.” It would, of course, be the year of his Consulate.
“I’ve heard that a calf was born three nights ago in Campania,” Curius contributed, “with five legs and two heads.”
Cicero snorted. “Monstrous births have no bearing on the affairs of men. They are nothing but the sport of the gods. I think the stars are of greater significance in our lives than most of us realize.”
"Oriental mummery,” Hortalus pronounced, “begging our royal guest’s pardon. I think that the only omens of significance for us are those officially recognized and handed down to us by ancient custom: the auguries and the haruspices.”
“Those being?” Tigranes asked.
“Auguries are taken by the officials of the college of augurs, of whom there are fifteen,” Caesar explained. “It is a great honor for one of us to be elected to that college. They interpret the divine will by observing the flight and feeding of birds, and by determining the direction of lightning and thunder. Favorable omens come from the left, unfavorable omens from the right.”
“Haruspices, on the other hand,” Cicero said, “are determined by observing the entrails of sacrificial animals. This is carried out by a professional class, mostly Etruscans. Official or not, I consider it to be fraudulent.”
Tigranes looked confused. “Just a moment. If you regard the left side as favorable and the right as unfavorable, why do Roman poets often speak of thunder from the right as a sign of the gods’ favor?”
“They are following a Greek custom,” Claudia said. “The Greek augurs faced north when taking the omens. Ours face south.”
“Speaking of lightning,” Catilina said, “I don’t know whether it came from right or left, but this morning a bolt struck the statue of Lucullus by the wharf at Ostia. I heard this from a bargeman at the Tiber docks today. Melted him into a puddle of bronze.”
There was much chatter about this omen. No official augur was required to interpret this one as unfavorable to Lucullus.
"This sounds most ominous,” Hortalus said. “Let us hope that it doesn’t presage some terrible defeat in the East.” The statement had a hypocritical ring to it, but then Hortalus always sounded that way. If he told you the sun had risen that morning, you would go outside to see, just to make sure.
“There are no few here in Rome who would rejoice to see Lucullus recalled,” Curius commented.