The King's Gambit(3)

In all of the great and varied city of Rome, I love the Forum best. Since childhood, I have spent part of nearly every day there. During my few and unwilling absences from the city, it was the Forum that I longed for most. At the time of which I now write, the Forum was a marvelously jumbled mass of temples, some of them still wooden; market stalls; fortune-tellers’ booths; speakers’ platforms; monuments of past wars; dovecotes for sacrificial birds; and the general lounging, idling and gossiping-place for the center of the world. Now, of course, it is a marble confection erected to the glory of a single family instead of the ancient tribal gathering place and market that I loved. I am happy to report, though, that the pigeons decorate the new monuments just as they did the old.

Remembering my vow of the morning, I made my way to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline. Word had it that the fire was under control, so I had downgraded my sacrifice to a dove. My personal income was small, and my office was not one which attracted many bribes, so it behooved me to take care with my expenditures.

I pulled a fold of my toga over my head and entered the dim, smoky interior of the ancient building. In this temple I could almost believe myself in the presence of the old Caecilii who had lived in the wood-and-thatch village of Roma which had stood on these hills, and had performed their rituals in this temple. I speak, of course, of the temple as it was before the present restorations which have turned it into a second-rate copy of a Greek temple to Zeus.

I gave my dove to the priest on duty and the bird was duly killed to the presumed satisfaction of Jupiter. While the brief ritual was performed, I noticed a man standing next to me. With his toga pulled over his head, I could see only that he was a youngish man, perhaps about my age. His toga was of fine quality, and his sandals had the little ivory crescent of the patrician fastened at the ankles.

As I left the temple, the man hastily followed, as if he wanted to speak to me. Outside, on the broad portico which has the finest of all views of the city, we uncovered our heads. His face seemed familiar, but it was the thinning hair above his still-youthful face which jogged my memory.

“I greet you, Decius of the illustrious Caecilii,” he said, embracing me and bestowing upon me the kiss which all Romans in public life must endure. It seemed to me that this normally perfunctory salute was given with more warmth than was absolutely necessary.

“And I greet you, Caius Julius Caesar.” Even through the veil that separates us, I can detect your smile. But the most trumpeted name in Roman history was not famous then. In those days, young Caesar was known only for the astonishing number and variety of his debaucheries, and for his extravagant debts. However, to everyone’s amazement, he had suddenly displayed a civic conscience and was standing for a quaestorship as a champion of the common man.

His new democratic ideals raised no few eyebrows, since the ancient Julian gens, although it had produced no men of public distinction in many generations, had always been of the aristocratic party. Young Caius was breaking with family tradition in siding with the Populares. True, his uncle by marriage was Marius, that same general in whose service my father had earned his nickname. That murderous old man had terrorized Rome in his last years as Consul and leader of the Populares, but he still had many admirers in Rome and throughout Italy. I also reminded myself that Caesar was married to the daughter of Cinna, who had been Marius’s colleague in the Consulate. Yes, young Caius Julius Caesar was definitely a man to watch.

“May I inquire after the health of your esteemed father?” he asked.

“Healthy as a Thracian,” I answered. “He’s in court today. When I left him, the Basilica was packed with Senators suing to get back their property confiscated by Sulla.”

“That’s a business that’ll take years to sort out,” Caesar said wryly. When he had been a very young man and Sulla was Dictator, Sulla had ordered him to divorce Cornelia, Cinna’s daughter. In a rare moment of personal integrity, Caesar had refused and was forced to flee Italy until Sulla’s death. That act of defiance had made him celebrated for a short time, but those had been eventful days in Rome, and most of the survivors had nearly forgotten him.

We descended the Capitoline, and Caesar asked my destination. He seemed oddly interested in my affairs. But then, when he was running for office Caius Julius could be as amiable and ingratiating as a Subura whore.

“Since I’m so near,” I answered, “I might as well look in on the Ludus Statilius. I have to investigate the death of a man who may have come from there.”

“A gladiator? Does the demise of that sort of trash really rate the time of a public official?”