I thought about it. “That was when Piso and Glabrio were consuls, wasn’t it? It was four years before my quaestorship. My family had me in Campania that whole year, administering a training camp for recruits to be sent to Crete for Metellus Creticus’s army there. I was out of touch with Roman politics that year and most of the next.”
“Pompey’s imperium was to last three years,” Nobilior said, “and it encompassed the entire sea and fifty miles inland, overriding the imperium of every provincial governor. And it was conferred by a lex Gabinia.”
“Gabinius was the tribune who got that law passed?” I had forgotten that.
“After a good deal of fighting, yes. The tribune Trebillius interposed his veto and was supported by Otho. There were weeks of brawling.”
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“They were lively times. In the end the Senate had to bring in a whole rural voting bloc to break the deadlock. The country people were great supporters of Pompey, of course, so the law got passed.”
“Are you telling me that Gabinius is Pompey’s man?”
“I am telling you that war, politics, and business are very complicated in this part of the world. As to his current affiliation”—he made an eloquent gesture with his hands—“these things change. The lex Gabinia was many years ago, and Pompey’s sun is in eclipse.”
“Here in the East,” Flavia added, “the people have a different view of Rome. The current politics of the Forum mean little to them. In the West, Caesar is the man of the hour. Here he is all but unknown. The great names in the East are still Pompey, Gabinius, even Lucullus. Their paid-off veterans and mercenaries are settled all over the islands and seaboard, many of them active in the various armies of the region.”
“In Egypt,” Nobilior said, “a sizable contingent of the king’s forces bear the name ‘Gabinians.’ Some are Romans, but most are those auxilia sent by Caesar—Gauls and Germans, many of them.”
Here, it seemed, he was coming to the crux of the matter. “And not only those,” Flavia added. “He picked up recruits from a lot of settlements in Cilicia and Illyria.”
“Including,” I asked, “those settlements founded by Pompey to separate the erstwhile pirates from the sea?”
“That I could not say,” Nobilior asserted. “It would have been in violation of the surrender terms after all. These men were not to take up arms again. Still, few laws lack flexibility where power and ambition are concerned.”
“All too true. Well, then, it may be that this man Spurius is one of those paid-off veterans now set up in business for himself.”
“Quite likely.” Nobilior nodded. “Would you care for some of this excellent Lesbian?”
I left his house no more than pleasantly tipsy. Flavia saw me to the door personally.
“You must visit us again soon, Senator,” she said.
“I would not forego the pleasure,” I assured her. Her parting kiss was far more ardent than commonly sanctioned by the rules of etiquette, but at least she kept her clothes on.
As I walked away I reminded myself to steer a wide course around that woman. Julia would, after all, be here soon, Flavia was a deterrent to clear thinking, but I managed to draw my thoughts upward from my nether regions sufficiently to ponder what I had just heard.
Nobilior implied that these pirates were Gabinius’s men. But, if so, where did that leave me? Gabinius had no imperium, was no more than an exile like many others, awaiting his chance to go back to Rome and resume his Senate seat. If some of his veterans turned outlaw, that did not mean he had put them up to it, although the implication could not have been clearer.
When I reached my quarters at the governor’s mansion I sent Hermes to fetch Ariston.
“How do the accommodations here suit you?” I asked him when he arrived.
“Fine so far. The serving girls here have taken a shine to me. When you consider the quality of the men they usually have to put up with, that’s not too surprising. The food and wine and the room are all better than I can afford at most times.” He stretched his powerful arms. “It would get boring as a steady diet, but for now I like it just fine.”
“Good. Ariston, when you were in Spurius’s little fleet, did many of the men speak of serving with Gabinius on his Egyptian expedition?”
He nodded. “Several of them did, as I recall. They said his recruiters had come to the villages where they were settled and offered them the chance to do something more congenial than trudge along behind an ox, and they’d jumped at it.”
“Did these recruiters say why their oath not to take up arms again had been suspended?”