As aedile he had completely repaved the Forum and its adjacent markets and renovated every building associated with his family. It was one of the most ancient, so that was a lot of buildings.
I pondered this profusion of white marble and brilliant gilding admiringly, comforted in the knowledge that these two great men were willing to squander such immense sums to buy the goodwill of their fellow citizens. There was only one grating fact to mar my pleasure. I couldn’t see the front of any new or renovated building without reading their names.
Looking out over the roof of the Temple of Saturn, I saw a group of men round the corner of the Basilica Sempronia. All wore green tunics, and something in the swagger of their walk said they were up to no good.
“Hermes,” I said, “come here.” He put down the scroll he had been studying and leaned on the waist-high railing, his sharp gaze following the path of my pointing finger. “Please tell me those are slaves from the stables of the Green Faction.”
“I suppose I could,” he allowed, “if you didn’t mind me lying to you. Those are Plautius Hypsaeus’s men. There are so many gangs these days that they’ve taken to wearing different colors to keep each other sorted out during the street brawls.”
“So that’s why the last dead Clodians I saw in the streets had orange stripes on their tunics,” I said.
“And why Milo just gave all his men new white tunics, although he claims it’s just so they’ll look smart when they follow him around in public. Aufidius’s boys have red borders on their tunics, Scaevola’s wear sky blue—” He went on, reciting a list of lesser mobs, each now with its own insignia.
The Plautius Hypsaeus he mentioned was yet another of our political gangsters. Like Milo, he was a candidate for consul for the coming year. It says much of Roman politics of the time that three candidates for the highest offices were gang leaders.
“Uh-oh,” Hermes said. “Look over there.” He was pointing to another group of men crossing the Via Sacra near the Temple of Venus Cloacina to the north. These had the same swagger, and their tunics were red bordered. Aufidius was a lesser gangster, but he supported Milo, Hypsaeus’s rival. “A silver denarius says they’re fighting before the redstripers are past the urban praetor’s platform.” Bloodthirsty little wretch.
“Not a chance,” I said. “They’re outnumbered, so they’ll run over there to Sulla’s Numidian War monument and put their backs against it, if they’ve got the sense of a goose.”
“Done,” Hermes said. “If first blood falls between the platform and the monument, the bet’s off.”
As I had anticipated, the two little mobs caught sight of one another across the Forum and stopped in their tracks like two dog packs with their necks bristling. I could almost see their fingers moving as they counted; then the men in green charged forward as those with the red stripes sidled toward the old monument, one Caesar had never bothered to restore since Sulla had been his enemy and had stolen the glory of that campaign from Marius. The red-striped Aufidians just managed to reach the monument and turn at bay as the Hypsaeans caught up with the hindmost man and brought him down with a brick. Hermes slid the denarius along the railing toward my hand. I picked it up and tucked it beneath my belt.
Down below, some women started screaming, and people mounted the steps of temples and basilicas to enjoy the show. The bullies of these gangs were often ex-gladiators who had served their time, so there was sometimes skilled fighting to be seen.
When neither side could make the other run with sticks and bricks, the forbidden blades appeared and the blood began to fiow in earnest.
“New bunch!” Hermes cried, as a little gang of men wearing yellow headbands ran in from the direction of the Temple of Vesta and attacked the green-wearers from behind.
“Who are these?” I asked Hermes.
He shrugged. “Never saw them before. They’re good.”
A general engagement now prevailed in the Forum. A few veteran brawlers wearing no discernible colors had joined in, apparently just for the fun of it. The state freedman who, along with his staff, had been ignoring all the noise, turned from his records at a renewed outburst of screaming and looked at the fighting mob disdainfully.
“Rome should have a decent police force. I am from Pergamum, and my city has never been disgraced by such a scene.”
“We’ve always done well enough without police,” I said. He was right, of course. Rome desperately needed a reliable police force, but you don’t just admit such a thing to a foreign-born freedman.