In the afternoon, Marcus Caninus arrived, and he was not alone. The five men with him were tough-looking specimens of his own sort, and all of them were dressed in green tunics. This was the uniform of the followers of Plautius Hypsaeus, mob leader and candidate for next year’s praetorship. Of course, I thought when I saw them, they might all work for the Green Racing Faction, or it might just be coincidence that they all wore green tunics that day. As I have said, I have little faith in the power of coincidence.
“You’ve summoned me, Aedile, so here I am,” Caninus said, his previous toadying servility replaced by insolence. “Now what do you want?” Clearly, my status had fallen in the two days since our last interview.
“You must remove all this timber,” I said, waving a hand over the heap of rotten wood.
“I delivered it only yesterday morning,” he said. “Where do you want it now?”
“First, I want to know why you switched the wood you took from the fallen insula, which was sound, although a bit green and then deliberately damaged, for this rotten stuff.”
“Switched?” he said. “This is the wood I took from that basement, and anyone who says differently is a liar.”
“Mind your tongue,” I advised him. “You are speaking to a serving magistrate.”
“Times aren’t what they once were, Aedile. People don’t look to you senators for leadership like they used to. An aedile doesn’t have imperium anyway. You’ve got no lictors around you, and you don’t have the special protections that a tribune of the plebs enjoys.”
It sounded to me suspiciously as if someone had coached him on the niceties of the law concerning serving officials. Most citizens were woefully ignorant of these matters and assumed that anyone in office shared in the powers and immunities of the highest. The fact was, many of us were no more than State functionaries without special protection and privileges. Those trappings of the imperium-holding offices—the lictors and curule chairs and the purple borders on the togas—conferred far more than mere dignity. They set the officeholder aside as someone with extraordinary powers and to trifie with whom could cost your head. As a mere plebeian aedile, I had none of those things.
Behind Caninus, his green-clad thugs smirked. Such men always relish a leader’s defiance of authority. I knew men like Caninus well from long, bitter experience. They are like the oversized curs that lead mongrel packs, and if you display the slightest weakness before them you are done for. I stepped up to him so that our faces were only inches apart and assumed the cold, imperious face for which Roman officials are famed all over the world. I was very good at this and practiced it often, in private.
“Publicanus,“ I said, in my most withering tone, “it is only out of respect for the laws of the Republic that I tolerate your insolence. Display any more of it, and I will haul you before the urban praetor’s court on a charge of maiestas. You are aware of that charge?” I had chosen my form of address deliberately. To most people, publicanus was a term of contempt and loathing, since the only publicani they were likely to encounter were the tax collectors, whom nobody loved.
His eyes fiickered for a moment, his confidence beginning to slip before my arrogance. “I’ve heard the word. What of it?”
“It means gross insult to the majesty of the Roman people and their sacred State. The punishment is the same as that for treason.”
“That is absurd! Just because I—”
“As an official of that State,” I went on, not giving him a chance to collect his slow wits, “I embody the collective dignity of the Roman People! Lay so much as a hand on the lowliest quaestor, and you become an enemy of the State.”
“Who is laying hands on anyone?” he blustered. “I spoke up for myself, that is all!”
I sneered as haughtily as Cato. “Insult of word or attitude is the same as personal violence. You are not in the midst of a mob now, Caninus, hurling anonymous abuse at your betters on the speaker’s platform. You stand here alone, before witnesses. These are the sacred precincts of the Temple of Ceres, home of the plebeian aediles since the founding of the Republic. Do not compound your offense with sacrilege!”
This was purest bluster on my part. He could bend over, pull up his tunic, and expose his buttocks to the whole College of Aediles in perfect safety, to the best of my knowledge; and you could probably include the High Priestess of Ceres. But physical size and the toughness of a street brawler are no match for the gravitas of a highborn Roman official, raised from birth to sit in judgment and command legions. Facing down such a figure, backed by the power of the State, was a far cry from driving gangs of slaves.