The River God's Vengeance(60)

“You don’t have to tell me about that.”

“I suppose not. Anyway, he was contemplating years of penury, but he would countenance no corrupt offers. He even tried to bring charges against those who tried to suborn him.”

“That is not easy to do,” I told her. “Of all the magistrates of my acquaintance, only Cato has made such charges stick.”

She nodded sadly. “So we found it to be. In any case, he grew disgusted with the censors, the consuls, and his fellow aediles. He decided to go directly to the Plebeian Assembly. He was sure that at least two or three of the tribunes would be willing to demand reform legislation and special courts to prosecute the builders.”

“Then he had greater faith in those demagogues than I have,” I said. “What happened?”

“He never got the chance. The night before he was to address the College of Tribunes in the Circus Flaminius he was murdered.” She said this dry-eyed, as a Roman noblewoman should, but a lifetime of dealing with people of my own class had taught me the little signals of body and facial expression, the tones and cadences of speech that serve us to express those feelings we think it unfitting to display before strangers. This woman still grieved for her husband, and she raged at his murderer.

“And”—I began, wondering how to put this delicately— “might you be able to tell me how he came to be—”

“Murdered in a whorehouse?” she said forthrightly. “As you are no doubt aware, regulation of those establishments falls under the purview of the plebeian aediles.”

“People never fail to remind me of the fact,” I acknowledged.

She managed another, even fainter, smile. “Aulus complained of the same thing. Well, this had nothing to do with his duties. He had just stepped down from office anyway, and he was hoping that the new year’s crop of tribunes would take up his cause before the bribery could take hold.”

I made sympathetic noises. I found it hard to believe that the man had spent so many years in politics without understanding that most officials get their biggest bribes before they actually take office. Doubtless he had been putting a rosy interpretation on the matter for his wife’s sake. He must have been growing quite discouraged by that time.

“In any case,” she went on, “on that evening, while he was preparing his presentation to the Tribunate, a messenger arrived. My husband received him and a short time later told me that he had to go out and confer with a man who was to present him with important evidence, evidence conclusive to his case. I urged him to take some slaves for an escort because it would soon be dark. He said that he would hire a torchbearer to see him home; that it was possible it might be dawn before he returned in any case. That was the last time I saw him.”

“Did he tell you who this person might be?”

“No, only that this was important, and the matter would brook no waiting.”

This was frustrating, but I knew that I was amazingly fortunate to have learned this much from her. Most Roman officials tell their wives absolutely nothing about their business. The usual explanation is that it is unfitting for a woman to take an interest in such things, that breeding children and conducting a household are their only proper concerns. The truth is that they seldom trust their wives, and for good reason. One of the reasons for Caesar’s great success was that he conducted continuous affairs with the wives of his rivals and was thus always able to anticipate their husbands’ maneuvers against him and take preemptive action.

“And what was the, ah, the establishment in which he was found?”

She lowered her eyelids in token of distaste. “It is called the Labyrinth.”

I couldn’t stop myself in time. “He was found in that place?”

She looked severely pained. “I was given to understand that it is rather notorious.”

“Scarcely the word for it,” I muttered, trying to retrieve my aplomb. Hastily, I said, “Did he by any chance leave behind the address he was preparing for the tribunes?”

“Some pages of notes only. It was his custom to organize his thoughts in this way, then to deliver his oration, and afterward, with his secretary, to write down the speech and publish it.”

This was a standard practice among Roman lawyers of the time. Cicero made a minor literary form of it. Instead of speaking from a prepared text (and there were lawyers of the old school who thought it unfitting even to use notes), the speaker orated from his rough notes, fine-tuned his presentation as he gauged audience reaction, and then published the speech in its corrected and polished form. Often as not, the published form differed noticeably from the speech itself.