The Tribune's Curse(73)

These were not comfortable thoughts. Gaul was looking better to me with each passing hour. Maybe I should quietly leave town and go rejoin Caesar. The office of aedile was even more objectionable if I didn’t live to exercise it.

But, no. I had been charged with an investigation, and I would see it through. I was a Roman official, and I had been given this assignment by the Senate, the consul, and the praetor urbanus, not to mention the whole Pontifical College and the virgo maxima. I would get to the bottom of the matter whatever the cost. It is with foolish thoughts like these that men frequently deceive themselves into great personal disasters.

The afternoon was drawing to a close, and almost without conscious thought my steps had taken me back to the Forum. I stood amid the monuments of past glory and wondered if I was seeing the end of it. Scipio Aemilianus, it is said, having destroyed Carthage, stood amid its ruins and wept. Not because he had destroyed that magnificent city, but because, surveying the ruin he had wrought, he understood that someday Rome, too, would look like this.

I tried to picture the Forum as a weed-grown field of deserted, roofless hulks, shattered columns, and limbless statues. The very thought was painful, and I tried to shake off the mood. If this was Rome’s eventual destiny, it was the duty of men like me to forestall it as long as possible.

On the steps of the Temple of Vesta, I saw a large group of ladies who carried themselves with unmistakably patrician bearing. I went to the old, round temple and located Julia.

“Practicing for the Vestalia?” I asked her.

She caught my mournful expression. “Yes. You’ve found out something bad, haven’t you?”

“I may have. Come walk with me.”

She took her leave of the other ladies and came down the steps with Cypria close behind. “We are going to excite gossip,” Julia said, not entirely serious.

“Let people talk,” I said scornfully. Of course, I had my hands clasped behind my back. At the time it was considered the absolute depth of bad taste for a husband and wife to display affection in public. Just walking together like this, without a flock of friends and clients, was slightly scandalous.

“Maybe Cato will show up,” I said. “If he does, I’ll kiss you, and we can watch him die of apoplexy.”

“You’re in a wonderful mood,” she said. “What’s happened?”

I told her of the day’s events and what I had found out from the records in the Tabularium. She considered these things for a while as we sauntered northwestward, toward the huge basilicas that dominated that end of the Forum. She did not seem terribly upset, but then Julia rarely got upset. I could see the signs that she was thinking hard, which was something she did well. When she spoke, she did not seem to be addressing the problem at hand.

“It was terrible news out of Egypt this morning.”

“Yes, I believe old Ptolemy’s finally stepped over the line, massacring the Alexandrians like that. This is going to bring us years of trouble.”

“Well, yes, but I was thinking of poor Berenice. I can’t say that I admired the woman, but she was kind to Fausta and me while we were at her court. How can a man put his own daughter to death like that?”

“Dynastic politics is a murderous business,” I told her. “But then, so is republican politics. Tyrants are always afraid, and close family members are the nearest rivals.”

“I don’t think Pompey would try to have you killed,” she said, making what seemed to me an illogical leap.

“Why not?”

“He can’t afford to alienate Caesar just now. Forget about Crassus for the moment. I loathe the man, but I don’t think he’s as stupid as you seem to believe.”

“He wouldn’t alienate your uncle Caius Julius if Caesar never knew about it.”

She looked at me. “Surely you know Caesar better than that. He keeps track of what goes on in Rome. He maintains a huge correspondence with friends and family members, and he has the subtlest mind in the world. He’s as brilliant as Cicero, and unlike Cicero he isn’t blinded by his own importance. He would put together all the little details and come up with the true answer.”

“I suppose you are right,” I said. More than once, Caesar had sent me off to investigate some matter to which he already knew the answer, just to see if I would arrive at the same solution by different means. But I did not tell her that, if Caesar needed an alliance with Pompey, he would consider my life a minor price to pay for it.

“What bothers me more,” I told her, “was how the”—I lowered my voice to a whisper lest Cypria or some passerby hear “—Secret Name got into it. I mean, Pompey intends to be virtual king of Rome. He’s not especially superstitious, but even he would hesitate to perform an act that would endanger the City itself.”