“No, as a matter of fact I came here this morning to consult with Polasser of Kish.” He nodded toward the man in Babylonian attire, who bowed back. “He is the most distinguished astrologer now in Rome and has been casting a horoscope for me.” I caught the faint expression of derision on the face of Sosigenes. He considered the whole Babylonian astrology business to be fraudulent.
I squatted by the body. “A good thing Demades wasn’t your astrologer. Has the purification been performed?”
“It has,” Sosigenes said. “There are priests here qualified to purify the dead.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “People do tend to die here. Hermes, remove this shroud.” He grimaced with distaste, but complied. For such a bloody-minded wretch, Hermes was finicky about touching the dead.
Poor old Demades was not looking his best, which is often true of the dead. He was all but unmarked, but his head lay at an odd angle. Somehow, his neck had been cleanly snapped. I could see no other wound, and he had the waxy pallor of one who has been dead for several hours.
“Hermes,” I said, “go get Asklepiodes. He should be in town.” Hermes hurried off, eager as always to visit the gladiatorial school where my old physician friend lived. There was something about that broken neck that bothered me.
“Might this have been an accident?” I said.
“A fall severe enough to have broken his neck should have left him badly bloodied.” Cassius said. He gestured around us. “And there’s no place to fall from around here. I suppose a strong wrestler could have done it easily enough.” Although still young, Cassius had seen enough slaughter not to be disturbed by a common murder. He had seen an entire Roman army exterminated at Carrhae and had barely escaped with his life. “What do you think, Archelaus?” He addressed thus a man who stood near him, a tall, saturnine specimen whose dress and grooming were Roman despite his Greek name.
“I’ve seen necks broken that way with the edge of a shield, and once in Ephesus I saw a pankration where a man broke his opponent’s neck with a blow from the edge of the hand.” He spoke of the roughest of all the Greek unarmed combative sports, in which the fighters are permitted to kick, gouge, and bite.
“Decius,” Cassius said, “this is Archelaus, a grandson of Nicomedes of Bithynia. He is here in Rome on a diplomatic mission on behalf of Parthia.”
I took the man’s hand. “Good luck. Caesar has every intention of resuming the war with Parthia.” The man’s status was clear to me now. He was a nobleman of a Roman province that had been an independent kingdom under his grandfather. The king of Parthia would not wish to send a deputation of his countrymen, who would be treated with hostility in Rome, so he sent a professional diplomat instead, one conversant with Roman customs. I had known others like him.
“I have every hope of effecting a reconciliation,” he said, his expression belying his words. Rome did not forgive a military defeat, and a humiliation like Carrhae could not be wiped out with words and treaties. Rather than speak of this hopeless subject I turned back to Cassius.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a follower of the astrologers.” Cassius was as old-fashioned a Roman as you could ask for, and among our class we believed the gods spoke in lightning and thunder and the flight of birds and the entrails of sacrificial animals. Astrology and other forms of fortune-telling were the province of bored, high-born ladies.
He looked sheepish, an oddity on his scarred, craggy face. “Actually, this is not for me. A certain high-placed Roman who must remain nameless sent me to consult with Polasser of Kish.”
“Not—” but I knew better than to pronounce the name. It made a sort of sense. Caesar believed all sorts of odd things and he was obsessed by what he thought of as his destiny. He wanted to put Alexander in the shade and he wanted assurance of that from the gods. Sometimes, he came dangerously close to counting himself among their number.
“Why have you sent for this Asklepiodes?” Archelaus wanted to know.
“He is the foremost authority in the world on wounds,” I told him. “I am hoping he can enlighten me on how this man met his death.” I hadn’t given up on the hope that it might prove to be an accident. It would make my life so much simpler. By now all the other astronomers had assembled around the corpse of their colleague and I addressed them. “Does anyone here know if Demades had an enemy or anyone with ill will toward him?”
To my surprise, the yellow-turbanned Indian cleared his throat. “I know of no one who bore him personal enmity, Senator,” he said, speaking Greek in an odd, singsong accent, “but he was rather vehement in his denunciations of the astrologers, of whom there are a number here.”