The Year of Confusion(21)
“I shall do exactly that,” she said, “and I’ll call on Callista, too.”
I knew that was coming.
The next day I went to the Tiber Island and sought out Sosigenes. I found him in his study, doing some sort of calculation on papyrus with dividers and instruments so arcane I didn’t want to ask him about them.
“Old friend,” I said, “we need to talk.”
“By all means,” he said. We went out to a little terrace off his study and he sent servants for refreshments. We sat for a while and I enjoyed the vista. From this spot we had a fine view of the low, massive bulk of the Circus Maximus just across the Forum Boarium, and towering above it the magnificent Temple of Ceres. The refreshments came, we sipped and nibbled, then I got down to business.
“Sosigenes, I’ve learned that some of your astronomers are very popular with the fashionable ladies of Rome.”
He sighed. “You already know my opinion of astrology. Unfortunately, far too few Romans share my skepticism. This is especially true of the ladies.”
“So I’ve learned. The most prominent among these are now intimates of your queen.”
He nodded. “I have never been able to persuade her majesty that she is wasting her time, but it is at worst harmless, I suppose.”
“Far from it,” I told him.
“Eh? What do you mean?” Like so many great scholars, Sosigenes dwelled in a world other than our own, a world of knowledge and scholarship that he thought to be above the petty affairs of men. In Alexandria he lived in the middle of a palace complex and did not realize what evil places they can be.
“Nothing that involves the highborn people of Rome can be termed harmless,” I informed him. “And that goes for the women. This is a place where politics is played for the highest stakes. At any gathering of great Roman ladies, you will find a number who will happily kill to advance the fortunes of their husbands or sons.”
“But, how can this concern us?”
“Did you know that, periodically, the aediles or censors expel all fortune-tellers from Rome?”
“I was unaware of this. Why?”
“Because they can influence politics here in Rome. It isn’t just bored noblewomen. The common people of Rome are passionately devoted to all sorts of fortune-telling. They are easy prey for any kind of fraud and if one of those persons predicts a particular outcome to an election or prophesies when a great person is going to die, it can affect public matters in unpredictable ways.”
“Yet you have your official augurs and haruspices. You take the omens for every sort of official business.”
“Precisely. Our augurs are public officials, but they, and the haruspices, emphatically do not predict the future. All they can pronounce upon is the will of the gods at that particular moment. The gods, of course, are free to change their minds. That calls for further omen taking. That’s the way we like it, with supernatural matters under competent official control. We don’t like unpredictable factors, like fortune-tellers, even if they are learned stargazers from Alexandria.”
“You are telling me that some of my colleagues may have embroiled themselves, however innocently, in Rome’s political intrigues?”
“I knew that a man of your acumen would understand. I am still puzzled by the role of Demades in all this because he was of the rationalist faction.”
“I wish I could help you there but I am just as puzzled as you. Polasser or Gupta or the Arab (he used the unpronounceable name), certainly. This is their art. But Demades was as unlikely as I to take part in these affairs. We were colleagues, but not confidants.”
“Sosigenes,” I said, “as much as I esteem you and your company, I think that it would be best if you and your friends were to leave Rome. Caesar may seem to have things under control, but that is far from the truth. There are all manner of intrigues and plots under way, and should you get entangled in them you will have little hope, being foreigners. The calendar is done. Why not just take your leave and return to the far more congenial milieu of the Museum?”
He sighed and made a Greek gesture of the hands and shoulders. “Personally, I would be most happy to go, but the choice is not mine. It lies with my queen and Caesar. We are here at their behest, and we will go only with their leave.”
“Why are they keeping you around?” I asked him.
“I do not know. At the moment we are continuing projects begun in Egypt, where the conditions for observing are better than here. We give lectures, or, a few of us, indulge in the activities that you have described.”
It seemed to make little sense, yet the great people of Rome tended to behave in senseless ways sometimes. I knew men who bought tremendously expensive and skilled architects, and then never built anything. Many owned impressively skilled slaves and never made use of them. It was a way of showing off their wealth and importance, that they could waste money in such an extravagant fashion. I supposed that keeping a gaggle of philosophers around doing nothing of importance was the same sort of foolishness.