When I stepped out from the house, I passed two other Callistus wives being delivered home in chairs. Dressed in the same highly embroidered style as Julia, they had clearly been shopping; it was obvious from the train of slaves carrying baskets and parcels. I gave them a formal nod, but did not interrupt their happy dash indoors, calling for cold drinks and their feather-fan girl to revive them.
‘A goodly haul!’ I nodded at the packages, smiling.
‘It will all have to go back!’ muttered the porter, darkly.
I dallied, pretending to adjust my sandal. ‘Primus and Secundus are mean with money?’
‘Not when they have it, but there’s none to spare at the moment. Everyone has been ordered to cut down.’ The two young wives had obviously failed to hear the message.
‘Has it happened before?’ I remembered Gornia saying the men gambled heavily on chariot races.
‘Time to time. They always get a windfall eventually, then it’s joy all round again.’
I said drily, ‘They ought to buy themselves a big strongbox where they can put away a nest egg for times of crisis.’
The porter missed the joke.
I wasted no pity on the Callisti. They must have picked the wrong team. They would have their auction proceeds coming in shortly to ease their money worries. If funds were tight, I imagined they would not admit openly that they were poor managers. They would want to keep quiet publicly and might even try to bluff a new agent. Embarrassment about their cashflow might explain why Niger’s bid for the old chest had been overturned.
It would have been sensible to warn him not to go so high. But when do most people act sensibly?
22
I convinced myself I needed to see Faustus. It was a short walk round the Caelian to the Vibius house so I went there, on the excuse that we had not fully discussed what Claudius Laeta told us.
Excuses were unnecessary. Faustus was writing a speech. He welcomed me, knowing I would listen, help him line up his thoughts and make good suggestions. The candidate, who had to deliver the oratory, ought to have done this but Vibius was nowhere to be seen.
‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, he’ll turn up. Let’s get the speech done. It’s time to make things personal.’
‘Insults!’
‘Yes, I thought you would like that.’
I would have liked to insult his friend Sextus for using Tiberius unfairly, but was too wise.
We had to blacken the rivals’ characters. It would involve information I had gathered, buffed up with dramatic rhetoric that Faustus was now contributing. Written out, most of my gleanings seemed to be about Dillius Surus: he not only drank, he lived off a rich wife who had given Domitian a troupe of obscene dwarfs, had tapeworms, was impotent, sued a man over an orchard − and if that wasn’t enough, he owned the dog that had bitten the priestess of Isis (on her birthday).
‘No, that’s wrong,’ said Faustus. ‘Latest information is-’
‘It was the priestess who bit the dog?’
For a moment I had him, then he smacked a cushion as he realised the joke. ‘Oh, and it was the dog’s birthday … No, I traced this malign canine. One of my colleagues had to deal with a public-order complaint from the priestess. The dog-owner is really Trebonius Fulvo. It’s some horrible hunting creature in a spiked collar that he keeps to make himself look menacing.’
‘What does he want a hunter for in Rome? Rat-catching?’
Faustus wrote that into the speech. For added sneers, he changed it to ‘Mouse-catching?’
Trebonius and Arulenus would be characterised jointly as antisocial citizens. Sextus would say not only did the pair show no respect for age, religion, decency or dog-control, they were physical degenerates. One did too many gymnastics, the other was both fat and effeminate, a double shame. Faustus had (he claimed) once seen Arulenus in a long striped tunic, with fringed sleeves, an outfit that no manly male would wear.
I smiled. ‘I had not envisaged either of those boors as chasing boys.’
‘No, but we can make the fact they are such close partners look suggestive in itself. “This pair practically roam the Forum holding hands – an insult to the stones where our ancestors walked!”’
‘You are surprisingly inventive, Faustus … Can’t they then say the same about Vibius and Gratus?’
‘Anyone can see Gratus would be scared to do anything outrageous and Sextus looks clean-living.’
‘I hope he is!’ I murmured.
‘Trust me. Then we point out Trebonius acquires his muscles by over-exercising in some sleazy gym.’
It was tricky for a Roman to strike a balance between looking after his body and not. A politician needed to be healthy and strong; he would be admired if he took care of himself, which implied he could be trusted to take care of his office. However, too much weight-training put him on a par with gladiators, bloody brutes who were social outcasts. Being muscle-bound could only be for sordid purposes in Roman eyes; there was a suggestion that what went on in gymnasiums (with their sinister Greek origins) might be sexually outrageous.
I eyed up Faustus, who shifted on his couch as I assessed his physique. ‘Nice!’
He concealed any embarrassment. ‘Arulenus wearing exotic clothes implies he’s a beast who lives for bodily pleasure – such an easy target. Everyone knows people in fancy dinner outfits go to all-night supper-parties with singing and dancing, leading to lascivious sex games. They wear perfume and depilate their bodies, all to appeal to the wrong kind of sexual partner. From a long tunic it’s a short step to a man who has wasted his fortune-’
‘Loose belts mean loose morals; fringes equal fornication … But the fringes are hearsay,’ I murmured. ‘And has anybody ever seen him with a pretty boy?’
‘I saw the fringes! Dangling right on his hairy wrists.’
‘Tiberius, I don’t doubt your eyesight. But please only have Sextus report he heard this from “a trusted friend”. Those two will make bad enemies. Trebonius and Arulenus might well send shaved-head heavies to thrash you senseless.’
‘Thank you for caring.’
I acknowledged his thanks. ‘Trebonius Fulvo wears ordinary tunics – though he is bursting out of them. He is also laden with finger jewellery. The rings look stuck on his fat fingers so if Sextus points them out Trebonius can only twist them helplessly, while everyone stares right at him. Arulenus seems much worse, totally immoral – isn’t he the one who cheated on a mistress, promising her marriage, then stealing her jewellery? And apparently he abandoned a wife when she was pregnant.’
‘Yes, he’s poison. We can imply the hypothetical pretty boys are the reason he reneges on decent marriage. He breaks the heart of an innocent woman – well, fairly innocent. It is said half the Senate have slept with her. He fails to become a respectable husband who sets about fathering children or if he gets one he leaves the mother in the lurch. Completely decadent. Is it too extreme to suggest his pretty boys are eunuchs?’
‘Stage too far,’ I warned him. ‘Given that you invented them!’
‘Me? Glyco and Hesperus, handsome young bucks who gild their nipples, everybody knows that degenerate duo …’
‘You made them up.’
‘That’s oratory.’
‘Be sensible. Go back to Trebonius. He’s too masculine?’
‘A brute!’ Faustus was fired up. ‘For comparison, I read up on Catiline – once the evil hard man of Republican politics. Cicero said Catiline made himself able to endure cold, hunger, thirst, lack of sleep – but then there was an argument against him that he was too dangerous to trust.’
‘My father rails against him for trying to overthrow the Republic, using the plight of the poor for his selfish advantage. Many of the poor still admire him, but those fools won’t be voting. Senators who actually remember who Catiline was will think of him as attacking the aristocracy. They will shudder and vote against that, hopefully voting for Sextus.’