Free The Tribune's Curse by John Maddox Roberts

Working at this hardest of all was Marcus Porcius Cato, dressed as he was in his hideous, old-fashioned toga. This garment was of the antiquated, rectangular variety, which does not drape as gracefully as the conventional, semicircular type. It was so dingy that he looked like a man in mourning, and he did not wear a tunic beneath it, since the ancestors he worshiped had seen no need for more than a single garment. He was barefoot since those ancestors considered shoes or sandals likewise effete. Or so Cato thought and communicated at great length.
    Every senator living in or near Rome and capable of rising from his bed was in Rome that morning. Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was stepping down from his consulship, taking up his proconsular
imperium
, and departing for Syria. Everyone wanted to see whether he’d make it to the City gate alive. There was considerable doubt concerning the likelihood of this. His army was far away, and he had few friends in Rome. He had secured his elections through intimidation and bribery, and supporters secured by such means are not likely to come to one’s aid when blood and teeth and random bits of flesh are being scattered in the streets.
    As always happens on such occasions, the City buzzed with omens: a two-headed calf had been born in Campania, Aetna had erupted again, blood fell from the sky upon the patch of ground before the Temple of Bellona that is designated enemy territory, and so forth—all the usual bad omens. My favorite that morning was the reported sighting of an eagle that flew
backward
through the Temple of Janus, in the back door and out the front. It is sorarely that one hears of a truly original omen. It occurred to me to wonder how anyone knew which door was which, since the god faces both ways.
    More disturbing were the accurate reports from the temples, where the sacrifices had been almost uniformly disastrous. Sacrificial animals had struggled; the priest’s assistant had needed more than a single blow of the hammer to stun them; unclean animals had intruded; or priests had stumbled over the ancient formulae. In front of the Temple of Jupiter
Stator
, an Etruscan
haruspex
, upon examining the liver of the sacrificed bull, had fled in horror. It is my own tendency to flee in horror from any liver, but
haruspices
are expected to be made of sterner stuff. Even as we waited at the base of the Capitol, Crassus was atop it sacrificing to Capitoline Jupiter.
    My fellow senators were crowded onto the steps of the Temple of Saturn, and all around us were the members of the various priestly colleges wearing their insignia. The Vestals stood on the steps of their temple, surrounded by a well-behaved crowd made up mostly of women.
    There were senators present who rarely came into the City twice in a year. I saw Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, my father’s old patron and colleague, who had retired to his country estate when his career in the courts was eclipsed by Cicero’s. He was deep in conversation with Marcus Philippus, one of the previous year’s consuls. I knew exactly what they were talking about: fishponds. Since the death of Lucullus the year before, Hortensius and Philippus had been unrivalled for the extravagance and magnificence of their fishponds, which contained both salt and fresh water, were the size of small lakes, and were surrounded by colonnades and porticoes, and whose every last mullet and lamprey they seemed to know by name. I suppose every man needs a hobby.
    Cicero himself was there, back from exile but not really safein the City. That morning, however, all the malice in Rome was directed elsewhere.
    I thrust my way through the press to Cato’s side. “The betting is five to three that he doesn’t make it alive past the Golden Milestone,” I said. “It’s ten to one and climbing that he doesn’t get to the City gate on his feet.”
    “I loathe the man,” Cato said with some degree of understatement, “but a Roman magistrate should be allowed