Free The Tribune's Curse by John Maddox Roberts Page B

companions were laid out on the pavement. People cheered this rare entertainment.
    Abruptly, another man rushed at Ateius. “Let our consul proceed, idiot!” he cried, even as he punched Ateius in the mouth.
    “This man has laid violent hands upon a tribune!” Ateius screamed. “This is sacrilege!”
    “Trebonius is a tribune, too,” Milo shouted. “Can’t do a thing about it. He’s sacrosanct.”
    Purple in the face, growling like a dog, and bleeding slightly from the lip, Ateius whirled around and pushed his way into the mob. Shakily, his men got to their feet and hustled off after him.
    The procession continued on its way. The little farce seemed to have put everyone in a better mood. There were no cheers, but the threatening noises had subsided to a few rude shouts and derisive laughter aimed at Crassus.
    “I think he’s going to make it to the gate,” someone said from behind me.
    “I hope so,” I said fervently. “I’ve bet a hundred and fifty sesterces he’d get all the way out of the City.” The senators who had bet he wouldn’t even make it out of the Forum alive were already paying the winners, sour faced and with one more grudge against Crassus to add to the rest.
    We marched all the long way to the ancient Capena Gate,which gave onto the Via Appia. Crassus was going to travel the Appia all the way to its end, in Brundisium. Thence he was going to sail to Syria, so eager was he to get there fast. A man who would set sail in November was capable of any folly.
    Ateius was waiting for him upon the city wall atop the gate.
    “What’s that fool up to?” Cato said, as mystified as the rest of us. The procession and the whole following crowd, as well as the multitude that had been waiting by the gate all morning, stood goggling at this unwonted spectacle.
    Ateius was transformed. Not only did he stand in this rather unorthodox spot, but he had discarded his toga for a bizarre robe striped red, black, and purple, bordered with Greek fretwork in gold thread, and spangled with embroidered stars, scorpions, serpents, and other symbols, many of them unfamiliar to me. The left side of his face was painted red like that of a
triumphator
, the right side painted white. On his head was a close-fitting cap covered with what looked like a multitude of tiny bones. Before him a fire burned in a bronze bowl mounted on a tripod. The flames were an ugly green.
    “Hear me, Janus!” Ateius cried.
Conventional enough so far
, I thought,
despite the strange getup
. When we invoke the gods, we always invoke Janus, god of beginnings, first. “Hear me, Jupiter Best and Greatest! Hear me, Juno, Minerva, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars, Neptune, and all the Olympians! Hear me, Bellona, Ops, Flora, Vulcan, Faunus, Consus, Pales, Vertumnus, Vesta, Tiberinus, the Dioscuri, and all the gods of the City, the river, the fields, and the woodlands of Rome! Hear me, the Unknown God!”
A comprehensive but not unusual invocation
, I thought.
    It was an unprecedented display. Ateius belonged to no priestly college I was aware of. He was not performing his ceremony, whatever it was, at a temple, shrine, or other sacred site. Still, despite its boldness and effrontery, nobody sought to stop him. It was not that any authority restrained us. It was just that,as Romans, we were terribly reluctant to interrupt a ritual in progress. From earliest youth we were drilled in the rule that a rite must be performed from beginning to end without interruption and without mistake. Ateius was taking advantage of our unthinking adherence to ritual law.
    Now he pointed at Crassus, using a wand wreathed with myrtle and tipped with what appeared to be an infant’s skull.
    “Immortals! Marcus Licinius Crassus has ignored the many and profuse omens you have sent to make plain your displeasure with his impious expedition to make war against the will of the Senate and People!” All this he spoke in a hieratical chant, the sort of voice one is accustomed to