Free Saturnalia by John Maddox Roberts

my hand, which Sestius took. “We never saw much of each other. I remember that you were returned first at the polls and got attached to the consuls’ personal staff. I was in the treasury.”
    “It was a memorable year,” Sestius said, which was a diplomatic way to put it. He had the look of an aristocrat who was also a street brawler. The same, I suppose, might have been said of me.
    Milo clapped his hands and a thug brought in a tray with a pitcher of wine and cups, along with the usual nuts, dried figs, dates, parched peas, and so forth. Despite his wealth, Milo had no comely serving girls, cultured valets, or entertainers among his staff. Every member of the household was eminently capable of defending the house and their master.
    “Publius and I are working out our strategy for next year’s tribunician elections,” Milo said. “We’ll probably spend most of our time in office undoing all the harm Clodius will do next year. Clodius will get Cicero exiled, so we’ll get him recalled. That’s going to take some hard work.”
    “I’ve just had an odd encounter with Clodius,” I said, glancing significantly at Sestius.
    “And you’re still alive? Speak freely, Publius is no friend of Clodius.”
    Briefly, I sketched out my odd interview with Clodius. Milo listened with his customary intense attention. No nuance of anything he heard ever escaped Milo. At the end of it, he tossed a handful of salted peas into his mouth.
    “I fear you are not going to make Clodius a happy man. That harpy poisoned Celer as sure as the sun comes up every morning.”
    “Why?” I asked. “She’s malevolent and she despised herhusband; but she had to be married to somebody, and Celer wasn’t as objectionable as most she would have been attached to. He had a fine house, and he left her free to do pretty much as she pleased.” This constituted a happy marriage, among my class.
    “Celer got a bit too hostile toward her little brother toward the end,” Milo said.
    “That’s right,” Sestius concurred. “Decius, you’ve been away from Rome too much of late. Last year Metellus Celer, as consul, opposed Clodius’s bid to transfer to the plebs. He was certainly not alone in that, but he got downright violent about it. He was losing his sense of moderation in his last months in office.”
    “It was a busy year,” I observed. “I heard that Caesar and Pompey and Crassus made up their political differences.”
    “Temporarily,” Milo said. “It won’t last. But for now the usual feuds are dormant. Caesar got Clodius transferred to the plebs to clear his path to the tribuneship, got him adopted by a man named Fonteius to do it, and guess who presided as augur at the adoption?”
    I ran the list of augurs through my memory, trying to recall which of them were still alive and in Italy. “Not Pompey!”
    “Pompeius Magnus himself,” Milo confirmed.
    “The world is getting to be a very odd place,” Sestius said. “If you can’t count on people like that to slit one another’s throats, what can you count on?”
    “Things will be back to normal soon,” Milo said. “Clodius is going to make such a mess of things next year that people will demand a return of order.”
    I had my doubts. “Clodius is ridiculously popular,” Isaid. “Is it true that he plans to make the free distribution of grain a guaranteed right of the citizens?”
    “A radical concept, isn’t it?” Sestius said.
    “It won him his tribuneship as nothing else could,” Milo commented, picking up a few nuts. “I wish I’d thought of it first.”
    “You’re joking!” Sestius said. “If the grain dole becomes institutionalized; instead of an emergency measure, not only will we lose one of our most powerful political tools, but every freed slave, ruined peasant, and footloose barbarian in Italy will head straight for Rome to sign up!”
    “They already do that anyway,” I pointed out.
    “It’s no cause for rejoicing,” Sestius