Free The Catiline Conspiracy by John Maddox Roberts

question.
    "Your pardon, but are you a relative of Metellus Celer, the
praetor
?"
    "He is a cousin of my father, but that doesn't mean I know him well. Throw a rock into the
Curia
, and chances are good that you'll hit a Metellus." He laughed at the witticism, and I could see him filing it away for use in a political lampoon. That was all right with me. I had stolen it from an acquaintance.
    "Why was he curious about Celer?" I asked Sempronia when we were alone in a garden. She leaned close and spoke conspiratorially.
    "Didn't you know? He's in love with Clodia!"
    "Really? She and Celer have only been married for eight months. Isn't it early for an intrigue?"
    "Well, you know Clodia." Indeed I did, all too well. She was a woman about whom I had decidedly mixed feelings. "Actually," Sempronia went on, "I think he just worships her from afar, writes love lyrics to her, that sort of thing. She's flattered, as who wouldn't be?"
    "But you think it's nothing more than that?" I said, cursing myself for even caring. She shot me another evaluating glance.
    "Dear Clodia hasn't let marriage interfere with her social activities," she said, "she's as wild as ever. But since she has married, she has been extremely discreet where men are concerned. I think she is being faithful, within her limits."
    Well, how could I blame a sensitive young poet for being in love with Clodia? I certainly had been, at one time. We were strolling by a rather graceful shrine to Isis when we encountered a man surrounded by the Egyptian staff, including Lisas. He wore the tunic of an
eques
, but they treated him with the fawning deference usually reserved for kings. He saw Sempronia, smiled, and walked from his circle of Egyptians, who parted for him as if he were preceded by a hundred lictors. He was a tall, fine-looking man of middle years whose clothes were of a quality I could only envy, although he wore no jewelry except for the plain gold ring of his rank. This, I learned, was Caius Rabirius Postumus, a famous banker and son of that elderly, distinguished Senator whom Caesar had tried to prosecute for a crime almost forty years past. I now understood the deference of the Egyptians. Although I had never met him, it was known that Postumus had lent huge sums to Auletes.
    "Decius Caecilius," he said after we had exchanged the usual pleasantries, "did I not hear that you discovered the body of my friend Oppius this morning?"
    "I merely happened by. He was your friend?"
    "We had a number of business dealings. He was a part of the banking community. I was terribly shocked when I heard of the murder."
    "Did he have enemies?" I asked him.
    "Just the ones that bankers always have. He was a quiet family man, no political ambitions or intrigues I ever heard about."
    "Then it was probably a debtor," I said.
    "That would make little sense," Postumus said. "He had heirs, business associates, others who will surely assume any outstanding accounts. Believe me, if the death of a creditor canceled debts, none of us bankers would be alive tomorrow. Not all debtors are as reasonable as King Ptolemy."
    "How is that?" Sempronia asked.
    "He has named me minister of finance to the kingdom."
    "He can use one," I noted. "I have never been able to understand how the king of the richest nation in the world can be so poor."
    "It's amazing, isn't it?" he agreed. "Perhaps it's because Egypt hasn't been a true nation since the days of the pharaohs, hundreds of years ago. Nothing but conquerors since then. The Macedonians are just the most recent."
    "There hasn't been a worthwhile Macedonian since Alexander," I opined, the wine sharpening my wit. "And he didn't amount to much. What does it take to beat Greeks and Persians, after all? Still, they were perfectly good barbarians while they were up in their mountains. A couple of generations after Alexander, what are they? Lunatics and drunkards, growing more degenerate with each inbred generation."
    "Shame on you two!" Sempronia said.