“I see. So I take it you don’t have a swamp adder?” I said.
He shook his head. “Neither I nor my staff are that brave. You are aware, I take it, that almost all of the snake charmers you see in the markets and at festivals are Marsian? They never use swamp adders for their performances. They would never touch one except for religious purposes. You aren’t really looking to buy one, are you, Senator?”
“No, I just need to learn about them. Matters of state between Rome and the Marsi, as it were.”
“Actually,” Julia said, “I am quite interested in purchasing a house snake, one for family consultation, although I suppose it would do no harm if it catches mice as well. Could you show us your stock?”
Needless to say, we went home with a snake, a small, green creature of no great distinction that I could see. It came with a supply of cedar shavings and careful instructions as to its care and feeding, housed in an Egyptian basket artistically plaited from papyrus fiber. Julia seemed almost as delighted with the basket as with the snake.
“Have we learned anything?” Hermes said as we wended our way back toward the Subura.
“Other than that I am an indulgent husband?”
“We already knew that, dear,” Julia said, gloating over her purchase.
“I am a bit puzzled,” I said, running a few things through my mind. “Pompaedius acted as if the handling of venomous serpents is a simple business, yet Poplicola told us that it takes a specially trained team of Marsi just to catch one for the bull sacrifice.”
“Maybe it’s catching one in the swamp that’s the tricky part,” Hermes said. “Maybe they live in packs out there. The sacred snake sounds domesticated.”
“Pompaedius,” I mused. “Wasn’t that the name of the man who led the Marsi in the Social War?”
“Quintus Pompaedius Silo,” Julia said. “He is said to have held Cato out of a high window by his heels, when Cato was about ten years old.”
“Should’ve dropped the little bugger on his head,” I observed. “I remember the story now. He was in Rome drumming up support for Marsian citizenship rights, and little Cato refused to take his oath or some such. I always thought it was something Cato’s supporters made up to make him sound patriotic instead of just an insufferably rude little twit.”
“Do you think it’s significant?” Hermes asked. “For all I know, Pompaedius is as common a name in Marsian territory as Cornelius is in Rome.”
“Probably nothing,” I said. But in truth I was not so sanguine. Religion and politics are inseparable, which is why the founders of the Republic wisely made priesthood and omen-taking a part of public office. That way it can be kept under control, after a fashion. But Caesar himself had decided that this silly business was worth pursuing. Of course, he was obliged by ancient custom to aid a client who was in Rome with a problem. “How did a Marsian named Pompaedius become Caesar’s client?” I wondered aloud.
“If I recall correctly,” Julia said, “most of the Marsi were clients of Livius Drusus. But then he was murdered.”
“He championed the Italian allies in the Senate, didn’t he?” It was coming back to me. Drusus had tried to get citizenship for all our Italian allies, but word got out, whether truthfully or not, that they had all secretly pledged to enter his clientele if he was successful in making them citizens. That would have made him too powerful, and his enemies had him assassinated. Typical politics for that generation. For any generation, if truth be told.
“That’s right,” Julia said, “but in the Social War, his brother was killed leading a Roman army against the Marsi, and the Livii repudiated their patronage.” Julia’s knowledge of the great families was far more comprehensive than my own. “After all the fuss died down and they were citizens, the Marsi took clientage under the Pompeius family, and when Pompey Magnus was killed, Caesar offered them patronage. His support in that part of Italy was weak, so he courted the Marsi. With them in his clientele, the other people of the central mountain district followed.”
“That sounds like Caesar,” I said. “They sent a good many young men to serve in his legions. I wonder what he promised them in return?”
“Nothing but the proper mutual obligations of patron and client, I am sure,” Julia said. She probably believed it.
Hermes spoke up. “Didn’t you say Angitia had a shrine in Rome?”
I had completely forgotten it. “Where is it, Julia? We ought to see if anyone there knows anything.”
“It’s just a tiny place near the grain market,” she said. “I don’t know if it even has a permanent staff. There is some sort of ceremony at the time of the Martialis, and people leave offerings there to protect them from snakebite. That’s as much as I know.”
The Martialis is a harvest festival and signifies the close of the agricultural year. A good time to ask the favor of a snake goddess to protect the granaries from mice. It made sense. I told the litter slaves to carry us to the grain market, and they complied with sour looks. Litter slaves always think that every direction is uphill.
We passed by the great plaza of the grain merchants with its spectacular statue of Apollo and turned down a tiny side street. Other than a small fountain at its entrance, there was nothing to distinguish it from Rome’s thousands of other little streets.
“How did you know of this place?” I asked Julia.
“My grandmother brought me here when I was a little girl. It was when Caesar departed for Syria. Aurelia believed that the entire Orient is carpeted with venomous serpents and she came here to sacrifice for his protection.”
“She was a pious woman,” I agreed. “When I was with Caesar in Gaul, she used to write him long letters detailing the sacrifices she had provided to protect him from enemies, from drowning, from accident, from scurrilous gossip and slander, and on and on. Caesar said she was single-handedly supporting all the animal sellers and priests in Rome.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” Julia protested.
“Not by much. I used to read those letters to him. He complained that he was ruining his vision with all the writing he did, so he had none to spare for his mother’s letters. She had incredibly tiny handwriting. Lavish though she was with sacrifices, she was stingy with paper, and crowded as much as she could onto a single sheet. To this day, it pains my eyes to think about those letters.”
“You never run out of things to complain about,” she observed.
“I’ve lived a tragic life,” I told her as the litter slaves set us down, gasping and puffing abundantly, despite the paltriness of the effort they had expended.
The shrine was at the very end of the street, which in turn wasn’t much more than an alley between two grain warehouses. The few doors of the flanking buildings looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years. The door to the shrine was flanked by low-relief pilasters wound with sculpted snakes. The paint was faded and flaking away. The door itself stood open. In the usual fashion of Italian temples and shrines, the portico sat atop a dozen or so narrow, steep steps.
“It looked better than this when I came here with Aurelia,” Julia said.
“We all looked better thirty years ago,” I told her. I was about to step inside when Hermes placed a hand on my arm and turned to Julia.
“What’s on the other side of this door?” he asked. I knew I was getting old. This was an elementary precaution I should have taken without conscious thought. When I was younger and my wits sharper, I would have sent Hermes through first.
“I didn’t go inside,” she said. “I stayed out here with some slave women while Grandmother went in. I don’t know if there was a priest inside or if she just made her sacrifice and came back out.”
Blood sacrifices are usually made on an altar before a temple, not inside. But there was no altar before the entrance. Sometimes food offerings were left at the feet of the deity’s image, incense burned, that sort of thing. “Is anyone here?” I shouted. There was silence from within. I looked at Hermes and jerked my head toward the doorway. He put a hand on the hilt of the sword he wore concealed beneath his clothes and strode through the doorway. Hearing no sounds of violence, I followed. Something about that open door bothered me. Thieves would not hesitate to rob the sanctuary of a foreign goddess.