It was on a sweltering midsummer day in the month of Sextilis that I was called to the home of a patrician named Quintus Fabius.
The house was situated on the Aventine Hill. The structure looked at once ancient and immaculately kept — a sign that its owners had prospered there for many generations. The foyer was lined with scores of wax effigies of the household ancestors; the Fabii go all the way back to the founding of the republic.
I was shown to a room off the central courtyard, where my hosts awaited me. Quintus Fabius was a man of middle age with a stem jaw and graying temples. His wife Valeria was a strikingly beautiful woman with hazel hair and blue eyes. They sat on backless chairs, each attended by a slave with a fan. A chair was brought in for me, along with a slave to fan me.
Usually, I find that the higher a client ranks on the social scale, the longer he takes to explain his business. Quintus Fabius, however, lost no time in producing a document. “What do you make of it?” he said, as yet another slave conveyed the scrap of papyrus to my hands.
“You can read, can’t you?” asked Valeria, her tone more anxious than insulting.
“Oh yes — if I go slowly,” I said, thinking to buy more time to study the letter (for a letter it was) and to figure out what the couple wanted from me. The papyrus was water-stained and roughly torn at the edges and had been folded several times, rather than rolled. The handwriting was childish but strong, with gratuitous flourishes on some of the letters.
To Pater and to Mater dearest:
By now my friends must have told you of my abduction. It was foolish of me to go off swimming by myself — forgive me! I know that you must be stricken with fear and grief, but do not fret overmuch; I have lost only a little weight and my captors are not too cruel.
I write to convey their demands. They say you must give them 100,000 sesterces. This is to be delivered to a man in Ostia on the morning of the ides of Sextilis, at a tavern called The Flying Fish. Have your agent wear a red tunic.
From their accents and their brutish manner I suspect these pirates are Cilicians. It may be that some of them can read (though I doubt it), so I cannot be completely frank, but know that I am in no greater discomfort than might be expected.
Soon we shall be reunited! That is the fervent prayer of your devoted son,
While I pondered the note, from the corner of my eye I saw that Quintus Fabius was drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. His wife anxiously fidgeted and tapped her long fingernails against her lips.
“I suppose,” I finally said, “that you would like me to go ransom the boy.”
“Oh yes!” Said Valeria, leaning forward and fixing me with a fretful gaze.
“He’s not a boy,” said Quintus Fabius, his voice surprisingly harsh. “He’s seventeen, and put on his manly toga a year ago.”
“But you will accept the job?” said Valeria.
I pretended to study the letter again. “Why not send someone from your own household? A trusted secretary, perhaps?”
Quintus Fabius scrutinized me. “I’m told that you’re rather clever. You find things out.”
“It hardly requires someone clever to deliver a ransom.”
“Who knows what unexpected contingencies may arise in such a situation? I’m told that I can trust your judgment... and your discretion.”
“Poor Spurius!” said Valeria, her voice breaking. “You’ve read his letter. You must see how badly he’s being treated.”
“He makes light of his tribulations,” I said.
“He would! If you knew my son, how cheerful he is by nature, you’d realize just how desperate his situation must be for him, even to mention his suffering. If he says he’s lost a little weight, he must be half-starved. What can such men be feeding him — fish heads and moldy bread? If he says these monsters are ‘not too cruel,’ imagine how cruel they must be! When I think of his ordeal — oh, I can hardly bear it!” She stifled a sob.
“Where was he kidnapped, and when?”
“It happened last month,” said Quintus Fabius.
“Twenty-two days ago,” said Valeria with a sniffle. “Twenty-two endless days and nights!”
“He was down at Baiae with some of his friends,” explained Quintus Fabius. “We have a summer villa above the beach, and a town house across the bay at Neapolis. Spurius and his friends took a little skiff and went out among the fishing boats. The day was hot. Spurius decided to take a swim. His friends stayed on the boat.”
“Spurius is a strong swimmer,” said Valeria, her pride steadying the tremor in her voice.
Quintus Fabius shrugged. “My son is better at swimming than at most things. While his friends watched, he made a circuit, swimming from one fishing boat to another. His friends saw him talking and laughing with the fishermen.”
“Spurius is very outgoing,” his mother explained.
“He swam farther and farther away,” Quintus Fabius continued, “until his friends lost sight of him for a while and began to worry. Then one of them saw Spurius on board what they had all thought to be a fishing vessel, though it was larger than the rest. It took them a moment to realize that the vessel had set sail and was departing. The boys tried to follow in the skiff, but none of them has any real skill at sailing. Before they knew it, the boat had disappeared, and Spurius with it. Eventually the boys returned to the villa at Baiae. They all thought that Spurius would turn up sooner or later, but he never did. Days passed without a word.”
“Imagine our worry!” said Valeria. “We sent frantic messages to our foreman at the villa. He made inquiries of fishermen all around the bay, trying to find anyone who could explain what had happened and identify the men who had sailed off with Spurius, but his investigations led nowhere.”
Quintus Fabius sneered. “The fishermen around Neapolis... well, if you’ve ever been down there you know the sort. Descendants of the old Greek colonists who’ve never given up their Greek ways. Some of them don’t speak Latin! As for their personal habits and vices, the less said the better. Such people can hardly be expected to cooperate with finding a young Roman patrician abducted by pirates.”
“On the contrary,” I said, “I should think that fishermen would be the natural enemies of pirates, whatever their personal prejudices against the patrician class.”
“However that may be, my man down in Baiae was unable to discover anything,” said Quintus Fabius. “We had no definite knowledge of what had become of Spurius until we received his letter a few days ago.”
I looked at the letter again. “Your son calls the pirates Cilicians. That seems rather far-fetched to me.”
“Why?” said Valeria. “Everyone says they’re the most, bloodthirsty people on earth. One hears about them making raids everywhere along the coasts, from Asia all the way to Africa and Spain.”
“True, but here, on the coast of Italy? And in the waters around Baiae?”
“It’s shocking news, I’ll agree,” said Quintus Fabius. “But what can you expect with the problem of piracy getting worse and worse while the Senate does nothing?”
I pursed my lips. “And it doesn’t seem odd to you that these pirates want the ransom brought to Ostia, just down the Tiber from Rome? That’s awfully close.”
“Who cares about such details?” said Valeria, her voice breaking. “Who cares if we have to go all the way to the Pillars of Hercules, or just a few steps to the Forum? We must go wherever they wish, to get Spurius safely home.”