"I don't think that's what he intends it for," said a Senator named Tusculus, who was rumored to be the great-grandson of a freedman. "I've spoken with his spectacle-planner. He says that the inaugural games for the theater when it's finished are to include a whole city sacking onstage, complete with cavalry and infantry and catapults."
"That would give old Euripides fits," I said. "Roman tastes in entertainment are a bit more robust than those of the effete Greeks."
All this conversation with accomplished with rigid faces, barely moving our mouths, coupled with the most rigid bearing. It would not have done to allow our gravitas to slip before the eyes of the citizenry. Once we were within the nascent theater we could relax, because there was no seating for the lower orders, all of whom went off to see livelier entertainments. I wished I could go with them.
The more lordly personages took their seats nearest the orchestra, just in front of the stage. Only these seats had been completed, and were made of white marble. The rest were temporary bleachers of wood. The stage itself was also of wood, as was the immense, three-tiered proscenium that rose behind the scaena. Eventually, this would all be rebuilt in stone, but no effort had been spared to make the temporary structure sumptuous, and all was bright with new paint and colorful hangings. Fountains sprayed perfumed water in high arcs, helping to dull the odor of fresh paint and new-cut pine.
"If I get pinesap on my new toga," said an eques behind me, "I'll bill Pompey for it." This raised a laugh. Now that the mob had hied away, we could revert to our natural state, which is to say, a pack of outspoken Italians.
"Here comes Pompey!" someone shouted. We all stood up and applauded dutifully as the great man made his appearance. He was wearing a golden wreath and a triumphator's voluminous purple toga picta covered all over with golden stars.
"Well, that's a pit premature, isn't it?" said Tusculus. "The procession's not until tomorrow."
"No," I said. "As giver of the games, he's entitled to the picta, worse luck. He just wants to get us used to seeing him wearing it. He intends to make it his full-time dress." There were a lot of boos from the anti-Pompeian faction, together with some of the ruder noises possible with the imaginative employment of lips and tongue. He did not deign to hear.
With Pompey's party I saw young Faustus Sulla, and they all took their places in the front row with Caesar, Crassus, Hortalus and the rest of the great men.
After a lengthy exchange of greetings, good wishes and insults, we all settled down to be bored into a state of deathlike stupefaction. As the chorus came out to begin their intolerable chanting, we surreptitiously rummaged through the contents of our togas. One of the few advantages of the great ceremonial toga is that it provides innumerable stashing-places for snacks and drink. I had brought along a skin of decent Vatican. It would have been criminal to store really good wine in a skin.
Of course, it was strictly forbidden to eat or drink during a performance, but who was going to bother us? All the important men were down in front, pretending to understand what was going on on the stage, where a troupe of men was mincing across the scaena, masked and dressed as women.
"Disgusting," I grumbled. "At least in the Italian mime, women's roles are still played by women."
"And none of those ridiculous masks, either," said a Senator. "Wigs and face paint are good enough. All a lot of Greek degeneracy, if you ask me."
"Everybody knows playgoing is bad for the public morals," I said. "Just ask Cato." I tossed a handful of parched nuts and peas into my mouth.
Caesar turned around and glared at the rear rows of Senators.
"Uh-oh," said an eques, "there's old Caesar, giving us the holy look."
"Good thing his wife must be above suspicion," said Tusculus. "Mine certainly isn't." We all tried not to laugh too loudly.
Some actors began screeching in horrid falsettos. One of them, Hecuba, I think, or perhaps it was Andromache, began to wail something about the gods and how they had made a fine old mess of Troy. I had to admit that the man had a fine command of feminine gestures. Every movement made his long gown sway gracefully.
Suddenly, I was absorbed in the performance and I took no note of my neighbor's rude comments. It was not that I had precipitously acquired an appreciation for Greek tragedy; rather, I felt that I stood on the verge of something. As the actor continued to intone I scanned the stage lineup of men in women's garments, then the front row of seats where sat Caesar and Crassus, Faustus and Pompey. Pompey, in his purple robe.
I was overcome by a blinding revelation from the gods, forgetting, in the exultation of the moment, that the gods always mean trouble when they send you a revelation like that. I felt as if surrounded by a golden nimbus as I leapt to my feet, abruptly caught up in the Greek spirit of things.
"Eureka!" I shouted.
"Who do you think you are, Metellus?" hissed somebody. "Bloody Archimedes? Sit down or you'll be arrested!" I ignored everything but my own brilliance.
"They were all there!" I said, not quite shouting. "All dressed as women!"
Now the whole front row had turned around, staring at me. My father looked close to apoplexy. Nobody looked pleased. A praetor pointed toward me, and a crowd of lictors began to march up an aisle between the seats, the axes gleaming in their fasces. My exultation evaporated as swiftly as it had come upon me, and I realized with dread what a terrible blunder I had made. I stumbled into an aisle and began to dash toward a gap in the barely begun outer wall.
"Must be a case of the runs," I heard somebody say as I got clear of the bleachers. Amid hooting and clapping, I dashed out as fast as my toga would allow. I glanced back over my shoulder to see if any lictors were in pursuit, but they were not. It would have been beneath their dignity. I slowed to a fast walk. Not only was running awkward, but heat built up beneath the heavy woolen toga at a tremendous rate.
A bit of my god-visited mood returned as I reentered the city, and the city itself was like something seen in a dream. It was all but deserted, with the whole populace packed into the two huge Circuses and the theaters. Adding to the dreamlike quality was the profusion of triumphal decorations, the heaps of flower petals that lay everywhere. The Forum was like a city of gods, populated by statues. I glanced up toward the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Within its dimness, through the smoke of the incense burning to the god's honor, I could just descry the great statue of Jupiter, the one that was supposed to give us warning of plots against the state. I threw the god a salute. If I could manage it, Pompey would not sacrifice in that temple on the morrow.
My slave Cato gaped as I came in through my front gate.
"Senator! We'd not expected you until this afternoon! There's a lady here to see you, but we told her-"
"Where's Hermes?" I said, brushing past him. Then his words sunk in and I turned. "What lady?"
"A lady Julia, one of the Caesars. She insisted on waiting for you to return. She's in the atrium."
I entered the atrium and Julia was there indeed, rising from a chair with a look of unutterable relief.
"Decius! How glad I am to see you alive. You're in terrible danger!"
"I know that," I said. "But how did you find out so fast?"
"So fast? But I only learned late last night."
"This is all too confusing," I said. "Just a moment. I must speak with my slave."
"No, you must speak with me!" She grabbed both my arms with surprising strength and swung me around to face her. "Decius, Clodius came to see my uncle last night. He wants to kill you. He was raving like a madman!"
"Of course he was," I said. "He is a madman. What had Caius Julius to say to that?"