I slipped the paper from the tube and unrolled it. The letter was written in a fine, aristocratic hand, the sort that our schoolmasters whip into us at an early age, but the formation of some of the letters was a trifle shaky, the sign of a writer in a state of emotional distress. The grammar was impeccable, but the phrasing was a bit awkward. One did not expect literary elegance from a Claudian. I began to read aloud.
[To the Senator Decimus]: a misspelling, but a common one, since my praenomen is extremely rare, while Decimus is not: [Caecilius Metellus the Younger:
[I dare not set my name to this, but you will know who I am. When I came to Rome to live, I sought only the support and patronage of my family to begin and pursue my career. Instead, I have become involved in matters that terrify me; matters involving murder, conspiracy and, I think, treason.
Upon my arrival, my kinsman Publius Clodius made much of me, and much of his own glowing future, persuading me to take service as one of his followers. Greatly flattered, I agreed. He entrusted me with matters of some sensitivity, some of them of questionable legality. He continually assured me that this was the way things were done in modern Roman political life.
For more than a month, Clodius hinted about a crucially important meeting he was arranging. All month, he met many times with Caius Julius Caesar, with Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives, and on several occasions I accompanied him to the camp of Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus to confer with the general.
All this time, Clodius showed the greatest signs of merriment, and behaved as if he were maneuvering these powerful men at his own will, into his own power. "I'll control them all," he told me on more than one occasion. How he was to accomplish this I could not imagine.
After his last meeting with Pompey, Clodius came away greatly agitated. When I asked him why he was so upset, he said that the general had required of him that he kill the son of the Censor Metellus, who had just returned to Rome. I had heard him speak many times, very bitterly, of this man and asked why he was so displeased with the commission. He said it was because it was at Pompey's behest rather than for his own satisfaction, and that Pompey had required that the deed be accomplished with poison so that it might appear that his enemy died of natural causes.]
"I told you," said Hermes.
"Quiet," I said, and continued reading.
[Clodius sent me to the herb-woman Purpurea to procure the poison. I had been sent to her before, to borrow from her a purple gown, for an unexplained reason. You encountered me just as I left her booth with the poison. Dutifully, I took the poison to Clodius. Then he horrified me by telling me that I was to administer the poison myself! He had discovered that you were to have dinner at the house of Mamercus Capito, and had managed to secure an invitation to the same dinner. I was to take his place, giving the excuse that he could not eat at the same table as you, his mortal enemy.
I protested, and he grew enraged. Then he all but knelt to beg me to perform this deed. He said that all his plans hinged upon keeping the goodwill of Pompey for this little time, and if I would do this for him I would have his eternal gratitude, and he would make me second only to himself in Rome. At last I agreed. Nobody could be more relieved than I that I failed.]
"That was my doing," Hermes said to Julia. "I saved his life."
"I'm keeping that in mind, Hermes," I said. "Perhaps I'll get a flagrum without the bronze studs."
[After the assemblage broke up upon the death of Capito,] I continued reading, [in which I swear before all the gods I had no involvement, I called for my slaves and left. Thinking I had murdered you, I could not bear to face Clodius, and fled instead to my kinswoman Clodia, at the house of Metellus Celer.
The next day I spent in the temples and the Forum, consumed with guilty agitation. You cannot imagine the relief I felt when I saw you before the Curia, very much alive and conferring with Cicero and Lucullus. I resolved to have nothing further to do with Clodius and went to his house to tell him so. He was displeased that I had failed, but merely said that we would have to try another time. He was far too preoccupied with the meeting planned for that night to concern himself with you. I told him that I did not wish to engage in further dealings with him, but he merely brushed my protestations aside, saying that I would overcome such childish scruples as I gained sophistication in Roman politics. At last I agreed, but I would do nothing unlawful.
Clodius laughed and called me his friend, and assured me that the night's doings would be more in the nature of a lark. I was to take the purple dress and another woman's gown and veil to the camp of Pompey, where, to my amazement, the general and Faustus Sulla were to don them and return with me to the city after sunset. I was to tell the watch at the gate that these were two ladies from a country estate coming to the city for the rites of the Good Goddess. My patrician insignia would assure compliance.
I did as instructed, although the experience was most bizarre. In the Forum we were joined by Clodius, also in women's attire, and two other men similarly clad. They mingled with the crowd of highborn ladies entering the house of the Pontifex Maximus and went inside.
I loitered about the Forum for several hours, until I heard a great commotion from inside. Clodius came running out of the house, stripped almost naked and pursued by a mob of women, screaming like furies. I threw my toga over him and we ducked down an alley and ran back to his house. All the way, Clodius was laughing like a madman, with tears of glee streaming from his eyes.
At the house he called for wine and began to drink heavily, without watering the wine. Soon he was quite drunk and boasting so loudly that I dismissed the household staff, lest they overhear. He said that now all his ambitions would be realized, and I asked him to explain, still under the impression that the night's doings had been no more than a prank.
He said that the three men who were to rule Rome had met at the house of Caesar and had determined upon the future course of the empire and that he, Clodius, had arranged all this. The two most powerful, Pompey and Crassus, could never work together and their rivalry would plunge the empire into civil war. Clodius believed that Caesar was greater than the other two, and had urged him to agree to this meeting, where their rivalries could be hammered out to the profit of all.
This seemed fantastic to me, and I asked him what he meant by it. He replied that he, Clodius, had perceived that Crassus and Pompey were too unimaginative to settle their differences save through battle; that Caesar, while brilliant and masterful, was too lazy to set a reconciliation in motion, and that all three were too bound by traditional forms to do as Sulla did, and set aside the constitution.
At the meeting in Caesar's house, Clodius said, the Pontifex Maximus bound them all by the most solemn oaths to abide by the conditions of their covenant, and the agreement they made was this:]
"Now we get to the heart of the matter," I said.
"Stop commenting and read!" Julia said, obviously in a state of considerable agitation, which I humored.
[To begin, since Caesar must be away in Spain for his pro-praetorship, and would not be in Rome to moderate between the other two, they were to comport themselves as friendly colleagues in his absence. Upon his return, their three-man coalition would begin to work in earnest to further the ambitions of all three. In token of his support, Crassus was to stand surety for Caesar's debts so that Caesar could leave Rome to assume his magistracy. Pompey required, apparently in fulfillment of an earlier, less formal agreement, that the other two be seen prominently in his triumph so that all might know that he enjoyed their wholehearted support.
Caesar's reward was to be a Consulship upon his return from Spain, and following it an extraordinary magistracy over all of Gaul. All would work to secure Crassus the war with Parthia that he desires. Pompey was to have whatever command he desires aside from Gaul and Parthia.