"You refer to the gossip that she murdered her husband three years
ago."
He nodded. "They say that Quintus Metellus Celer was healthy one day and dead the next. They say that his marriage to Clodia was always stormy-and moreover that Celer and her brother Clodius had become fierce enemies. The rift was ostensibly over politics-but what man could abide having a brother-in-law for a rival in his bed?"
"But which brother-in-law was the usurper-Clodius… or Celer?"
He shrugged. "I suppose that was up to Clodia to decide. Celer was the loser; he lost his life. And now Caelius? Perhaps any man who comes between this brother and sister is risking more than he realizes."
I shook my head. "You repeat these scandalous charges as if you knew them to be true, Eco."
"Only because I think you should consider very carefully what sort of people you're dealing with. You've made up your mind to go through with this, then?"
"To try to find the truth about Dio's murder, yes."
"Under Clodia's auspices?"
"It was she who hired me. Circumstance led her to me-circum-stance, or Cybele."
"But the political danger of associating yourself in any way with Clodius-"
"I've made up my mind."
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Then I think at the very least we should review what we know about these Clodii, before you go off pursuing their interests or pocketing any more of their silver."
"Very well, what do we know about them? And let us be careful to separate fact from slander."
Eco nodded. He spoke deliberately, carefully framing his thoughts. "They are patricians. They come from a very old, very distinguished family. They have many renowned ancestors, many of whom served as consuls, whose public works are scattered all over Italy-roads, aque-ducts, temples, basilicas, gates, porticoes, arches. Their relatives are intermarried with families of equal stature in such a tangle that even a silkmaker could never unravel all the threads. The Clodii are at the heart of Rome's ruling class."
"As fractured and at odds with itself as that class may be. Yes, the respectability of their ancestry and their connections is beyond question," I agreed. "Though one always has to wonder how the rich and powerful became so in the first place."
Eco shook his finger at me. "Now, Papa, you've already bent your own rule-mixing facts with innuendo."
"Facts only," I conceded. "Or at least, anything not a fact must be clearly identified as hearsay," I amended, realizing that it might otherwise be impossible to talk about Clodia and Clodius at all.
"Well then," Eco continued, "to begin with, there's the spelling of their name. The patrician form is Claudius, and their father was Appius Claudius. But Clodius and all three of his sisters changed their spelling of the family name to the more common form some years ago, with an o, not the posh-sounding au. That must have been when Clodius decided to cast his lot as a populist politician and a rabble-rouser. I suppose it helps to give him the common touch when he's consorting with his hired strong-armers and brick throwers, or canvassing for votes among those who live off the grain dole he established."
"Yes, but what advantage does it give to Clodia?" I wondered.
"From your description of the goings-on at her horti this afternoon, I'd imagine she craves the common touch as well. Gossip, I confess!" Eco hurriedly added, as I raised a finger.
"Another fact, then," I said. "They're not full-blooded siblings."
"I thought they were."
"No, Clodia is the eldest of the lot, and she had a different mother from the rest. Her mother died giving birth to her, I believe. Soon after, Appius Claudius married his second wife and sired three boys and two more girls, the youngest of the boys being Publius Claudius, now Clodius. Clodius must be about your age, Eco, thirty-five or so, and Clodia is about five years older than him."
"They're only half siblings, then," Eco said. "So any copulation- conjectural or otherwise-would be only half incest, I suppose."
"Not that such a distinction would matter to anyone this side of Egypt," I said. "Actually-more gossip-one hears that Clodius has been the lover of all three of his sisters, the two full-blooded, younger ones as well as his big sister Clodia. Just as one hears that Clodius was groomed as a catamite by his older brothers when he was a boy, to sell his sexual favors to wealthy rakes."
"But I thought Clodius and his family were wealthy to begin with."
"Fabulously wealthy by our standards, Eco, but not by those of their peers. During the civil wars, when Clodia and Clodius were children, their father Appius was on the side of Sulla. When Sulla's fortunes ebbed, Appius had to flee Rome for several years. His children had to fend for themselves in a city full of enemies. Clodia, the oldest, was barely into her teens. It can't have been easy for those children. Those were hard years for everyone." This was something I hardly needed to tell Eco; it was in those years of chaotic civil strife that his own father had died and his mother had been reduced to such poverty that she eventually abandoned him to fend for himself in the streets, until I took him into my home and adopted him.
"When Sulla eventually triumphed and became dictator, Appius Claudius returned and for a short while thrived. He was elected consul in the year that Sulla retired. Then he took his reward, a provincial governorship-of Macedonia, I think-where he could bleed the locals for taxes, collect tribute from their chieftains and thus provide his sons back home with silver to start their political careers and his daughters with dowries. So it goes for a Roman with a successful political career. But not in the case of Appius Claudius. He died in Macedonia. The taxes and tributes were collected by his successor, and the only thing the children of Appius Claudius got back from Macedonia were the ashes of their father. They must have gone through a bad patch after that. They were never so poor that they dropped from sight, but one can imagine them scrimping and cutting corners to keep up appearances- the kind of petty humiliations that privileged patricians find so galling.
"And without a father in the house, the children must have made their own rules. Did young Clodius and his sisters carry on like rutting sheep without a shepherd to separate them? I don't know, but growing up in a turbulent, often hostile city with their father absent for years at a time, and then losing him while they were still quite young, must have brought the siblings close together-perhaps uncommonly or even un-naturally close. And while I seriously doubt that young Clodius was ever a prostitute in the strictly commercial sense-that kind of talk reeks of slander-given the circumstances, it's not hard to imagine him using whatever attributes he possessed to curry favor with those who could help him and his brothers get ahead. It's also not hard to imagine that there were those who found him desirable. Even now Clodius still has the look of a boy-sleek-limbed, slender-hipped, broad-chested. Smooth skin. A face like his sister's… "
"Yes, I was forgetting that you've just seen him naked," said Eco, raising his eyebrows.
I ignored his teasing. "The third name attached to their branch of the Claudian line is Pulcher, you know-'beautiful.' Clodius's full name is Publius Clodius Pulcher, and his sister is Clodia Pulcher. I don't know how far back the name goes, or which of their ancestors was vain enough to add it, but it certainly fits the current generation. Pulcher, indeed! And yes, I speak advisedly, having just seen both of them naked, or near enough-fact, not gossip! You know, I can well imagine that there are those, having seen the two of them together, who rather like to picture Clodia and Clodius making love, whether it's true or not." "Papa, your eyes are glazing over!"