“The praetor peregrinus of last year, Aulus Sabinus, says that you tried to bring suit against Polasser, but he wouldn’t hear it.”
“Probably got a whopping bribe from Polasser, if you ask me.”
“Let’s not get into that,” I said, knowing that it was all too likely. “In what way did Polasser cheat you?”
“First off, he’s supposed to be able to see your future, right?” He began to fume. “All these eastern star-men are supposed to be good at it. Well, he told me to buy heavy, that the coming year should be a good one for speculating in grain. It made sense, didn’t it? Civil war, everyone nervous, everyone hoarding. So I followed his advice. Well, you know what happened to the grain market last year, don’t you? You’re a senator, you have estates.”
“The market was flooded first with a good harvest here and then with cheap grain from Egypt.”
“Exactly,” he said disgustedly. “I know what your kind think of mine. You think we’re schemers who batten on the misfortune of others, Well, it’s business, isn’t it? It’s a hard world. And when things turn out good for others, nobody sheds tears because it’s a disaster for us.”
“I’m not passing judgment on you,” I assured him. “I know plenty of senators who are in your business, at one remove or another.”
“Buggering right,” he said. A man came into the office.
“Master, some wagons just came in from Apuleia.”
“Good,” Balesus said. Then, to us, “I bought this lot before it was planted. See what a risky business it is? Let’s go look at it. I’ll show you some things.”
“Lead the way,” I said. Hermes raised his eyebrows at me but I ignored him. We went out onto the balcony and down some stairs to a yard behind the building. Eight or ten wagons stood there, loaded with big leather bags.
“Late harvest in Apuleia this year, and these wagons were a long time on the road. Now the first thing you do is this.” He went to the third wagon and selected a bag apparently at random, opening its top. He reached in and took out a handful of grain. He held it up close to his eyes. They were fine, fat grains as far as I could see.
“Looks good so far,” he said. “No mold, properly dried, no mouse dung in it. Now this is the next thing you do.” He thrust his hand down into the grain until his arm was buried past the elbow. He withdrew another fistful of grain from deep within and examined it. “The same stuff. We’ll go through some other bags before I’ll take it, but it looks like I’m not being cheated. Now I’ll show you something else. Come along.”
So we followed him across the plaza to a rather splendid building decorated with reliefs of wheat sheaves, harvest implements, and various gods of field and storehouse. It was the guildhall of the grain merchants. He led us to a room where a bored clerk sat with a pair of scales and a number of weights.
“I want to show the senator those bags the thief from Neapolis brought here last month,” Balesus said.
“Help yourself,” the clerk said, indicating a number of the big leather sacks that leaned against a wall nearby. “It’s not needed as evidence anymore, the man’s been sentenced. I was going to throw it out and sell the sacks.”
“Then we’re just in time.” Balesus hauled out a sack and set it before me and opened it. “Here, Senator. Give it a try.”
I took a handful of grain from the top and looked at it in the light that streamed in through a window. These looked like healthy grains to my eye. “Looks fine.”
“Now dig deep, like I just did,” he said, grinning.
I stuck my hand down in as far as it would go and closed my fingers around a fistful and drew it out. This I examined as well. The grains were shriveled, showed signs of mold, and were laced with unpleasant black flakes. They even smelled foul.
“You see? You have to be careful in this business. The man should have known better than to try this trick in Rome, but he did. Tried to sell it out there in the great market at the peak of the harvest, thinking buyers wouldn’t look close when they had so many tons to move. Well, he was wrong. We hauled him before the curule aedile but he can only levy fines and judged this too serious and passed it to the praetor’s court. The man’s property was confiscated and he was sold as a slave. I hope he works shoveling other people’s grain for the rest of his miserable life.”
We went back outside and walked back toward his office. “You seem to know your business.” I said.
“That I do. Well, these star-men have their own schemes, and I wish I knew as much about them as I do about the grain business.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“I didn’t try to take Polasser to court just because he’d gulled me with a false horoscope. I’d just look like a fool then, wouldn’t I? I learned he’d advised half a dozen other merchants, and probably others who wouldn’t admit it. Some he told to buy, like he told me. Others he told to sell. Any way it came out, he’d have a string of merchants who thought he’d given them a proper fortune. What do you want to bet he’d charge more for his services the next year?”
“Very clever,” I said. “Why didn’t the other men you mentioned join you in pressing for this suit?”
He snorted. “Not buggering likely, not after I told them who his patron was. Nobody’d touch it then.”
Hermes was bursting to say something, and he’d held his silence long enough, so I nodded to him
“Who recommended Polasser to you?”
“A patrician lady who was selling off the produce from her dead husband’s estate last year. Name was Fulvia.”
I had been very afraid that he was about to speak another name. This was bad enough, but it still came as a relief. “Did she advise the others as well?”
He shrugged. “I suppose so. They must’ve found out about the fraud from somewhere.”
“Well, I thank you, you’ve been very helpful. And now I know what to do when somebody tries to sell me grain in bulk.”
“Anything for the Senate and people. And, Senator?”
I was turning to go but turned back. “Yes?”
“There was nothing wrong with our old calendar. Why did you have to saddle us with this new one? It’s caused me no end of trouble. Contracts have dates on them, you know.”
We made our way back toward the Forum. “Fulvia, eh?” Hermes said.
“Well, I knew she was part of Servilia’s little group. So what has this told us? It could be nothing. She must have wanted to sell off the produce from Curio’s estates before his other relatives could lay hands on them. I don’t know what the disposition of those estates has been, now that she’s married to Antonius.” Curio had been a remarkable man, at first a conservative, then an adherent of Caesar and a tribune of the people, and very successful in every role. He’d had a brilliant future ahead of him and had married Fulvia, who always furthered her husbands’ careers to the best of her ability, which was saying something. Then he had gone to Africa in Caesar’s cause and had been killed in some obscure skirmish, a sad end for such a man.
“It could be nothing,” I said. “She may have been besotted with these astrologers and babbled about them to anyone who would listen. I’ve known others like that.”
“And Polasser may have looked at how the grain business works and decided that there was a killing to be made. Still, Balesus seems like a hard-headed man, not likely to be taken in by such a fraud.”
“You never can tell. I’ve known many men to be sensible and no-nonsense in their own line of work, but gullible fools when out of their depth. A fraud artist I once knew said that a self-made man was often the easiest victim.”
“Why should that be?” Hermes wanted to know.
“He said it’s because they think they know everything. Starting with nothing they build great fortunes and they think they have perfect judgment. They won’t consult with more knowledgeable people because they think they’ve made it where they are by always knowing exactly what they are doing. In fact, they often succeeded because they were lucky, or just hard-working or shrewd in a very narrow field. So they will trust a transparent fraud when a five-minute conversation with someone like Cicero or Sosigenes or Callista would show them the error of their ways. They have too much confidence in themselves.”