I sent for Hermes, and he arrived while I was about my morning ablutions.
“Hermes, we’re going to the headquarters of the messenger’s guild this morning.” I thrust my face into the bowl of cold water and blew like a beached whale for a while. I straightened and groped for a towel, which Hermes thrust into my hand. The cobwebs and smoke seemed to clear from my head as I dried my face.
“I should have thought of it myself,” Hermes said.
“My thought exactly. What more logical than that our fleet-footed fugitive should work as a messenger? He can keep in training and get paid for it in the bargain.”
“But the guild members are mostly slaves,” he pointed out. “He could be working as a messenger at one of the great houses instead of at the public service.”
“That’s likely,” I said, knowing that men like Cicero carried on huge correspondence and employed full-time messengers. Businessmen sometimes had scores. “But it’s a place to start and there has to be network of information among the community of messengers. It’s not that large a group of men, even in Rome.”
After a few bites of oil-dipped bread we were out the door just as the sun was clearing the roofs of the lowest buildings. Then we turned our steps, as on most mornings, toward the Forum. The headquarters of the messenger’s guild was located near the Curia, since they got a great deal of business from the senators.
It was a modest building, the carving above its portal proclaiming it to be, logically enough, the Brotherhood of Mercury. There was a rather fine statue of that deity out front, and a number of members lounged about on the steps. Ordinarily, a great many more occupied the tavern just across the narrow street, but it was all but empty at this early hour. We climbed the short flight of steps and passed within.
As a guild whose only stock in trade was its membership, the place needed no elaborate facilities or warehousing space. There was a single, spacious room, its walls decorated with tasteful frescoes, a fine marble desk in its center. In the rear wall was a doorway leading to what appeared to be a smaller room lined with honeycomb shelves for record-keeping. That was all. A substantial man rose from behind the desk.
“Welcome, Senator Metellus!” he said. “How may I help you? I am Scintillius, duumvir of the Honorable Guild of Mercury at Rome.” Actually, the word “substantial” is a weak one to describe the duumvir of the guild. He was grossly corpulent and wheezed as he rose. If he had ever been a messenger himself, those days were long behind him.
“Ah, my friend Scintillus!” I said as if I wanted his vote. “Well met! This morning I find myself in need of your services. That is to say, I am trying to locate a man who might be a member of your guild.”
“Eh?” He looked a bit hesitant. “I mean, I shall be most happy to help you and the noble Senate any way I may.” He sweated slightly but that might have just been all that fat. “I do hope there is no, ah, irregularity involved?”
“None at all, none at all!” I assured him heartily.
“The senator is looking for a man who may be going by the name of Caius Domitius,” Hermes rapped out. “We think he works here.” This was a routine we had worked out long before. I was all hearty geniality, and he came across as threatening. Sometimes if you keep people off-balance you learn things you might not otherwise.
“I see. Caius Domitius, you say? I can’t say that I know all of the messengers by name, but with two names he must be a citizen so that narrows it, and we have records, of course. Why did you say you wanted him?”
“We didn’t say,” Hermes told him forcefully. “Records, you say?”
“Yes, yes,” he gestured toward the door behind him. “Right back here. Records of our purchases and discharges, payrolls, important commissions and so forth.”
“Show us!” Hermes barked.
The man whirled and now it was time to do my bit. I took him by the arm. “This fellow should be distinctive. He’s a great cross-country runner, surely an asset to your magnificent, ancient, and very honorable establishment. Such a man as you might use to run messages to country estates, or even hire out to the legions for wartime service. Why, when I was in Gaul with Caesar a few years ago we had a company of men hired from this very guild for routine communications between far-spread cohorts, all those daily missives that don’t call for a detached cavalryman, you know.” While I babbled on thus we entered the smaller room which was jammed full of cabinets, the nests of cubbies stacked to the ceiling.
“As you see, Senator, we keep very careful records.”
I could see nothing of the sort, but I hoped they were in better order than those at the public archive. “So I see. A splendid facility indeed. And among these heaps of scrolls do you have the employment record of our Caius Domitius?”
“I truly hope so, Senator. As you can see these records go back many, many years, but I presume that the man you seek will have been employed here, if indeed he was, in rather more recent times?”
“Certainly within the last few years.”
“Then the payroll records are the place to look,” he said, taking down a large scroll. “Since most of our staff are slaves, those receiving a free laborer’s pay are a decided minority.”
“Why do you employ free men at all?” Hermes demanded.
“It’s a matter of law,” he said, “laid down by the censors in the times of the wars with Carthage. In businesses that employ more than a hundred persons, no more than eighty percent may be slave. It is the same for the construction industry, the stevedores, brickmaking, and so forth. In fact, only agriculture is exempt, and certain occupations that free men won’t do for any pay, like mining.”
This was a law dating from the earliest days when cheap slaves began to pour into Italy. There was fear that free labor might be totally displaced and the censors acted to stem the tide. Their success has been partial, at best. Caesar had recently passed a law requiring those who grazed their herds in Italy to employ not less than one-third freemen as herders. It was the least he could do, considering how many Gallic slaves he had dumped on the market.
He went to a table beneath an east-facing window and began to unroll the big scroll. “The first part,” he explained, “records the contributions we make to each man’s peculium. These vary in size and frequency according to the man’s length of service and diligence at his work. One who works hard and stays sober can expect to buy his own freedom from the savings in his peculium in five to seven years.” This is the traditional means of assuring obedience and good work from a slave. “They can, of course, keep any tips they receive.” He unrolled the scroll further, revealing figures in a different color of ink.
“Now here,” he went on, “are the records of the free employees’ pay. Men are paid on the day before the calends of each month. Of course,” he grumbled in a lower voice, “with this new calendar, we must refigure everything.”
“Just see if he’s in there,” Hermes growled. He was beginning to overdo it. The man was cooperating after all. I made a signal to back off and Hermes complied, reluctantly. This was one of his favorite games.
“Certainly, certainly. Ah, here he is!” He stabbed a pudgy, beringed finger at a line on which in large letters was written “C DOMIT CIT.”
“You see? Caius Domitius, citizen. This accounts for his slightly higher grade of pay than that of a foreigner, of which we employ a number.”
“Dates?” I asked.
“Last worked for us in Quinctilis of that year.” For those too young to remember, that is the name of the month that Caesar had that very year obtained consent from the Senate to name after himself, July. The Senate would grant him almost anything in those days.