The Venus Throw (41 page)

“At this point Verginia’s betrothed young lover, the rising politician, arrived on the scene, and delivered an outraged speech about how Appius Claudius was using the law to make slaves of everyone in Rome just for the purpose of satisfying his own lust. He would die himself, the young man vowed, before he would let his betrothed spend a night away from her father’s house. The girl was a virgin, and it was a virgin he intended to marry.

“He stirred the crowd to a frenzy. Appius Claudius called for armed lictors to keep order, and threatened to have the young orator arrested for starting a riot. But to keep the situation from getting completely out of hand, Appius Claudius agreed to let the girl go home with her uncle for the night and made the man post a huge bond in silver to make sure Verginia would show up for her hearing.

“At dawn the next morning the city woke in a fever of excitement. Verginius, back from his military duty, appeared in the Forum leading his daughter by the hand—he in mourning, she in rags, followed by all the women of the family making lamentations. There was a trial, or something resembling a trial, with each of the sides presenting arguments and Appius Claudius presiding as sole judge. Evidence and common sense counted for nothing. The verdict was decided before the trial began. As soon as the arguments were finished, Appius Claudius announced that Verginia was the slave of Marcus, not the daughter of Verginius. Marcus was free to claim his property.

“The crowd was stupefied. Nobody uttered a word. Marcus began pushing his way through the crowd, heading for Verginia. The women around her burst into tears. Verginius shook his fist at Appius and cried out, ‘I meant my daughter for a bridal bed, not for your brothel! No man who owns a sword will put up with this sort of outrage!’

“Appius Claudius was prepared for this. He’d received alarming reports of an uprising being planned against the decemvirs, he claimed, and so just happened to have a troop of armed lictors on hand to keep order. He called them out and told them to draw their swords and clear the way so that Marcus could claim his property. Anyone who obstructed this act of justice would be killed on the spot as a disturber of the peace. Marcus strode forward through the cordon of steel and laid his hands on Verginia.

“Verginius finally seemed to lose heart. With tears in his eyes he called to Appius Claudius: ‘Perhaps I
have
been terribly mistaken all these years. Yes, perhaps you’re right and the girl isn’t really my daughter after all. Let me take the child and her nurse aside for just one moment so that I can talk to them both privately. If I can reconcile myself to this mistake, I can give her up without violence.’ Appius granted this request, though in retrospect one has to wonder why. Perhaps he wanted to savor the actual moment of acquiring the girl, of seeing her fall into Marcus’s clutches, and didn’t mind an excuse for stretching out the ordeal just a bit longer.

“Verginius took his daughter to a little street off the Forum. He ran into a butcher’s shop, grabbed a knife, and ran back to Verginia. Before anyone could stop him, he stabbed her in the heart. She died in his arms, convulsing and spitting blood, while he stroked her hair and whispered to her over and over, ‘It was the only way to set you free, my child, the only way.’ He staggered back into the Forum carrying her body. The crowd parted for him, stunned into silence, so that Verginius’s cries echoed through the Forum. “This blood is on your hands, Appius Claudius! The curse of my virgin daughter’s blood is on your head!’ ”

Catullus fell silent. I stared into the darkness above us. “Quite a story,” I finally said. “What happened next?”

“Verginius and the young man who was to have been his
son-in-law led an uprising. The decemvirs were brought down. Appius Claudius was arrested.”

“Was he punished?”

“He killed himself in prison, awaiting trial.”

“No wonder the Clodii don’t brag about him. But I don’t see how the story relates to your Lesbia.”

“Don’t you? You see, there’s this particular strain of madness in their blood. Yes, the Clodii have a heritage of building, creating, rising to glory and triumph. But there’s also this other aspect, this unwholesome tendency to obsess, this inability to see beyond a thing they desire but cannot have. If they come to want a thing, they’ll do anything to get it. Anything! And if their skewed judgment takes them down the wrong path, don’t expect them to realize the error and turn back. Oh no, once set upon it, they’ll run the course, even straight into disaster. And all in the name of love! They’ll wager everything on the slim chance that when the dice are cast they’ll score the Venus Throw.”

“Are you sure you’re speaking of Clodia? Or could it be yourself you’re describing, Catullus?”

He was silent for a long moment. “I suppose I wouldn’t love, her as I do if we weren’t alike in certain ways.”

He was quiet then for so long that I thought he must have fallen asleep, until he murmured, “Cicero speaks tomorrow.”

“What?”

“At the trial.”

“Yes.”

“She should have known better than to take him on. Cicero is a dangerous man.”

“I know. I saw what he did to Catilina when he made up his mind to destroy him. All it took were words.”

“Clodia thinks everything comes down to bodies, and sex. She doesn’t understand the power of words. It’s why she thinks my poetry is weak.” He was quiet, then said, “Cicero was in love with her once. Did you know that?”

“I once heard a very vague rumor of some such thing, but it sounded like nonsense to me. Cicero, in love with anyone but himself?”

“Infatuated, anyway. He was great friends with her husband, Quintus. Always visiting their house, back when Quintus was alive and the place was . . . well, respectable enough for a man like Cicero to feel at home. Clodia was a lot more restrained back then; more discreet, anyway. I think she rather liked having to carry on her affairs behind someone else’s back—the secret meetings, the danger of getting caught, the wicked thrill of cuckolding her husband. And of course, a married woman can simply turn her back on a lover the moment she tires of him . . .”

“But Cicero? Preposterous. He despises people like her.”

“Are there other people like Clodia?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Perhaps he despises her now, but back then . . . this was during the worst part of Clodia’s marriage, the last few years before Quintus died, when the two of them fought all the time, even in front of company. Especially in front of company. They fought about everything—Clodia’s affairs, her brother’s career, money, polities. I’ ve always thought that’s what intrigued Cicero—seeing her at her most argumentative. He could ignore the fact that she was beautiful, but she was also clever and sharp-tongued. A voluptuous beauty who could argue a man like Quintus into the ground—well, Cicero developed quite a fascination for her. That happens to men like him sometimes, who keep their natural appetites all bottled up. Suddenly they find themselves madly in love with the most inappropriate person. I suspect Clodia was a bit intrigued by him—the perverse attraction of opposites. I’m not sure whether they ever did anything about it. She told me they did, but I figured she was just lying to hurt me. This was years ago, but it makes him all the more dangerous to her now.”

“Dangerous?” I said, not quite sure what he meant. I was getting very sleepy.

“Men like Cicero don’t like to dwell on that sort of memory. They see it as weakness. They prefer to stamp it out.”

I tried to imagine Cicero as a lover—prim, dyspeptic Cicero—but I was too sleepy to make the mental effort, or too afraid it would give me bad dreams.

“Tomorrow—oh, no, light’s coming through the shutters. The sky’s beginning to lighten already,” Catullus groaned. “Not tomorrow, then: today. Today the Great Mother festival begins, and down in the Forum, someone will be destroyed.”

“How can you be certain?”

He tapped his earlobe. “The gods whisper in a poet’s ear. Today, someone will be publicly annihilated. Humiliated. Ruined forever.”

“You mean Marcus Caelius.”

“Do I?”

“Who else?”

He stretched his body in a paroxysm of yawning. “Things could go one way or the other. Even the gods will have to wait and see.”

“What do you mean?” I murmured. Then I must have fallen asleep, or else Catullus did, because I never heard him answer.

A
fter a fitful hour or two of sleep I opened my eyes. Morning light was creeping in around the shuttered windows, but I think it was Catullus’s snoring that woke me.

I crept to the anteroom, kicked Belbo awake, and told him to run home as fast as he could and fetch my best toga. He was back before I had finished washing my face.

“I suppose someone was minding the door,” I said, while he helped me dress.

“Yes, Master.”

“Was there any word of Eco?”

“No, Master.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing, Master.”

“Was your mistress up?”

“Yes, Master.”

“What did she have to say? Any message for me?”

“No, Master. She didn’t say a word. But she looked—”

“Yes, Belbo?”

“She looked more displeased than usual, Master.”

“Did she? Come, Belbo, we’ll need to hurry to catch the start of the trial. I’m sure we can find something to eat on the way. There’ll be plenty of vendors out for the festival.” As we were leaving, Catullus appeared from the bedroom,
looking haggard and bleary-eyed. He assured me he would be down at the Forum before the trial started, but he looked to me as if he would have to be raised from the dead first.

Belbo and I arrived just as the defense was beginning its arguments. With no slaves sent ahead to hold a chair for me, I found myself near the back of the crowd, which was even larger than the day before. I had to stand on tiptoes to see, but I had no trouble hearing. The well-trained orator’s voice of Marcus Caelius rang through the square.

As Atratinus, the youngest of the prosecutors, had begun their case the day before, so young Caelius began his own defense; as Atratinus had dwelled on the defendant’s character, so did Caelius. Was this the morally depraved, sensation-seeking, too-handsome young murderer that the prosecution had portrayed? One would never have known it from Caelius’s appearance and manner. He was dressed in a toga so old and faded that even a poor man might have thrown it out. It must have come from a musty chest in his father’s storage room.

His manner was as humble as his clothes were shabby. The fiery young orator famous for his rapid delivery and biting invectives spoke on this day in a calm, measured, thoughtful cadence, oozing with respect for the judges. He declared himself innocent of all charges; these horrible, spurious accusations had been lodged against him by people who had once been his friends but were now his enemies, and their only goal was to destroy him for their personal satisfaction. A man could hardly be blamed for the treachery of false friends; still, Caelius regretted his poor judgment in ever having associated with such people, for he could see the pain and suffering it had caused his father and mother, who were with him again today, dressed in mourning and barely controlling their tears. He regretted, too, the burden that the trial had placed on his loyal friends, beloved mentors and trusted advocates, Marcus Crassus and Marcus Cicero, two truly great Romans whose example he had admittedly
failed to live up to, but to whom he would turn again for renewed inspiration when this ordeal had passed, provided the judges in their wisdom saw fit to give him that chance.