Saturnalia by John Maddox Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

dominated by the huge Theater of Pompey and itsextensive complex, which included a meeting hall for the Senate. Since its completion, most Senate meetings had been held there. At least the place had enough room. Sulla had almost doubled the number of senators without building a correspondingly large Senate chamber. Now, twenty years later, despite deaths and purgings by the censors, there were still far too many to fit comfortably in the old Curia.
    I saw the tents and booths immediately upon coming in sight of the Circus Flaminius. They were brightly colored and painted in fanciful designs with stars, serpents, and lunar crescents being favored motifs. They also seemed to be doing a brisk business, another sign of unsettled times. As in so many other matters, Rome had two distinct traditions in fortune-telling: the official and the popular.
    On an official level, the state had augurs who were elected and who interpreted omens according to a strict table of significance, mostly concerned with birds, lightning, thunder, and other things of the air. They did not foretell the future, but rather, they received the will of the gods concerning a given subject at a particular time. This was a bit rarified for the common people, so from time to time the state resorted to the Etruscan
haruspices,
who interpreted the will of the gods by the robust technique of examining the entrails of sacrificial animals. Rarest of all were consultations of the Sibylline Books, which occurred only at times of calamity or extraordinary omens and were in the keeping of a college of fifteen distinguished men.
    These were lofty personages, whose pronouncements were of general concern to the state and community. There were private augurs and
haruspices
who offered personal consultations and charged a fee for their services, but they were rather despised by officialdom. Hence the wise women, whomthe common people consulted incessantly upon matters both important and trivial. Unlike the official omen readers, who made no pretence to special powers, the seeresses often claimed the ability to foresee the future. Like their betters, the commons never lacked for credulity, and the frequency of failed predictions never shook their faith in the efficacy of these prophetesses.
    The first booth I came to was small and shabby, not that the rest would have been mistaken for
praetoria.
I passed inside and immediately began choking on the thick incense smoke. With smarting eyes I could just make out an aged crone seated pretentiously upon a short-legged bronze tripod, as if she were a genuine sibyl.
    “What would you have of Bella?” she hissed. “Bella finds that which is hidden. Bella sees what is to come.” Her near-toothless mouth made the words come out a bit mushy, robbing them of their intended awe-inspiring effect.
    “Actually, I was looking for someone skilled with herbs and medicines,” I told her.
    “Six booths down on the left,” she said. “Beneath the circus arches. Ask for Furia.”
    I thanked her and backed out. Before proceeding I stood taking deep breaths while facing the wind. When my eyes stopped tearing, I went in search of the one called Furia.
    The crone’s talents obviously did not include a facility with numbers, because there were at least twelve booths between hers and the circus. I hoped for the sake of her clients that her gift of prophecy was greater than her arithmetic. From the tents I passed I heard rattling and fluting and the sounds of wailing chants. Some of these women claimed to be able to put customers in contact with dead relatives. I have never understood why these shades never seem to speak in a normaltone of voice but always resort to shrieking and moaning. Neither could I see the point of consulting them. My living relatives gave me enough trouble as it was.
    The deep arcade at the base of any circus makes a near-ideal impromptu market, and those beneath the Flaminius had been curtained off, with further curtains