SPQR III: the sacrilege by John Maddox Roberts Read Free Book Online

infant seem a veritable monster by comparison. One thing was certain: That boy had been afraid to be seen emerging from her booth.
    If you seek any prominent Roman at midday, it is usually futile to look for him at home. Your best bet is to go to the Forum and wander around until you bump into him. That was how I found Milo. He stood near the Temple of Castor and Pollux, surrounded by a group of tough-looking men, most of them dressed in dark tunics. He was the only one who bothered with a toga. He grinned his great, white-toothed grin when he saw me.
    We had been friends for years, a thing most of my peers thought disgraceful. He was the most powerful gang leader in Rome, with Clodius as his only rival. He was a huge man, still young and extraordinarily handsome. He had been a rower in his younger years and was as strong as any professional gladiator or wrestler. We exchanged the usual embraces and greetings and he invited me to his house, where we could talk privily.
    The minor fortress Milo called home occupied a whole block in one of the better slums. It was fully staffed with street fighters, many of them veterans of the legions or the arena. We sat at a table in Milo's enormous assembly room, and one of his men brought us watered wine. Milo was never one for the amenities, so I launched straight into the matter at hand.
    "Milo, why is Clodius still in Rome?"
    "His presence has not escaped me," Milo said. "Nor has the fact that Caesar shows an uncharacteristic fondness for our city when his fortunes are to be mended elsewhere."
    "Caius Julius doesn't amount to much," I said.
    "Not yet, but keep your eye on him. And Clodius is Caesar's man."
    I remembered the odd tableau that morning. "You think it's connected?"
    "I know that Clodius does very little these days without Caesar's permission."
    My cup paused halfway to my lips. "That's new. Were some new lines drawn while I was away?"
    "The lines are much the same as always, but the number of players in this game has narrowed. There used to be many gangs controlling the streets of Rome. Now there are just two: mine and Clodius's. Once there was a large number of soldier-politicians and lawyer-politicians contending for mastery of Rome and its empire. Most have dropped out or been eliminated. Lucullus, Hortalus and the rest have left the big struggle for power."
    "Hortalus is Censor with my father," I pointed out.
    "An office with great prestige but no imperium. No, Decius Caecilius, the contenders are now Pompey, Crassus and Cicero, with Caesar soon to join them. See what he is like when he gets back from Spain."
    "I trust your instincts," I said. "So you say Clodius has become Caesar's man. Celer tells me that you are now closely linked with Cicero."
    "Cicero and I are not friends, but he needs me. The men who want to control the empire must be away from the city much of the time. They must have an ally to control the city in their absence, and there is no constitutional office for that purpose."
    I always admired this quality in Milo. He knew the branchings of power as a farmer knows the branching of his grapevines. He knew which branches showed promise and which needed pruning. He was utterly un-trammeled by the constitutional precedents and traditions that shaped the political thinking of more orthodox Romans.
    "What is Cicero's standing these days with the Senate and the public in general?"
    "Precarious for the moment. He has his adherents, but his enemies charge that he was high-handed in executing the Catilinarian conspirators without trial. And many are resentful of his indifferent origins. They can't accept the idea of a new man rising as Cicero has. Some are jealous of his new house on the Palatine. They're charging that he embezzled public funds to build it."
    "How do you read the situation?" I asked.
    "The Catilinarian scandal will fade in no great time. Nothing gets old as fast as yesterday's scandal. Catilina never had any firm base among the powerful men of