The Catiline Conspiracy by John Maddox Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

here, I thought. He would probably petition the Senate for a return to human sacrifice, since it had been the custom of our ancestors.
    There was a heap of something on the floor, covered by a large piece of cloth. Behind me, next to the doorway, I found a lamp-niche and placed my lamp in it. Then I stooped and drew the cloth back. The flame glittered off a great deal of metal. It was a heap of weapons. The majority were swords and short spears. I saw the stout
gladius
of the legions in many styles, some recent, others dating back as far as Scipio and the Punic wars. There was the long
spatha
of the cavalry and the many shapes of sword used in the amphitheater. Some of the spears were hunting weapons such as broad-bladed boar spears. Others were military, the light javelin and the heavy
pilum
of the legions. Once again, these last were mostly of older design.
    It was a strange armory, obviously gathered from many sources, but brought here for what purpose? I recovered the heap of arms and looked into the other rooms. One was empty. In the other was a small stack of shields, not the great, body-covering
scutum
of the regular legions, but the small, round or oval ones carried by light-armed auxiliaries.
    I went back up the steps. At the landing, I looked to see if there was anyone about who might see me leaving the basement stair. The great shrine was vacant for the moment and I slipped out, replacing the lamp in its niche. When I returned to the treasury, Minicius looked up from beneath his white brows.
    "Where have you been?" he demanded. He was only a freedman, but as one of the most important freedmen in Rome, he did not have to be humble. He sat at his table, his pen racing across a scroll of papyrus.
    "I had to run over the public bath and use the jakes," I said. "It must have been something I ate this morning."
    "More likely something you drank last night. Here, I've a stack of things for you to sign."
    I looked them over, but I really had no idea what I was signing. Only a man who works with numbers all his life can make any sense of columns of figures. I had to trust Minicius. Since every treasury
quaestor
for the last forty years or so had done the same without coming to harm, I felt fairly safe.
    I said nothing to him or anybody else about what I had found. It was the sort of thing requiring a great deal of deep, serious thought. After locking the treasury in the afternoon, I did exactly that. I went to one of the smaller baths, where I was not likely to encounter anyone I would be obliged to talk to. There I sat in the
caldarium
, stewed in the hot water, and thought.
    Somebody had cached arms in the Temple of Saturn. It was clearly not part of an attempt to steal the treasury. Thieves avoid fighting at all costs. On the other hand, someone planning a coup would naturally wish to seize the treasury as one of his first acts.
    But who might it be? The times had been tranquil for almost twenty years, since the dictatorship of Sulla. All the wars had been on foreign soil except for the slave rebellion led by Spartacus. Was one of our generals planning a march on Rome and preparing for it by arming cohorts within the city? It would not be the first time.
    Something did not fit that theory, though. I worried at it until I saw what was not consistent: it was the haphazardness of the weaponry. Surely a general would have supplied his confederates with arms of a uniform nature, if for no other reason than a military sense of tidiness. Whoever had done this had picked up weapons wherever he could find them, probably buying them a few at a time at widely separated places to avoid suspicion.
    Of course, not all of our generals were as well fixed as Pompey. Italy was full of the veterans of a dozen wars, paid off, disbanded and settled in smallholdings up and down the length of the peninsula. Every one of them had his helmet and shield, his sword and armor hanging by the hearth, waiting for his old general to call him back to the