A Gladiator Dies Only Once (27 page)

“Once a thing is done, it’s done. The accomplished fact takes on an air of inevitability, no matter how uncertain it might have seemed beforehand. Do you not agree, Gordianus?” Cicero flashed a quizzical smile.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

We were strolling across the Forum on a fine spring morning. Ahead of us, fluffy white clouds were heaped on the horizon beyond the Capitoline Hill, like a vast nimbus crowning the Temple of Jupiter, but in every other direction the sky was an immaculate blue. The mild, warm air carried strains of birdsong from yew trees that grew along the slope of the Palatine Hill that rose steeply to our left. We continued to stroll at a slow pace, but paused when a group of Vestals emerged from the round temple of their goddess and crossed our path, holding their chins high and wearing haughty expressions. One of them deigned to cast a glance at Cicero, and I saw him give her a faint nod. I recognized his sister-in-law Fabia; once, years ago, I had rescued her from the terrible fate that awaits any Vestal who dares to break her vow of chastity. Fabia did not appear to notice me, or else deliberately avoided meeting my gaze. So it sometimes goes with those who call on Gordianus the Finder in their time of trouble; when the trouble is over, and they no longer need me, I vanish to their eyes, as the smoke from a censer can be dispersed by a puff of air, leaving no trace to the senses.

Cicero, tired of walking, indicated that he wished to sit for a while on the stone bench beside the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. He gestured to the space beside him, but I told him I preferred to remain standing for a while.

“What’s this you were saying, about inevitability?” I asked.

Cicero hummed thoughtfully. “How did the playwright Ennius put it? ‘It is done now. The workings of the Fates I surmise; how could the outcome have been otherwise?’”

“Ennius was talking about the murder of Remus by Romulus, as I recall. But what in Hades are
you
talking about, Cicero?”

He shrugged and narrowed his eyes, as if searching his mind for an example, but I suspected the point he wished to make was already fully formed in his mind and he was simply taking his time to get around to it, wanting his words to seem spontaneous rather than rehearsed. Cicero was a lawyer, and this is how lawyers speak; they never go straight to the point when they can practice circumlocution. There was no sense in pressing him. I sighed and decided to sit down after all.

“Well, Gordianus, consider: a mere ten years ago—say, during the consulship of my good friend Lucullus—who could have foreseen with any certainty the future course of the Roman Republic? To the west, the rebel general Sertorius was luring malcontents in the Senate to Spain, with the aim of setting up a rival republic; Sertorius and his followers claimed that they represented the true Rome, and showed every intention of returning someday to claim the city as their own. Meanwhile, to the east, the war against King Mithridates had taken a turn for the worse; it was beginning to look as if Rome had bitten off more than she could chew when she invaded Mithridates’s holdings in Asia Minor, and we were likely to choke on our mistake.

“And
then,
to compound the situation, our enemies decided to join forces against us! Sertorius sent his right-hand man, Marcus Varius, to lead Mithridates’s army, and so Rome found herself embattled against Roman generals on both sides. The development was all the more unnerving because Sertorius had only one eye—as did Varius! One had lost his right eye in battle, the other his left; I can never remember which had lost which. Notwithstanding Aristotle and his disdain for coincidence, any historian will tell you that Fortune loves odd synchronisms and curious parallels—and what a curious turn of events, if Rome had been bested by two of her own generals, a pair of men who between them possessed a pair of eyes such as most men take for granted. I must confess, Gordianus, in my darker moods it seemed to me that Sertorius and Mithridates together would triumph and split the world between them; history would have taken a very different course, and Rome would be a different place today.”

“But that’s not what happened,” I said.

“No. Sertorius, with his overbearing personality, at last became so insufferable to his own followers that they murdered him. Sertorius’s one-eyed henchman Varius proved to be not such a capable general after all; in a sea battle off the island of Lemnos, Lucullus took him captive and destroyed his army. King Mithridates was bested on every front, and stripped of his most prized territories, which now pay their tribute to Rome. What’s done is done, and the outcome seems to have been inevitable all along; Rome’s triumph was assured from the beginning, by the grace of the gods, and it could never have been otherwise.”

“You believe in destiny, then?”

“Rome
believes in destiny, Gordianus, for at every stage of her history, her destiny has been manifest.”

“Perhaps,” I said, but doubtfully. It was in the nature of my work to poke and prod and peer beneath the surface of things, to turn back rugs, so to speak, and examine the detritus swept underneath; and from my experience, no man (and by extension, no nation) possessed such a thing as a manifest destiny. Every man and nation proceeded through life in fits and starts, frequently heading off in the wrong direction and then doubling back, usually making a host of catastrophic mistakes and desperately trying to cover them over before moving on to make the next mistake. If the gods took any part in the process, it was generally to have a bit of sport at the expense of hapless mortals, not to light the way to some predetermined path of greatness. Only historians and politicians, blessed by keen self-interest and blurry hindsight, could look at the course of events and see the workings of divine intention.

If Cicero entertained another view, I was hardly surprised. At that moment, he was swiftly and surely approaching the apogee of his political career. His work as an advocate in the courts had gained him the friendship of Rome’s most powerful families. His advancement through the magistracies had been marked by one successful election campaign after another. In the coming run for the consulship he was considered a clear front-runner. When I first met him, many years before, he had been young, untested, and much more cynical about the ways of the world; since then, success had tamed him and given him the rosy, self-satisfied aura of those who begin to think their success was inevitable, along with the success of the city and the empire they served.

“And yet,” I observed, “if things had gone only a little differently, Sertorius might have become king of the West, with his capital in Spain, and Mithridates might still be undisputed king of the East, and Rome might have been reduced to a mere backwater over which the two of them would be squabbling.”

Cicero shuddered at the thought. “A good thing, then, that Sertorius was killed, and Mithridates soundly defeated by Lucullus.”

I cleared my throat. It was one thing for Cicero to engage in philosophical speculation about destiny, but another to contradict the facts of recent history. “I believe it’s been left for Pompey to finally end the war with Mithridates, once and for all.”

“Pompey is charged with
ending
the war, yes; but Lucullus fought Mithridates for years, all over Asia Minor, before he was recalled to Rome and forced to cede his command to Pompey. If Pompey appears to be making quick work of Mithridates, it’s only because Lucullus softened the ground for him.” Cicero snorted. “Ever since Lucullus came back to Rome, he’s been owed a triumph for his many victories in the East, but his political enemies have successfully conspired to deprive him of it. Well, their obstructionism is about to be ended, and within a year, Lucullus will finally celebrate his triumph; perhaps—and I should be only too honored—during the year of my consulship, should the gods favor my election. So please, Gordianus, don’t subject me to this line of argument about Pompey being the sole conqueror of the East. Lucullus broke the enemy’s back, and Pompey merely moved in for the kill.”

I shrugged. It was a controversy about which I had no firm opinion.

Cicero cleared his throat. “Anyway . . . how would you like to join him for a leisurely meal this afternoon?”

“Join
whom
?.”

“Why, Lucullus, of course.”

“Ah . . .” I nodded. So that was the true purpose of Cicero’s desire to see me that morning, and the point of his digressions. The subject all along had been Lucullus.

“Has Lucullus invited me?”

“He has. And, let me assure you, Gordianus, no man in his right mind would refuse an invitation to sup with Lucullus. His conquests in the East made him very, very wealthy, and I’ve never known anyone who more greatly enjoys spending his wealth. His dinners are legendary—even those he consumes by himself!”

I nodded. Lucullus was a well-known Epicurean, devoted to enjoying the good life and indulging every sensory pleasure. Even during military campaigns he had been noted for the extravagance of his table. The multitudes in Rome were eagerly looking forward to his triumph, which, along with a fabulous procession, would also feature public entertainments, banquets, and a distribution of gifts to all who attended.

“If Lucullus desires my company, why does he not contact me directly? And to what do I owe the honor of this invitation?”
In other words: What sort of trouble had Lucullus gotten himself into, and what would he expect me to do about it?
I could leave the question of payment to another time; Lucullus was not miserly and could afford to be generous.

Cicero looked at me askance. “Gordianus, Gordianus! Always so suspicious! First of all, Lucius Licinius Lucullus is not the sort of fellow to dispatch a slave to deliver an invitation to a fellow citizen he hasn’t yet met. Not his style at all! He obtains new friends through those who are already his friends. He’s very strict about that sort of thing; decorum matters greatly to him. Which is not to say he’s stuffy; quite the opposite. Do you follow me?”

I raised a dubious eyebrow.

Cicero snorted. “Very well, then, it was I who mentioned your name to him and suggested he might wish to make your acquaintance. And not for any nefarious purpose; the context was entirely innocent. What do you know about Lucullus’s circle of friends?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Yet if I were to mention their names, you’d no doubt recognize them. Famous men, well regarded in their fields, the best of the best. Men like Antiochus of Ascalon, the Greek philosopher; Arcesislaus, the sculptor; and of course Aulus Archias, the poet. Those three are Lucullus’s constant companions.”

“I’ve heard of them, of course. Is it Lucullus’s habit to collect friends whose names all begin with the same letter?”

Cicero smiled. “You’re not the first to notice that; ‘the three As,’ Lucullus sometimes calls them. A mere coincidence, signifying nothing—as I’m sure Aristotle would agree, notwithstanding his own initial. Anyway, as you can imagine, the conversation at Lucullus’s table can be rather elevated, with discussions of philosophy and art and poetry and so on; even I sometimes find it a bit challenging to carry my weight—if you can imagine that!” He laughed aloud at this self-deprecation; to be polite, I managed a chuckle.

“Of late,” he continued, “Lucullus has been most interested in discourse on the subjects of truth and perception—how we know what we know, and how we distinguish truth from falsehood.”

“Epistemology, I think the philosophers call it.”

“Exactly! You see, Gordianus, you are not entirely without refinement.”

“I don’t recall claiming that I was.”

Cicero laughed, but I did not join him. “Anyway, Lucullus was saying that he’s grown weary of hearing the same points of view expounded over and over. He already knows what Antiochus and Arcesislaus and Archias will say, given their points of view—the philosopher, the artist, the poet. And he knows what I will say—the politician! Apparently some particular problem is bothering him, though he won’t come out and say what it is, and our tired ideas are of no use to him. So, when I dined with him a few days ago, I told him I knew a fellow who might very well have something new to offer: Gordianus the Finder.”

“Me?”

“Are you not as obsessed with truth as any philosopher? Do you not see the true shape of things as keenly as any sculptor and cut through falsehood as cleverly as any playwright? And are you not as sharp a judge of character as any politician? More importantly, would you not enjoy an unforgettably lavish meal as much as any other man? All your host shall ask in return is your company and your conversation.”

Put that way, I could see no reason to refuse. Still, it seemed to me there must be more to the matter than Cicero was willing to admit.

To reach the villa of Lucullus, one passed outside the city walls at the Fontinalis Gate, traveled a short distance up the Flaminian Way, and then ascended the Pincian Hill. A stone wall surrounded the property; entry could be obtained only through a guarded iron gate. Even after one passed through the gate, the villa could not be seen, for it was surrounded by extensive gardens.

The gardens had excited much comment, for Lucullus had collected hundreds of trees, flowers, vines, and shrubberies from all over Asia Minor and had transported them, at great expense, back to Rome, along with a veritable army of gardeners. Some of the plants had taken root in the soil of Italy, while others had not, and so the garden was still a work in progress, with here and there a bare spot or a plant that appeared less than content. Nonetheless, the consummate artistry of Lucullus’s landscapers was evident at every turn. To follow the stone-paved path that wound up the hillside toward the villa, decorated here and there with a rustic bench, or a statue, or a splashing fountain, was to encounter one delightfully framed vista after another. Unfamiliar flowers bloomed in profusion. The leaves of exotic trees shivered in the warm breeze. Trellises were overgrown with vines that bore strange fruit. Occasionally, through the lush greenery, I caught a glimpse of the temples atop the Capitoline Hill in the distance, or the glimmer of the sinuous, faraway Tiber, and the sight compelled me to pause and take it in.