The Venus Throw (11 page)

“No,” she said.

“That’s odd. I thought that he would; he was so distraught. I worried about him while I was away. Perhaps he didn’t need my help after all. Have you heard any news of him, through your vast network of spies and informants?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And? What news?”

“He’s dead,” said Bethesda. “Murdered, I believe, in the house where he was staying. That’s all I know.”

The swirling dregs in my wine cup slowed to a stop, the porridge in my stomach turned to stone, and in my mouth I tasted ashes.

I
t was not until several days after my return to Rome that I found time to write a letter to Meto. I recounted to him the events which had transpired in my absence—Cicero defeating Caelius in the trial of Bestia despite the accusation of “the guilty finger” (the perfect anecdote for Meto to share with his tentmates!), Pompey’s embarrassment on his way to Milo’s trial, the obscene chant about Clodius and Clodia.

Since I had made such a story of Trygonion’s and Dio’s visit when I saw Meto in Illyria, I felt I should let him know what had become of the philosopher. Merely a matter of keeping him informed, I told myself, as I began setting down the words. But as I wrote, I began to realize that telling the tale was in fact my chief reason for writing the letter. Dio’s murder had left me with a nagging sense of guilt, and writing down the gory facts for Meto’s perusal, painful though it was, somehow eased my conscience, as if describing an event could mitigate its awfulness.

When it comes to correspondence, I am not Meto; my prose will never capture great Caesar’s admiration. Nonetheless, I will copy down a bit of what I wrote to Meto on that last day of Februarius:

Also, son, you will probably remember the tale I told you about my visit from Dio, the philosopher I once knew in Alexandria, and the little gallus named Trygonion. You laughed when I described to you their absurd disguises—Dio dressed like a woman, and the eunuch in a toga trying to pass himself off as a Roman.

The sequel, I fear, is quite the opposite of funny.

What Dio dreaded came to pass, only hours after he left me. That very night, as I was making ready for my journey to see you, Dio was being viciously murdered in the house of his host, Titus Coponius.

I learned the bare fact that Dio had been murdered from Bethesda on the morning after my return to Rome. She claimed to know no details at all. Bethesda took a disliking to Dio the instant she laid eyes on him, and you know how she is—from that moment on he might as well not have existed; even her appetite for gossip seems unstirred by his murder. I had to discover the details for myself, posing discreet questions in the proper quarters. This was not difficult, though it took some time.

It seems that there had been a previous, failed attempt to poison Dio. He mentioned this to me himself on the night of his visit. Apparently some slaves of his previous host, Lucius Lucceius, were suborned (doubtless by agents of King Ptolemy) to poison Dio’s food, but succeeded instead in killing his sole remaining slave, who had taken on the role of food taster. Dio fled from Lucceius’s house to that of Coponius.

It was from the house of Coponius that Dio came to call on me, and to ask for my help. If only I had offered to let him spend the night in my house! But then his assassins might have done their bloody work here, under my roof. I think of Bethesda and particularly of Diana and I shudder at the thought.

Poison having failed, Dio’s enemies resorted to less subtle means. After leaving my house, Dio returned to Coponius’s as quickly as he could—darkness had fallen and Dio feared the streets, even disguised as he was and with Belbo along for protection. As for Trygonion, Belbo says that he went along as far as Coponius’s door and then went his own way, perhaps returning to the House of the Galli, which is also here on the Palatine, close by the temple of Cybele. No one seems to know much about this gallus, and no one can explain to me his relationship to Dio.

What follows is secondhand information, some of it thirdhand—which makes it gossip, really—but I think it’s reliable.

Back at Coponius’s house, Dio shut himself alone in his room, refusing to take any diner. (He had already eaten at my house, and was very fearful of being poisoned.) The household of Coponius retires early, and soon after dark everyone was abed except the slave who had been posted inside the front door to keep watch through the night. At some point (before midnight, according to the watchman) there was a noise from the back of the house, where Dio was quartered.

The watchman went to investigate. Dio’s door was locked. The slave called his name and rapped on the door. Finally the slave pounded so loudly that Coponius himself (in the bedroom adjoining) was awakened and came to ask what the matter was. At length the door was broken down and Dio was discovered on his sleeping couch, lying on his back with his eyes and mouth wide open, his chest pierced by gaping wounds. He had been stabbed to death in his bed.

A window in the room opened onto a small courtyard. The shutters of this window were open and the latch had been forced from outside. The killer or killers
apparently crept over a high wall, skulked across the terrace, broke into Dio’s room through the window, murdered him, then skulked away.

The killer or killers escaped unseen.

It was a wretched end to a distinguished life. That Dio foresaw his destruction and spent his final days in a city far from home, dreading every shadow, casts an even gloomier pall over his fate. That he came to me, asking for my help on the very day of his murder, fills me with agitation. Could I have prevented the deed? Almost certainly not, I tell myself, for the men who wished to see Dio dead have resources far beyond anything I could forestall. Yet it seems a cruel jest of the gods to have brought him back into my life after so many years and then to have snatched him away so violently. I have seen much carnage and suffering in my life, yet it never becomes easier to bear. It only becomes harder for me to fathom.

Now every member of the embassy which arrived last fall from Alexandria has been murdered or has fled back to Egypt or has otherwise vanished from sight. (The few still in Rome, I am told, have either pledged their allegiance to King Ptolemy or been bribed to keep silent; no doubt some or all of them were the king’s spies from the beginning.) The people of Rome should be ashamed that such an atrocity could occur not just in Italy but in the very heart of the city itself. To be sure, there are those who say that Dio’s murder is such an outrage that the Senate will be shamed into taking some action to punish his slayers (if not King Ptolemy, then at least his henchmen). The Senate may even move to repudiate the king and recognize Queen Berenice, which was the object of Dio’s mission. While he lived, the Senate would not even allow him to officially address them, but in death
Dio may yet achieve what he desired: an Egypt with a new, independent ruler.

Can justice follow upon a tragedy such as Dio’s murder? Considering the state of Rome’s courts and the persons whose interests are at stake, I strongly doubt it. But I refuse to brood overmuch concerning this matter. Had I accepted Dio’s commission to expose his enemies, I might now feel some obligation to pursue the matter of bringing his killers to justice. Fortunately, my rejection of his commission was explicit. I told him that I could not help him and gave him a good reason. My conscience is clear. The task of finding the blade which drew Dio’s lifeblood, and punishing the hand that wielded it, does not fall to me.

Whatever happens next, it will not involve me, and for that I am glad.

Rereading that letter now, I see that my statements regarding the circumstances of Dio’s death are marred by a number of errors, some of them quite significant. But no statement was more in error than the final one, which I read now with a shudder of amazement. How could I have been so blithely, smugly unforeseeing? What a perilous world we move through, like men blindfolded. The past and future are equally obscure, and broad daylight can hide as many dangers as the landscape of the night.

A
lmost a month passed before I had occasion to write to Meto again.

To my beloved son Meto, serving under the command of Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, from his loving father in Rome, may Fortune be with you.

I write this letter on the twenty-ninth day of Martius, an uncommonly warm day for so early in the spring—we have thrown open all the windows and the afternoon sunshine is hot on my shoulders. I wish you were here beside me.

Alas, you are not. Nor are you safely at ease in Illyria, where I last saw you. I learned in the Forum of your sudden move to Gaul not long after my visit. They say that Caesar was called to put down a revolt by some tribe with an unpronounceable name—I won’t even try to spell it. I presume that you have gone along with him.

Take care, Meto.

Given your movements, I have no way of knowing if my letter of a month ago has reached you, or will reach you after this one, or will ever reach you at all, but since one of Caesar’s message bearers (a young
soldier who has carried my letters to you before) is about to leave for Gaul and says he will take along a letter from me if I can finish it within the hour, I am writing very quickly and will simply give you what news I can, even at the risk of conveying events that make little sense for lack of context. (Don’t show this letter to your commander, please. I fear that a man who dictates his memoirs on horseback would hardly accept being rushed as an excuse for fashioning such awkward sentences.)

Hopefully, you did receive my last letter, and so you know of the murder of Dio. I scoffed at those who said Dio’s murder was too big a thing to go without consequence and that the scandal would result in someone being punished, but it seems that I was wrong and they were right, up to a point.

The scandal has been enormous. Dio was even better known and more highly regarded than I had realized—or did murder make a martyr of him and render him larger and more beloved in death than he was in life? For a man who is now spoken of in such tones of awe, he was certainly treated very shabbily in the final months of his life, shuffling from one reluctant (perhaps treacherous) host to another, expending his resources until his purse was empty. The senators who now speak of Dio as a second Aristotle and weep at the mention of his name are the same men who refused to allow Dio to speak in their chambers not long ago.