A Murder on the Appian Way Read online

  “Well, we are here to get some answers. Not tomorrow, not somewhere else, but here and now. First, wonder no more where Milo is—he’s standing right in front of you, his head held high, proudly showing himself in the heart of the city he has served so long and so faithfully. You may have heard a wild rumor that Milo had left Rome for good and was never coming back. Yes, I see some of you nodding; you know the rumor. Ridiculous! Think of that which you love best in all the world. Would you ever let yourself be parted from it, or abandon it for any reason? No! Not if you had to die first. Not even”—he lowered his voice—“if you had to kill. That is how much Milo loves Rome. He will never forsake her.

  “Which brings us back to the first question: What sort of fellow is Milo, what is his character? That’s something each of you may decide for yourself, when you have had a chance to hear him out. Yes, Milo himself shall speak to you today. The rules allow him to speak, since Milo is himself the subject of this contio, and I demand that he speak, since I am the tribune who called this contio. Demand him to speak, I say, because Milo did not come here willingly. Oh no! I had to drag him here today, against his will. Do you think he wanted to leave his safe house to go walking in a city where madmen run riot, crying out for his death? Milo is exceedingly brave, but he’s not a fool. No, he came only because I insisted that he come, only because I, as your tribune, demanded it.

  “Which brings us to the third question, which weighs like a stone on all of us, which fills our heads like the stench from the smoking ruins of the Senate House over yonder: When will this madness be over? Not until something is done about the death of Clodius, I’m afraid. Not until the whole ugly incident is put to rest, as the shade of Clodius himself was supposedly put to rest when his friends set fire to him like a faggot in the Senate House. How did Clodius die, and why, and who killed him? The friends of Clodius claim that he was viciously attacked and killed without cause. They point the finger of blame at Milo. They call him a murderer. They insinuate that he intends to kill again, and that next time his victim will be a man far more revered, far greater than Clodius ever was.

  “Then let us put Titus Annius Milo on trial. Yes! Right here, right now, let us put him on trial for murder. Not a trial such as the magistrates hold, with jurors chosen from the Senate and the higher orders. It is you, the people, citizens of Rome, who have suffered most from the chaos of the last few days, and so I bring this matter directly to you, the people, and earnestly solicit your judgment. You see, I have not come to praise Milo; I have come to try him! And if you should determine that he is a vicious murderer, that he plots more murders, then let him leave our midst. Yes! Let him be banished, let us send him into exile and make that vicious rumor real. Let us drive Milo from the heart of the city he loves into the wilderness!”

  At this there were scattered cries of indignation from the crowd, as if the idea of Milo in exile outraged them. I noticed that our friend the fuller was among the first to raise his voice in protest. He was soon joined by a swelling chorus of dissent. Someone had done a thorough job of seeding the crowd. But I noticed that the man I had called a banker was yelling in protest, too, and gesturing for those in his retinue to raise their voices; surely a man of his means had not been bought with a mere fifty sesterces.

  Caelius raised his hands for silence and put on an expression of dismay. “Citizens! Please, restrain yourselves! You love Milo, as Milo loves Rome; I understand that. Still, he must be called to account. He must be judged, and we must be sober in our verdict. No more cheering or jeering, I beg you. This is not a candidate’s rally. This is a contio held in time of dire emergency, a solemn inquiry into a matter that has crippled our city with riot and fire. What we do here today will be talked about all over the seven hills and beyond the city walls. Those who cannot be here today, great and small alike, will take notice of your judgment. Remember that!”

  Eco spoke in my ear: “Another reference to Pompey?”

  Caelius stepped to one side of the platform. “Milo, come forward!”

  Proud and with head held high—that was how Caelius had described Milo. Certainly he did not have the scurrying gait or furtive look of a man haunted by guilt. He swept forward without hesitation and with a grand, almost swaggering air of confidence. His toga was better fitted than the one he had worn at Cicero’s house, draped and folded to give the best impression of his short, stocky physique. His usually beard-shadowed jaw looked so pale that I wondered if he had applied some sort of cosmetic.

  At a real trial he would have been expected to put on his shabbiest toga, shamble about like an old man, wear his hair unkempt and let his beard grow stubbly; jurors expect an accused man to exploit their sympathies. Clearly, Milo was having none of that. To show himself at a trial, even a mock trial, looking more like a proud candidate than an anxious defendant, was an act of pure defiance. This partisan crowd loved it. Despite Caelius’s admonitions, a loud and seemingly spontaneous cheer echoed through the Forum. Milo’s lips twitched into a smirk and he lifted his chin several degrees higher.

  Caelius put on a stern face and raised his arms for silence. “Citizens, must I remind you what we are here for? Let us proceed. Let Titus Annius Milo make an accounting of his actions.”

  Caelius stepped back to allow Milo full run of the platform; Milo was of the arm-swinging school of oratory which requires an expansive stage, in many ways the opposite of Caelius. His forte was not the small jest that only later in the speech blossoms into hilarity, or the elegant understatement that veils a pointed dagger. Milo represented what Cicero had once jokingly ridiculed as the hammer and yoke school of oratory: “Pound home every point with a heavy hammer, then yoke up the metaphors and flog them all the way to market.”

  But not every speaker can be a Cicero or Caelius; every orator has to find the style that suits him, and dogged earnestness bordering on stolid defiance suited Milo. That morning, striding back and forth across the platform waving his arms, he seemed utterly blunt and candid, though I knew that his every word and gesture must have been carefully scripted and rehearsed again and again in Cicero’s study.

  “Fellow citizens of this beloved city! My friend Marcus Caelius is right—the madness that threatens us all will never be dispelled until the true circumstances of the death of Publius Clodius are made known. I don’t know what you’ve heard about his death—I can only imagine the ugly rumors that have been flying and the vicious aspersions that have been cast against me, and against my loyal servants, who bravely risked their lives to save my own.

  “I’m not the sort to give pretty speeches. I will be brief and to the point. I can only tell you what I know.

  “Nine days ago I left Rome and set out on a short journey down the Appian Way. Some of you may know that I hold a local office back in my hometown, Lanuvium. Last year my fellow Lanuvines elected me their ‘dictator’—a quaint way of saying chief magistrate. The office is not demanding, but occasionally I do have to go home to fulfill my obligations. This was such an occasion. I was called upon to nominate a priest to the local cult of Juno to preside over her festival next month. Juno’s patronage of Lanuvium goes back to ancient times, before the Lanuvines were conquered by Rome. Her festival is the biggest day of the year in Lanuvium. Traditionally the Roman consuls attend. So I intend to return to Lanuvium next month, in that capacity—because there will be elections, and I will be elected consul!”

  There was an outburst of cheering. Milo waited for it to subside. “That morning I attended the regular meeting of the Senate, which broke up around the fourth hour of the day. Then I went home to change into traveling clothes. My wife was going with me. I would have preferred to start right away—the trip to Lanuvium is about eighteen miles, an easy day’s journey if you get an early enough start. But with all her last-minute preparations—isn’t that always the way with a wife?—we didn’t leave Rome until well after midday. For her comfort, we rode in an open carriage bundled up in heavy cloaks. I should like to have traveled lighter,
but my wife insisted on bringing her serving maids and boys along, so we had quite a long retinue.

  “As you all know, the Appian Way heads south, straight as an arrow’s flight and flat as a table. It’s not until you reach the vicinity of Mount Alba that the road takes a few turns and you begin to ascend a bit. There are some grand homes in that area. Pompey has a villa in the woods not too far off the road. So did Publius Clodius. I wish I had remembered that, and been more cautious.

  “Clodius must have known of my plan to go to Lanuvium that day—it was no secret. Perhaps he also knew that I would be accompanied by my wife and her servants, encumbered with a most unwarlike retinue. I’m told that Clodius had said outright and in public, only a few days previously, that he intended to kill me within a matter of days. ‘We can’t take the consulship from Milo, but we can take his life!’ That’s what he said. And this was the day he intended to make good on that threat, at that lonely spot on the Appian Way.

  “I found out later that Clodius had left Rome—suddenly, quietly—the previous day. To be ready for me, to lie in wait. He must have had scouts posted along the way, running ahead to let him know that I was coming. He chose a spot where the higher ground gave him the advantage. There I was, in a carriage, with all those women and servant boys, and there was Clodius with his troop of trained killers on horseback, hidden in the trees off the road, waiting and watching.

  “The ambush occurred at about the eleventh hour of the day. The sun was already beginning to dip below the higher trees. And then the attack—confusion, screaming, blood. If I’d been a bird flying overhead, I might be able to tell you exactly what happened. But to me, sitting in that carriage with my wife, it all began in the blink of an eye. All at once there were men with swords standing in the road, blocking our way. My driver shouted at them. They rushed at him, pulled him from the carriage and stabbed him to death right before my eyes! I threw off my cloak. I found my sword and leaped from the vehicle. By Hercules, the screams of my wife still echo in my ears! The men who’d killed my driver came after me, but the fellows were cowards at heart. A few swings of my sword and they fled like rabbits!” When Milo mimed the action with broad strokes through the air, it wasn’t hard to imagine men fleeing from him.

  “Then I realized that more men were attacking the retinue behind me. Amid the confusion I saw Clodius himself astride a horse. He turned and saw my beloved Fausta. He heard her screaming. He didn’t see me—the carriage blocked his view. But he must have seen my rumpled cloak and thought that I was still in the carriage with Fausta, slumped over, dead—because he cried out to his companions, ‘We’ve got him! Milo’s dead! At last, he’s dead!’

  “Let me tell you, citizens, it’s a strange thing, hearing a man proclaim your death in a gleeful voice. My bodyguards farther back in the retinue tried to fight their way to the carriage to help me, until they heard Clodius gloating that I was dead. Can you blame them for what happened next? They fought to defend themselves, yes, but they also fought because they were furious, because they thought that their master had been murdered and their mistress was in terrible danger. In the midst of the skirmish they came upon Clodius himself, and when the skirmish was over, Clodius was dead. I didn’t order his death. It happened without my knowledge and outside my presence. Are my slaves to blame? No! They did exactly what every man here would have wanted his own slaves to do in the same situation. Am I not right?”

  There was a roar of agreement from the crowd. I noticed that the banker was especially enthusiastic.

  Milo seemed to draw strength from the crowd. He continued to shout above the roar. Veins bulged on neck and his face turned red. “If Clodius had succeeded with his ambush, it’s I who would be dead today!” He poked his chest repeatedly with his forefinger, hard enough to bruise himself. “It would be Clodius that everyone would be pointing at. They’d all be accusing Clodius of murder, and saying Clodius was a threat to …” Milo restrained himself. It wouldn’t do to say the Great One’s name out loud. “But Clodius failed! Clodius lost! He paid the price for his wickedness. He was the cause of his own death, and I won’t take responsibility for it!”

  This brought even louder cheers. Milo stood on tiptoe, clenching his fists at his sides and shouting to be heard. He had remarkably powerful lungs. “I regret nothing! I apologize for nothing! And I refuse to mouth empty words of comfort to his widow or his children, and certainly not to that vile sister of his. His death was the greatest gift the gods could give to Rome. If I’d strangled him with my own hands, I wouldn’t be ashamed to say so! If I’d killed him in cold blood, caught him by surprise and stabbed him in the back, still I would be proud of the act!”

  Caelius hurriedly stepped forward, his face rigid. I leaned toward Eco. “I think Milo has gone beyond his script.”

  Caelius raised his left hand for silence. With his right hand he reached for Milo’s shoulder. When Milo tried to shrug him off, Caelius tightened his grip until I saw Milo wince and shoot him an angry glance.

  The crowd ignored the signal for silence. They began to chant as if they were at an election rally. Several different chants started up at once. The result was deafening. The fuller joined in with those reciting an old piece of doggerel about Clodius and his sister:

  Clodius played the little girl

  While he was still a boy!

  Then Clodia made the little man

  Into her private toy!

  This chant was repeated over and over, punctuated by whoops of laughter and shouted louder and louder to compete with another chant taken up by the banker and his retinue:

  Grain dole, grain dole,

  It’s all just shit

  From Clodius’s hole!

  Big pole, little pole,

  They all disappear

  Up Clodius’s hole!

  Up on the platform, Milo burst into laughter. His face turned an apoplectic shade of red. He laughed so hard he began to weep. He seemed to me like a man who has been holding a torturous pose that strains every tendon to agony for hour after hour, and suddenly cannot hold the pose any longer. He shook so convulsively that he seemed hardly able to stand up.

  Caelius gave up on quieting the crowd. He wore a bemused, vaguely anxious expression, as if to say: This was not exactly what I intended, but I suppose it will do …

  I turned to Eco, curious to see my unflappable son’s reaction, but he had reverted to muteness, as confounded as I was. To ridicule the dead is to mock the gods. There was something frightening in the sudden, raging hilarity of the mob, a vertiginous sensation of teetering at the edge of a dark precipice.

  The raucous chanting continued, but was suddenly joined by a noise more like screaming than laughter. An invisible, palpable tremor passed through the crowd, a quiver of anxiety. Heads turned in confusion, trying to discern the source. The ripple of apprehension was quickly followed by a wave of panic.

  How had Milo described the ambush on the Appian Way? Confusion, screaming, blood—if I’d been a bird flying overhead, I might be able to tell you exactly what happened—but it all began in the blink of an eye …

  So it was in the Forum that day, when the Clodians descended with flashing swords like a vengeful army on the contio of Caelius and Milo.

  9

  I have never been a military man, but I am not a stranger to battle. In the year that Cicero was consul, I was with my son Meto when he fought for Catilina at the battle of Pistoria. I carried a sword. I saw Romans slaughter Romans.

  I have seen battle. I know what a battle looks like, sounds like, smells like. What happened in the Forum that day was nothing like a battle. It was a massacre.

  During the massacre itself, there was no time to think about anything but escape. It was only afterward that I was able to ponder exactly what happened.

  Some said that the Clodians’ attack was spontaneous, spurred by reports of what Milo and Caelius were saying at the contio. Infuriated at the allegation that Clodius had staged an ambush, his grieving followers
decided to show the crowd at the contio just what an ambush was like. Others argued that the attack was premeditated, just as Clodius’s ambush on the Appian Way had been premeditated, and that the Clodians had only been waiting for Milo’s appearance and the first public gathering of his supporters to launch their assault.

  Premeditated or not, the attack was well staged. The Clodians arrived heavily armed. They made no attempt to hide their weapons. They carried short swords, daggers, and clubs. Some carried bags of stones. Some carried torches. They seemed to appear from all sides at once. The panicked crowd contracted into itself, so that at first there was as great a danger of being crushed or trampled underfoot by friends as there was of being cut open or clubbed to death by foes.

  Of course, despite the law which forbids carrying weapons inside the city walls, many at the contio were secretly armed or had armed bodyguards, and many of them (especially those who were part of Milo’s regular gang) had as much experience of street fighting as the Clodians, so the engagement was not entirely one-sided. But the Clodians had the strategic advantage of surprise and the tactical advantage of having the crowd surrounded. They may also have had a considerable advantage in numbers—that was what the bruised and battered adherents of Milo claimed afterward, but at the time I doubt that anyone bothered to count heads.

  Milo’s adherents would also claim afterward that the attacking force was made up largely of slaves. Clodius’s lieutenants, they claimed, now commanded whole armies of slaves and former slaves who owed them allegiance thanks to Clodius’s radical innovations, like the grain dole. That was the true crime of what happened that day, Milo’s people said: that slaves and ex-slaves had disrupted a peaceable public assembly of citizens conducting state business. What had the Republic come to when such low-born rabble ruled the streets?