'If that's true, then why did someone murder Hieronymus?'
'Your friend was poking his nose into other people's business-powerful people, dangerous people. Who knows what embarrassing or incriminating information he may have uncovered, having nothing at all to do with Caesar? The Scapegoat surely offended someone, but his death is hardly proof of a plot against Caesar.'
What he said made sense, yet I found myself recalling the cryptic 'key' that Hieronymus had mentioned in his journal. I repeated the words aloud. ' 'Look all around! The truth is not found in the words, but the words may be found in the truth.' '
'What in Hades is that supposed to mean?'
'I wish I knew,' I said. Then, seemingly from nowhere, a memory came to me, and I felt a sudden chill.
'What's that look on your face?' said Uncle Gnaeus.
I shivered. 'A long time ago, in a public latrine here in the Forum, I was very nearly murdered. By Hercules, I'd almost forgotten! It was thirty-five years ago, during the trial of Sextus Roscius, the first time I worked with Cicero. A hired killer followed me into a latrine near the Temple of Castor. We were alone. He pulled a knife-'
'All very interesting, I'm sure, but perhaps you could leave a man in peace!'
I turned and left at once, almost feeling sorry for Uncle Gnaeus. Judging by the silence, he still had not managed to begin relieving himself.
The crowd had grown even thicker than before. I looked in vain for a way to pass through. The din of the shouting and laughter was deafening.
I realized I had no desire to return to my seat in the stands. I had seen quite enough of doomed, humiliated prisoners, of Caesar in his ceremonial chariot, and of lictors and cavalry officers and marching legionaries.
I suddenly longed to be anywhere else. I started walking, heading away from the triumph, fleeing the crush and the noise. At length, taking a roundabout path of least resistance, I found myself at the Flaminian Gate in the old city walls.
I kept walking. Once through the gate, I was outside the city proper, on the Field of Mars. When I was a boy, much of this area had still been literally a field, with vast parade grounds. Some areas of the Field of Mars remained undeveloped, but in my lifetime the greater part of it had been filled with new tenements and temples and public buildings. It had become one of the liveliest neighborhoods of Rome.
But on this day, the streets were almost deserted. From beyond the Capitoline Hill, which now loomed between me and the Forum, I could still hear the roar of the crowd but more and more faintly as I continued to walk toward the great bend of the Tiber. I felt a sense of freedom and escape-from haughty Uncle Gnaeus, from Caesar, from Calpurnia, from my fretful wife, and even from Rupa, my constant companion in recent days.
At length I came to the new neighborhood of shops and apartments that had sprung up around Pompey's Theater, where I had come to visit Arsinoe. Was she there still, returned to her high prison, but alone now, without Ganymedes to look after her?
I wandered past the empty porticos. All the shops were closed. I came to the entrance to the theater itself. The gate was open and unmanned. I wandered inside.
The tiers of seats were empty. I gazed up row after row, fascinated by the play of sunlight and shadow on the repeating semicircles, all the way to the top, where the Temple of Venus stood. Lost in thought, I slowly ascended the steps.
I remembered the enormous controversy that erupted when Pompey announced his plans to build the theater. For centuries, conservative priests and politicians had thwarted the construction of a permanent theater in Rome, arguing that such an extravagance would lead the Romans to become as decadent as the stagestruck Greeks. Pompey circumvented their objections by adding a temple to the complex, so that the whole structure could be consecrated as a religious building. The design was clever; the rows of theater seats also served as steps leading up to the sanctuary at the summit.
'Can you hear me?'
I was not alone. A lone figure with a white beard, dressed in a tunic of many colors, had stepped onto the stage.
'I said, can you hear me up there? Don't simply nod. Speak.'
'Yes!' I shouted.
'No need to yell. That's the whole point: acoustics. I'm barely talking above normal volume now, and yet you can hear me perfectly well, can't you?'
'Yes.'
'Good. La-la-la, la-la-la. Fo-di-da, fo-di-da.' He continued to utter a series of nonsensical noises. I realized he was a performer limbering his throat, but I laughed aloud anyway.
'Well, I can see you're going to be an easy audience!' he said. 'Sit. Listen. You can help me with my timing.'
I did as I was told. I had come here seeking escape, after all. What better escape could I hope for, than a few moments in the theater?
He cleared his throat, then struck a dramatic pose. When he spoke again, his voice was utterly different. It had a rich, dark tone, full of curious inflections. It was an actor's voice, trained to fascinate.
'Friends and countrymen, welcome to the play. I am the playwright. This is the prologue-my chance to tell you what to think about the tale you're about to see. I could let you simply watch the play and make up your own minds-but being fickle Romans, I know better than to trust your judgment. Oh that's right, jeer and boo…' He broke from his pose. 'Well? Jeer and boo!'
I obliged him with what I imagined would be a suitably obscene jeer, involving his mother.
'That's better,' he said, and continued his soliloquy. 'I know why you're all here: to celebrate a great man's good fortune. Not a good man's great fortune; that would be a different matter-and a different man.'
I obligingly laughed at this witticism, which was clearly a jab at Caesar, the sponsor of the upcoming plays. My laughter may have sounded a bit forced, but Decimus Laberius-for now I recognized the man, one of the leading playwrights and performers of the Roman stage-seemed not to care if my reactions were sincere as long as I gave him a token response to help him with his timing.
'But why am I here?' he continued. 'To be perfectly candid, I had rather be at home right now, with my feet up and my nose in a book. I've had enough of all this carrying-on and celebrating; it grates on an old man's nerves. Yet here I am, with a new play produced on demand, and why? Because I'm desperate to beat that fool Publilius Syrus out of the prize? No! I don't need a prize to tell me I'm a better playwright than that babbling freedman.
'No, I am here because the Goddess of Necessity compels me. To what depths of indignity has she thrust me, here at the end of my life? You see me at twice thirty years, a broken man. When I was thirty-or better yet, half thirty-oh, how young and proud I was! No power in heaven or on earth could bend me to its will. Neither begging nor bribery, cajoling nor threatening could move me one iota. But now-look at me jump!' Laberius executed a sudden leap and barely stopped himself from tumbling head over heels; his awkwardness was so convincing that I laughed out loud. He paused for a moment, as if waiting for the laughter of a huge audience to subside. 'A most unbecoming activity for a man my age! So why do I jump? Because a certain man demands it.
'No, that's unfair. The fellow does not demand it. He asks. He makes a polite request. He says, 'Laberius, dear friend, best and boldest of playwrights, would you be so kind…' And Laberius-jumps!' He executed an even more fitful leap with a hair-raising recovery.
'And here's the rub: it matters not a fig that I should stand here and complain; he merely takes my mutterings as a compliment. Look, he's laughing now!' Laberius pointed at the box of honor in the midst of the seats, which was as empty as the rest of the theater. He shook his head. 'Bitter are the twists and turns of Fortune. My own success has made me another's slave. The dazzling jewel of Fame had turned me into another man's ornament. My gift for words renders me… mute. But oh, can I jump!' Again he took a leap, but something in the halting movement was more pathetic than absurd, more pitiful than funny. I did not laugh at all.
He cocked his head. 'Do you remember that game we played when we were boys called king of the hill? Well, I imagined I was very nearly at the top of that hill for a while, but then I took a tumble, and now I find myself at the bottom-just like all of you-looking up at the winner, who's so high above me I have to squint to see him.' In a quavering childlike voice, so strange it gave me gooseflesh, he quoted from the ditty boys sang when they played the game:
