Sometimes, uttering the impossible can suddenly make it seem quite possible after all. I stared at the roof of the Senate House, as if by concentrating I could see through it to perceive what Sextus Cloelius was up to. Surely not -
And then I saw the first wisps of smoke, streaming wraithlike from the shuttered windows set high along the walls of the Senate House.
'Papa-'
'Yes, Diana, I see. They must be cremating the body, inside the building. The idiots! If they aren't careful — '
'They hardly look to me like the sort to be careful,' said Belbo, tilting his head earnestly.
A little later the first flickering tongues of flame appeared at one of the windows. One after another the shutters caught fire. Heavy black smoke began to pour from the windows, then from the open doorway. Sextus Cloelius ran out of the building, waving his torch triumphantly over his head. The crowd fell silent for a moment, probably as awed as I was by the enormity of what had happened. Then they released a roar that must have been heard all the way to Bovillae.
It was heard in Cicero's house, at least. From the corner of my eye I saw a movement on his roof He had returned, along with Tiro. The two of them stood upright, no longer crouching, and watched the spectacle in the Forum below. Tiro clutched his face. He was weeping. How many happy hours had he spent in that building, copying down his master's speeches in the shorthand he invented, ordering his army of clerks about, paying witness to the great career he had done so much to foster? Slaves can be very sentimental.
Cicero did not weep. He crossed his arms, set his jaw in a hard line and stared grimly at the orgy of destruction below.
'There!' said Diana. She was pointing at Cicero. 'There! That's what Jupiter must have looked like, gazing down at Troy.'
Knowing Cicero far better than my daughter did, and certain that there was nothing remotely godlike about him, I was about to correct her when Belbo interrupted.
'You're right,' he said. 'The very image!'
Their shared certainty forced me to take another look. Diana was right. I had to concede it. As Cicero looked at that moment, watching the destruction of the Senate House by Clodius's mob, so great Jupiter might have looked when he brooded on Mount Ida and watched the mad clash of mortals below.
IV
Whipped by the cold wind, the blazes shot higher and higher until the whole Senate House was engulfed by flames. The mob danced on the marble steps, hooting and laughing while they dodged cascades of cinders and ash.
The fire began to spread, first to the complex of senatorial offices to the south of the Senate House. The threat of the mob had already emptied most of the buildings, but after the flames started a few panic-stricken clerks came rushing out, carrying armloads of documents. Some tripped and fell, others zigzagged madly, dodging the taunting mob, dropping their burdens. Wax tablets scattered like tumbling dice. Scrolls unfurled and streamed like pennants in the breeze.
Then the wind changed. The flames spread west of the Senate House, to the Porcian Basilica. One of the great buildings of the Forum, it was a hundred and thirty years old, the first basilica ever built. Its distinguishing features — the long nave terminating in an apse with colonnaded aisles on either side — are now duplicated in buildings all over the empire. Many of the wealthiest bankers in the world kept their headquarters in the Porcian Basilica. It took hardly an hour for the fire to reduce its venerable majesty to a smouldering pile of rubble.
It was the bankers, I learnedlater, desperate to salvage what remained of their records, who finally organized a large contingent of freedmen and slaves to battle the flames. Acting out of pure selfishness, they may have saved a large part of Rome from going up in smoke. The firefighters formed long, snaking lines across the Forum and through the cattle market all the way to the banks of the Tiber, where they filled buckets with water and passed them up to pour on the flames, then passed the empty buckets back again. From time to time a few rowdies broke away from the mourners' frenzied revelry to harass the firefighters, pelting them with stones and spitting on them. Scuffles broke out. A cordon of bodyguards, also sent by the bankers, arrived to protect the bucket-passers.
It was a mad day. Rome seemed racked with fever, delirious. With Clodius consigned to the purifying flames, and the Senate House along with him, his mourners carried on their unconventional funeral celebration. Could they have planned such madness in advance, or did they make it up as they went along, inspired by the dancing flames and the billowing smoke, invigorated by the charred tang in the air? At mid-afternoon, they held a funeral feast. Before the smouldering Senate House they set up tables, covered the tables with black cloths and spread out a banquet.
While the firefighters continued their frantic efforts, the Clodians drank and ate in honour of their dead leader. The poor and hungry of the city came out to join them, at first meekly and then, seeing that they were welcome, in jubilation. Vast quantities of food arrived — great urns full of blood-black sausages, pots of black beans, loaves of black bread, all suitably black for a feast to honour the dead, washed down with blood-red wine. Meanwhile the confused, frightened, curious citizens of Rome — those who lacked the safe vantage of a Palatine rooftop to watch what was going on — skirted the edges of the Forum, cautiously peeking around comers and peering over walls, gawking variously in outrage, delight, disbelief and consternation.
I spent much of the day on my root watching. So did Cicero. He would disappear for a while, then reappear with various visitors, many of them senators, as I could tell from the purple border on their togas. They would take in the view, shake their heads in disgust or gasp in horror, then disappear again, talking and gesticulating. There seemed to be some sort of all-day meeting going on in Cicero's house.
Eco came by to see me for a while. I told him he was mad to venture out on such a day. He had stayed clear of the Forum, and though he had heard the rumour that the Senate House was destroyed, he had thought it was only that, a rumour. I took him up on the.roof so he could see the spectacle for himself. He headed back to Menenia and the twins soon after.
Even Bethesda overcame her distrust of the ladder and ventured up on the roof for a while to see what all the fuss was about. I teased her that the sight of so much rioting must have made her homesick for Alexandria, seeing that the Alexandrians were so famous for rioting. She didn't laugh at the joke. Neither did I.
The feasting and the firefighting down in the Forum continued until well after nightfall. Towards evening Belbo brought me a bowl of hot soup and climbed back down. A little later Diana joined me with her own steaming bowl. As we sat alone on the roof the sky darkened to deeper and deeper shades of blue verging into black. In every season, twilight is the most beautiful hour in Rome. The stars began to show in the firmament, glittering like bits of frost. There was even a kind of prettiness about the nickering lights down in the Forum, now that darkness hid the ugliness of charred wood and blackened stone. The fires had largely died down, but the deepening gloom revealed smouldering patches of flame in the ruins of the Porcian Basilica and the senatorial office buildings.
Diana finished her soup. She put down the bowl and pulled a blanket over her shoulders. 'How did Clodius die, Papa?'
'From his wounds, I should think: Surely you don't want me to describe them again.'
'No. I mean, how did it happen?'
'I don't know, really. I'm not sure that anyone does, except whoever killed him, of course. There seemed to be quite a bit of confusion about it at his house last night. Clodia said there was a skirmish of some sort down on the Appian Way, near a place called Bovillae, where Clodius had a villa. Clodius and some of his men had an altercation with Milo and some of his men. Clodius got the worst of it.'
'But why did they fight?'
'Clodius and Milo have been enemies for a long time, Diana.' 'Why?'
'Why are two men usually enemies? Because they want the same thing.' 'A woman?'
'In some cases. Or a boy. Or a father's love. Or an inheritance, or a piece of land. In this case, Clodius and Milo both wanted power.' 'And they couldn't both have it?'
' Apparently not. Sometimes when two ambitious men are enemies, one of them has to die if the other's to
