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 afterwards 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 afterwards, but at the time I doubt that anyone bothered to count heads.
Milo's adherents would also claim afterwards that the attackingforce 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?
But as I say, all these considerations came as afterthoughts. At the time, panic reigned.
Eco and I sensed the danger at the same moment, even though there was nothing yet to see. He reached for my arm. I reached for his. His bodyguards turned outward in a ring and reached for the daggers hidden in their tunics.
Eco pressed his mouth to my ear. 'Whatever happens, Papa, stay close to me!'
More easily said than done, I thought, as bodies pressed together and were wrenched this way and that, like links of armour being tested by a smith. To be caught in such a crowd must be something like the sensation of drowning in rough waters. A sea of bodies is a solid, writhing thing that presses back against you, struggling, like you, to stay alive.
The noise became deafening- oaths, curses, screams, grunts, sudden high-pitched wails and guttural, choking sounds. The fuller and his slave were suddenly next to me. He was yelling, to no one in particular, 'I knew this would happen! I knew it!'
Suddenly there was a break in the crowd nearby, like a rip through a piece of cloth. The Clodians broke through. Wild-eyed men with upright daggers in their fists rushed towards me. Their hps were drawn back, their teeth clenched. They growled like dogs.
Eco's bodyguards seemed to have vanished, along with Eco. The panicked crowd was at my back, like a solid wall; I could no more melt into it than I could melt into stone. 'That one!' cried one of
the attackers, pointing with his knife. 'Get the bastard!' He rushed towards me.
I braced myself, fighting the impulse to turn away. I have always promised myself that I would not end up as one of those corpses discovered with wounds in the back. I stared at the man's face, trying to look into his eyes, but his wild gaze was fixed on something beyond me. He veered past me, his knife whistling a shrill note a finger's-width from my ear. His friends followed, shoving me out of the way. From the comer of my eye I saw flashing daggers rise into the air one after another, like long-necked birds craning skyward.
I pressed myself into the fleeing crowd, trying to merge again into its anonymity, trying not to watch. An even stronger impulse compelled me to look back.
The daggers rose and fell, rose and fell. They were met by other daggers. Streamers of blood shot upward like screams congealing in the frosty air. In the midst of the turmoil I saw the man I had taken for a banker. He was the one the Clodians had rushed to attack. His cordon of bodyguards had been breached and decimated. The slaves who fell defending him were crumpled in a mass around him, their bloodstained bodies trapping his legs so that he could not flee. The Clodians circled him like vultures, their knives like pecking beaks. They stabbed him again and again. As he twisted and writhed, his mouth gaping in a soundless scream, greedy hands reached to snatch the silver necklace from his throat and pull a bag of coins from inside his toga.
His assailants circled him once more and then moved on, like a whirlwind. By some miracle the banker remained upright. His eyes and mouth were wide open in astonishment, his toga covered with blood. Suddenly one of his assailants rushed back and quickly, skdlfuly, like a dutiful slave caring for his master's accoutrements, took the man's hand and slipped the gold signet ring from his finger.
The thief might have left it at that, but having come back to finish his business he seemed determined to strike a final blow. He slipped behind the stupefied banker and raised his dagger high, gripping it with both hands. I cringed and braced myself as if the blow were aimed at me.
But I never saw it fell. A strong hand gripped my shoulder and spun me around. I faced a hulking young man with glinting eyes and a grimly set jaw. At the bottom edge of my sight I saw flashing steel and knew he held a dagger.
I have faced the prospect of imminent death on several occasions in my near-sixty years. It always seems to provoke the same chain of thoughts in my head. You fool, I always think-because it seems that such situations could always, somehow, have been avoided or at least postponed-you fool, this is the end of you at last. The gods have lost interest in the little story of your life. You no longer amuse them. You shall now be snuffed out like a guttering lamp…
It is always the same: the names of my loved ones echo in my head. I hear the sweet sound of my father's voice, which I have not heard for many, many years. And sometimes, in such moments, and this was such a moment, I see the face of my mother, who died when I was very young, and whose face I can otherwise never quite recall. I remembered it vividly in that instant, and knew that my father had been right when he had told me, as he had often done, that she was beautiful, very beautiful…
But of course A part of me knew that I was not yet destined to die, and understood at once when the hulking young man, in a gruff desperate voice, said, 'Thank Jupiter I found you! The master is furious! Come on!'
The fellow was one of Eco's young bodyguards, of course. In my confusion I had not recognized him.
Eco had retreated behind a nearby temple, where a lean-to shed attached to the plain rear wall offered a degree of concealment. We could still be seen from two directions, since the shed was open at either end, but the spot was at least more defensible than standing in the open.
'Papa! Thank the gods Davus found you!'
'Never mind the gods. Thank Davus.' I smiled at the sturdy young fellow, who grinned back at me. 'What now?'
Eco peered out glumly. There was nothing and no one to be seen except blank walls which cast back the echoes of the rioting mob. 'I suppose we could stay here. Not a bad spot to make a stand, though there's no knowing what we might come up against.'
'Should we make a run for it?'
'Maybe. To your house or mine?'
'Mine's closer,' I said. 'But we'd have to cross the Forum somehow, and I imagine there's more chance of the riot spreading up that way, towards Milo's house.' I felt a chill as I thought of my wife and daughter alone at the house, with only a barred door and Belbo to protect them.
'To my house then, Papa?'
'No. I have to get back to Bethesda and Diana.'
He nodded. The sound of the not seemed to grow louder, though it might have been only a trick of the acoustics. Suddenly two figures appeared from around the corner of the temple. We ducked into the shadows.
