That was the way to deal with him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Didius Flaccus hated to be kept waiting, even if a lifetime as a soldier had inured him to such a thing. He had no choice; as a retired centurion you were only as good as the weight of your purse and he was way short of the funds he needed to set up in the style to which he aspired. He had enough money, accumulated from plunder and the depredations he had visited on his legionary underlings, like charging them for leave, to take a small apartment at the top of a tenement, but it would be rough wine and poor food he had to eat if he wanted his money to last. He could not bear the thought of that, or even worse, going back to the provincial farm from which he had set out all those years ago to be a soldier. He could return to the province of Illyricum and set up in some kind of trade, but that did not appeal either, especially since questions might be asked about the sudden demise of that old soothsayer, with him the last caller.
Silently he damned the man, for his dying words had brought Flaccus no peace. He still had a prophecy couched as a riddle, one he had extracted from more than one seer. He badly wanted to believe them all, but after the near-fulfilment of the prophecy south of Thralaxas, he was prey to even more doubt than he had entertained previously. What he could do with some money! He had his eye fixed on a ground or first-floor dwelling, with enough income to live properly and dress well, a situation that might lend itself to the acquisition of a young Roman wife. Perhaps the person he had come to see could help; after all they had once soldiered together and been companions, albeit the man had been his titular superior. So he sat in the ante-room of the house of Cassius Barbinus, waiting for the owner to summon him.
All around he could see the evidence of great wealth; the space alone, in such a crowded city as Rome, was evidence of that, let alone the statuary and furniture. The floor of the atrium, right through to the colonnade that surrounded the garden, was laid with an intricate pattern of mosaics that must have set Barbinus back a fortune. Even the goblet in his hand, presented to him by a young, sleek and handsome slave, was the kind of article he had longed to pinch as a serving soldier. The whole place smacked of Hellenism, of Greek luxury and excess; the old centurion, who had known nothing but the army for twenty years, loved it, and gave up a silent wish to the God Porus, that the kind of plenty he was experiencing would one day be his.
The carefully manicured slave reappeared, requesting that he follow, and Flaccus stood up, goblet in hand, till the slave favoured him with a look of such condescension that, for all his years and seniority, he blushed, put the goblet down on the table, and followed to the door of the tablinum. Cassius Barbinus did not stand to receive him, nor did he look up, concentrating on the list of figures on his desk. Flaccus was content to look at the top of the senator’s bald head, which, since he never went out without a hat, was as white as his remaining hair. A ‘new man’ they called Cassius Barbinus; reasonably well-born into the upper reaches of the plebeian class in a Roman colony off the Via Appia, he had done his duty as a soldier but then set aside any desire to climb the cursus honorum, doing what very few men of his background had dared to undertake previously. He had openly gone into trade, working in his own name instead of through middlemen and not just farming and ranching; even the most elevated patrician noble saw that as a state duty.
Cassius Barbinus had bought ships and traded with the east; taken up tax farming on behalf of the Republic; bought mining concessions and vineyards that were operated for profit rather than personal consumption and he had got his seat in the Senate, despite the rules against members openly indulging in such activities. When his more rigid peers sneered at him for this, he was apt to throw a huge and expensive dinner, in defiance of the sumptuary laws, watching amused as his fellow-senators angled for invitations to eat delicacies they could not themselves afford.
‘So, Flaccus,’ he said, looking up. The face above the fat body was smooth and round, the man overweight, well fed and sleek. ‘You’re a lot greyer in the hair, but you haven’t changed much.’
‘Neither have you, sir.’
Barbinus stood up, rubbing his hands over his protruding belly. ‘Nonsense, man. I must be twice the weight I was when I was a soldier.’
He walked round from behind his desk and stood beside the retired centurion. Then he ran his hand over Flaccus’s flat stomach, a hand that lingered just a little longer than necessary. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a belly like yours.’
‘You don’t give! It’s what you do without that gives you a flat belly.’
Barbinus laughed and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Well said, Flaccus. I do eat too much and business has kept me from exercising as frequently as I should. Still we’re not here to discuss your figure or mine, are we?’
Flaccus’s eyes lost their hard look, to be replaced by one of supplication. ‘Have you thought on my request?’
‘I have that, but I’m not sure that I can oblige.’ Flaccus looked slightly crestfallen. Then, as if he remembered who he was with, his face took on the same blank look he had always reserved for conversations with senior officers. ‘After all, you’re no clerk, are you?’ It was not a question requiring an answer, so Flaccus did not provide one. ‘Nor are you sailor enough to captain one of my ships.’
‘I thought I might act as your agent, somewhere. Ephesus or the like.’
‘And rob me blind, no doubt.’ Flaccus was about to protest when Barbinus cut him short. ‘I would have thought if anyone would retire rich from the legions it would be you. You were such an avaricious bastard.’
‘I wasn’t lucky,’ said Flaccus bitterly.
The other man snorted. ‘Luck. What’s luck got to do with it? I daresay you’ve had enough money, you just haven’t managed to hang on to it. What was it? Too many visits to the brothel? Gambling?’
‘Don’t matter, but being a centurion must fit a man for something.’
‘It equips a man for many things, Didius Flaccus, but not occupations that pay any more than wages and that’s not what you’re after, is it?’ Flaccus shook his head sharply as Barbinus walked back behind the desk. He sat there for a moment in silence, before looking up again, a gleam in his eye. ‘I have one job which needs doing that might fit the bill, a job that a hard-nosed old centurion might do better than most.’
Barbinus picked up a piece of paper in his fat fingers and swore gently under his breath. When he looked at Flaccus again he saw that the man was practically at attention, his face bearing the look of a soldier seeking to avoid censure. ‘I’m not swearing at you, Flaccus. I’ve just bought the rights to some land in Sicily, a great deal of land in fact and I had to pay a lot of money for it, a good deal more than it’s worth.’
‘That don’t sound like you.’
‘Anything for a quiet life, Flaccus. One of our more elevated senators, a present censor, no less, hinted that my commercial activities, not to mention the way I spend my money, could be construed as unbecoming for a man in my position.’
‘Meaning?’
Barbinus looked thoughtful for a moment, but declined to explain why, if he could be expelled for indulging in trade or overspending, he was still a senator. Flaccus would know as well as anyone, having been in the army, the difference between the rules as they were written and how they were applied.
‘Censure on the floor of the Senate. Perhaps even removal from the senatorial roll, since the present consuls are in office only because the man threatening me has put them there.’
‘I don’t see…’
‘I bought two Latifunda off him, Flaccus, that is the most noble Lucius Falerius Nerva. Now there’s a man who wouldn’t soil his hands in trade, but he’s not beyond eliciting a bribe, as long as it can be dressed up as a normal transaction.’
‘Is the land worthless, then?’
‘No. I sent someone to look it over. It’s good wheat-growing soil, even if it has been allowed to go to the dogs. Old Lucius is too immersed in politics to supervise the place properly, so it’s more like a retirement home for slaves than a proper farm. The trouble is that it’s hard to make money out of wheat, since the price is controlled. It’s profitable, but not profitable enough the way it is now. Lucius Falerius will use my money to buy some land closer to Rome, where he can do some ranching.’
‘Can’t you ranch on this Sicilian land?’
