John Maddox Roberts - [SPQR Roman Mysteries 8.6]-Mightier Than The Sword by John Maddox Roberts

The wonderful
thing about being
Aedile
is that you get to spend
your days poking through every foul, dangerous, rat-infested,
pestilential cellar in Rome. Building inspection is part of the job,
and you can spend your whole year just prosecuting violations of the
building codes, never mind putting on the Games and inspecting all the
whorehouses, also part of the job. And I'd landed the office in a year
when a plebeian couldn't be
Curule Aedile.
The
Curule
got to wear a purple border on his toga and sat around the markets all
day in a folding chair, attended by a lictor and levying fines for
violations of the market laws. No, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus got that
job. Well, he never amounted to anything, so there is justice in the
world, after all. Mind you, he got to be Triumvir some years later, but
considering that the other two were Antony and Octavian, he might as
well have been something unpleasant adhering to the heel of Octavian's
sandal.
    And the worst
thing was, you didn't have to serve as
Aedile
to
stand for higher office! It was just that you had not a prayer of being
elected
Praetor
unless, as
Aedile,
you put on splendid Games as a gift to the people. If you gave them
enough chariot races, and plays and pageants and public feasts and
Campanian gladiators by the hundred, then, when you stood for higher
office, they would remember you kindly. Of course the State only
provided a pittance for these Games, so you had to pay for them out of
your own pocket, bankrupting yourself and going into debt for years.
That was what being
Aedile
meant.
    That was why I
was in a bad mood when I found the body. It wasn't as if bodies were
exactly rare in Rome, especially that year. It was one of the very
worst years in the history of the City. The election scandals of the
previous year had been so terrible that our two Consuls almost weren't
allowed to assume office in January, and the year got worse after that.
My good friend, Titus Annius Milo, politician and gang leader, was
standing for Consul for the next year, as was the equally disreputable
Plautius Hypsaeus. Milo's deadly enemy and mine, Publius Clodius
Pulcher, was standing for
Praetor.
Their mobs
battled each other in the streets day and night, and bodies were as
common as dead pigeons in the Temple of Jupiter.
    But that was in
the streets. Another plebeian
Aedile,
whose name
I no longer recall, had charge of keeping the streets clean. I resented
finding them in my nice, peaceful if malodorous cellars. And it wasn't
in one of the awful, disgusting tenement cellars, either, uninspected
for decades and awash with the filth of poverty and lax enforcement of
the hygienic laws.
    Instead, it was
in the clean, new basement of a town house just built on the Aventine.
I was down there inspecting because in Rome honest building contractors
are as common as volunteer miners in the Sicilian sulphur pits. My
slave Hermes preceded me with a lantern. He was a fine, handsome,
strapping young man by this time, and very good at controlling his
criminal tendencies. Unlike so many, the basement smelled pleasantly of
new-cut timber and the dry, dusty scent of stone fresh from the quarry.
There was another, less pleasant smell beneath these, though.
Hermes
stopped, a yellow puddle of light around his feet spilling over a
shapeless form.
    "There's a stiff
here, Master."
    "Oh, splendid.
And I thought this was going to be my only agreeable task all day. I
don't suppose it's just some old beggar, come down here to get out of
the weather and died of natural causes?"
    "Not unless
there's beggars in the Senate, these days," Hermes said.
    My scalp
prickled. There were few things I hated worse than finding a
high-ranking corpse. "Well, some of us are poor enough to qualify.
Let's see who we have."
    I squatted by the
body while Hermes held the lantern near the face. Sure enough, the man
wore a tunic with a senator's wide, purple stripe. He was middle-aged,
bald and beak-nosed, none of which were distinctions