Man Eater

Leaving Jupiter to his immortal chores, Quintilian pressed on to do what he came for, to make his devotions at the shrines of Honour and Virtue and Fidelity as he had done every year since his first wife had died. It wasn’t the most successful of marriages, but at least she wasn’t a harridan. Or a snob. Owing to his current wife’s obsession with status, Quintilian’s fortune was dwindling fast, he’d be bankrupt by the time he reached sixty unless urgent steps were taken.

‘We must bring the villa up to scratch,’ she had argued. ‘Only then can we hope to entertain the Princeps.’

Silly, vain cow. Augustus was a family man, who rejoiced in simplicity and spurned affectation. Pausing in the shade of the Public Record Office, Quintilian watched a white-robed priest bless an offering from a well-known goldsmith who lived on the Esquiline. Assuming he would ever accept such an invitation to Umbria, the Emperor would find greater solace watching the swallows dip over the lake-the lake that he, incidentally, was draining to provide more land for wheat-and discussing administration. Should the treasury fund more of the imperial thrust into Germany? Should an extra legion be despatched, now Pannonia was annexed? Where should the next aqueduct run, since the Virgo, Agrippa’s underground masterpiece, was already proving inadequate for the increased consumption?

Too late! Quintilian’s wife had already ordered marble and stone and magnificent statues, organized work gangs, architects, gardeners. The watercourses alone cost 100,000 sesterces.

Puffed from his descent of the Capitol, he leaned against the side of the Rostra and thought of the great men who had addressed the populace from here. This was where the murdered corpse of the Divine Julius was shown to the people, where the hands of Cicero had been nailed by Mark Antony. Never before had Quintilian felt so distant from his illustrious senatorial predecessors. The bones in his face throbbed and throbbed. His cheek, his jaw, even his eye sockets, and the skin were stiff from the swelling. Sweat ran down his neck in rivulets to soak into his toga, making it even heavier than usual. He stumbled, scuffing the toe of his black senatorial boot, and when he tried to stand upright again, it was as though he was carrying a dead cow on his shoulders. Bloody quacks!

Being the third day of the Festival of Mars, the Forum was packed to capacity. Butchers’ cleavers splintered their blocks, mongrels plundered the scrap bins. Shouts of ‘stop thief’ or ‘make way for the chariot’ mingled with smells of pies and poultry, pickles and pancakes. A spice-seller skidded on a fish head, and a thousand exotic scents exploded into the air. Cinnamon and nutmeg and cumin clung to Quintilian as he bumbled his way through the shoppers and the charlatans. You could buy anything here today, from pastry-cutters to ivory plaques, cucumbers to scribes.

And the sun beat mercilessly on it all, pounding his head like a pestle.

Had it not been for that bloody wife of mine, he thought bitterly, I could be tucked up in bed with a poppy draught. And all for a paltry plot in Etruria. Yet the thought of the Seferius woman lifted his spirits and strangely the aches receded. By Jupiter, she could warm a man’s bedsheets, she could. Sly little bitch, mind-but he’d got her. This time he’d bloody well got her! Third time lucky, but lucky was just how Quintilian felt.

Maybe when the dust has settled and you realize women and business don’t mix, we could come to a different arrangement, eh? The Emperor was firm on the subject of single women. Within two years of bereavement they must wed again. Quintilian had never been sure about the legislation, although he saw no personal gain in opposing it, but, as with most laws, there was a loophole. Suppose a respected aristocrat (him for instance) became this woman’s guardian?

Despite his swollen face and raging jawache, he felt a stirring in his loins. Here? In the middle of the Forum? So outrageous was it, that his desire, so to speak, swelled and the prospect of making Claudia Seferius his mistress became even more attractive. No woman had ever had such a dramatic effect on him, not even in his youth, and Venus knows how active he was in the old days. Edging his way past a shoemaker, bent double under a roll of hides, he began to fantasize about love trysts whereby she would be waiting, naked, oiled, eager to show her gratitude at being spared a loveless marriage…

It was the loveless marriage bit that brought Quintilian back from the Elysian Fields. Thanks to his wife, his vines and his olives had been ripped out and replaced with bloody watercourses. The former had made him a fortune, the latter had cost him one.