John Maddox Roberts

Venus in Pearls

There are worse things than being a dictator's flunky. Being a dictator's enemy is one of them. Thus, when Julius Caesar had a mission for me to perform, I was always more than happy to undertake it as long as it didn't mean killing anyone I really liked. Not that Caesar ever asked me to do anything so distasteful. It was just that, had he asked, I probably would have complied, within reason. There were a number of men in Rome I would not have minded putting from Caesar's path.

But Caesar was not vengeful, nor vindictive by the standards of the powerful and ambitious men of that time. Indeed, his death came about because he neglected to kill a few men he really should have.

Usually, though, he wanted me to do things suited to my peculiar talents. It always amused him to see how I solved the problems he set me. Then he would regale his dinner guests with a witty recounting of my deeds.

I was getting a reputation as Caesar's performing dog, but it was a reputation I could live with. Young Herod, Antipater's son, once quoted to me a prophet of his people who said that a living dog is better than a dead lion. At the time I thought this was a rather craven philosophy, but now that in old age I contemplate the dead lions of my past, I see the wisdom in those words.

Come to think of it, young Herod is now old Herod, a king in fullest command of his nation although a client of Rome, and sitting atop a whole heap of dead lions.

I received my orders at the end of a grueling senate meeting. These meetings were once leisurely affairs characterized by long, soporific speeches and attended only by those with nothing better to do, save when important issues occupied everyone's attention or at election time. This agreeable routine changed when Caesar took power. He had work for everybody, ambitious projects to accomplish and a whole empire to set in order after a destructive civil war. Not to mention that he had nearly doubled the size of that empire and the new territories had to be administered.

We kept our traveling kits packed in those days because you went to the Curia in the morning knowing that, before lunch, Caesar might dispatch you on an embassy to Parthia, or to Massilia to build a new aqueduct, or to Egypt to wheedle more grain from Cleopatra, or to take command of an army and go conquer India. And woe to the senator who failed to show up at the Curia without a good excuse. I witnessed the following incident personally.

We had taken our seats amid the usual buzz of conversation, which stilled when Caesar entered preceded by his twenty-four lictors. He seated himself in the curule chair and scanned the House. There were perhaps four hundred of us present that morning, the rest mostly absent with the legions or on foreign missions. Instantly Caesar knew that a man was missing. 'Where is Aulus Fimbria?" he demanded.

A friend of the man stood. "Caesar, Aulus Fimbria died in the night."

"Died?" Caesar said scornfully. "He was healthy enough yesterday."

"Nevertheless, Caesar, this very morning his widow told me that he had expired of some unknown ailment."

Caesar took a sharply pointed bronze stylus from the scribe who sat by him and handed it to a lictor. "Go to the house of Aulus Fimbria and poke him with this," he ordered. "If he twitches, haul him in here."

An hour later the lictor returned and reported that Fimbria was indeed dead. '"I'll let him off this time," Caesar muttered. The lesson was not lost on us.

But on this particular day all senators in residence were accounted for. Caesar spent the morning naming men to various commissions, instructing the senate concerning his foreign policy decisions, and generally behaving in the highhanded fashion that suited him so well. He got no argument. By that time the senate was made up of his supporters and his former enemies who were so relieved to be alive that they had to be restrained from voting him divine honors.

Toward the middle of the day, the traditional end of a senate session, I had escaped assignment to any committee or special duty and was looking forward to a late lunch and a leisurely bath, perhaps to be followed by a fine dinner at the home of a friend, possibly one of those recently returned exiles I hadn't seen in years. Caesar was famously magnanimous, and most of his former enemies were back home, only a few diehard Pompeians still holding out in remote corners of the empire. I was heading for the door with the others when this fond illusion was shattered.

"Decius Caecilius, attend me," Caesar said.

Uh-oh, I thought. He wants me for something unofficial. That's always a bad sign. I put on one of my best smiles and strode over to him.

"That is a singularly insincere smile," he noted.

"Nonetheless, I am informed that one must smile upon Caesar these days. It is said to be dangerous to appear too glum."

"Nonsense. I have a job for you, and you may frown and pout all you like while you carry it out."

"What sort of job?" I asked, resigned.

"A crime."

"Commit one or solve one?"

"Don't try my patience, Decius. The breastplate of pearls I gave to Venus has disappeared. I want you to find and retrieve it in time for my triumph."

"Pearls, Caesar?" I sighed.

"I'm afraid so." He grew conciliatory and put an arm around my shoulders. Presumably this semi-divine familiarity was supposed to reduce my humiliation. "Listen, Decius, I am fully aware that you are an ex-praetor qualified for high command and fit to govern an important province, and you shall do so soon. But," he gave my shoulders a comforting little squeeze, "your family's recent hostility toward me went beyond the merely politic. I can't very well shower you with honors before I've had a chance to properly reward my faithful supporters. Just be patient, and you'll soon be restored to the full honors of your birth and station. In the meantime, kindly go and find my pearls."

"Where were they last seen, Caesar?"

"Among my triumphal trophies. An image of the goddess will wear them at the head of the procession on the first day. You know where to look."

Indeed I did. The whole city knew of the preparations for Caesar's triumph. Since his return from Spain, where he had crushed Pompey's sons at Munda earlier that year, Caesar had been gathering the staggering loot to be displayed in his triumph in a field near the Circus Flaminius on the Field of Mars.

I took my leave of him and made my way thither. It wasn't a long walk. The senate was meeting that day in the Curia attached to Pompey's theater, which was handy to the Flaminius. This was because the ancient Curia Hostilia in the Forum was still in ruins, burned in the riots that followed the death of Clodius seven years previously. Also, it was customary for a general to remain outside the city proper until the day of his triumph. As dictator, Caesar could have dispensed with this ancient taboo, but he felt that as Pontifex Maximus he should observe it.

Perhaps these then-famous pearls deserve some explanation because the manner of their acquisition was so peculiar. When, in the course of his Gallic war, Caesar invaded the island of Britannia, his stated reason was to secure freshwater pearls, a product of that island, to make a breastplate for Venus Genetrix, the ancestress of his house. This was perhaps the silliest reason ever given for starting a war. I do not think we need to regard it seriously.

He did, however, get his pearls because he always got what he wanted, or at least that was what he claimed. Over whether they were truly freshwater pearls from Britannia there was some dispute. Some speculated that they might be common pearls from the East.

Not that pearls of any sort were exactly common. And about this time Romans had conceived a veritable passion for pearls. People paid the most extravagant sums for them. Caesar gave one said to be worth six million sesterces to Servilia, mother of his future assassin, Brutus.

The triumphal preparations covered a vast area, much of it protected by the largest awnings ever seen in Rome, even greater than the one that shaded the audience at the Circus Maximus. The whole area was guarded by a full legion of Caesar's veterans, another little reminder, were one needed, of who was master in Rome.

I was well known to Caesar's men, so they passed me through without difficulty. Beyond the guards were acres of loot: gold and silver in every form imaginable, from crowns to cooking pots, gems, precious woods, woven goods of all sorts, sculpture, painting, beautiful captives of both sexes, incredibly detailed models of cities and forts Caesar had taken, exotic animals, entire trees with their limbs trimmed and hung with arms and armor as trophies, images of all the state gods to be borne at the head of the procession, images of enemy gods to be borne in chains behind them, captives like their conquered worshippers.

As in everything else, Caesar intended that his triumph should outshine anything ever seen before. This one would stretch on for days and would commemorate his conquests in Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa. His most recent victories would not be acknowledged; there would be no trophies to celebrate his defeat of Pompey and his supporters. It was forbidden to celebrate a triumph for the defeat of Roman citizens.

A little asking led me to a tent stitched with gold thread and surrounded by protective herms. Before its entrance, incense burned on a small altar of finely wrought bronze. I passed within and found the interior illuminated by that ghostly glow that comes of sunlight passing through cloth, this time faintly tinged with gold. In the center stood the image of the goddess, now covered by a cloth of Tyrian purple-this pall alone worth a good-sized country estate.

The image stood beneath a frame of beams shaped like a doorway with a pulley in the center of the lintel. A few yards to the rear of the statue was a rope and windlass arrangement, with a ladder and a pile of heavily padded cloths. I had seen this sort of apparatus many times before. It had been used to raise the statue onto its pediment and soon would be employed to lift it onto a huge float that would be borne on the shoulders of Caesar's men at the head of the procession.

"May I be of assistance, Senator?" The speaker was a young woman whom I did not recognize at first, but some subtle cast of her features identified her as a member of Caesar's small family. She wore the spotless white robe of a priestess, and she was attended by a number of slave girls, also clad in white.

"Chloe!"I said.

She beamed. "I am amazed. The last time you saw me I was ten years old."

I now remembered the occasion. It had been at a wedding celebration during the consulship of Pompey and Metellus Scipio, so the girl was now about seventeen. Of course, her real name was Julia, like my wife and every other woman of that family, but the Caesars usually gave girl children Greek nicknames. Besides Chloe I knew a Thisbe, a Helen, a Circe, and a poetically inclined girl called Sappho.

My own wife had been called Briseis as a girl before she decided that Julia would remind everyone of who she really was.

"I would know you anywhere. You've only grown more beautiful." This gallantry was not entirely insincere. She was an attractive girl with huge eyes that were set just a little too close together, a common flaw in that family. But she had the grace and dignity that were drilled into the Caesars of both sexes from birth.

"You are very flattering." Then the smile disappeared. "You're here about the pearls, aren't you?"

"Your great-uncle has assigned me to investigate."

"I just do not understand it!" she said, showing her distress. "Yesterday we performed the evening sacrifice, closed the tent, and left. This morning we reopened the tent, and the pearls were gone! With all the soldiers guarding this place, how could it have happened?"

"Who was last to see them?"

"I suppose I must have been," Chloe said. "I dismissed my girls after the sacrifice and stayed behind to perform a rite that may be observed only by patrician members of the Julian family. That took only the time it takes for a spoon of incense to burn on the altar." A trifling time, not enough to accomplish anything seriously nefarious. "After that, I rejoined my girls, and we returned to Caesar's house."

"May I see the statue?"

She gestured to the slave girls, and they carefully drew the precious cloth away from the sculpture.

As might be expected from a man of Caesar's wealth and taste, she was glorious. The goddess was executed in bronze, an unusual thing, since Venus is usually sculpted in white marble. The metal was of the rare alloy called Corinthian in which the copper was alloyed not only with tin but also with silver and gold, which produces a paler color than the common red bronze and which does not turn green or black with age. It had been polished to a golden glow that truly looked like divine flesh. Her abundant hair was a separate casting of pure gold, her eyes formed of mother-of-pearl and sapphire. I recognized it as the work of Rhoton of Cyprus, one of the greatest sculptors of the day.

She was somewhat larger than lifesize and was without any of her usual attendants or attributes. She was not performing any of the subtly provocative acts one so often sees in sculptures of this goddess: wringing water from her hair after a bath, fastening her sandal, gazing into a mirror, and so forth. Instead she stood in the attitude of a deity bestowing a blessing, her weight distributed evenly on both feet, arms out with palms raised.

She was also nude, and this was the reason for that breastplate. In those days, unlike the Greek habit, it was not the Roman custom to portray this goddess entirely naked. Even when she was so sculpted, she was often painted with a symbolic golden modesty-garment. Caesar's "breastplate" was not the military sort but rather a mantle of pearls that would drape her from shoulder to thigh. It was inspired by the aegis, the magical mantle of the Greek Athena, usually depicted as a serpent-fringed goatskin but always described in sacred verse as a breastplate or shield.

"I haven't yet seen this garment," I told Chloe. "But I have heard that it is marvelous."

"It is sublime," she said. "More than thirty thousand pearls strung on something like two hundred eighty yards of fine golden chains. You can just see through it. To one entering her new temple, she will seem to be wearing the seafoam of her birth."

"It sounds heavy," I noted.

"Very. My girls and I weren't able to lift it onto her shoulders and had to ask some men to help."

"What men?"

"Some of the soldiers on guard outside."

"You allowed soldiers to handle this treasure?"

Already I saw trouble. Soldiers are acquisitive people.

"They were Caesar's men," she said, shrugging. Like my wife and the other women of his family, Chloe seemed to share the common misconception that Caesar's men worshipped him and would never steal from him. I knew better.

"Besides," she added, "there is treasure everywhere here. They would scarcely need the feel of pearls to excite their greed." That, at least, made sense.

"Were these the girls who were with you then?" I asked.

"Girls, attend," she said with quiet authority. The girls lined up, hands clasped before them, eyes downcast. Chloe gestured to each in turn. "Harmonia, Euterpe, Gaia, Leto, and Chrysis. Do you wish to question them?"

"What I would really like to know," I said, watching them closely, "is whether any of these girls has been on familiar terms with any of those soldiers." No one frowned, no one blushed.

"Of course not!" Chloe said heatedly. "I guard the chastity of my girls personally. They were raised in the house of the Pontifex Maximus."

"Quite so." Chloe had little grasp of the relevancies, but none of the girls showed the slightest sign of guilt. "When was the statue delivered?"

She thought a moment. "Two days before the breastplate arrived."

"And who delivered it?"

"Thyrsites the Alexandrian. He is a dealer in statuary. I believe he handled all the work on this one: commissioning the sculptor, the shipping and delivery. His men are amazingly skilled at the work. They arrived at first light and had it set up by midmorning, heavy though it is."

"And how did the pearls arrive?"

She crossed the tent and stooped over a long wooden box. This she opened, and it exuded a fragrance of fresh cedar. "It was in this box." She drew from it a long, tubular case of what appeared to be silk, a fabulous item by itself. "It was rolled up and covered with this case."

"And who handled this work?"

"The firm of Considius. He does all the finest pearl work in Rome. The women of my family deal exclusively with Considius."

"Did he perform the goldwork as well?"

"That I could not tell you. Is it important?'

"You never can tell what may prove to be important." I took one last look at the goddess as the girls readied to recover her. She truly was glorious.

The workers and dealers in precious substances were concentrated near the Forum, the pearl market being located at the northern end. The establishment of Considius seemed surprisingly modest for so great a merchant; little more than a booth crowded with beautifully crafted wooden cases. The whole place smelled sweetly of cedar. The cases were made of the same wood as the big delivery box in the goddess's tent.

"Welcome, Senator!" The man who came from the back of the tent wore citizen's clothes and the ring of an equites, but his features were subtly foreign, that Greek-Syrian mixture one encounters so often in the East. This made good sense considering the nature of his business. He was a balding, portly man perhaps forty-five years of age. "I am Considius. How may I help my distinguished guest?"

"I find that I must learn something about pearls."

His eyebrows went up. "I do hope the Senate is not considering new sumptuary laws."

"With Julius Caesar in charge? Not likely."

"Ah, excellent. How, then, may I enlighten you?"

"I know very little about pearls, and I've avoided learning lest my wife acquire too great a taste for them. How do they come to Rome?'

"Pearls come from the seas of the world, Senator, most of them from far, far to the east. Observe." He went to a long, narrow case, a miniature of the one I had seen in the tent, opening it to reveal a stunning series of pearls graded by color, from the common white on one end to silvery black on the other. They lay in a single row, nestled in silk and none of them was smaller than the tip of my smallest finger.

"Here," Considius explained, "we have black pearls from the Euxine Sea, rose-tinted ones from the Red Sea, yellow pearls from Arabian waters. The greatest number come from India and its numerous islands."

"I never knew there could be so many shades of white alone," I admitted. "Yours is a great and far-flung business."

"The trade is very ancient and very extensive," he said. 'Perhaps the only trade to compare is that in frankincense."

"Even among the white pearls," I commented, "I see here great differences not only in color but in- in brightness."

He smiled. "We refer to this quality as luster. Yes, there are wide differences. There is great art in matching the pearls in even an ordinary necklace because they must be matched not only in color and luster but also in size. All must be of the same size or very evenly graded." He opened a standing case to reveal at least a hundred neck-laces, from a tiny choker suitable for the neck of a girlchild to a massive rope that would have gone several times around the neck of a giantess. I made a mental note to keep Julia away from this place.

"That being the case," I said, "it must be a Herculean task to match a huge number of pearls as in the breastplate of Venus Genetrix, which I understand you undertook."

"Not truly," he said. "You see, in a very large piece such precision is not really necessary. Each pearl should be as close a match as possible to the adjacent pearls, but a small divergence from those farther away is scarcely noticeable. With a truly huge item like the pearl aegis Caesar commissioned, it is hardly necessary at all. The human eye cannot take in so many pearls at once. We graded them by size, with the largest at the collar, diminishing toward the hem. Differences in shade and luster were only roughly considered. With thirty thousand pearls, greater precision than that is not possible. Besides, these were freshwater pearls he brought back from Britannia."

"Is there a difference?" I wanted to know.

"Yes. Freshwater pearls are rarer than sea pearls, and Britannia is a faraway, exotic land, so people expect them to be extraordinary. Sadly, they are rather inferior to sea pearls, usually smaller, indifferent in color and luster."

"I see. And thirty thousand seems to me a rather great number for the pearl fisheries of Britannia."

He lowered his voice as if that were necessary. "Actually, and I tell you this in strictest confidence, Caesar returned with fewer than five thousand Britannic pearls. He did not actually conquer the island, you know."

"Then I take it you were forced to make up the difference."

"I was," he said with some satisfaction. "It was the largest single order I've ever had. If Caesar wants a thing, Caesar must have it. I had to assemble the pearls, and my craftsmen had to work day and night to pierce them all and string them on the golden chains."

"I take it you did not perform that task here."

"No, here I have only finished pieces on display. The actual work is performed in my establishment in the Trans-Tiber. I have twenty slaves under a freedman supervisor, all of them marvelously trained and skilled."

"And you do your own goldwork?"

"Oh no. That would be frowned upon by the guilds. Gemstones, precious metals, and pearls are separate trades. My chains and other goldwork are made by Demaratus. He's an Alexandrian Greek, and his craftsmen are the best gold-workers in the world. These are his." He threw open another case, this one containing samples of golden chain, some so fine they could scarcely be seen. They were graded by thickness, but none was too thick to go through a pearl.

"These also are his work," Considius raised a lid, revealing perhaps a hundred rings, all designed to have pearls set in them. There were also pierced golden beads of many shapes. "These beads are meant to be strung together with the pearls on necklaces and earrings. The customer may choose to match up pearls and settings and beads, but I provide what guidance I can. Some of my customers have the most ghastly taste."

"Did Caesar take a personal hand in designing the breastplate for Venus?"

"He let me know precisely what he needed, but he left the details of construction to me. Even a man like Caesar can't be expert at everything." He closed the cases. "Might I know why you are inquiring about these matters?'

"Just curious," I said, taking my leave. One of the best things about my position was that I didn't have to explain myself to anybody.

The goldsmiths' quarter lay in a block of houses and shops on the Via Nova, opposite the ancient Mugonia Gate, near the eastern end of the Forum. A bit of asking took me to a shop considerably larger than that of Considius. This one featured armed guards, for which the goldsmiths' and jewelers' guilds had special licenses. These men, who looked like retired Greek mercenaries, let me through without questioning. Apparently they thought a senator must be too dignified to steal. A fat lot they knew about it.

The doorway in the low wall opened onto a spacious courtyard where twenty or more craftsmen worked quietly. The ticking of their tiny hammers was like the noise of insects, and the bellows' feeding auto the furnaces was like the breathing of somnolent beasts. The heat from the latter was intense. From somewhere inside the sprawling building came a continuous, muffled thumping as of padded mallets, and someone was playing a pipe in time with the thumping.

Demaratus was a small dark man dressed, groomed, and bearded like a Greek, but one look told me his ancestors had worked gold for the pharaohs. He favored me with a smile full of dazzling teeth.

"Greetings, Senator! How may the firm of Demaratus be of service to the Senate and People of Rome?" He was a foreigner, but he could sling the old formula like a citizen.

"Actually, I am on a mission for Caesar," I told him.

"Ah! The gold leaf to adorn the new temple of Venus Genetrix? Please inform the Dictator that the leaf is being hammered out even as we speak. Come, I will show you."

This wasn't what I was there for, but I've learned far more by indirection than by asking questions directly. I followed him inside and saw some twenty men seated on the floor in a row. This was where the hammering noise was coming from. Before each man was what appeared to be a stack of sheepskin cut square, about twice the width of a man's hand on each side.

Before the men sat a woman playing a lively tune in the Lydian mode on a double tibia, keeping time for them like a ship's hortator. They were pounding these sheepskin cubes with big-headed wooden mallets. After each tenth blow the men turned the sheepskins over with a dexterous flip of the hand, then continued pounding on the other side. Apparently they could continue this monotonous labor forever, and they'd been doing it for a long time. Their arms, particularly their forearms, were tremendously developed although they were not otherwise muscular. At a trill from the tibia each man tossed his hammer in the air, twirling, caught it in the other hand as it came down, and continued to pound.

"Very impressive," I said. "What am I looking at?"

This is how gold leaf is made." He showed me how the gold was first hammered as thin as possible with a hammer and anvil, which is very thin indeed, then was cut into small squares and placed between layers of thin sheepskin, the skins bound into stacks of a hundred or more, then pounded for hours by these mallet-men. The pieces would treble or quadruple their size under this treatment and become so fine that they seemed to weigh nothing and would cling to any object one desired to gild.

"When the gilders apply the leaf to the new temple," he went on, "they will bond it fully to the stone, metal, or wood by passing a red-hot iron a fraction of an inch from the surface. No further treatment is needed save a gentle burnishing."

"He's not planning to gild the whole temple, is he?"

"Not at all. But the altar is to be gilded, the capitals of the columns, the details of the frieze and the pediment, all the interior pilasters, the base of the statue and the entire ceiling. It will be a most lavish use of gold leaf, worthy of a Ptolemy."

"Or a Caesar. This is wonderful," I told him, always happy to learn something new. "But alas, it is not gold leaf I wish to inquire about but gold chain."

"Chain? Has Caesar another project? I've already returned to him the gold left over from the aegis of Venus."

"Returned? Caesar himself gave you the gold to make the chains?"

"But of course. Why buy gold when you already have plundered gold in your possession?"

That made sense. "In what form was this gold?"

"When Considius undertook the pearl contract, he told Caesar that my firm would handle the gold-work. Caesar sent it in the form of six golden Gaulish cauldrons, all carefully weighed. These we melted down into bullion form. When the chains were completed, I returned the remaining gold to Caesar."

"But those cauldrons were part of Caesar's triumphal trophies."

"The cauldrons you will see in the triumph will be replicas of gilded copper."

"You simply can't trust anything any more," I said. He shrugged philosophically. "Was this the largest order you've ever undertaken?"

"The aegis of Venus? By no means. It required something less than five hundred sixty yards of fine chain. Just last year, the Cumaeans adorned their temple of Neptune by draping the interior with a great fisherman's net of golden chain. This required more than seventeen hundred yards of chain of a much heavier gauge than I used for the aegis. Pompey has consistently ordered wonderful golden chains, manacles, and neck-rings to bind the many noble and royal prisoners who adorned his memorable triumphs. At least he used to." We observed a moment of silence to acknowledge the passing of that great but difficult man.

This talk of chains called for another tour of the facilities, and I saw the workmen hammering gold bars into plates, then cutting the plates into thin rods with shears, drawing the rods into long wires, twisting the wires around mandrels of the requisite size and shape, snipping the coils thus formed into rings, linking the rings into chains, and then, the most difficult task of all, soldering all the links in glowing furnaces.

Great skill was required to keep the furnaces at exactly the right temperature. Too cool and the solder would not flow. Too high and the gold would melt and all the labor would have to be repeated. The furnaces were under the supervision of a skinny old man dressed only in a linen loincloth who spent his days squatting in front of them, judging their heat by color alone. Beside him squatted a youth he was training to the same exacting skill. At the old man's subtle hand signals the bellows-men quickened or slowed their hauling on the ropes, and the firetenders threw in fresh charcoal or scooped out glowing cinders.

"Have you done other work connected with the new temple?" I asked. "For instance, the goddess's golden wig?"

"No, that would have been done on Cyprus under the supervision of the sculptor."

"I see."That meant only one more call to make.

The establishment of Thyrsites was on the river south of the Sublician Bridge. It was little more than a warehouse equipped with all the tackle necessary for lifting weighty sculpture and stout wagons for transporting them. When the slave at the door announced my arrival, Thyrsites hurried to greet me. Thus far that day I had dealt with a Roman-named Syrian and a Greek-named Egyptian. Thyrsites was a Greek-named Greek, even if he was from Egypt. He begged to know how he could be of assistance.

"I've come at Caesar's behest to inquire about the statue of Venus Genetrix," I informed him.

"Ah! A wonderful work, is it not? Have you seen it?"

"I have. Wonderful, indeed."

"I do hope no harm has come to it?" His concern seemed genuine.

"None that I know of. I just need some information."

"I am at your service."

"First off, how is the pediment made?"

He looked puzzled. "It is simply a solid block of granite porphyry, very highly polished but extremely plain in the Doric fashion as you must have seen. Caesar did not want attention to be distracted from contemplation of the goddess herself."

"Very good. And the statue?"

"The finest Corinthian bronze, hollow-cast, like all large bronze sculpture, using the lost wax process perfected centuries ago by Rhoecus and Theodoras. In this case the casting was simplified by the top of the head's being left unfinished, since the goddess was to wear a golden wig. Personally, I think this is why so many statues wear wigs or helmets. It makes the casting process less chancy."

"I've wondered about that," I told him. "And this wig, is it cast of solid gold?"

"It is pure gold, but it is all hammer work, no casting. It is quite thin and delicate and was packed in a separate crate. It is fastened to the cranium by pins passing through eyelets behind the ears, quite invisible to a viewer standing below."

"That is all I need to know," I told him, and turned to go.

"But, Senator," he stammered, mystified, "why do you-"

But I was already away. I didn't have to answer to anybody, and the fewer who knew what I knew the better.

My last call of the day was Caesar's house, his temporary home on the Campus Martius. It was getting late, but he greeted me without impatience. "Decius! We will be having dinner soon; perhaps you can join us. I take it you have learned something?'

"I have, Dictator."

"Then you can regale my guests with the tale of your accomplishments."

"That would be unwise, Caesar."

His face clouded. "How so?"

"I am afraid it concerns a woman of your household."

"Slave or freeborn?"

"Patrician. A pure Julian."

He closed his eyes. "Chloe." Then they snapped open again. "How is this possible? I have questioned her girls closely. She never had time to tamper with the aegis and is not strong enough to move it by herself"

"If you will accompany me to the tent where the goddess awaits, I will show you."

Caesar passed instructions to inform his guests that he would be late for dinner, and without so much as a single lictor for company, we went to the treasure camp.

Caesar ordered soldiers to bring torches and lamps for light, then told them to go outside and keep silent. When they had gone, he raised his hands and spoke a prayer in language so archaic that I could make out only a word or two.

I took one of the ladders and propped it against the wooden framework. "She and her temple have not yet been consecrated," I said. "Why do you observe these ceremonies?"

"It is the custom in my family," he said. That was the Caesars for you. They always overdid everything. "What are you doing?'

"I'm relieving the goddess of her wig." Behind her ears I found the split pins and drew them from the raised eyelets. Thus freed, the wig lifted easily. Large as it was, the thin-beaten gold weighed no more than two pounds. Very carefully I descended with it and laid it on the grassy turf. From brow to nape the top of the head of Venus was missing.

Caesar frowned. "I thought the head would be complete, as if it were merely shaved."

"Thyrsites tells me that this way the casting is greatly simplified." I went to the windlass and unwound some rope tipped with a hook. Then I climbed the ladder again, passed hook and rope over the pulley, and lowered it into the goddess's head. "And now, Caesar, if you will give that windlass a few turns?"

He set the thing into creaking motion, and slowly something that resembled a gleaming white cable emerged. When the hook reached the pulley, I tugged the remainder out and spread the hem of the garment over the bronze head and shoulders. Caesar lowered the hook and within moments the goddess was wearing her pearly mantle once more. I restored her wig and stood back to get the full effect. Truly glorious.

"You see how quickly that went?" I said. "With a windlass and pulley, even a weighty object like the aegis can be moved swiftly using only the strength of a child. Of course Chloe was careful to act as if she were ignorant of basic mechanics. She summoned some of your soldiers to assist her in lifting the mantle. Spread the suspicion that way, too."

"She is a clever girl. But I take it she did not plan this on her own?"

"No, she was put up to it by a man who knows his business and has the wherewithal to reward her. Your women really love their pearls, Caesar. Shall we go arrest him now?"

"No, plenty of time in the morning." He clapped me on the shoulder. "Come, Decius, let's have dinner. But," he said ominously, "this will not be among the subjects of dinner conversation." Meaning I was never to speak of this, ever.

The next morning we paid a visit to the manufactory of Considius in the Trans-Tiber district. We dispensed with the polite formalities, and Caesar's lictors bashed the door in with their fasces. In the courtyard we found a number of slaves or free craftsmen assembling another aegis apparently identical to the original. We also found Considius, his face gone paler than his pearls.

Caesar surveyed the scene. "As you said, Decius. Congratulations." His tone was almost jovial, a dangerous sign. "A pity you are a citizen, Considius. Citizens can't be crucified. Lucky you."

"But how-" Considius began.

"Chloe let it slip that thirty thousand pearls required something like two hundred eighty yards of fine gold chain. Demaratus told me you ordered a bit more than five hundred sixty yards. Why would you need twice the required chain unless you were making two mantles? You conspired with Chloe to make the original disappear. You knew that Caesar had sworn to have the goddess draped with that mantle in time for his triumph, so he would have to come to you for another. Not bad. Another thirty thousand pearls sold and a generous bonus for a quick job. As a Julian and a priestess of Venus, Chloe could get you access to the new temple at any time so you could retrieve the original, unstring the pearls, and sell them as hundreds of necklaces, earrings, and so on. Pure profit for you, and a nice cut for Chloe, I imagine."

"Considius," Caesar said quietly, "would you like to continue breathing?"

'Very much so, Dictator," the man said.

"Then you will be happy to know that you are donating this splendid new mantle to Pompey's temple of Venus. You will retire to some remote town and hope that I never take an interest in you again. If you had to borrow to purchase all these pearls, I hope you can come to a satisfactory arrangement with your creditors. If word of this matter ever comes out, I will know who talked, and this empire is mine. I will find you."

"As you wish, Caesar." Big drops of sweat poured down his face like a shower of his own pearls.

"A nice gesture," I said to Caesar as we walked back to the Campus Martius. "A mantle for Pompey's temple, I mean. It will go a long way to reconciling you with the old Pompeians."

"He was my son-in-law and my friend. I never would have harmed him. It was young Ptolemy who cut his head off, and for that I killed him. I've never touched his statues or his inscriptions, nor have I torn down his trophies as was done to Marius."

"And now his Venus will have an aegis as fine as yours."

"Not quite," he said. "After all, mine is made of Britannic river pearls, while the other is made of common eastern sea pearls."

"And what will you do to Chloe?"

"Send her to Arpinum and marry her off to some dull clod without political ambition. As I have said before, the women of my household must be above suspicion."

"It used to be just your wife."

"Times change, Decius." And so they did.

These were the events of two days in the year 708 of the City of Rome, during the third Dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar.

Content

John Maddox Roberts
Venus in Pearls