SPQR III: the sacrilege Read Online Free PDF

to me turned around. His face was malignant, dark and flushing darker. I should have recognized that squat, neckless form even from behind. Somehow I managed to control my natural impulse to reach for a weapon. Just as well, since I was unarmed.
    "Why, Publius," I said, "I rejoice to see your face again." And indeed I did. It always did my heart good to look upon the scars I had put on that misshapen countenance.
    "My sister said you were back." He almost strangled on the words, but perhaps he just suffered from croup. I swear I saw red veins shoot across his eyeballs like strokes of lightning. Then Caesar put a hand on his shoulder.
    "Now, let us have no unseemliness," Caesar said, smiling. "This is the house of Metellus." At his touch and his words and his smile, Clodius ceased to tremble and his color faded. Wordlessly, he nodded. It was the most extraordinary performance. Had the idea not been so absurd, I would have sworn that Clodius was afraid of Caesar! I could not guess what the little scene meant, but I learned something from it that was to haunt me for years to come. I wanted never to see Caius Julius smile at me like that.
    My kinsman Metellus Creticus was standing near and caught the unpleasant scene, and he moved in to provide a diversion.
    "It's no wonder Decius is confused about the date," he said. "Everybody else is, too. The calendar's gotten all skewed again. That's your job, Caius Julius. When are you going to correct it?" Our calendar was lunar, and because the diurnal year doesn't quite come out even with the turnings of the moon, the calendar would get out of order and every few years the Pontifex Maximus would have to slip in an extra month to make it come out even. Caesar had ignored the problem since his election, probably because he was, basically, a lazy man.
    "This creaky old calendar of ours is beyond redemption," Caesar said. "I propose to utterly reform the calendar so that it never needs adjusting again."
    A good lazy man's solution, I thought. "How will you do that?" I asked him.
    "I will assemble the best astronomers and mathematicians to be found and commission them to work out a sensible calendar in which the number of months always stays the same. I think it can be done if we accept the idea that not all the months will have the same number of days and they will have nothing to do with the phases of the moon."
    "Sounds too radical to me," Creticus said. At the time I took it merely for more of Caesar's grandiose talk, but a few years later he actually did it, and we haven't had to adjust the calendar since. Even a man like Caius Julius can do something right once in a while.
    By this time Clodius's friends had led him away, and it occurred to me that somebody, perhaps Clodia, had passed the word that we were to be kept apart. That was a juxtaposition I could live with. As I waited for Celer to appear, I noticed something that I had begun to suspect the day before, in the Forum: I had become very popular with the publicani . Most of these were prosperous equities , men in the building or tax-farming trade. They all were eager to make my acquaintance and they all asked pointedly after my father's health. As the Censors were in charge of letting the public contracts, I was clearly a man to cultivate. They hinted that, should I commend them to the old man, I could look forward to some generous gifts at Saturnalia. It looked as if I might finally escape my customary penury.
    Mind you, this was not considered a matter of corruption, although our First Citizen would have it so. He claims that we were utterly corrupt in those days and that his "reforms" have fixed everything and corruption is no more. As usual, he flatters himself. He has merely ensured that a fat chunk of every bribe that is passed comes to him.
    At one point, while having my ear abraded by a quarry owner, I found myself edging toward a little knot of men surrounding Clodius. I had keen ears, and I always loved to eavesdrop,