Read SPQR III: the sacrilege for Free Online Page B

thought, he was just trying to get a little drama into his life. It is the common practice of boys just come to manhood to do things like that: wear poison rings or conceal swords beneath their tunics or write dreadful poems. However, nothing remotely connected with Publius Clodius was too trifling to rouse my suspicions.
    The booth was typical of the sort: a flimsy construction of poles, roofed and walled with cheap, heavy cloth. Unlike the vendors' booths, this one did not have a table out front for the display of wares. Instead, the front and sides were decorated with magical symbols: crescent moons, snakes, owls and the like. I pushed aside the curtain and ducked through the low doorway. The interior was full of baskets containing all manner of herbs, vials of scented oils and nameless articles, of interest solely to the practitioners of magic. In one rustling basket I saw a knot of writhing black snakes.
    "May I help you, sir?" The speaker was an absurdly ordinary-looking peasant woman. She might as well have been selling turnips in the produce market.
    "I am the Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger," I said portentously. "I want to know what the noble youth who just left was doing here."
    She looked me over. "Is there any reason I should talk about my clients to you?"
    "Your sort is forbidden within the city, you know," I said.
    "The stripe's on your tunic, not your toga," she pointed out. By this she meant that I did not wear the purple-bordered toga praetexta and therefore plainly had no judicial power.
    "No, but my father is the Censor Metellus," I said.
    "Is that so? I don't follow political matters much. Well, if that's the case, he's the one I should be talking to, I suppose. Why don't you fetch him here and we'll sit down and have a little chat?"
    "Woman, you try my patience. Don't you know how to show the proper respect to a Senator?"
    She looked at me pityingly. "Now, sir, you know perfectly well a Senator's just a citizen with a purple stripe on his tunic. If you only knew how many Senators come to me wanting a poison to get rid of their wives, or an abortion for a slave girl, and me just a poor, honest fortune-teller and herbalist. The wives come, too, because the noble husband's been away all year and they're going to have a baby that'll come out looking just like the Gallic stableboy. You'd be shocked at what your peers get up to, sir." Unfortunately, I would not be a bit shocked.
    "And you, of course, would have nothing to do with such things?"
    "I should hope not!" She made a number of gestures against the evil eye and other supernatural misfortunes. "I read the signs and give advice. Come to me with a cold or a hangover and I'll mix you up a potion to relieve your suffering, but don't ask me to do anything illegal."
    Well, I could scarcely expect her to admit selling poisons for purposes other than suicide, since the punishment was a horrible death. '
    "Fortune-telling is illegal," I pointed out.
    "Well, there's lawbreaking that gets you run out of town and there's lawbreaking that gets you nailed to a cross. It's that last kind that I call illegal."
    "I am going to stay here until you tell me what that boy was doing here. Then what will you do for customers?"
    She threw up her hands in exasperation. "Oh, sir! Wasn't you ever that young? Didn't you always go running to a fortune-teller every time your heart went thump over some neighbor's pimply daughter? Lovesick boys outnumber embarrassed Senators any day."
    "Very well," I said, "I will accept that for now, but I may be back. What is your name?"
    "Purpurea, sir. You'll find me here most days."
    I left fuming. Sometimes I envy Asiatic nobles, whose inferiors have to grovel in the dirt before them and lick their toes. Purpurea! When women get to make up their own names, they come up with some strange ones. And her pose of innocence did not impress me. In my lifetime I have known thousands of criminals, and the best of them could make a newborn