Message: Murder in the House of Varrus!!! (Chapter II)
Author: L. Didius Silva
Originally Posted: October 8, 2000 (reposted with the permission of the author)

Usually things are quiet and boring. A common joke in the Statores was that we'd have to go out and break into a house ourselves just to have a real crime to solve. Now it seemed the gods thought they'd be funny and dump everything in our laps at one time. Like I said before, today was Iudes August, one of the biggest festival days on the calendar.

Today was the feast of the Vertumnalia. It was sacred to the god Vertumnus and the goddess Pomona. They are the patron deities of gardens and fruit orchards. It was also sacred to Diana, goddess of the moon. She would have a big celebration today. Also celebrated today were festivals to Hercules, to Castor and Pollux, to Flora - goddess of flowers. This meant that there was a party going on in almost every corner of Roma. Most of my Cohort were out patrolling the streets, just like the Vigiles were. All of us were trying to keep the merry, drunken, citizenry from burning the Urbs down around our ears. We'd slap the cuffs on any troublemakers we found. Later, we'd get together with the Vigiles and swap any civilian troublemakers for military ones.

As if that were not enough, two days earlier, a Treasury Quaestor from Sicilia had gotten off the boat in Ostia and gone promptly missing. We know that he had cleared the guards at the Porta Ostiensis, then he'd just disappeared off the face of the earth. The fact that he'd been transporting 12 gold bars, part of the taxes from Sicilia which were very late this year due to bad crops, did not bode well for his continued health. The Treasury Praetor was all over us and the Vigiles to find the gold, er... I mean the Quaestor, without any delay. We'd been given his description and would keep an eye out for him while doing crowd control.

Murder was a capital crime, so I'd have to go myself. I decided to take four men with me, the Decurion Marcus Priscus, and the legionaries Calpetanus Rantius, Julius Cordus, and Vettius Bolanus. General Varrus lived in the Vallis Camenarum, a little valley formed between the Mons Aventinus and the Mons Caelius. His domus was on a street called the Vicus Honoris et Virtutis (the Street of Honor and Virtue). Since his house lay in the First District, it was under the normal authority of the Vth Cohort of Vigiles. Its watch commander was Sullius Piso, sometime friend, sometime enemy, always a rival and one of the sharpest investigators Roma ever produced.

With Aurelia's slave leading the way, we proceeded over the Collis Viminalis, through the Subura District (with our hands over our purses), down the Clivus Pullius in Tabernola, across the Via Sacra, then down the Vicus Capiti Africae until we came to the door of the HQ of the Vth Vigiles. The building was empty.

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