Decimus

"Augusto di Prima Porta" by Deckard Enright

Decimus by Deckard Enright

Somehow, throughout all this conspiracy, I managed to keep at the dictator’s side. I take pride in that. There is an underappreciated joy in tricking someone. 

Before the anticipated day, I am invited to the home of a contemporary to eat and drink and make conversation, as friends, as comrades. As it is, the dictator will be there. 

I expect this will not be a problem. I have approached him unfaltering a thousand times in the past four weeks. This is a trivial event, nothing formal; he means to congregate with close friends before he departs for another campaign in a few days. He thinks he will be departing for another campaign. 

I arrive. The pleasantries begin. The dictator himself is as cordial as ever. After having various high-stakes parleys with foreign kings from distant lands, this meeting to him must feel trivial at best, as casual as going to the market to buy bread. Nothing is different. Nothing is new. Tomorrow will be history, but today, we eat dinner. 

I am escorted into the dining room. The dictator looks up at the first sound. His eyes light up. Decime!, he exclaims, and we exchange pleasantries.

How tense. I begin to feel uneasy from the moment we lock eyes. He is viscerally happy to see me, and that makes my stomach churn.

We eat and drink. We talk of war. We talk of government. As we do. The evening is entirely, wholly normal. But the unease does not leave. I am speaking with a man who is on death row, but is under the pretense that tomorrow he will live to see another sunset over the city he rules. 

Suddenly, trickery feels less virtuous. I pity this man for his obliviousness, and I believe that if he knew an ounce of the truth, he would pity me.

The night marches on. It wears down on me more every minute. Sitting next to this man who will soon be dead makes me sweat. How can I listen to his rambles? He talks of his ambitions. He talks of his goals. None of these will matter soon. 

The conversation turns.

Quod est optimus via ut mori?

What is the best way to die?

Somehow, after a night of unbridled eat and drink, the conversation has come to this. I discuss the prompt with our contemporary, trying to calm my nerves. The dictator is uncharacteristically quiet. He is so fortunate- he must think of death so little. 

I watch as he opens his mouth to speak.

“Repente improvisus.”

Suddenly and unexpectedly.

Jupiter must mean to make me a fool. I feel my entire body go cold. It is a wonder the dictator does not eye me with suspicion, for my guilty conscience gets the best of me. For the first time, amid all this conspiring, I am filled with fear. 

Fear. Not a typical characteristic a man of prestige should have. Guilt. A trait unfit for any general. This man killed a million men and does not falter when speaking of it. Now, confronted with the reality that just one man will be dead in part by my hand, I can hardly get a word out. 

I feel lowly, like a worm or something equally pathetic and disgusting. Perhaps my forefathers, all valiant consuls and generals, look upon me in shame, or in disgust, like one would scrunch up their face at something dead laying in the street. 

He was kind to me. We served together. He entrusted me with command of his men many times. He has said many times that he saw his younger comrades as children, his children. 

Among all the scheming, to him I was loyal. Devoted. I was a Caesarian. How can I do the deed? How can I raise this dagger…

But how can I think this way? He was a threat. He was malignant, destructive. He would tear this city apart, break it down to the roots like a cancer. He is uncontrollable. The senate cannot stop him, nor the praetors nor the quaestors nor the consul. No one can stop him. 

But someone will. And it will happen suddenly and unexpectedly.

On the Ides of March, Gaius Julius Caesar, my friend, my enemy, will have his wish granted.