A Point of Law

Plot summary

Senator Decius Metellus has returned from his military expedition to Cyprus, having concluded a successful campaign against local pirates and gathered enough booty to pay off his outstanding debts and finance his campaign for praetor. He is campaigning in the Forum when a young aristocrat loudly denounces him for alleged fraud and theft while in office on Cyprus, and boldly threatening to prosecute him for said acts. A minor scuffle breaks out, before the young man is dragged away.

Later, the young man is found gruesomely murdered, and suspicion falls on Decius. To his consternation, his family inform him that, although the charges are unlikely to stick, they can nevertheless delay his election for at least a year. Decius, thinking hard, realizes that the young man may have been a virtual nobody, but could recite a pedigree that would virtually guarantee him popular support - claiming descent from Scipio Africanus and the Gracchi, among others. This means that the young man was likely the figurehead of a conspiracy. The exact aim of the conspiracy is unclear, but Decius reasons that someone must be aiming at reducing the Caecilia Metelli's voting bloc in the Senate (as Decius concedes, he himself is not that important).

Decius consults Sallustius, who gives him a small lecture about the Republic's political landscape: for generations, the great aristocratic families of Rome have been slowly shrinking, more dependent on adoption to sustain their numbers, and gradually losing their hold on the highest offices of state which they consider to be their birthright. Now, with Caesar's power, wealth, and popularity growing on a daily basis, these aristocrats are being pushed to increasingly desperate lengths. Sallust confides that he was a guest at several dinner parties at which schemes were discussed to seize control of the State; the young man was to have been the figurehead, and popular support was supposed to have been further mobilized by proposing a mass cancellation of debts. Of course, Sallust dismissed the scheme as hare-brained.

Characters in A Point of Law

Decius Metellus the Younger

protagonist;

Hermes

Decius's freedman and assistant;

Julia

Decius's wife, Julius Caesar's niece;

Asklepeiodes

Greek physician, Decius's close friend;

Callista

Greek scholar living in Rome;

Historical Characters

Octavia the Younger;

Gaius Sallustius Crispus;

Marcus Claudius Marcellus;

Gaius Claudius Marcellus Major;

Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor;

Gaius Scribonius Curio;

Fulvia;

Cicero;

Cato the Younger;

Julius Caesar (mentioned only);

Pompey (mentioned only);

Octavius (mentioned only);

Major themes

As with the previous volumes of Roberts's SPQR series, A Point of Law explores the gradual decline of the Roman Republic as a result of its increasingly dysfunctional politics. The conspiracy which Decius uncovers and thwarts is symptomatic of these ills: amateurishly planned, poorly executed, and born of a blinkered, reactionary mindset. Decius is profoundly depressed: he has always loathed and mistrusted Caesar as ambitious and unscrupulous, yet he cannot deny that he is far smarter and more capable than almost anyone in the Senate.