Friends

M. Didius Falco

Director of Falco & Partner, auditors to the Census

Anacrites

Temporary partner in Falco & Partner, a protégé

Ma

Permanent protector of Anacrites

Helena Justina

Permanent partner of Falco

Julia Junilla

Infant child of Falco and Helena

Pa (Geminus)

Ex-partner of, and in need of protection from, Ma

Maia

Falco's youngest sister, looking for her chance

Famia

Maia's husband, looking for a drink

D. Camillus Verus

A senator, father to Helena, looking for his son

Q. Camillus Justinus

An idealist, looking for a plant

Claudia Rufina

An heiress disappointed in love

A. Camillus Aelianus

A hopeful, disappointed in money

Lenia

Looking to let go of her husband

Smaractus

Looking to hang on to his wife's cash

Rodan & Asiacus

Deadbeats, regularly beaten and usually half-dead

Thalia

An exotic circus manager

Romans

Vespasian Augustus

Emperor and Censor, building the Flavian Amphitheater

Antonia Caenis

Mistress and long-term partner to the Emperor

Claudius Laeta

Senior administrator at the Palace, a loner

Rutilius Gallicus

Special Envoy to Tripolitania

Romanus

An unknown

Scilla

A wild girl looking for a legal device

Pomponius Urtica

A praetor who never did anything illegal

Rumex

A celebrity graffiti

Buxus

An animal keeper

An elderly gooseboy

Just looking at birds all day

Tripolitanians

Saturninus

A gladiators' trainer, from Lepcis Magna

Euphrasia His wife, who has promised to say nothing

Calliopus A venatio specialist, from Oea

Artemisia His wife, who can't say anything as she isn't there

Hanno A man who can afford to pay his taxes, from Sabratha

Myrrha Who may say something, but only in Punic

Iddibal A far from beastly bestiarius

Fidelis A faithful interpreter

Animals

Nux

A personable pup, commander of the Falco household

Leonidas

A friendly lion, who is due to make a killer dead meat

Draco

A very unfriendly lion

Anethum

A performer who brings lying doggo to perfection

Also featuring

Borago the bear,

Ruta the alleged aurochs,

Ostriches,

Pigeons,

Lions,

Stone lions,

a Leopardess

By Special Request

Jason the python

And Introducing

The Sacred Geese of Juno

Jurisdictions of the Vigiles Cohorts in Rome:

Coh I

Regions VII & VIII (Via Lata, Forum Romanum)

Coh II

Regions III & V (Isis and Serapis, Esquiline)

Coh III

Regions IV & VI (Temple of Peace, Alta Semita)

Coh IV

Regions XII & XIII (Piscina Publica, Aventine)

Coh V

Regions I & II (Porta Capena, Caelimontium)

Coh VI

Regions X & XI (Palatine, Circus Maximus)

Coh VII

Regions IX & XIV (Circus Flaminius, Transtiberina)

Tripolitania and Cyrenaïca

Rome : December A. D. 73-April A. D. 74

MY PARTNER AND I had been well set up to earn our fortunes until we were told about the corpse.

Death, it has to be said, was ever-present in those surroundings. Anacrites and I were working among the suppliers of wild beasts and gladiators for the arena Games in Rome; every time we took our auditing note tablets on a site visit, we spent the day surrounded by those who were destined to die in the near future and those who would only escape being killed if they killed someone else first. Life, the victors' main prize, would be in most cases temporary.

But there amongst the fighters' barracks and the big cats' cages, death was commonplace. Our own victims, the fat businessmen whose financial affairs we were so delicately probing as part of our new career, were themselves looking forwards to long, comfortable lives-yet the formal description of their business was Slaughter. Their stock-in-trade was measured as units of mass murder; their success would depend upon those units satisfying the crowd in straightforward volume terms, and upon their devising ever more sophisticated ways to deliver the blood.

We knew there must be big money in it. The suppliers and trainers were free men-a prerequisite of engaging in commerce, however sordid-and so they had presented themselves with the rest of Roman society in the Great Census. This had been decreed by the Emperor on his accession, and it was not simply intended to count heads. When Vespasian assumed power in a bankrupt Empire after the chaos of Nero's reign, he famously declared that he would need four hundred million sesterces to restore the Roman world. Lacking a personal fortune, he set out to find funding in the way that seemed most attractive to a man with middle-class origins. He named himself and his elder son, Titus, as Censors, then called up the rest of us to give an account of ourselves and of everything we owned. Then we were swingeingly taxed on the latter, which was the real point of the exercise.

The shrewd amongst you will deduce that some heads of household found themselves excited by the challenge; foolish fellows tried to minimize the figures when declaring the value of their property. Only those who can afford extremely cute financial advisers ever get away with this, and since the Great Census was intended to rake in four hundred million it was madness to attempt a bluff. The target was too high; evasion would be tackled head-on-by an Emperor who had tax farmers in his recent family pedigree.

The machinery for extortion already existed. The Census traditionally used the first principle of fiscal administration: the Censors had the right to say: we don't believe a word of what you're telling us. Then they made their own assessment, and the victim had to pay up accordingly. There was no appeal.

No; that's a lie. Free men always have the right to petition the Emperor. And it's a perk of being Emperor that he can twitch his purple robe and augustly tell them to get lost.

While the Emperor and his son were acting as Censors, it would in any case be a waste of time to ask them to overrule themselves. But first they had to make the hard-hitting reassessments, and for that they needed help. To save Vespasian and Titus from being forced personally to measure the boundaries of estates, interrogate sweaty Forum bankers, or pore over ledgers with an abacus-given that they were simultaneously trying to run the tattered Empire after all-they were now employing my partner and me. The Censors needed to identify cases where they could clamp down. No emperor wants to be accused of cruelty. Somebody had to spot the cheats who could be reassessed without causing an outcry, so Falco & Partner had been hired-at my own suggestion and on an extremely attractive fee basis-to investigate low declarations.