The Missing Cup

NOTE This story contains insults, and sexual innuendo.

There are objects whose value increases only after they disappear. This is true of jewels, manuscripts, beautiful women, and cups borrowed from senators.

The cup belonged to Quintus Lutatius Varro, a man of moderate ancestry, considerable wealth, and the sort of polished resentment that improves beneath silver lamps. It was Greek, or said to be Greek, which in Rome often means that no living Greek has been permitted to examine it. Two dolphins formed the handles. A drunken satyr pursued three nymphs around the bowl, though the nymphs appeared less alarmed than etiquette required.

Varro displayed it at every dinner.

He did not drink from it. That would have exposed the cup to wine. Instead, it stood upon a cedar table beside his couch while guests admired its antiquity, workmanship, and owner in the proper order.

I attended one such dinner in the year when Caesar and Bibulus were consuls, though Rome saw rather more of Caesar than of Bibulus.

Also present were Calvus, Cinna, the senator Aulus Cornelius Lentulus, two merchants from Massilia, Varro’s widowed sister Terentia, and a young military tribune named Gaius Fadius, whose father had purchased him a career and was still awaiting delivery.

Lesbia arrived late.

Write that plainly, Philo. Her lateness supplied enough ornament.

Varro rose too quickly, struck the cedar table with his knee, and nearly sent the cup onto the pavement. A slave caught it against his chest.

Varro snatched it back and examined the dolphins.

“You clumsy little abortion scraped from a riverside storeroom,” he said, “if you had damaged this, I would have had you gelded and sold to a bathhouse where men prefer their attendants smooth and frightened.”

Terentia watched him return the cup to its stand.

“Do not threaten the boy with advancement, Quintus. He may drop it deliberately.”

Lentulus laughed through a mouthful of mullet. “Your sister has been a widow too long. A woman deprived of lawful occupation soon begins improving the household with her tongue.”

Terentia selected a fig. “And a senator indulged too long begins mistaking his belly for a province. Yours appears to have revolted successfully.”

Lentulus patted himself with satisfaction. “A large appetite is shameful only among the poor. In men of rank it proves that someone else has harvested properly.”

This pleased the Massiliote merchants, who laughed as men do when a senator speaks and trade may depend upon understanding him.

Fadius then began describing warfare.

“The common soldier believes courage means running toward a spear,” he said. “That is because the common soldier owns nothing worth preserving. Command requires finer judgment. A man must know when to advance, when to hold, and when to let another fellow receive the first thrust.”

Calvus inclined his cup toward me. “Fadius has mastered the final principle without leaving Rome.”

Fadius smiled thinly. “You poets speak bravely from couches. Put Calvus in a shield line and he would offer the enemy a corrected verb while they opened him from groin to throat.”

“That would still be the first useful opening connected with your military career,” Calvus replied.

Cinna laughed loudly enough to earn Varro’s displeasure.

One merchant asked whether Homer had been Athenian.

“Homer belonged to seven cities,” Cinna explained, “because seven cities discovered after his death that genius improves local reputation. While he lived, I suspect none would have paid for his supper.”

“Then he was badly managed,” the merchant said.

“He was blind,” Calvus replied. “You may yet qualify as his critic.”

Lesbia reclined opposite me. She had not spoken to me in nineteen days. I knew the number because indifference becomes measurable when one is suffering from it.

During the third course, Varro asked me to recite.

“You have been quiet, Valerius, and a quiet poet is like a eunuch lingering outside a bridal chamber: either useless or planning an entrance. Give us something brief. Lentulus loses interest after eight lines unless a brother has mounted his sister before the sixth.”

Lentulus wiped his fingers. “I object only when poets take longer to arrive than their lovers.”

“Then your wife must have admired brevity,” Terentia said.

Varro nearly spilled his wine laughing.

I recited eight lines about a garland abandoned beside an empty cup at dawn. Cinna praised the bruised myrtle. Calvus objected to the verb entered.

“Dawn does not enter,” he said. “It spills, exposes, breaks in. A creditor enters, usually while the debtor is climbing from his mistress’s window.”

Lesbia’s mouth curved.

“That is better,” she said. “A creditor who has always owned the door.”

Nineteen days ended there.

Varro lifted the Greek cup beneath the lamp.

“Your poem lacks an object worthy of regret. Your vessel sounds like something a tavern girl rinses after three sailors have mistaken the same stain for affection.”

“A worthy cup should not need its owner to announce it,” I said.

“A poet objecting to publicity,” Varro replied, “is like a prostitute complaining that men know the address.”

“Both professions depend upon clients returning despite disappointment.”

Even Lesbia laughed.

Wine deepened the evening. Lentulus demanded dice, but Varro refused.

“Dice strip men too quickly,” he said. “Conversation lets a fool remain clothed until dessert.”

Terentia looked toward Fadius. “Not always.”

A Syrian girl began playing the lyre. Lentulus watched her hands.

“Very delicate,” he said. “Though Syrians are said to show greater invention when the instrument is held between the knees.”

The girl’s playing did not falter.

Terentia turned her cup slowly. “You speak with unusual authority. Did she teach you, or was your position beneath the instrument?”

Before Lentulus could answer, the lamps failed.

One guttered. Another smoked. A third died when a slave opened the garden doors. For half a minute the room became shadow, curses, overturned cushions, and the slap of a sandal landing in sauce.

When the lamps returned, the cedar table was empty.

The cup was gone.

Varro stood very still.

“Close the doors. No one leaves until I have the cup or someone’s confession.”

The merchants protested. Lentulus objected to being searched. Varro ordered the servants examined first.

Tunics were shaken. Sandals were opened. The Syrian musician stood rigid while an older slave inspected the folds of her dress.

Lentulus watched with interest.

“If the cup is not in the tunic,” he said, “perhaps the steward should continue. Eastern women are renowned for making room where Roman craftsmanship would find none.”

Lesbia looked at him. “You have spent so long imagining where other people conceal silver that one wonders what your household hides whenever you enter it.”

“Only gratitude,” Lentulus replied.

“Then your slaves are greater actors than Roscius.”

Nothing was found.

Varro ordered the guests searched.

Calvus rose first. “Proceed. Should you discover dignity anywhere upon me, return it to Lentulus. He has plainly mislaid his.”

Fadius refused.

“I am a military tribune. I will not be pawed like a bathhouse boy accused of stealing oil.”

Terentia glanced at the hand upon his sword. “Then stop clutching yourself as though the steward has offered payment.”

“My honor is not material for a widow’s amusement.”

“Most male honor is,” she replied. “Widows merely have more time to notice.”

The steward approached. Fadius drew his sword halfway.

Until then, the missing cup had been comedy. A blade would make it Roman.

I stepped between them.

“Put it away, Fadius. If you kill the steward, Varro will still want his cup, and Lentulus will insist that the body be searched from both ends.”

“Thoroughness is the mother of justice,” Lentulus said.

Fadius turned upon me. “You have insulted every man in this room and now expect me to trust your judgment. Give me one good reason to trust you.”

“Because I know where the cup is.”

The room went silent.

“It is beneath the second cedar table, under the cloak beside the musicians.”

Calvus lifted the cloak. The cup stood there.

Varro seized it.

“Who moved it?”

His eyes settled upon the servants.

“I did,” I said.

Lesbia looked at me. Calvus looked as though he had discovered faulty meter.

Varro’s face tightened. “You touched my cup without permission and then watched me search my household?”

“You nearly broke it when Lesbia entered. I judged it safer elsewhere.”

“And you said nothing?”

“I wished to see how far Roman dignity could travel before tripping over furniture.”

Outside, after the dinner collapsed beneath its own shame, Lesbia walked beside me beneath the portico.

“You lied,” she said.

“I protected a slave.”

“You also prevented Fadius from winning his first campaign against an unarmed steward.”

“Accidental virtue remains virtue.”

She studied me. “Did you move the cup?”

“No.”

“Then why confess?”

“Because truth had entered the room dressed as a servant, and every nobleman present was too busy displaying his honor to notice.”

Lesbia smiled.

It was not forgiveness. It was better. Forgiveness closes an account. Interest keeps it open.

Behind us, Varro restored the cup to its cedar table. The satyr resumed pursuing the nymphs, Lentulus demanded more wine, and Roman dignity settled over the room like the odor above a public sewer: familiar, persistent, and fiercely defended by those fortunate enough to stand uphill.