MURDER IN A ROMAN LAUNDRY

MURDER IN THE LAUNDRY (Rome)

Scene: Rome 102 A D

In front of Didius’s Fullonica on a narrow side street off the Vicus Sacra a sizeable crowd had amassed. Three Vigiliae kept the crowd well back from the entrance.  All laundry activity was suspended.

Behind the laundry were two tomb-size vats.  One half full of urine.  At any hour of the day from well before dawn until long after sundown men lined up to relieve their full bladders. The other vat was nearly full of days old urine, turned to ammonia, ready for transfer to laundry tubs.  Also in that vat was the body of Didius.

Didius, the proprietor, owned the laundry and the slaves who did the work—carrying pails of cured urine from the vat to tubs, diluting it with water. After which they agitated clothes by stomping on them, as if crushing grapes, before stretching them over racks under the bleaching sun.

Didius’s business was good, twice and three times the volume of other laundries. Partly because of its location, mostly because of Didius promotion genius.

Slave workers were lined up, questioned gently at first, then under torture. To no event.

Attention turned to personal and professional enemies of whom there were many. Part of Didius’s business genius rested in his unscrupulous treatment of family, friends, enemies and employees. Notable among those who without pangs of conscience would have killed Didius:  His wife, Flora, resentful of what she considered theft of her personal wealth and known for her preference of younger more virile men:  Clivus , the weaver whose business faced failure from what he claimed was Didius’s improper cleaning:  Flaucus, an ex- slave who had surreptitiously bought his freedom through a third party and set up a competing  Fullonica.

Flora was dismissed as too short, too thin and too weak.  Clivius produced proof of an out-of-town trip to buy yarn.  Flaucus with no alibi and much motive was chief suspect and might have been tried had not Fortune intervened.

Two Vigiliae, breaking the monotony of their night shift, entered the bar near Didius’s laundry. Mucius, the young son of  Senator Tertius boasted of dumping an officious man in a water trough. Goaded by the Vigiliae,  Mucius regaled the patrons of the bar with an account of the evil pleasure of the night marauding  activities of  the idle young  nobles.

As justice unfolded Flaucus was cleared of any wrong doing; as injustice unfolded Young Mucius and his gang were surrendered to their noble parents.