“Why not?”
“At least a few of us should go with you,” said Antonius. “For your protection. If you need privacy, we can stay a few paces behind.”
Caesar shook his head. “Toward what end has Caesar done so much to please the people of Roma, with great public feasts and entertainments, if not to make it safe for himself to walk across the city without a bodyguard?”
“That’s a fine notion,” said Antonius, “but in reality—”
“No, Antonius. I won’t walk the streets of my city in fear of my life. A man dies only once. The dread of death causes far more misery than the thing itself, and I shall not submit to it. It’s only a short walk from here to the house of Lucius, and an even shorter walk from there to my house. I shall be perfectly safe.”
Antonius began to protest, but Caesar silenced him with a look.
As the two of them crossed the Palatine Hill alone under moonlight, Lucius as always felt a bit uncomfortable in his great-uncle’s presence, and sensed that Caesar felt uneasy, as well. Several times Caesar began to speak, then fell silent. The world’s greatest general and second-greatest orator—for even Caesar ceded the highest place to the eloquent Cicero—seemed unable to express himself.
“To Hades with this!” he finally muttered. “I shall say it as plainly as I can. Lucius, your grandfather…”
“The one they call Unlucky?”
“Yes. He did me a very great favor once. He saved my life.”
“How did he do that, Uncle?”
“This is very difficult to talk about. In fact, I’ve never told this story to anyone. But you deserve to know the truth about your grandparents, Lucius, and the sacrifice they made for my sake. This was during Sulla’s dictatorship, at the height of the proscriptions. I was very young, only a year or so older than you are now. I was in great danger. I was also very ill, suffering from the quartan ague.” He looked up at the moon. By its soft light Lucius caught a glimpse of the youth Caesar once had been. “Maybe that’s why I refuse to fear death now; I had enough of fearing death when I was young. Anyway, I was skulking from house to house, hiding from Sulla’s henchmen, but at the home of your grandparents a fellow named Phagites caught up with me…”
He proceeded to tell Lucius about the bribe that Lucius’s grandfather paid to save his life, and later, in the presence of Sulla himself, the extraordinary sacrifice that was required of Julia and Lucius the Unlucky—the dissolution of their marriage when Caesar refused to divorce his wife at Sulla’s whim.
“Your grandmother was heartbroken, but she adapted swiftly; that was her nature. But your grandfather was never the same. He was a broken man. He had acted honorably, yet he felt dishonored. He saw no way to right the wrong that had been done to him. If he had lived, eventually I might have found some way to make recompense, some means to help him regain his self-respect. But he died while he was still quite young, and before I could make my mark on the world.”
They had been strolling at a slow pace. Caesar abruptly halted. “Do you know how he died?”
“He fell on a patch of ice.”
“Yes. Do you know where?”
Lucius shrugged. “Somewhere here on the Palatine, I think.”
“It was on the very spot where we now stand.”
Under the silver moonlight, it was not hard to imagine the paving stones glazed with ice. Lucius shivered. “By your reckoning, Uncle, his was a good death—swift and without warning. Perhaps the gods granted him an early death as a kind of mercy.”
“Perhaps. But the debt I owed to your grandfather has weighed upon me ever since. Not even the gods can change the past, and the dead are beyond our reach. But I can make certain that you, Lucius, will have every opportunity to earn your own place of honor. I would have done so anyway, because you’re my kin; but I wanted you to know of your grandfather’s sacrifice, so that between the two of us there is an understanding of what came before. I should be gratified to see you attain the dignity that your grandfather believed he had lost.”
Lucius considered this. “Thank you for telling me, Uncle. I’m not sure what else I can say.” Silently, he wondered about the words Caesar had spoken with such gravity. What did “dignity” and “honor” mean now? In a world ruled by a king, the ancient Course of Honor, with each man competing against equals to become first man in the state, had become meaningless.
Caesar seemed to read his thoughts. “In the future, the Course of Honor will not have quite the same significance as it did for our ancestors. But ambitious men will still be able to earn Roma’s gratitude, along with personal wealth and glory, on the battlefield. Shall I confide a secret to you, Lucius? Something I haven’t shared even with Antonius?”
He commenced walking again, in the direction of Lucius’s house. “My military ambitions—my ambitions for Roma—are even greater than Antonius and the others assume. The idea of conquering Parthia greatly excites them, as you saw, but that is as far as their imaginations can reach. Caesar’s plans extend far beyond the conquest of Parthia. My dream is to take Parthia, yes—and then to traverse the far side of the Euxine Sea and circle back, conquer Scythia and Germania and all the lands that border them, cross the channel to Britannia, and then return to Italy by way of Gaul, ending where I began. When Caesar is finished, Roma’s dominion will comprise a true world empire, bounded on every side by ocean.”
Lucius was awed by the grandeur of this vision. He was flattered that Caesar should confide in him. But Caesar was not finished.
“No such empire has ever existed before; even Alexander’s empire was not as far-flung. And of course, upon his death, the lands Alexander conquered did not remain unified but were divided among his heirs, with a great deal of confusion and bloodshed. Alexander’s general Ptolemy did the best, when he took Egypt; Queen Cleopatra is his direct descendent. But what will happen to Roma’s empire when I die, Lucius? Will it be a single kingdom with a single ruler? Will it be carefully divided into many kingdoms, all closely allied? Or will it be splintered into rival kingdoms, each at war with the other?”
“Might it not become a republic again, Uncle?”
Caesar smiled, as if at a whimsical notion. “Anything is possible, I suppose—even that! No man of my generation could find a way to make the Republic work, but perhaps men of a later day will be able to do so. Meanwhile, I think ahead. I do my best to shape the course of the future. It may be that I will live to be very old and that I will work out a means to pass on my legacy intact; or I may die tonight, as my father and his father died, struck down by the gods without warning. At present, my will provides for my heirs, and of course you are among them, Lucius. But if my power endures and if my plans come to fruition, more complicated arrangements will be required.
“I tell you all this, Lucius, because it may be that the gods have in mind for you a very special destiny. Through your descent from the Julii, you are the offspring of Venus, no less than I myself. Through your father’s line, you carry one of the oldest names in Roma’s history. The Pinarii are very ancient—but you, Lucius, are very young. You’ve accomplished nothing, as yet; but neither have you made mistakes. Prepare yourself. Be loyal to me. Prove yourself in battle. Observe the conduct of other men; adopt their virtues and avoid their vices. I’m thinking specifically of Antonius. I know you feel close to him. But you have it in you to become a far better man than he is.”
Lucius frowned. “You place great trust in Antonius.”
“I do. But I’m not blind to his faults.”
Having been taken so deeply into Caesar’s confidence, Lucius felt emboldened to ask him about the incident a month earlier, when Antonius had three times offered Caesar the diadem during the Lupercalia.
“You were there,” said Caesar. “You saw all that took place. What did you think?”
“I think you staged the incident, like a play, to test the citizen’s reaction to a crown. When you saw that so many disapproved, you reassured them that you had no desire to be their king.”
Caesar nodded. “In politics, reality and appearance are of equal importance. You cannot attend to one and neglect the other. A man must determine both what he is, and what others believe him to be. It’s a tricky business, this matter of crowns and titles. Shall I tell you another secret?”
Lucius nodded.
“Tomorrow, before the debate regarding the Parthian command, one of my loyal senators will make an announcement regarding the Sibylline Books. It appears that the priests in charge of interpreting the verses have discovered a most remarkable passage, which indicates that the Parthians can be conquered only by a king. I refused the diadem that was offered to me by Antonius at the Lupercalia, to the applause of the people. But what if the Senate should implore Caesar to accept a royal title, to ensure the conquest of Parthia?”
“You will become a king, then?” said Lucius. “And this will happen tomorrow?”
Caesar smiled wryly. “This is the plan: The Senate will declare that Caesar is king of all Roman provinces outside Italy, with the right to wear a crown in any place other than Italy, on land or sea. This technicality will satisfy both Caesar’s need for authority and the need of the Senate and the citizens to believe themselves free of a king. Caesar will be king of the rest of the world, on Roma’s behalf.”
Lucius frowned. “Auguries and omens, and the Sibylline Books—are they merely tools for men to use? Do they not truly express the will of the gods?”
“Perhaps both propositions are true. Auguries and the rest are tools, yes; and the man who masters those tools does so because he is favored by the gods. It is a remarkable thing, how frequently divine will coincides with the designs of successful men.” Caesar smiled. “Of course, not every omen is favorable. If I listened to every warning I receive from every soothsayer on every street corner in Roma, I might never leave my house, and I certainly would not venture out to address the Senate tomorrow!”
“Have you received a specific warning?”
“Too many to relate! Shooting stars, goats born two-headed, tears from statues, letters mysteriously formed in the sand—all sorts of portents have been brought to my attention in the last month. Some of these warnings specifically cite the Ides of Martius as a day of ill omen. That’s one reason Antonius has been playing mother hen lately. He thinks I should be surrounded by a bodyguard at all times. But Caesar has decided to ignore these so-called omens and do as he wishes.”
Their quiet conversation was abruptly interrupted by loud voices from a side street. A group of men was heading straight toward them. Caesar seized Lucius’s arm and pulled him into a doorway.
The men began to sing, loudly and badly out of tune. They were obviously drunk. One of them spotted the two figures in the shadows of the doorway and stepped closer, peering at them.
“Numa’s balls! If it isn’t the spawn of Venus himself—our beloved dictator!”
“Who?” shouted one of his companions.
“Gaius Julius Caesar!”
“You liar!”