Colleen McCullough
Fortunes Favorites
PART I from APRIL 83 B.C. until DECEMBER 82 B.C.
Though the steward held his five flamed lamp high enough to illuminate the two recumbent figures in the bed, he knew its light had not the power to waken Pompey. For this, he would need Pompey's wife. She stirred, frowned, turned her head away in an effort to remain asleep, but the vast house was murmuring beyond the open door, and the steward was calling her. Domina! Domina! Even in confusion modest servants did not make a habit of invading Pompey's bedchamber Antistia made sure she was decently covered before she sat up. "What is it? What's the matter?" "An urgent message for the master. Wake him and tell him to come to the atrium," barked the steward rudely. The lamp flames dipped and smoked as he swung on his heel and left; the door closed, plunging her into darkness. Oh, that vile man! He had done it deliberately! But she knew where her shift lay across the foot of the bed, drew it on, and shouted for a light. Nothing woke Pompey. Provided with a lamp and a warm wrap, Antistia finally turned back to the bed to discover him slumbering still. Nor did he seem to feel the cold, lying on his back uncovered to the waist. She had tried on other occasions and for other reasons to kiss him awake, but never could. Shakes and pummels it would have to be. "What?" he asked, sitting up and running his hands through his thick yellow thatch; the quiff above his peaked hairline stood up alertly. So too were the blue eyes surveying her alert. That was Pompey: apparently dead one moment, wide awake the next. Both soldiers' habits. "What?" he asked again. "There's an urgent message for you in the atrium." But she hadn't managed to finish the sentence before he was on his feet and his feet were shoved into backless slippers and a tunic was falling carelessly off one freckled shoulder. Then he was gone, the door gaping behind him. For a moment Antistia stood where she was, undecided. Her husband hadn't taken the lamp he could see in the dark as well as any cat so there was nothing to stop her following save her own knowledge that probably he wouldn't like it. Well, bother that! Wives were surely entitled to share news important enough to invade the master's sleep! So off she went with her little lamp barely showing her the way down that huge corridor flagged and walled with bare stone blocks. A turn here a flight of steps there and suddenly she was out of the forbidding Gallic fortress and into the civilized Roman villa, all pretty paint and plaster. Lights blazed everywhere; the servants had busied themselves to some effect. And there was Pompey clad in no more than a tunic yet looking like the personification of Mars oh, he was wonderful! He might even have confided in her, for his eyes did take her presence in. But at the same moment Varro arrived in startled haste, and Antistia's chance to share personally in whatever was causing the excitement vanished. "Varro, Varro!" Pompey shouted. Then he whooped, a shrill and eldritch sound with nothing Roman in it; just so had long dead Gauls whooped as they spilled over the Alps and took whole chunks of Italy for their own, including Pompey's Picenum. Antistia jumped, shivered. So, she noticed, did Varro. "What is it?" "Sulla has landed in Brundisium!" "Brundisium! How do you know?" "What does that matter?" demanded Pompey, crossing the mosaic floor to seize little Varro by both shoulders and shake him. "It's here, Varro! The adventure has begun!" "Adventure?" Varro gaped. "Oh, Magnus, grow up! It's not an adventure, it's a civil war and on Italian soil yet again!" "I don't care!" cried Pompey. "To me, it's an adventure. If you only knew how much I've longed for this news, Varro! Since Sulla left, Italy has been as tame as a Vestal Virgin's lapdog!" What about the Siege of Rome?'' asked Varro through a yawn. The happy excitement fled from Pompey's face, his hands fell; he stepped back and looked at Varro darkly. "I would prefer to forget the Siege of Rome!" he snapped. "They dragged my father's naked body tied to an ass through their wretched streets!" Poor Varro flushed so deeply the color flooded into his balding pate. "Oh, Magnus, I do beg your pardon! I did not I would not I am your guest please forgive me!" But the mood was gone. Pompey laughed, clapped Varro on the back. "Oh, it wasn't your doing, I know that!" The huge room was piercingly cold; Varro clasped his arms about his body. "I had better start for Rome at once." Pompey stared. "Rome? You're not going to Rome, you're coming with me! What do you think will happen in Rome? A lot of sheep running around bleating, the old women in the Senate arguing for days come with me, it will be much more fun!" "And where do you think you're going?" "To join Sulla, of course." "You don't need me for that, Magnus. Climb on your horse and ride off. Sulla will be glad to find you a place among his junior military tribunes, I'm sure. You've seen a lot of action." "Oh, Varro!" Flapping hands betrayed Pompey's exasperation. "I'm not going to join Sulla as a junior military tribune! I'm going to bring him three more legions! I, Sulla's lackey! Never! I intend to be his full partner in this enterprise." This astounding announcement broke upon Pompey's wife as upon Pompey's friend and houseguest; aware that she had gasped, almost voiced her shock aloud, Antistia moved quickly to a place where Pompey's eyes would not encounter her. He had quite forgotten her presence and she wanted to hear. Needed to hear.
In the two and a half years she had been his wife, Pompey had left her side for more than a day on only one occasion. Oh, the loveliness of that! To enjoy his undivided attention! Tickled, chided, rumpled, ruffled, hugged, bitten, bruised, tumbled ... Like a dream. Who could ever have imagined it? She, the daughter of a senator of mere middle rank and barely sufficient fortune, to find herself given in marriage to Gnaeus Pompeius who called himself Magnus! Rich enough to marry anyone, the lord of half Umbria and Picenum, so fair and handsome everyone thought he looked like a reincarnation of Alexander the Great what a husband her father had found for her! And after several years of despairing that she would never find a suitable husband, so small was her dowry. Naturally she had known why Pompey had married her; he had needed a great service from her father. Who happened to be the judge at Pompey's trial. That had been a trumped up affair, of course all of Rome had known it. But Cinna had desperately needed vast sums to fund his recruitment campaign, and young Pompey's wealth was going to provide those vast sums. For which reason had young Pompey been indicted upon charges more correctly directed at his dead father, Pompey Strabo that he had illegally appropriated some of the spoils from the city of Asculum Picentum. Namely, one hunting net and some buckets of books. Trifling. The catch lay not in the magnitude of the offense, but in the fine; were Pompey to be convicted, Cinna's minions empaneled to decide the size of the penalty were at perfect liberty to fine him his entire fortune. A more Roman man would have settled to fight the case in court and if necessary bribe the jury; but Pompey whose very face proclaimed the Gaul in him had preferred to marry the judge's daughter. The time of year had been October, so while November and December wore themselves away, Antistia's father had conducted his court with masterly inaction. The trial of his new son in law never really eventuated, delayed by inauspicious omens, accusations of corrupt jurors, meetings of the Senate, agues and plagues. With the result that in January, the consul Carbo had persuaded Cinna to look elsewhere for the money they so desperately needed. The threat to Pompey's fortune was no more. Barely eighteen, Antistia had accompanied her dazzling marital prize to his estates in the northeast of the Italian peninsula, and there in the daunting black stone pile of the Pompey stronghold had plunged wholeheartedly into the delights of being Pompey's bride. Luckily she was a pretty little girl stuffed with dimples and curves, and just ripe for bed, so her happiness had been undiluted for quite a long time. And when the twinges of disquiet began to intrude, they came not from her adored Magnus but from his faithful retainers, servants and minor squires who not only looked down on her, but actually seemed to feel free to let her know they looked down on her. Not a great burden as long as Pompey was close enough to come home at night. But now he was talking of going off to war, of raising legions and enlisting in Sulla's cause! Oh, what would she do without her adored Magnus to shield her from the slights of his people?
He was still trying to convince Varro that the only proper alternative was to go with him to join Sulla, but that prim and pedantic little fellow so elderly in mind for one who had not been in the Senate more than two years! was still resisting. "How many troops has Sulla got?" Varro was asking. "Five veteran legions, six thousand cavalry, a few volunteers from Macedonia and the Peloponnese, and five cohorts of Spaniards belonging to that dirty swindler, Marcus Crassus. About thirty nine thousand altogether." An answer which had Varro clawing at the air. "I say again, Magnus, grow up!" he cried. "I've just come from Ariminum, where Carbo is sitting with eight legions and a huge force of cavalry and that is just the beginning! In Campania alone there are sixteen other legions! For three years Cinna and Carbo gathered troops there are one hundred and fifty thousand men under arms in Italy and Italian Gaul! How can Sulla cope with such numbers?" "Sulla will eat them," said Pompey, unimpressed. "Besides, I'm going to bring him three legions of my father's hardened veterans. Carbo's soldiers are milk smeared recruits." "You really are going to raise your own army?" "I really am." "Magnus, you're only twenty two years old! You can't expect your father's veterans to enlist for you!" "Why not?" asked Pompey, genuinely puzzled. "For one thing, you're eight years too young to qualify for the Senate. You're twenty years away from the consulship. And even if your father's men would enlist under you, to ask them to do so is absolutely illegal. You're a private citizen, and private citizens don't raise armies." "For over three years Rome's government has been illegal," Pompey countered. "Cinna consul four times, Carbo twice, Marcus Gratidianus twice the urban praetor, almost half the Senate outlawed, Appius Claudius banished with his imperium intact, Fimbria running round Asia Minor making deals with King Mithridates the whole thing is a joke!" Varro managed to look like a pompous mule not so very difficult for a Sabine of the rosea rura, where mules abounded. "The matter must be solved constitutionally," he said. That provoked Pompey to outright laughter. "Oh, Varro! I do indeed like you, but you are hopelessly unrealistic! If this matter could be solved constitutionally, why are there one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Italy and Italian Gaul?" Again Varro clawed the air, but this time in defeat. "Oh, very well, then! I'll come with you." Pompey beamed, threw his arm around Varro's shoulders and guided him in the direction of the corridor which led to his rooms. "Splendid, splendid! You'll be able to write the history of my first campaigns you're a better stylist than your friend Sisenna. I am the most important man of our age, I deserve to have my own historian at my side." But Varro had the last word. "You must be important! Why else would you have the gall good pun, that! to call yourself Magnus?" He snorted. "The Great! At twenty two, The Great! The best your father could do was to call himself after his cross eyes!" A sally Pompey ignored, busy now with steward and armorer, issuing a stream of instructions. And then finally the vividly painted and gilded atrium was empty save for Pompey. And Antistia. He came across to her. "Silly little kitten, you'll catch a chill," he scolded, and kissed her fondly. "Back to bed, my honey cake." "Can't I help you pack?" she asked, sounding desolate. "My men will do that for me, but you can watch." This time the way was lit by a servant bearing a massive chandelier; fitting herself into Pompey's side, Antistia (still clutching her own little lamp) walked with him to the room where all his war gear was stored. An imposing collection. Fully ten different cuirasses hung from T shaped poles gold, silver, steel, leather strapped with phalerae and swords and helmets hung from pegs on the walls, as did kilts of leather straps and various kinds of padded underpinnings. "Now stay there and be an absolutely darling little mouse," Pompey said as he lifted his wife like a feather and put her atop a couple of big chests, her feet dangling clear of the floor. Where she was forgotten. Pompey and his menservants went through every item one by one would it be useful, was it going to be necessary? Then when Pompey had ransacked the other trunks scattered around the room, he carelessly transferred his wife to a different perch in order to ransack her original seat, tossing this and that to the waiting slaves, talking away to himself so happily that Antistia could cherish no illusions he was going to miss his wife, his home, or civilian life. Of course she had always known that he regarded himself first and foremost as a soldier, that he despised the more customary pursuits of his peers rhetoric, law, government, assemblies, the plots and ploys of politics. How many times had she heard him say he would vault himself into the consul's ivory chair on his spear, not on fine words and empty phrases? Now here he was putting his boast into practice, the soldier son of a soldier father going off to war. The moment the last of the slaves had staggered away under armloads of equipment, Antistia slid off her trunk and went to stand in front of her husband. "Before you go, Magnus, I must speak to you," she said. Clearly this he regarded as a waste of his precious time, but he did pause. "Well, what is it?" "How long are you going to be away?" "Haven't the slightest idea," he said cheerfully. "Months? A year?" "Months, probably. Sulla will eat Carbo." "Then I would like to return to Rome and live in my father's house while you're gone." But he shook his head, clearly astonished at her proposal. "Not a chance!" he said. "I'm not having my wife running round Carbo's Rome while I'm with Sulla in the field against the selfsame Carbo. You'll stay here." "Your servants and other people don't like me. If you're not here, it will go hard for me." "Rubbish!" he said, turning away. She detained him by stepping in front of him once more. "Oh, please, husband, spare me just a few moments of your time! I know it's a valuable commodity, but I am your wife." He sighed. "All right, all right! But quickly, Antistia!" "I can't stay here!" "You can and you will." He moved from one foot to the other. "When you're absent, Magnus even for a few hours your people are not kind to me. I have never complained because you are always kind to me, and you've been here except for the time you went to Ancona to see Cinna. But now there is no other woman in your house, I will be utterly alone. It would be better if I returned to my father's house until the war is over, truly." "Out of the question. Your father is Carbo's man." "No, he is not. He is his own man." Never before had she opposed him, or even stood up to him; Pompey's patience began to fray. "Look, Antistia, I have better things to do than stay here arguing with you. You're my wife, and that means you'll stay in my house." "Where your steward sneers at me and leaves me in the dark, where I have no servants of my own and no one to keep me company," she said, trying to appear calm and reasonable, but beginning to panic underneath. "That's absolute rubbish!" "It is not, Magnus. It is not! I don't know why everyone looks down on me, but everyone does." "Well, of course they do!" he said, surprised at her denseness. Her eyes widened. "Of course they look down on me? What do you mean, of course?" He shrugged. "My mother was a Lucilia. So was my grandmother. And what are you?" "That is a very good question. What am I?" He could see she was angry, and it angered him. Women! Here he was with his first big war on his hands, and this creature of no significance was determined to stage her own drama! Did women have no sense at all? "You're my first wife," he said. "First wife?" "A temporary measure." "Oh, I see!" She looked thoughtful. "A temporary measure. The judge's daughter, I suppose you mean." "Well, you've always known that." "But it was a long time ago, I thought it had passed, I thought you loved me. My family is senatorial, I'm not inappropriate." "For an ordinary man, no. But you're not good enough for me.'' "Oh, Magnus, where do you get your conceit from? Is that why you have never once finished yourself inside me? Because I'm not good enough to bear your children?" "Yes!" he shouted, starting to leave the room. She followed him with her little lamp, too angry now to care who heard. "I was good enough to get you off when Cinna was after your money!" "We've already established that," he said, hurrying. "How convenient for you then, that Cinna is dead!" "Convenient for Rome and all good Romans." "You had Cinna murdered!" The words echoed down the stone corridor that was big enough to allow the passage of an army; Pompey stopped. "Cinna died in a drunken brawl with some reluctant recruits." "In Ancona your town, Magnus! Your town! And right after you had been there to see him!" she cried. One moment she was standing in possession of herself, the next she was pinned against the wall with Pompey's hands about her throat. Not squeezing. Just about her throat. "Never say that again, woman," he said softly. "It's what my father says!" she managed, mouth dry. The hands tightened ever so slightly. "Your father didn't like Cinna much. But he doesn't mind Carbo in the least, which is why it would give me great pleasure to kill him. But it won't give me any pleasure to kill you. I don't kill women. Keep your tongue behind your teeth, Antistia. Cinna's death had nothing to do with me, it was a simple accident." "I want to go to my father and mother in Rome!" Pompey released her, gave her a shove. "The answer is no. Now leave me alone!" He was gone, calling for the steward; in the distance she could hear him telling that abominable man that she was not to be allowed to leave the precincts of the Pompey fortress once he was off to his war. Trembling, Antistia returned slowly to the bedroom she had shared with Pompey for two and a half years as his first wife a temporary expedient. Not good enough to bear his children. Why hadn't she guessed that, when she had wondered many times why he always withdrew, always left a slimy puddle for her to clean off her belly? The tears were beginning to gather. Soon they would fall, and once they did she would not be able to stop them for hours. Disillusionment before love has lost its keenest edge is terrible. There came another of those chilling barbarian whoops, and faintly Pompey's voice: "I'm off to war, I'm off to war! Sulla has landed in Italy, and it's war!"
2
Dawn had scarcely broken when Pompey, clad in glittering silver armor and flanked by his eighteen year old brother and by Varro, led a little party of clerks and scribes into the marketplace of Auximum. There he planted his father's standard in the middle of its open space and waited with ill concealed impatience until his secretariat had assembled itself behind a series of trestle tables, sheets of paper at the ready, reed pens sharpened, cakes of ink dissolved in heavy stone wells. By the time all this was done, the crowd had gathered so thickly that it spilled out of the square into the streets and lanes converging upon it. Light and lithe, Pompey leaped onto a makeshift podium beneath Pompey Strabo's woodpecker standard. "Well, it's come!" he shouted. "Lucius Cornelius Sulla has landed in Brundisium to claim what is rightfully his an uninterrupted imperium, a triumph, the privilege of depositing his laurels at the feet of Jupiter Optimus Maximus inside the Capitol of Rome! At just about this time last year, the other Lucius Cornelius he cognominated Cinna was not far away from here trying to enlist my father's veterans in his cause. He did not succeed. Instead, he died. Today you see me. And today I see many of my father's veterans standing before me. I am my father's heir! His men are my men. His past is my future. I am going to Brundisium to fight for Sulla, for he is in the right of it. How many of you will come with me?'' Short and simple, thought Varro, lost in admiration. Maybe the young man was correct about vaulting into the consul's curule chair on his spear rather than on a wave of words. Certainly no face he could discern in that crowd seemed to find Pompey's speech lacking. No sooner had he finished than the women began to drift away clucking about the imminent absence of husbands and sons, some wringing their hands at the thought, some already engrossed in the practicalities of filling kit bags with spare tunics and socks, some looking studiously at the ground to hide sly smiles. Pushing excited children out of the way with mock slaps and kicks, the men shoved forward to cluster about those trestle tables. Within moments, Pompey's clerks were scribbling strenuously. From a nice vantage spot high on the steps of Auximum's old temple of Picus, Varro sat and watched the activity. Had they ever volunteered so lightheartedly for cross eyed Pompey Strabo's campaigns? he wondered. Probably not. That one had been the lord, a hard man but a fine commander; they would have served him with goodwill but sober faces. For the son, it was clearly different. I am looking at a phenomenon, Varro thought. The Myrmidons could not have gone more happily to fight for Achilles, nor the Macedonians for Alexander the Great. They love him! He's their darling, their mascot, their child as much as their father. A vast bulk deposited itself on the step next to him, and Varro turned his head to see a red face topped by red hair; a pair of intelligent blue eyes were busy assessing him, the only stranger present. "And who might you be?" asked the ruddy giant. "My name is Marcus Terentius Varro, and I'm a Sabine." "Like us, eh? Well, a long time ago, at any rate." A horny paw waved in the direction of Pompey. Look at him, will you? Oh, we've been waiting for this day, Marcus Terentius Varro the Sabine! Be he not the Goddess's honeypot?" Varro smiled. "I'm not sure I'd choose that way of putting it, but I do see what you mean." "Ah! You're not only a gentleman with three names, you're a learned gentleman! A friend of his, might you be?" "I might be." "And what might you do for a crust, eh?" "In Rome, I'm a senator. But in Reate, I breed mares." "What, not mules?" "It's better to breed the mares than their mule offspring. I have a little bit of the rosea rura, and a few stud donkeys too.'' How old might you be?'' "Thirty two," said Varro, enjoying himself immensely. But suddenly the questions ceased; Varro's interlocutor disposed himself more comfortably by resting one elbow on the step above him and stretching out a Herculean pair of legs to cross his ankles. Fascinated, the diminutive Varro eyed grubby toes almost as large as his own fingers. "And what might your name be?" he asked, falling into the local vernacular quite naturally. "Quintus Scaptius." "Might you have enlisted?" "All Hannibal's elephants couldn't stop me!" "Might you be a veteran?" "Joined his daddy's army when I was seventeen. That was eight years ago, but I've already served in twelve campaigns, so I don't have to join up anymore unless I might want to," said Quintus Scaptius. "But you did want to." "Hannibal's elephants, Marcus Terentius, Hannibal's elephants!" Might you be of centurion rank?'' "I might be for this campaign." While they talked, Varro and Scaptius kept their eyes on Pompey, who stood just in front of the middle table joyfully hailing this man or that among the throng. "He says he'll march before this moon has run her course," Varro observed, "but I fail to see how. I admit none of these men here today will need much if any training, but where's he going to get enough arms and armor? Or pack animals? Or wagons and oxen? Or food? And what will he do for money to keep his great enterprise going?'' Scaptius grunted, apparently an indication of amusement. "He does not need to worry about any of that! His daddy gave each of us our arms and armor at the start of the war against the Italians; then after his daddy died, the boy told us to hang on to them. We each got a mule, and the centurions got the carts and oxen. So we'd be ready against the day. You'll never catch the Pompeii napping! There's wheat enough in our granaries and lots of other food in our storehouses. Our women and children won't go hungry because we're eating well on campaign." "And what about money?" asked Varro gently. "Money?" Scaptius dismissed this necessity with a sniff of contempt. "We served his daddy without seeing much of it, and that's the truth. Wasn't any to be had in those days. When he's got it, he'll give it to us. When he hasn't got it, we'll do without. He's a good master." "So I see." Lapsing into silence, Varro studied Pompey with fresh interest. Everyone told tales about the legendary independence of Pompey Strabo during the Italian War: how he had kept his legions together long after he was ordered to disband them, and how he had directly altered the course of events in Rome because he had not disbanded them. No massive wage bills had ever turned up on the Treasury's books when Cinna had them audited after the death of Gaius Marius; now Varro knew why. Pompey Strabo hadn't bothered to pay his troops. Why should he, when he virtually owned them? At this moment Pompey left his post to stroll across to Picus's temple steps. "I'm off to find a campsite," he said to Varro, then gave the Hercules sitting next to Varro a huge grin. "Got in early, I see, Scaptius." Scaptius lumbered to his feet. "Yes, Magnus. I'd best be getting home to dig out my gear, eh?" So everyone called him Magnus! Varro too rose. "I'll ride with you, Magnus." The crowd was dwindling, and women were beginning to come back into the marketplace; a few merchants, hitherto thwarted, were busy putting up their booths, slaves rushing to stock them. Loads of dirty washing were dropped on the paving around the big fountain in front of the local shrine to the Lares, and one or two girls hitched up their skirts to climb into the shallow water. How typical this town is, thought Varro, walking a little behind Pompey: sunshine and dust, a few good shady trees, the purr of insects, a sense of timeless purpose, wrinkled winter apples, busy folk who all know far too much about each other. There are no secrets here in Auximum! "These men are a fierce lot," he said to Pompey as they left the marketplace to find their horses. "They're Sabines, Varro, just like you," said Pompey, "even if they did come east of the Apennines centuries ago." "Not quite like me!" Varro allowed himself to be tossed into the saddle by one of Pompey's grooms. "I may be a Sabine, but I'm not by nature or training a soldier." "You did your stint in the Italian War, surely." "Yes, of course. And served in my ten campaigns. How quickly they mounted up during that conflagration! But I haven't thought of a sword or a suit of chain mail since it ended.'' Pompey laughed. "You sound like my friend Cicero." "Marcus Tullius Cicero? The legal prodigy?" "That's him, yes. Hated war. Didn't have the stomach for it, which my father didn't understand. But he was a good fellow all the same, liked to do what I didn't like to do. So between us we kept my father mighty pleased without telling him too much." Pompey sighed. "After Asculum Picentum fell he insisted on going off to serve under Sulla in Campania. I missed him!"
In two market intervals of eight days each Pompey had his three legions of veteran volunteers camped inside well fortified ramparts some five miles from Auximum on the banks of a tributary of the Aesis River. His sanitary dispositions within his camp were faultless, and care of them rigidly policed. Pompey Strabo had been a more typical product of his rural origins, had known only one way to deal with wells, cesspits, latrines, rubbish disposal, drainage: when the stink became unbearable, move on. Which was why he had died of fever outside Rome's Colline Gate, and why the people of the Quirinal and Viminal, their springs polluted from his wastes, had done such insult to his body. Growing ever more fascinated, Varro watched the evolution of his young friend's army, and marveled at the absolute genius Pompey showed for organization, logistics. No detail, regardless how minute, was overlooked; yet at the same time the enormous undertakings were executed with the speed only superb efficiency permitted. I have been absorbed into the very small private circle of a true phenomenon, he thought: he will change the way our world is, he will change the way we see our world. There is not one single iota of fear in him, nor one hairline crack in his self confidence. However, Varro reminded himself, others too have shaped equally well before the turmoil begins. What will he be like when he has his enterprise running, when opposition crowds him round, when he faces no, not Carbo or Sertorius when he faces Sulla? That will be the real test! Same side or not, the relationship between the old bull and the young bull will decide the young bull's future. Will he bend? Can he bend? Oh, what does the future hold for someone so young, so sure of himself? Is there any force or man in the world capable of breaking him? Definitely Pompey did not think there was. Though he was not mystical, he had created a spiritual environment for himself that fitted certain instincts he cherished about his nature. For instance, there were qualities he knew he owned rather than possessed invincibility, invulnerability, inviolability for since they were outside him as much as inside, ownership seemed more correct than possession. It was just as if, while some godly ichor coursed through him, some godly miasma wrapped him round as well. Almost from infancy he had lived within the most colossal daydreams; in his mind he had generated ten thousand battles, ridden in the antique victor's chariot of a hundred triumphs, stood time and time again like Jupiter come to earth while Rome bowed down to worship him, the greatest man who had ever lived. Where Pompey the dreamer differed from all others of that sort was in the quality of his contact with reality he saw the actual world with hard and sharp acuity, never missed possibility or probability, fastened his mind leechlike upon facts the size of mountains, facts as diminutive as one drop of clearest water. Thus the colossal daydreams were a mental anvil upon which he hammered out the shape of the real days, tempered and annealed them into the exact framework of his actual life. So he got his men into their centuries, their cohorts, their legions; he drilled them and inspected their accoutrements; he culled the too elderly from his pack animals and sounded blows on the axles of his wagons, rocked them, had them driven fast through the rough ford below his camp. Everything would be perfect because nothing could be allowed to happen that would show him up as less than perfect himself.
Twelve days after Pompey had begun to assemble his troops, word came from Brundisium. Sulla was marching up the Via Appia amid scenes of hysterical welcome in every hamlet, village, town, city. But before Sulla left, the messenger told Pompey, he had called his army together and asked it to swear an oath of personal allegiance to him. If those in Rome had ever doubted Sulla's determination to extricate himself from any threat of future prosecutions for high treason, the fact that his army swore to uphold him even against the government of Rome told all men that war was now inevitable. And then, Pompey's messenger had gone on to say, Sulla's soldiers had come to him and offered him all their money so that he could pay for every grain of wheat and leaf of vegetable and seed of fruit as he moved through the heartland of Calabria and Apulia; they would have no dark looks to spoil their general's luck, they would have no trampled fields, dead shepherds, violated women, starving children. All would be as Sulla wanted it; he could pay them back later, when he was master of the whole of Italy as well as Rome. The news that the southern parts of the peninsula were very glad to welcome Sulla did not quite please Pompey, who had hoped that by the time he reached Sulla with his three legions of hardened veterans, Sulla would be in sufficient trouble to need him. However, that was clearly not to be; Pompey shrugged and adapted his plans to the situation as it had been reported to him. "We'll march down our coast to Buca, then head inland for Beneventum," he said to his three chief centurions, who were commanding his three legions. By rights these jobs should have gone to high born military tribunes, whom he could have found had he tried. But high born military tribunes would have questioned Pompey's right to general his army, so Pompey had preferred to choose his subordinates from among his own people, much though certain high born Romans might have deplored it had they known. "When do we move?" asked Varro, since no one else would. "Eight days before the end of April," said Pompey.
Then Carbo entered the scene, and Pompey had to change his plans yet again. From the western Alps the straight line of the Via Aemilia bisected Italian Gaul all the way to the Adriatic Sea at Ariminum; from Ariminum another excellent road skirted the coast to Fanum Fortunae, where began the Via Flaminia to Rome. This gave Ariminum a strategic importance only equaled by Arretium, which dominated access to Rome west of the Apennines. It was therefore logical that Gnaeus Papirius Carbo twice consul of Rome and now governor of Italian Gaul should put himself, his eight legions and his cavalry into camp on the fringes of Ariminum. From this base he could move in three directions: along the Via Aemilia through Italian Gaul toward the western Alps; along the Adriatic coast in the direction of Brundisium; and along the Via Flaminia to Rome. For eighteen months he had known Sulla would come, and that of course would be Brundisium. But too many men still lingered in Rome who might when the time came side with Sulla, though they declared themselves completely neutral; they were all men with the political clout to overthrow the present government, which made Rome a necessary target. And Carbo also knew that Metellus Pius the Piglet had gone to earth in Liguria, bordering the western Alps of Italian Gaul; with Metellus Pius were two good legions he had taken with him out of Africa Province after Carbo's adherents had ejected him from Africa. The moment the Piglet heard that Sulla had landed, Carbo was certain he would march to join Sulla, and that made Italian Gaul vulnerable too. Of course there were the sixteen legions sitting in Campania, and these were much closer to Brundisium than Carbo in Ariminum; but how reliable were the consuls of this year, Norbanus and Scipio Asiagenus? Carbo couldn't be sure, with his own iron will removed from Rome herself. At the end of last year he had been convinced of two things: that Sulla would come in the spring, and that Rome would be more inclined to oppose Sulla if Carbo himself were absent from Rome. So he had ensured the election of two staunch followers in Norbanus and Scipio Asiagenus and then given himself the governorship of Italian Gaul in order to keep an eye on things and be in a position to act the moment it became necessary. His choice of consuls had been in theory anyway good, for neither Norbanus nor Scipio Asiagenus could hope for mercy from Sulla. Norbanus was a client of Gaius Marius's, and Scipio Asiagenus had disguised himself as a slave to escape from Aesernia during the Italian War, an action which had disgusted Sulla. Yet were they strong enough? Would they use their sixteen legions like born generals, or would they miss their chances? Carbo just didn't know.
On one thing he had not counted. That Pompey Strabo's heir, mere boy that he was, would have the audacity to raise three full legions of his father's veterans and march them to join Sulla! Not that Carbo took the young man seriously. It was those three legions of veterans that worried Carbo. Once they reached Sulla, Sulla would use them brilliantly. It was Carbo's quaestor, the excellent Gaius Verres, who had brought the news to Carbo of Pompey's projected expedition. "The boy will have to be stopped before he can start," said Carbo, frowning. "Oh, what a nuisance! I'll just have to hope that Metellus Pius doesn't move out of Liguria while I'm dealing with young Pompeius, and that the consuls can cope with Sulla." "It won't take long to deal with young Pompeius," said Gaius Verres, tone confident. "I agree, but that doesn't make him less of a nuisance," said Carbo. "Send my legates to me now, would you?" Carbo's legates proved difficult to locate; Verres chased from one part of the gigantic camp to another for a length of time he knew would not please Carbo. Many things occupied his mind while he searched, none of them related to the activities of Pompey Strabo's heir, young Pompeius. No, what preyed upon the mind of Gaius Verres was Sulla. Though he had never met Sulla (there was no reason why he ought, since his father was a humble backbencher senator, and his own service during the Italian War had been with Gaius Marius and then Cinna), he remembered the look of Sulla as he had walked in the procession going to his inauguration as consul, and had been profoundly impressed. As he was not martial by nature, it had never occurred to Verres to join Sulla's expedition to the east, nor had he found the Rome of Cinna and Carbo an unendurable place. Verres liked to be where the money was, for he had expensive tastes in art and very high ambitions. Yet now, as he chased Carbo's senior legates, he was beginning to wonder if it might not be time to change sides. Strictly speaking, Gaius Verres was proquaestor rather than quaestor; his official stint as quaestor had ended with the old year. That he was still in the job was due to Carbo, whose personal appointee he had been, and who declared himself so well satisfied that he wanted Verres with him when he went to govern Italian Gaul. And as the quaestor's function was to handle his superior's money and accounts, Gaius Verres had applied to the Treasury and received on Carbo's behalf the sum of 2,235,417 sesterces; this stipend, totted up with due attention to every last sestertius (witness those 417 of them!), was intended to cover Carbo's expenses to pay his legions, victual his legions, assure a proper life style for himself, his legates, his servants and his quaestor, and defray the cost of a thousand and one minor items not able to be classified under any of the above. Though April was not yet done, something over a million and a half sesterces had already been swallowed up, which meant that Carbo would have to ask the Treasury for more before too long. His legates lived extremely well, and Carbo himself had long grown used to having Rome's public resources at his fingertips. Not to mention Gaius Verres; he too had stickied his hands in a pot of honey before dipping them deeply into the moneybags. Until now he had kept his peculations unobtrusive, but, he decided with fresh insight into his present position, there was no point in being subtle any longer! As soon as Carbo's back was turned to deal with Pompey's three legions, Gaius Verres would be gone. Time to change sides. And so indeed Gaius Verres went. Carbo took four of his legions but no cavalry the following dawn to deal with Pompey Strabo's heir, and the sun was not very high when Gaius Verres too departed. He was quite alone save for his own servants, and he did not follow Carbo south; he went to Ariminum, where Carbo's funds lay in the vaults of a local banker. Only two persons had the authority to withdraw it: the governor, Carbo, and his quaestor, Verres. Having hired twelve mules, Verres removed a total of forty eight half talent leather bags of Carbo's money from the banker's custody, and loaded them upon his mules. He did not even have to offer an excuse; word of Sulla's landing had already flown around Ariminum faster than a summer storm, and the banker knew Carbo was on the march with half his infantry. Long before noon, Gaius Verres had escaped the neighborhood with six hundred thousand sesterces of Carbo's official allowance, bound via the back roads first for his own estates in the upper Tiber valley, and then the lighter of twenty four talents of silver coins for wherever he might find Sulla. Oblivious to the fact that his quaestor had decamped, Carbo himself went down the Adriatic coast toward Pompey's position near the Aesis. His mood was so sanguine that he did not move with speed, nor did he take special precautions to conceal his advent. This was going to be a good exercise for his largely unblooded troops, nothing more. No matter how formidable three legions of Pompey Strabo's veterans might sound, Carbo was quite experienced enough to understand that no army can do better than its general permits it to. Their general was a kid! To deal with them would therefore be child's play.
When word of Carbo's approach was brought to him, Pompey whooped with joy and assembled his soldiers at once. "We don't even have to move from our own lands to fight our first battle!" he shouted to them. "Carbo himself is coming down from Ariminum to deal with us, and he's already lost the fight! Why? Because he knows I'm in command! You, he respects. Me, he doesn't. You'd think he'd realize The Butcher's son would know how to chop up bones and slice meat, but Carbo is a fool! He thinks The Butcher's son is too pretty and precious to bloody his hands at his father's trade! Well, he's wrong! You know that, and I know that. So let's teach it to Carbo!" Teach it to Carbo they did. His four legions came down to the Aesis in a fashion orderly enough, and waited in disciplined ranks for the scouts to test the river crossing, swollen from the spring thaw in the Apennines. Not far beyond the ford, Carbo knew Pompey still lay in his camp, but such was his contempt that it never occurred to him Pompey might be in his own vicinity. Having split his forces and sent half across the Aesis well before Carbo arrived, Pompey fell on Carbo at the moment when two of his legions had made the crossing, and two were about to do so. Both jaws of his pincer attacked simultaneously from out of some trees on either bank, and carried all before them. They fought to prove a point that The Butcher's son knew his trade even better than his father had. Doomed by his role as the general to remain on the south bank of the river, Pompey couldn't do what he most yearned to do go after Carbo in person. Generals, his father had told him many times, must never put the base camp out of reach in case the battle didn't develop as planned and a swift retreat became necessary. So Pompey had to watch Carbo and his legate Lucius Quinctius rally the two legions left on their bank of the Aesis, and flee back toward Ariminum. Of those on Pompey's bank, none survived. The Butcher's son did indeed know the family trade, and crowed jubilantly. Now it was time to march for Sulla!
Two days later, riding a big white horse which he said was the Pompeius family's Public Horse so called because the State provided it Pompey led his three legions into lands fiercely anti Rome a few short years earlier. Picentines of the south, Vestini, Marrucini, Frentani, all peoples who had struggled to free the Italian Allied states from their long subjection to Rome. That they had lost was largely due to the man Pompey marched to join Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Yet no one tried to impede the army's progress, and some in fact came asking to enlist. Word of his defeat of Carbo had outstripped Pompey, and they were martial peoples. If the fight for Italia was lost, there were other causes; the general feeling seemed to be that it was better to side with Sulla than with Carbo. Everyone's spirits were high as the little army left the coast at Buca and headed on a fairly good road for Larinum in central Apulia. Two eight day market intervals had gone by when Pompey's eighteen thousand veteran soldiers reached it, a thriving small city in the midst of rich agricultural and pastoral country; no one of importance in Larinum was missing from the delegation which welcomed Pompey and sped him onward with subtle pressure. His next battle lay not three miles beyond the town. Carbo had wasted no time in sending a warning to Rome about The Butcher's son and his three legions of veterans, and Rome had wasted no time in seeking to prevent amalgamation between Pompey and Sulla. Two of the Campanian legions under the command of Gaius Albius Carrinas were dispatched to block Pompey's progress, and encountered Pompey while both sides were on the march. The engagement was sharp, vicious, and quite decisive; Carrinas stayed only long enough to see that he stood no chance to win, then beat a hasty retreat with his men reasonably intact and greater respect for The Butcher's son. By this time Pompey's soldiers were so settled and secure that the miles swung by under their hobnailed, thick soled caligae as if no effort was involved; they had passed into their third hundred of these miles with no more than a mouthful or two of sour weak wine to mark the event. Saepinum was reached, a smaller place than Larinum, and Pompey had news that Sulla was now not far away, camped outside Beneventum on the Via Appia. But first another battle had to be fought. Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus, brother of Pompey Strabo's old friend and senior legate, tried to ambush the son in a small section of rugged country between Saepinum and Sirpium. Pompey's overweening confidence in his ability seemed not to be misplaced; his scouts discovered where Brutus Damasippus and his two legions were concealed, and it was Pompey who fell upon Brutus Damasippus without warning. Several hundred of Brutus Damasippus's men died before he managed to extricate himself from a difficult position, and fled in the direction of Bovianum. After none of his three battles had Pompey attempted to pursue his foes, but not for the reasons men like Varro and the three primus pilus centurions assumed; the facts that he didn't know the lay of the land, nor could be sure that these were not diversions aimed at luring him into the arms of a far bigger force, did not so much as intrude into Pompey's thoughts. For Pompey's mind was obsessed to the exclusion of all else with the coming meeting between himself and Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
Visions of it unrolled before his sightless dreaming eyes like a moving pageant two godlike men with hair of flame and faces both strong and beautiful uncoiled from their saddles with the grace and power of giant cats and walked with measured stately steps toward each other down the middle of an empty road, its sides thronged with every traveler and every last inhabitant of the countryside, an army behind each of these magnificent men, and every pair of eyes riveted upon them. Zeus striding to meet Jupiter. Ares striding to meet Mars. Hercules striding to meet Milo. Achilles striding to meet Hector. Yes, it would be hymned down the ages so loudly that it would put Aeneas and Turnus to shame! The first encounter between the two colossi of this world, the two suns in its sky and while the setting sun was still hot and still strong, its course was nearing an end. Ah! But the rising sun! Hot and strong already, yet with all the soaring vault before it in which to grow ever hotter, ever stronger. Thought Pompey exultantly, Sulla's sun is westering! Whereas mine is barely above the eastern horizon.
He sent Varro ahead to present his compliments to Sulla and to give Sulla an account of his progress from Auximum, the tally of those he had killed, the names of the generals he had defeated. And to ask that Sulla himself venture down the road to meet him so that everyone could witness his coming in peace to offer himself and his troops to the greatest man of this age. He didn't ask Varro to add, "or of any other age" that he was not prepared to admit, even in a flowery greeting. Every detail of this meeting had been fantasized a thousand times, even down to what Pompey felt he ought to wear. In the first few hundred passes he had seen himself clad from head to foot in gold plate; then doubt began to gnaw, and he decided golden armor was too ostentatious, might be labeled crass. So for the next few hundred passes he saw himself clad in a plain white toga, shorn of all military connotations and with the narrow purple stripe of the knight slicing down the right shoulder of his tunic; then doubt gnawed again, and he worried that the white toga would merge into the white horse to produce an amorphous blob. The final few hundred passes saw him in the silver armor his father had presented to him after the siege of Asculum Picentum had concluded; doubt did not gnaw at all, so he liked that image of self best. Yet when his groom assisted him into the saddle of his big white Public Horse, Gnaeus Pompeius (Magnus) was wearing the very plainest of steel cuirasses, the leather straps of his kilt were unadorned by bosses or fringes, and the helmet on his head was standard issue to the ranks. It was his horse he bedizened, for he was a knight of the eighteen original centuries of the First Class, and his family had held the Public Horse for generations. So the horse wore every conceivable knightly trapping of silver buttons and medallions, silver encrusted scarlet leather harness, an embroidered blanket beneath a wrought and ornamented saddle, a clinking medley of silver pendants. He looked, Pompey congratulated himself as he set off down the middle of the empty road with his army in rank and file behind him, like a genuine no nonsense soldier a workman, a professional. Let the horse proclaim his glory! Beneventum lay on the far side of the Calor River, where the Via Appia made junction with the Via Minucia from coastal Apulia and Calabria. The sun was directly overhead when Pompey and his legions came over the brow of a slight hill and looked down to the Calor crossing. And there on this side of it, waiting in the middle of the road upon an unutterably weary mule, was Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Attended only by Varro. The local populace! where were they? Where were Sulla's legates, his troops? Where the travelers? Some instinct made Pompey turn his head and bark to the standard bearer of his leading legion that the soldiers would halt, remain where they were. Then, hideously alone, he rode down the slope toward Sulla, his face set into a mask so solid he felt as if he had dipped it in plaster. When he came within a hundred paces of the mule, Sulla more or less fell off it, though he kept his feet because he threw one arm around the mule's neck and fastened his other hand upon the mule's long bedraggled ear. Righting himself, he began to walk down the middle of the empty road, his gait as wide based as any sailor's. Down from his clinking Public Horse leaped Pompey, not sure if his legs would hold him; but they did. Let one of us at least do this properly, he thought, and strode out. Even at a distance he had realized that this Sulla bore absolutely no resemblance to the Sulla he remembered, but as he drew ever closer, Pompey began to discern the ravages of time and awful malaise. Not with sympathy or pity, but with stupefied horror, a physical reaction so profound that for a moment he thought he would vomit. For one thing, Sulla was drunk. That, Pompey might have been able to forgive, had this Sulla been the Sulla he remembered on the day of his inauguration as consul. But of that beautiful and fascinating man nothing was left, not even the dignity of a thatch of greyed or whitened hair. This Sulla wore a wig to cover his hairless skull, a hideous ginger red affair of tight little curls below which two straight silver tongues of his own hair grew in front of his ears. His teeth were gone, and their going had lengthened his dented chin, made the mouth into a puckered gash below that unmistakable nose with the slight crease in its tip. The skin of his face looked as if it had been partially flayed, most of it a raw and bloody crimson, some few places still showing their original whiteness. And though he was thin to the point of scrawniness, at some time in the not too distant past he must have grown enormously fat, for the flesh of his face had fallen into crevices, and vast hollow wattles transformed his neck into a vulturine travesty. Oh, how can I shine against the backdrop of this mangled piece of human wreckage? wailed Pompey to himself, battling to stem the scorching tears of disappointment. They were almost upon each other. Pompey stretched out his right hand, fingers spread, palm vertical. "Imperator!" he cried. Sulla giggled, made a huge effort, stretched out his own hand in the general's salute. "Imperator!" he shouted in a rush, then fell against Pompey, his damp and stained leather cuirass stinking foully of waterbrash and wine. Varro was suddenly there on Sulla's other side; together he and Pompey helped Lucius Cornelius Sulla back to his inglorious mule and shouldered him up until he sprawled upon its bare and dirty hide. "He would insist on riding out to meet you as you asked," Varro said, low voiced. "Nothing I could say would stop him." Mounted on his Public Horse, Pompey turned, beckoned his troops to march, then ranged himself on the far side of Sulla's mule from Varro, and rode on into Beneventum.
"I don't believe it!" he cried to Varro after they had handed the almost insensible Sulla over to his keepers. "He had a particularly bad night last night," Varro said, unable to gauge the nature of Pompey's emotions because he had never been privy to Pompey's fantasies. "A bad night? What do you mean?" "It's his skin, poor man. When he became so ill his doctors despaired of his life, they sent him to Aedepsus a small spa some distance from Euboean Chalcis. The temple physicians there are said to be the finest in all Greece. And they saved him, it's true! No ripe fruit, no honey, no bread, no cakes, no wine. But when they put him to soak in the spa waters, something in the skin of his face broke down. Ever since the early days at Aedepsus, he has suffered attacks of the most dreadful itching, and rips his face to raw and bleeding meat. He still eats no ripe fruit, no honey, no bread, no cakes. But wine gives him relief from the itching, so he drinks." Varro sighed. "He drinks far too much." "Why his face? Why not his arms or legs?" Pompey asked, only half believing this tale. "He had a bad sunburn on his face don't you remember how he always wore a shady hat whenever he was in the sun? But there had been some local ceremony to welcome him, he insisted on going through with it despite his illness, and his vanity prompted him to wear a helmet instead of his hat. I presume it was the sunburn predisposed the skin of his face to break down," said Varro, who was as fascinated as Pompey was revolted. His whole head looks like a mulberry sprinkled with meal! Quite extraordinary!" "You sound exactly like an unctuous Greek physician," said Pompey, feeling his own face emerge from its plaster mask at last. Where are we housed? Is it far? And what about my men?" I believe that Metellus Pius has gone to guide your men to their camp. We're in a nice house not far down this street. If you come and break your fast now, we can ride out afterward and find your men." Varro put his hand kindly on Pompey's strong freckled arm, at a loss to know what was really wrong. There was no pity in Pompey's nature, so much he had come to understand; why therefore was Pompey consumed with grief?
That night Sulla entertained the two new arrivals at a big dinner in his general's house, its object to allow them to meet the other legates. Word had flown around Beneventum of Pompey's advent his youth, his beauty, his adoring troops. And Sulla's legates were very put out, thought Varro in some amusement as he eyed their faces. They all looked as if their nursemaids had cruelly snatched a delicious honeycomb from their mouths, and when Sulla showed Pompey to the locus consularis on his own couch, then put no other man between them, the looks spoke murder. Not that Pompey cared! He made himself comfortable with unabashed pleasure and proceeded to talk to Sulla as if no one else was present. Sulla was sober, and apparently not itching. His face had crusted over a little since the morning, he was calm and friendly, and obviously quite entranced with Pompey. I can't be wrong about Pompey if Sulla sees it too, thought Varro. Deeming it wiser at first to keep his gaze concentrated within his immediate vicinity rather than to inspect each man in the room in turn, Varro smiled at his couch companion, Appius Claudius Pulcher. A man he liked and esteemed. "Is Sulla still capable of leading us?" he asked. "He's as brilliant as he ever was," said Appius Claudius. "If we can keep him sober he'll eat Carbo, no matter how many troops Carbo can field." Appius Claudius shivered, grimaced. "Can you feel the evil presences in this room, Varro?" "Very definitely," said Varro, though he didn't think the kind of atmosphere he felt was what Appius Claudius meant. "I've been studying the subject a little," Appius Claudius proceeded to explain, "among the minor temples and cults at Delphi. There are fingers of power all around us quite invisible, of course. Most people aren't aware of them, but men like you and me, Varro, are hypersensitive to emanations from other places." "What other places?" asked Varro, startled. "Underneath us. Above us. On all sides of us," said Appius Claudius in sepulchral tones. "Fingers of power! I don't know how else to explain what I mean. How can anyone describe invisible somethings only the hypersensitive can feel touching them? I'm not talking about the gods, or Olympus, or even numina. ..." But the others in the room had lured Varro's attention away from poor Appius Claudius, who continued to drone on happily while Varro assessed the quality of Sulla's legates. Philippus and Cethegus, the great tergiversators. Every time Fortune favored a new set of men, Philippus and Cethegus turned their togas inside out or back to the right side again, eager to serve the new masters of Rome; each of them had been doing it for thirty years. Philippus was the more straightforward of the two, had been consul after several fruitless tries and even became censor under Cinna and Carbo, the zenith of a man's political career. Whereas Cethegus a patrician Cornelius remotely related to Sulla had remained in the background, preferring to wield his power by manipulating his fellow backbenchers in the Senate. They lay together talking loudly and ignoring everybody else. Three young ones also lay together ignoring everybody else what a lovely trio! Verres, Catilina and Ofella. Villains all, Varro was sure of it, though Ofella was more concerned about his dignitas than any future pickings. Of Verres and of Catilina there could be no doubt; the future pickings ruled them absolutely. Another couch held three estimable, upright men Mamercus, Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus (an adopted Varro, actually the brother of Sulla's loyalest follower, Lucullus). They patently disapproved of Pompey, and made no attempt to conceal it. Mamercus was Sulla's son in law, a quiet and steady man who had salvaged Sulla's fortune and got his family safely to Greece. Metellus Pius the Piglet and his quaestor Varro Lucullus had sailed from Liguria to Puteoli midway through April, and marched across Campania to join Sulla just before Carbo's Senate mobilized the troops who might otherwise have stopped them. Until Pompey had appeared today, they had basked in the full radiance of Sulla's grateful approval, for they had brought him two legions of battle hardened soldiers. However, most of their attitude was founded in the who of Pompey, rather than in the what or even in the why. A Pompeius from northern Picenum? An upstart, a parvenu. A non Roman! His father, nicknamed The Butcher because of the way he conducted his wars, might have achieved the consulship and great political power, but nothing could reconcile him and his to Metellus Pius or Varro Lucullus. No genuine Roman, of senatorial family or not, would have, at the age of twenty two, taken it upon himself absolutely illegally! to bring the great patrician aristocrat Lucius Cornelius Sulla an army, and then demand to become, in effect, Sulla's partner. The army which Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus had brought Sulla automatically became his, to do with as he willed; had Sulla accepted it with thanks and then dismissed Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus, they would perhaps have been angered, but they would have gone at once. Punctilious sticklers, both of them, thought Varro. So now they lay on the same couch glaring at Pompey because he had used the troops he had brought Sulla to elicit a top command neither his age nor his antecedents permitted. He had held Sulla to ransom. Of all of them, however, by far the most intriguing to Varro was Marcus Licinius Crassus. In the autumn of the previous year he had arrived in Greece to offer Sulla two and a half thousand good Spanish soldiers, only to find his reception little warmer than the one he had received from Metellus Pius in Africa during the summer. Most of the chilly welcome was due to the dramatic failure of a get rich quick scheme he and his friend the younger Titus Pomponius had engineered among investors in Cinna's Rome. It had happened toward the end of the first year, which saw Cinna joined with Carbo in the consulship, when money was beginning rather coyly to appear again; news had come that the menace of King Mithridates was no more, that Sulla had negotiated the Treaty of Dardanus with him. Taking advantage of a sudden surge of optimism, Crassus and Titus Pomponius had offered shares in a new Asian speculation. The crash occurred when word came that Sulla had completely reorganized the finances of the Roman province of Asia, that there would be no tax gathering bonanza after all. Rather than stay in Rome to face hordes of irate creditors, both Crassus and Titus Pomponius had decamped. There was really only one place to go, one man to conciliate: Sulla. Titus Pomponius had seen this immediately, and gone to Athens with his huge fortune intact. Educated, urbane, something of a literary dilettante, personally charming, and just a trifle too fond of little boys, Titus Pomponius had soon come to an understanding with Sulla; but finding that he adored the atmosphere and style of life in Athens, he had chosen to remain there, given himself the cognomen of Atticus Man of Athens. Crassus was not so sure of himself, and had not seen that Sulla was his only alternative until much later than Atticus. Circumstances had conspired to leave Marcus Licinius Crassus head of his family and impoverished. The only money left belonged to Axia, the widow not only of his eldest brother, but also the widow of his middle brother. The size of her dowry had not been her sole attraction; she was pretty, vivacious, kindhearted and loving. Like Crassus's mother, Vinuleia, she was a Sabine from Reate, and fairly closely related to Vinuleia at that. Her wealth came from the rosea rura, best pasture in all of Italy and breeding ground of fabulous stud donkeys which sold for enormous sums sixty thousand sesterces was not an uncommon price for one such beast, potential sire of many sturdy army mules. When Axia's husband, the eldest Crassus son, Publius, was killed outside Grumentum during the Italian War, she was left a widow and pregnant. In that tightly knit and frugal family, there seemed only one answer; after her ten months of mourning were over, Axia married Lucius, the second Crassus son. By whom she had no children. When he was murdered by Fimbria in the street outside his door, she was widowed again. As was Vinuleia, for Crassus the father, seeing his son cut down and knowing what his fate would be, killed himself on the spot. At the time Marcus, the youngest Crassus son, was twenty nine years old, the one whom his father (consul and censor in his day) had elected to keep at home in order to safeguard his name and bloodline. All the Crassus property was confiscated, including Vinuleia's. But Axia's family stood on excellent terms with Cinna, so her dowry wasn't touched. And when her second ten month period of mourning was over, Marcus Licinius Crassus married her and took her little son, his nephew Publius, as his own. Three times married to each of three brothers, Axia was known ever after as Tertulla Little Three. The change in her name was her own suggestion; Axia had a harsh un Latin ring to it, whereas Tertulla tripped off the tongue. The glorious scheme Crassus and Atticus had concocted which would have been a resounding success had Sulla not done the unexpected regarding the finances of Asia Province shattered just as Crassus was beginning to see the family wealth increase again. And caused him to flee with a pittance in his purse, all his hopes destroyed. Behind him he left two women without a male protector, his mother and his wife. Tertulla bore his own son, Marcus, two months after he had gone. But where to go? Spain, decided Crassus. In Spain lay a relic of past Crassus wealth. Years before, Crassus's father had sailed to the Tin Isles, the Cassiterides, and negotiated an exclusive contract for himself to convey tin from the Cassiterides across northern Spain to the shores of the Middle Sea. Civil war in Italy had destroyed that, but Crassus had nothing left to lose; he fled to Nearer Spain, where a client of his father's, one Vibius Paecianus, hid him in a cave until Crassus was sure that the consequences of his fiscal philandering were not going to follow him as far as Spain. He then emerged and began to knit his tin monopoly together again, after which he acquired some interests in the silver lead mines of southern Spain. All very well, but these activities could only prosper if the financial institutions and trading companies of Rome were made available to him again. Which meant he needed an ally more powerful than anyone he knew personally: he needed Sulla. But in order to woo Sulla (since he lacked the charm and the erudition possessed so plentifully by Titus Pomponius Atticus) he would have to bring Sulla a gift. And the only gift he could possibly offer was an army. This he raised among his father's old clients; a mere five cohorts, but five well trained and well equipped cohorts. His first port of call after he left Spain was Utica, in Africa Province, where he had heard Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, he whom Gaius Marius had called the Piglet, was still trying to hold on to his position as governor. He arrived early in the summer of the previous year, only to find that the Piglet a pillar of Roman rectitude was not amused by his commercial activities. Leaving the Piglet to make his own dispositions when his government fell, Crassus went on to Greece, and Sulla, who had accepted his gift of five Spanish cohorts, then proceeded to treat him coldly. : Now he sat with his small grey eyes fixed painfully upon Sulla, waiting for the slightest sign of approval, and obviously most put out to see Sulla interested only in Pompey. The cognomen of Crassus had been in the Famous Family of Licinius for many generations, but they still managed to breed true to it, Varro noted; it meant thickset (or perhaps, in the case of the first Licinius to be called Crassus, it might have meant intellectually dense?). Taller by far than he looked, Crassus was built on the massive lines of an ox, and had some of that animal's impassive placidity in his rather expressionless face. Varro gave the assembled men a final glance, and sighed. Yes, he had been right to spend most of his thoughts upon Crassus. They were all ambitious, most of them were probably capable, some of them were as ruthless as they were amoral, but leaving Pompey and Sulla out of it, of course Marcus Crassus was the man to watch in the future. Walking back to their own house alongside a completely sober Pompey, Varro found himself very glad that he had yielded to Pompey's exhortations and attached himself at first hand to this coming campaign. "What did you and Sulla talk about?" he asked. "Nothing earthshaking," said Pompey. "You kept your voices low enough." ' "Yes, didn't we?" Varro felt rather than saw Pompey's grin. "He's no fool, Sulla, even if he isn't the man he used to be. If the rest of that sulky assemblage couldn't hear what we said, how do they know we didn't talk about them?" "Did Sulla agree to be your partner in this enterprise?" I got to keep command of my own legions, which is all I wanted. He knows I haven't given them to him, even on loan." Was it discussed openly?'' "I told you, the man is no fool," said Pompey laconically. "Nothing much was said. That way, there is no agreement between us, and he is not bound." "You're content with that?" "Of course! He also knows he needs me," said Pompey.
Sulla was up by dawn the next morning, and an hour later had his army on the march in the direction of Capua. By now he had accustomed himself to spurts of activity that coincided with the state of his face, for the itching was not perpetually there; rather, it tended to be cyclic. Having just emerged from a bout and its concomitant intake of wine, he knew that for some days he would have a little peace provided he did absolutely nothing to trigger another cycle. This required a rigid policing of his hands, which could not be permitted to touch his face for any reason. Not until a man found himself in this predicament did he understand how many times his hands would go to his face without volition, without any awareness. And here he was with the weeping vesicles growing harder as they struggled to heal, and all the tickles, tingles, tiny movements of the skin that healing process involved. It was easiest on the first day, which was today, but as the days went on he would tend to forget, would reach up to scratch a perfectly natural itch of nose or cheek and the whole ghastly business could start again. Would start again. So he had disciplined himself to get as much done as possible before the next outbreak, and then to drink himself insensible until it passed. Oh, but it was difficult! So much to do, so much that had to be done, and he a shadow of the man he had been. Nothing had he accomplished without overcoming gigantic obstacles, but since the onset of that illness in Greece over a year ago he constantly found himself wondering why he bothered to continue. As Pompey had so obviously remarked, Sulla was no fool; he knew he had only a certain time left to live. On a day like today, of course, just emerging from a bout of itching, he did understand why he bothered to continue: because he was the greatest man in a world unwilling to admit that. The Nabopolassar had seen it in him on the banks of the river Euphrates, and not even the gods could delude a Chaldaean seer. To be great beyond all other men, he understood on a day like today, meant a far greater degree of suffering too. He tried not to smile (a smile might disturb the healing process), thinking of his couch companion on the previous evening; now there was one who didn't even begin to comprehend the nature of greatness! Pompey the Great. Trust Sulla to have discovered already by what name he was known among his own people. A young man who actually thought that greatness did not have to be worked at, that greatness had been given him at birth and would never not be there. I wish with all my heart, Pompeius Magnus, thought Sulla, that I could live long enough to see who and what will bring you crashing down! A fascinating fellow, however. Most definitely a prodigy of some sort. He was not the stuff of a loyal subordinate, so much was sure. No, Pompey the Great was a rival. And saw himself as a rival. Already. At twenty two. The veteran troops he had brought with him Sulla knew how to use; but how best to use Pompey the Great? Give him plenty of free rein to run with, certainly. Make sure he was not given a task he couldn't do. Flatter him, exalt him, never prick his monumental conceit. Give him to understand that he is the user, and never let him see that he is the one being used. I will be dead long before he is brought crashing down, because while I am alive, I will make sure no one does that to him. He's far too useful. Too ... Valuable. The mule upon which Sulla rode squealed, tossed its head in agreement. But, ever mindful of his face, Sulla did not smile at the mule's sagacity. He was waiting. Waiting for a jar of ointment and a recipe from which to make further jars of ointment. Almost ten years ago he had first experienced this skin disease, on his way back from the Euphrates. How satisfying that expedition had been! His son had come along, Julilla's son who in his adolescence had turned out to be the friend and confidant Sulla had never owned before. The perfect participant in a perfect relationship. How they had talked! About anything and everything. The boy had been able to forgive his father so many things Sulla had never been able to forgive himself oh, not murders and other necessary practicalities, they were just the things a man's life forced him to do. But emotional mistakes, weaknesses of the mind dictated by longings and inclinations reason shouted were stupid, futile. How gravely Young Sulla had listened, how completely had he, so short in years, understood. Comforted. Produced excuses which at the time had even seemed to hold water. And Sulla's rather barren world had glowed, expanded, promised a depth and dimension only this beloved son could give it. Then, safely home from the journey beyond the Euphrates and Roman experience, Young Sulla had died. Just like that. Over and done with in two tiny little insignificant days. Gone the friend, gone the confidant. Gone the beloved son. The tears stung, welled up no! No! He could not weep, must not weep! Let one drop trickle down his cheek, and the itchy torment would begin. Ointment. He must concentrate upon the idea of the ointment. Morsimus had found it in some forgotten village somewhere near the Pyramus River of Cilicia Pedia, and it had soothed, healed him. Six months ago he had sent to Morsimus, now an ethnarch in Tarsus, and begged him to find that ointment, even if he had to search every settlement in Cilicia Pedia. Could he but find it again and, more importantly, its recipe his skin would return to normal. And in the meantime, he waited. Suffered. Became ever greater. Do you hear that, Pompey the Great? He turned in his saddle and beckoned to where behind him rode Metellus Pius the Piglet and Marcus Crassus (Pompey the Great was bringing up the rear at the head of his three legions). "I have a problem," he said when Metellus Pius and Crassus drew level with him. "Who?" asked the Piglet shrewdly. "Oh, very good! Our esteemed Philippus," said Sulla, no expression creasing his face. "Well, even if we didn't have Appius Claudius along, Lucius Philippus would present a problem," said Crassus, the abacus of his mind clicking from unum to duo, "but there's no denying Appius Claudius makes it worse. You'd think the fact that Appius Claudius is Philippus's uncle would have kept him from expelling Appius Claudius from the Senate, but it didn't." Probably because nephew Philippus is some years older than uncle Appius Claudius," said Sulla, entertained by this opinion. "What exactly do you want to do with the problem?" asked Metellus Pius, unwilling to let his companions drift off into the complexities of Roman upper class blood relationships. "I know what I'd like to do, but whether or not it's even possible rests with you, Crassus," said Sulla. Crassus blinked. "How could it affect me?" Tipping back his shady straw hat, Sulla looked at his legate with a little more warmth in his eyes than of yore; and Crassus, in spite of himself, felt an uplift in the region of his breast. Sulla was deferring to him! "It's all very well to be marching along buying grain and foodstuffs from the local farmers," Sulla began, his words a trifle slurred these days because of his lack of teeth, but by the end of summer we will need a harvest I can ship from one place. It doesn't have to be a harvest the size of Sicily's or Africa's, but it does have to provide the staple for my army. And I am confident that my army will increase in size as time goes on." "Surely," said Metellus Pius carefully, "by the autumn we'll have all the grain we need from Sicily and Africa. By the autumn we will have taken Rome." "I doubt that." "But why? Rome's rotting from within!" Sulla sighed, his lips flapping. "Piglet dear, if I am to help Rome recover, then I have to give Rome a chance to decide in my favor peacefully. Now that is not going to happen by the autumn. So I can't appear too threatening, I can't march at the double up the Via Latina and attack Rome the way Cinna and Marius descended upon her after I left for the east. When I marched on Rome the first time, I had surprise on my side. No one believed I would. So no one opposed me except a few slaves and mercenaries belonging to Gaius Marius. But this time is different. Everyone expects me to march on Rome. If I do that too quickly, I'll never win. Oh, Rome would fall! But every nest of insurgents, every school of opposition would harden. It would take me longer than I have left to live to put resistance down. I can't afford the time or the effort. So I'll go very slowly toward Rome." Metellus Pius digested this, and saw the sense of it. With a gladness he couldn't quite conceal from those glacial eyes in their sore sockets. Wisdom was not a quality he associated with any Roman nobleman; Roman noblemen were too political in their thinking to be wise. Everything was of the moment, seen in the short term. Even Scaurus Princeps Senatus, for all his experience and his vast auctoritas, had not been wise. Any more than had the Piglet's own father, Metellus Numidicus. Brave. Fearless. Determined. Unyielding of principle. But never wise. So it cheered the Piglet immensely to know that he rode down the long road to Rome with a wise man, for he was a Caecilius Metellus and he had a foot in both camps, despite his personal choice of Sulla. If there was any aspect of this undertaking from which he shrank, it was the knowledge that try though he might to avoid it he would inevitably end in ruining a good proportion of his blood or marital relations. Therefore he appreciated the wisdom of advancing slowly upon Rome; some of the Caecilii Metelli who at the moment supported Carbo might see the error of their ways before it was too late. Of course Sulla knew exactly how the Piglet's mind was working, and let him finish his thoughts in peace. His own thoughts were upon his task as he stared between the mournful flops of his mule's ears. I am back in Italy and soon Campania, that cornucopia of all the good things from the earth, will loom in the distance green, rolling, soft of mountain, sweet of water. And if I deliberately exclude Rome from my inner gaze, Rome will not eat at me the way this itching does. Rome will be mine. But, though my crimes have been many and my contrition none, I have never liked so much as the idea of rape. Better by far that Rome comes to me consenting, than that I am forced to rape her.... You may have noticed that ever since I landed in Brundisium I have been sending written letters to all the leaders of the old Italian Allies, promising them that I will see every last Italian properly enrolled as a citizen of Rome according to the laws and treaties negotiated at the end of the Italian War. I will even see them distributed across the full gamut of the thirty five tribes. Believe me, Piglet, I will bend like a strand of spider's web in the wind before I attack Rome!" "What have the Italians to do with Rome?" asked Metellus Pius, who had never been in favor of granting the full Roman citizenship to the Italians, and had secretly applauded Philippus as censor because Philippus and his fellow censor, Perperna, had avoided enrolling the Italians as Roman citizens. "Between Pompeius and me, we've marched through much of the territory which fought against Rome without encountering anything beyond welcome and perhaps hope that I will change the situation in Rome concerning their citizenships. Italian support will be a help to me in persuading Rome to yield peacefully." "I doubt it," said Metellus Pius stiffly, "but I daresay you know what you're doing. Let's get back to the subject of Philippus, who is a problem." "Certainly!" said Sulla, eyes dancing. "What has Philippus to do with me?" asked Crassus, deeming it high time he intruded himself into what had become a duet. I have to get rid of him, Marcus Crassus. But as painlessly as possible, given the fact that somehow he has managed to turn himself into a hallowed Roman institution." "That's because he has become everybody's ideal of the dedicated political contortionist," said the Piglet, grinning. "Not a bad description," said Sulla, nodding instead of trying to smile. "Now, my big and ostensibly placid friend Marcus Crassus, I am going to ask you a question. I require an honest answer. Given your sad reputation, are you capable of giving me an honest answer?'' This sally did not appear even to dent Crassus's oxlike composure. "I will do my best, Lucius Cornelius." "Are you passionately attached to your Spanish troops?" "Considering that you keep making me find provisions for them, no, I am not," said Crassus. "Good! Would you part with them?" "If you think we can do without them, yes." "Good! Then with your splendidly phlegmatic consent, my dear Marcus, I'll bring down several quarry with the same arrow. It is my intention to give your Spaniards to Philippus he can take and hold Sardinia for me. When the Sardinian harvest comes in, he will send all of it to me," said Sulla. He reached for the hide flask of pale sour wine tied to one horn of his saddle, lifted it, and squirted liquid expertly into his gummy mouth; not a drop fell on his face. "Philippus will refuse to go," said Metellus Pius flatly. "No, he won't. He'll love the commission," said Sulla, capping the birdlike neck of his wineskin. "He'll be the full and undisputed master of all he surveys, and the Sardinian brigands will greet him like a brother. He makes every last one of them look virtuous." Doubt began to gnaw at Crassus, who rumbled deeply in his throat, but said no word. "Wondering what you'll do without troops to command?" "Something like that," said Crassus cautiously. "You could make yourself very useful to me," said Sulla in casual tones. "How?" "Your mother and your wife are both from prominent Sabine families. How about going to Reate and starting to recruit for me? You could commence there, and finish among the Marsi." Out went Sulla's hand, clasped the heavy wrist of Crassus. "Believe me, Marcus Crassus, in the spring of next year there will be much military work for you to do, and good troops Italian, if not Roman for you to command." "That suits me," said Crassus. "It's a deal." "Oh, if only everything could be solved so easily and so well!" cried Sulla, reaching once more for his wineskin. Crassus and Metellus Pius exchanged glances across the bent head of silly artificial curls; he might say he drank to ease the itching, but the truth appeared more to be that nowadays Sulla couldn't go for very long without wetting his whistle. Somewhere down the nightmare alley of his physical torments, he had embraced his palliative with a permanent and enduring love. But did he know it? Or did he not? Had they found the courage to ask him, Sulla would have told them readily. Yes, he knew it. Nor did he care who else knew it, including the fact that his deceptively weak looking vintage was actually strongly fortified. Forbidden bread, honey, fruit and cakes, little in his diet did he truly like. The physicians of Aedepsus had been right to remove all those tasty things from his food intake, of that he had no doubt. When he had come to them, he knew he was dying. First he had endured an insatiable craving for sweet and starchy things, and put on so much weight that even his mule had complained about the burden of carrying him; then he began to experience numbness and tingling in both feet, burnings and pains too as time went on, so that the moment he lay down to sleep, his wretched feet refused to let him. The sensations crept into his ankles and lower legs, sleep became harder and harder to find. So he added a heavy; very sweet and fortified wine to his customary fare, and used it to drug himself into sleeping. Until the day when he had found himself sweating, gasping and losing weight so quickly that he could almost see himself disappearing. He drank flagons of water one after the other, yet still was thirsty. And most terrifying of all! his eyes began to fail. Most of that had disappeared or greatly eased after he went to Aedepsus. Of his face he wouldn't think, he who had been so beautiful in his youth that men had made absolute fools of themselves, so beautiful after he attained maturity that women had made absolute fools of themselves. But one thing which had not disappeared was his need to drink wine. Yielding to the inevitable, the priest physicians of Aedepsus had persuaded him to exchange his sweet fortified wine for the sourest vintages available, and over the months since, he had come to prefer his wine so dry it made him grimace. When the itch was not upon him he kept the amount he drank under some sort of control, in that he didn't let it interfere with his thought processes. He just drank enough to improve them or so he told himself. "I'll keep Ofella and Catilina with me," he said to Crassus and Metellus Pius, stoppering up the flask again. "However, Verres is the epitome of his name an insatiably greedy boar. I think I will send him back to Beneventum, for the time being at least. He can organize supplies and keep an eye on our rear." The Piglet giggled. "He might like that, the honey boy!" This provoked a brief grin in Crassus. What about yon Cethegus?" he asked, legs aching from hanging down limply; they were very heavy legs. He shifted his weight a little. "Cethegus I shall retain for the moment," said Sulla. His hand strayed toward the wine, then was snatched away. "He can look after things in Campania."
Just before his army crossed the river Volturnus near the town of Casilinum, Sulla sent six envoys to negotiate with Gaius Norbanus, the more capable of Carbo's two tame consuls. Norbanus had taken eight legions and drawn himself up to defend Capua, but when Sulla's envoys appeared carrying a flag of truce, he arrested them without a hearing. He then marched his eight legions out onto the Capuan plain right beneath the slopes of Mount Tifata. Irritated by the unethical treatment meted out to his envoys, Sulla proceeded to teach Norbanus a lesson he would not forget. Down the flank of Mount Tifata Sulla led his troops at a run, hurled them on the unsuspecting Norbanus. Defeated before the battle had really begun, Norbanus retreated inside Capua, where he sorted out his panicked men, sent two legions to hold the port of Neapolis for Carbo's Rome, and prepared himself to withstand a siege. Thanks to the cleverness of a tribune of the plebs, Marcus Junius Brutus, Capua was very much disposed to like the present government in Rome; earlier in the year, Brutus had brought in a law giving Capua the status of a Roman city, and this, after centuries of being punished by Rome for various insurrections, had pleased Capua mightily. Norbanus had therefore no need to worry that Capua might grow tired of playing host to him and his army. Capua was used to playing host to Roman legions. "We have Puteoli, so we don't need Neapolis," said Sulla to Pompey and Metellus Pius as they rode toward Teanum Sidicinum, "and we can do without Capua because we hold Beneventum. I must have had a feeling when I left Gaius Verres there." He stopped for a moment, thought about something, nodded as if to answer his thought. Cethegus can have a new job. Legate in charge of all my supply columns. That will tax his diplomacy!" "This," said Pompey in disgruntled tones, "is a very slow kind of war. Why aren't we marching on Rome?" The face Sulla turned to him was, given its limitations, a kind one. "Patience, Pompeius! In martial skills you need no tuition, but your political skills are nonexistent. If the rest of this year teaches you nothing else, it will serve as a lesson on political manipulation. Before ever we contemplate marching on Rome, we have first to show Rome that she cannot win under her present government. Then, if she proves to be a sensible lady, she will come to us and offer herself to us freely." "What if she doesn't?" asked Pompey, unaware that Sulla had already been through this with Metellus Pius and Crassus. "Time will tell" was all Sulla would say. They had bypassed Capua as if Norbanus inside it did not exist, and rolled on toward the second of Rome's consular armies, under the command of Scipio Asiagenus and his senior legate, Quintus Sertorius. The little and very prosperous Campanian towns around Sulla did not so much capitulate as greet him with open arms, for they knew him well; Sulla had commanded Rome's armies in this part of Italy for most of the duration of the Italian War. Scipio Asiagenus was camped between Teanum Sidicinum and Cales, where a small tributary of the Volturnus, fed by springs, provided a great deal of slightly effervescent water; even in summer its mild warmth was delightful. "This," said Sulla, "will be an excellent winter camp!" And sat himself and his army down on the opposite bank of the streamlet from his adversary. The cavalry were sent back to Beneventum under the charge of Cethegus, while Sulla himself gave a new party of envoys explicit instructions on how to proceed in negotiating a truce with Scipio Asiagenus. "He's not an old client of Gaius Marius's, so he'll be much easier to deal with than Norbanus," said Sulla to Metellus Pius and Pompey. His face was still in remission and his intake of wine was somewhat less than on the journey from Beneventum, which meant that his mood was cheerful and his mind very clear. "Maybe," said the Piglet, looking doubtful. "If it were only Scipio, I'd agree wholeheartedly. But he has Quintus Sertorius with him, and you know what that means, Lucius Cornelius." "Trouble," said Sulla, sounding unworried. "Ought you not be thinking how to render Sertorius impotent?" "I won't need to do that, Piglet dear. Scipio will do it for me." He pointed with a stick toward the place where a sharp bend in the little river drew his camp's boundary very close to the boundary of Scipio's camp on the far shore. "Can your veterans dig, Gnaeus Pompeius?" Pompey blinked. "With the best!" "Good. Then while the rest are finishing off the winter fortifications, your fellows can excavate the bank outside our wall, and make a great big swimming pool," said Sulla blandly. "What a terrific idea!" said Pompey with equal sangfroid, and smiled. "I'll get them onto it straightaway." He paused, took the stick from Sulla and pointed it at the far bank. "If it's all right with you, General, I'll break down the bank and concentrate on widening the river, rather than make a separate swimming hole. And I think it would be very nice for our chaps if I roofed at least a part of it over less chilly later on." "Good thinking! Do that," said Sulla cordially, and stood watching Pompey stride purposefully away. What was all that about?'' asked Metellus Pius, frowning; he hated to see Sulla so affable to that conceited young prig! "He knew," said Sulla cryptically. "Well, I don't!" said the Piglet crossly. "Enlighten me!" "Fraternization, Piglet dear! Do you think Scipio's men are going to be able to resist Pompeius's winter spa? Even in summer? After all, our men are Roman soldiers too. There is nothing like a truly pleasurable activity shared in common to breed friendship. The moment Pompeius's pool is finished, there will be as many of Scipio's men enjoying it as ours. And they'll all get chatty in no time same jokes, same complaints, same sort of life. It's my bet we won't have to fight a battle." "And he understood that from the little you said?" "Absolutely." "I'm surprised he agreed to help! He's after a battle." "True. But he's got my measure, Pius, and he knows he will not get a battle this side of spring. It's no part of Pompeius's strategy to annoy me, you know. He needs me just as much as I need him," said Sulla, and laughed softly without moving his face. He strikes me as the sort who might prematurely decide that he doesn't need you." "Then you mistake him."
Three days later, Sulla and Scipio Asiagenus parleyed on the road between Teanum and Cales, and agreed to an armistice. About this moment Pompey finished his swimming hole, and typically methodical after publishing a roster for its use that allowed sufficient space for invaders from across the river, threw it open for troop recreation. Within two more days the coming and going between the two camps was so great that, "We may as well abandon any pretense that we're on opposite sides," said Quintus Sertorius to his commander. Scipio Asiagenus looked surprised. "What harm does it do?" he asked gently. The one eye Sertorius was left with rolled toward the sky. Always a big man, his physique had set with the coming of his middle thirties into its final mold thick necked, bull like, formidable. And in some ways this was a pity, for it endowed Sertorius with a bovine look entirely at variance with the power and quality of his mind. He was Gaius Marius's cousin, and had inherited far more of Marius's personal and military brilliance than had, for instance, Marius's son. The eye had been obliterated in a skirmish just before the Siege of Rome, but as it was his left one and he was right handed, its loss had not slowed him down as a fighter. Scar tissue had turned his pleasant face into something of a caricature, in that its right side was still most pleasant while its left leered a horrible contradiction. So it was that Scipio underestimated him, did not respect or understand him. And looked at him now in surprise. Sertorius tried. "Asiagenus, think! How well do you feel our men will fight for us if they're allowed to get too friendly with the enemy?" "They'll fight because they're ordered to fight." "I don't agree. Why do you think Sulla built his swimming hole, if not to suborn our troops? He didn't do it for the sake of his own men! It's a trap, and you're falling into it!" "We are under a truce, and the other side is as Roman as we are," said Scipio Asiagenus stubbornly. "The other side is led by a man you ought to fear as if he and his army had been sown from the dragon's teeth! You can't give him one single little inch, Asiagenus. If you do, he will end in taking all the miles between here and Rome." "You exaggerate," said Scipio stiffly. "You're a fool!" snarled Sertorius, unable not to say it. But Scipio was not impressed by the display of temper either. He yawned, scratched his chin, looked down at his beautifully manicured nails. Then he looked up at Sertorius looming over him, and smiled sweetly. "Do go away!" he said. "I will that! Right away!" Sertorius snapped. "Maybe Gaius Norbanus can make you see sense!" "Give him my regards," Scipio called after him, then went back to studying his nails. So Quintus Sertorius rode for Capua at the gallop, and there found a man more to his taste than Scipio Asiagenus. The loyalest of Marians, Norbanus was no fanatical adherent of Carbo's; after the death of Cinna, he had only persisted in his allegiance because he loathed Sulla far more than he did Carbo. You mean that chinless wonder of an aristocrat actually has concluded an armistice with Sulla? asked Norbanus, voice squeaking as it uttered that detested name. "He certainly has. And he's permitting his men to fraternize with the enemy," said Sertorius steadily. "Why did I have to be saddled with a colleague as stupid as Asiagenus?" wailed Norbanus, then shrugged. "Well, that is what our Rome is reduced to, Quintus Sertorius. I'll send him a nasty message which he will ignore, but I suggest you don't return to him. I hate to think of you as a captive of Sulla's he'd find a way to murder you. Find something to do that will annoy Sulla." "Eminent good sense," said Sertorius, sighing. "I'll stir up trouble for Sulla among the towns of Campania. The townspeople all declared for Sulla, but there are plenty of men who aren't happy about it." He looked disgusted. "Women, Gaius Norbanus! Women! They only have to hear Sulla's name and they go limp with ecstasy. It's the women decided which side these Campanian towns chose, not the men." "Then they ought to set eyes on him," said Norbanus, and grimaced. "I believe he looks like nothing human." "Worse than me?" "A lot worse, so they say." Sertorius frowned. "I'd heard something of it, but Scipio wouldn't include me in the treating party, so I didn't see him, and Scipio made no reference to his appearance." He laughed grimly. "Oh, I'll bet that hurts him, the pretty mentula! He was so vain! Like a woman." Norbanus grinned. "Don't like the sex much, do you?" "They're all right for a poke. But I'll have none to wife! My mother is the only woman I have any time for at all. Now she is what a woman ought to be! Doesn't stick her nose into men's affairs, doesn't try to rule the roost, doesn't use her cunnus like a weapon." He picked up his helmet and clapped it on his head. "I'll be off, Gaius. Good luck convincing Scipio that he is wrong. Verpa!"
After some thought, Sertorius decided to ride from Capua toward the Campanian coast, where the pretty little town of Sinuessa Aurunca might just be ripe for a declaration against Sulla. The roads everywhere in Campania were free enough from trouble; Sulla had not attempted any blockades aside from a formal investment of Neapolis. No doubt he would shortly put a force outside Capua to keep Norbanus in, but there had been no sign of it when Sertorius visited. Even so, Sertorius felt it advisable to stay off the main roads. He liked the sensation of a fugitive existence; it carried an extra dimension of real life with it, and reminded him slightly of the days when he had posed as a Celtiberian warrior of some outlandish tribe in order to go spying among the Germans. Ah, that had been the life! No chinless wonders of Roman aristocrats to placate and defer to! Constant action, women who knew their place. He had even had a German wife, sired a son by her without once ever feeling that she or the boy hampered him. They lived in Nearer Spain now, up in the mountain stronghold of Osca, and the boy would be how time flew! almost a man. Not that Quintus Sertorius missed them, or hankered to set eyes upon this only child. What he missed was the life. The freedom, the sole ruling excellence, which was how a man acquitted himself as a warrior. Yes, those were the days.... As was his invariable habit, he traveled without any kind of escort, even a slave; like his cousin, dear old Gaius Marius, he believed that a soldier ought to be able to care for himself completely. Of course his kit was back in Scipio Asiagenus's camp and he would not go back for it or would he? Come to think of it, there were a few items he would sorely miss: the sword he normally used, a shirt of chain mail he had picked up in Further Gaul of a lightness and workmanship no smith in Italy could match, his winter boots from Liguria. Yes, he would go back. Some days would elapse before Scipio would fall. So he turned his horse around and headed back toward the northeast, intending to swing beyond Sulla's camp on its far side. And discovered that some distance in his rear a small party was proceeding along the rutted track. Four men and three women. Oh, women! Almost he reversed direction once more, then resolved to pick up speed and hasten by them. After all, they were heading seaward, he was now going back toward the mountains. But as they loomed larger he frowned. Surely the man in their lead was familiar? A veritable giant, flaxen haired and massive of thews, just like thousands more German men he had known Burgundus! Ye gods, it was! Burgundus! And behind him rode Lucius Decumius and his two sons! Burgundus had recognized him; each man kicked his horse in the ribs and rode to a meeting, with little Lucius Decumius flogging his beast to catch up. Trust Lucius Decumius not to miss a word of any conversation! "What on earth are you doing here?" Sertorius asked after the handshakes and the backslappings were over. "We're lost, that's what we're doing here," said Lucius Decumius, glaring at Burgundus balefully. "That heap of German rubbish swore he knew the way! But do he? No, he do not!" Years of exposure to Lucius Decumius's never ending spate of (quite well meant) insults had inured Burgundus to them, so he bore them now with his usual patience, merely eyeing the small Roman the way a bull eyed a gnat. "We're trying to find the lands of Quintus Pedius," said Burgundus in his slow Latin, smiling at Sertorius with a liking he felt for few men. "The lady Aurelia is going to fetch her daughter to Rome." And there she was, plodding along upon a stout mule and sitting absolutely straight, not a hair out of place nor a single smear of dust upon her fawn traveling robe. With her was her huge Gallic serving maid, Cardixa, and another female servant Sertorius did not know. "Quintus Sertorius," she said, joining them and somehow assuming command. Now she was a woman! Sertorius had said to Norbanus that he prized only one of the breed, his mother, but he had quite forgotten Aurelia. How she managed to be beautiful as well as sensible he didn't know; what he did know was that she was the only woman in the entire world who was both. Added to which, she was as honorable as any man, she didn't lie, she didn't moan or complain, she worked hard, and she minded her own business. They were almost exactly the same age forty and had known each other since Aurelia had married Gaius Julius Caesar over twenty years earlier. "Have you seen my mother?" Sertorius asked as she prodded her mule to lead them slightly apart from the rest of her party. "Not since last year's ludi Romani, so you would have seen her yourself since I have. But she'll be down to stay with us again this year for the games. It's become a regular habit." "Old horror, she never will stay in my house," he said. "She's lonely, Quintus Sertorius, and your house is such a lonely place. If she stays with us she's in the midst of a bustle, and she likes that. I don't say she'd like it for longer than the games last, but it's good for her once a year." Satisfied on the subject of his mother, whom he loved very much, he turned his mind to the present predicament. "Are you really lost?" he asked. Aurelia nodded, sighed. "I fear we are. Wait until my son hears about it! He'll never let me live it down. But he cannot leave Rome, being flamen Dialis, so I had to trust in Burgundus." She looked rueful. "Cardixa says he can lose himself between the Forum and the Subura, but I confess I thought she was being pessimistic. Now I see she didn't exaggerate in the slightest!" "And Lucius Decumius and his boys are useless too." "Outside the city walls, completely. However," she said loyally, "I could not ask for more caring and protective escorts, and now that we've met you, I'm sure we'll arrive at Quintus Pedius's in no time." "Not quite in no time, but certainly I can put you on your way." His one good eye studied her thoughtfully. "Come to fetch your chick home, Aurelia?" She flushed. "Not exactly. Quintus Pedius wrote to me and asked me to come. Apparently both Scipio and Sulla are camped on the borders of his land, and he felt Lia would be safer elsewhere. But she refused to leave!" "A typical Caesar," said Sertorius, smiling. "Stubborn." "How right you are! It really ought to have been her brother come when he tells them to do this or do that, both his sisters jump! But Quintus Pedius seems to think I will do. My job is not so much to fetch my chick home, as to persuade my chick to come home." "You'll succeed. The Caesars may be stubborn, but it isn't from the Caesars that your son gets his air of command. That he gets from you, Aurelia," said Sertorius. He looked suddenly brisk. "You'll understand when I tell you that I'm in a bit of a hurry. I'm going your way for a part of your journey, but I won't be able to escort you to Quintus Pedius's door, unfortunately. For that you'll have to apply to Sulla. He's camped squarely between where we are at the moment and Quintus Pedius's door." "Whereas you are on your way to Scipio," she said, nodding. "I wasn't," he said frankly, "until I realized I had too much gear back in his camp that I didn't want to part with." The large purple eyes surveyed him tranquilly. "Oh, I see! Scipio doesn't meet the test." "Did you think he could?" "No, never." A small silence fell; they were riding now back the way both had come, and the rest of Aurelia's party had fallen in behind them without a word. "What will you do, Quintus Sertorius?" "Make as much trouble for Sulla as I can. In Sinuessa, I think. But after I fetch my gear from Scipio's camp." He cleared his throat. "I can take you all the way to Sulla. He'd never try to detain me if I came on business like this." No, just take us as far as some spot from which we can find his camp without getting lost." Aurelia heaved a small and pleasurable sigh. "How nice it will be to see Lucius Cornelius again! It is four years since he was last in Rome. He always visited me just after he arrived, and just before he left. A kind of tradition. Now I have to break it, and all because of one stubborn daughter. Still, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that Lucius Cornelius and I will set eyes upon each other again. I have missed his visits dreadfully." Almost Sertorius opened his mouth to warn her, but in the end he didn't. What he knew about Sulla's condition was hearsay, and what he knew about Aurelia was hard fact. She would prefer to make her own discoveries, of that he was sure. So when the earth and timber ramparts of Sulla's camp began to trace lines across the rolling Campanian horizon, Quintus Sertorius bade his cousin in law a grave goodbye, geed up his horse and departed. A new road led across the fields toward the ramparts, worn already by a ceaseless progress of supply carts and shod hooves; there could be no excuse for getting lost. "We must have passed right by it," said Lucius Decumius, scowling. "Hid from view by the size of your arse, Burgundus!" "Now, now," said Aurelia calmly, "stop quarreling, do!" And that was the end of the conversation. An hour later the little band of riders paused before the gate while Lucius Decumius demanded to see the general, then entered a world very strange and new to Aurelia, who had never been anywhere near an army camp in her entire life. Many were the glances she received as they paced down the broad high street which led as straight as a spear shaft toward the tiny aperture of another gate in the far distance. Perhaps three miles lay between, she realized, amazed. Halfway along the Via Principalis there reared the only piece of raised ground within the camp; an obviously artificial knoll upon which stood a large stone house. The big red general's flag was flying to indicate that the general was in, and the red haired duty officer seated at his table under an awning stood up awkwardly when he saw that the general's visitor was a woman. Lucius Decumius, his sons, Burgundus, Cardixa and the other female servant remained by the horses as Aurelia walked sedately up the path toward the duty officer and the sentries who flanked him. Because she was completely wrapped in voluminous fine fawn wool, all young Marcus Valerius Messala Rufus the duty officer could see was her face. But that, he thought, catching his breath, was quite enough. As old as his mother, yet the most beautiful woman! Helen of Troy hadn't been young either. For the years had not dimmed Aurelia's magic; she still turned all heads whenever she appeared outside her own apartment. "I would like to see Lucius Cornelius Sulla, please." Messala Rufus neither asked for her name nor thought to warn Sulla of her advent; he simply bowed to her and gestured with his hand toward the open door. Aurelia entered, smiling her thanks. Though the shutters were wide to let in air, the room was shadow filled, especially in the far corner where a man was bent over his desk writing busily by the light of a big lamp. Her voice could be no one else's: "Lucius Cornelius?" Something happened. The bowed shoulders stiffened, hunched up as if to ward off some frightful blow, and the pen and paper skittled across the surface of the table, so violently were they thrust away. But after that he sat without moving, back to her. She advanced a few paces. "Lucius Cornelius?" Still nothing, but her eyes were becoming used to the gloom and took in the sight of a head of hair which did not belong to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Little ginger red curls, quite ridiculous. Then he heaved himself around as if convulsing, and she knew it was Lucius Cornelius Sulla only because he looked at her out of Lucius Cornelius Sulla's eyes. Unmistakably his eyes. Ye gods, how could I do this to him? But I didn't know! If I had known, a siege tower could not have dragged me here! What is my face saying? What does he see in my expression? "Oh, Lucius Cornelius, how good to see you!" she said in exactly the right tones, covered the rest of the distance to his desk, and kissed him on both poor scarred cheeks. Then she sat down on a folding chair close by, tucked her hands in her lap, gave him an unselfconscious smile, and waited. "I didn't intend ever to see you again, Aurelia," he said, not taking his eyes from hers. "Couldn't you wait until I got to Rome? This is a departure from our normal habit I didn't expect." "Rome seems to be the hard way for you an army at your back. Or perhaps I sensed this would be the first time you did not come to visit. But no, dear Lucius Cornelius, I'm not here for any guessable reason. I'm here because I'm lost." "Lost?" "Yes. I'm trying to find Quintus Pedius. My silly daughter won't come to Rome and Quintus Pedius he's her second husband, which you won't know doesn't want her anywhere near two firmly encamped armies." It came out quite cheerfully and convincingly, she thought. It ought to reassure him. But he was Sulla, so he said, "Gave you a shock, didn't I?" She did not attempt to dissemble. "In some ways, yes. The hair, principally. Yours is gone, I presume." "Along with my teeth." He bared his gums like an ape. "Well, we all come to it if we live long enough." "Wouldn't want me to kiss you now the way I did a few years ago, would you?" Aurelia put her head to one side, smiled. "I didn't want you to kiss me that way even then, though I did enjoy it. Far too much for my own peace of mind. How you hated me!" "What did you expect? You turned me down. I don't like women turning me down." "I do remember that!" "I remember the grapes." "So do I." He drew a deep breath, squeezed his eyelids together. "I wish I could weep!" "I am glad you can't, dear friend," she said tenderly. "You wept for me then." "Yes, I did. But I won't weep for you now. That would be to mourn for a vanished reflection gone a long way down the river. You're here. I rejoice at that." He got up at last, an old tired man. A cup of wine?'' "Yes, indeed." He poured, she noticed, from two separate flagons. "You wouldn't like the urine I'm forced to drink these days. As dry and sour as I am." "I'm pretty dry and sour myself, but I won't insist upon tasting your choice if you don't recommend that I do." She took the simple cup he handed her and sipped gratefully. "Thank you, it's good. We've had a long day looking for Quintus Pedius." "What's your husband about, to leave you to do his job? Is he away yet again?" asked Sulla, sitting down with more ease. The luminous eyes grew glassily stern. "I have been a widow for two years, Lucius Cornelius." That astonished him. "Gaius Julius, dead? He was as fit as a boy! Was he killed in battle?" "No. He just died suddenly." "Yet here I am, a thousand years older than Gaius Julius, still hanging on to life." It came out sounding bitter. "You're the October Horse, he was just the middle of the field. A good man, and I liked being married to him. But I never thought him a man who needed to hang on to life," said Aurelia. "Just as well perhaps that he didn't. If I take Rome, it would have gone hard for him. I presume he would have elected to follow Carbo." "He followed Cinna, for Gaius Marius's sake. But Carbo? That I do not know." She changed the subject, growing used now to the way he looked, who had been as beautiful as Apollo. "Is your wife well, Lucius Cornelius?" "When I last heard. She's still in Athens. Gave me twins last year, a boy and a girl." He chuckled. "She's afraid they're going to grow up to look like her Uncle Piggle wiggle." "Oh, poor little things! But that's nice, to have children. Do you ever wonder about your other twins, the boys your German wife had? They'd be young men now." "Young Cherusci! Taking scalps and burning Romans alive in wicker cages." It was going to be all right. He was calmer, less tormented. Of all the fates she had imagined might have been lying in wait for Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the loss of his special and unique attraction had not been among them. And yet he was still Sulla. His wife, she thought, probably loved him just as much as she ever had when he looked like Apollo. For some time they talked on, slipping back through the rolling years as they exchanged information about this one and that one; he, she noticed, liked to talk about his protg, Lucullus, and she, he noticed, liked to talk about her only son, who was now called Caesar. "As I remember, young Caesar was scholarly. Being flamen Dialis ought to suit him," said Sulla. Aurelia hesitated, seemed about to say something, then apparently said a different something: "He has made a tremendous effort to be a good priest, Lucius Cornelius." Frowning, Sulla glanced at the window nearest to him. "I see the sun is westering, that's why it's so dim in here. Time to get you on your way. I'll have some cadets act as guides Quintus Pedius is not far beyond my camp. And you may tell your daughter that if she stays, she's a fool. My men are not ravening beasts, but if she's a true Julia she'll be a sore temptation, and one cannot forbid the troops to drink wine when they're in a permanent camp in Campania. Take her to Rome at once. I'll provide an escort for you as far as Ferentinum on the day after tomorrow. That will see you safely out of the clutches of both the armies encamped hereabouts." She rose. "I have Burgundus and Lucius Decumius, and dear Lucius Decumius's sons as well. But I would appreciate an escort if you can truly spare the men. Is there no battle imminent between you and Scipio?" Oh, how sad, never to see that wonderful Sullan smile again! The best he could do these days was a grunt that didn't disturb the scabs and scars of his face. "That idiot? No, I don't foresee a battle," he said, standing in his doorway. He gave her a little push. "Now go, Aurelia. And don't expect me to visit you in Rome." Off she went to join her waiting escort, while Sulla began to issue instructions to Messala Rufus. And in no time, it seemed, they were riding down the Via Praetoria toward yet another one of the four gates into Sulla's enormous camp. One look at her face had not encouraged any of her companions to speak to her, so Aurelia was accorded the much needed peace of finishing her journey inside her own thoughts. I have always liked him, even though he became our enemy. Even though he is not a good person. My husband was a genuinely good person, and I loved him, and was faithful to him with my mind and my body. Yet I know it now, though I did not until now some little bit of me did I give to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The bit my husband did not want, would not have known what to do with. We only kissed that once, Lucius Cornelius and I. But it was as beautiful as it was black. A passionate and engulfing mire. I did not yield. But ye gods, how I wanted to! I won a victory of sorts. Yet did I perhaps lose a war? Whenever he walked into my comfortable little world, a gale blew in around him; if he was Apollo, he was also Aeolus, and ruled the winds of my spirit, so that the lyre at my core hummed a melody my husband never, never heard.... Oh, this is worse than the grief of death and utter parting! I have looked upon the wreckage of a dream that was as much mine as his, and he knows it, poor Lucius Cornelius. But what courage! A lesser man would have fallen upon his sword. His pain, his pain! Why am I feeling this? I am busy, practical, unimaginative. My life is sifted out and very satisfying. But now I understand what bit of myself has always belonged to him; the bird bit, that might have lifted in soaring spirals singing its heart out while all the earth below burned away to an unimportant nothing. And no, I am not sorry I kept my feet upon the earth, never soared. It suits the way I am. He and I would never have known a moment's peace. Oh, I bleed for him! I weep for him! And because she rode in front of all save the party of Roman officers, who led the way, her people did not see Aurelia's tears any more than they had seen Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the wreckage of a dream.
The patient and protesting letter Gaius Norbanus sent to Scipio Asiagenus did nothing to avert Scipio's self inflicted disaster; yet no one was more astonished than Scipio Asiagenus when, having decided after all to give battle, he discovered that his troops would not fight for him. Instead, his eight legions deserted en masse to Sulla. In fact, even when Sulla stripped him of his consular insignia of office and sent him packing under the escort of a squadron of cavalry, Scipio Asiagenus was still incapable of appreciating Rome's predicament. Quite tranquilly and complacently he went off to Etruria and began to recruit another army from among the enormous number of Gaius Marius's clients who lived there. Gaius Marius might be dead, but his memory would never fade. Whereas Scipio Asiagenus was merely a passing presence. "He doesn't even understand that he broke a solemn truce," said Sulla, looking puzzled. "I know the Scipiones are on the way down, but that one ! He's not worthy of the name Cornelius Scipio. If I take Rome, I'll execute him." "You should have executed him when you had him," said the Piglet, a little waspishly. "He's living to be a nuisance. '' "No, he's the poultice I'm applying to Etruria's boil," said Sulla. "Draw the poison out, Pius, while there's only one head to deal with. Don't leave it to become a carbuncle." More wisdom, of course; Metellus Pius grinned. What a wonderful metaphor!"
Though the month was still Quinctilis and summer not yet over, Sulla moved no more that year. With Scipio's departure the two camps were joined cozily together, and Sulla's hoary centurions began working upon the young and inexperienced troops who had belonged to Carbo's Rome. Fear of Sulla's veterans had operated upon them more powerfully than had the more friendly aspects of fraternization; the slight exposure of scant days had revealed to them a kind of soldier they didn't know hardbitten, weathered, completely professional. Definitely not the sort of men any raw recruit could confidently face on a field of battle. Desertion had seemed the better alternative. The defection of Sinuessa Aurunca under the influence of Quintus Sertorius could be no more than a pinprick; Sulla did invest it, but only to use it as a training ground for Scipio's army, not to starve it out or storm its forbidding ramparts. He was not interested in any task which caused mass loss of life that year. Sinuessa's most useful purpose was to contain the extremely able Quintus Sertorius. Holed up there, he was useless to Carbo, who could indeed have used him to better purpose. Word came from Sardinia that Philippus and his Spanish cohorts had seized power easily. He would be able to send the entire harvest of Sardinia: and in due time the grain ships arrived in Puteoli, there to unload for Sulla's benefit, having encountered no war galleys or pirates en route. Then winter came early, and was an unusually severe one. To split the size of his more than doubled forces, Sulla sent some cohorts off to invest Capua as well as Sinuessa and Neapolis, thus compelling other parts of Campania than Teanum to help feed his troops. Verres and Cethegus proved capable victuallers, even devised a method of storing fish caught in the Adriatic in bins of packed down snow; fish lovers who could never get enough of it fresh, Sulla's soldiers reveled in this unexpected treat, and the army surgeons found themselves coping with case after case of bone in the throat. All of which was of no importance to Sulla, who had picked at some of the scabs on his healed face, and started the itching again. Everyone who came into contact with him had begged him to let them fall off naturally, but that restless temperament couldn't wait; when they began to lift and dangle, he picked. The outbreak was a very bad one, and (perhaps because of the cold? wondered Varro, pressed into service because he had revealed a scientific curiosity) raged without let for three full months. Three months of a sodden, genuinely lunatic Sulla, who moaned and scratched, screamed and drank. At one stage Varro bound his hands to his sides to keep them from his face, and though like Ulysses tied to the mast while the Sirens sang he was willing enough to endure this confinement, at the same time he implored to be freed. And of course succeeded eventually in freeing himself. To scratch again. It was at the turn of the year that Varro despaired, went to warn Metellus Pius and Pompey that he doubted whether Sulla would recover by the spring. "There's a letter for him from Tarsus," said Metellus Pius, who was resigned to keeping Pompey company through the winter; Crassus was among the Marsi, and Appius Claudius and Mamercus were in charge of siege operations elsewhere. Varro looked alert. "Tarsus?" "That's right. From the ethnarch Morsimus." Is there a jar?'' "No, just a letter. Can he read it?" "Definitely not." "Then you'd better read it, Varro," said Pompey. Metellus Pius looked scandalized. "Really, Pompeius!" "Oh, Piglet, stop being so sanctimonious!" said Pompey wearily. "We know he's been hoping for some magic salve or other, and we know he'd charged Morsimus with finding it. Now there's news of some sort, but he can't read. Don't you think for his sake, if for no one else's that Varro ought to see what Morsimus has to say?" So Varro was allowed to see what Morsimus had to say.
Here is the recipe, which is the most I can do for you, dear Lucius Cornelius, my friend and patron. It seems the salve has to be freshly prepared more often than the length of a journey from the Pyramus of Cilicia Pedia all the way to Rome would permit. So you must seek out the ingredients and make it for yourself. Luckily none of the ingredients is exotic, though many of them apparently are hard to extract. The cure has to come from a sheep, or sheep. First you take a fleece of absolutely raw wool, and set someone to scraping the fibers with an instrument sharp enough to crush them, yet not sharp enough to cut them through. You will find that on the edge of your strigilis a substance builds up rather oily, but having the consistency of cheese curds. You must scrape until you have a great mound of this many fleeces, was how my source put it. Then you soak the substance in warm water warm, not hot! though it cannot be too cool either. The best test is a fingertip in the water it should feel hot, but by no means unbearable. The substance will partially melt into a layer which floats on top. That layer is the part you want, in measure a full beaker. Then you take a fleece with its hide attached, making sure some fat adheres to the back of the hide the animal must have been freshly slaughtered, as indeed all must have been and you boil it. The fat you obtain from this you must render twice over, and then you must reserve a full beaker of it. The fat of a sheep, so said my source, needs some special fat from inside the beast also, for sheep fat is very hard, even in a warm room. My source the smelliest and most detestable of crones, not to mention the most rapacious of creatures! said this internal fat must be plucked from amid the harder fat on top of the sheep's kidneys, and mashed. Then it must be melted in warm water, as with the scrapings from the wool. You must lift off the layer which forms on top of the water, in the amount of two thirds of a beaker. To this, add one third of a beaker of bile freshly drawn from the sheep's gallbladder immediately after its slaughtering. After which, you mix all the ingredients together gently, but thoroughly. The ointment is rather hard, but not as hard as the rendered fat on its own. Smear it on at least four times a day. I warn you, dear Lucius Cornelius, that it stinks disgustingly. But my source insists that it be used without the addition of perfumes or spices or resins. Please let me know if it works! The vile old crone swears it was she who made that original jar you used with such success, though I myself am in some doubt. Vale from Morsimus.
Off went Varro to marshal a small army of slaves, and set the slaves to find a flock of sheep. After which, in a little house close by the more solid building in which Sulla lived, he hovered anxiously between cauldrons and toiling scrapers, insisting upon personally inspecting every carcass and every kidney, insisting that he personally test the temperature of all the water, measuring meticulously and driving the servants to the point of exasperation with his fusses and clucks and tches. For perhaps an hour before his ointment factory commenced work he fretted and fumed over the size of the beaker; and then, at the end of the hour, he saw the truth, and laughed until he cried. Provided his beakers were all the same size, what did size matter? One hundred sheep later (the bile and the rendered down fat came from only two sheep, but the little bit of fat on top of the kidneys and the scrapings from the wool were painfully slow in accumulating), Varro found himself with a fairly large porphyry jar of ointment. As for the exhausted slaves, they found themselves with a hundred largely untouched carcasses of delicious mutton, and counted their labors well done for the chance of a full belly of roasted meat. The hour was late, and Sulla, so his attendant whispered, was asleep on a couch in his dining room. "Drunk," nodded Varro. "Yes, Marcus Terentius." "Well, I think that's probably good." In he went on tiptoe, and stood for a moment looking down at the poor tortured creature Sulla had become. The wig had fallen off and lay with its gauze interior gaping; many thousands of hairs had gone into its manufacture, each one painstakingly knotted onto that base of gauze. To think that it took longer to make than my ointment! Varro thought, and sighed, shook his head. Then, very delicately, he applied his salve caked fingers to the bleeding mess of Sulla's face. The eyes snapped open at once, pain and terror shrieking from beneath their wine blinded glaze; the mouth opened, the lips stretched to show gums and tongue. Yet no sound did he emit. "It is the ointment, Lucius Cornelius," Varro whispered. "I have made it to the exact recipe. Can you bear it if I try to smear some on?" Tears welled, pooled in the sockets of Sulla's eyes because he lay flat on his back. Before they could overflow from each outer corner, Varro had dabbed them away with a piece of softest cloth. Still they welled. Still Varro dabbed. "You mustn't weep, Lucius Cornelius. The salve has to be applied to dry skin. Now lie quietly, and close your eyes." So Sulla lay quietly, eyes closed. After a few reflexive jerks because his face was being touched, he made no other protest, and slowly the tension oozed out of him. Varro finished, took a lamp with five flames and held it up to view his handiwork. A clear, watery fluid was popping up in beads wherever the skin had broken down, but the layer of ointment seemed to have tamed the bleeding. "You must try not to scratch. Does it itch?" Varro asked. The eyes remained closed. "Yes, it itches. But I've known it to itch far worse. Tie my hands to my sides." Varro did that. "I'll come back toward dawn and smear some more on. Who knows, Lucius Cornelius? Perhaps by dawn the itching will have gone away." Then he tiptoed out. At dawn the itch was still present, but to Varro's clinically detached gaze Sulla's skin looked what was the word? calmer. On went more ointment; Sulla asked that his hands remain tied. But by nightfall, three applications later, he announced that he thought he could refrain from scratching if Varro loosed his bonds. And four days after that, he told Varro that the itching was gone. "The stuff works!" cried Varro to Pompey and the Piglet, afire with the satisfaction of a vindicated physician, for all that he was no physician, nor wanted to be. Will he able to command in the spring?'' asked Pompey. Provided that the stuff continues to work, probably well before the spring," said Varro, and bustled off with his porphyry jar to embed it in the snow. Kept cold, it would last longer, though Varro's hands stank of what he suspected was the rancid version of it. "Truly he is felix!" said Varro to himself; he meant, of course, that Sulla had luck.
3
When the onset of that cold and early winter brought snow to Rome, many of those who lived there saw the freeze as an ill omen. Neither Norbanus nor Scipio Asiagenus had returned after their respective defeats, nor did cheering news come of their subsequent activities; Norbanus was now under halfhearted siege in Capua, while Scipio drifted around Etruria recruiting. Toward the end of the year, the Senate thought about convening to debate what its and Rome's future held. Numbers were down to about a third of Sulla's original fairly plump body of men, between those who had streamed to join Sulla in Greece, and this latest outpouring anxious to align itself with Sulla now he was back in Italy. For despite the protestations of a group of senators who insisted upon calling themselves neutral, everyone in Rome from highest to lowest knew very well that the lines were drawn. All of Italy and Italian Gaul were not large enough to accommodate Sulla and Carbo in peaceful coexistence; they stood for opposite values, systems of government, ideas of where Rome ought to go. Sulla stood for the mos maiorum, the centuries old customs and traditions which embodied the landed aristocrats as leaders in peace and war, whereas Carbo stood for the commercial and business leaders the knights and the tribuni aerarii. As neither group would agree to share an equal dominance, one or the other would have to win dominance by means of another civil war. That the Senate even toyed with the idea of meeting was due only to the return of Carbo from Italian Gaul, summoned from Ariminum by the tribune of the plebs Marcus Junius Brutus, he who had legislated the status of a fully Roman city for Capua. They met in Brutus's house on the Palatine, a place with which Gnaeus Papirius Carbo was very familiar; he and Brutus had been friends for many years. It was besides a discreeter location than Carbo's house, where (so rumor had it) even the boy who cleaned out the chamber pots was taking bribes from several people interested in knowing what Carbo was thinking of doing next. That Brutus's house was free from corrupt servants was entirely thanks to Brutus's wife, Servilia, who ran her establishment more stringently by far than Scipio Asiagenus had his army. She tolerated no kind of misbehavior, seemed to have as many eyes in her head as Argus, and as many ears as a colony of bats. The servant who could outwit or outgeneral her did not exist, and the servant who was not afraid of her lasted scant days. So it was that Brutus and Carbo could settle to their very private conversation in complete security. Except, of course, for Servilia herself. Nothing happened or was said in her house that she did not know about, and this very private conversation was not conducted out of her hearing, she made sure of that. The two men were inside Brutus's study with the doors shut, and Servilia crouched outside on the colonnade beneath the one open window. A cold and uncomfortable place for an eavesdropper, but Servilia thought that of little consequence compared to what might be said inside the cozy room. They began with pleasantries. "How is my father?" asked Brutus. "He's well, sends you his regards." "I'm surprised you can put up with him!" burst from Brutus, who stopped, obviously shocked at what he had said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound angry. I'm really not angry." "Just somewhat bewildered that I can put up with him?" "Yes." "He's your father," said Carbo in tones of comfort, "and he's an old man. I understand why you might find him a trouble. However, he isn't to me. It's as simple as that. After Verres absconded with what was left of my governor's allowance, I had to find a replacement quaestor anyway. Your dad and I have been friends ever since he returned with Marius from exile, as you well know." Carbo paused, probably to pat Brutus on the arm, thought the eavesdropper cynically; she knew how Carbo handled her husband. He then went on. "When you married, he bought you this house so he wouldn't be underfoot. What he didn't count on was the loneliness of living by himself after you and he had been well, bachelors together might be the best way to put it for so long. I imagine he made a nuisance of himself, and may have annoyed your wife. So when I wrote and asked him to be my new proquaestor, he accepted with alacrity. I see no need for guilt in you, Brutus. He's happy where he is." "Thank you," said Brutus with a sigh. "Now what's so urgent I had to come in person?" "The elections. Since the desertion of everyone's friend, Philippus, morale in Rome has plummeted. No one will lead, no one has the courage to lead. That's why I felt you had to come to Rome, at least until after the elections. I can find no one well qualified who wants to be consul! No one qualified wants to hold any position of importance, for that matter," said Brutus nervously; he was a nervous man. What about Sertorius?'' "He's a stickler, you know that. I wrote to him in Sinuessa and begged him to stand for the consulship, but he declined. For two reasons, though I had expected only one that he is still a praetor, and ought to wait the customary two years before being consul. I had hoped to talk him over that hurdle, and might have, had it been his only reason. The second reason I found impossible." "What was his second reason?" "He said Rome was finished, that he refused to be consul in a place full of cowards and opportunists." "Elegantly put!" "He would be governor of Nearer Spain, he said, and take himself right away." "Fellator!" snarled Carbo. Brutus, who did not like strong language, said nothing to this, and apparently had nothing further to say on any subject, as nothing was said for some time. Exasperated, the listener on the colonnade applied her eye to the ornate lattice of the shutter, and saw Carbo and her husband sitting one on either side of Brutus's desk. They might, she thought idly, have been brothers both very dark, both rather homely of features, and neither particularly tall nor particularly well built. Why, she had asked herself often, had Fortune not favored her with a more impressive looking husband, one she could be sure would shine politically? Of a military career for Brutus she had abandoned hope early, so politics it must be. But the best Brutus could think of was to legislate to give Capua the status of a Roman city. Not a bad idea and certainly it had saved his tribunate of the plebs from utter banality! but he would never be remembered as one of the great tribunes of the plebs, like her Uncle Drusus.
Brutus had been Uncle Mamercus's choice, though in himself Uncle Mamercus was mind and body Sulla's man, and had been in Greece with Sulla at the time it became necessary to find a husband for the eldest of his six wards, Servilia. They were all still living in Rome under the chaperonage of a poor relation, Gnaea, and her mother, Porcia Liciniana a terrifying woman! Any guardian, no matter how geographically removed from his wards he might happen to be, need have no worry about the virtue and moral status of a child living under the thumb of Porcia Liciniana! Even her daughter, Gnaea, just grew plainer and more spinsterish as the years passed. Thus it had been Porcia Liciniana who had received the suitors for Servilia's hand in marriage as her eighteenth birthday approached, and Porcia Liciniana who had transmitted relevant information about the various suitors to Uncle Mamercus in the east. Together with penetrating remarks about virtue, morality, prudence, temperance, and all the other qualities she considered desirable in a husband. And though Porcia Liciniana had never once committed the gross solecism of expressing an outright preference for one suitor above any other, those penetrating remarks of hers did sink into Uncle Mamercus's mind. After all, Servilia had a huge dowry and the felicitude of a splendid old patrician name, and was, Uncle Mamercus had been assured by Porcia Liciniana, not unattractive in her person besides. So Uncle Mamercus took the easy way out; he chose the man Porcia Liciniana had hinted about most heavily. Marcus Junius Brutus. Since he was a senator in his early thirties, he was deemed old enough to be beyond youthful follies and indiscretions; he would be the head of his branch of the family when Old Brutus died (which could not be too far away, said Porcia Liciniana); and he was a wealthy man of impeccable (if plebeian) ancestry. Servilia herself did not know him, and even after Porcia Liciniana informed her of her impending marriage, she was not allowed to meet Brutus until their wedding day arrived. That this antique custom was levied upon her was not due to the daunting Porcia Liciniana; it was rather the direct outcome of a childhood punishment. Because she had served as her estranged father's spy in the household of her Uncle Drusus, her Uncle Drusus had sentenced her to a form of domestic imprisonment: she was never to be allowed to have her own room or any vestige of privacy within his house, and never to be allowed to leave that house unless accompanied by people who would police her smallest step or expression. And all that had been years and years before she reached marriageable age, and every adult in her life at that time mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandmother, stepfather was long dead. But still the rule continued to be enforced. No exaggeration then to say that Servilia was so anxious to marry and be gone from Uncle Drusus's house that she would hardly have cared who her husband was. To her, he had come to represent liberation from a detested regimen. But on learning his name, she had closed her eyes in profound relief. A man of her own class and background rather than the country squire she had expected the country squire her Uncle Drusus during his lifetime had more than once threatened would be her husband when she grew up. Luckily Uncle Mamercus could see no advantage in marrying his niece below her station nor could Porcia Liciniana. Off to the house of Marcus Junius Brutus she went, a new and very thankful bride, and with her went her enormous dowry of two hundred talents five million sesterces. What was more, it would remain hers. Uncle Mamercus had invested it well enough to ensure her a good income of her own, and directed that upon her death it should go to her female children. As her new husband, Brutus, had plenty of money of his own, the arrangement concerning her dowry did not disappoint him. Indeed, it meant that he had acquired a wife of the highest patrician aristocracy who would always be able to pay for her own upkeep be it slaves, wages for slaves, clothing, jewelry, houses, or other expenses she incurred, she would have to pay for them herself. His money was safely his! Aside from freedom to go where she pleased and see whomever she pleased, marriage for Servilia turned out to be a singularly joyless affair. Her husband had been a bachelor too long, no mother or other woman in his house; his ways were set, and did not include a wife. He shared nothing with her even, she felt, his body. If he asked friends to dinner, she was told to absent herself from the dining room; his study was forbidden to her at all times; he never sought her out to discuss anything of any kind with her; he never showed her anything he bought or acquired; he never requested her company when he visited any of his country villas. As for his body well, it was just a thing which from time to time visited her room and excited her not at all. Of privacy, she suddenly found she had far more than the long years without privacy now made comfortable or welcome. As her husband liked to sleep alone, she didn't even have someone else in the cubicle where she slept, and found the silence horrifying. So it was that marriage turned out to be merely a variation on the theme which had dogged her almost from infancy: she was important to no one, she mattered to no one. The only way she had managed to matter was by being nasty, spiteful, vicious, and this side of herself every servant in the house knew to his or her cost. But to her husband she never showed this side of herself, for she knew he did not love her, and that therefore divorce was never far away. To Brutus, she was unfailingly pleasant. To the servants, she was unfailingly hard. Brutus did his duty, however. Two years a wife, Servilia fell pregnant. Like her mother, she was properly formed for bearing children, and suffered not a bit. Even labor was not the nightmare agony she had been led to believe; she brought forth her son within seven hours on an icy March night, and was able to revel in him when he was given to her, washed and sweet. Little wonder then that baby Brutus expanded to fill every vacant corner of his mother's love starved life that she would not let any other woman give him milk, and cared for him entirely herself, and put his crib in her own sleeping cubicle, and from his birth was wrapped in him to the exclusion of all else.
Why then did Servilia bother to listen outside the study on that freezing day late in November of the year Sulla landed in Italy? Certainly not because her husband's political activities interested her for his sake. She listened because he was the father of her beloved son, and she had made a vow that she would safeguard her son's inheritances, reputation, future welfare. It meant she had to keep herself informed about everything. Nothing must escape her! Especially her husband's political activities. Servilia didn't care for Carbo, though she acknowledged that he was no lightweight. But she had correctly assessed him as one who would look after his own interests ahead of Rome's; and she wasn't sure that Brutus was clearheaded enough to see Carbo's deficiencies. The presence of Sulla in Italy worried her deeply, for she was possessed of a genuinely political mind, and could see the pattern of future events more acutely than most men who had spent half a lifetime in the Senate. Of one thing she was sure; that Carbo didn't have sufficient strength in him to hold Rome together in the teeth of a man like Sulla. She took her eye away, presented her ear to the lattice instead, and sank to her knees on the painfully cold terrazzo floor. It was beginning to snow again a boon! The flakes formed a veil between her muffled body and the hive of domestic activity at the far end of the peristyle garden, where the kitchens were, and servants pattered back and forth. Not that fear of detection concerned her; Brutus's household would never have dared question her right to be anywhere she liked in any kind of posture. It was more that she liked to appear to Brutus's household in the light of a superior being, and superior beings did not kneel outside a husband's window to eavesdrop. Suddenly she tensed, pressed her ear closer. Carbo and her husband were talking again! "There are some good men among those eligible to run for praetor," Brutus was saying. "Carrinas and Damasippus are as capable as they are popular." "Huh!" from Carbo. "Like me, they let a hairless youth beat them in battle but unlike me, they at least had been warned that Pompeius is as ruthless as his father, and ten times as crafty. If Pompeius stood for praetor, he'd win more votes than Carrinas and Damasippus put together." "Pompeius's veterans carried the day," said Brutus in a reasonable tone. "Maybe. But if so, then Pompeius let them do their job without interference." Impatient, it seemed, to leap into the future, Carbo now changed the subject. Praetors are not what concern me, Brutus. I'm worried about the consulship thanks to your predictions of gloom! If necessary, I'll stand for consul myself. But whom can I take for a colleague? Who in this wretched city is capable of shoring me up rather than dragging me down? There will be war in the spring, nothing is surer. Sulla's not been well, but my intelligence sources say he'll face the next campaigning season in high fettle." "Illness was not his only reason for hanging back this past year," said Brutus. "We've heard rumors that he's stayed inert to give Rome the chance to capitulate without a war." "Then he stayed inert in vain!" said Carbo savagely. "Oh, enough of these speculations! Whom can I take as my fellow consul?" "Have you no ideas?" asked Brutus. "Not a one. I need someone capable of firing people's spirits someone who will inspire the young men to enlist, and the old men to wish they could enlist. A man like Sertorius. But you say flatly that he won't consent." "What about Marcus Marius Gratidianus, then?" "He's a Marius by adoption, and that's not good enough. I wanted Sertorius because he's a Marius by blood." There was a pause, but not of a helpless kind; hearing an indrawn breath from her husband, the listener outside the window stiffened to absolute stillness, determined not to miss a single word of what was coming. "If it's a Marius you want," said Brutus slowly, "why not Young Marius?" Another pause ensued, of the thunderstruck variety. Then Carbo said, "That's not possible! Edepol, Brutus, he's not much more than twenty years old!" "Twenty six, actually." "He's four years too young for the Senate!" "There's no constitutionally official age, in spite of the lex Villia annalis. Custom rules. So I suggest you have Perperna appoint him to the Senate at once." "He's not his father's bootlace!" cried Carbo. "Does that matter? Does it, Gnaeus Papirius? Really? I admit that in Sertorius you would have found your ideal member of the Marii no one in Rome commands soldiers better, or is more respected by them. But he won't consent. So who else is there except Young Marius?" "They'd certainly flock to enlist," said Carbo softly. "And fight for him like the Spartans for Leonidas." Do you think he could do it?'' "I think he'd like to try." "You mean he's already expressed a wish to be consul?" Brutus laughed, something he was not prone to do. "No, Carbo, of course not! Though he's a conceited sort of fellow, he's not actually very ambitious. I simply mean that I think if you went to him and offered him the chance, he'd jump at it. Nothing so far in his life has presented him with any opportunity to emulate his father. And in one respect at least, this will give him the opportunity to surpass his father. Gaius Marius came late into office. Young Marius will be consul at a younger age even than Scipio Africanus. No matter how he fares, there's fame in that for him." If he fares half as well as Scipio Africanus, Rome stands in no danger from Sulla." "Don't hope for a Scipio Africanus in Young Marius," warned Brutus. "The only way he could prevent Cato the Consul from losing a battle was to stab him in the back." Carbo laughed, something he did often. "Well, that was a bit of luck for Cinna at least! Old Marius paid him a fortune not to press a charge of murder." "Yes," said Brutus, sounding very serious, "but that episode should point out to you some of the difficulties you'll face with Young Marius as your colleague in the consulship." "Don't turn my back?" "Don't turn your best troops over to him. Let him prove he can general troops before you do that." There came the noise of chair legs scraping; Servilia got to her feet and fled to the warmth of her workroom, where the young girl who did the nursery laundry was enjoying a rare chance to cuddle baby Brutus. The flare of scorching jealousy leaped inside Servilia before she could control it; her hand flashed out, cracked so hard against the girl's cheek that she fell from her perch on the crib, and in so doing, dropped the baby. Who didn't reach the floor because his mother swooped to catch him. Then, clasping him fiercely to her breast, Servilia literally kicked the girl from the room. "Tomorrow you'll be sold!" she shrieked down the length of the colonnade enclosing the peristyle garden. Her voice changed, she merely shouted now: "Ditus! Ditus!" The steward, whose flowery name was Epaphroditus but was usually addressed as Ditus, came at the run. "Yes, domina? "That girl the Gaul you gave me to wash Baby's things flog her and sell her as a bad slave." The steward gaped. "But domina, she's excellent! Not only does she wash well, she's absolutely devoted to Baby!" Servilia slapped Epaphroditus quite as hard as she had the girl, then demonstrated that she knew how to use a choice obscenity. Now listen to me, you pampered, over fed Greek fellator! When I give you an order you'll obey it without a word, let alone an argument! I don't care whose property you are, so don't go whining to the master, or you'll rue it! Now fetch the girl to your office and wait for me. You like her, so you won't flog her hard enough unless I'm there to see it." The crimson mark of her hand standing out on his face was complete to its fingers, but it didn't provoke the terror in him that her words did. Epaphroditus bolted. Servilia didn't ask for another maid; instead, she herself wrapped baby Brutus warmly in a fine wool shawl, and carried him down to the steward's office. The girl was tied down and a weeping Epaphroditus forced, under the basilisk glare of his mistress, to flog her until her back turned to bright red jelly and gobbets of her flesh flew everywhere. Incessant screams erupted from the room into the snow muffled air, but the snow could not muffle those screams. Nor did the master appear to demand what was going on, for Brutus had gone with Carbo to see Young Marius, as Servilia had guessed. Finally Servilia nodded. The steward's arm fell. She walked up to inspect his handiwork closely, and looked satisfied. "Yes, good! She'll never grow skin back on that mess again. No point in offering her for sale, she wouldn't fetch a single sestertius. Crucify her. Out there in the peristyle. She'll serve as a warning to the rest of you. And don't break her legs! Let her die slowly." Back to her workroom Servilia marched, there to unwrap her son and change his linen diaper. After which she sat him on her lap and held him out at arm's length to adore him, leaning forward occasionally to kiss him tenderly and talk to him in a soft, slightly growling voice. They made a sufficiently pretty picture, the small dark child upon his small dark mother's knee. She was a beautiful woman, Servilia, endowed with a firmly voluptuous figure and one of those little pointed faces which have an air of many secrets in a stilly folded mouth and thickly lidded, hooded eyes. The child however, owned only his infant's beauty, for in truth he was plain and rather torpid what people called a "good baby" in that he cried hardly at all and made no fusses. And so when he came home from the house of Young Marius did Brutus find them, and listened without comment to the coldly narrated story of the negligent laundress and her punishment. As he would never have dared to interfere with Servilia's smoothly efficient domestic arrangements (his house had never run as well before he married her, so much was sure), he made no alterations to his wife's sentence, and when his steward came to him later at his summons, did not remark upon the snow smothered figure tied lolling to a cross in the garden.
"Caesar! Where are you, Caesar?" He came strolling barefooted out of what used to be his father's study, a pen in one hand and a roll of paper in the other, wearing no more than a thin tunic. Frowning, because his mother's voice had interrupted his train of thought. But she, swaddled in layer upon layer of exquisitely fine home woven woolen fabric, was more concerned with the welfare of his body than the output of his mind, and said testily, "Oh, why will you ignore the cold? You do, you know! And no slippers either! Caesar, your horoscope suggests that you will suffer a terrible illness at about this time in your life, and you're aware it does. Why do you tempt the lady Fortune to touch the line of that evil aspect and bring it into being? Horoscopes are commissioned at birth to ensure that potential risks can be prevented from becoming real. Be good!" Her perturbation was absolutely genuine and he knew it so he gave her the smile for which he was already famous, a kind of unspoken apology that did not threaten his pride. "What is it?" he asked, resigned the moment he set eyes on her to the fact that his work would have to wait; she was clad for going out. "We've been sent for to your Aunt Julia's." At this time of day? In this weather?'' "I'm glad you've noticed the weather! Not that it prompts you to dress sensibly," said Aurelia. "I do have a brazier, Mater. In fact, I have two." "Then go into the warmth and change," she said. "It is freezing in here, with the wind whistling down the light well." Before he turned to go, she added, "Best find Lucius Decumius. We're all asked." That meant both his sisters, which surprised him it must be a very important family conference! Almost he opened his mouth to assure his mother that he didn't need Lucius Decumius, that a hundred women would be safe under his protection; then he shut it. He wouldn't win, so why try? Aurelia always knew how she wanted things done. When he emerged from his rooms he was wearing the regalia of the flamen Dialis, though in weather like this he wore three tunics beneath it, woolen breeches to below his knees, and thick socks inside a pair of baggy boots without straps or laces. His priest's laena took the place of another man's toga; this clumsy double layered garment was cut on the full circle, contained a hole in its middle through which he poked his head, and was richly colored in broad stripes of alternating scarlet and purple. It reached to his knees and completely concealed his arms and hands, which meant, he thought ruefully (trying to find some virtue in his detested laena), that he did not need to wear mittens in this icy storm. Atop his head sat the apex, a close fitting ivory helmet surmounted by a spike upon which was impaled a thick disc of wool. Since officially becoming a man, Caesar had adhered to the taboos which hedged the flamen Dialis around; he had abandoned military practice on the Campus Martius, he allowed no iron to touch his person, he wore no knots or buckles, said hello to no dog, had his footwear made from the leather of an animal killed accidentally, and ate only those things his role as flamen Dialis permitted. That his chin displayed no beard was because he shaved with a bronze razor; that he had managed to wear boots when his priestly clogs were impractical was only because he had personally designed a style of boot to fit well without using the normal devices which made it snug around ankle and calf. Not even his mother knew how deeply he loathed his lifelong sentence as Priest of Jupiter. When he had become a man at half past fifteen, he had assumed the senseless shibboleths of his flaminate without a murmur or a look, and Aurelia had heaved a sigh of relief. The early rebellion had not lasted. What she couldn't know was his true reason for obeying: he was a Roman to his core, which meant he was committed absolutely to the customs of his country, and he was inordinately superstitious. He had to obey! If he did not, he would never obtain the favor of Fortune. She would not smile upon him or his endeavors, he would have no luck. For despite this hideous lifelong sentence, he still believed Fortune would find a way out for him if he did his best to serve Jupiter Optimus Maximus as his special priest. Thus obedience did not mean reconciliation, as Aurelia thought it did. Obedience only meant that with every passing day he hated being flamen Dialis more. And hated it most because under the law there could be no escape. Old Gaius Marius had succeeded in shackling him forever. Unless Fortune rescued him. Caesar was seventeen, would not be eighteen until another seven months had elapsed; but he looked older, and he carried himself like a consular who had also been censor. The height and the broad shoulders helped, of course, allied as they were to a gracefully muscular frame. His father had been dead for two and a half years, which meant he had come very early into his title of paterfamilias, and now wore it naturally. The extreme good looks of his boyhood had not faded, though they had become more manly his nose, thank all the gods, had lengthened to a form properly, bumpily Roman, and saved him from a prettiness which would have been a great burden to one who so ardently desired to be everything a man should be soldier, statesman, lover of women without suspicion that he was also a lover of men. His family was assembled in the reception room, garbed for a long, cold walk. Except, that is, for his wife, Cinnilla. At eleven years of age she was not considered adult enough to attend these rare gatherings of the clan. However, she was present, the only small and dark member of the house; when Caesar entered, her pansy black eyes flew to his face just as they always did. He adored her, moved to her now and swept her off her feet to hold her in his arms, kissing her soft pink cheek with his eyes closed the better to inhale the exquisite perfume of a child kept clean and balmed by his mother. "Doomed to stay home?" he asked, kissing her cheek again. "One day I'll be big enough," she said, showing dimples in her enchanting smile. "Indeed you will! And then you'll be more important than Mater, because you'll be the mistress of the house." He put the child down, smoothed his hand over her mass of waving black hair, and winked at Aurelia. "I won't be the mistress of this house," she said solemnly. "I'll be the flaminica Dialis, and mistress of a State house." "True," he said lightly. "How could I have forgotten?" Out into the driving snow he went, up past the shops which nestled in the outer wall of Aurelia's apartment house, to the rounded apex of that triangular building. Here was located what appeared to be a tavern, yet was not; it was the headquarters of the College of Crossroads Brethren who supervised the well being and spiritual life of the crossroads outside its double doors, especially the towerlike shrine to the Lares and the big fountain, which now flowed sluggishly amid a tumble of ethereally blue icicles, so cold was this winter. Lucius Decumius was in residence at his usual table in the back left hand corner of the huge, clean room. Grizzled these days but face as unlined as ever, he had recently admitted his two sons to membership, and was training them in all the multifarious activities of his college. So they sat one on either side of him like the two lions which always flanked a statue of Magna Mater grave, tawny, thick maned, yellow eyed, claws furled. Not that Lucius Decumius in any way resembled Magna Mater! He was little, skinny, and anonymous looking; his sons took after their mother, who was a large Celtic lady from the Ager Gallicus. To no one unacquainted with him did he seem what he actually was brave, tortuously subtle, amoral, enormously intelligent, loyal. The three Decumii brightened when Caesar walked through the door, but only Lucius Decumius rose. Threading his way between the tables and benches, he reached Caesar, stood on tiptoe and kissed the young man on the lips more fondly than he did either of his sons. It was the kiss of a father, though it was given to someone whose only connection with him lay tangled amid the cords of his not inconsiderable heart. "My boy!" he crowed, and took Caesar's hand. "Hello, dad," Caesar answered with a smile, lifted Lucius Decumius's fingers and pressed them against his cold cheek. "Been sweeping out some dead man's house?" asked Lucius Decumius, in reference to Caesar's priestly regalia. "Nasty weather for dying! Have a cup of wine to warm you, eh?" Caesar grimaced. He had never managed to cultivate a real liking for wine, try though Lucius Decumius and his brethren had to instill it in him. "No time, dad. I'm here to borrow a couple of the brethren. I have to take my mother and sisters to the house of Gaius Marius, and she doesn't trust me to do it on my own, of course." "Wise woman, your mother," said Lucius Decumius with a look of wicked glee. He beckoned to his sons, who rose at once and came to join him. "Togs on, lads! We're going to take the ladies to the house of Gaius Marius." No resentment of their father's obvious preference for Gaius Julius Caesar colored the emotions of Lucius Decumius Junior or young Marcus Decumius; they simply nodded, clapped Caesar on the back in great affection, and went off to find their warmest clothing. "Don't come, dad," said Caesar. "Stay here out of the cold." But that didn't suit Lucius Decumius, who allowed his sons to dress him much as a doting mother might have dressed her toddling offspring. "Where's that oaf Burgundus?" he asked as they spilled out into the swirling snow. Caesar chuckled. "No use to anyone at the moment! Mater sent him down to Bovillae with Cardixa. She might have started breeding late, but she's produced one baby giant every year since she first set eyes on Burgundus. This will be number four, as you well know." "You'll never be short of bodyguards when you're consul." Caesar shivered, but not from the cold. "I'll never be consul," he said harshly, then lifted his shoulders and tried to be pleasant. "My mother says it's like feeding a tribe of Titans. Ye gods, they can eat!" "Good people, but." "Yes, good people," said Caesar. By this time they had reached the outer door of Aurelia's apartment, and collected the womenfolk. Other aristocratic ladies might have elected to ride in litters, especially in such weather, but not the Julian ladies. They walked, their progress down the Fauces Suburae somewhat eased by the Decumius sons, who shuffled ahead to blaze a path through the accumulating snow. The Forum Romanum was utterly deserted, and looked odd bled of its vividly colored columns and walls and roofs and statues; everything was marble white, seemed sunk in a deep and dreamless sleep. And the imposing statue of Gaius Marius near the rostra had a bank of snow perched on either bushy eyebrow, masking the normally fierce glare of his dark eyes. Up the Hill of the Bankers they toiled, through the vast portals of the Fontinalis Gate, and so to the door of Gaius Marius's house. As its peristyle garden lay at the back of the mansion, they entered straight into the foyer, and there peeled off outer garments (save for Caesar, doomed to wear his regalia). Lucius Decumius and his sons were taken away by the steward, Strophantes, to sample some excellent food and wine, while Caesar and the women entered the atrium. Had the weather been less unnaturally cold, they might have remained there, since it was well past dinnertime, but the open rectangle of the compluvium in the roof was acting like a vortex, and the pool below it was a twinkling crust of rapidly melting snowflakes. Young Marius appeared then to welcome them and usher them through into the dining room, which would be warmer, he said. He looked, thought Caesar warily, almost afire with happiness, and the emotion suited him. As tall as Caesar (who was his first cousin), he was more heavily built, fair of hair and grey of eye, handsome, impressive. Physically far more attractive than his father, he yet lacked that vital something which had made of Gaius Marius one of the Roman immortals. Many generations would go by, Caesar reflected, before every schoolchild ceased to learn about the exploits of Gaius Marius. Such would not be the lot of his son, Young Marius. This was a house Caesar loathed visiting; too much had happened to him here. While other boys of his age had been heedlessly frittering away their time playing on the Campus Martius, he had been required to report here every day to act as nurse/companion to the aged and vindictive Gaius Marius. And though he had swept strenuously with his sacred broom after Marius died here, that malign presence still lingered. Or so Caesar thought. Once he had admired and loved Gaius Marius. But then Gaius Marius had appointed him the special priest of Jupiter, and in that one stroke had rendered it impossible for Caesar ever to rival him. No iron, no weapons, no sight of death no military career for the flamen Dialis! An automatic membership in the Senate without the right to stand for election as a magistrate no political career for the flamen Dialis! It was Caesar's fate to be honored without earning that honor, revered without earning that reverence. The flamen Dialis was a creature belonging to the State, housed and paid and fed by the State, a prisoner of the mos maiorum, the established practices of custom and tradition. But of course Caesar's revulsion could never endure past the moment in which he set eyes upon his Aunt Julia. His father's sister, the widow of Gaius Marius. And, differently from his mother, the person in the world he loved the most. Indeed, he loved her more than he did his mother, if love could be classified as a simple rush of sheer emotion. His mother was permanently grafted to his intellect because she was adversary, adherent, critic, companion, equal. Whereas Aunt Julia enfolded him in her arms and kissed him on the lips, beamed at him with her soft grey eyes innocent of the faintest condemnation. Life for him without either one was unthinkable. Julia and Aurelia elected to sit side by side on the same couch, ill at ease because they were women, and women did not recline on couches. Forbidden by custom to lie comfortably, they perched on the edge with their feet dangling clear of the floor and their backs unsupported. "Can't you give the women chairs?" asked Caesar of Young Marius as he shoved bolsters behind his mother and his aunt. "Thank you, nephew, we'll manage now you've propped us up," said Julia, always the peacemaker. "I don't think the house has enough chairs for all of us! This is a conference of women." An inalienable truth, acknowledged Caesar ruefully. The male element of this family was reduced to two men: Young Marius and Caesar. Both only sons of dead fathers. Of women, there were more. Had Rome been present to see Julia and Aurelia side by side, Rome would have enjoyed the spectacle of two of her most beautiful women encompassed in one glance. Though both were tall and slim, Julia owned the innate grace of the Caesars, whereas Aurelia moved with brisk, no nonsense economy. One, Julia, had softly waving blonde hair and widely opened grey eyes, and might have posed for the statue of Cloelia in the upper Forum Romanum. The other, Aurelia, had ice brown hair and a quality of beauty which had, in her youth, caused her to be likened to Helen of Troy. Dark brows and lashes, a pair of deeply set eyes many of the men who had tried to marry her had insisted were purple, and the profile of a Greek goddess. Julia was now forty five years old to Aurelia's forty. Both had been widowed in distressing though very different circumstances. Gaius Marius had died of his third and most massive stroke, but only after launching and pursuing an orgy of murder no one in Rome would ever forget. All his enemies had died and some of his friends and the rostra had bristled with the heads as thickly as pins in a cushion. With this sorrow, Julia lived. Aurelia's husband, loyal to Cinna after the death of Marius as was only fitting in one whose son was married to Cinna's younger daughter had gone to Etruria to recruit troops. One summer morning in Pisae he had bent over to lace up his boot, and died. A ruptured blood vessel in his brain was the conclusion reached at postmortem; he was burned on a pyre without a single member of his family present, and his ashes were then sent home to his wife. Who did not even know her husband was dead when Cinna's messenger came to present her with the funerary urn. How she felt, what she thought, no one knew. Even her son, made head of his family a month short of his fifteenth birthday. No tear had she shed that anyone had seen, and the look on her face had not changed. For she was Aurelia, fastened up inside herself, apparently more attached to her work as landlady of a busy insula than to any human being save for her son. Young Marius had no sisters, but Caesar had two older than himself. Both of them looked like their Aunt Julia; there were strong echoes of Aurelia in Caesar's face, but not in either of his sisters'. Julia Major, called Lia, was now twenty one years old, and carried the faintest suggestion of something careworn in her expression. Not without reason. Her first husband, a penniless patrician by name of Lucius Pinarius, had been the love of her heart, so she had been allowed albeit reluctantly to marry him. A son had arrived less than a year later, and shortly after that happy event (which did not turn out to have the hoped for sobering effect on Lucius Pinarius's character or behavior), Lucius Pinarius died in mysterious circumstances. Murder by a confederate was thought likely, but no proof could be found. So Lia, aged nineteen, found herself a widow in such an impoverished state that she had been obliged to return to live under her mother's roof. But between her marriage and her widowhood the identity of the paterfamilias had changed, and she now discovered that her young brother was not nearly as softhearted or malleable as her father had been. She must marry again, said Caesar but a man of his choosing, for, "It is clear to me," he said to her dispassionately, "that, left to your own devices, you will pick another idiot." Quite how or where Caesar had found Quintus Pedius, no one knew (though some suspected a collaboration with Lucius Decumius, who might be a seedy little man of the Fourth Class, but who had remarkable contacts), but home he came with Quintus Pedius, and betrothed his widowed oldest sister to this stolid, upright Campanian knight of good but not noble family. He was not handsome. He was not dashing. At forty, he was not even very young. But he was colossally rich and almost pathetically grateful for the chance to marry a lovely and youthful woman of the most exalted patrician nobility. Lia had swallowed, looked at her fifteen year old brother, and graciously accepted; even at that age, Caesar could put something into his face and eyes that killed argument before it was born. Luckily the marriage had turned out well. Lucius Pinarius might have been handsome and dashing and young, but as a husband he had been disappointing. Now Lia discovered that there were many compensations in being the darling of a rich man twice her age, and as time went on she grew very fond of her uninspiring second husband. She bore him a son, and was so settled into her delightfully luxurious life on her husband's estates outside Teanum Sidicinum that when Scipio Asiagenus and then Sulla had established camps in the neighborhood, she flatly refused to go home to her mother, who would, she knew, regulate her exercise, her diet, her sons and her life to suit her own austere ideas. Of course Aurelia had arrived in person (after, it seemed, an unexpected meeting with Sulla a meeting about which she had said little beyond mentioning it), and Lia had been bundled to Rome. Without her sons, alas; Quintus Pedius had preferred to keep them with him in Teanum. Julia Minor, called Ju Ju, had been married in the early part of this year, not long after her eighteenth birthday. No chance that she would be allowed to pick someone unsuitable! Caesar did the picking, though she had railed against his highhanded usurpation of a task she felt herself fully able to perform. Of course he won. Home he came with another colossally rich suitor, this time of an old senatorial family, and himself a backbencher senator content to stay on the back benches. He hailed from Aricia, just down the Via Appia from the Caesar lands at Bovillae, and that fact made him Latin, which was one cut above mere Campanian. After setting eyes on Marcus Atius Balbus, Ju Ju had married him without a murmur; compared to Quintus Pedius he was quite reasonable, being a mere thirty seven, and actually handsome for such an advanced age. Because Marcus Atius Balbus was a senator, he owned a domus in Rome as well as enormous estates at Aricia, so Ju Ju could congratulate herself on yet one more advantage over her elder sister; she at least lived more or less permanently in Rome! On that late afternoon when all the family was summoned to the house of Gaius Marius, she was beginning to be heavy with child. Not that her pregnancy had prevented her mother from making her walk! "It isn't good for pregnant women to coddle themselves," said Aurelia. "That's why so many of them die in childbirth." "I thought you said they died because they ate nothing but fava beans," Ju Ju had countered, wistfully eyeing the litter in which she had made the journey from her husband's house on the Carinae to her mother's apartment building in the Subura. "Those too. Pythagorean physicians are a menace." One more woman was present, though by blood she was not related to any of the others or at least, not closely related. Her name was Mucia Tertia, and she was Young Marius's wife. The only daughter of Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, she had been called Mucia Tertia to distinguish her from her two famous cousins, the daughters of Scaevola the Augur. Though she wasn't precisely beautiful, Mucia Tertia had disturbed many a man's sleep. A muddy green in color, her eyes were abnormally far apart and thickly fringed by black lashes which were longer at the outer corners of her eyes, thereby accentuating the distance between them; though she never said so, she deliberately trimmed her lashes shorter at the inner corners of her eyes with a tiny pair of ivory scissors from Old Egypt. Mucia Tertia was well aware of the nature of her unusual attractions. Her long, straight nose somehow managed not to be a disadvantage, even if the purists did think there ought to be some sort of bump or break in it. Again, her mouth was far from the Roman ideal of beauty, being very wide; when she smiled, she showed what seemed like a hundred perfect teeth. But her lips were full and sensuous, and she had a thick, creamy skin which went well with her dark red hair. Caesar for one found her alluring, and at half past seventeen was already highly experienced in sexual matters. Every female in the Subura had indicated willingness to help such a lovely young man find his amatory feet, and few were deterred when they discovered Caesar insisted they be bathed and clean; the word had gone out very quickly that young Caesar was equipped with a couple of mighty weapons, and knew how best to use them. Most of the reason Mucia Tertia interested Caesar lay in a certain quality of enigma she owned; try as he might, she was one person he couldn't see to the bottom of. She smiled readily to display those hundred perfect teeth, yet the smile never originated in her extraordinary eyes, and she gave off no clues of gesture or expression as to what she really thought. She had been married for four years of apparent indifference, as much on Young Marius's side as on hers. Their conversation together was pleasantly chatty but quite formal; they never exchanged those glances of secret understanding most married couples did; no move did either make to touch the other, even when no one was looking; and they had no children. If the union was genuinely devoid of feeling, Young Marius for one certainly did not suffer; his philanderings were common knowledge. But what about Mucia Tertia, of whom no whisper had ever circulated concerning indiscretion, let alone infidelity? Was Mucia Tertia happy? Did she love Young Marius? Or did she hate him? Impossible to tell, and yet and yet Caesar's instincts said she was desperately unhappy. The group had settled down, and every eye was now fixed on Young Marius, who perversely had elected to sit upon a chair. Not to be outdone, Caesar too drew up a chair, but far removed from where Young Marius sat in the hollow of the U formed by the three dining couches; he sat behind his mother's shoulder, on the outside of the U, and so could not see the faces of his most beloved women. To him, it seemed more important by far to look at Young Marius, Mucia Tertia, and the steward Strophantes, who had been asked to attend and who stood near the doorway, having quietly refused Young Marius's invitation to seat himself. Wetting his lips an unusual sign of nervousness Young Marius began to speak. "Earlier this afternoon, I had a visit from Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and Marcus Junius Brutus." "That's an odd combination," said Caesar, who didn't want his cousin to flow on without interruption; he wanted Young Marius a little flustered. The look Young Marius flashed him was angry, but not angry enough to fluster his thinking. A start only. Then Caesar found his ploy foiled. Said Young Marius, They came to ask me if I would stand for the consulship in conjunction with Gnaeus Carbo. I said I would." The stir was general. Caesar saw amazement on the faces of his sisters, a sudden spasm in his aunt's spine, a peculiar but unfathomable look in Mucia Tertia's remarkable eyes. "My son, you're not even in the Senate," said Julia. "I will be tomorrow, when Perperna puts me on the rolls." "You haven't been quaestor, let alone praetor." "The Senate is willing to waive the usual requirements." "You don't have the experience or the knowledge!" Julia persisted, her voice despairing. "My father was consul seven times. I grew up surrounded by consulars. Besides, you can't call Carbo inexperienced." Asked Aurelia, "Why are we here?" Young Marius shifted his earnest and appealing gaze from his mother to his aunt. To talk the matter over between us, of course!" he said, a little blankly. "Rubbish!" said Aurelia bluntly. "Not only have you made up your mind already, but you've also told Carbo you'll run as his colleague. It seems to me that you've dragged us out of our warm house just to listen to news the city gossip 'would have brought to our ears almost as quickly." "That's not so, Aunt Aurelia!" "Of course it's so!" snapped Aurelia. Skin bright red, Young Marius turned back to his mother, a hand extended to her in appeal. "Mama, it's not so! I know I told Carbo I'd stand, but but I always intended to listen to what my family had to say, truly! I can change my mind!" "Hah! You won't change your mind," said Aurelia. Julia's fingers fastened upon Aurelia's wrist. "Be quiet, Aurelia! I want no anger in this room." "You're right, Aunt Julia anger is the last emotion we want," said Caesar, inserting himself between his mother and his aunt. From this new vantage spot he stared at his first cousin intently. "Why did you say yes to Carbo?" he asked. A question which didn't fool Young Marius for a moment. "Oh, give me credit for more intelligence than that, Caesar!" he said scornfully. "I said yes for the same reason you would have, if you didn't wear a laena and an apex." "I can see why you'd think I would have said yes, but in actual fact I never would have. In suo anno is the best way." "It's illegal," said Mucia Tertia unexpectedly. "No," said Caesar before Young Marius could answer. "It's against the established custom and even against the lex Villia annalis, but it's not exactly illegal. It could only become prosecutably illegal if your husband usurped the position against the will of Senate and People. Senate and People can legislate to nullify the lex Villia. And that is what will happen. Senate and People will procure the necessary legislation, which means the only one who will declare it illegal is Sulla." A silence fell. "That is the worst of it," said Julia, voice faltering. "You'll be in the field against Sulla." "I would have been in the field against Sulla anyway, Mama," said Young Marius. But not as the inaugurated representative of Senate and People. To be consul is to accept ultimate responsibility. You will be leading Rome's armies." A tear trickled down Julia's cheek. "You'll be the focus of Sulla's thoughts, and he is the most formidable man! I don't know him as well as your Aunt Aurelia does, Gaius, but I know him quite well enough. I've even liked him, in the days when he used to take care of your father he did, you know. He used to smooth over the little awkwardnesses which always seemed to happen around your father. A more patient and perceptive man than your father. A man of some honor too. But your father and Lucius Cornelius share one very important factor in common when all else fails, from constitution to popular support, they are or should that be were? both capable of going to whatever lengths are necessary to achieve their aims. That's why both of them have marched on Rome in the past. And that is why Lucius Cornelius will march on Rome again if Rome takes this course, elects you consul. The very fact of your election will tell him that Rome intends to fight him to the end, that there can be no peaceful resolution." She sighed, wiped the tear away. "Sulla is why I wish you'd change your mind, dear Gaius. If you had his years and background, you might possibly win. But you do not. You cannot win. And I will lose my one and only child." It was the plea of a reasonable and mature adult; Young Marius was neither, and his face as he listened to this heartfelt speech only set. His lips parted to answer. "Well, Mater," said Caesar, getting in first, "as Aunt Julia says, you know Sulla better than any of the rest of us! How do you feel about it?" Little discomposed Aurelia, and she had no intention of telling them the details of her last discomposure: that awful, tragic encounter with Sulla in his camp. "It is true, I do know Sulla well. I've even seen him within the last six months, as all of you know. But in the old days I was always the last person he saw before he left Rome, and the first person he saw when he came back. Between his goings and his comings, I hardly saw him at all. That is typical of Sulla. At heart he's an actor. He can't live without drama. And he knew how to make an otherwise innocuous situation pregnant with meaning. That's why he chose to see me at the moments he did. It invested my presence in his life with more color, more significance. Instead of a simple visit to a lady with whom he liked to talk of relatively unimportant things, each visit became a farewell or a reunion. He endowed me with portent, I think it would be fair to say that." Caesar smiled at her. "You haven't answered my question, Mater," he said gently. "Nor I have," said that extraordinary woman without alarm or guilt. "I will proceed to do so." She looked at Young Marius sternly. What you must understand is that if you face Sulla as the inaugurated representative of the Senate and People that is, as consul you will endow yourself with portent as far as Sulla is concerned. Your age combined with the identity of your father Sulla will use to heighten the drama of his struggle to achieve dominance in Rome. All of which is scant comfort to your mother, nephew. For her sake, give up this idea! Face Sulla on the field as just another military tribune." "How do you feel?" asked Young Marius of Caesar. "I say do it, cousin. Be consul ahead of your year." "Lia?" She turned troubled eyes toward her Aunt Julia and said, "Please don't do it, cousin!" "Ju Ju?" "I agree with my sister." "Wife?" "You must go with your fortune." "Strophantes?" The old steward sighed. "Domine, do not do it!" With nods that rocked his upper body gently, Young Marius sat back on his chair and flung an arm along its tall back. He pursed his mouth, blew through his nostrils softly. "Well, no surprises, at any rate," he said. "My female relatives and my steward exhort me not to step out of my time and status and imperil my person. Perhaps my aunt is trying to say that I will also imperil my reputation. My wife puts it all on the lap of Fortune am I one of Fortune's favorites? And my cousin says I must go ahead." He got to his feet, a not unimposing presence. "I will not go back on my word to Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and Marcus Junius Brutus. If Marcus Perperna agrees to enroll me in the Senate, and the Senate agrees to procure the necessary legislation, I will declare myself a candidate for the consulship." "You haven't really told us why," said Aurelia. "I would have thought that was obvious. Rome is desperate. Carbo can find no suitable colleague. So where did he turn? To the son of Gaius Marius. Rome loves me! Rome needs me! That is why," said the young man. Only the oldest and loyalest of retainers would have found the courage to say what Strophantes did, speaking not only for the stricken mother, but for the father who was dead: "It is your father Rome loves, domine. Rome turns to you because of your father. Rome doesn't know you, except that you are the son of the man who saved her from the Germans, who won the first victories in the war against the Italians, and who was consul seven times. If you do this thing, it will be because you are your father's son, not because you are yourself." Young Marius loved Strophantes, as the steward well knew; considering its implications, he took the steward's speech very well. His lips tightened, that was all. When Strophantes was done, he merely said, "I know. It is up to me to show Rome that Young Marius is the equal of his dear old dad." Caesar looked at the floor, said nothing. Why, he was asking himself, didn't the crazy old man give the laena and apex of the flamen Dialis to someone else? I could do it. But Young Marius never will.
And so toward the end of December the electors in their Centuries met upon the Campus Martius in the place called after a sheepfold, and voted in Young Marius as senior consul, with Gnaeus Papirius Carbo as his junior colleague. The very fact that Young Marius polled far higher than did Carbo was an indication of Rome's desperation, her fears as well as her doubts. However, many who voted genuinely felt that something of Gaius Marius must have rubbed off on his son, and that under Young Marius victory against Sulla was a strong possibility. In one respect the electoral results had highly gratifying consequences; recruitment, especially in Etruria and Umbria, accelerated at once. The sons and grandsons of Gaius Marius's clients flocked to join the son's legions, suddenly much lighter of heart, full of new confidence. And when Young Marius visited the enormous estates of his father, he was hailed as a savior, feted, adored. Rome turned out in festive mood to see the new consuls inaugurated on the first day of January, and was not disappointed. Young Marius went through the ceremonies displaying a transparent happiness which endeared him to the hearts of all who watched; he looked magnificent, he smiled, he waved, he called out greetings to familiar faces in the crowd. And, since everybody knew where his mother was standing (beneath the stern statue of her late husband near the rostra), everybody saw the new senior consul leave his place in the procession in order to kiss her hands and her lips. And gesture a brave salute to his father. Perhaps, thought Carbo cynically, the people of Rome needed to have Youth in power at this critical moment. Certainly it was many years since a crowd had given full throated approval to a consul on his first day in office. Today it did. And by all the gods, Carbo finished his thought, hope that Rome did not come to regret her electoral bargain! For so far Young Marius's attitude had been cavalier; he seemed to assume as a matter of course that everything would just fall into his lap, that he would not need to work, that all the battles of the future were already safely won. The omens were not good, though nothing untoward had been witnessed by the new consuls during their night watch atop the Capitol. What boded ill was an absence an absence of such moment that no one could forget or ignore it. Where the great temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus had reared on the highest point of the Capitoline Hill for five hundred years, there now existed only a heap of blackened, unrecognizable detritus. On the sixth day of Quinctilis of the year just ended, a fire had begun inside the Great God's house, and burned for seven long days. Nothing was left. Nothing. For the temple had been so old that no part of it save its podium was made of stone; the massive drums of its plain Doric columns were as wooden as its walls, its rafters, its interior paneling. Only its great size and solidity, rare and costly colors of paint, glorious murals and plenteous gilding had served to make it look a fitting abode for Jupiter Best and Greatest, who lived only in this one place; the idea of Principal Jupiter setting up house on top of the highest mountain as Greek Zeus had done was quite unacceptable to any Roman or Italian. When the ashes had cooled sufficiently for the priests to inspect the site, disaster had piled on top of disaster. Of the gigantic terracotta statue of the God made by the Etruscan sculptor Vulca during Old Tarquin's reign as King of Rome, there was no trace. The ivory statues of Jupiter's wife, Juno, and his daughter Minerva had vanished too; as had the temple's eerie squatters, Terminus the Boundary and Juventas of Youth, who had refused to move out when King Tarquin had commenced the building of Jupiter Optimus Maximus's home. Law tablets and records of unparalleled antiquity had gone, as had the Sibylline Books and many other prophetic documents upon which Rome relied for godly guidance in times of crisis. Innumerable treasures made of gold and silver had melted, even the solid gold statue of Victory given by Hiero of Syracuse after Trasimene, and another massive statue in gilded bronze of Victory driving a biga a two horsed chariot. The tortured lumps of admixed metals found among the detritus had been gathered up and given to the smiths for refining, but the ingots the smiths had smelted (which went into the Treasury beneath the temple of Saturn against the time when they would be given to artisans to make new works) could not replace the immortal names of the original sculptors Praxiteles and Myron, Strongylion and Polyclitus, Scopas and Lysippus. Art and History had gone up in the same flames as the earthly home of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Adjacent temples had also suffered, particularly that of Ops, who was the mysterious guardian of Rome's public wealth and had no face or person; the temple would have to be rebuilt and rededicated, so great had been the damage. The temple of Fides Publica was badly hurt. too. The heat of the nearby fire had charred all the treaties and pacts fixed to its inside walls, as well as the linen swaddle around the right hand of an ancient statue thought only thought! to be Fides Publica herself. The other building which suffered was new and made of marble, and therefore required little beyond fresh paint; this was the temple to Honor and Virtue erected by Gaius Marius to house his trophies of war, his military decorations and his gifts to Rome. What perturbed every Roman was the significance of the distribution of the damage: Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the guiding spirit of Rome; Ops was Rome's public prosperity; Fides Publica was the spirit of good faith between Romans and their gods; and Honor and Virtue were the two principal characteristics of Rome's military glory. Thus every Roman asked himself and herself: was the fire a sign that Rome's days of ascendancy were over? Was the fire a sign that Rome was finished? So it was that on this New Year's Day the consuls were the first ever to enter office unhallowed by the shelter of Jupiter Best and Greatest. A temporary shrine had been erected beneath a canopy at the foot of the blackened old stone podium upon which the temple used to stand, and here the new consuls made their offerings, swore their oaths of office. Bright hair hidden by his close fitting ivory helmet, body hidden by the suffocating folds of his circular laena, Caesar the flamen Dialis attended the rites in his official capacity, though he had no active role to play; the ceremonies were conducted by the chief priest of the Republic, the Pontifex Maximus, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, father of Young Marius's wife. Caesar stood there experiencing two separate and conflicting foci of pain: one, that the destruction of the Great Temple rendered the special priest of Jupiter religiously homeless, and the other, that he himself would never stand in purple bordered toga to take office as consul. But he had learned to deal with pain, and throughout the rituals disciplined himself to stand straight, tall, devoid of expression. The meeting of the Senate and the feast held afterward had been shifted from Jupiter Optimus Maximus to the Curia Hostilia, home of the Senate and a properly inaugurated temple. Though by age Caesar was disbarred from the interior of the Curia Hostilia, as flamen Dialis he was automatically a member of the Senate, so no one tried to stop his entering, and he listened impassively to the short, formal proceedings which Young Marius as senior consul got under way quite creditably. The governorships to commence in twelve months' time were apportioned out by lot to this year's praetors and both the consuls, the date of the feast of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount was determined, and other movable days of public or religious nature were also fixed. As there was little the flamen Dialis could eat among the bountiful and expensive food offered after the meeting concluded, Caesar found an inconspicuous spot and set himself to listen to whatever conversations drifted past him as men sorted out their preferred couches. Rank dictated the positions of some, like those holding magistracies, priesthoods, augurships, but the bulk of the senators were at liberty to distribute themselves among cronies and settle to partake of viands the bottomless purse of Young Marius had provided. It was a thin gathering, perhaps no more than a hundred strong, so many senators had fled to join Sulla, and by no means all of those present to witness the inauguration of the consuls were partial to the consuls or their plans. Quintus Lutatius Catulus was there, but no lover of Carbo's cause; his father, Catulus Caesar (who died during Marius's bloodbath) had been an implacable enemy of Marius's, and the son was cut from the same cloth, though not as gifted or educated. That, reflected the watching Caesar, was because his father's Julian blood had been diluted in the son by his mother, a Domitia of the Domitii Ahenobarbi Famous Family stock, but not famous for intellect. Caesar didn't like him, a prejudice of looks; Catulus was weedy and undersized, and had his mother's Domitian red hair as well as her freckles. He was married to the sister of the man who reclined next to him on the same couch, Quintus Hortensius, and Quintus Hortensius (another noble stay in Rome neutral) was married to Catulus's sister, Lutatia. Still in his early thirties, Quintus Hortensius had become Rome's leading advocate under the rule of Cinna and Carbo, and was held by some to be the best legal mind Rome had ever produced. He was quite a handsome man, his taste for life's little luxuries was betrayed by a sensuous lower lip, and his taste for beautiful boys by the expression in his eyes as they rested upon Caesar. A veteran of such looks, Caesar extirpated any ideas Hortensius might have been forming by sucking his mouth in ridiculously and crossing his eyes; Hortensius flushed and turned his head immediately to look at Catulus. At that moment a servant came to whisper to Caesar that his cousin demanded his presence at the far end of the room. Rising from the bottom tier step where he had huddled himself to look, Caesar slopped in his backless clogs to where Young Marius and Carbo lay, kissed his cousin on the cheek, then perched himself on the edge of the curule podium behind the couch. "Not eating?" asked Young Marius. "There's not much I can eat." "S'right, I forgot," mumbled Young Marius through a mouthful of fish. He swallowed it, and pointed to the huge platter laid out on the table in front of his couch. "There's nothing to stop you having some of that," he said. Caesar eyed the partially dismembered carcass with distinct lack of enthusiasm; it was a licker fish of the Tiber. "Thank you," he said, "but 1 never could see any virtue in eating shit." That provoked a chuckle from Young Marius, but couldn't destroy his enjoyment in consuming a creature which thrived upon the excrement flowing out of Rome's vast sewers; Carbo, Caesar noted with amusement, was not so strong stomached, for his hand, which had been in the act of reaching out to tear off a chunk of licker fish, suddenly grabbed at a tiny roast chicken instead. Of course here Caesar was more noticeable, but prominence carried considerable reward; he could see many more faces. While he exchanged idle badinage with Young Marius, his eyes were very busy skipping from man to man. Rome, he thought, might be pleased enough at the election of a twenty six year old senior consul, but some of the men present at this feast were not pleased at all. Especially Carbo's minions Brutus Damasippus, Carrinas, Marcus Fannius, Censorinus, Publius Burrienus, Publius Albinovanus the Lucanian ... Of course there were some who were highly delighted, like Marcus Marius Gratidianus and Scaevola Pontifex Maximus but they were both related to Young Marius, and had, so to speak, a vested interest in seeing the new senior consul do well. The younger Marcus Junius Brutus appeared behind Carbo's end of the couch. He was greeted, Caesar noticed, with unusual fervor; Carbo did not normally indulge in rapturous welcomes. Seeing it, Young Marius weaved away in search of more convivial company, leaving Brutus to take his place. Brutus nodded in passing to Caesar, without displaying any interest in him. That was the best thing about being flamen Dialis; he interested nobody because he was so politically insignificant. Carbo and Brutus proceeded to talk openly. "I think we can congratulate ourselves on an excellent ploy," said Brutus, digging his fingers into the disintegrating carcass of the licker fish. "Huh." The chicken, barely nibbled, was thrown down with a grimace of distaste; Carbo took bread. "Oh, come now! You ought to be elated." "About what? Him? Brutus, he's as hollow as a sucked egg! I've seen enough of him during the past month to know that, I do assure you. He may hold the fasces for the month of January, but it's I who will have to do all the work." "You didn't expect that to be different, surely?" Carbo shrugged, tossed the bread away; since Caesar's remark about eating shit, his appetite had vanished. "Oh, I don't know.... Maybe I'd hoped to see him grow a little sense. After all, he is Marius's son, and his mother is a Julian. You'd think those facts would be worth something." "They're not, I take it." "Not your granny's used handkerchief. The most I can say about him is that he's a useful ornament he makes us look very pretty, and he sucks in the recruits." "He might command troops well," said Brutus, wiping his greasy hands on the linen napkin a slave passed to him. "He might. My guess is he won't. I intend to take your advice in that area, certainly." "What advice?" "To make sure he isn't given the best soldiers." "Oh." Brutus flipped the napkin into the air without bothering to see whether the silent servant hovering near Caesar managed to catch it. "Quintus Sertorius isn't here today. I had at least hoped he'd come to Rome for this occasion. After all, Young Marius is his cousin." Carbo laughed, not a happy sound. "Sertorius, my dear Brutus, has abandoned our cause. He left Sinuessa to its fate, made off to Telamon, enlisted a legion of Etrurian clients of Gaius Marius's, and sailed on the winter winds for Tarraco. In other words, he's taken up his governorship of Nearer Spain very early. No doubt he hopes that by the time his term is over, there will be a decision in Italy." "He's a coward!" said Brutus indignantly. Carbo made a rude noise. "Not that one! I'd rather call him strange. He's got no friends, haven't you ever noticed it? Nor a wife. But he doesn't have Gaius Marius's ambition, for which we all ought to thank our lucky stars. If he did, Brutus, he'd be senior consul." "Well, I think it's a pity he's left us in the lurch. His presence on the battlefield would have made all the difference. Aside from anything else, he knows how Sulla fights." Carbo belched, pressed his belly. I think I'm going to retire and take an emetic. The young cub's prodigious assortment of food is too rich for my stomach." Brutus assisted the junior consul from the couch and led him off toward a screened corner of the hall behind the podium, where several servants tended an array of chamber pots and bowls for those in need. Flicking a scornful glance at Carbo's back, Caesar decided he had heard the most important conversation likely to take place at this consular inaugural feast. He kicked off his clogs, picked them up, and quietly stole away. Lucius Decumius was lurking in a sheltered corner of the Senate House vestibule, and appeared at Caesar's side the moment he had fully emerged from the doorway. His arms were full of more sensible garments decent boots, a hooded cloak, socks, a pair of woolen breeches. Off came the regalia of the flamen Dialis. Behind Lucius Decumius loomed an awesome personage who took apex, laena and clogs from Lucius Decumius and stuffed them into a drawstringed leather bag. What, back from Bovillae, Burgundus?'' asked Caesar, gasping with the cold as he struggled to pull on a laceless boot. "Yes, Caesar." "How goes it? All well with Cardixa?" "I am the father of another son." Lucius Decumius giggled. "I told you, Pavo my peacock! He will have given you a whole bodyguard by the time you're the consul!" "I will never be consul," said Caesar, and looked out at the shrouded end of the Basilica Aemilia, swallowing painfully. "Rubbish! Of course you'll get there," said Lucius Decumius, and reached up his mittened hands to cup Caesar's face. "Now you just stop all that gloomy business! There's not nothing in the whole world will stop you once you make up your mind to it, hear me?'' Down came the hands, one of them gesturing impatiently at Burgundus. "Go on, you great German lump! Clear a path for the master!"
It went on as it had begun, that terrible winter, and seemed as if it would never end. The seasons were in fair company to the calendar after some years of Scaevola as Pontifex Maximus; he, like Metellus Dalmaticus, believed in keeping date and season in harmony, though the Pontifex Maximus between them, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, had allowed the calendar to gallop ahead it was ten days shorter than the solar year because he despised finicky Greek habits, he had said. But finally in March the thaw set in, and Italy began to believe that warmth would return to countryside and house. Asleep since October, the legions stirred, woke into activity. Braving the deep snow of early March, Gaius Norbanus issued out of Capua with six of his eight legions and marched to join Carbo, who was back in Ariminum. He went straight past Sulla, who chose to ignore him; on the Via Latina and then the Via Flaminia, Norbanus could manage to move despite the snow, and soon reached Ariminum. His arrival plumped out Carbo's forces there to thirty legions and several thousand cavalry, an enormous burden for Rome and the Ager Gallicus to carry. But before leaving for Ariminum, Carbo had solved his most pressing problem: where the money to keep all these troops under arms would come from. Perhaps it was the melted gold and silver from the burned temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus stored as ingots in the Treasury gave him the idea, for certainly he commenced by seizing them, leaving in their stead a promissory note that Rome owed her Great God so many talents of gold and so many talents of silver. A large number of Rome's temples were rich in their own right, and since religion was. a part of the State and run by the State, Carbo and Young Marius took it upon themselves to "borrow" the money held in Rome's temples. In theory this was not unconstitutional, but in practice it was abhorrent, a solution to financial crises which was never put into effect. But out of the temple strong rooms came chest after chest after chest of coins: the single sestertius which was given at the birth of a Roman citizen's male or female child to Juno Lucina; the single denarius which was given upon maturation of a Roman citizen male child to Juventas; the many denarii donated to Mercury after a businessman wetted his laurel bough at the sacred fountain; the single sestertius which was given at the death of a Roman citizen to 'Venus Libitina; the sesterces which were donated by successful prostitutes to Venus Erucina all this money and much more was commandeered to fund Carbo's war machine. Bullion too was taken, and any gold or silver temple gift not felt to be an artistic loss was melted down. The stammering praetor Quintus Antonius Balbus not one of the noble Antonii was given the job of minting new coins and sorting out the old. Sacrilegious many may have deemed it, but the value of the haul was staggering. Carbo was able to leave Young Marius in charge of Rome and the campaign in the south, and journey to Ariminum with an easy mind. Though neither camp was aware it shared something in common, both Sulla and Carbo had made a similar resolution that this was one civil war would not wreck Italy, that every mouthful of provender for man and beast involved in the hostilities must be paid for in hard cash, that the amount of land ruined by army maneuvers must be kept to an absolute minimum. The Italian War had brought the whole country to the brink of extinction; the country could not afford another war like it, especially so soon. And this, both Sulla and Carbo knew. They were also aware that the war between them lacked in the eyes of ordinary people the nobility of purpose and ironclad reason which the Italian War had possessed in abundance. That had been a struggle between Italian states which wanted to be independent of Rome, and Rome which wanted the Italian states kept in a certain degree of vassalage. But what was this new conflict really all about? Simply, which camp would end in ruling and owning Rome. It was a struggle for ascendancy between two men, Sulla and Carbo, and no amount of propaganda either camp put out could really disguise that fact. Nor were the ordinary people of Rome and Italy fooled. Therefore the country could not be subjected to extreme hardship, nor the economic well being of the Roman and Italian communities diminished. Sulla was borrowing from his soldiers, but the only ones Carbo could borrow from were the gods. And always at the back of each man's mind there loomed an awful dilemma: how, when the struggle was over, could the debt be paid back? None of this impinged upon the thoughts of Young Marius, the son of a fabulously wealthy man never brought up to care about money, be it the money to pay for some expensive personal trifle, or the money to pay the legions. If old Gaius Marius had talked to anyone about the fiscal side of war, it had been to Caesar during those months when Caesar had helped him recover from his second stroke. To his son, he had hardly talked at all. For by the time he had needed his son, Young Marius was of an age to be seduced more by the charms of Rome than by his father. To Caesar nine years younger than his cousin fell the lot of Gaius Marius's reminiscences. And Caesar had listened avidly to much the arrival of his priesthood had rendered worse than useless. When the thaw set in after the middle of March, Young Marius and his staff of legates moved from Rome to a camp outside the little town of Ad Pictas on the Via Labicana, a diverticulum which avoided the Alban Hills and rejoined the Via Latina at a place called Sacriportus. Here on a flat alluvial plain eight legions of Etrurian and Umbrian volunteers had been encamped since early winter, under as strict and intensive a training program as the cold made possible. Their centurions were all Marian veterans, and good at training, but when Young Marius arrived toward the end of March, the troops were still very green. Not that Young Marius cared; he genuinely believed that the greenest recruit would fight for him the way hardened soldiers had fought for his father. And he faced the task of stopping Sulla with unimpaired confidence. There were men in his camp who understood far better than Young Marius the enormity of that task, but not one of them tried to enlighten their consul commander. If taxed for a reason why, each one would probably have answered that beneath all his bluster, Young Marius did not have the internal resources to cope with so much truth. The figurehead, Young Marius must be cherished and protected, kept together. When intelligence reports arrived to inform him that Sulla was preparing to move, Young Marius cheered. For Sulla it seemed had detached eleven of his eighteen legions along with all save a few squadrons of cavalry, and sent this big force under the command of Metellus Pius the Piglet toward the Adriatic coast and Carbo in Ariminum. Which left Sulla with seven legions only, a smaller force than Young Marius owned. "I can beat him!" he said to his senior legate, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. Married to Cinna's elder girl, Ahenobarbus was committed to Carbo's side despite a natural inclination in Sulla's direction; he was very much in love with his beautiful red haired wife, and sufficiently under her thumb to do whatever she wished. The fact that most of his close relatives were either sternly neutral or with Sulla he contrived to ignore. Now he listened to Young Marius in jubilant mood, and felt a much greater degree of unease; perhaps he ought to start thinking of how and where to flee if Young Marius didn't make good his boast and beat the old red fox, Sulla. On the first day of April, Young Marius in high fettle moved his army out of camp and marched through the ancient pylons at Sacriportus onto the Via Latina, heading southeast toward Campania and Sulla. He wasted no time, for there were two bridges to cross within five miles of each other, and he wanted to be clear of them before he encountered the enemy. No one offered him any advice as to the prudence of marching to meet Sulla rather than remaining where he was, and though he had traveled the Via Latina dozens of times, Young Marius did not have the kind of mind which remembered terrain or saw terrain in military terms. At the first bridge spanning the Veregis he remained behind while his troops marched across in high spirits, and suddenly realized that the ground was better for fighting around the pylons of Sacriportus than in the direction he was going. But he didn't stop. At the second bridge across the bigger, more torrential stream of the Tolerus it finally dawned on him that he was steadily moving into country where his legions would find it difficult to maneuver. His scouts arrived to tell him that Sulla was ten miles down the road and rapidly passing the town of Ferentinum, whereupon Young Marius panicked. "I think we'd better go back to Sacriportus," he said to Ahenobarbus. "I can't hope to deploy the way I want to in this country, and I can't get past Sulla to more open ground. So we'll face him at Sacriportus. Don't you think that's best?" "If you think so," said Ahenobarbus, who was well aware of the effect an order to face about and retreat would have on these green troops, but decided not to say a word. "I'll give the command. Back to Sacriportus." "At the double!" cried Young Marius, his confidence oozing away moment by moment, and his sense of panic increasing. Ahenobarbus looked at him, astonished, but again elected to say nothing. If Young Marius wanted his army exhausted by some miles of run trot walk retreat, why should he argue? They couldn't win anyway. So back to Sacriportus the eight legions proceeded at the double, the thousands of young soldiers growing more bewildered as their centurions exhorted them to pick up their heels and move! Young Marius too became infected with this desperate hurrying, and rode among the ranks urging them on without once thinking to inform them that they were not in retreat, merely moving to better ground on which to fight. The result was that both troops and commander arrived on that better ground in no mental or physical condition to make proper use of it. Like all his peers, Young Marius was tutored as to how to fight a battle, but until now he had simply assumed his father's acumen and skill would automatically swirl into his mind; but at Sacriportus, with legates and military tribunes all clustered about him looking at him to receive orders, he couldn't think, he couldn't find one single iota of his father's acumen and skill. "Oh," he said finally, "deploy the legions in checkered square eight men deep on each side of each square, and keep two legions in line behind to serve as reinforcements." They were not adequate orders, but no one tried to force better orders out of him, and his thirsty, panting troops did not find their flagging spirits cheered by an address from Young Marius; instead of attempting to speak to them, he rode off to one side of the field and sat upon his horse with his shoulders hunched and his face betraying the depth of his dilemma. Discerning Young Marius's unadventurous battle plan from the top of a ridge between the Tolerus and Sacriportus, Sulla sighed, shrugged, and sent his five legions of veterans into action under the elder Dolabella and Servilius Vatia. The two best legions from Scipio Asiagenus's old army he held in reserve under Lucius Manlius Torquatus, while he himself remained on the ridge, attended by a squadron of cavalry deputed to form a messenger corps and carry the general's instructions to the battlefield at the gallop if a change in tactics should become necessary. With him was none other than old Lucius Valerius Flaccus Princeps Senatus, the Leader of the House; Flaccus had made up his mind during the worst of the winter, and quit Rome for Sulla halfway through February.
* * *
When he saw Sulla's army approaching, Young Marius underwent a return of his calm, though not of his optimism, and assumed personal command of his left wing without having any real idea of what he was doing or what he ought to do. The two armies met in midafternoon of that shortish day, and before the first hour was over the Etrurian and Umbrian farm boys who had enlisted so enthusiastically for Young Marius were fleeing the field in all directions away from where Sulla's veterans were chopping them into pieces with effortless ease. One of the two legions Young Marius had kept in reserve deserted en masse to Servilius Vatia, and stood quietly while the slaughter of their confederates went on scant paces away. It was the sight of that defected legion that finished Young Marius. Remembering that the formidable fortress town of Praeneste lay not far to the east of Sacriportus, he ordered a retreat into Praeneste. With something tangible to do, he fared better, and contrived to evacuate the troops of his left wing in reasonable order. Commanding Sulla's right, Ofella took after Young Marius with a swiftness and savagery Sulla, watching from his ridge, applauded heartily. For ten miles Ofella harried and harassed, cut off stragglers and cut them up, while Young Marius endeavored to save as many as he could. But when at last the enormous gates of Praeneste closed behind him, only seven thousand of his men had managed to stay with him. Young Marius's center had perished on the field almost to the last man, but his right wing, led by Ahenobarbus, succeeded in breaking off hostilities and making a run for Norba. This ancient stronghold of the Volsci, fanatically loyal to Carbo's cause, stood atop a mountain twenty miles to the southwest, and gladly opened the gates in its impregnable walls to receive Ahenobarbus's ten thousand men. But not to receive Ahenobarbus! Wishing his devastated soldiers the best of luck for the future, Ahenobarbus continued on for the coast at Tarracina and there took ship for Africa, the farthest place from Italy he could bear to think of with equanimity. Unaware that his senior legate had slipped away, Young Marius was satisfied with his Praenestian shelter; from this city Sulla would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to dislodge him. Some twenty three miles from Rome, Praeneste occupied the heights of a spur of the Apennines, a site which had enabled it to withstand many assaults on its frowning walls through the centuries before Young Marius availed himself of its defenses. No army could take it from behind, where the outcrop on which it stood joined higher, more precipitous mountains; yet it could be provisioned from this direction, which made it impossible to starve out. Of springs there were aplenty within the citadel, and in vast caverns below the mighty shrine to Fortuna Primigenia for which Praeneste was most famous, there lay many medimni of wheat and oil and wine, other imperishable foods like hard cheeses and raisins, as well as apples and pears from the previous autumn's picking. Though its roots were Latin enough and its version of that language proudly held by its citizens to be the oldest and purest, Praeneste had never allied itself with Rome. It fought on the side of the Italian Allies during the Italian War, and still held defiantly that its citizenship was superior to Rome's Rome was a parvenu place! Its fervent espousal of Young Marius was therefore logical enough; he seemed to the people of Praeneste the underdog facing Sulla's vengeful might, and being his father's son besides, was warmly welcomed. As thanks, he pressed his soldiers into forming forage parties and sent them out along the snake paths behind the citadel to procure as much food as possible. Praeneste now had many extra mouths. "By summer Sulla will have moved on from sheer necessity, and then you can leave," said the city's chief magistrate. A prophecy not to bear fruit; less than a market interval after the battle of Sacriportus, Young Marius and the inhabitants of Praeneste witnessed the beginnings of a siege investment too monumental to be anything less than iron determination to see Praeneste fall. The tributaries which ran off the spur in the direction of Rome all entered the Anio River, whereas those which ran off the spur in the opposite direction all eventually entered the Tolerus River: Praeneste was a watershed. And now, with a speed the imprisoned onlookers found incredible, a great wall and ditch began to grow from the Anio side of the spur all the way around to the Tolerus side. When these siegeworks were completed, the only way in or out of Praeneste would be the snake paths through the mountains behind. Provided, that is, that they were left unguarded.
The news of Sacriportus flew to Rome before the sun had set upon that fatal day but very secretly. General dissemination would have to wait upon hearsay. It came by special courier from Young Marius himself, for the moment he was inside Praeneste he dictated a hasty letter to Rome's urban praetor, Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus. It said:
All is lost south of Rome. We must hope that Carbo in Ariminum wages the sort of war Sulla will not be able to deal with, if only because he grossly lacks Carbo's numbers. Carbo's troops are far better than mine were. Mine's lack of proper training and experience unsettled them so much they could not hold for an hour against Sulla's old retainers. I suggest you try to prepare Rome for a siege, though that may be impossible in a place so huge and so divided in its loyalties. If you think Rome will refuse to undergo siege, then you must expect Sulla within the next market interval, for there are no troops to oppose him between here and Rome. Whether he intends to occupy Rome, I do not know. What I hope is that he intends to bypass it in favor of attacking Carbo. From what I have heard my father say about Sulla, it would be like him to be forming a pincer to crush Carbo, using Metellus Pius as his other jaw. I wish I knew. I do not know. Except that it would be premature for Sulla to occupy Rome at this time, and I do not see Sulla making that mistake. It may be some time before I can leave Praeneste, which has taken me in willingly its people have a great affection for Gaius Marius, and have not refused to succor his son. Rest assured that as soon as Sulla moves on to deal with Carbo, I will break out and come to Rome's aid. Perhaps if I am in Rome myself, her people will agree to withstand siege. Further to that, it occurs to me that the time has come to destroy every last nest of Sullan vipers within our beloved city. Kill them all, Damasippus! Do not allow sentiment to soften your resolve. Living men who might decide to support Sulla will make it impossible for Rome to resist him. But if the great ones who might make trouble for us are dead, then all the little ones will knuckle under without demur. Every man who might be of military help to Carbo must leave Rome now. That includes you, Damasippus. Here follow a very few names of Sullan vipers which spring to mind. I know I have missed dozens, so think of them all! Our Pontifex Maximus. The elder Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Carbo Arvina. Publius Antistius Vetus.
Brutus Damasippus followed orders. During the shortlived but comprehensive program of murder old Gaius Marius had perpetrated before he died, Quintus Mucius Scaevola the Pontifex Maximus had been stabbed, for no good reason anyone could discover. His would be assassin (that Fimbria who had gone off with Flaccus the suffect consul to relieve Sulla of his command against King Mithridates, then murdered Flaccus) could produce no better excuse at the time than to laugh that Scaevola deserved to die. But Scaevola had not died, though the wound was severe. Tough and doughty, the Pontifex Maximus was back on his feet and about his public duties within two months. Now, however, there was to be no escape. Father in law of Young Marius though he was, he was cut down as he tried to seek asylum in the temple of Vesta. Of treachery to Young Marius he was quite innocent. The elder Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul not long after his brother the reforming Pontifex Maximus, was executed in his home. And no doubt Pompey the Great would have beamed his full approval had he known that his father in law's blood need not now stain his own hands; Publius Antistius was murdered too, and his wife, demented with grief, took her own life. By the time Brutus Damasippus had worked his way through those he considered might endanger Carbo's Rome, some thirty heads adorned the rostra in the lower Forum Romanum; men who called themselves neutral (like Catulus, Lepidus and Hortensius) bolted the doors of their houses and refused to venture out in case one of Brutus Damasippus's minions decided they must die too. His work done, Brutus Damasippus fled from Rome, as did his fellow praetor Gaius Albius Carrinas. Both of them joined Carbo. The minting praetor, Quintus Antonius Balbus, also left Rome at this time, but commanding a legion of troops; his task was to go to Sardinia and wrest that island off Philippus. Strangest defection of all, however, was that of the tribune of the plebs Quintus Valerius Soranus. A great scholar and a known humanitarian, he found himself unable to condone this slaughter of men not even proven to be affiliated in any way with Sulla. But how to make a public protest which would impress the whole city? And how could one man destroy Rome? For Quintus Valerius Soranus had come to the conclusion that the world would be a better place if Rome ceased to exist. After some thought, he arrived at his solution. He went to the rostra, climbed upon it, and there, surrounded by the dripping trophies of Brutus Damasippus, he screamed aloud the secret name of Rome. AMOR!'' he cried, again and again. Those who heard and understood ran with hands clapped over their ears away from his voice. Rome's secret name could never be uttered aloud! Rome and all she stood for would fall down like a shoddy building in an earthquake. Quintus Valerius Soranus himself believed that implicitly. So having told air and birds and horrified men Rome's secret name, Soranus fled to Ostia wondering why Rome still stood upon her seven hills. From Ostia he sailed for Sicily, a marked man to both sides. Virtually bereft of government, the city did not fall down or fall apart. People went about their affairs as they always did; the neutral noblemen popped their heads from out of their front doors, sniffed the air, sallied out, said nothing. Rome waited to see what Sulla would do.
Sulla did enter Rome, but quietly, and without his army at his back to protect him. There was no compelling reason why he should not enter Rome, but very many compelling reasons why he should. Matters like his imperium and whether or not he relinquished it in the moment he crossed the sacred boundary of the pomerium into the city he cared little about. Who was there in this rudderless Rome to gainsay him, or accuse him of illegalities, or religiously impugn him? If he came back to Rome it would be as Rome's conqueror and master, with whatever powers he needed to make all right concerning his past career. So he stepped across the pomerium without a qualm, and proceeded to give the city back some semblance of government. The most senior magistrate left in Rome was one of the two brothers Magius from Aeclanum, a praetor; him Sulla put in charge, with the aediles Publius Furius Crassipes and Marcus Pomponius to assist him. When he heard about Soranus's uttering the secret name of Rome aloud he frowned direfully and shuddered, though the bristling fence of speared heads around the rostra he eyed with perfect equanimity, only ordering that they be taken down and given the proper rites. He made no speeches to the people, and called no meeting of the Senate. Less than a full day after he entered he was gone again, back to Praeneste. But behind him he left two squadrons of cavalry under the command of Torquatus to assist the magistrates to maintain order, he said blandly. He made no attempt to see Aurelia, who had wondered; when she heard that he was gone again she presented an indifferent front to her family, especially to Caesar, who knew his mother's meeting with Sulla outside Teanum had been fraught with all kinds of significance, but knew she wasn't going to enlighten him.
The legate in charge of the investment of Praeneste was the defector Quintus Lucretius Ofella, whose orders had come directly from Sulla. "I want Young Marius penned up in Praeneste for the rest of his days," Sulla had said to Ofella. "You'll build a wall thirty feet high all the way from the mountains behind on the Anio side to the mountains behind on the Tolerus side. The wall will contain a sixty foot fortified tower every two hundred paces. Between the wall and the town you will dig a ditch twenty feet deep and twenty feet wide, and you will fix stimuli in its bottom as thick as reeds in the shallows of the Fucine Lake. When the investment is completed, you will station camps of men to guard every little track which leads from behind Praeneste across the high Apennines. No one will get in, and no one will get out. I want that arrogant pup to understand that Praeneste is now his home for as long as he has left to live." A sour smile twisted the corners of Sulla's mouth, a smile which would have displayed those ferally long canines in the days when he had had teeth; it was still not a pretty phenomenon. "I also want the people of Praeneste to know that they have Young Marius for the rest of his life, so you will have heralds inform them of that fact six times a day. It is one thing to succor a lovely young man with a famous name, but quite another to realize that the lovely young man with the famous name has brought death and suffering into Praeneste with him." When Sulla moved on to Veii to the north of Rome, he left Ofella behind with two legions to carry out the work. And work they did. Luckily the area was rich in volcanic tufa, a curious stone which cut as easily as cheese, yet hardened to the consistency of rock after it was exposed to the air. With this to quarry, the wall went up at mushroom pace, and the ditch between it and Praeneste deepened daily. Earth from the ditch was piled into a second wall, and in the large No Man's Land which existed inside these siegeworks no tree or object tall enough to serve as a battering ram was left standing. On the mountains behind the town, every tree was also felled between the back walls and the camps of men who now guarded the snake paths and prevented the Praenestians foraging. Ofella was a hard taskmaster; he had a reputation to make with Sulla, and this was his chance. Thus no one paused to rest, or so much as had the time to complain about a sore back or aching muscles. Besides, the men too had a reputation to make with Sulla; one of the legions was the one which had deserted Young Marius at Sacriportus, and the other had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus. Loyalty was suspect, so a well built wall and well excavated ditch would show Sulla they were worthy. All they had to work with were their hands and their legionary's digging tools; but there were over ten thousand pairs of hands and more than sufficient tools, and their centurions taught them the shortcuts and knacks in building siegeworks. To organize a task of such monumental size was no great trouble to Ofella, a typical Roman when it came to methodical execution. In two months the wall and ditch were finished. They were over eight miles in length and bisected both the Via Praenestina and the Via Labicana in two places, thereby interrupting traffic on both these roads and rendering them useless beyond Tusculum and Bola. Those Roman knights and senators whose estates were affected by the fortifications could do nothing save glumly wait for the siege to be over and curse Young Marius. On the other hand, the smallholders of the region rejoiced as they eyed the tufa blocks; when the siege was over the wall would come down and they would have an inexhaustible supply of material for field fences, buildings, barns, byres. At Norba the same sort of exercise went on, though Norba did not require such massive siegeworks. Mamercus had been sent there with a legion of new recruits (dispatched from Sabine country by Marcus Crassus) to reduce it, and settled to his task with the dour and understated efficiency which had successfully carried him through many a perilous situation. As for Sulla, at Veii he divided the five legions he had left between himself and Publius Servilius Vatia. Vatia was to take two of them and march into coastal Etruria, while Sulla and the elder Dolabella took the other three up the Via Cassia toward Clusium, further inland. It was now the beginning of May, and Sulla was very well pleased with his progress. If Metellus Pius and his larger section of the army acquitted themselves equally well, by autumn Sulla stood an excellent chance of owning all of Italy and all of Italian Gaul. And how were Metellus Pius and his forces doing? Sulla had heard little about their progress at the time he himself started up the Via Cassia toward Clusium, but he had a great deal of faith in this loyalest of adherents as well as a lively curiosity as to how Pompey the Great would fare. He had quite deliberately given Metellus Pius the larger army, and deliberate too were his instructions that Pompey the Great should have the command of five thousand cavalry he knew he would not need in his own maneuvers through more settled and hillier terrain.
4
Metellus Pius had marched for the Adriatic coast with his own two legions (under the command of his legate Varro Lucullus), six legions which had belonged to Scipio, the three legions which belonged to Pompey, and those five thousand horse troopers Sulla had given to Pompey. Of course Varro the Sabine traveled with Pompey, a ready and sympathetic ear (not to mention a ready and sympathetic pen!) tuned to receive Pompey's thoughts. "I must put myself on better terms with Crassus," said Pompey to him as they moved through Picenum. "Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus are easy and anyway, I quite like them. But Crassus is a surly brute. More formidable by far. I need him on my side." Astride a pony, Varro looked a long way up to Pompey on his big white Public Horse. "I do believe you've learned something during the course of a winter spent with Sulla!" he said, genuinely amazed. "I never thought to hear you speak of conciliating any man with the exception of Sulla, naturally." "Yes, I have learned," admitted Pompey magnanimously. His beautiful white teeth flashed in a smile of pure affection. "Come now, Varro! I know I'm well on my way to becoming Sulla's most valued helper, but I am capable of understanding that Sulla needs other men than me! Though you may be right," he went on thoughtfully. "This is the first time in my life that I've dealt with any other commander in chief than my father. I think my father was a very great soldier. But he cared for nothing aside from his lands. Sulla is different." "In what way?" asked Varro curiously. "He cares nothing for most things including all of us he calls his legates, or colleagues, or whatever name he considers judicious at the time. I don't know that he even cares for Rome. Whatever he does care for, it isn't material. Money, lands even the size of his auctoritas or the quality of his public reputation. No, they don't matter to Sulla." Then what does?'' Varro asked, fascinated with the phenomenon of a Pompey who could see further than himself. "Perhaps his dignitas alone," Pompey answered. Varro turned this over carefully. Could Pompey be right? Dignitas! The most intangible of all a Roman nobleman's possessions, that was dignitas. His auctoritas was his clout, his measure of public influence, his ability to sway public opinion and public bodies from Senate to priests to the Treasury. Dignitas was different. It was intensely personal and very private, yet it extended into all parameters of a man's public life. So hard to define! That, of course, was why there was a word for it. Dignitas was ... a man's personal degree of impressiveness ... of glory? Dignitas summed up what a man was, as a man and as a leader of his society. It was the total of his pride, his integrity, his word, his intelligence, his deeds, his ability, his knowledge, his standing, his worth as a man. ... Dignitas survived a man's death, it was the only way he could triumph over death. Yes, that was the best definition. Dignitas was a man's triumph over the extinction of his physical being. And seen in that light, Varro thought Pompey absolutely correct. If anything mattered to Sulla, it was his dignitas. He had said he would beat Mithridates. He had said he would come back to Italy and secure his vindication. He had said that he would restore the Republic in its old, traditional form. And having said these things, he would do them. Did he not, his dignitas would be diminished; in outlawry and official odium there could be no dignitas. So from out of himself he would find the strength to make his word good. When he had made his word good, he would be satisfied. Until he had, Sulla could not rest. Would not rest. "In saying that," Varro said, "you have awarded Sulla the ultimate accolade." The bright blue eyes went blank. "Huh?" "I mean," said Varro patiently, "that you have demonstrated to me that Sulla cannot lose. He's fighting for something Carbo doesn't even understand." "Oh, yes! Yes, definitely!" said Pompey cheerfully. They were almost to the river Aesis, in the heart of Pompey's own fief again. The brash youth of last year had not vanished, but sat now amid a branching superstructure of fresh, stimulating experiences; in other words, Pompey had grown. In fact, he grew a little more each day. Sulla's gift of cavalry command had interested Pompey in a type of military activity he had never before seriously considered. That of course was Roman. Romans believed in the foot soldier, and to some extent had come to believe the horse soldier was more decorative than useful, more a nuisance than an asset. Varro was convinced that the only reason Romans employed cavalry was because the enemy did. Once upon a time, in the days of the Kings of Rome and in the very early years of the Republic, the horse soldier had formed the military elite, was the spearhead of a Roman army. Out of this had grown the class of knights the Ordo Equester, as Gaius Gracchus had called it. Horses had been hugely expensive too expensive for many men to buy privately. Out of that had grown the custom of the Public Horse, the knight's mount bought and paid for by the State. Now, a long way down the road from those days, the Roman horse soldier had ceased to exist except in social and economic terms. The knight businessman or landowner that he was, member of the First Class of the Centuries was the horse soldier's Roman relic. And still to this day, the State bought the eighteen hundred most senior knights their horses. Addicted to exploring the winding lanes of thought, Varro saw that he was losing the point of his original reflection, and drew himself resolutely back onto thought's main road. Pompey and his interest in the cavalry. Not Roman in manpower anymore. These were Sulla's troopers he had brought from Greece with him, and therefore contained no Gauls; had they been recruited in Italy, they would have been almost entirely Gallic, drawn from the rolling pastures on the far side of the Padus in Italian Gaul, or from the great valley of the Rhodanus in Gaul across the Alps. As it was, Sulla's men were mostly Thracians, admixed with a few hundred Galatians. Good fighters, and as loyal as could be expected of men who were not themselves Roman. In the Roman army they had auxiliary status, and some of them might be rewarded at the end of a hard won campaign with the full Roman citizenship, or a piece of land. All the way from Teanum Sidicinum, Pompey had busied himself going among these men in their leather trousers and leather jerkins, with their little round shields and their long lances; their long swords were more suitable for slashing from the height of a horse's back than the short sword of the infantryman. At least Pompey had the capacity to think, Varro told himself as they rode steadily toward the Aesis. He was discovering the qualities of horsemen soldiers and turning over the possibilities. Planning. Seeing if there was any way their performance or equipage might be improved. They were formed into regiments of five hundred men, each regiment consisting of ten squadrons of fifty men, and they were led by their own officers; the only Roman who commanded them was the overall general of cavalry. In this case, Pompey. Very much involved, very fascinated and very determined to lead them with a flair and competence not usually present in a Roman. If Varro privately thought that a part of Pompey's interest stemmed from his large dollop of Gallic blood, he was wise enough never to indicate to Pompey that such was his theory. How extraordinary! Here they were, the Aesis in sight, and Pompey's old camp before them. Back where they had begun, as if all the miles between had been nothing. A journey to see an old man with no teeth and no hair, distinguished only by a couple of minor battles and a lot of marching. "I wonder," said Varro, musing, "if the men ever ask themselves what it's all about?" Pompey blinked, turned his head sideways. "What a strange question! Why should they ask themselves anything? It's all done for them. I do it all for them! All they have to do is as they're told." And he grimaced at the revolutionary thought that so many as one of Pompey Strabo's veterans might think. But Varro was not to be put off. "Come now, Magnus! They are men like us in that respect, if in no other. And being men, they are endowed with thought. Even if a lot of them can't read or write. It's one thing never to question orders, quite another not to ask what it's all about." "I don't see that," said Pompey, who genuinely didn't. "Magnus, I call the phenomenon human curiosity! It is in a man's nature to ask himself the reason why! Even if he is a Picentine ranker who has never been to Rome and doesn't understand the difference between Rome and Italy. We have just been to Teanum and back. There's our old camp down there. Don't you think that some of them at least must be asking themselves what we went to Teanum for, and why we've come back in less than a year?" "Oh, they know that!" said Pompey impatiently. "Besides, they're veterans. If they had a thousand sesterces for every mile they've marched during the past ten years, they'd be able to live on the Palatine and breed pretty fish. Even if they did piss in the fountain and shit in the cook's herb garden! Varro, you are such an original! You never cease to amaze me the things that chew at you!" Pompey kicked his Public Horse in the ribs and began to gallop down the last slope. Suddenly he laughed uproariously, waved his hands in the air; his words floated back quite clearly. "Last one in's a rotten egg!" Oh, you child! said Varro to himself. What am I doing here? What use can I possibly be? It's all a game, a grand and magnificent adventure.
Perhaps it was, but late that night Metellus Pius called a meeting with his three legates, and Varro as always accompanied Pompey. The atmosphere was excited: there had been news. "Carbo isn't far away," said the Piglet. He paused to consider what he had said, and modified it. "At least, Carrinas is, and Censorinus is rapidly catching him up. Apparently Carbo thought eight legions would be enough to halt our progress, then he discovered the size of our army, and sent Censorinus with another four legions. They'll reach the Aesis ahead of us, and it's there we'll have to meet them." "Where's Carbo himself?" asked Marcus Crassus. "Still in Ariminum. I imagine he's waiting to see what Sulla intends to do." "And how Young Marius will fare," said Pompey. "True," agreed the Piglet, raising his brows. "However, it isn't our job to worry about that. Our job is to make Carbo hop. Pompeius, this is your purlieu. Should we bring Carrinas across the river, or keep him on the far side?" "It doesn't really matter," said Pompey coolly. "The banks are much the same. Plenty of room to deploy, some tree cover, good level ground for an all out contest if we can bring it on." He looked angelic, and said sweetly, "The decision belongs to you, Pius. I'm only your legate." "Well, since we're trying to get to Ariminum, it makes more sense to get our men to the far side," said Metellus Pius, quite unruffled. "If we do force Carrinas to retreat, we don't want to have to cross the Aesis in pursuit. The report indicates that we have a huge advantage in cavalry. Provided that you think the terrain and the river will allow it, Pompeius, I would like you to spearhead the crossing and keep your horse troopers between the enemy and our infantry. Then I'll wheel our infantry on the far bank, you peel your cavalry back out of the way, and we'll attack. There's not much we can do in terms of subterfuge. It will be a straight battle. However, if you can swing your cavalry around behind the enemy after I've engaged him from the front, we'll roll Carrinas and Censorinus up." No one objected to this strategy, which was sufficiently loose to indicate that Metellus Pius had some talent as a general. When it was suggested that Varro Lucullus should command Pompey's three legions of veterans, thereby allowing Pompey full license with his cavalry, Pompey agreed without a qualm. "I'll lead the center," said Metellus Pius in conclusion, "with Crassus leading the right, and Varro Lucullus the left." Since the day was fine and the ground was not too wet, things went very much as Metellus Pius had planned. Pompey held the crossing easily, and the infantry engagement which followed demonstrated the great advantage veteran troops bestowed upon a general in battle. Though Scipio's legions were raw enough, Varro Lucullus and Crassus led the five veteran legions superbly, and their confidence spilled over onto Scipio's men. Carrinas and Censorinus had no veteran troops, and went down without extending Metellus Pius too severely. The end result would have been a rout had Pompey managed to fall upon the enemy rear, but as he skirted the field to do so, he encountered a new factor. Carbo had arrived with six more legions and three thousand horse to contest Pompey's progress. Carrinas and Censorinus managed to draw off without losing more than three or four thousand men, then camped next to Carbo a scant mile beyond the battlefield. The advance of Metellus Pius and his legates ground to a halt. "We will go back to your original camp south of the river," said Metellus Pius with crisp decision. "I would rather they think us too cautious to proceed, and I also think it behooves us to keep a fair distance between us and them." Despite the disappointing outcome of the day's conflict, spirits were high among the men, and quite high in the command tent when Pompey, Crassus and Varro Lucullus met their general at dusk. The table was covered with maps, a slight disorder indicating that the Piglet had been poring over them closely. "All right," he said, standing behind the table, "I want you to look at this, and see how best we can outflank Carbo." They clustered around, Varro Lucullus holding a five flamed lamp above the carefully inked sheepskin. The map displayed the Adriatic coastline between Ancona and Ravenna, together with inland territory extending beyond the crest of the Apennines. "We're here," said the Piglet, finger on a spot below the Aesis. "The next big river onward is the Metaurus, a treacherous crossing. All this land is Ager Gallicus here and here Ariminum at the northward end of it some rivers, but none according to this difficult to ford. Until we come to this one between Ariminum and Ravenna, see? The Rubico, our natural border with Italian Gaul." All these features were lightly touched; the Piglet was methodical. "It's fairly obvious why Carbo has put himself in Ariminum. He can move up the Via Aemilia into Italian Gaul proper he can go down the Sapis road to the Via Cassia at Arretium and threaten Rome from the upper Tiber valley he can reach the Via Flaminia and Rome that way he can march down the Adriatic into Picenum, and if necessary into Campania through Apulia and Samnium." "Then we have to dislodge him," said Crassus, stating the obvious. "It's possible." "But there is a hitch," said Metellus Pius, frowning. "It seems Carbo is not entirely confined to Ariminum anymore. He's done something very shrewd by sending eight legions under Gaius Norbanus up the Via Aemilia to Forum Cornelii see? Not far beyond Faventia. Now that is not a great distance from Ariminum perhaps forty miles." "Which means he could get those eight legions back to Ariminum in one hard day's march if he had to," said Pompey.
"Yes. Or get them to Arretium or Placentia in two or three days," said Varro Lucullus, who never lost sight of the overall concept. We have Carbo himself sitting on the other side of the Aesis with Carrinas and Censorinus and eighteen legions plus three thousand cavalry. There are eight more legions in Forum Cornelii with Norbanus, and another four garrisoning Ariminum in company with several thousand more cavalry." "I need a grand strategy before I go one more inch," said Metellus Pius, looking at his legates. "The grand strategy is easy," said Crassus, the abacus clicking away inside his mind. "We have to prevent Carbo's recombining with Norbanus, separate Carbo from Carrinas and Censorinus, and Carrinas from Censorinus. Prevent every one of them from recombining. Just as Sulla said. Fragmentation." "One of us probably me will have to get five legions to the far side of Ariminum, then cut Norbanus off and make a bid to take Italian Gaul," said Metellus Pius, frowning. "Not an easy thing to do." "It is easy," said Pompey eagerly. "Look here's Ancona, the second best harbor on the Adriatic. At this time of year it's full of ships waiting on the westerlies to sail for the east and a summer's trading. If you took your five legions to Ancona, Pius, you could embark them on those ships and sail to Ravenna. It's a sweet voyage, you'd never need to be out of sight of land, and there won't be any storms. It's no more than a hundred miles you'll do it in eight or nine days, even if you have to row. If you get a following wind not unlikely at this time of year you'll do it in four days." His hand stabbed at the map. "A quick march from Ravenna to Faventia, and you'll cut Norbanus off from Ariminum permanently." "It will have to be done in secret," said the Piglet, eyes shining. "Oh, yes, Pompeius, it will work! They won't dream of our moving troops between here and Ancona their scouts will all be to the north of the Aesis. Pompeius, Crassus, you'll have to sit right where we are at the moment pretending to be five legions stronger until Varro Lucullus and I have sailed from Ancona. Then you move. Try to catch up to Carrinas, and make it look serious. If possible, tie him down and Censorinus as well. Carbo will be with them at first, but when he hears I've landed at Ravenna, he'll march to relieve Norbanus. Of course, he may elect to stay in this neighborhood himself, send Carrinas or Censorinus to relieve Norbanus. But I don't think so. Carbo needs to be centrally located." "Oh, this is going to be tremendous fun!" cried Pompey. And such was the contentment in the command tent that no one found this statement too flippant; even Marcus Terentius Varro, sitting quietly in a corner taking notes.
The strategy worked. While Metellus Pius hustled himself, Varro Lucullus and five legions to Ancona, the other six plus the cavalry pretended to be eleven. Then Pompey and Crassus moved out of the camp and crossed the Aesis without opposition; Carbo had decided, it seemed, to lure them toward Ariminum, no doubt planning a decisive battle on ground more familiar to him. Pompey led the way with his cavalry, hard on the heels of Carbo's rear guard, cavalry commanded by Censorinus, and nipped those heels with satisfying regularity. These tactics irritated Censorinus, never a patient man; near the town of Sena Gallica he turned and fought, cavalry against cavalry. Pompey won; he was developing a talent for commanding horse. Into Sena Gallica the smarting Censorinus retreated with infantry and cavalry both but not for long. Pompey stormed its modest fortifications. Censorinus then did the sensible thing. He sacrificed his horse, made off through the back gate of Sena Gallica with eight legions of infantry, and headed for the Via Flaminia. By this time Carbo had learned of the unwelcome presence of the Piglet and his army in Faventia; Norbanus was now cut off from Ariminum. So Carbo marched for Faventia, leaving Carrinas to follow him with eight more legions; Censorinus, he decided, would have to fend for himself. But then came Brutus Damasippus to find Carbo as he marched, and gave him the news that Sulla had annihilated the army of Young Marius at Sacriportus. Sulla was now heading up the Via Cassia toward the border of Italian Gaul at Arretium, though all the troops he had were three legions. In that instant, Carbo changed his plans. Only one thing could be done. Norbanus would have to hold Italian Gaul unaided against Metellus Pius; Carbo and his legates must halt Sulla at Arretium, not a difficult thing to do when Sulla had but three legions.
* * *
Pompey and Crassus got the news of Sulla's victory over Young Marius at just about the same time as Carbo did, and hailed it with great jubilation. They turned westward to follow Carrinas and Censorinus, each now bringing eight legions to Carbo at Arretium on the Via Cassia. The pace was furious, the pursuit determined. And this, decided Pompey as he headed with Crassus for the Via Flaminia, was no campaign for cavalry; they were heading into the mountains. Back to the Aesis he sent his horse troopers, and resumed command of his father's veterans. Crassus, he had discovered, seemed content to follow his lead as long as what Pompey suggested added up to the right answers inside that hard round Crassus head. Again it was the presence of so many veterans made the real difference; Pompey and Crassus caught up to Censorinus on a diverticulum of the Via Flaminia between Fulginum and Spoletium, and didn't even need to fight a battle. Exhausted, hungry, and very afraid, the troops of Censorinus disintegrated. All Censorinus managed to retain were three of his eight legions, and these precious soldiers he determined must be saved. He marched them off the road and cut across country to Arretium and Carbo. The men of his other five legions had scattered so completely that none of them afterward were ever successfully amalgamated into new units. Three days later Pompey and Crassus apprehended Carrinas outside the big and well fortified town of Spoletium. This time a battle did take place, but Carrinas fared so poorly that he was forced to shut himself up inside Spoletium with three of his eight legions; three more of his legions fled to Tuder and went to earth there; and the last two disappeared, never to be found. "Oh, wonderful!" whooped Pompey to Varro. "I see how I can say bye bye to stolid old Crassus!" This he did by hinting to Crassus that he should take his three legions to Tuder and besiege it, leaving Pompey to bring his own men to bear on Spoletium. Off went Crassus to Tuder, very happy at the thought of conducting his own campaign. And Pompey sat down before Spoletium in high fettle, aware that whoever sat down before Spoletium would collect most of the glory because this was where General Carrinas himself had taken refuge. Alas, things didn't work out as Pompey had envisaged! Astute and daring, Carrinas sneaked out of Spoletium during a nocturnal thunderstorm and stole away to join Carbo with all three of his legions intact. Pompey took Carrinas's defection very personally; fascinated, Varro learned what a Pompeian temper tantrum looked like, complete with tears, gnawed knuckles, plucked tufts of hair, drumming of heels and fists on the floor, broken cups and plates, mangled furniture. But then, like the nocturnal thunderstorm so beneficial to Carrinas, Pompey's thwarted rage rolled away. "We're off to Sulla at Clusium," he announced. "Up with you, Varro! Don't dawdle so!" Shaking his head, Varro tried not to dawdle.
It was early in June when Pompey and his veterans marched into Sulla's camp on the Clanis River, there to find the commander in chief a trifle sore and battered of spirit. Things had not gone very well for him when Carbo had come down from Arretium toward Clusium, for Carbo had nearly won the battle which developed out of a chance encounter, and therefore could not be planned. Only Sulla's presence of mind in breaking off hostilities and retiring into a very strong camp had saved the day. "Not that it matters," said Sulla, looking greatly cheered. "You're here now, Pompeius, and Crassus isn't far away. Having both of you will make all the difference. Carbo is finished." "How did Metellus Pius get on?" Pompey asked, not pleased to hear Sulla mention Crassus in the same breath. "He's secured Italian Gaul. Brought Norbanus to battle outside Faventia, while Varro Lucullus he'd had to go all the way to Placentia to find asylum took on Lucius Quinctius and Publius Albinovanus near Fidentia. All went splendidly. The enemy is scattered or dead." "What about Norbanus himself?" Sulla shrugged; he never cared very much what happened to his military foes once they were beaten, and Norbanus had not been a personal enemy. "I imagine he went to Ariminum," he said, and turned away to issue instructions about Pompey's camp. Sure enough, Crassus arrived the following day from Tuder at the head of three rather surly and disgruntled legions; rumor was rife among their ranks that after Tuder fell, Crassus had found a fortune in gold and kept the lot. "Is it true?" demanded Sulla, the deep folds of his face grown deeper, his mouth set so hard its lips had disappeared. But nothing could dent that bovine composure. Crassus's mild grey eyes widened, he looked puzzled but unconcerned. "No." "You're sure?" There was nothing to be had in Tuder beyond a few old women, and I didn't fancy a one." Sulla shot him a suspicious glance, wondering if Crassus was being intentionally insolent; but if so, he couldn't tell. "You are as deep as you are devious, Marcus Crassus," he said at last. I will accord you the dispensations of your family and your standing, and elect to believe you. But take fair warning! If ever I discover that you have profited at the expense of the State out of my aims and endeavors, I will never see you again." "Fair enough," said Crassus, nodding, and ambled off. Publius Servilius Vatia had listened to this exchange, and smiled now at Sulla. "One cannot like him," he said. "There are few men this one does like," said Sulla, throwing his arm around Vatia's shoulders. "Aren't you lucky, Vatia?" "Why?" "I happen to like you. You're a good fellow never exceed your authority and never give me an argument. Whatever I ask you to do, you do." He yawned until his eyes watered. "I'm dry. A cup of wine, that's what I need!" A slender and attractive man of medium coloring, Vatia was not one of the patrician Servilii; his family, however, was more than ancient enough to pass the most rigorous of social examinations, and his mother was one of the most august Caecilii Metelli, the daughter of Metellus Macedonicus which meant he was related to everybody who mattered. Including, by marriage, Sulla. So he felt comfortable with that heavy arm across his back, and turned within Sulla's embrace to walk beside him to the command tent; Sulla had been imbibing freely that day, needed a little steadying. "What will we do with these people when Rome is mine?'' asked Sulla as Vatia helped him to a full goblet of his special wine; Vatia took his own wine from a different flagon, and made sure it was well watered. "Which people? Crassus, you mean?" "Yes, Crassus. And Pompeius Magnus." Sulla's lip curled up to show his gum. "I ask you, Vatia! Magnus! At his age!" Vatia smiled, sat on a folding chair. "Well, if he's too young, I'm too old. I should have been consul six years ago. Now, I suppose I never will be." "If I win, you'll be consul. Never doubt it. I am a bad enemy, Vatia, but a stout friend." "I know, Lucius Cornelius," said Vatia tenderly. "What do I do with them?" Sulla asked again. "With Pompeius, I can see your difficulty. I cannot imagine him settling back into inertia once the fighting is over, and how do you keep him from aspiring to offices ahead of his time?" Sulla laughed. "He's not after office! He's after military glory. And I think I will try to give it to him. He might come in quite handy." The empty cup was extended to be refilled. "And Crassus? What do I do with Crassus?" "Oh, he'll look after himself," said Vatia, pouring. "He will make money. I can understand that. When his father and his brother Lucius died, he should have inherited more than just a rich widow. The Licinius Crassus fortune was worth three hundred talents. But of course it was confiscated. Trust Cinna! He grabbed everything. And poor Crassus didn't have anything like Catulus's clout." Sulla snorted. "Poor Crassus, indeed! He stole that gold from Tuder, I know he did." "Probably," said Vatia, unruffled. "However, you can't pursue it at the moment. You need the man! And he knows you do. This is a desperate venture."
The arrival of Pompey and Crassus to swell Sulla's army was made known to Carbo immediately. To his legates he turned a calm face, and made no mention of relocating himself or his forces. He still outnumbered Sulla heavily, which meant Sulla showed no sign of breaking out of his camp to invite another battle. And while Carbo waited for events to shape themselves, tell him what he must do, news came first from Italian Gaul that Norbanus and his legates Quinctius and Albinovanus were beaten, that Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus held Italian Gaul for Sulla. The second lot of news from Italian Gaul was more depressing, if not as important. The Lucanian legate Publius Albinovanus had lured Norbanus and the rest of his high command to a conference in Ariminum, then murdered all save Norbanus himself before surrendering Ariminum to Metellus Pius in exchange for a pardon. Having expressed a wish to live in exile somewhere in the east, Norbanus had been allowed to board a ship. The only legate who escaped was Lucius Quinctius, who was in Varro Lucullus's custody when the murders happened. A tangible gloom descended upon Carbo's camp; restless men like Censorinus began to pace and fume. But still Sulla would not offer battle. In desperation, Carbo gave Censorinus something to do; he was to take eight legions to Praeneste and relieve the siege of Young Marius. Ten days after departing, Censorinus was back. It was impossible to relieve Young Marius, he said the fortifications Ofella had built were impregnable. Carbo sent a second expedition to Praeneste, but only succeeded in losing two thousand good men when Sulla ambushed them. A third force set off under Brutus Damasippus to find a road over the mountains and break into Praeneste along the snake paths behind it. That too failed; Brutus Damasippus looked, abandoned all hope, and returned to Clusium and Carbo. Even the news that the paralyzed Samnite leader Gaius Papius Mutilus had assembled forty thousand men in Aesernia and was going to send them to relieve Praeneste had no power now to lift Carbo's spirits; his depression deepened every day. Nor did his attitude of mind improve when Mutilus sent him a letter saying his force would be seventy thousand, not forty thousand, as Lucania and Marcus Lamponius were sending him twenty thousand men, and Capua and Tiberius Gutta another ten thousand. There was only one man Carbo really trusted, old Marcus Junius Brutus, his proquaestor. And so to Old Brutus he went as June turned into Quinctilis, and still no decision had come to him capable of easing his mind. "If Albinovanus would stoop to murdering men he'd laughed and eaten with for months, how can I possibly be sure of any of my own legates?'' he asked. They were strolling down the three mile length of the Via Principalis, one of the two main avenues within the camp, and wide enough to ensure their conversation was private. Blinking slowly in the sunlight, the old man with the blued lips made no quick, reassuring answer; instead, he turned the question over in his mind, and when he did reply, said very soberly, "I do not think you can be sure, Gnaeus Papirius." Carbo's breath hissed between his teeth; he trembled. "Ye gods, Marcus, what am I to do?" "For the moment, nothing. But I think you must abandon this sad business before murder becomes a desirable alternative to one or more of your legates." Abandon ?'' "Yes, abandon," said Old Brutus steadily. "They wouldn't let me leave!" Carbo cried, shaking now. "Probably not. But they don't need to know. I'll start making our preparations, while you look as if the only thing worrying you is the fate of the Samnite army." Old Brutus put his hand on Carbo's arm, patted it. "Don't despair. All will be well in the end." By the middle of Quinctilis, Old Brutus had finished his preparations. Very quietly in the middle of the night he and Carbo stole away without baggage or attendants save for a mule loaded down with gold ingots innocently sheathed in a layer of lead, and a large purse of denarii for traveling expenses. Looking like a tired pair of merchants, they made their way to the Etrurian coast at Telamon, and there took ship for Africa. No one molested them, no one was the slightest bit interested in the laboring mule or in what it had in its panniers. Fortune, thought Carbo as the ship slipped anchor, was favoring him!