But when Sulla introduced his legislation to cancel the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, approval was not so general or so strong. Over the centuries of the Republic, the tribunes of the plebs had gradually arrogated more and more legislative business unto themselves, and turned that Assembly which contained only plebeians into the most powerful of the lawmaking bodies. Often the main objective of the tribunes of the plebs had been to handicap the largely unwritten powers of the Senate, and to render the consuls less essential. "That," said Sulla in tones of great satisfaction, "is now all finished with. In future, tribunes of the plebs will retain little except their right to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi.'' A huge stir; the House murmured and moved restlessly, then frowned and looked bleak. "I will see the Senate supreme!" Sulla thundered. "To do that, I must render the tribunate of the plebs impotent and I will! Under my new laws, no man who has been a tribune of the plebs will be able to hold any magistracy after it he will not be able to become aedile or praetor or consul or censor! Nor will he be able to hold office as a tribune of the plebs for a second time until ten years have elapsed. He will be able to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi only in its original way, by rescuing an individual member of the Plebs from the clutches of a single magistrate. No tribune of the plebs will be able to call a law threatening the Plebs as a whole a part of that right! Or call a duly convened court a part of that right." Sulla's eyes rested thoughtfully upon, oddly enough, two men who could not hold the office of tribune of the plebs because they were patricians Catilina and Lepidus. "The right of the tribune of the plebs to veto," he went on, "will be severely curtailed. He will not be able to veto senatorial decrees, laws carrying senatorial approval, the right of the Senate to appoint provincial governors or military commanders, nor the right of the Senate to deal with foreign affairs. No tribune of the plebs will be allowed to promulgate a law in the Plebeian Assembly unless it has been authorized first by the Senate in passing a senatus consultum. He will no longer have the power to summon meetings of the Senate." There were many glum faces, quite a few angry ones; Sulla paused rather stagily to see if anyone was going to protest audibly. But no one did. He cleared his throat. "What do you have to say, Quintus Hortensius?" Hortensius swallowed. "I concur, Lucius Cornelius." "Does anyone not concur?" Silence. "Good!" said Sulla brightly. "Then this lex Cornelia will go into law forthwith!" "It's horrific," said Lepidus to Gaius Cotta afterward. "I couldn't agree more." "Then why," demanded Catulus, "did we lie down under it so tamely? Why did we let him get away with it? How can the Republic be a genuine Republic without an active and properly constituted tribunate of the plebs?" "Why," asked Hortensius fiercely, taking this as a direct criticism of his own cowardice, "did you not speak out, then?" "Because," said Catulus frankly, "I like my head right where it is firmly attached to my shoulders." "And that about sums it up," said Lepidus. "I can see," said Metellus Pius, joining the group, "the logic behind it how clever he's been! A lesser man would simply have abolished the office, but not he! He hasn't tampered with the ius auxilii ferendi. What he's done is to pare away the powers added on in later times. So he can successfully argue that he's working well within the framework of the mos maiorum and that has been his theme in everything. Mind you, I don't think this can possibly work. The tribunate of the plebs matters too much to too many." "It will last as long as he lives," said Cotta grimly. Upon which note, the party broke up. No one was very happy but on the other hand, nor did anyone really want to pour his secret thoughts and feelings into another man's ear. Too dangerous! Which just went to show, thought Metellus Pius as he walked home alone, that Sulla's climate of terror was working.
By the time Apollo's games came round early in Quinctilis, these first laws had been joined by two more: a lex Cornelia sumptuaria and a lex Cornelia frumentaria. The sumptuary law was extremely strict, even going so far as to fix a ceiling of thirty sesterces per head on ordinary meals, and three hundred per head on banquets. Luxuries like perfumes, foreign wines, spices and jewelry were heavily taxed; the cost of funerals and tombs was limited; and Tyrian purple carried an enormous duty. The grain law was reactionary in the extreme. It abolished the sale of cheap grain by the State, though Sulla was far too shrewd to forbid the State to sell grain; his law just said that the State could not undercut the private grain merchants. A heavy program, by no means ended. Perhaps because the onerous task of preparing all this legislation had been going on without let since just after Sulla's triumph, the Dictator decided on the spur of the moment to take a few days off and attend the ludi Apollinares, celebrated during early Quinctilis. The events held in the Circus Maximus were not what he wanted to see, of course; he wanted to go to the plays, of which a good ten or eleven had been scheduled in the temporary wooden theater erected within the space of the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius. Comedy reigned. Plautus, Terence and Naevius were well represented, but there were several mimes listed too, and these were always Sulla's favorites. True comedy contained written lines which could not be deviated from, but the mime was just a stock situation upon which the cast and its director extrapolated their own lines, and played without masks. Perhaps it was his interlude with Aurelia's delegation that led to his wholehearted participation in the plays put on during Apollo's games; or perhaps the fact that one of his ancestors had founded Apollo's games made him decide he must show himself; or was it a need to set eyes upon the actor Metrobius? Thirty years! Could it really be that long? Metrobius had been a lad, Sulla celebrating his thirtieth birthday in bitter frustration. Since his entry into the Senate three years afterward, their meetings had been few and far apart, and filled with torment. Sulla's decision to deny that part of himself had been considered, obdurate, firmly based in logic. Those men in public life who admitted to or succumbed to a preference for their own sex were damned for it. No law compelled them to retire, though there were several laws on the tablets, including a lex Scantinia which demanded a death penalty; mostly they were not used, for there was a certain tolerance in fair men. The reality was more subtle, need not even retard the public career if the man was able. It consisted in amusement, contempt, liberal applications of wit and pun and sarcasm, and it diminished a man's dignitas drastically. Some men who ought to be his peers would always regard him as their inferior because of it. And that to Sulla made it something he couldn't have, no matter how badly he wanted it and he wanted it badly. His hopes were pinned on his eventual retirement after which, he told himself, he didn't care one iota what men said of him. He would come into his own, he would grab eagerly at a personal reward. His accomplishments at his retirement would be tangible and formidable, his dignitas accumulated over the length of his public career too cemented to be diminished by an old man's last sexual fling. But oh, he longed for Metrobius! Who probably wouldn't be interested in an old and ugly man. That too had contributed to his decision to go to the plays. Better to find out now than when the time came to retire. Better to feast his worsening eyes upon this beloved object while he could still see. There were several companies taking part in the festival, including the one now led by Metrobius, who had changed from acting in tragedies to formal comedy some ten years ago. His group was not scheduled to perform until the third day, but Sulla was there on the first and second days, devoted to mime, and enjoyed himself enormously. Dalmatica came with him, though she couldn't sit with the men, as she could at the Circus; a rigid hierarchy had been established in the theater, plays not being quite approved of in Roman society. Women, it was felt, might be corrupted if they sat with men to watch so much immorality and nudity. The two front rows of seating in the semicircular, tiered cavea were reserved for members of the Senate, and the fourteen rows just behind had used to be reserved for the knights of the Public Horse. This privilege had been conferred on the senior knights by Gaius Gracchus. And it had afforded Sulla intense pleasure to take it away. Thus all knights were now forced to battle for seats among their inferiors on a first come, first served basis. The few women who attended sat right up the top at the back of the cavea; they could hear well enough, but had difficulty in seeing anything titillating on the stage. In formal comedy (such as Metrobius played), no women were included in the fully masked cast, but in the mimes from Atella female roles were played by women, and nobody was masked; quite often, nobody was clothed. The third day's play was by Plautus, and a favorite: The Vainglorious Soldier. The starring role was taken by Metrobius how foolish! All Sulla could see of his face was the grotesque covering with its gaping mouth curving up in a ridiculous smile, though the hands were there, and the neat, muscular body looked well in its Greek armor. Of course at the end the cast took their bows with masks off; Sulla was finally able to see what the years had done to Metrobius. Very little, though the crisp black hair was exquisitely sprinkled with white, and there was a deepening fissure on either side of the straight, high bridged Greek nose. He couldn't weep, not there in the very middle of the front row upon his cushioned section of the wooden seat. But he wanted to, had to fight not to. The face was too far away, separated from him by the vacant half moon of the orchestra, and he couldn't see the eyes. Oh, he could distinguish two black pools, but not what they held. Not even whether they rested on him, or on some current lover three rows behind. Mamercus was with Sulla; he turned to his son in law and said, voice a little constricted, "Ask the man who played the miles gloriosus to come down, would you? I have a feeling I used to know him, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I'd like to congratulate him in person." The audience was vacating the temporary wooden structure, and the women present were wending their way toward their spouses if they were respectable women, or trolling for business if they were prostitutes. Carefully escorted by Chrysogonus and very carefully avoided by those in the audience who recognized them Dalmatica and Cornelia Sulla joined the Dictator and Mamercus just as Metrobius, still in armor, finally arrived before Sulla. "You did very well, actor," said the Dictator. Metrobius smiled to reveal that he still had perfect teeth. "I was delighted to see you in the audience, Lucius Cornelius." "You were a client of mine once, am I right?" "Indeed I was. You released me from my cliental obligations just before you went to the war against Mithridates," said the actor, eyes giving nothing away. "Yes, I remember that. You warned me of the charges one Censorinus would try to bring against me. Just before my son died." The wrecked face squeezed up, straightened with an effort. "Before I was consul, it was." "A happy chance that I could warn you," said Metrobius. "A lucky one for me." "You were always one of Fortune's favorites." The theater was just about empty; weary of these continuing platitudes, Sulla swung to face the women and Mamercus. "Go home," he said abruptly. "I wish to talk with my old client for a while." Dalmatica (who had not been looking well of recent days) seemed fascinated with the Greek thespian, and stood with her eyes fixed on his face. Then Chrysogonus intruded himself into her reverie; she started, turned away to follow the pair of gigantic German slaves whose duty it was to clear a path for the Dictator's wife wherever she went. Sulla and Metrobius were left alone to follow too far behind for anyone to think they belonged to the same party. Under normal circumstances the Dictator would have been approached by clients and petitioners, but such was his luck that no one did approach. "Just this stroll," Sulla said. "I ask nothing more." "Ask what you will," said Metrobius. Sulla stopped. "Stand here in front of me, Metrobius, and see what time and illness have done. The position hasn't changed. But even if it had, I am no use to you or to anyone else except these poor silly women who persist in oh, who knows? Pitying me, in all probability. I don't think it can be love." "Of course it's love!" He was close now, close enough for Sulla to see that the eyes still held love, still looked at him with tenderness. And with a dynamic kind of interest unspoiled by disgust or revulsion. A softer, more personal version of the way Aurelia had looked at him in Teanum Sidicinum. "Sulla, those of us who have once fallen under your spell can never be free of you! Women or men, there is no difference. You are unique. After you, all others pale. It's not a matter of virtue or goodness." Metrobius smiled. "You have neither! Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness. I have forgotten all my Plato, so I am not sure what he and Socrates have to say about it." Out of the corner of his eye Sulla noticed Dalmatica turn back to stare in his direction, but what her face displayed he could not tell at the distance. Then she went round the corner, and was gone. "Does what you say mean," asked the Dictator, "that if I am allowed to put down this present burden, you would consider living with me until I die? My time grows short, but I hope at least some of it will be mine alone to spend without consideration of Rome. If you would go with me into retirement, I promise you would not suffer in any way least of all financially." A laugh, a shake of the curly dark head. "Oh, Sulla! How can you buy what you have owned for thirty years?" The tears welled, were blinked away. "Then when I retire, you will come with me?" "I will." "When the time comes I'll send for you." "Tomorrow? Next year?" "Not for a long while. Perhaps two years. You'll wait?" "I'll wait." Sulla heaved a sigh of almost perfect happiness: too short, too short! For he remembered that each time he had seen Metrobius on those last occasions, someone he loved had died. Julilla. His son. Who would it be this time? But, he thought, I do not care. Because Metrobius matters more. Except for my son, and he is gone. Only let it be Cornelia Sulla. Or the twins. Let it not be Dalmatica! He nodded curtly to Metrobius as if this had been the most trivial of encounters, and walked away. Metrobius stood watching his retreating back, filled with happiness. It was true then what the little local gods of his half remembered home in Arcadia said: if a man wanted something badly enough, he would get it in the end. And the dearer the price, the greater the reward. Only when Sulla had disappeared did he turn back toward the dressing rooms. Sulla walked slowly, completely alone; that in itself was a seldom experienced luxury. How could he find the strength to wait for Metrobius? Not a boy any longer, but always his boy. He could hear voices in the distance and slowed even more, unwilling that anyone should see his face just yet. For though his heart hoped and acknowledged a premonitory joy, there was anger in him because of this joyless task he still must finish, and fear in him that it might be Dalmatica to die. The two voices were louder now, and one of them floated high above the other. He knew it well. Odd, how distinctive a man's voice was! No two alike, once one got past superficial similarities of pitch and accent. This speaker could be no one save Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was his stepdaughter Aemilia Scaura's husband. He really is the outside of enough,'' said Glabrio now, in tones both forceful and aristocratically languid. "Thirteen thousand talents his proscriptions have put into the Treasury, and he boasts of it! The truth is, he ought to hang his head in shame! The sum should have been ten times as much! Properties worth millions knocked down for a few thousands, his own wife the proud owner of fifty millions in big estates bought for fifty thousands it's a disgrace!" "I hear you've profited yourself, Glabrio," said another familiar voice that belonging to Catilina. "A trifle only, and not more than my due. Frightful old villain! How dared he have the audacity to say the proscriptions would end on the Kalends of last month the names are still going up on the rostra every time one of his minions or his relatives covets another luscious slice of Campania or the seashore! Did you notice him remain behind to have a chat to the fellow played the vainglorious soldier? He can't resist the stage or the riffraff who strut across it! That goes back to his youth, of course, when he was no better than the most vulgar strumpet who ever hawked her fork outside Venus Erucina's! I suppose he's worth a laugh or two among the pansies when they get together to see who is on which end today. Have you ever seen a daisy chain of pansies? Sulla's seen plenty!" "Be careful what you say, Glabrio," said Catilina, sounding a little uneasy. "You too could wind up proscribed." But Glabrio laughed heartily. "Not I!" he cried gleefully. "I'm part of the family, I'm Dalmatica's son in law! Even Sulla can't proscribe a member of the family, you know." The voices faded as the two men moved off, but Sulla stayed where he was, just around the corner. All movement had stilled in him, and the ice cold eyes glowed eerily. So that was what they said, was it? After all these years too... Of course Glabrio was privy to much Rome was not but clearly Rome would soon be privy to everything Glabrio imagined or knew. How much was idle gossip, how much the opportunity to read documents and papers filed away year by year? Sulla was in the throes of collecting all his written evidence against the day of his retirement, for he intended to author his memoirs, as Catulus Caesar had done ten years earlier. So there were plenty of bits and pieces lying around, it wouldn't have taken any great talent to unearth them. Glabrio! Why hadn't he thought of Glabrio, always in and out of his house? Not every member of that privileged visiting circle was a Cornelia Sulla or a Mamercus! Glabrio! And who else? The ashes of his anger at having to continue to hold Metrobius at arm's length tumbled onto a fresh conflagration within Sulla's mind and fueled it sourly, relentlessly. So, he thought as he picked up his feet and began to walk again, I cannot proscribe a member of my own family, eh? I cannot, he's right about that. Yet need it be proscription? Might there not be a better way? Round the corner he came, straight into the arms of Pompey. Both men stepped back, reeling a little. "What, Magnus, on your own?" asked Sulla. "Sometimes," said Pompey, falling into step alongside the Dictator, "it's a pleasure to be alone." "I heartily concur. But don't tell me you tire of Varro!" Too much Varro can be a pain in the podex, especially when he starts prating on about Cato the Censor and the old ways and when money had real value. Though I'd rather hear Varro on those topics than on invisible fingers of power," grinned Pompey. "That's right, I'd forgotten he was a friend of poor old Appius Claudius's," said Sulla, rather glad that if in his present mood he had to collide with anyone, it had turned out to be Pompey. "I wonder why we all think of Appius Claudius as so old?" Pompey chuckled. "Because he was born old! But you are out of touch, Sulla! Appius Claudius is quite eclipsed these days. There's a new man in town name of Publius Nigidius Figulus. A proper sophist. Or do I mean Pythagorean?" He shrugged casually. No use, I never can keep one sort of philosopher distinct from all the others." "Publius Nigidius Figulus! It's an old and hallowed name, but I hadn't heard of the genuine article raising his head in Rome. Is he a bucolic gentleman, perhaps?" "Not a hayseed, if that's what you're asking. More a gourd half full of peas rattle, rattle ... He's a great expert on Etruscan soothsaying, from lightning to livers. Knows more lobes in that organ than I know figures of speech." "How many figures of speech do you know, Magnus?" asked Sulla, highly diverted. "Two, I think. Or is it three?" "Name them." "Color and description "Two." "Two." They walked on in silence for a moment, both smiling, but at different thoughts entirely. "So how does it feel to be a knight when they don't have special seats at the theater anymore?" demanded Sulla. "I'm not complaining," said Pompey blithely. "I never go to the theater." "Oh. Where have you been today, then?" "Out to the Via Recta. Just for a good walk, you know. I get very hamstrung in Rome. Don't like the place." On your own here?'' "More or less. Left the wife behind in Picenum." He pulled a sour face. "Not to your liking, Magnus?" "Oh, she'll do until something better comes along. Adores me! Just not good enough, is all." "Well, well! It's an aedilician family." "I come from a consular family. So ought my wife." "Then divorce her and find a consular wife." "Hate making small talk, to women or their fathers." At that precise moment a blinding inspiration came to Sulla, who stopped dead in the middle of the lane leading from the Velabrum to the Vicus Tuscus just below the Palatine. Ye gods!" he gasped. "Ye gods!" Pompey stopped too. "Yes?" he asked politely. "My dear young knight, I have had a brilliant idea!" "That's nice." "Oh, stop mouthing platitudes! I'm thinking!" Pompey obediently said nothing further, while Sulla's lips worked in and out upon his toothless gums like a swimming jellyfish. Then out came Sulla's hand, fixed itself on Pompey's arm. "Magnus," come and see me tomorrow morning at the third hour," he said, gave a gleeful skip, and departed at a run. Pompey remained where he was, brow furrowed. Then he too began to walk, not toward the Palatine but toward the Forum; his house was on the Carinae. Home went Sulla as if pursued by the Furies; here was a task he was really going to enjoy performing! "Chrysogonus, Chrysogonus!" he bellowed in the doorway as his toga fell behind him like a collapsing tent. In came the steward, looking anxious something he did quite often of late, had Sulla only noticed. Which he didn't. "Chrysogonus, take a litter and go to Glabrio's house. I want Aemilia Scaura here at once." "Lucius Cornelius, you came home without your lictors!" "Oh, I dismissed them before the play began sometimes they're a wretched nuisance," said the Dictator impenitently. "Now go and pick up my stepdaughter!" "Aemilia? What do you want her for?" asked Dalmatica as she came into the room. "You'll find out," said Sulla, grinning. His wife paused, stared at him searchingly. "You know, Lucius Cornelius, ever since your interview with Aurelia and her delegation, you've been different." "In what way?" This she found difficult to answer, perhaps because she was reluctant to provoke displeasure in him, but finally she said, "In your mood, I think." "For better or for worse, Dalmatica?" "Oh, better. You're happy." "I am that," he said in a happy voice. "I had lost sight of a private future, but she gave it back to me. Oh, what a time I'm going to have after I retire!" "The actor fellow today Metrobius. He's a friend." Something in her eyes gave him pause; his carefree feeling vanished immediately, and an image of Julilla lying with his sword in her belly swam into his mind, actually blotted Dalmatica's face from his gaze. Not another wife who wouldn't share him, surely! How did she know? What could she know? Did they smell it? "I've known Metrobius since he was a boy," he said curtly, his tone not inviting her to enquire further. "Then why did you pretend you didn't know him before he came down from the stage?" she asked, frowning. "He was wearing a mask until the end of the play!" Sulla snapped. "It's been a good many years, I wasn't sure." Fatal! She had maneuvered him to the defensive, and he didn't like it. "Yes, of course," she said slowly. "Yes, of course." "Go away, Dalmatica, do! I've frittered away too much of my time since the games began, I have work waiting." She turned to go, looking less perturbed. "One more thing," he said to her back. "Yes?" "I shall need you when your daughter arrives, so don't go out or otherwise make yourself unavailable." How peculiar he was of late! she thought, walking through the vast atrium toward the peristyle garden and her own suite of rooms. Touchy, happy, labile. Up one moment, down the next. As if he had made some decision he couldn't implement at once, he who loathed procrastination. And that fine looking actor ... What sort of place did he occupy in Sulla's scheme of things? He mattered; though how, she didn't know. Had there been even a superficial resemblance, she would have concluded that he was Sulla's son such were the emotions she had sensed in her husband, whom she knew by now very well. Thus it was that when Chrysogonus came to inform her that Aemilia Scaura had arrived, Dalmatica had not even begun to think further about why Sulla had summoned the girl. Aemilia Scaura was in her fourth month of pregnancy, and had developed the sheen of skin and clearness of eye which some women did no bouts of sickness here! A pity perhaps that she had taken after her father, and in consequence was short of stature and a little dumpy of figure, but there were saving echoes of her mother in her face, and she had inherited Scaurus's beautiful, vividly green eyes. Not an intelligent girl, she had never managed to reconcile herself to her mother's marriage to Sulla, whom she both feared and disliked. It had been bad enough during the early years, when her brief glimpses of him had shown someone at least attractive enough to make her mother's passion for him understandable; but after his illness had so changed him for the worse she couldn't even begin to see why her mother apparently felt no less passionately about him. How could any woman continue to love such an ugly, horrible old man? She remembered her own father, of course, and he too had been old and ugly. But not with Sulla's internal rot; though she had neither the perception nor the wit thus to describe it. Now here she was summoned into his presence, and with no more notice than to leave a hasty message for Glabrio in her wake. Her stepfather greeted her with pats of her hand and a solicitous settling on a comfortable chair actions which set her teeth on edge and made her fear many things. Just what was he up to? He was jam full of glee and as pregnant with mischief as she was with child. When her mother came in the whole business of hand pats and solicitous settlings began all over again, until, it seemed to the girl, he had arranged some sort of mood and anticipation in them that would make whatever he intended to do more enjoyable to him. For this was not unimportant. This was going to matter. "And how's the little Glabrio on the way?" he asked his stepdaughter, nicely enough. "Very well, Lucius Cornelius." "When is the momentous event?" "Near the end of the year, Lucius Cornelius." "Hmmm! Awkward! That's still a good way off." "Yes, Lucius Cornelius, it is still a good way off." He sat down and drummed his fingers upon the solid oaken back of his chair, lips pursed, looking into the distance. Then the eyes which frightened her so much became fixed upon her; Aemilia Scaura shivered. "Are you happy with Glabrio?" he asked suddenly. She jumped. "Yes, Lucius Cornelius." "The truth, girl! I want the truth!" "I am happy, Lucius Cornelius, I am truly happy!" "Would you have picked somebody else had you been able?" A blush welled up beneath her skin, her gaze dropped. "I had formed no other attachment, Lucius Cornelius, if that's what you mean. Manius Acilius was acceptable to me." "Is he still acceptable?" "Yes, yes!" Her voice held an edge of desperation. "Why do you keep asking? I am happy! I am happy!" "That's a pity," said Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Dalmatica sat up straight. "Husband, what is all this?" she demanded. "What are you getting at with these questions? I am indicating, wife, that I am not pleased at the union between your daughter and Manius Acilius Glabrio. He deems it safe to criticize me because he is a member of my family," said Sulla, his anger showing. "A sign, of course, that I cannot possibly permit him to continue being a member of my family. I am divorcing him from your daughter. Immediately." Both women gasped; Aemilia Scaura's eyes filled with tears. "Lucius Cornelius, I am expecting his child! I cannot divorce him!" she cried. "You can, you know," the Dictator said in conversational tones. "You can do anything I tell you to do. And I am telling you that you will divorce Glabrio at once." He clapped his hands to summon the secretary called Flosculus, who entered with a paper in his hand. Sulla took it, nodded dismissal. "Come over here, girl. Sign it." Aemilia Scaura sprang to her feet. "No!" Dalmatica also rose. "Sulla, you are unjust!" she said, lips thin. "My daughter doesn't want to divorce her husband." The monster showed. "It is absolutely immaterial to me what your daughter wants," he said. "Over here, girl! And sign." "No! I won't, I won't!" He was out of his chair so quickly neither woman actually saw him move. The fingers of his right hand locked in a vise around Aemilia Scaura's mouth and literally dragged her to her feet, squealing in pain, weeping frantically. "Stop, stop!" shouted Dalmatica, struggling to prise those fingers away. "Please, I beg of you! Leave her be! She's with child, you can't hurt her!" His fingers squeezed harder and harder. "Sign," he said. She couldn't answer, and her mother had passed beyond speech. "Sign," said Sulla again, softly. "Sign or I'll kill you, girl, with as little concern as I felt when I killed Carbo's legates. What do I care that you're stuffed full with Glabrio's brat? It would suit me if you lost it! Sign the bill of divorcement, Aemilia, or I'll lop off your breasts and carve the womb right out of you!" She signed, still screaming. Then Sulla threw her away in contempt. "There, that's better," he said, wiping her saliva from his hand. "Don't ever make me angry again, Aemilia. It is not wise. Now go." Dalmatica gathered the girl against her, and the look of loathing she gave Sulla was without precedent, a genuine first. He saw it, but seemed indifferent, turned his back upon them. In her own rooms Dalmatica found herself with an hysterical girl on her hands and a huge burden of anger to deal with. Both took some time to calm. "I have heard he could be like that, but I've never seen it for myself," she said when she was able. "Oh, Aemilia, I'm so sorry! I'll try to get him to change his mind as soon as I can face him without wanting to tear his eyes out of his head," But the girl, not besotted, chopped the air with her hand. "No! No, Mother, no. You'd only make things worse." "What could Glabrio have done to provoke this?" "Said something he ought not have. He doesn't like Sulla, I know that. He keeps implying to me that Sulla likes men in ways men shouldn't." Dalmatica went white. "But that's nonsense! Oh, Aemilia, how could Glabrio be so foolish? You know what men are like! If they do not deserve that slur, they can behave like madmen!" "I'm not so sure it is undeserved," said Aemilia Scaura as she held a cold wet towel to her face, where the marks of her stepfather's fingers were slowly changing from red purple to purple black. "I've always thought there was woman in him." "My dear girl, I've been married to Lucius Cornelius for almost nine years," said Dalmatica, who seemed to be shrinking in size, "and I can attest that it is an infamy." "All right, all right, have it your own way! I don't care what he is! I just hate him, the vile beast!" "I'll try when I'm cooler, I promise." "Save yourself more of his displeasure, Mother. He won't change his mind," said Aemilia Scaura. "It's my baby I'm worried about, it's my baby matters to me." Dalmatica stared at her daughter painfully. "I can say the same thing." The cold wet towel fell into Aemilia Scaura's lap. "Mother! You're pregnant too?" "Yes. I haven't known for very long, but I'm sure." "What will you do? Does he know?" "He doesn't know. And I'll do nothing that might provoke him to divorce me." "You've heard the tale of Aelia." "Who hasn't?" "Oh, Mother, that changes everything! I'll behave, I'll behave! He mustn't be given any excuse to divorce you!" "Then we must hope," said Dalmatica wearily, "that he deals more kindly with your husband than he has with you.' "He'll deal more harshly." "Not necessarily," said the wife who knew Sulla. "You were first to hand. Very often his first victim satisfies him. By the time Glabrio arrives to find out what's the matter, he may be calm enough to be merciful." If he wasn't calm enough to be merciful, Sulla was at least drained of the worst of his anger at Glabrio's indiscreet words. And Glabrio was perceptive enough to see that blustering would only make his situation more perilous. "There is no need for this, Lucius Cornelius," he said. "If I have offended you, I will strive mightily to remove the cause of that offense. I wouldn't put my wife's position in jeopardy, I assure you." "Oh, your ex wife is in no jeopardy," said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. "Aemilia Scaura who is a member of my family! is quite safe. But she cannot possibly stay married to a man who criticizes her stepfather and spreads stories about him that are manifest lies." Glabrio wet his lips. "My tongue ran away with me." "It runs away with you very often, I hear. That is your privilege, of course. But in future you'll let it without the insulation of claiming to be a member of my family. You'll let it and take your chances, just like everyone else. I haven't proscribed a senator since my first list. But there's nothing to stop my doing so. I honored you by appointing you to the Senate ahead of your thirtieth birthday, as I have a great many other young men of high family and illustrious forebears. Well, for the moment I will leave your name among the senators and will not attach it to the rostra. Whether in future I continue to be so clement depends on you, Glabrio. Your child is growing in the belly of my children's half sister, and that is the only protection you have. When it is born, I will send it to you. Now please go." Glabrio went without another word. Nor did he inform any of his intimates of the circumstances behind his precipitate divorce. Nor the reasons why he felt it expedient to leave Rome for his country estates. His marriage to Aemilia Scaura had not mattered to him in an emotional way; she satisfied him, that was all. Birth, dowry, everything as it ought to be. With the years affection might have grown between them. It never would now, so much was sure. A small twinge of grief passed through him from time to time when he thought of her, mostly because his child would never know its mother. What happened next did nothing to help heal the breach between Sulla and Dalmatica; Pompey came to see the Dictator the following morning, as directed. "I have a wife for you, Magnus," said Sulla without delay. There was a quality of sleepy lion about Pompey that stood him in good stead when things happened he wished to think about before acting or speaking. So he took time to ingest this piece of information, face open rather than guarded; but what was going on inside his mind he did not betray. Rather, thought Sulla, watching him closely, he just rolled over in some metaphorical sun to warm his other side, and licked his chops to remove a forgotten morsel from his whiskers. Languid but dangerous. Yes, best to tie him to the family he was no Glabrio. Finally, "How considerate of you, Dictator!" said Pompey. "Who might she be?" This unconscious grammatical betrayal of his Picentine origins grated, but Sulla did not let it show. He said, "My stepdaughter, Aemilia Scaura. Patrician. Of a family you couldn't better if you looked for a millennium. A dowry of two hundred talents. And proven to be fertile. She's pregnant to Glabrio. They were divorced yesterday. I realize, it's a bit inconvenient for you to acquire a wife who is already expecting another man's child, but the begetting was virtuous. She's a good girl." That Pompey was not put off or put out by this news was manifest; he beamed foolishly. "Lucius Cornelius, dear Lucius Cornelius! I am delighted!" "Good!" said Sulla briskly. "May I see her? I don't think I ever have!" A faint grin came and went across the Dictator's face as he thought of the bruises about Aemilia Scaura's mouth; he shook his head. "Give it two or three market intervals, Magnus, then come back and I'll marry you to her. In the meantime I'll make sure every sestertius of her dowry is returned, and keep her here with me." "Wonderful!" cried Pompey, transported. "Does she know?'' "Not yet, but it will please her very much. She's been secretly in love with you ever since she saw you triumph," lied Sulla blandly. That shot penetrated the lion's hide! Pompey almost burst with gratification. "Oh, glorious!" he said, and departed looking like a very well fed feline indeed. Which left Sulla to break the news to his wife and her daughter. A chore he found himself not averse to doing. Dalmatica had been looking at him very differently since this business had blown up out of a tranquillity almost nine years old, and he disliked her disliking him; as a result, he needed to hurt her. The two women were together in Dalmatica's sitting room, and froze when Sulla walked in on them unannounced. His first action was to study Aemilia Scaura' s face, which was badly bruised and swollen below her nose. Only then did he look at Dalmatica. No anger or revulsion emanated from her this morning, though her dislike of him was there in her eyes, rather cold. She seemed, he thought, ill. Then reflected that women often took refuge in genuine illnesses when their emotions were out of sorts. "Good news!" he said jovially. To which they gave him no reply. "I have a new husband for you, Aemilia." Shocked, she looked up and at him with tear reddened, dull eyes. "Who?" she asked faintly. "Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus." "Oh, Sulla, really!" snapped Dalmatica. "I refuse to believe you mean it! Marry Scaurus's daughter to that Picentine oaf? My daughter, of Caecilius Metellus blood? I will not consent!" "You have no say in the matter." "Then I wish Scaurus were alive! He'd have plenty to say!" Sulla laughed. "Yes, he would, wouldn't he? Not that it would make any difference in the end. I need to tie Magnus to me with a stronger bond than gratitude he doesn't have a grateful bone in his body. And you, stepdaughter, are the only female of the family available at the moment." The grey shade in Dalmatica's skin deepened. "Please don't do this, Lucius Cornelius! Please!" "I'm carrying Glabrio's baby," whispered Aemilia Scaura. "Surely Pompeius wouldn't want me?" "Who, Magnus? Magnus wouldn't care if you'd had sixteen husbands and had sixteen children in your nursery," said Sulla. "He knows a bargain when he sees one, and you're a bargain for him at any price. I give you twenty days to heal your face, then you'll marry him. After the child is born, I'll send it to Glabrio." The weeping broke out afresh. "Please, Lucius Cornelius, don't do that to me! Let me keep my baby!" "You can have more with Magnus. Now stop behaving like a schoolgirl and face facts!" Sulla's gaze went to Dalmatica. "That goes for you as well, wife." He walked out, leaving Dalmatica to do what she could to comfort her daughter. Two days later, Pompey informed him by letter that he had divorced his wife, and would like a firm wedding date. "I plan to be out of town until the Nones of Sextilis," said Sulla in his answer, "so I think two days after the Nones of Sextilis seems propitious. You may present yourself in my house at that time, not before."
Hercules Invictus was the god of the triumphing imperator and held sway over the Forum Boarium, in which lay the various meat markets, and which formed the large open space in front of the starting post end of the Circus Maximus. There he had his Great Altar, his temple, and there too his statue, naked save on the day a general held his victory parade, when it was dressed in triumphal robes. Other temples to other aspects of Hercules also dotted the area, for he was the patron god of olives, of merchant plutocrats, and of commercial voyages personally placed under his protection. On the feast day of Hercules Invictus, announced Sulla in a citywide proclamation, he would dedicate one tenth of his private fortune to the god, as thanks for the god's favor in all his martial endeavors. A huge stir of anticipatory pleasure went through the populace, as Hercules Invictus had no temple funds, so could not keep the moneys donated to him; they were spent in his and the triumphing general's name on providing a public feast for all free men in Rome. On the day before the Ides of Sextilis this being the god's feast day five thousand tables of food would be laid out, each table catering for more than a hundred hungry citizens (which was not to say that there were half a million free males in Rome what it did say was that the donor of the feast understood that it was hard to exclude spry grannies, determined wives and cheeky children). A list of the location of these five thousand tables was appended to the proclamation; a formidable exercise in logistics, such an occasion was very carefully planned and executed so that the participants by and large remained in their own districts, did not clog the streets or overflow into rival regions and thereby cause fights, public disturbances, crime waves and riots. The event set in train, Sulla left for his villa at Misenum with his wife, his daughter, his children, his grandchildren, his stepdaughter, and Mamercus. Dalmatica had avoided him ever since the dissolution of Aemilia Scaura's marriage to Glabrio, but when he did see her in passing, he had noticed that she looked ill. A holiday beside the sea was clearly called for. This entourage was augmented by the consul Decula, who drafted all Sulla's laws for him, and by the ubiquitous Chrysogonus. It was therefore some days after they had settled into seaside living before he found the leisure to spend a little time with his wife, still tending to avoid him. "There's no point in holding things like Aemilia against me," he said in reasonable but unapologetic tones. "I will always do what I have to do. You should know that by now, Dalmatica." They were sitting in a secluded corner of the loggia overlooking the water, cooled by a gentle zephyr wind and shaded by a judiciously planted row of cypresses. Though the light was not harsh, it revealed that several days of healthier air had not served to improve Dalmatica's ailment, whatever it might be; she looked drawn and grey, much older than her thirty seven years. "I do know it," she said in answer to this overture of peace, but not with equanimity. "I wish I could accept it! But when my own children are involved, it's different." "Glabrio had to go," he said, "and there was only one way to do that sever him from my family. Aemilia is young. She will get over the blow. Pompeius is not such a bad fellow." "He is beneath her." I agree. Nonetheless, I need to bind him to me. Marriage between him and Aemilia also drives home to Glabrio that he dare not continue to speak out against me, when I have the power to give Scaurus's daughter to the likes of a Pompeius from Picenum." He frowned. "Leave it be, Dalmatica! You don't have the strength to withstand me." "I know that," she said, low voiced. "You're not well, and I'm beginning to think it has nothing to do with Aemilia," he said, more kindly. "What is it?" I think I think ..." "Tell me!" "I'm going to have another child." "Jupiter!" He gaped, recovered, looked grim. "I agree it isn't what either of us wants at this time," she said wearily. "I fear I am a little old." "And I am far too old." He shrugged, looked happier. "Oh well, it's an accomplished thing, and we're equally to blame. I take it you don't want to abort the process?" "I delayed too long, Lucius Cornelius. It wouldn't be safe for me at five months. I didn't notice, I really didn't." "Have you seen a doctor or a midwife?" "Not yet." He got up. "I'll send Lucius Tuccius to you now." She flinched. "Oh, Sulla, please don't! He's an ex army surgeon, he knows nothing about women!" "He's better than all your wretched Greeks!" "For doctoring men, I agree. But I would much rather see a lady doctor from Neapolis or Puteoli." Sulla abandoned the struggle. "See whomever you like," he said curtly, and left the loggia. Several lady physicians and midwives came to see her; each agreed she was run down, then said that as time went on and the baby in her womb settled, she would feel better. And so on the Nones of Sextilis the slaves packed up the villa and the cavalcade set off for Rome, Sulla riding ahead because he was too impatient to dawdle at the snail's pace the women's litters made inevitable. In consequence he reached the city two days ahead of the rest of his party, and plunged into the last moment details concerning his coming feast. "Every baker in Rome has been engaged to make the bread and the cakes, and the special shipments of flour are already delivered," said Chrysogonus smugly; he had arrived in the city even earlier than Sulla. "And the fish will be fresh? The weather is scorching." "All taken care of, Lucius Cornelius, I do assure you. I have had a section of the river above the Trigarium fenced off with nets, and the fish are already swimming there against the day. A thousand fish slaves will commence to gut and cook on the morning of the feast." "The meats?" Will be freshly roasted and sweet, the guild of caterers has promised. Sucking pigs, chickens, sausages, baby lambs. I have had a message from Italian Gaul that the early apples and pears will arrive on time five hundred wagons escorted by two squadrons of cavalry are proceeding down the Via Flaminia at this moment. The strawberries from Alba Fucentia are being picked now and packed in ice from the Mons Fiscellus. They will reach Rome the night before the feast also under military escort." "A pity people are such thieves when it comes to food," said the Dictator, who had been poor enough and hungry enough in his youth to understand, for all he pretended otherwise. "If it were bread or porridge, Lucius Cornelius, there would be no need to worry," soothed Chrysogonus. "They mostly steal what has a novel taste, or a season." "Are you sure we have enough wine?" "There will be wine and food left over, domine." "None of the wine's vinegary, I hope!" "It is uniformly excellent. Those vendors who might have been tempted to throw in a few air contaminated amphorae know well who the buyer is." Chrysogonus smiled reminiscently. "I told every one of them that if we found a single amphora of vinegar, the lot of them would be crucified, Roman citizens or no." "I want no hitches, Chrysogonus. No hitches!" But the hitch when it came bore no connection (or so it seemed) to the public feast; it involved Dalmatica, who arrived attended by every wisewoman Cornelia Sulla could find as they passed through the towns on the Via Appia. "She's bleeding," said Sulla's daughter to her father. The relief on his face was naked. "She'll lose the thing?" he asked eagerly. "We think she may." "Far better that she does." "I agree it won't be a tragedy if she loses the baby," said Cornelia Sulla, who didn't waste her emotions on anger or indignation; she knew her father too well. "The real worry is Dalmatica herself, tata." "What do you mean?" "She may die." Something darkly appalled showed in his eyes, just what his daughter couldn't tell; but he made a movement of distress, shook his head violently. "He is a harbinger of death!" he cried, then, "It is always the highest price! But I don't care, I don't care!" The look of amazement on Cornelia Sulla's face brought him back to his senses, he snorted. "She's a strong woman, she won't die!" "I hope not." Sulla got to his feet. "She wouldn't consent to see him before, but she will now. Whether she wants to or not." "Who?" "Lucius Tuccius." When the ex army surgeon arrived in Sulla's study some hours later, he looked grave. And Sulla, who had waited out those hours alone, had passed from horror at what always seemed to happen after he saw Metrobius, through guilt, to resignation. As long as he didn't have to see Dalmatica; for he didn't think he could face her. "You don't bear good tidings, Tuccius." "No, Lucius Cornelius." What exactly is wrong?'' Sulla asked, pulling at his lip. "There seems to be a general impression that the lady Dalmatica is pregnant, and that is certainly what she thinks," said Lucius Tuccius, "but I doubt the existence of a child." The crimson patches of scar tissue on Sulla's face stood out more starkly than usual. Then what does exist?'' The women speak of haemorrhage, but the loss of blood is too slow for that," said the little doctor, frowning. "There is some blood, but mixed with a foul smelling substance I would call pus were she a wounded soldier. I diagnose some kind of internal suppuration, but with your permission, Lucius Cornelius, I would like to obtain some further opinions." "Do whatever you like," said Sulla sharply. "Just keep the comings and goings unobtrusive tomorrow I have a wedding to see to. I suppose my wife cannot attend?" "Definitely not, Lucius Cornelius." Thus it was that Aemilia Scaura, five months pregnant by her previous husband, married Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in Sulla's house without the support of anyone who loved her. And though beneath her veils of flame and saffron she wept bitterly, Pompey set himself the moment the ceremony was over to soothing and pleasing her, and succeeded so well that by the time they left, she was smiling. It ought to have been Sulla who informed Dalmatica of this unexpected bonus, but Sulla continued to find excuse after excuse as to why he couldn't visit his wife's rooms. "I think," said Cornelia Sulla, upon whom his communication with Dalmatica had devolved, "that he can't bear to see you looking so ill. You know what he's like. If it's someone he doesn't care about he is utterly indifferent. But if it's someone he loves, he can't bring himself to face the situation." There was a smell of corruption in the big airy room where Dalmatica lay, reinforced the closer a visitor came to the bed. She was, Cornelia Sulla knew, dying; Lucius Tuccius had been right, no baby was growing inside her. What was pushing her poor laboring belly into a travesty of pregnancy no one seemed to know, except that it was morbid, malign. The putrid discharge flowed out of her with sluggish remorselessness, and she burned with a fever no amount of medicine or care seemed to cool: She was still conscious, however, and her eyes, bright as two flames, were fixed on her stepdaughter painfully. "I don't matter," she said now, rolling her head upon her sweat soaked pillow. "I want to know how my poor little Aemilia got on. Was it very bad?'' "Actually, no," said Cornelia Sulla, with surprise in her voice. Believe it or not, darling stepmother, by the time she left to go to her new home, she was quite happy. He's rather a remarkable fellow, Pompeius I'd never more than seen him in the distance before today, and I had all a Cornelian's prejudice against him. But he's terribly good looking far more attractive than silly Glabrio! and turned out to have a great deal of charm. So she started out in floods of tears, but a few moments of Pompeius's telling her how pretty she was and how much he loved her already, and she was quite lifted out of her despond. I tell you, Dalmatica, the man has more to him than ever I expected. I predict he makes his women happy." Dalmatica appeared to believe this. "They do tell stories about him. Years ago, when he was scarcely more than a child, he used to have congress with Flora you know who I mean?'' "The famous whore?" "Yes. She's a little past her prime now, but they tell me she still mourns the passing of Pompeius, who never left her without leaving the marks of his teeth all over her I cannot imagine why that pleased her, but apparently it did! He tired of her and handed her over to one of his friends, which broke her heart. Poor, silly creature! A prostitute in love is a butt." "Then it may well be that Aemilia Scaura will end in thanking tata for freeing her from Glabrio." "I wish he would come to see me!"
The day before the Ides of Sextilis arrived; Sulla donned his Grass Crown and triumphal regalia, this being the custom when a man of military renown sacrificed on the Ara Maxima in the Forum Boarium. Preceded by his lictors and heading a procession of members of the Senate, the Dictator walked the relatively short distance from his house to the Steps of Cacus, and down them to the empty area in which the meat markets were normally located. When he passed by the statue of the god today also clad in full triumphal regalia he paused to salute it and pray. Then on he went to the Great Altar, beyond which stood the little round temple of Hercules Invictus, an old plainly Doric structure which enjoyed some fame because inside it were located some frescoes executed by the famous tragic poet Marcus Pacuvius. The victim, a plump and perfect cream colored heifer, was waiting in the care of popa and cultarius, chewing her drugged cud and watching the frenzied pre banquet activity within the marketplace through gentle brown eyes. Though Sulla wore his Grass Crown, the rest of those assembled were crowned with laurel, and when the younger Dolabella who was urban praetor and therefore in charge of this day's ceremonies began his prayers to Hercules Invictus, no one covered his head. A foreigner within the sacred boundary, Hercules was prayed to in the Greek way, with head bare. Everything proceeded in flawless fashion. As donor of the heifer and celebrant of the public feast, Sulla bent to catch some of the blood in the skyphos, a special vessel belonging to Hercules. But as he crouched and filled the cup, a low black shape slunk like a shadow between the Pontifex Maximus and the cultarius, dipped its snout into the growing lake of blood on the cobbles, and lapped noisily. Sulla's shriek of horror ripped out of him as he leaped back and straightened; the skyphos emptied as it fell from his nerveless hand, and the wizened, stringy Grass Crown tumbled off his head to lie amid the blood. By this the panic was spreading faster than the ripples on the crimson pool at which the black dog, starving, still lapped. Men scattered in all directions, some screaming thinly, some hurling their laurels away, some plucking whole tufts from their hair; no one knew what to do, how to end this nightmare. It was Metellus Pius the Pontifex Maximus who took the hammer from the stupefied popa and brought it crashing down upon the dog's working head. The cur screeched once and began to whirl in a circular dance, its bared teeth snapping and gnashing, until after what seemed an eternity it collapsed in a convulsing tangle of limbs and slowly stilled, dying, its mouth spewing a cascade of bloodied foam. Skin whiter than Sulla's, the Pontifex Maximus dropped the hammer to the ground. "The ritual has been profaned!" he cried in the loudest voice he had ever produced. Praetor urbanus, we must begin again! Conscript Fathers, compose yourselves! And where are the slaves of Hercules, who ought to have made sure no dog was here?" Popa and cultarius rounded up the temple slaves, who had drifted off before the ceremony got under way to see what sort of goodies were being piled upon the readied tables. His wig askew, Sulla found the strength at last to bend over and pick up his blood dabbled Grass Crown. "I must go home and bathe," he said to Metellus Pius. "I am unclean. In fact, all of us are unclean, and must go home and bathe. We will reassemble in an hour." To the younger Dolabella he said, less pleasantly, "After they've cleared away the mess and thrown the carcass of the heifer and that frightful creature into the river, have the viri capitales lock the slaves up somewhere until tomorrow. Then have them crucified and don't break their legs. Let them take days to die. Here in the Forum Boarium, in full sight of the god Hercules. He doesn't want them. They allowed his sacrifice to be polluted by a dog." Unclean, unclean, unclean, unclean: Sulla kept repeating the word over and over as he hurried home, there to bathe and clothe himself this time in toga praetexta a man did not have more than one set of triumphal regalia, and that one set only if he had triumphed. The Grass Crown he washed with his own hands, weeping desolately because even under his delicate touch it fell apart. What remained when finally he laid it to dry on a thick pad of white cloth was hardly anything beyond a few tired, limp fragments. My corona graminea is no more. I am accursed. My luck is gone. My luck! How can I live without my luck? Who sent it, that mongrel still black from its journey through the nether darknesses? Who has spoiled this day, now that Gaius Marius cannot? Was it Metrobius? I am losing Dalmatica because of him! No, it is not Metrobius.... So back to the Ara Maxima of Hercules Invictus he went, now wearing a laurel wreath like everyone else, his terrified lictors ruthlessly clearing a path through the crowds gathering to descend on the feast once it was laid out. There were still a few ox drawn carts bringing provisions to the tables, which created fresh panics as their drivers saw the cavalcade of approaching priests and hastened to unyoke their beasts, drive them out of the way; if one ox plopped a pile of dung in the path of priests, the priests were defiled and the owner of the ox liable to be flogged and heavily fined. Chrysogonus had obtained a second heifer quite as lovely as the first, and already flagging from the drug the frantic steward had literally rammed down its throat. A fresh start was made, and this time all went smoothly right to the last. Every one of the three hundred senators present spent more time making sure no dog lurked than in paying attention to the ritual. A victim sacrificed to Hercules Invictus could not be taken from the pyre alongside the god's Great Altar, so like Caesar's white bull on the Capitol, it was left to consume itself among the flames, while those who had witnessed the morning's dreadful events scurried home the moment they were free to do so. Save for Sulla, who went on as he had originally planned; he must walk through the city wishing the feasting populace a share of his good fortune. Only how could he wish them that when Fortune's favoritism had been canceled out of existence by a black mongrel? Each made of planks laid on top of trestles, five thousand tables groaned with food, and wine ran faster than blood on a battlefield. Unaware of the disaster at the Ara Maxima, more than half a million men and women gorged themselves on fish and fruit and honey cakes, and stuffed the sacks they had brought with them full to the top so that those left at home including slaves might also feast. They greeted Sulla with cheers and invocations to the gods, and promised him that they would remember him in their prayers until they died. Night was falling when he finally returned to his house on the Palatine, there to dismiss his lictors with thanks and the news that they would be feasted on the morrow in their precinct, behind the inn on the corner of the Clivus Orbius. Cornelia Sulla was waiting for him in the atrium. "Father, Dalmatica is asking for you," she said. "I'm too tired!" he snapped, knowing he could never face his wife, whom he loved but not enough. "Please, Father, go to her! Until she sees you, she won't abandon this idiotic notion your conduct has put into her head." "What idiotic notion?" he asked, stepping out of his toga as he walked to the altar of the Lares and Penates on the far wall. There he bent his head, broke a salt cake upon the marble shelf, and laid his laurel wreath upon it. His daughter waited patiently until this ceremony was done with and Sulla turned back in her direction. "What idiotic notion?" he asked again. "That she is unclean. She keeps saying she's unclean." Like stone he stood there, the horror crawling all over him, in and out and round and round, a wormy army of loathsome sensations he could neither control nor suffer. He jerked, flung his arms out as if to ward off assassins, stared at his daughter out of a madness she had not seen in him in all her life. "Unclean!" he screamed. "Unclean!" And vanished, running, out of the house. Where he spent the night no one knew, though Cornelia Sulla sent parties armed with torches to look for him amid the ruins of those five thousand tables, no longer groaning. But with the dawn he walked, clad only in his tunic, into the atrium, and saw his daughter still waiting there. Chrysogonus, who had remained with Cornelia Sulla throughout the night because he too had much to fear, advanced toward his master hesitantly. "Good, you're here," said Sulla curtly. "Send to all the priests minor as well as major! and tell them to meet me in one hour's time at Castor's in the Forum." "Father?" asked Cornelia Sulla, bewildered. "Today I have no truck with women" was all he said before he went to his own rooms. He bathed scrupulously, then rejected three purple bordered togas before one was presented to him that he considered perfectly clean. After which, preceded by his lictors (four of whom were ordered to change into unsoiled togas), he went to the temple of Castor and Pollux, where the priests waited apprehensively. "Yesterday," he said without preamble, "I offered one tenth of everything I own to Hercules Invictus. Who is a god of men, and of men only. No women are allowed near his Great Altar, and in memory of his journey to the Underworld no dogs are permitted in his precincts, for dogs are chthonic, and all black creatures. Hercules is served by twenty slaves, whose main duty is to see that neither women nor dogs nor black creatures pollute his precincts. But yesterday a black dog drank the blood of the first victim I offered him, a frightful offense against every god and against me. What could I have done, I asked myself, to incur this? In good faith I had come to offer the god a huge gift, together with a sacrificial victim of exactly the right kind. In good faith I expected Hercules Invictus to accept my gift and my sacrifice. But instead, a black dog drank the heifer's blood right there at the foot of the Ara Maxima. And my Grass Crown was polluted when it fell into the blood the black dog drank." The ninety men he had commanded to attend him stood without moving, hackles rising at the very thought of so much profanation. Everyone present in Castor's had been at the ceremony the day before, had recoiled in horror, and then had spent the rest of that day and the night which followed in wondering what had gone wrong, why the god had vented such displeasure upon Rome's Dictator. "The sacred books are gone, we have no frame of reference," Sulla went on, fully aware of what was going through the minds of his auditors. It was left to my daughter to act as the god's messenger. She fulfilled all the criteria: she spoke without realizing what she said; and she spoke in ignorance of the events which occurred before the Great Altar of Hercules Invictus." Sulla stopped, peering at the front ranks of priests without seeing the face he was looking for. "Pontifex Maximus, come out before me!" he commanded in the formal tones of a priest. The ranks moved, shuffled a little; out stepped Metellus Pius. "I am here, Lucius Cornelius." "Quintus Caecilius, you are closely concerned in this. I want you in front of the rest because no man should see your face. I wish I too had that privilege, but all of you must see my face. What I have to say is this: my wife, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, daughter of one Pontifex Maximus and first cousin of our present Pontifex Maximus, is" Sulla drew a deep breath "unclean. In the very instant that my daughter told me this, I knew it for the truth. My wife is unclean. Her womb is rotting. Now I had been aware of that for some time. But I did not know that the poor woman's condition was offensive to the gods of men until my daughter spoke. Hercules Invictus is a god of men. So too is Jupiter Optimus Maximus. I, a man, have been entrusted with the care of Rome. To me, a man, has been given the task of helping Rome recover from the wars and vicissitudes of many years. Who I am and what I am matters. And nothing in my life can be unclean. Even my wife. Or so I see it today. Am I right in my assumption, Quintus Caecilius, Pontifex Maximus?" How much the Piglet has grown! thought Sulla, the only one privileged to see his face: Yesterday it was the Piglet took charge, and today it is only he who fully understands. "Yes, Lucius Cornelius," said Metellus Pius in steady tones. "I have called all of you here today to take the auspices and decide what must be done," Sulla went on. "I have informed you of the situation, and told you what I believe. But under the laws I have passed, I can make no decision without consulting you. And that is reinforced because the person most affected is my wife. Naturally I cannot have it said that I have used this situation to be rid of my wife. I do not want to rid myself of my wife, I must make that clear. To all of you, and through you, to all of Rome. Bearing that in mind, I believe that my wife is unclean, and I believe the gods of men are offended. Pontifex Maximus, as the head of our Roman religion, what do you say?" "I say that the gods of men are offended," said Metellus Pius. "I say that you must put your wife from you, that you must never set eyes upon her again, and that you must not allow her to pollute your dwelling or your legally authorized task." Sulla's face revealed his distress; that was manifest to everyone. "I love my wife," he said thickly. "She has been loyal and faithful to me. She has given me children. Before me, she was a loyal and faithful wife to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, and gave him children. I do not know why the gods of men require this of me, or why my wife has ceased to please them." "Your affection for your wife is not in question," said the Pontifex Maximus, her first cousin. Neither of you needs to have offended any god, of men or of women. It is better to say that her presence in your house and your presence in her life have in some unknown way interrupted or distorted the pathways whereby divine grace and favor are conducted to Rome. On behalf of my fellow priests, I say that no one is to blame. That we find no fault on either your side, Lucius Cornelius, or on your wife's side. What is, is. There can be no more to be said." He spun round to face the silent assemblage, and said in loud, stern, unstammering voice, "I am your Pontifex Maximus! That I speak without stammer or stumble is evidence enough that Jupiter Optimus Maximus is using me as his vessel, and that I am gifted with his tongue. I say that the wife of this man is unclean, that her presence in his life and house is an affront to our gods, and that she must be removed from his life and his house immediately. I do not require a vote. If any man here disagrees with me, let him say so now." The silence was profound, as if no men stood there at all. Metellus Pius swung back to face the Dictator. "We direct you, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to instruct your servants to carry your wife, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, out of your house and convey her to the temple of Juno Sospita, where she must remain until she dies. On no account must you set eyes upon her. And after she has been taken away, I direct the Rex Sacrorum and the flamen Martialis in lieu of the flamen Dialis to conduct the purification rites in Lucius Cornelius's house." He pulled his toga over his head. "O Celestial Twins, you who are called Castor and Pollux, or the Dioscuri, or the Dei Penates, or any other name you might prefer you who may be gods or goddesses or of no sex at all we have come together in your temple because we have need of your intercession with the mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus whose offspring you may or may not be and with the triumphator Hercules Invictus. We pray that you will testify before all the gods that we are sincere, and have striven to right whatever wrong it is that has been done. In accordance with our contractual agreements, which go back to the battle at Lake Regillus, we hereby promise you a sacrifice of twin white foals as soon as we can find such a rare offering. Look after us, we beg you, as you have always done." The auspices were taken, and confirmed the decision of the Pontifex Maximus. The clear morning light, which struck the interior of the temple through its open doorway, turned suddenly darker when the sun moved toward its zenith, and a chill breath of some strange wind came whistling softly in the sunlight's stead. "One final matter before we go," said Sulla. The feet stilled at once. "We must replace the Sibylline Books, for though we have the Book of Vegoe and Tages still safe in the temple of Apollo, that work is unhelpful in any situation wherein foreign gods are involved, as is Hercules Invictus. There are many sibyls throughout the world, and some who are closely connected to the Sibyl of Cumae who wrote her verses on palm leaves and offered them to King Tarquinius Priscus so long ago. Pontifex Maximus, I wish you to depute someone to organize a search throughout the world for the verses which were contained in our prophetic books." "You are right, Lucius Cornelius, it must be done," said Metellus Pius gravely. "I will find a man fit for the purpose." The Dictator and the Pontifex Maximus walked back to Sulla's house together. "My daughter won't take it kindly," said the Dictator, "but if she hears it from you, she may not blame me for it." "I am very sorry for this mess." "So," said Sulla unhappily, "am I!" Cornelia Sulla did believe her father, a fact which surprised her as much as it did him. "Insofar as you're able, Father, I think you do love her, and I don't think so badly of you that I credit you with wanting to be rid of her." "Is she dying?" asked Metellus Pius, smitten with a qualm because it had been his idea to place Dalmatica in the temple of Juno Sospita for however much longer she had to live. "Very soon now, Lucius Tuccius says. She's full of a growth." "Then let us get it over and done with." Eight sturdy litter bearers took Dalmatica from her sickbed, but not in dignified silence; the forbearance with which Sulla's wife had conducted her life to date vanished in the moment she was informed of the priests' decision, and realized she would never see Sulla again. She screamed, she wept, she shrieked his name over and over and over as they carried her away, while Sulla sat in his study with his hands over his ears and the tears coursing down his face. One more price to pay. But did he have to pay it for Fortune's sake or for the sake of Metrobius? There were four temples in a row outside the Servian Walls in the vegetable markets: Pietas, Janus, Spes, and Juno Sospita. Though this Juno was not one of the primary goddesses who looked after gravid women, she was simultaneously a warrior offshoot of the Great Mother of Pessinus, Juno of Snakes from Lanuvium, Queen of Heaven, and Savior of Women. Perhaps because of this last aspect in her makeup, it had long been the custom for women safely delivered of a child to bring the afterbirth to Juno Sospita and leave it in her temple as an offering. At the time of the Italian War, when money had been short and temple slaves few, the Metella Balearica who had been wife to Appius Claudius Pulcher had dreamed that Juno Sospita appeared to her complaining bitterly that her temple was so filthy she couldn't live in it. So Balearica had gone to the consul, Lucius Caesar, and demanded that he help her scrub it out. They had found more than rotting placentas; the place was green and runny with the detritus of dead women, dead bitches, dead babies, rats. Herself pregnant at the time she and Lucius Caesar had performed their stomach turning labor, Caecilia Metella Balearica had died two months later after giving birth to her sixth child, Publius Clodius. But the temple had been beautifully kept ever since; the offered afterbirths were placed in an ooze proof basket and taken away regularly to be ritually burned by the flaminica Dialis (or, in these days, by her designated replacement), and no temple floor was cleaner or temple interior sweeter smelling. Cornelia Sulla had prepared a place for Dalmatica's bed, to which the litter bearers transferred her in an agony of terror, men brought into a woman's precinct. She was still crying out for Sulla, but weakly, near her end, and seemed not to recognize her surroundings. A painted statue of the goddess stood upon a plinth; she wore shoes with upturned toes, brandished a spear, and faced a rearing snake, but the most striking aspect of her image was the real goatskin draped about her shoulders, tied at her waist, and with its head and horns perched atop the goddess's dark brown hair like a helmet. There beneath this outlandish creature sat Cornelia Sulla and Metellus Pius, each holding one of Dalmatica's hands to help her surmount the mortal barriers of pain and loss. The wait was one of hours only, a spiritual rather than a physical ordeal. The poor woman died still asking to see Sulla, apparently deaf to the reasonable answers both Cornelia Sulla and Metellus Pius gave her. When she was dead the Pontifex Maximus had the undertakers set up her lectus funebris inside the temple, as she could not be taken home to lie in state. Nor could she be displayed; she sat in the traditional upright position completely covered by a black, gold edged cloth, hedged in by the keening professional mourners, and had for her background that strange goddess with goatskin and rearing snake and spear. "When one has written the sumptuary law," said Sulla afterward, "one can afford to ignore it." As a result, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica's funeral cost one hundred talents, and boasted over two dozen chariot borne actors who wore the ancestral wax masks of the Caecilii Metelli and two patrician families, Aemilius Scaurus and Cornelius Sulla. But the crowd which thronged the Circus Flaminius (it had been decided that to bring her body inside the pomerium would be imprudent, given her unclean status) appreciated so much luster less than they did the sight of Dalmatica's three year old twins, Faustus and Fausta, clad in black and carried by a black festooned female giant from Further Gaul.
On the Kalends of September the real legislating began, an onslaught of such dimensions that the Senate reeled. The present law courts are clumsy, time consuming and not realistic," said Sulla from his curule chair. "No comitia should hear civil or criminal charges the procedures are too long, too liable to political manipulation, and too influenced by the fame or popularity of the accused not to mention his defending advocates. And a jury which might be as large as several thousand electors is as unwieldy as it is injudicious." Having thus neatly disposed of a trial process in one of the Assemblies, Sulla went on. I will give Rome seven permanent standing courts. Treason, extortion, embezzlement, bribery, forgery, violence, and murder. All of these except the last one involve the State or the Treasury in some way, and will be presided over by one of the six junior praetors, according to the lots. The murder court will try all cases of murder, arson, magic, poison, perjury, and a new crime which I will call judicial murder that is, exile achieved through the agency of a court. I expect that the murder court will be the busiest, though the simplest. And I will see it presided over by a man who has been aedile, though not yet praetor. The consuls will appoint him." Hortensius sat horrified, for his greatest victories had been fought in one of the Assemblies, where his style and his ability to sway a big crowd had made of him a legend; juries of the size staffing a court were too intimate to suit him. "Genuine advocacy will die!" he cried. "What does that matter?" asked Sulla, looking astonished. "More important by far is the judicial process, and I intend to take that off the Assemblies, Quintus Hortensius, make no mistake about it! However, from the Assembly of the People I will seek a law to sanction the establishment of my standing courts, and by the provisions of that law all three Assemblies will formally hand over their juridical duties to my standing courts." "Excellent!" said the historian Lucius Cornelius Sisenna. "Every man tried in court will therefore be tried by the consent of the Assemblies! That means a man will not be able to appeal to an Assembly after the court has delivered its verdict." "Exactly, Sisenna! It renders the appeal process null and void, and eliminates the Assemblies as judges of men." "That is disgusting!" shouted Catulus. "Not only disgusting, but absolutely unconstitutional! Every Roman citizen is entitled to an appeal!" "Appeal and trial are one and the same, Quintus Lutatius," said Sulla, "and part of Rome's new constitution." "The old constitution was good enough in matters like this!" In matters like this history has shown us all too clearly that the provisions of the old constitution led to many a man who ought to have been convicted getting off because some Assembly was persuaded by some trick rhetoric to overturn a legal court decision. The political capital made out of such Assembly trials and appeals was odious, Quintus Lutatius. Rome is too big and too busy these days to be mired down in customs and procedures invented when Rome was little more than a village. I have not denied any man a fair trial. I have in fact made his trial fairer. And made the procedure simpler." The juries?'' asked Sisenna. Will be purely senatorial one more reason why I need a pool of at least four hundred men in the Senate. Jury duty was a burden, and will be a burden when there are seven courts to staff. However, I intend to reduce the size of juries. The old fifty one man jury will be retained only in cases of the highest crimes against the State. In future jury size will depend on the number of men available to sit, and if for any reason there is an even number of men on a jury, then a tied decision will count as an acquittal. The Senate is already divided into decuries of ten men, each headed by a patrician senator. I will use these decuries as the jury base, though no decury will be permanently seconded to duty in one particular court. The jury for each individual trial in any court will be selected by lot after the trial date has been set." "I like it," said the younger Dolabella. "I hate it!" cried Hortensius. "What happens if my decury is drawn for jury duty while I myself am occupied in acting for a defendant in another trial?'' "Why, then you'll just have to learn to fit both in," said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. "Whores do it, Hortensius! You ought to be able to." "Oh, Quintus, shut your mouth!" breathed Catulus. "Who decides the number of men to staff a particular jury?" asked the younger Dolabella. "The court president," said Sulla, "but only to a limited extent. The real determination will depend upon the number of decuries available. I would hope to see a figure between twenty five and thirty five men. Not all of a decury will be seconded at once that would keep jury numbers even." "The six junior praetors will be each given presidency of a court by lot," said Metellus Pius. "Does that mean the old system will still prevail to decide who will be urban and who foreign praetor?" "No, I will abolish giving urban praetor to the man at the top of the poll, and foreign praetor to the man who comes in second," said Sulla. "In future, all eight jobs will be decided purely by the lots." But Lepidus wasn't interested in which praetor would get what; he asked the question he already knew the answer to, just to make Sulla say it. "You therefore intend to remove all court participation from the knights?'' "Absolutely. With one brief intermission, the control of Rome's juries has rested with the knights since the time of Gaius Gracchus. That will stop! Gaius Gracchus neglected to incorporate a clause in his law which allowed a corrupt knight juror to be prosecuted. Senators are fully liable under the law, I will make sure of that!" "So what is left for the urban and foreign praetors to do?" asked Metellus Pius. "They will be responsible for all civil litigation," said Sulla, "as well as, in the case of the foreign praetor, criminal litigation between non Romans. However, I am removing the right of the urban and foreign praetor to make a judgment in a civil case himself instead, he will pass the case to a single judge drawn by lot from a panel of senators and knights, and that man will act as iudex. His decision will be binding on all of the parties, though the urban or foreign praetor may elect to supervise the proceedings." Catulus now spoke because Hortensius, still red faced and angry at Sulla's gibe, would not ask. "As the constitution stands at the moment, Lucius Cornelius, only a legally convoked Assembly can pass a sentence of death. If you intend to remove all trials from the Assemblies, does this mean you will empower your courts to levy a death sentence?" No, Quintus Lutatius, it does not. It means the opposite. The death sentence will no longer be levied at all. Future sentences will be limited to exiles, fines, and/or confiscation of some or all of a convicted man's property. My new laws will also regulate the activity of the damages panel this will consist of between two and five of the jurors chosen by lot, and the court president." "You have named seven courts," said Mamercus. "Treason, extortion, embezzlement, bribery, forgery, violence, and murder. But there is already a standing court in existence for cases of public violence under the lex Plautia. I have two questions: one, what happens to this court? and two, what happens in cases of sacrilege?" "The lex Plautia is no longer necessary," said Sulla. He leaned back, looking pleased; the House seemed happy at the idea of having criminal procedures removed from the comitia. "Crimes of violence will be tried either in my violence court or in the treason court if the magnitude is great enough. As for sacrilege, offenses of this nature are too infrequent to warrant a standing court. A special court will be convened when necessary, to be presided over by an ex aedile. Its conduct, however, will be the same as the permanent courts no right of appeal to the Assemblies. If the matter concerns the un chastity of a Vestal Virgin, the sentence of being buried alive will continue to be enforced. But her lover or lovers will be tried in a separate court and will not face a death sentence." He cleared his throat, continued. "I am nearly done for today. First of all, a word about the consuls. It is not good for Rome to see the consuls embroiled in foreign wars. These two men during their year in office should be directly responsible for the welfare and well being of Rome and Italy, nothing else. Now that the tribunes of the plebs have been put in their proper place, I hope to see the consuls more active in promulgating laws. And secondly, conduct within the Senate itself. In future, a man may rise to his feet to speak if he so wishes, but he will no longer be permitted to stride up and down the floor as he does so. He must speak from his allocated place, either seated or standing. Noise will not be tolerated. No applause, no drumming of feet, no calls or outcries will be tolerated. The consuls will levy a fine of one thousand denarii upon any man who infringes my new standards of conduct within the House." A small group of senators clustered below the Curia Hostilia steps after Sulla had dismissed the meeting; some of them (like Mamercus and Metellus Pius) were Sulla's men to the last, whereas others (like Lepidus and Catulus) agreed that Sulla was at best an evil necessity. "There's no doubt," said the Piglet, "that these new courts will take a great burden off the legislating bodies no more fiddling about trying to induce the Plebeian Assembly to enact a special court to try someone, no more worrying about some unknown knight taking a bribe yes, they are good reforms." "Oh come, Pius, you're old enough to remember what it was like during the couple of years after Caepio the Consul gave the courts back to the Senate!" cried Philippus. "I was never not on some jury or other, even during the summer!" He turned to Marcus Perperna, his fellow censor. "You remember, surely." Only too well,'' said Perperna with feeling. "The trouble with you two," said Catulus, "is that you want the Senate to control juries, but you complain when it's your turn to serve. If we of the Senate want to dominate the trial process, then we have to be prepared to take the pain along with the pleasure." "It won't be as difficult now as it was then," said Mamercus pacifically. "There are more of us." "Go on, you're the Great Man's son in law, he pulls your strings and you howl like a dog or bleat like a sheep!" snapped Philippus. "There can't be enough of us! And with permanent courts there will be no delays at least back then we could hold things up by getting the Assemblies to dither about for a few market intervals while we had a holiday. Now, all the president of a court has to do is empanel his jury! And we won't even know in advance whether we'll be sitting on it, so we won't be able to plan a thing. Sulla says the lots won't be drawn until after the trial date has been set. I can see it now! Two days into a lovely summer laze by the sea, and it's off back to Rome to sit on some wretched jury!" "Jury duty ought to have been split," said Lepidus. "Keep the important courts for the Senate you know, extortion and treason. The murder court could function properly on knight jurors it would probably function properly if its juries were drawn from the Head Count!" "What you mean," said Mamercus acidly, "is that juries trying senators should be composed of senators, whereas juries trying the rest of the world on charges like witchcraft or poisoning are not important enough for senators." "Something like that," said Lepidus, smiling. "What I'd like to know," said the Piglet, deeming it time to change the subject a little, "is what else he plans to legislate." "I'd be willing to bet it won't be to our advantage!" said Hortensius. "Rubbish!" said Mamercus, not a bit dismayed at being called Sulla's puppet. "Everything he's done so far has strengthened the influence of the Senate and tried to bring Rome back to the old values and the old customs." "It may be," said Perperna thoughtfully, "that it is too late to go back to the old ways and the old customs. A lot of what he's abolished or changed has been with us long enough to deserve being lumped in with the rest of the mos maiorum. These days the Plebeian Assembly is like a club for playing knucklebones or dice. That won't last because it can't last. The tribunes of the plebs have been Rome's major legislators for centuries." "Yes, what he did to the tribunes of the plebs isn't at all popular," said Lepidus. "You're right. The new order of things in the Plebeian Assembly can't last."
On the Kalends of October the Dictator produced new shocks; he shifted the sacred boundary of Rome exactly one hundred feet in the vicinity of the Forum Boarium, and thus made Rome a little bit larger. No one had ever tampered with the pomerium after the time of the Kings of Rome; to do so was considered a sign of royalty, it was an un Republican act. But did that stop Sulla? Not in the least. He would shift the pomerium, he announced, because he now declared the Rubico River the official boundary between Italy and Italian Gaul. That river had been so regarded for a very long time, but the last formal fixing of the boundary had been at the Metaurus River. Therefore, said Sulla blandly, he could justifiably be said to have enlarged the territory of Rome within Italy, and he would mark the event by moving Rome's pomerium an infinitesmal hundred feet. "Which as far as I'm concerned," said Pompey to his new (and very pregnant) wife, "is splendid!" Aemilia Scaura looked puzzled. "Why?" she asked. She did a lot of asking why and might thus have irritated a less egotistical man, but Pompey adored being asked why. "Because, my darling little roly poly girl who looks as if she has swallowed a giant melon whole" he tickled her tummy with a leer and a wink "I own most of the Ager Gallicus south of Ariminum, and it now falls officially into Umbria. I am now one of the biggest landowners in all Italy, if not the very biggest. I'm not sure. There are men who own more land thanks to their holdings in Italian Gaul, like the Aemilii Scauri your tata, my delectable wee pudding and the Domitii Ahenobarbi, but I inherited most of the Lucilian estates in Lucania, and with the southern half of the Ager Gallicus added to my lands in Umbria and northern Picenum, I doubt I have a rival inside Italy proper! There are many going around deploring the Dictator's action, but he'll get no criticism from me." "I can't wait to see your lands," she said wistfully, putting her hand on the mound of her abdomen. "As soon as I am able to travel, Magnus you promised." They were sitting side by side on a couch, and he turned to tip her over with a gentle push in just the right place, then pinched her lips painlessly between his fingers and kissed her all over her ecstatic face. "More!" she cried when he finished. His head hung over hers, his impossibly blue eyes twinkled. "And who's the greedy little piggy wiggy?" he asked. "The greedy little piggy wiggy should know better, shouldn't she?" She fell into cascades of giggles, which provoked him to tickle her because he liked the sound of them so; but soon he wanted her so badly that he had to get up and move away. "Oh, bother this wretched baby!" she cried crossly. "Soon, my adorable kitten," he managed to say cheerfully. "Let's get rid of Glabrio before we try for our own." And indeed Pompey had been continent, determined that no one, least of all Aemilia Scaura's stiff and haughty Caecilius Metellus relatives, should be able to say that he was not the most considerate and kindest of husbands; Pompey wanted badly to join the clan. Learning that Young Marius had made an intimate of Praecia, Pompey had taken to visiting her sumptuous house, for he deemed it no comedown to sample someone else's leavings provided that the someone else had been famous, or stuffed with clout, or awesomely noble. Praecia was, besides, a sexual delight sure to please him in ways he knew very well Aemilia Scaura would not when her turn came. Wives were for the serious business of making babies, though poor Antistia had not even been accorded that joy. If he liked being married which he did it was because Pompey had the happy knack of knowing how to make a wife besotted. He paid her compliments galore, he didn't care how silly what he said might sound were Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus to overhear (he just made very sure he never said things like that in the hearing of Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus), and he maintained a jolly, good tempered attitude which disposed her to love him. Yet clever Pompey! he allowed her to have moods, to weep, to carp a trifle, to chastise him. And if neither Antistia nor Aemilia Scaura knew that he manipulated them while they thought they did the manipulating, then that was all for the good; all parties were satisfied, and strife was nonexistent. His gratitude to Sulla for bestowing Scaurus Princeps Senatus's daughter upon him knew almost no bounds. He understood that he was more than good enough for Scaurus's daughter, but it also reinforced his positive opinion of himself to know that a man like Sulla considered him good enough for Scaurus's daughter. Of course he was quite aware that it suited Sulla to bind him by a tie of marriage, and that too contributed to his positive opinion of himself; Roman aristocrats like Glabrio could be thrown aside at the Dictator's whim, but the Dictator was concerned enough about Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to give him what he had taken from Glabrio. Sulla might (for example) have given Scaurus's daughter to his own nephew, Publius Sulla, or to the much favored Lucullus. Pompey had set his heart against belonging to the Senate, but it was no part of his plans to alienate himself from the circle of the Dictator; rather, his dreams had taken a fresh direction, and he now saw himself becoming the sole military hero in the history of the Republic who would seize proconsular commands without being at the very least a senator. They said it couldn't be done. They had sneered at him, smirked at him, mocked him. But those were dangerous activities when they were aimed at Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus! In the years to come he would make every last one of them suffer and not by killing them, as Marius might have nor by proscribing them, as Sulla would have. He would make them suffer by forcing them to come to him, by maneuvering them into a position so invidious that the pain of being nice to him would well nigh kill their fine opinions of themselves. And that was far sweeter to Pompey than seeing them die! So it was that Pompey managed to contain his desire for this delectable sprig of the gens Aemilia, contented himself with many visits to Praecia, and consoled himself by eyeing Aemilia Scaura's belly, never again to be filled with any but his progeny. She was due to have her baby at some time early in December, but toward the end of October she went into a sudden and terrible labor. Thus far her pregnancy had been uneventful, so this very late miscarriage came as a shock to everyone, including her doctors. The scrawny male child who came so prematurely into the world died the day after, and was not long survived by Aemilia Scaura, who bled her way inexorably from pain to eternal oblivion. Her death devastated Pompey. He had genuinely loved her in his proprietary, unselective fashion; if Sulla had searched Rome for the right bride for Pompey in a conscious effort to please him, he could not have chosen better than the giggly, slightly dense, completely ingenuous Aemilia Scaura. The son of a man called The Butcher and himself called Kid Butcher, Pompey's exposure to death had been lifelong, and not conditioned by impulses of compassion or mercy. A man lived, a man died. A woman lived, a woman died. Nothing was certain. When his mother died he had cried a little, but until the death of Aemilia Scaura only the death of his father had profoundly affected him. Yet his wife's death smote Pompey almost to joining her upon her funeral pyre; Varro and Sulla were never sure afterward whether Pompey's struggle to leap into the flames was genuine or only partly genuine, so frantic and grief stricken was he. In truth, Pompey himself didn't know. All he did know was that Fortune had favored him with the priceless gift of Scaurus's daughter, then snatched the gift away before it could be enjoyed. Still weeping desolately, the young man quit Rome through the Colline Gate, a second time because of sudden death. First his father, now Aemilia Scaura. To a Pompeius from northern Picenum, there was only one alternative. To go home.
"Rome now has ten provinces," said Sulla in the House the day after the funeral of his stepdaughter. He was wearing the senatorial mourning, which consisted of a plain white toga and a tunic bearing the thin purple stripe of a knight rather than the senator's broad purple stripe. Had Aemilia Scaura been his blood daughter he could not easily have gone about public business for ten days, but the absence of any close blood relationship obviated that. A good thing; Sulla had a schedule. "Let me list them for you, Conscript Fathers: Further Spain, Nearer Spain, Gaul across the Alps, Italian Gaul, Macedonia together with Greece, Asia, Cilicia, Africa together with Cyrenaica, Sicily, and Sardinia together with Corsica. Ten provinces for ten men to govern. If no man remains in his province for more than one year, that will leave ten men for ten provinces at the beginning of every year two consuls and eight praetors just coming out of office." His gaze lighted upon Lepidus, to whom he appeared to address his next remarks for no better reason, it seemed, than random selection. "Each governor will now routinely be assigned a quaestor except for the governor of Sicily, who will have two quaestors, one for Syracuse and one for Lilybaeum. That leaves nine quaestors for Italy and Rome out of the twenty. Ample. Each governor will also be assigned a full staff of public servants, from lictors and heralds to scribes, clerks, and accountants. It will be the duty of the Senate acting on advice from the Treasury to assign each governor a specific sum to be called the stipend and this stipend will not be added to for any reason during the year. It therefore represents the governor's salary, and will be paid to him in advance. Out of it he must pay his staff and expenses of office, and must present a full and proper accounting of it at the end of his year's governorship, though he will not be obliged to refund any part of it he has not spent. It is his the moment it is paid over to him, and what he does with it is his own business. If he wishes to invest it in Rome in his own name before he leaves for his province, that is permitted. However, he must understand that no more moneys will be forthcoming! A further word of warning is necessary. As his stipend becomes his personal property the moment it is paid over, it can legally be attached by lien if the new governor is in debt. I therefore advise all potential governors that their public careers will be jeopardized if they get themselves into debt. A penniless governor going out to his province will be facing heavy criminal charges when he returns home!" A glare around the chamber, then Sulla went back to business. "I am removing all say in the matters of wars, provinces and other foreign affairs from the Assemblies. From now on the Assemblies will be forbidden to so much as discuss wars, provinces and other foreign affairs, even in contio. These matters will become the exclusive prerogative of the Senate." Another glare. "In future, the Assemblies will pass laws and hold elections. Nothing else. They will have no say in trials, in foreign affairs, or in any military matter." A small murmur started as everyone took this in. Tradition was on Sulla's side, but ever since the time of the Brothers Gracchi the Assemblies had been used more and more to obtain military commands and provinces or even to strip men appointed by the Senate of their military commands and provinces. It had happened to the Piglet's father when Marius had taken the command in Africa off him, and it had happened to Sulla when Marius had taken the command against Mithridates off him. So this new legislation was welcome. Sulla transferred his gaze to Catulus. "The two consuls should be sent to the two provinces considered most volatile or endangered. The consular provinces and the praetorian ones will be apportioned by the casting of lots. Certain conventions must be adhered to if Rome is to keep her good name abroad. If ships or fleets are levied from provinces or client kingdoms, the cost of such levies must be deducted from the annual tribute. The same law applies to the levying of soldiers or military supplies." Marcus Junius Brutus, so long a mouse, took courage. "If a governor is heavily committed to a war in his province, will he be obliged to give up his province at the end of one year?" "No," said Sulla. He was silent for a moment, thinking, then said, "It may even be that the Senate will have no other choice than to send the consuls of the year to a foreign war. If Rome is assailed on all sides, it is hard to see how this can be avoided. I only ask the Senate to consider its alternatives very carefully before committing the consuls of the year to a foreign campaign, or before extending a governor's term of office." When Mamercus lifted up his hand to speak, the senators pricked up their ears; by now he was so well known as Sulla's puppet asker of questions that everyone knew this meant he was going to ask something which Sulla thought best to introduce via the medium of a question. "May I discuss a hypothetical situation?" Mamercus asked. "By all means!" said Sulla genially. Mamercus rose to his feet. As he was this year's foreign praetor and therefore held curule office, he was sitting on the podium at the far end of the hall where all the curule magistrates sat, and so could be seen by every eye when he stood up. Sulla's new rule forbidding men to leave their place when they spoke made the men on the curule podium the only ones who could be seen by all. "Say a year comes along," said Mamercus carefully, "when Rome does indeed find herself assailed on all sides. Say that the consuls and as many of the praetors of the year as can be spared have gone to fight during their tenure of office or say that the consuls of the year are not militarily skilled enough to be sent to fight. Say that the governors are depleted perhaps one or two killed by barbarians, or dead untimely from other causes. Say that among the Senate no men can be found of experience or ability who are willing or free to take a military command or a governorship. If you have excluded the Assemblies from debating the matter and the decision as to what must be done rests entirely with the Senate, what ought the Senate to do?'' "Oh, what a splendid question, Mamercus!" Sulla exclaimed, just as if he hadn't worded it himself. He ticked the points off on his fingers. "Rome is assailed on all sides. No curule magistrates are available. No consulars or ex praetors are available. No senator of sufficient experience or ability is available. But Rome needs another military commander or governor. Is that right? Have I got it right?'' "That is right, Lucius Cornelius," said Mamercus gravely. "Then," said Sulla slowly, "the Senate must look outside its ranks to find the man, must it not? What you are describing is a situation beyond solution by normal means. In which case, the solution must be found by abnormal means. In other words, it is the duty of the Senate to search Rome for a man of known exceptional ability and experience, and give that man all the legal authorities necessary to assume a military command or a governorship." "Even if he's a freedman?" asked Mamercus, astonished. "Even if he's a freedman. Though I would say he was more likely to be a knight, or perhaps a centurion. I knew a centurion once who commanded a perilous retreat, was awarded the Grass Crown, and afterward given the purple bordered toga of a curule magistrate. His name was Marcus Petreius. Without him many lives would have been lost, and that particular army would not have been able to fight again. He was inducted into the Senate and he died in all honor during the Italian War. His son is among my own new senators." But the Senate is not legally empowered to give a man outside its own ranks imperium to command or govern!" objected Mamercus. Under my new laws the Senate will be legally empowered to do so and ought to do so, in fact," said Sulla. "I will call this governorship or military command a 'special commission,' and I will bestow the necessary authority upon the Senate to grant it with whatever degree of imperium is considered necessary! to any Roman citizen, even a freedman." What is he up to?'' muttered Philippus to Flaccus Princeps Senatus. "I've never heard the like!" "I wish I knew, but I don't," said Flaccus under his breath. But Sulla knew, and Mamercus guessed; this was one more way to bind Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who had refused to join the Senate, but because of all those veterans of his father's was still a military force to be reckoned with. It was no part of Sulla's plan to allow any man to lead an army on Rome; he would be the last, he had resolved on that. Therefore if times changed and Pompey became a threat, a way had to be open for Pompey's considerable talents to be legally harnessed by the legal body responsible the Senate. Sulla intended to legislate what amounted to pure common sense.
"It remains for me to define treason," the Dictator said a few days later. "Until my new law courts came into being some time ago, there were several different kinds of treason, from perduellio to maiestas minuta big treasons, little treasons, and treasons in between. And what all of these treasons lacked was true specificity. In future all charges of treason will be tried in the quaestio de maiestate, my standing treason court. A charge of treason, as you will shortly see, will be largely limited to men given provincial governorships or commands in foreign wars. If a civilian Roman generates treason within Rome or Italy, then that man will be the object of the only trial process I will allow an Assembly to conduct. Namely, that man will be tried perduellio in the Centuries, and will in consequence face the old penalty death tied to a cross suspended from an unlucky tree." He let that sink in a little, then continued. "Any and all of the following will be treasonable: "A provincial governor may not leave his province. "A provincial governor may not permit his armies to march beyond the provincial frontier. "A provincial governor may not start a war on his own initiative. "A provincial governor may not invade the territory of a client king without formal permission from the Senate. "A provincial governor may not intrigue with a client king or any body of foreign nationals in order to change the status quo of any foreign country. A provincial governor may not recruit additional troops without the consent of the Senate. "A provincial governor may not make decisions or issue edicts within his own province that will alter his province's status without the formal consent of the Senate. "A provincial governor may not remain in his province for more than thirty days after the arrival in that province of his Senate appointed successor. "That is all." Sulla smiled. "On the positive side of things, a man with imperium will continue to hold that imperium until he crosses the sacred boundary of Rome. This has always been so. I now reaffirm it." "I do not see," said Lepidus angrily, "why all these specific rules and regulations are necessary!" "Oh come, Lepidus," said Sulla wearily, "you're sitting here looking straight at me. Me! A man who did almost every 'may not' on my list! I was justified! I had been illegally deprived of my imperium and my command. But I am here now passing laws which will make it impossible for any man to deprive another of his imperium and his command! Therefore the situation I was in cannot happen again. Therefore those men who break any of my 'may nots' will be guilty of treason. No man can be permitted to so much as toy with the idea of marching on Rome or leading his army out of his province in the direction of Rome. Those days are over. And I am sitting here to prove it."
On the twenty sixth day of October, Sulla's nephew, Sextus Nonius Sufenas (who was Sulla's sister's younger boy) put on the first performance of what were to become annual victory games, the ludi Victoriae; they culminated at the Circus Maximus on the first day of November, which was the anniversary of the battle at the Colline Gate. They were good but not magnificent games, save that for the first time in a dozen decades the Trojan Game was performed. The crowd loved it because of its novelty a complex series of maneuvers on horseback carried out by youths who had to be of noble birth. Greece, however, was not amused. Sufenas had combed Greece for athletes, dancers, musicians and entertainers, so that the Olympic Games in Olympia, celebrated at about the same time of year, were an absolute disaster. And juicy scandal! the younger son of Antonius Orator, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, utterly disgraced himself by driving a chariot in one of the races; if it was a social cachet for a nobleman to participate in the Trojan Game, it was an horrific solecism for a nobleman to drive a chariot. On the Kalends of December, Sulla announced the names of the magistrates for the coming year. He would be senior consul himself, with Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius the Piglet as his junior. Loyalty was rewarded at last. The elder Dolabella received Macedonia as his province, and the younger Dolabella was given Cilicia. Though well provided by the lots with a quaestor in the person of Gaius Publicius Malleolus, the younger Dolabella insisted upon taking none other than Gaius Verres along as his senior legate. Lucullus remained in the east serving under Thermus, the governor of Asia, but Gaius Scribonius Curio came home to a praetorship. It was now time for Sulla to begin the most massive undertaking of all the awarding of land to his veterans. During the next two years the Dictator intended to demobilize one hundred and twenty thousand men belonging to twenty three legions. During his first consulship at the end of the Italian War he had handed over the rebel lands of Pompeii, Faesulae, Hadria, Telesia, Grumentum and Bovianum to his Italian War veterans, but that had been a tiny task compared to the present one. The program was meticulously worked out, and incorporated graduations of reward according to the length of a man's service, his rank, and his personal valor. Primus pilus centurions in his Mithridatic legions (they all had many decorations into the bargain) were each given five hundred iugera of prime land, whereas the ranker soldiers of Carboan legions which had deserted to Sulla received the smallest pensions, ten iugera of less desirable land. He began with the confiscated lands of Etruria in the areas which had belonged to Volaterrae and Faesulae, punished yet again. Because Etruria had by now established what amounted to a tradition of opposition to Sulla, he did not at first concentrate his veterans in enclosed soldier communities; instead he scattered them far and wide, thinking thereby to contain future rebellion. This turned out to be a mistake. Volaterrae rose almost at once, shut its gates after lynching many of Sulla's veterans, and prepared to withstand a siege. As the town lay in a deep ravine yet was raised up on a very high, flat topped hill in the middle of the ravine, Volaterrae looked forward to a long defiance. Sulla went there in person to establish his blockade, stayed for three months, then went back to Rome when he saw how long and wearisome a job reducing Volaterrae was going to be. He learned from this lesson, however, and changed his mind about how his veterans would be settled on their lands; his later colonies were just that, cohesive nuclei of ex soldiers able to stick together in the face of bitter local opposition. His one overseas experiment occurred on Corsica, where he set up two separate soldier colonies, thinking to civilize the place and eliminate the Corsican curse, banditry. A futile hope.
The new law courts settled down well, providing the perfect arena for a new legal star, the young man Marcus Tullius Cicero. Quintus Hortensius (who had thriven in the trial atmosphere of the Assemblies) took time to telescope his act down to the intimate size of the open air courtroom; whereas Cicero found it ideal. At the end of the old year Cicero appeared alone for the defendant in a preliminary hearing before the younger Dolabella, who was praetor urbanus. The object of the hearing was to decide whether the sum of money known as sponsio should be lodged, or whether the case could proceed without it. Cicero's advocate opponents were formidable Hortensius and Philippus. But he won, Hortensius and Philippus lost, and Cicero embarked upon a forensic career which was to have no equal. It was in June of the year that Sulla was senior consul with Metellus Pius as his junior consul that a twenty six year old nobleman of patrician family, Marcus Valerius Messala Niger, appealed to his good friend, the twenty six year old Marcus Tullius Cicero, to act on behalf of a man who was Niger's friend as well as his client. "Sextus Roscius Junior, from Ameria," said Messala Niger to Cicero. "He's charged with murdering his father." "Oh!" said Cicero, astonished. "You're a good advocate, my dear Niger. Why not defend him yourself? Murder is juicy, but very easy, you know. No political overtones." "That's what you think," said Messala Niger grimly. "This case has more political pitfalls than a ditch has sharpened stakes! There is only one man who has a chance of winning, and that man is you, Marcus Tullius. Hortensius recoiled in horror." Cicero sat up straighter, a gleam of interest in his dark eyes; he used one of his favorite tricks, dipping his head and shooting Messala Niger a keen glance from under his brows. "A murder case so complicated? How?" Whoever takes on the defense of Roscius of Ameria will be taking on Sulla's whole system of proscription," said Messala Niger. "In order to get Roscius off, it will be necessary to prove that Sulla and his proscriptions are utterly corrupt." The generous mouth with the full lower lip pursed into a soundless whistle. "Ye gods!" "Ye gods, indeed. Still interested?" "I don't know...." Cicero frowned, at war with himself; preservation of his skin was mandatory, and yet a case so difficult had the potential to win him legal laurels no other kind of case could. "Tell me about it, Niger. Then I'll see." Niger settled down to tell his story cleverly enough that Cicero's interest would be stimulated further. "Sextus Roscius is my own age, and I've known him since we were at school together. We both served in our six campaigns under Lucius Caesar and then Sulla in Campania. Roscius's father owned most of Ameria, including no less than thirteen river frontage properties along the Tiber fabulously rich! Roscius is his only son. But there are also two cousins, sons of his brother, who are the real villains of the piece. Old Roscius went to Rome on a visit at the beginning of the year, and was murdered in Rome. I don't know whether the cousins did it, nor does Roscius. Probable, but not necessary." Messala Niger grimaced. "The news of the father's murder came to Ameria through an agent of the cousins, certainly. And the most suspicious part about it is that this agent didn't tell poor Roscius at all! Instead he told the cousins, who hatched a plot to filch all the property off my friend Roscius." "I think I begin to see," said Cicero, whose mind was razor keen when it came to the criminal perfidies of men. "Volaterrae had just revolted, and Sulla was there conducting the initial stages of the siege. With him was Chrysogonus." There was no need to inform Cicero who was this Chrysogonus; all of Rome knew the infamous bureaucrat in charge of the lists, the books, and all the data pertaining to Sulla's proscriptions. "The cousins rode to Volaterrae and were granted an interview with Chrysogonus, who was willing to make a deal with them but for a huge price. He agreed to forge Roscius's dead father's name on one of the old proscription lists. He would then 'happen to see' a routine report on the murder, and pretend to 'remember' that this name was a proscribed one. That is what transpired. Roscius's father's properties worth a cool six million were immediately put up for auction by Chrysogonus, who bought them all himself for two thousand, if you please." "I love this villain!" cried Cicero, looking as alert as a huntsman's hound. "Well, I do not! I loathe the man!" said Messala Niger. "Yes, yes, he's loathsome! But what happened next?" All of this occurred before Roscius even knew his father was dead. The first intimation he had was when Cousin Two appeared bearing Chrysogonus's proscription order, and evicted Roscius from his father's properties. Chrysogonus kept ten of the thirteen estates for himself and installed Cousin Two on them as his live in manager and agent. The other three estates Chrysogonus signed over to Cousin One as outright payment. The blow for poor Roscius was a twin one, of course not only did he learn that his father had been proscribed months before, but also that he was murdered." "Did he believe this tissue of lies?" asked Cicero. "Absolutely. Why should he not have? Everyone with two sesterces to rub together expected to find himself named on a proscription list, whether he lived in Rome or in Ameria. Roscius just believed! And got out." "Who smelled the rotten carcass?" "The elders of the town," said Messala Niger. "A son is never as sure of his father's worth and nature as his father's friends are, which is not illogical. A man's friends know him without the concomitant emotional distortions suffered by his son." "True," said Cicero, who didn't get on with his own father. "So the friends of the old man held a conference, and agreed that there had not been a Marian, Cinnan or Carboan bone in the old man's entire body. They agreed to ride to Volaterrae and seek an audience with Sulla himself, beg him to reverse the proscription and allow Roscius to inherit. They gathered up masses of evidence and set off at once." "Accompanied by which cousin?" asked Cicero shrewdly. "Quite correct," said Messala Niger, smiling. "They were joined by Cousin One, who actually had the temerity to assume command of the mission! In the meantime Cousin Two rode at the gallop for Volaterrae to warn Chrysogonus what was in the wind. Thus it was that the deputation never got to see Sulla. It was waylaid by Chrysogonus, who took all the details and all the masses of evidence! from them, and promised them that he would see the Dictator reverse his proscription. Don't worry! was his cry. Everything will be right and Roscius will inherit." Did no one suspect that he was talking to the real owner of ten of the thirteen estates?'' asked Cicero incredulously. "Not a one, Marcus Tullius." "It's a sign of the times, isn't it?" "I fear so." "Go on, please." "Two months went by. At the end of them old man Roscius's friends realized that they had been neatly tricked, for no order rescinding the proscription came through, and Cousin One and Cousin Two were now known to be living on the confiscated property as if they owned it. A few enquiries revealed that Cousin One was the outright owner of three, and Chrysogonus of the other ten. That terrified everyone, as everyone assumed Sulla was a part of the villainy." "Do you believe he was?" asked Cicero. Messala Niger thought long, finally shook his head. No, Cicero, I doubt it." "Why?" asked the born lawyer. "Sulla is a hard man. Frankly, he terrifies me. They say that in his youth he murdered women for their money, that he got into the Senate over their bodies. Yet I knew him slightly when I was in the army too junior to be on close terms, of course, but he was always around, always busy, always in control of the job and he struck me as aristocratically scrupulous. Do you know what I mean by that?" Cicero felt a tinge of red creeping under his skin, but pretended he was at ease. Did he know what the patrician nobleman Marcus Valerius Messala Niger meant by aristocratic scrupulousness? Oh, yes! No one understood better than Cicero, who was a New Man, and envied patricians like Messala Niger and Sulla very much. "I think so," he said. "He has a dark side to him, Sulla. He'd probably kill you or me without a qualm if it suited him. But he would have a patrician's reasons for killing us. He wouldn't do it because he coveted thirteen lush properties on the banks of the Tiber. If it occurred to him to go to an auction of proscribed property and he was able to pick up some very cheap estates, he would. I don't say he wouldn't. But conspire to enrich himself or his freedman in a dishonorable way when nothing as vital as his career was at stake? No. I don't think so. His honor matters to him. I see it in his laws, which I think are honorable laws. I may not agree with him that the tribunes of the plebs must be legislated out of all their power, but he's done it legally and openly. He's a Roman patrician." "So Sulla doesn't know," said Cicero thoughtfully. "I believe that to be the truth." "Pray continue, Marcus Valerius." "About the time that the elders of Ameria began to think that Sulla was a part of the conspiracy, my friend Roscius became more vocal. The poor fellow really was utterly flattened for months, you know. It took a long time for him to say anything. But the moment he did begin to say things, there were several attempts on his life. So two months ago he fled to Rome and sought shelter with his father's old friend, the retired Vestal Metella Balearica. You know, the sister of Metellus Nepos. His other sister was the wife of Appius Claudius Pulcher she died giving birth to that frightful monster of a child, Publius Clodius." "Get on with it, Niger," said Cicero gently. "The fact that Roscius knew such powerful people as Metellus Nepos and a retired Vestal Virgin of the Caecilii Metelli gave the two cousins some sleepless nights, it would appear. They began to believe that Roscius just might manage to see Sulla in person. But they didn't dare murder Roscius, not without risking being found out if the Caecilii Metelli insisted upon an enquiry. So they decided it was better to destroy Roscius's reputation, by fabricating evidence that he had murdered his own father. Do you know a fellow called Erucius?'' Cicero's face twisted in contempt. "Who doesn't? He's a professional accusator." Well, he came forward to charge Roscius with the murder of his father. The witnesses to old Roscius's death were his slaves, and of course they had been sold along with the rest of his estate to Chrysogonus. Therefore there was no likelihood that they would appear to tell the real story! And Erucius is convinced that no advocate of ability will take on Roscius's defense because every advocate will be too afraid of Sulla to dare say damning things about the proscription process." "Then Erucius had better look to his laurels," said Cicero briskly. "I'll defend your friend Roscius gladly, Niger." "Aren't you worried that you'll offend Sulla?" "Pooh! Rubbish! Nonsense! I know exactly how to do it and do it, I will! I predict, in fact, that Sulla will thank me," said Cicero blithely. Though other cases had been heard in the new Murder Court, the trial of Sextus Roscius of Ameria on a charge of parricide created a huge stir. Sulla's law stipulated that it be presided over by an ex aedile, but in that year it was under the presidency of a praetor, Marcus Fannius. Fearlessly Cicero aired the story of Roscius in his actio prima, and left no juror or spectator in any doubt that his main defense was the corruption behind Sulla's proscriptions. Then came the final day of the trial, when Cicero himself was to give his final address to the jury. And there, seated on his ivory curule chair to one side of the president's tribunal, was Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The presence of the Dictator dismayed Cicero not a jot; instead, it pushed him to hitherto undreamed of heights of eloquence and brilliance. "There are three culprits in this hideous affair," he said, declaiming not to the jury, but to Sulla. "The cousins Titus Roscius Capito and Titus Roscius Magnus are obvious, but actually secondary. What they did, they could not have done without the proscriptions. Without Lucius Cornelius...... Chrysogonus," he said, pausing so long between the second and the third names that even Messala Niger began to think he might say, "Sulla." On went Cicero. "Who exactly is this 'golden child'? This Chrysogonus? Let me tell you! He is a Greek. There is no disgrace in that. He is an ex slave. There is no disgrace in that. He is a freedman. There is no disgrace in that. He is the client of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. There is no disgrace in that. He is rich. There is no disgrace in that. He is powerful. There is no disgrace in that. He is the administrator of the proscriptions. There is no disgrace in that ooops! Ooops, ooops! I beg your collective pardons, Conscript Fathers! You see what happens when one bumps along in a rhetorical rut for too long? I got carried away! I could have gone on saying 'There is no disgrace in that' for hours! And oh, what a rhetorical ravine I would have dug for myself!" Fairly launched, Cicero paused to revel consciously in what he was doing. "Let me say it again. He is the administrator of the proscriptions. And in that there is a monumental, a gigantic, an Olympian disgrace! Do all of you see this splendid man on his curule chair this model of every Roman virtue, this general without rival, this lawmaker who has broken new bounds of statesmanship, this brilliant jewel in the crown of the illustrious gens Cornelia? Do all of you see him? Sitting so calmly, Zeus like in his detachment? Do all of you see him? Then look well!" Now Cicero turned away from Sulla to glare at the jury from under his brows, a rather sticklike figure, so thin was he even in his toga; and yet he seemed to tower, to have the thews of Hercules and the majesty of Apollo. "Some years ago this splendid man bought himself a slave. To be his steward. An excellent steward, as things turned out. When this splendid man's late wife was forced to flee from Rome to Greece, his steward was there to help and console. His steward was there in complete charge of this splendid man's dependents wife and children and grandchildren and servants while our great Lucius Cornelius Sulla strode up the Italian peninsula like a titan. His steward was trusted, and did not betray that trust. So he was freed, and took for himself the first two parts of a mighty name Lucius Cornelius. As is the custom, for his third name he kept his own original name Chrysogonus. The golden child. Upon whose head was heaped honor after honor, trust after trust, responsibility after responsibility. He was now not merely the freedman steward of a great household, but also the director, the administrator, the executor of that process which was designed to fulfill two aims: the first, to see a just and rightful punishment meted out to all those traitors who followed Marius, who followed Cinna, who even followed an insect as small as Carbo; and the second, to use the property and estates of traitors as fuel to fan poor impoverished Rome into the flame of prosperity again." Back and forth across the open space left in front of Marcus Fannius's tribunal did Cicero stride, his left arm raised to hold his toga at its left shoulder, his right arm limply by his side. No one moved. Every eye was fixed upon him, men breathed in shallow gasps thinking they didn't breathe at all. "So what did he do, this Chrysogonus? All the while keeping his oily smiling bland face toward his employer, his patron, he slithered to exact his revenge on this one who had insulted him, on that one who had impeded him he toiled mightily in the secret marches of the night with forger's pen and patron's trust to slip in this name and that name whose property he slavered for, to conspire with worms and vermin to enrich himself at the expense of his patron, at the expense of Rome. Ah, members of the jury, but he was cunning! How he plotted and schemed to cover his tracks, how he smarmed and greased in the presence of his patron, how he manipulated his little army of pimps and panders how industriously he worked to make sure that his noble and illustrious patron could have no idea of what was really going on! For that is what happened. Given trust and authority, he abused both in the vilest and most despicable ways." The tears began to flow; Cicero sobbed aloud, wrung his hands, stood hunched over in a paroxysm of pain. "Oh, I cannot look at you, Lucius Cornelius Sulla! That it should be I a mean and simple man from the Latin countryside a hick, a hayseed, a bucolic shyster that it should have to be I who must draw the wool from your eyes, who must open them to the the what adjective can I find adequate to describe the level of the treachery of your most esteemed client, Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus? Vile treachery! Disgusting treachery! Despicable treachery! But none of those adjectives is low enough!" The easy tears were dashed away. "Why did it have to be me? Would that it could have been anybody else! Would that it had been your Pontifex Maximus or your Master of the Horse great men both, and hung about with honors! But instead the lot has fallen to me. I do not want it. But I must accept it. Because, members of the jury, which do you think I would rather do? Spare the great Lucius Cornelius Sulla this agony by saying nothing about the treachery of Chrysogonus, or spare the life of a man who, though accused of murdering his own father, has actually done nothing to warrant the charge? Yes, you are right! It must be the embarrassment, the public mortification of an honorable and distinguished and legendary man because it cannot be the unjust conviction of an innocent man." He straightened, drew himself up. "Members of the jury, I now rest my case." The verdict, of course, was a foregone conclusion: ABSOLVO. Sulla rose to his feet and strolled toward Cicero, who found the crowd around him melting away. "Well done, my skinny young friend," the Dictator said, and held out his hand. "What an actor you would have made!" So exhilarated that he felt as if his feet were floating free in air, Cicero laughed, clasped the hand fervently. "What an actor I am, you mean! For what is superlative advocacy except acting out one's own words?" "Then you'll end the Thespis of Sulla's standing courts." "As long as you forgive me for the liberties I had to take in this case, Lucius Cornelius, I will be anything you like." "Oh, I forgive you!" said Sulla airily. "I think I could forgive almost anything if it meant I sat through a good show. And with only one exception, I've never seen a better amateur production, my dear Cicero. Besides, I've been wondering how to get rid of Chrysogonus for some time I'm not entirely a fool, you know. But it can be ticklish." The Dictator looked around. "Where is Sextus Roscius?" Sextus Roscius was produced. "Sextus Roscius, take back your lands and your reputation, and your dead father's reputation," said Sulla. "I am very sorry that the corruption and venality of one I trusted has caused you so much pain. But he will answer for it." "Thanks to the brilliance of my advocate, Lucius Cornelius, it has ended well," said Sextus Roscius shakily. "There is an epilogue yet to play," said the Dictator, jerked his head at his lictors, and walked away in the direction of the steps which led up onto the Palatine. The next day Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus, who was a Roman citizen of the tribe Cornelia, was pitched headlong from the Tarpeian Rock. "Think yourself lucky," said Sulla to him beforehand. "I could have stripped you of your citizenship and had you flogged and crucified. You die a Roman death because you cared so well for my womenfolk when times were hard. I can do nothing more for you than that. I hired you originally because I knew you were a toad. What I didn't count on was becoming so busy that I was unable to keep an eye on you. But sooner or later it comes out. Bye bye, Chrysogonus." The two cousins Roscius Capito and Magnus disappeared from Ameria before they could be apprehended and brought to trial; no further trace of them was ever discovered. As for Cicero, he was suddenly a great name and a hero besides. No one else had taken on the proscriptions and won.
2
Having been freed from his flaminate and ordered to do military duty under the governor of Asia Province, Marcus Minucius Thermus, Gaius Julius Caesar left for the east a month short of his nineteenth birthday, accompanied by two new servants and his German freedman, Gaius Julius Burgundus. Though most men heading for Asia Province sailed, Caesar had decided to go by land, a distance of eight hundred miles along the Via Egnatia from Apollonia in western Macedonia to Callipolis on the Hellespont. As it was summer by the calendar and the seasons, the journey was not uncomfortable, though devoid for the most part of the inns and posting houses so prevalent throughout Italy; those who went overland to Asia camped. Because flamen Dialis was not allowed to travel, Caesar had been obliged to travel in his mind, which had devoured every book set in foreign parts, and imagined what the world might look like. Not, he soon learned, as it really was; but the reality was so much more satisfying than imagination! As for the act of travel even Caesar, so eloquent, could not find the words to describe it. For in him was a born traveler, adventurous, curious, insatiably eager to sample everything. As he went he talked to the whole world, from shepherds to salesmen, from mercenaries looking for work to local chieftains. His Greek was Attic and superlative, but all those odd tongues he had picked up from infancy because his mother's insula contained a polyglot mixture of tenants now stood him in good stead; not because he was lucky enough to find people who spoke them as he went along, but because his intelligence was attuned to strange words and accents, so he was able to hear the Greek in some strange patois, and discern foreign words in basic Greek. It made him a good traveler, in that he was never lost for means of communication. It would have been wonderful to have had Bucephalus to ride, of course, but young and trusty Flop Ears the mule was not a contemptuous steed in any way save appearance; there were times when Caesar fancied it owned claws rather than hooves, so surefooted was it on rough terrain. Burgundus rode his Nesaean giant, and the two servants rode very good horses if he himself was on his honor not to bestride any mount except Flop Ears, then the world would have to accept this as an eccentricity, and understand from the caliber of his servants' horses that he was not financially unable to mount himself well. How shrewd Sulla was! For that was where it hurt Caesar liked to make a good appearance, to dazzle everyone he encountered. A little difficult on a mule! The first part of the Via Egnatia was the wildest and most inhospitable, for the road, unpaved but well surveyed, climbed the highlands of Candavia, tall mountains which probably hadn't changed much since well before the time of Alexander the Great. A few flocks of sheep, and once in the distance a sight of mounted warriors who might have been Scordisci, were all the evidence of human occupation the travelers saw. From Macedonian Edessa, where the fertile river valleys and plains offered a better livelihood, men became more numerous and settlements both larger and closer together. In Thessalonica, Caesar sought and was given accommodation in the governor's palace, a welcome chance to bathe in hot water ablutions since leaving Apollonia had been in river or lake, and very cold, even in summer. Though invited to stay longer, Caesar remained only one day there before journeying on. Philippi the scene of several battles of fame and recently occupied by one of the sons of King Mithridates he found interesting because of its history and its strategic position on the flanks of Mount Pangaeus; though even more interesting was the road to the east of it, where he could see the military possibilities inherent in the narrow passes before the countryside flattened a little and the terrain became easier again. And finally there lay before him the Gulf of Melas, mountain ringed but fertile; a crust of ridge beyond it and the Hellespont came into view, more than merely a narrow strait. It was the place where Helle tumbled from the back of the Golden Ram and gave her name to the waters, it was the site of the Clashing Rocks which almost sank the Argo, it was the place where armies of Asiatic kings from Xerxes to Mithridates had poured in their thousands upon thousands from Asia into Thrace. The Hellespont was the true crossroads between East and West. In Callipolis, Caesar took ship at last for the final leg of his journey, aboard a vessel which had room to accommodate the horses, the mule and the pack animals, and which was sailing direct to Pergamum. He was hearing now of the revolt of Mitylene and the siege which was under way, but his orders were to report in Pergamum; he could only hope he would be posted to a war zone. But the governor, Marcus Minucius Thermus, had other duties in mind for Caesar. "It's vital that we contain this rebellion, he said to this new junior military tribune, because it's caused by the new system of taxation the Dictator has put into Asia Province. Island states like Lesbos and Chios were very well off under Mithridates, and they'd love to see the end of Rome. Some cities on the mainland feel much the same. If Mitylene succeeds in holding out for a year, we'll have other places thinking they can revolt too. One of the difficulties in containing Mitylene is its double harbor, and the fact that we don't have a proper fleet. So you, Gaius Julius, are going to see King Nicomedes in Bithynia and levy a fleet from him. When you've gathered it, I want you to sail it to Lesbos and put it at the disposal of my legate, Lucullus, who is in charge of the investment." "You'll have to forgive my ignorance, Marcus Minucius," said Caesar, "but how long does it take to gather a fleet, and how many vessels of what kind do you want?'' "It takes forever," said Thermus wearily, "and you'll get whatever the King can scrape together or it might be more accurate to say that you'll get as little as the King can escape with. Nicomedes is no different from any other oriental potentate." The nineteen year old frowned, not pleased at this answer, and proceeded to demonstrate to Thermus that he owned a great deal of natural though not unattractive arrogance. "That's not good enough," he said. "What Rome wants, Rome must have." Thermus couldn't help himself; he laughed. "Oh, you have a lot to learn, young Caesar!" he said. That didn't sit well. Caesar compressed his lips and looked very like his mother (whom Thermus didn't know, or he might have understood Caesar better). Well, Marcus Minucius, why don't you tell me your ideal delivery date and your ideal fleet composition?" he asked haughtily. "Then I will take it upon myself to deliver your ideal fleet on your ideal date." Thermus's jaw dropped, and for a moment he genuinely didn't know how best to answer. That this superb self confidence did not provoke a fit of anger in him, he himself found interesting; nor this time did the young man's arrogance provoke laughter. The governor of Asia Province actually found himself believing that Caesar truly thought himself capable of doing what he said. Time and King Nicomedes would rectify the mistake, but that Caesar could make it was indeed interesting, in view of the letter from Sulla which Caesar had presented to him.
He has some claim on me through marriage, this making him my nephew, but I wish to make it abundantly clear that I do not want him favored. In fact, do not favor him! I want him given difficult things to do, and difficult offices to occupy. He owns a formidable intelligence coupled with high courage, and it's possible he'll do extremely well. However, if I exclude Caesar's conduct during the course of two interviews with me, his history to date has been uninspiring, thanks to his being the flamen Dialis. From this he is now released, legally and religiously. But it means that he has not done military service, so his valor may simply be verbal. Test him, Marcus Minucius, and tell my dear Lucullus to do the same. If he breaks, you have my full permission to be as ruthless as you like in punishing him. If he does not break, I expect you to give him his due. I have a last, if peculiar, request. If at any time you witness or learn that Caesar has ridden a better animal than his mule, send him home at once in disgrace.
In view of this letter, Thermus, recovering from his utter stupefaction, said in even tones, "All right, Gaius Julius, I'll give you a time and a size. Deliver the fleet to Lucullus's camp on the Anatolian shore to the north of the city on the Kalends of November. You won't stand a chance of prising one vessel but of old Nicomedes by then, but you asked for a delivery date, and the Kalends of November would be ideal we'd be able to cut off both harbors before the winter and give them a hard one. As to size: forty ships, at least half of which should be decked triremes or larger. Again, you'll be lucky if you get thirty ships, and of those, about five decked triremes." Thermus looked stern. "However, young Caesar, since you opened your mouth, I feel it my duty to warn you that if you are late or if the fleet is less than ideal, it will go against you in my report to Rome." "As it should," said Caesar, undismayed. "You may have rooms here in the palace for the time being," said Thermus cordially; despite Sulla's giving him permission, it was no part of Thermus's policy to antagonize someone related to the Dictator. "No, I'm off to Bithynia today," said Caesar, moving toward the door. "There's no need to overdo it, Gaius Julius!" "Perhaps not. But there's every need to get going," said Caesar, and got going. It was some time before Thermus went back to his endless paperwork. What an extraordinary fellow! Very well mannered, but in that inimitable way only patricians of the great families seemed to own; the young man left it in no doubt that he liked all men and felt himself superior to none, while at the same time knowing himself superior to all save (perhaps) a Fabius Maximus. Impossible to define, but that was the way they were, especially the Julians and the Fabians. So good looking! Having no sexual liking for men, Thermus pondered about Caesar in that respect; looks of Caesar's kind very often predisposed their possessors toward a sexual liking for men. Yet, he decided, Caesar had not behaved preciously at all. The paperwork reproached silently and Thermus went back to it; within moments he had forgotten all about Gaius Julius Caesar and the impossible fleet.
Caesar went overland from Pergamum without permitting his tiny entourage a night's rest in a Pergamum inn. He followed the course of the Caicus River to its sources before crossing a high ridge and coming down to the valley of the Macestus River, known as the Rhyndacus closer to the sea; the latter, it seemed from talking to various locals, he would do better not to aim for. Instead he turned off the Rhyndacus parallel to the coast of the Propontis and went to Prusa. There was, he had been told, just a chance that King Nicomedes was visiting his second largest city. Prusa's position on the flanks of an imposing snow covered massif appealed to Caesar strongly, but the King was not in residence. On went Caesar to the Sangarius River, and, after a short ride to the west of it, came to the principal royal seat of Nicomedia dreaming upon its long, sheltered inlet. So different from Italy! Bithynia, he had discovered, was soft in climate rather than hot, and amazingly fertile thanks to its series of rivers, all flowing more strongly at this time of year than Italian rivers. Clearly the King ruled a prosperous realm, and his people wanted for nothing. Prusa had contained no poverty stricken inhabitants; nor, it turned out, did Nicomedia. The palace stood upon a knoll above the town, yet within the formidable walls. Caesar's initial impression was of Greek purity of line, Greek colors, Greek design and considerable wealth, even if Mithridates had ruled here for several years while the Bithynian king had retreated to Rome. He never remembered seeing the King in Rome, but that was not surprising; Rome allowed no ruling king to cross the pomerium, so Nicomedes had rented a prohibitively expensive villa on the Pincian Hill and done all his negotiating with the Senate from that location. At the door of the palace Caesar was greeted by a marvelously effeminate man of unguessable age who eyed him up and down with an almost slavering appreciation, sent another effeminate fellow off with Caesar's servants to stable the horses and the mule, and conducted Caesar to an anteroom where he was to wait until the King had been informed and his accommodation decided upon. Whether Caesar would succeed in obtaining an immediate audience with the King, the steward (for so he turned out to be) could not say. The little chamber where Caesar waited was cool and very beautiful, its walls unfrescoed but divided into a series of panels formed by plaster moldings, the cornices gilded to match the panel borders and pilasters. Inside the panels the color was a soft shell pink, outside them a deep purplish red. The floor was a marble confection in purples and pinks, and the windows which looked onto what seemed to be the palace gardens were shuttered from the outside, thus loomed as framed landscapes of exquisite terraces, fountains, blooming shrubs. So lush were the flowers that their perfumes seeped into the room; Caesar stood inhaling, his eyes closed. What opened them was the sound of raised voices coming from beyond a half opened door set into one wall: a male voice, high and lisping, and a female voice, deep and booming. "Jump!" said the woman. "Upsy daisy!" "Rubbish!" said the man. "You degrade it!" "Oozly woozly soozly!" said the woman, and produced a huge whinny of laughter. "Go away!" from the man. "Diddums!" from the woman, laughing again. Perhaps it was bad manners, but Caesar didn't care; he moved to a spot from which his eyes could see what his ears were already hearing. The scene in the adjacent chamber obviously some sort of private sitting room was fascinating. It involved a very old man, a big woman perhaps ten years younger, and an elderly, roly poly dog of some smallish breed Caesar didn't recognize. The dog was performing tricks standing on its hind legs to beg, lying down and squirming over, playing dead with all four feet in the air. Throughout its repertoire it kept its eyes fixed upon the woman, evidently its owner. The old man was furious. "Go away, go away, go away!" he shouted. As he wore the white ribbon of the diadem around his head, the watcher in the other room deduced he was King Nicomedes. The woman (the Queen, as she also wore a diadem) bent over to pick up the dog, which scrambled hastily to its feet to avoid being caught, ran round behind her, and bit her on her broad plump bottom. Whereupon the King fell about laughing, the dog played dead again, and the Queen stood rubbing her buttock, clearly torn between anger and amusement. Amusement won, but not before the dog received her well aimed foot neatly between its anus and its testicles. It yelped and fled, the Queen in hot pursuit. Alone (apparently he didn't know the next door room was occupied, nor had anyone yet told him of Caesar's advent), the King's laughter died slowly away. He sat down in a chair and heaved a sigh, it would seem of satisfaction. Just as Marius and Julia had experienced something of a shock when they had set eyes upon this king's father, so too did Caesar absorb King Nicomedes the Third with considerable amazement. Tall and thin and willowy, he wore a floor length robe of Tyrian purple embroidered with gold and sewn with pearls, and flimsy pearl studded golden sandals which revealed that he gilded his toenails. Though he wore his own hair cut fairly short and whitish grey in color he had caked his face with an elaborate maquillage of snow white cream and powder, carefully drawn in soot black brows and lashes, artificially pinkened his cheeks, and heavily carmined his puckered old mouth. "I take it," said Caesar, strolling into the room, "that Her Majesty got what she deserved." The King of Bithynia goggled. There before him stood a young Roman, clad for the road in plain leather cuirass and kilt. He was very tall and wide shouldered, but the rest of him looked more slender, except that the calves of his legs were well developed above finely turned ankles wrapped around with military boots. Crowned by a mop of pale gold hair, the Roman's head was a contradiction in terms, as its cranium was so large and round that it looked bulbous, whereas its face was long and pointed. What a face! All bones but such splendid bones, stretched over with smooth pale skin, and illuminated by a pair of large, widely spaced eyes set deep in their sockets. The fair brows were thinnish, the fair lashes thick and long; the eyes themselves could be, the King suspected, disquieting, for their light blue irises were ringed with a blue so dark it appeared black, and gave the black pupils a piercing quality softened at the moment by amusement. To the individual taste of the King, however, all else was little compared to the young man's mouth, full yet disciplined, and with the most kissable, dented corners. "Well, hello!" said the King, sitting upright in a hurry, his pose one of bridling seductiveness. "Oh, stop that!" said Caesar, inserting himself into a chair opposite the King's. "You're too beautiful not to like men," the King said, then looked wistful. "If only I were even ten years younger!" "How old are you?" asked Caesar, smiling to reveal white and regular teeth. "Too old to give you what I'd like to!" "Be specific about your age, that is." "I am eighty." "They say a man is never too old." "To look, no. To do, yes." "Think yourself lucky you can't rise to the occasion," said Caesar, still smiling easily. "If you could, I'd have to wallop you and that would create a diplomatic incident." "Rubbish!" scoffed the King. "You're far too beautiful to be a man for women." "In Bithynia, perhaps. In Rome, certainly not." "Aren't you even tempted?" "No." "What a disgraceful waste!" "I know a lot of women who don't think so." "I'll bet you've never loved one of them." "I love my wife," said Caesar. The King looked crushed. "I will never understand Romans!" he exclaimed. "You call the rest of the world barbarian, but it is you who are not civilized." Draping one leg over the arm of his chair, Caesar swung its foot rhythmically. "I know my Homer and Hesiod," he said. "So does a bird, if you teach it." "I am not a bird, King Nicomedes." "I rather wish you were! I'd keep you in a golden cage just to look at you." "Another household pet? I might bite you." "Do!" said the King, and bared his scrawny neck. "No, thanks." "This is getting us nowhere!" said the King pettishly. "Then you have absorbed the lesson." "Who are you?" "My name is Gaius Julius Caesar, and I'm a junior military tribune attached to the staff of Marcus Minucius Thermus, governor of Asia Province." "Are you here in an official capacity?" "Of course." "Why didn't Thermus notify me?" "Because I travel faster than heralds and couriers do, though why your own steward hasn't announced me I don't know," said Caesar, still swinging his foot. At that moment the steward entered the room, and stood aghast to see the visitor sitting with the King. "Thought you'd get in first, eh?" asked the King. "Well, Sarpedon, abandon all hope! He doesn't like men." His head turned back to Caesar, eyes curious. "Julius. Patrician?" "Yes." "Are you a relative of the consul who was killed by Gaius Marius? Lucius Julius Caesar?" "He and my father were first cousins." "Then you're the flamen Dialis!" "I was the flamen Dialis. You've spent time in Rome." "Too much of it." Suddenly aware the steward was still in the room, the King frowned. "Have you arranged accommodation for our distinguished guest, Sarpedon?" "Yes, sire." "Then wait outside." Bowing severally, the steward eased himself out backward. What are you here for?'' asked the King of Caesar. The leg was returned to the floor; Caesar sat up squarely. "I'm here to obtain a fleet." No particular expression came into the King's eyes. "Hmm! A fleet, eh? How many ships are you after, and what kind?" "You forgot to ask when by," said this awkward visitor. "Add, when by." "I want forty ships, half of which must be decked triremes or larger, all collected in the port of your choice by the middle of October," said Caesar. Two and a half months away? Oh, why not just cut off both my legs?" yelled Nicomedes, leaping to his feet. "If I don't get what I want, I will." The King sat down again, an arrested look in his eyes. "I remind you, Gaius Julius, that this is my kingdom, not a province of Rome," he said, his ridiculously carmined mouth unable to wear such anger appropriately. "I will give you whatever I can whenever I can! You ask! You don't demand." "My dear King Nicomedes," said Caesar in a friendly way, "you are a mouse caught in the middle of a path used by two elephants Rome and Pontus." His eyes had ceased to smile, and Nicomedes was suddenly hideously reminded of Sulla. Your father died at an age too advanced to permit you tenure of this throne before you too were an old man. The years since your accession have surely shown you how tenuous your position is you've spent as many of them in exile as you have in this palace, and you are only here now because Rome in the person of Gaius Scribonius Curio put you back. If Rome, which is a great deal further away from Pontus than you are, is well aware that King Mithridates is far from finished and far from being an old man! then you too must know it. The land of Bithynia has been called Friend and Ally of the Roman People since the days of the second Prusias, and you yourself have tied yourself inextricably to Rome. Evidently you're more comfortable ruling than in exile. That means you must co operate with Rome and Rome's requests. Otherwise, Mithridates of Pontus will come galumphing down the path toward Rome galumphing the opposite way and you, poor little mouse, will be squashed flat by one set of feet or the other." The King sat without a thing to say, crimson lips agape, eyes wide. After a long and apparently breathless pause, he took air into his chest with a gasp, and his eyes filled with tears. "That isn't fair!" he said, and broke down completely. Exasperated beyond endurance, Caesar got to his feet, one hand groping inside the armhole of his cuirass for a handkerchief; he walked across to the King and thrust the piece of cloth at him. "For the sake of the position you hold, compose yourself! Though it may have commenced informally, this is an audience between the King of Bithynia and Rome's designated representative. Yet here you sit bedizened like a saltatrix tonsa, and snivel when you hear the unvarnished truth! I was not brought up to chastise venerable grandfathers who also happen to be Rome's client kings, but you invite it! Go and wash your face, King Nicomedes, then we'll begin again." Docile as a child, the King of Bithynia got up and left. In a very short time he was back, face scrubbed clean, and accompanied by several servants bearing trays of refreshments. "The wine of Chios," said the King, sitting down and beaming at Caesar without, it seemed, resentment. "Twenty years old!" "I thank you, but I'd rather have water." "Water?" The smile was back in Caesar's eyes. "I am afraid so. I have no liking for wine." "Then it's as well that the water of Bithynia is renowned," said the King. "What will you eat?" Caesar shrugged indifferently. "It doesn't matter." King Nicomedes now bent a different kind of gaze upon his guest; searching, unaffected by his delight in male beauty. So he looked beyond what had previously fascinated him in Caesar, down into the layers below. "How old are you, Gaius Julius?" "I would prefer that you call me Caesar." "Until you begin to lose your wonderful head of hair," said the King, betraying the fact that he had been in Rome long enough to learn at least some Latin. Caesar laughed. "I agree it is difficult to bear a cognomen meaning a fine head of hair! I'll just have to hope that I follow the Caesars in keeping it into old age, rather than the Aurelians in losing it." He paused, then said, "I'm just nineteen." "Younger than my wine!" said the King in a voice of wonder. "You have Aurelius in you too? Orestes or Cotta?" "My mother is an Aurelia of the Cottae." "And do you look like her? I don't see much resemblance in you to Lucius Caesar or Caesar Strabo." "I have some characteristics from her, some from my father. If you want to find the Caesar in me, think not of Lucius Caesar's younger brother, but his older one Catulus Caesar. All three of them died when Gaius Marius came back, if you remember." "Yes." Nicomedes sipped his Chian wine pensively, then said, "I usually find Romans are impressed by royalty. They seem in love with the philosophy of being Republican, but susceptible to the reality of kingship. You, however, are not a bit impressed." "If Rome had a king, sire, I'd be it," said Caesar simply. "Because you're a patrician?" "Patrician?" Caesar looked incredulous. "Ye gods, no! I am a Julian! That means I go back to Aeneas, whose father was a mortal man, but whose mother was Venus Aphrodite." "You are descended from Aeneas's son, Ascanius?" "We call Ascanius by the name Iulus," said Caesar. "The son of Aeneas and Creusa?" "Some say so. Creusa died in the flames of Troy, but her son did escape with Aeneas and Anchises, and did come to Latium. But Aeneas also had a son by Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus. And he too was called Ascanius, and Iulus." "So which son of Aeneas are you descended from?" "Both," said Caesar seriously. "I believe, you see, that there was only one son the puzzle lies in who mothered him, as everyone knows his father was Aeneas. It is more romantic to believe that Iulus was the son of Creusa, but more likely, I think, that he was the son of Lavinia. After Aeneas died and Iulus grew up, he founded the city of Alba Longa on the Alban Mount uphill from Bovillae, you might say. Iulus died there, and left his family behind to continue to rule the Julii. We were the Kings of Alba Longa, and after it fell to King Servius Tullius of Rome, we were brought into Rome as her foremost citizens. We are still Rome's foremost citizens, as is demonstrated by the fact that we are the hereditary priests of Jupiter Latiaris, who is older by far than Jupiter Optimus Maximus." "I thought the consuls celebrated those rites," said King Nicomedes, revealing more knowledge of things Roman. "Only at his annual festival, as a concession to Rome." "Then if the Julii are so august, why haven't they been more prominent during the centuries of the Republic?'' "Money," said Caesar. "Oh, money!" exclaimed the King, looking enlightened. "A terrible problem, Caesar! For me too. I just haven't the money to give you your fleet Bithynia is broke." "Bithynia is not broke, and you will give me my fleet, O king of mice! Otherwise splosh! You'll be spread as thin as a wafer under an elephant's foot." "I haven't got it to give you!" "Then what are we doing sitting wasting time?" Caesar stood. Put down your cup, King Nicomedes, and start up the machinery!" A hand went under the King's elbow. "Come on, up with you! We will go down to the harbor and see what we can find." Outraged, Nicomedes shook himself free. "I wish you would stop telling me what to do!" "Not until you do it!" "I'll do it, I'll do it!". "Now. There's no time like the present." "Tomorrow." "Tomorrow might see King Mithridates appear over the hill." "Tomorrow will not see King Mithridates! He's in Colchis, and two thirds of his soldiers are dead." Caesar sat down, looking interested. "Tell me more." He took a quarter of a million men to teach the savages of the Caucasus a lesson for raiding Colchis. Typical Mithridates! Couldn't see how he could lose fielding so many men. But the savages didn't even need to fight. The cold in the high mountains did the work for them. Two thirds of the Pontic soldiers died of exposure," said Nicomedes. "Rome doesn't know this." Caesar frowned. "Why didn't you inform the consuls?" "Because it's only just happened and anyway, it is not my business to tell Rome!" "While you're Friend and Ally, it most definitely is. The last we heard of Mithridates, he was up in Cimmeria reshaping his lands at the north of the Euxine." "He did that as soon as Sulla ordered Murena to leave Pontus alone," nodded Nicomedes. "But Colchis had been refractory with its tribute, so he stopped off to rectify that and found out about the barbarian incursions." "Very interesting." "So as you can see, there is no elephant." Caesar's eyes twinkled. "Oh yes there is! An even larger elephant. It's called Rome." The King of Bithynia couldn't help it; he doubled up with laughter. "I give in, I give in! You'll have your fleet!" Queen Oradaltis walked in, the dog at her heels, to find her ancient husband without his face painted, and crying with laughter. Also decently separated by some feet from a young Roman who looked just the sort of fellow who would be sitting in much closer proximity to one like King Nicomedes. "My dear, this is Gaius Julius Caesar," said the King when he sobered a little. A descendant of the goddess Aphrodite, and far better born than we are. He has just maneuvered me into giving him a large and prestigious fleet." The Queen (who had no illusions whatsoever about Nicomedes) inclined her head regally. "I'm surprised you haven't just given him the whole kingdom," she said, pouring herself a goblet of wine and taking up a cake before she sat down. The dog bumbled over to Caesar and dumped itself on his feet, gazing up adoringly. When Caesar bent to give it a resounding pat, it collapsed, rolled over, and presented its fat belly to be scratched. "What's his name?" asked Caesar, who clearly liked dogs. "Sulla," said the Queen. A vision of her sandaled toe administering a kick to Sulla's private parts rose up before Caesar's inner gaze; it was now his turn to double up with laughter. Over dinner he learned of the fate of Nysa, only child of the King and Queen, and heir to the Bithynian throne. "She's fifty and childless," said Oradaltis sadly. "We refused to allow Mithridates to marry her, naturally, but that meant he made it impossible for us to find a suitable husband for her elsewhere. It is a tragedy." "May I hope to meet her before I leave?" asked Caesar. "That is beyond our power," sighed Nicomedes. "When I fled to Rome the last time Mithridates invaded Bithynia, I left Nysa and Oradaltis here in Nicomedia. So Mithridates carried our girl off as a hostage. He still has her in his custody." "And did he marry her?" "We think not. She was never a beauty, and she was even then too old to have children. If she defied him openly he may have killed her, but the last we heard she was alive and being held in Cabeira, where he keeps women like the daughters and sisters he won't permit to marry," said the Queen. "Then we'll hope that when next the two elephants collide on that path, King Nicomedes, the Roman elephant wins the encounter. If I'm not personally a part of the war, I'll make sure whoever is in command knows whereabouts Princess Nysa is." "By then I hope I'll be dead," said the King, meaning it. "You can't die before you get your daughter back!" "If she should ever come back it will be as a Pontic puppet, and that is the reality," said Nicomedes bitterly. "Then you had better leave Bithynia to Rome in your will." "As the third Attalus did with Asia, and Ptolemy Apion with Cyrenaica? Never!" declared the King of Bithynia. "Then it will fall to Pontus. And Pontus will fall to Rome, which means Bithynia will end up Roman anyway." "Not if I can help it." "You can't help it," said Caesar gravely. The next day the King escorted Caesar down to the harbor, where he was assiduous in pointing out the complete absence of ships rigged for fighting. "You wouldn't keep a navy here," said Caesar, not falling for it. "I suggest we ride for Chalcedon." "Tomorrow," said the King, more enchanted with his difficult guest in every passing moment. "We'll start today," said Caesar firmly. "It's what? Forty miles from here? We won't do it in one ride." "We'll go by ship," said the King, who loathed traveling. "No, we'll go overland. I like to get the feel of terrain. Gaius Marius who was my uncle by marriage told me I should always journey by land if possible. Then if in future I should campaign there, I would know the lie of the land. Very useful." "So both Marius and Sulla are your uncles by marriage." "I'm extraordinarily well connected," said Caesar solemnly. "I think you have everything, Caesar! Powerful relatives, high birth, a fine mind, a fine body, and beauty. I am very glad I am not you." "Why?" "You'll never not have enemies. Jealousy or envy, if you prefer to use that term to describe the coveting of characteristics rather than love will dog your footsteps as the Furies did poor Orestes. Some will envy you the beauty, some the body or its height, some the birth, some the mind. Most will envy you all of them. And the higher you rise, the worse it will become. You will have enemies everywhere, and no friends. You will be able to trust neither man nor woman." Caesar listened to this with a sober face. "Yes, I think that is a fair comment," he said deliberately. "What do you suggest I do about it?" "There was a Roman once in the time of the Kings. His name was Brutus," said the King, displaying yet more knowledge of Rome. "Brutus was very clever. But he hid it under a facade of brutish stupidity, hence his cognomen. So when King Tarquinius Superbus killed men in every direction, it never once occurred to him to kill Brutus. Who deposed him and became the first consul of the new Republic." "And executed his own sons when they tried to bring King Tarquinius Superbus back from exile and restore the monarchy to Rome," said Caesar. "Pah! I've never admired Brutus. Nor will I emulate him by pretending I'm stupid." "Then you must take whatever comes." "Believe me, I intend to take whatever comes!" "It's too late to start for Chalcedon today," said the King slyly. "I feel like an early dinner, then we can have some more of this wonderfully stimulating conversation, and ride at dawn." "Oh, we'll ride at dawn," said Caesar cheerfully, "but not from here. I'm leaving for Chalcedon in an hour. If you want to come, you'll have to hurry." Nicomedes hurried, for two reasons: the first was that he knew he had to keep a strict eye on Caesar, who was highhanded; and the second that he was fathoms deep in love with the young man who continued to profess that he had no weakness for men. He found Caesar being thrown up into the saddle of a mule. "A mule?" "A mule," said Caesar, looking haughty. "Why?" "It's an idiosyncrasy." "You're on a mule, and your freedman rides a Nesaean?" "So your eyes obviously tell you." Sighing, the King was helped tenderly into his two wheeled carriage, which followed Caesar and Burgundus at a steady walk. However, when they paused for the night under the roof of a baron so old he had never expected to see his sovereign again, Caesar apologized to Nicomedes. "I'm sorry. My mother would say I didn't stop to think. You're very tired. We ought to have sailed." "My body is devastated, that's true," said Nicomedes with a smile. "However, your company makes me young again." Certainly when he joined Caesar to break his fast on the morning after they had arrived in Chalcedon (where there was a royal residence), he was bright and talkative, seemed well rested. "As you can see," he said, standing on the massive mole which enclosed Chalcedon's harbor, "I have a neat little navy. Twelve triremes, seven quinqueremes, and fourteen undecked ships. Here, that is. I have more in Chrysopolis and in Dascylium." "Doesn't Byzantium take a share of the Bosporan tolls?" "Not these days. The Byzantines used to levy the tolls they were very powerful, used to have a navy almost the equal of the Rhodians. But after the fall of Greece and then Macedonia, they had to keep a large land army to repel the Thracian barbarians, who still raid them. Simply, Byzantium couldn't afford to keep a navy as well as an army. So the tolls passed to Bithynia." "Which is why you have several neat little navies." "And why I have to retain my neat little navies! I can donate Rome ten triremes and five quinqueremes altogether, from what is here and what is elsewhere. And ten undecked ships. The rest of your fleet I'll hire." "Hire?" asked Caesar blankly. "Of course. How do you think we raise navies?" "As we do! By building ships." "Wasteful but then you Romans are that," said the King. "Keeping your own ships afloat when you don't need them costs money. So we Greek speaking peoples of Asia and the Aegean keep our fleets down to a minimum. If we need more in a hurry, we hire them. And that is what I'll do." "Hire ships from where?" asked Caesar, bewildered. "If there were ships to be had along the Aegean, I imagine Thermus would have commandeered them already." "Of course not from the Aegean!" said Nicomedes scornfully, delighted that he was teaching something to this formidably knowledgeable youth. "I'll hire them from Paphlagonia and Pontus." "You mean King Mithridates would hire ships to his enemy?" "Why would he not? They're lying idle at the moment, and costing him money. He doesn't have all those soldiers to fill them, and I don't think he plans an invasion of Bithynia or the Roman Asian province this year or next year!" "So we will blockade Mitylene with ships belonging to the kingdom Mitylene so badly wants to ally itself with," said Caesar, shaking his head. "Extraordinary!" "Normal," said Nicomedes briskly. "How do you go about the business of hiring?" "I'll use an agent. The most reliable fellow is right here in Chalcedon." It occurred to Caesar that perhaps if ships were being hired by the King of Bithynia for Rome's use, it ought to be Rome paying the bill, but as Nicomedes seemed to regard the present situation as routine, Caesar wisely held his tongue; for one thing, he had no money, and for another, he wasn't authorized to find the money. Best then to accept things as they were. But he began to see why Rome had problems in her provinces, and with her client kings. From his conversation with Thermus, he had assumed Bithynia would be paid for this fleet at some time in the future. Now he wondered exactly how long Bithynia would have to wait. "Well, that's all fixed up," said the King six days later. Your fleet will be waiting in Abydus harbor for you to pick it up on the fifteenth day of your October. That is almost two months away, and of course you will spend them with me." "It is my duty to see to the assembling of the ships," said Caesar, not because he wished to avoid the King, but because he believed it ought to be so. "You can't," said Nicomedes. "Why?" "It isn't done that way." Back to Nicomedia they went, Caesar nothing loath; the more he had to do with the old man, the more he liked him. And his wife. And her dog.
Since there were two months to while away, Caesar planned to journey to Pessinus, Byzantium, and Troy. Unfortunately the King insisted upon accompanying him to Byzantium, and upon a sea journey, so Caesar never did get to either Pessinus or Troy; what ought to have been a matter of two or three days in a ship turned into almost a month. The royal progress was tediously slow and formal as the King called into every tiny fishing village and allowed its inhabitants to see him in all his glory though, in deference to Caesar, without his maquillage. Always Greek in nature and population, Byzantium had existed for six hundred years upon the tip of a hilly peninsula on the Thracian side of the Bosporus, and had a harbor on the horn shaped northern reach as well as one on the southern, more open side. Its walls were heavily fortified and very high, its wealth manifest in the size and beauty of its buildings, private as well as public. The Thracian Bosporus was more beautiful than the Hellespont and more majestic, thought Caesar, having sailed through the Hellespont. That King Nicomedes was the city's suzerain became obvious from the moment the royal barge was docked; every man of importance came flocking to greet him. However, it did not escape Caesar that he himself got a few dark looks, or that there were some present who did not like to see the King of Bithynia on such good terms with a Roman. Which led to another dilemma. Until now Caesar's public associations with King Nicomedes had all been inside Bithynia, where the people knew their ruler so well that they loved his whole person, and understood him. It was not like that in Byzantium, where it soon became obvious that everyone assumed Caesar was the King of Bithynia's boyfriend. It would have been easy to refute the assumption a few words here and there about silly old fools who made silly old fools of themselves, and what a nuisance it was to be obliged to dicker for a fleet with a silly old fool. The trouble was, Caesar couldn't bring himself to do that; he had grown to love Nicomedes in every way except the one way Byzantium assumed he did, and he couldn't hurt the poor old man in that one place he himself was hurting most his pride. But there were cogent reasons why he ought to make the true situation clear, first and foremost because his own future was involved. He knew where he was going all the way to the top. Bad enough to attempt that hard climb hiding a part of his nature which was real; but worse by far to attempt it knowing that the inference was quite unjustified. If the King had been younger he might have decided upon a direct appeal, for though Nicomedes condemned the Roman intolerance of homosexuality as un Hellenic, barbarian even, he would out of his naturally warm and affectionate nature have striven to dispel the illusion. But at his advanced age, Caesar couldn't be sure that the hurt this request would produce would not also be too severe. In short, life, Caesar was discovering after that enclosed and sheltered adolescence he had been forced to endure, could hand a man conundrums to which there were no adequate answers. Byzantine resentment of Romans was due, of course, to the occupation of the city by Fimbria and Flaccus four years earlier, when they appointed by the government of Cinna had decided to head for Asia and a war with Mithridates rather than for Greece and a war with Sulla. It made little difference to the Byzantines that Fimbria had murdered Flaccus, and Sulla had put paid to Fimbria; the fact remained that their city had suffered. And here was their suzerain fawning all over another Roman. Thus, having arrived at what decisions he could, Caesar set out to make his own individual impression on the Byzantines, intending to salvage what pride he could. His intelligence and education were a great help, but he was not so sure about that element of his nature that his mother so deplored his charm. It did win over the leading citizens of the city and it did much to mollify their feelings after the singular boorishness and brutishness of Flaccus and Fimbria, but he was forced in the end to conclude that it probably strengthened their impressions of his sexual leanings male men weren't supposed to be charming. So Caesar embarked upon a frontal attack. The first phase of this consisted in crudely rebuffing all the overtures made to him by men, and the second phase in finding out the name of Byzantium's most famous courtesan, then making love to her until she cried enough. "He's as big as a donkey and as randy as a goat," she said to all her friends and regular lovers, looking exhausted. Then she smiled and sighed, and stretched her arms voluptuously. "Oh, but he's wonderful! I haven't had a boy like him in years!" And that did the trick. Without hurting King Nicomedes, whose devotion to the Roman youth was now seen for what it was. A hopeless passion. Back to Nicomedia, to Queen Oradaltis, to Sulla the dog, to that crazy palace with its surplus of pages and its squabbling, intriguing staff. "I'm sorry to have to go," he said to the King and Queen at their last dinner together. "Not as sorry as we are to see you go," said Queen Oradaltis gruffly, and stirred the dog with her foot. Will you come back after Mitylene is subdued?'' asked the King. "We would so much like that." "I'll be back. You have my word on it," said Caesar. "Good!" Nicomedes looked satisfied. "Now, please enlighten me about a Latin puzzle I have never found the answer to: why is cunnus masculine gender, and mentula feminine gender?'' Caesar blinked. "I don't know!" "There must surely be a reason." "Quite honestly, I've never thought about it. But now that you've drawn it to my attention, it is peculiar, isn't it?" "Cunnus should be cunna it's the female genitalia, after all. And mentula should be mentulus it's a man's penis, after all. Below so much masculine bluster, how hopelessly confused you Romans are! Your women are men, and your men, women." And the King sat back, beaming. "You didn't choose the politest words for our private parts," said Caesar gravely. "Cunnus and mentula are obscenities." He kept his face straight as he went on. "The answer is obvious, I would have thought. The gender of the equipment indicates the sex it is intended to mate with the penis is meant to find a female home, and a vagina is meant to welcome a male home." "Rubbish!" said the King, lips quivering. "Sophistry!" said the Queen, shoulders shaking. "What do you have to say about it, Sulla?" asked Nicomedes of the dog, with which he was getting on much better since the advent of Caesar or perhaps it was that Oradaltis didn't use the dog to tease the old man so remorselessly these days. Caesar burst out laughing. When I get home, I will most certainly ask him!" The palace was utterly empty after Caesar left; its two aged denizens crept around bewildered, and even the dog mourned. "He is the son we never had," said Nicomedes. "No!" said Oradaltis strongly. "He is the son we could never have had. Never." "Because of my family's predisposition?" "Of course not! Because we aren't Romans. He is Roman." "Perhaps it would be better to say, he is himself." Do you think he will come back, Nicomedes?'' A question which seemed to cheer the King up. He said very firmly, "Yes, I believe he will."
When Caesar arrived in Abydus on the Ides of October, he found the promised fleet riding at anchor two massive Pontic sixteeners, eight quinqueremes, ten triremes, and twenty well built but not particularly warlike galleys. "Since you wish to blockade rather than pursue at sea," said part of the King's letter to Caesar, "I have given you as your minor vessels broad beamed, decked, converted merchantmen rather than the twenty undecked war galleys you asked for. If you wish to keep the men of Mitylene from having access to their harbor during the winter, you will need sturdier vessels than lightweight galleys, which have to be drawn up on shore the moment a storm threatens. The converted merchantmen will ride out all but gales so terrible no one will be on the sea. The two Pontic sixteeners I thought might come in handy, if for no other reason than they look so fearsome and daunting. They will break any harbor chain known, so will be useful when you attack. Also, the harbor master at Sinope was willing to throw them in for nothing beyond food and wages for their crews (five hundred men apiece), as he says the King of Pontus can find absolutely no work for them to do at the moment. I enclose the bill on a separate sheet." The distance from Abydus on the Hellespont to the Anatolian shore of the island of Lesbos just to the north of Mitylene was about a hundred miles, which, said the chief pilot when Caesar applied to him for the information, would take between five and ten days if the weather held and every ship was genuinely seaworthy. "Then we'd better make sure they all are," said Caesar. Not used to working for an admiral (for such, Caesar supposed, was his status until he reached Lesbos) who insisted that his ships be gone over thoroughly before the expedition started, the chief pilot assembled Abydus's three shipwrights and inspected each vessel closely, with Caesar hanging over their shoulders badgering them with ceaseless questions. Do you get seasick?'' asked the chief pilot hopefully. "Not as far as I know," said Caesar, eyes twinkling. Ten days before the Kalends of November the fleet of forty ships sailed out into the Hellespont, where the current which always flowed from the Euxine into the Aegean bore them at a steady rate toward the southern mouth of the strait at the Mastusia promontory on the Thracian side, and the estuary of the Scamander River on the Asian side. Not far down the Scamander lay Troy fabled Ilium, from the burning ruins of which his ancestor Aeneas had fled before Agamemnon could capture him. A pity that he hadn't had a chance to visit this awesome site, Caesar thought, then shrugged; there would be other chances. The weather held, with the result that the fleet still keeping well together arrived off the northern tip of Lesbos six days early. Since it was no part of Caesar's plan to get to his destination on any other day than the Kalends of November, he consulted the chief pilot again and put the fleet snugly into harbor within the curling palm of the Cydonian peninsula, where it could not be seen from Lesbos. The enemy on Lesbos did not concern him: he wanted to surprise the besieging Roman army. And cock a snook at Thermus. "You have phenomenal luck," said the chief pilot when the fleet put out again the day before the Kalends of November. "In what way?" "I've never seen better sailing conditions for this time of the year and they'll hold for several days yet." "Then at nightfall we'll put in to whatever sheltering bay we can find on Lesbos. At dawn tomorrow I'll take a fast lighter to find the army," said Caesar. "There's no point in bringing the whole fleet down until I find out whereabouts the commander wants to base it."
Caesar found his army shortly after the sun had risen on the following day, and went ashore to find Thermus or Lucullus, whoever was in command. Lucullus, as it turned out. Thermus was still in Pergamum. They met below the spot where Lucullus was supervising the construction of a wall and ditch across the narrow, hilly spit of land on which stood the city of Mitylene. It was Caesar of course who was curious; Lucullus was just testy, told no more than that a strange tribune wanted to see him, and deeming all unknown junior officers pure nuisances. His reputation in Rome had grown over the years since he had been Sulla's faithful quaestor, the only legate who had agreed to the march on Rome that first time, when Sulla had been consul. And he had remained Sulla's man ever since, so much so that Sulla had entrusted him with commissions not usually given to men who had not been praetor; he had waged war against King Mithridates and he had stayed in Asia Province after Sulla went home, holding it for Sulla while the governor, Murena, had busied himself conducting an unauthorized war against Mithridates in the land of Cappadocia. Caesar saw a slim, fit looking man of slightly more than average height, a man who walked a little stiffly not, it seemed, because there was anything wrong with his bones, but rather because the stiffness was in his mind. Not a handsome man but definitely an interesting looking one he had a long, pale face surmounted by a thatch of wiry, waving hair of that indeterminate color called mouse brown. When he came close enough to see his eyes, Caesar discovered they were a clear, light, frigid grey. The commander's brows were knitted into a frown. "Yes?" "I am Gaius Julius Caesar, junior military tribune." "Sent from the governor, I presume?" "Yes." "So? Why did you have to ask for. me? I'm busy." "I have your fleet, Lucius Licinius." "My fleet?" "The one the governor told me to obtain from Bithynia." The cold regard became fixed. "Ye gods!" Caesar stood waiting. "Well, that is good news! I didn't realize Thermus had sent two tribunes to Bithynia," said Lucullus. "When did he send you? In April?" "As far as I know, I'm the only one he sent." "Caesar Caesar ... You can't be the one he sent at the end of Quinctilis, surely!" "Yes, I am." And you have a fleet already? "Yes." "Then you'll have to go back, tribune. King Nicomedes has palmed you off with rubbish." This fleet contains no rubbish. I have forty ships I have personally inspected for seaworthiness two sixteeners, eight quinqueremes, ten triremes, and twenty converted merchantmen the King said would be better for a winter blockade than light undecked war galleys," said Caesar, hugging his delight inside himself so secretly not a scrap of it showed. "Ye gods!" Lucullus now inspected this junior military tribune as minutely as he would a freak in a sideshow at the circus. A faint turn began to work at tugging the left corner of his mouth upward, and the eyes melted a little. "How did you manage that?" "I'm a persuasive talker." "I'd like to know what you said! Nicomedes is as tight as a miser's clutch on his last sestertius." "Don't worry, Lucius Licinius, I have his bill." Call me Lucullus, there are at least six Lucius Liciniuses here." The general turned to walk toward the seashore. "I'll bet you have the bill! What is he charging us for sixteeners?" "Only the food and wages of their crews." "Ye gods! Where is this magical fleet?" "About a mile upshore toward the Hellespont, riding at anchor. I thought it would be better to come ahead myself and ask you whether you want it moored here, or whether you'd rather it went straight on to blockade the Mitylene harbors." Some of the stiffness had gone from Lucullus's gait. "I think we'll put it straight to work, tribune." He rubbed his hands together. "What a shock for Mitylene! Its men thought they'd have all winter to bring in extra provisions." When the two men reached the lighter and Lucullus stepped nimbly on board, Caesar hung back. "Well, tribune? Aren't you coming?" "If you wish. I'm a little new to military etiquette, so I don't want to make any mistakes," said Caesar frankly. "Get in, man, get in!" It was not until the twenty oarsmen, ten to a side, had turned the open boat into the north and commenced the long, easy strokes which ate up distance that Lucullus spoke again. "New to military etiquette? You're well past seventeen, tribune, are you not? You didn't say you were a contubernalis.'' Stifling a sigh (he could see that he would be tired of explaining long before explanations were no longer necessary), Caesar said in matter of fact tones, I am nineteen, but this is my first campaign. Until June I was the flamen Dialis.'' But Lucullus never wanted lavish details; he was too busy and too intelligent. So he nodded, taking for granted all the things most men wanted elaborated. Caesar ... Was your aunt Sulla's first wife?" "Yes." "So he favors you." "At the moment." "Well answered! I am his loyalest follower, tribune, and I say that as a warning I owe to you, considering your relationship to him. I do not permit anyone to criticize him." "You'll hear no criticisms from me, Lucullus." "Good." A silence fell, broken only by the uniform grunt of twenty oarsmen dipping simultaneously into the water. Then Lucullus spoke again, with some amusement. "I would still like to know how you prised such a mighty fleet out of King Nicomedes." And that secret delight suddenly popped to the surface in a manner Caesar had not yet learned to discipline; he said something indiscreet to someone he didn't know. "Suffice it to say that the governor annoyed me. He refused to believe that I could produce forty ships, half of them decked, by the Kalends of November. I was injured in my pride, and undertook to produce them. And I have produced them! The governor's lack of faith in my ability to live up to my word demanded it." This answer irritated Lucullus intensely; he loathed having cocksure men in his army at any level, and he found the statement detestably arrogant. He therefore set out to put this cocksure child in his place. "I know that painted old trollop Nicomedes extremely well," he said in a freezing voice. "Of course you are very pretty, and he is very notorious. Did he fancy you?'' But, as he had no intention of permitting Caesar to reply, he went on immediately. "Yes, of course he fancied you! Oh, well done for you, Caesar! It isn't every Roman who has the nobility of purpose to put Rome ahead of his chastity. I think we'll have to call you the face that launched forty ships. Or should that be arse?" The anger flared up in Caesar so quickly that he had to drive his nails into his palms to keep his arms by his sides; in all his life he had never had to fight so hard to keep his head. But keep it he did. At a price he was never to forget. His eyes turned to Lucullus, wide and staring. And Lucullus, who had seen eyes like that many times before, lost his color. Had there been anywhere to go he would have stepped back out of reach; instead he held his ground. But not without an effort. "I had my first woman," said Caesar in a flat voice, "at about the time I had my fourteenth birthday. I cannot count the number I have had since. This means I know women very well. And what you have just accused me of, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, is the kind of trickery only women need employ. Women, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, have no other weapon in their arsenal than to use their cunni to get what they want or what some man wants them to get for him. The day I need to resort to sexual trickery to achieve my ends, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, is the day that I will put my sword through my belly. You have a proud name. But compared to mine it is less than the dust. You have impugned my dignitas. I will not rest until I have extirpated that stain. How I obtained your fleet is not your affair. Or Thermus's! You may rest assured, however, that it was obtained honorably and without my needing to bed the King or the Queen, for that matter. The sex of the one being exploited is of little moment. I do not reach my goals by such methods. I reach them by using my intelligence a gift which, it seems to me, few men own. I should therefore go far. Further, probably, than you." Having finished, Caesar turned his back and looked at the receding siegeworks which were making a ruin of the outskirts of Mitylene. And Lucullus, winded, could only be thankful that the verbal exchange had taken place in Latin; otherwise the oarsmen would have spread its gist far and wide. Oh, thank you, Sulla! What a hornet you have sent to enliven our placid little investment! He will be more trouble than a thousand Mitylenes. The rest of the trip was accomplished in a stony silence, Caesar withdrawn into himself and Lucullus cudgeling his brains to think of a way by which he could retrieve his position without sacrificing his good opinion of himself for it was absolutely inconceivable that he, the commanding officer of this war, could lower himself to apologize to a junior military tribune. And, as a satisfactory solution continued to elude him, at the end of the short journey he scaled the ladder up onto the deck of the nearest sixteener having to pretend Caesar didn't exist. When he was standing firmly on the deck he held his right hand, palm outward, to halt Caesar's progress up the ladder. "Don't bother, tribune," he said coldly. "Return to my camp and find your quarters. I don't want to see you." "Am I at liberty to find my servants and horses?" "Of course."
If Burgundus, who knew his master as well as anyone, was sure that something had gone very wrong during the time Caesar had been away from the fleet, he was wise enough not to remark upon Caesar's pinched, glazed expression as they set off by land toward Lucullus's camp. Caesar himself remembered nothing of the ride, nor of the layout of the camp when he rode into it. A sentry pointed down the via principalis and informed the new junior military tribune that he would find his quarters in the second brick building on the right. It was not yet noon, but it felt as if the morning had contained a thousand hours, and the kind of weariness Caesar now found in himself was entirely new dark, frightful, blind. As this was a permanent camp not expected to be struck before the next spring, its inhabitants were housed more solidly and comfortably than under leather. For the rankers, endless rows of stout wooden huts, each containing eight soldiers; for the noncombatants, bigger wooden huts each containing eighty men; for the general, a proper house almost big enough to be called a mansion, built of sun dried bricks; for the senior legates, a similar house; for the middle rank of officers, a squarer mud brick pile four storeys in height; and for the junior military tribunes, the same kind of edifice, only smaller. The door was open and voices issued from within when Caesar loomed there, hesitating, his servants and animals waiting in the road behind him. At first he could see little of the interior, but his eyes were quick to respond to changes in the degree of available light, so he was able to take in the scene before anyone noticed him. A big wooden table stood in the middle of the room, around which, their booted feet on its top, sat seven young men. Who they were he didn't know; that was the penalty for being the flamen Dialis. Then a pleasant faced, sturdily built fellow on the far side of the table glanced at the doorway and saw Caesar. "Hello!" he said cheerfully. "Come in, whoever you are." Caesar entered with far more assurance than he felt, the effect of Lucullus's accusation still lingering in his face; the seven who stared at him saw a deadly Apollo, not a lyrical one. The feet came down slowly. After that initial welcome, no one said a word. Everyone just stared. Then the pleasant faced fellow got to his feet and came round the table, his hand outstretched. "Aulus Gabinius," he said, and laughed. "Don't look so haughty, whoever you are! We've got enough of those already." Caesar took the hand, shook it strongly. "Gaius Julius Caesar," he said, but could not answer the smile. "I think I'm supposed to be billeted here. A junior military tribune." "We knew they'd find an eighth somewhere," said Gabinius, turning to face the others. "That's all we are junior military tribunes the scum of the earth and a thorn in our general's side. We do occasionally work! But since we're not paid, the general can't very well insist on it. We've just eaten dinner. There's some left. But first, meet your fellow sufferers." The others by now had come to their feet. "Gaius Octavius." A short young man of muscular physique, Gaius Octavius was handsome in a rather Greek way, brown of hair and hazel of eye except for his ears, which stuck straight out like jug handles. His handshake was nicely firm. "Publius Cornelius Lentulus plain Lentulus." One of the haughty ones, obviously, and a typical Cornelian brown of coloring, homely of face. He looked as if he had trouble keeping up, yet was determined to keep up insecure but dogged. "The fancy Lentulus Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Niger. We call him Niger, of course." Another of the haughty ones, another typical Cornelian. More arrogant than plain Lentulus. "Lucius Marcius Philippus Junior. We call him Lippus he's such a snail." The nickname was an unkindness, as Lippus did not have bleary eyes; rather, his eyes were quite magnificently large and dark and dreamy, set in a far better looking face than Philippus owned from his Claudian grandmother, of course, whom he resembled. He gave an impression of easygoing placidity and his handshake was gentle, though not weak. "Marcus Valerius Messala Rufus. Known as Rufus the Red." Not one of the haughty ones, though his patrician name was very haughty. Rufus the Red was a red man red of hair and red of eye. He did not, however, seem to be red of disposition. "And, last as usual because we always seem to look over the top of his head, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus." Bibulus was the haughtiest one of all, perhaps because he was by far the smallest, diminutive in height and in build. His features lent themselves to a natural expression of superiority, for his cheekbones were sharp, as was his bumpy Roman nose; the mouth was discontented and the brows absolutely straight above slightly prominent, pale grey eyes. Hair and brows were white fair, having no gold in them, which made him seem older than his years, numbering twenty one. Very occasionally two individuals upon meeting generate in that first glance a degree of dislike which has no foundation in fact or logic; it is instinctive and ineradicable. Such was the dislike which flared between Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus in their first exchange of glances. King Nicomedes had spoken of enemies here was one, Caesar was sure. Gabinius pulled the eighth chair from its position against the wall and set it at the table between his own and Octavius's. "Sit down and eat," he said. "I'll sit, gladly, but forgive me if I don't eat." "Wine, you'll have some wine!" "I never touch it." Octavius giggled. "Oh, you'll love living here!" he cried. "The vomit is usually wall to wall." "You're the flamen Dialis!" exclaimed Philippus's son. "I was the flamen Dialis," said Caesar, intending to say no more. Then he thought better of that, and went on, "If I give you the details now, no one need ever ask about it again." He told the story crisply, his words so well chosen that the rest of them no scholars, any soon realized the new tribune was an intellectual, if not a scholar. "Quite a tale," said Gabinius when it was over. "So you're still married to Cinna's daughter," said Bibulus. "Yes." "And," said Octavius, giving a whoop of laughter, "we are now hopelessly locked in the ancient combat, Gabinius! Caesar makes it four patricians! War to the death!" The rest gave him withering glances, and he subsided. "Just come out from Rome, have you?" asked Rufus. "No, from Bithynia." "What were you doing in Bithynia?" asked plain Lentulus. "Gathering a fleet for the investment of Mitylene." "I'll bet that old pansy Nicomedes liked you," sneered Bibulus. Knowing that it was a breach of manners calculated to offend most of those in the room, he had tried not to say it; but somehow his tongue could not resist. "He did, as a matter of fact," said Caesar coolly. "Did you get your fleet?" Bibulus pressed. "Naturally," said Caesar with a haughtiness Bibulus could never have matched. The laughter was sharp, like Bibulus's face. "Naturally? Don't you mean, un naturally?" No one actually saw what happened next. Six pairs of eyes only found focus after Caesar had moved around the table and picked Bibulus up bodily, holding him at arm's length, feet well clear of the floor. It looked ridiculous, comedic; Bibulus's arms were swinging wildly at Caesar's smiling face but were too short to connect a scene straight out of an inspired mime. "If you were not as insignificant as a flea," said Caesar, "I would now be outside pounding your face into the cobbles. Unfortunately, Pulex, that would be tantamount to murder. You're too insignificant to allow me to beat you to a pulp. So stay out of my way, fleabite!" Still holding Bibulus clear of the floor, he looked about until he found something that would do a cabinet six feet tall. Without seeming to exert much effort, he popped Bibulus on top, gracefully avoiding the boot Bibulus aimed at him. "Kick your feet up there for a while, Pulex." Then he was gone, out into the road. "Pulex really suits you, Bibulus!" said Octavius, laughing. "I shall call you Pulex from now on, you deserve it. How about you, Gabinius? Going to call him Pulex?" "I'd rather call him Podex!" snapped Gabinius, red faced with anger. What possessed you to say that, Bibulus? It was utterly uncalled for, and it makes every one of us look bad!" He glared at the others. "I don't care what the rest of you do, but I'm going out to help Caesar unload." "Get me down!" said Bibulus from the top of the cabinet. "Not I!" said Gabinius scornfully. In the end no one volunteered; Bibulus had to drop cleanly to the floor, for the flimsy unit was too unstable to permit of his lowering himself by his hands. In the midst of his monumental rage he also knew bewilderment and mortification Gabinius was right. What had possessed him? All he had succeeded in doing was making a churl of himself he had lost the esteem of his companions and could not console himself that he had won the encounter, for he had not. Caesar had won it easily and with honor not by striking a man smaller than himself, but rather by showing that man's smallness up. It was only natural that Bibulus should resent size and muscularity in others, as he had neither; the world, he well knew, belonged to big and imposing men. Just the look of Caesar had been enough to set him off the face, the body, the height and then, to cap those physical advantages, the fellow had produced a spate of fluent, beautifully chosen words! Not fair! He didn't know whom he hated most himself, or Gaius Julius Caesar. The man with everything. Bellows of mirth were floating in from the road, too intriguing for Bibulus to resist. Quietly he crept to the side of the doorway and peered around it furtively. There stood his six fellow tribunes holding their sides, while the man who had everything sat upon the back of a mule! Whatever he was saying Bibulus could not hear, but he knew the words were witty, funny, charming, likable, irresistible, fascinating, interesting, superbly chosen, spellbinding. Well,'' he said to himself as he slunk toward the privacy of his room, "he will never, never, never be rid of this flea!"
As winter set in and the investment of Mitylene slowed to that static phase wherein the besiegers simply sat and waited for the besieged to starve, Lucius Licinius Lucullus finally found time to write to his beloved Sulla.
I hold out high hopes for an end to this in the spring, thanks to a very surprising circumstance about which I would rather tell you a little further down the columns. First, I would like you to grant me a favor. If I do manage to end this in the spring, may I come home? It has been so long, dear Lucius Cornelius, and I need to set eyes on Rome not to mention you. My brother, Varro Lucullus, is now old enough and experienced enough to be a curule aedile, and I have a fancy to share the curule aedileship with him. There is no other office a pair of brothers can share and earn approbation. Think of the games we will give! Not to mention the pleasure. I am thirty eight now, my brother is thirty six almost praetor time, yet we have not been aediles. Our name demands that we be aediles. Please let us have this office, then let me be praetor as soon afterward as possible. If, however, you feel my request is not wise or not deserved, I will of course understand. Thermus seems to be managing in Asia Province, having given me the siege of Mitylene to keep me busy and out of his hair. Not a bad sort of fellow, really. The local peoples all like him because he has the patience to listen to their tales of why they can't afford to pay the tribute, and I like him because after he's listened so patiently, he insists they pay the tribute. These two legions I have here are composed of a rough lot of fellows. Murena had them in Cappadocia and Pontus, Fimbria before him. They have an independence of mind which I dislike, and am busy knocking out of them. Of course they resent your edict that they never be allowed to return to Italy because they condoned Fimbria's murder of Flaccus, and send a deputation to me regularly asking that it be lifted. They get nowhere, and by this know me well enough to understand that I will decimate them if they give me half an excuse. They are Rome's soldiers, and they will do as they are told. I become very testy when rankers and junior tribunes think they are entitled to a say but more of that anon. It seems to me at this stage that Mitylene will have softened to a workable consistency by the spring, when I intend a frontal assault. I will have several siege towers in place, so it ought to succeed. If I can beat this city into submission before the summer, the rest of Asia Province will lie down tamely. The main reason why I am so confident lies in the fact that I have the most superb fleet from you'll never guess! Nicomedes! Thermus sent your nephew by marriage, Gaius Julius Caesar, to obtain it from Nicomedes at the end of Quinctilis. He did write to me to that effect, though neither of us expected to see the fleet before March or even April of next year. But apparently, if you please, Thermus had the audacity to laugh at young Caesar's confidence that he would get the fleet together quickly. So Caesar pokered up and demanded a fleet size and delivery date from Thermus in the most high handed manner possible. Forty ships, half of them decked quinqueremes or triremes, delivered on the Kalends of November. Such were Thermus's orders to this haughty young fellow. But would you believe it, Caesar turned up in my camp on the Kalends of November with a far better fleet than any Roman could ever have expected to get from the likes of Nicomedes? Including two sixteeners, for which I have to pay no more than food and wages for their crews! When I saw the bill, I was amazed Bithynia will make a profit, but not an outrageous one. Which makes me honor bound to return the fleet as soon as Mitylene falls. And to pay up. I hope to pay up out of the spoils, of course, but if these should fail to be as large as I expect, is there any chance you could persuade the Treasury to make me a special grant? I must add that young Caesar was arrogant and insolent when he handed the fleet over to me. I was obliged to put him in his place. Naturally there is only one way he could possibly have extracted such a magnificent fleet in such a short time from old pansy Nicomedes he slept with him. And so I told him, to put him in his place. But I doubt there is any way in the world to put Caesar in his place! He turned on me like a hooded snake and informed me that he didn't need to resort to women's tricks to obtain anything and that the day he did was the day he would put his sword through his belly. He left me wondering how to discipline him not usually a problem I have, as you know. In the end I thought perhaps his fellow junior military tribunes might do it for me. You remember them you must have seen them in Rome before they set out for service. Gabinius, two Lentuli, Octavius, Messala Rufus, Bibulus, and Philippus's son. I gather tiny Bibulus did try. And got put up on top of a tall cabinet for his pains. The ranks in the junior tribunes' quarters have been fairly split since Caesar has acquired Gabinius, Octavius, and Philippus's son Rufus is neutral and the two Lentuli and Bibulus loathe him. There is always trouble among young men during siege operations, of course, because of the boredom, and it's difficult to flog the young villains to do any work. Even for me. But Caesar spells trouble above and beyond the usual. I detest having to bother myself with people on this low level, but I have had no choice on several occasions. Caesar is a handful. Too pretty, too self confident, too aware of what is, alas, a very great intelligence. However, to give Caesar his due, he's a worker. He never stops. How I don't quite know, but almost every ranker in the camp seems to know him and like him, more's the pity. He just takes charge. My legates have taken to avoiding him because he won't take orders on a job unless he approves of the way the job is being done. And unfortunately his way is always the better way! He's one of those fellows who has it all worked out in his mind before the first blow is struck or the first subordinate ordered to do a thing. The result is that all too often my legates end up with red faces. The only way so far that I have managed to prick his confidence is in referring to how he obtained his wonderful fleet from old Nicomedes at such a bargain price. And it does work, to the extent that it angers him hugely. But will he do what I want him to do physically attack me and give me an excuse to court martial him? No! He's too clever and too self controlled. I don't like him, of course. Do you? He had the impudence to inform me that my birth compared to his is less than the dust! Enough of junior tribunes. I ought to find things to say about grander men senior legates, for example. But I am afraid that about them I can think of nothing. I hear that you have gone into the matchmaking business, and have found Pompeius Kid Butcher a wife far above his own standing. You might, if you have the time, find me a bride. I have been away since my thirtieth birthday, now I am almost of praetor's age and have no wife, let alone son to succeed me. The trouble is that I prefer good wine, good food and good times to the sort of woman a Licinius Lucullus must marry. Also, I like my women very young, and who is so hard up that he would give me his thirteen year old? If you can think of anyone, let me know. My brother absolutely refuses to act as a matchmaker, so you can imagine how happy I was to learn that you have gone into the business. I love you and miss you, dear Lucius Cornelius.
Late in March, Marcus Minucius Thermus arrived from Pergamum, and agreed that Lucullus should attack. When he heard all the details about Caesar's Bithynian fleet he roared with laughter, though Lucullus was still unable to see the funny side of it; he was too plagued by complaints passed up the command chain about his unruly, scrapping junior military tribunes. There was, however, a very old and unwritten army law: if a man is a constant source of trouble, put him somewhere in the battle sure to see him dead by the end of it. And, making his plans for the assault on Mitylene, Lucullus resolved to abide by this ancient army law. Caesar would have to die. Full command in the coming battle had been left with him; Thermus would be present only as an observer. It was not extraordinary for a general to call all ranks of his officers to a final council, but rare enough in the case of Lucullus to cause some comment. Not that anyone thought it odd to see the junior military tribunes present; they were inordinately troublesome, and clearly the general did not trust them. Normally they served, chiefly as messengers, under his legionary tribunes, and it was as such that he appointed them when he came to the fine details at the end of his war council. Except for Caesar, to whom he said coldly, "You are a pain in the podex, but I note that you like to work hard. I have therefore decided to give you command of a special cohort composed of all the worst elements in the Fimbriani. This cohort I will hold in reserve until I see whereabouts the fiercest resistance is. Then I will order it into that section of the battle. It will be your job as their commander to see that they reverse the situation." "You're a dead man," said Bibulus complacently as they sat in their quarters after the council. "Not I!" said Caesar cheerfully, splitting a hair from his head with his sword, and another with his dagger. Gabinius, who liked Caesar enormously, looked worried. "I wish you weren't such a prominent sort of mentula," he said. "If you would only pipe down and make yourself inconspicuous, you wouldn't be singled out. He's given you a job he ought not to have given to a junior, especially one who has never served in a campaign before. All of his own troops are Fimbriani and under permanent sentence of exile. He's gathered together the ones who resent it most, then put you in charge of them! If he was going to give you command of a cohort, it ought to have been of men from Thermus's legions." "I know all that," said Caesar patiently. "Nor can I help it if I'm a prominent sort of mentula ask any of the camp women." That provoked a chuckle from some, dark looks from others; those who loathed him might have forgiven him more easily had he not, over the course of the winter, earned an enviable reputation among the female camp followers made more novel and amusing by his insistence that the lucky woman be so clean she shone. "Aren't you worried at all?" asked Rufus the Red. "No," said Caesar. "I have luck as well as talent. Wait and see." He slid sword and dagger into their scabbards carefully, then prepared to carry them to his room. As he passed by Bibulus he tickled him under the chin. "Don't be afraid, little Pulex," he said, "you're so small the enemy will never notice you." "If he wasn't so sure of himself, I might find him more bearable," said plain Lentulus to Lentulus Niger as they trod together up the stairs to their rooms. "Something will cut him down to size," said Niger. "Then I hope I'm there to see it," said plain Lentulus, and shivered. "It's going to be nasty tomorrow, Niger." "Most of all for Caesar," said Niger, and smiled with sour satisfaction. "Lucullus has thrown him to the arrows." There were six siege towers drawn close to the walls of Mitylene, each big enough to permit the passage of hundreds of troops through them and onto the top of the walls quickly enough to meet the defenders and hurl them down. Unfortunately for Lucullus, the defenders were well aware that their chances of withstanding such an assault were less than their chances of winning a pitched battle outside their walls. Halfway through the night Lucullus was woken with the news that the city's gates were all open and that sixty thousand men were pouring out to take up stations in the space between Mitylene's walls and the ditch and siege wall Lucullus had built. Bugles blew, drums rolled, horns blared: the Roman camp became a scene of frenzied activity as Lucullus summoned his soldiers to arms. He now had all four of Asia's legions, as Thermus had brought the other two with him; these had not been a part of Fimbria's army and so would be entitled to return to Rome with Thermus at the conclusion of his term in office. Thus their presence in the siege camp at Mitylene had served to remind the Fimbriani of their permanent exile, and stirred up fresh discontent. Now that a pitched battle was inevitable, Lucullus feared that the Fimbriani would not stand and fight. Which made it more imperative than ever that Caesar's cohort of the most aggressive malcontents be separated from the rest of the army. Lucullus had twenty four thousand men, against Mitylene's sixty thousand. But among the seasoned Mitylene warriors would be many old men and little boys as there always were when a city marshaled its people to fight a force of besiegers. "I'm a fool, I should have thought of this!" said an angry Lucullus to Thermus. "What's more to the point, how did they know we were going to attack today?" asked Thermus. "Spies, probably among the camp women," said Lucullus. "I will have all of them killed later." He returned to the business at hand. "The worst of it is that it's still too dark to see how they've drawn themselves up. I'll have to keep them at bay until I've worked out a plan." "You're a brilliant tactician, Lucullus," said Thermus. "It will go well, despite this." At dawn Lucullus stood at the top of one of the towers along his own walls, examining the massed formations of enemy; his troops were already in No Man's Land, clustered along the edge of his ditch, from the bottom of which the hundreds of thousands of sharpened stakes had been hastily removed. Lucullus wanted no impaled Roman soldiers if his army should be forced back. One good thing, it would have to be a fight to the death. Lucullus's wall would prevent his own troops fleeing the field. Not that he anticipated this; the Fimbriani when they were in the mood to fight were as good as any troops he had ever commanded. Before the sun rose he was in No Man's Land himself, with his command chain around him receiving their orders. "I can't address the army, it would never hear me," he said, tight lipped. "So everything depends on your hearing me now, and on your absolute obedience. As your orientation point you will use the great north gate of Mitylene, as it is right in the center of our sphere of operation. My army will be drawn up in the shape of a crescent moon, with the wings forward of the center. But in the middle of the hollow exactly opposite the gate I want a forward thrusting peak. This peak will advance ahead of all other units at a walk, its objective the gate. My tactic is to use the peak to divide the enemy host in two, and to enclose each half within the loops of my crescent. That means the men must keep the shape of their formation, the wing tips almost level with the peak. I have no cavalry, so I must ask the men at the ends of the crescent to behave like cavalry wings. Fast and heavy." Perhaps seventy men were gathered around him as he stood on a small box to give him sufficient height to see everyone; the cohort centurions were there as well as the officers. His frowning gaze rested upon Caesar and the pilus prior centurion who commanded that cohort of rebels he had originally intended as arrow fodder. Lucullus had no trouble in remembering the name of the pilus prior Marcus Silius an aggressive, ill mannered upstart who was always the ringleader of the deputations the men of the Fimbriani sent regularly to petition him. This was no time to exact revenge; what he needed was to make a decision based firmly in good sense. And what he had to decide was whether this cohort ought to form the spearhead of that central peak a cohort sure to die almost to its last man or be buried at the back of one of the two crescent curves where it could do little save form a reinforcement. He made up his mind. "Caesar and Silius you will take your cohort to the head of the peak and drive toward the gate. Once you reach the gate, hold your ground no matter what they throw at you." And he went on to make the rest of his dispositions. "The gods help me, that cunnus Lucullus has given me a pretty baby to lead us," growled Silius to Caesar out of the side of his mouth as they waited for Lucullus to end. From a seasoned centurion Caesar took the slur without so much as a flicker of irritation. Instead, he laughed. "Would you rather be led by a pretty baby who sat at Gaius Marius's knee for two years hearing how to fight, or by some ostensibly skilled legate who doesn't know his military arse from his military elbow?" Gaius Marius! That was the one name echoed in the heart of every Roman soldier like a joy bell. The gaze Marcus Silius bent upon his commander was searching, even a little mollified. "And what was you to Gaius Marius?" he asked. "He was my uncle. And he believed in me," said Caesar. "But this is your first campaign and your first battle!" Silius objected. "Know everything, Silius, don't you? Then you'd better add this. I won't let you or your men down. But if you let me down, I'll have the lot of you flogged," said Caesar. "You got a deal," said Silius promptly, and slipped off to tell his junior centurions what to do. Lucullus was not the kind of general who wasted time. The moment his officers knew what was expected of them and had put their men into formation, he sounded the advance. It was clear to him that the enemy had no actual plan of battle, for they simply waited in a huge mass spread along the ground under their walls, and when the Roman army began to walk, made no attempt to charge it. They would take its assault on their shields and then fight. Their numbers, they were sure, would win the day. As shrewd as he was truculent, Silius spread the word from one end of his six hundred men to the other: their commander was a pretty baby who also happened to be Gaius Marius's nephew and Gaius Marius had believed in him. Caesar walked alone in front of the standard, his big rectangular shield on his left arm, his sword still in its metal scabbard; Marius had told him that it must not be drawn until the last moment before the enemy was engaged, because, "You can't afford to look down at the ground, whether you're advancing at a run or a walk," he had mumbled out of the unparalyzed corner of his mouth. "If you're carrying the thing unsheathed in your right hand and you stumble into a hole or trip over a rock, you'll end in wounding yourself." Caesar was not afraid, even in the most secret corner of himself, and it never occurred to him for one moment that he might be killed. Then he became aware that his men were singing:
"We are the Fim bri ani! Be ware the Fim bri ani! We trapped the King of Pontus! We are the best there is!''
Fascinating, mused Caesar as the waiting hordes of Mitylene came closer and closer. It must be four years since Fimbria died, four years in which they've fought for two Licinii, Murena and then Lucullus. He was a wolfshead, Fimbria. But they still think of themselves as his men. They are not and I suspect they never will be the Liciniani. How they felt about Murena, I don't know. But they loathe Lucullus! Well, who doesn't? He's such a stiff rumped aristocrat. And he doesn't believe it's useful to have his soldiers love him. How wrong he is. At exactly the correct moment Caesar signaled the bugler to play "launch spears," and kept cool enough not to duck when over a thousand of them whistled above his head in two volleys which sorely distressed and unsettled the men of Mitylene. Now follow up! He drew his sword and flashed it in the air, heard the peculiar scrape of six hundred swords being pulled out of their sheaths, and then he walked calmly into the enemy like a senator into a Forum crowd, shield round and not a thought in his head for what was happening at his back. Short, double edged and razor sharp, the gladius was not a weapon to swing about one's head and slash downward; Caesar used it as it was meant to be used, held at groin level with its blade a hypotenuse and its wicked point upward, outward. Stab and thrust, thrust and stab. The enemy didn't like this form of attack, aimed at precious loins, and the cohort of Fimbriani troublemakers just kept on advancing, which gave the men of Mitylene scant room to wield their longer swords above their heads. Shock hurled them back, the pressure of the Romans kept them back for long enough to see Lucullus's peak at the hollow middle of his crescent bury itself deep in the enemy ranks. After that they took courage and stood to fight by any means they could, all haters of Rome, and determined to die before their beloved Mitylene would fall once more into Roman hands. A big part of it, Caesar soon discovered, was bluff. When a man came at you, you displayed no terror nor gave ground; for if you did, you lost the encounter mentally and your chances of dying were far greater. Attack, attack, always attack. Look invincible, then it was the enemy soldiers who gave ground. He reveled in it, blessed with fine reflexes and a phenomenally accurate eye, and for a long time he fought on without pausing to think what was happening behind him. Then, he discovered, there was room even in the hottest contest for intelligence; he was the cohort's commander, and he had almost forgotten its existence. But how to turn about and see what was going on without being cut down? How to gain a vantage spot from which he could assess the situation? His arm was tiring a little, though the low sword stance and the light weight of the sword staved off the kind of fatigue the enemy were obviously suffering as they waved their far heavier weapons around; their swings were becoming progressively wilder and their slashes less enthusiastic. A heap of enemy dead lay to one side of where he stood, pushed there by the eddying movements of those who still lived and fought. Caesar put everything he had into a sudden flurry of aggression and seized the opportunity this gave him to spring up onto the mound of bodies. His legs were vulnerable, but nothing higher, and the pile was wide enough once he gained its summit to turn around without guarding his legs. A cheer went up from his men when they saw him, and that gladdened him. But he could see that his cohort was now cut off; Lucullus's spearhead had done its work, yet had not been backed up strongly enough. We are an island in the midst of enemy, he thought. Thanks to Lucullus. But we will stand, and we will not die! Coming down in a series of savage leaps which confused the enemy, he ranged himself beside Marcus Silius, soldiering on. "We're cut off blow 'form square,' " he said to the cohort bugler, who fought alongside the standard bearer. It was done with formidable precision and speed oh, these were good troops! Caesar and Silius worked their way inside the square and went around its perimeter cheering the men on and seeing that any weak spots were strengthened. "If only I had my mule, I could find out what was going on all over the field," said Caesar to Silius, "but junior military tribunes in charge of mere cohorts don't ride. That's a mistake." "Easy fixed!" said Silius, who now looked at Caesar with great respect. He whistled up a dozen reserves standing nearby. "We'll build you a tribunal out of men and shields." A short time later Caesar was standing at full stretch on top of four men who held their shields over their heads, having attained this lofty height by a series of human steps. "Watch out for enemy spears!" shouted Silius to him. It now became apparent that the outcome of the battle was still hotly disputed, but that Lucullus's tactics were basically sound; the enemy looked as if it might find itself rolled up by the Roman wings, closing inexorably. "Give me our standard!" Caesar yelled, caught it when the bearer flung it into the air, and waved it on high in the direction of Lucullus, clearly visible on a white horse. There, that should at least inform the general that we're alive and holding our ground as ordered," he said to Silius when he jumped down, having given two thwarted spearmen a rude gesture with his hand as he did so. "My thanks for providing the tribunal. Hard to know who'll win." Not long after that the men of Mitylene launched an all out offensive on Caesar's square. "We'll never hold," said Silius. "We'll hold, Silius! Squeeze everybody up as tight as a fish's anus," said Caesar. "Come on, Silius, do it!" He forced his way to where the brunt of the attack was falling, Silius with him, and there laid about left and right, sensing the enemy's desperation. This marooned cohort of Romans must die to serve as an example to the rest of the field. Someone loomed beside him; Caesar heard Silius gasp, and saw the saber coming down. How he managed to fend his own opponent off with his shield and deflect the blow which would have cleaved Silius's head in two, Caesar never afterward understood only that he did it, and then killed the man with his dagger, though that arm still carried his shield. The incident seemed to form a kind of watershed, for after it the cohort slowly found the enemy pressure lessening, and was able some time later to continue its advance. The barred gate was reached; in its shelter the Fimbriani turned to face the far distant Roman wall, exultant nothing would dislodge them now! Nothing did. At about an hour before sunset Mitylene gave up the fight, leaving thirty thousand dead soldiers upon the field, mostly old men and little boys. Mercilessly just, Lucullus then executed every woman of Lesbos in the Roman camp, while at the same time he allowed the women of Mitylene to visit the shambles of the battlefield to gather in their dead for proper burial.
It took, Caesar learned, a full month to tidy up the aftermath of battle, and was harder work than preparing for the fray. His cohort with whom he now associated himself at all times had decided that he was worthy of Gaius Marius's favor (of course he didn't tell them that Gaius Marius's favor had manifested itself in the form of a flaminate), and that it was Caesar's to command. Several days before the ceremony at which the general, Lucullus, and the governor, Thermus, awarded military decorations to those who had earned them, the pilus prior centurion Marcus Silius had gone to Lucullus and Thermus and formally sworn that Caesar had personally saved his life in battle, then held the ground on which it happened until after the contest was over; he also swore that it was Caesar who saved the cohort from certain death. "If it had been a full legion you would have won the Grass Crown," said Thermus as he fitted the chaplet of oak leaves on Caesar's big golden head by pulling its open ends further apart, "but as only a cohort was involved, the best Rome can do is to give you the corona civica." After a moment's thought, he went on to say, "You realize, Gaius Julius, that winning the Civic Crown automatically promotes you to the Senate, and entitles you to other distinctions under the Republic's new laws. It would certainly seem that Jupiter Optimus Maximus is determined to have you in the Senate! The seat you lost when you ceased to be the flamen Dialis is now returned to you." Caesar was the only man at the battle of Mitylene so honored, and his the only cohort given phalerae to adorn its vexillum; Marcus Silius was awarded a full set of nine golden phalerae, which he proudly strapped on the front of his leather cuirass. He already had nine silver phalerae (now switched to adorn the back of his cuirass), five broad silver armillae, and two gold torcs suspended from his front shoulder straps. "I'll give Sulla this," said Silius to Caesar as they stood together among the other decorated soldiers on the tribunal while the army saluted them, "he may have denied us the chance to go home, but he was too fair a man to take our decorations off us." He eyed Caesar's oak leaf chaplet admiringly. "You're a real soldier, pretty baby," he said. "I never saw a better." And that, said Caesar to himself afterward, was worthier praise than all the platitudes and congratulations Lucullus and Thermus and the legates heaped upon him during the banquet they gave in his honor. Gabinius, Octavius, Lippus and Rufus were very pleased for him, and the two Lentuli very quiet. Bibulus, who was not a coward but had not won anything because he had done routine messenger service throughout the battle, could not stay quiet. "I might have known it," he said bitterly. "You did not one thing any of us could not have done, were we lucky enough to have found ourselves in the same situation. But you, Caesar, have all the luck. In every way." Caesar laughed merrily as he chucked Bibulus under the chin, a habit he had fallen into; it was Gabinius who protested. "That is to deny a man the proper merit of his actions," he said angrily. "Caesar shamed every last one of us with the amount of work he did during the winter, and he shamed every last one of us on the battlefield by doing more hard work! Luck? Luck, you small minded, envious fool, had nothing to do with it!" "Oh, Gabinius, you shouldn't let him irk you," said Caesar, who could afford to be gracious and knew it annoyed Bibulus almost to a fit of tears. "There is always an element of luck. Special luck! It's a sign of Fortune's favor, so it only belongs to men of superior ability. Sulla has luck. He's the first one to say it. But you wait and see! Caesar's luck will become proverbial." "And Bibulus's nonexistent," said Gabinius more calmly. "Probably," said Caesar, his tone indicating that this was a matter which neither interested nor provoked him.
Thermus, Lucullus, their legates, officials and tribunes returned to Rome at the end of June. The new governor of Asia Province, Gaius Claudius Nero, had arrived in Pergamum and taken over, and Sulla had given Lucullus permission to come home, at the same time informing him that he and his brother, Varro Lucullus, would be curule aediles the next year. "By the time you come home," ended Sulla's letter, "your election as curule aedile will be over. Please excuse me from the role of matchmaker I seem not to have my usual luck in that particular area. You will by now have heard that Pompeius's new wife has died. Besides, if your taste runs to little girls, my dear Lucullus, then you're better off doing your own dirty work. Sooner or later you'll find some impoverished nobleman willing to sell you his underaged daughter. But what happens when she grows up a bit? They all do!" It was Marcus Valerius Messala Rufus who arrived in Rome to find a marriage in the making. His sister of whom he was very fond had, as he knew from her tear stained letters, been summarily divorced by her husband. Though she continued to vow that she loved him with every breath she took, the divorce made it plain that he did not love her at all. Why, no one understood. Valeria Messala was beautiful, intelligent, well educated and not boring in any way; she didn't gossip, she wasn't spendthrift, nor did she ogle other men. One of the city's wealthiest plutocrats died late in June, and his two sons put on splendid funeral games to his memory in the Forum Romanum. Twenty pairs of gladiators clad in ornamental silver were to fight; not one after the other, as was customary, but in two conflicts of ten pairs each a Thracian pitted against a Gaul. These were styles, not nationalities the only two styles practiced at that time and the soldiers of the sawdust had been hired from the best gladiatorial school in Capua. Pining for a little diversion, Sulla was eager to go, so the brothers mourning their dead father were careful to install a comfortable enclosure in the middle of the front row facing north wherein the Dictator could dispose himself without being crushed up against people on either side. Nothing in the mos maiorum prevented women from attending, nor from sitting among the men; funeral games were held to be a kind of circus, rather than a theatrical performance. And her cousin Marcus Valerius Messala Niger, fresh from his triumph of having engaged Cicero to defend Roscius of Ameria, thought that it might cheer poor divorced Valeria Messala up if he took her to see the gladiators fight. Sulla was already ensconced in his place of honor when the cousins arrived, and the seating was almost filled; the first ten pairs of men were already in the sawdust cushioned ring, going through their exercises and flexing their muscles as they waited for the bereaved brothers to decide the games should start with the prayers and the sacrifice carefully chosen to please the dead man. But at such affairs it was very useful to have highborn friends, and especially to have an aunt who was both an ex Vestal and the daughter of Metellus Balearicus. Sitting with her brother, Metellus Nepos, his wife, Licinia, and their cousin Metellus Pius the Piglet (who was consul that year, and hugely important), the ex Vestal Caecilia Metella Balearica had saved two seats which no one quite had the courage to usurp. In order to reach them, Messala Niger and Valeria Messala had to work their way past those already sitting in the second row, and therefore directly behind the Dictator. He was, everyone noted, looking rested and well, perhaps because Cicero's tact and skill had enabled him to quash a great deal of lingering feeling about the proscriptions and eliminate a problem by throwing Chrysogonus off the Tarpeian Rock. All of the Forum was thronged, the ordinary people perched on every roof and flight of steps, and those with clout in the wooden bleachers surrounding the ring, a roped off square some forty feet along a side. It wouldn't have been Rome had not the latecomers been subjected to considerable abuse for pushing their way past those already comfortably seated; though Messala Niger didn't care a hoot, poor Valeria found herself muttering a series of apologies as she pressed on. Then she had to pass directly behind Rome's Dictator; terrified that she might bump him, she fixed her eyes on the back of his head and his shoulders. He was wearing his silly wig, of course, and a purple bordered toga praetexta, his twenty four lictors crouched on the ground forward of the front row. And as she passed Valeria noticed a fat and fleecy sausage of purple wool adhering to the white folds of toga across Sulla's left shoulder; without stopping to think, she picked it off. He never showed a vestige of fear in a crowd, always seemed above that, oblivious to danger. But when he felt the light touch Sulla flinched, leaped out of his chair and turned around so quickly that Valeria stepped back onto someone's toes. The last ember of terror still dying out of his eyes, he took in the sight of a badly frightened woman, red haired and blue eyed and youthfully beautiful. "I beg your pardon, Lucius Cornelius," she managed to say, wet her lips, sought for some explanation for her conduct. Trying to be light, she held out the sausage of purple fluff and said, "See? It was on your shoulder. I thought if I picked it off, I might also pick off some of your luck." Her eyes filled with quick tears, resolutely blinked away, and her lovely mouth shook. "I need some luck!" Smiling at her without opening his lips, he took her outstretched hand in his and gently folded her fingers around the innocent cause of so much fear. "Keep it, lady, and may it bring you that luck," he said, and turned away to sit down again. But all through the gladiatorial games he kept twisting around to look at where Valeria sat with Messala Niger, Metellus Pius and the rest of that party; and she, very conscious of his searching scrutiny, would smile at him nervously, then blush and look away. "Who is she?" he asked the Piglet as the crowd, well pleased with the magnificent display, was slowly dispersing. Of course the whole party had noticed (along with a lot of other people), so Metellus Pius did not dissimulate. Valeria Messala," he said. "Cousin of Niger and sister of Rufus, who is at the moment returning from the siege of Mitylene." "Ah!" said Sulla, nodding. "As wellborn as she is truly beautiful. Recently divorced, isn't she?" "Most unexpectedly, and for no reason. She's very cut up about it, as a matter of fact." "Barren?" asked the man who had divorced one wife for that. The Piglet's lip curled contemptuously. "I doubt it, Lucius Cornelius. More likely lack of use." "Hmm!" Sulla paused to think, then said briskly, "She must come to dinner tomorrow. Ask Niger and Metellus Nepos too and yourself, of course. But not the other women."
So it was that when the junior military tribune Marcus Valerius Messala Rufus arrived in Rome he found himself summoned to an audience with the Dictator, who didn't mince matters. He was in love with Rufus's sister, he said, and wished to marry her. What could I say?'' asked Rufus of his cousin Niger. "I hope you said, delighted," said Niger dryly. "I said, delighted." "Good!" "But how does poor Valeria feel? He's so old and ugly! I wasn't even given a chance to ask her, Niger!" "She'll be happy enough, Rufus. I know he's nothing much to look at, but he's the unofficial King of Rome and he's as rich as Croesus! If it doesn't do anything else for her, it will be balm to the wound of her undeserved divorce," said Niger strongly. "Not to mention how advantageous the marriage will be for us! I believe he's arranging for me to be a pontifex, and you an augur. Just hold your tongue and be thankful." Rufus took his cousin's sound advice, having ascertained that his sister genuinely thought Sulla attractive and desirable, and did want the marriage. Invited to the wedding, Pompey found a moment to have some private speech with the Dictator. "Half your luck," said that young man gloomily. "Yes, you haven't had too much luck with wives, have you?" asked Sulla, who was enjoying his wedding feast immensely, and feeling kindly disposed toward most of his world. "Valeria is a very nice woman," Pompey vouchsafed. Sulla's eyes danced. "Left out, Pompeius?" "By Jupiter, yes!" "Rome is absolutely stuffed with beautiful noblewomen. Why not pick one out and ask her tata for her hand?" "I'm no good at that sort of warfare." "Rubbish! You're young rich handsome and famous," said Sulla, who liked to tick things off. "Ask, Magnus! Just ask! It would be a fussy father who turned you down." "I'm no good at that sort of warfare," Pompey repeated. The eyes which had been dancing now surveyed the young man shrewdly; Sulla knew perfectly well why Pompey wouldn't ask. He was too afraid of being told that his birth wasn't good enough for this or that patrician young lady. His ambition wanted the best and his opinion of himself insisted he have the best, but that niggling doubt as to whether a Pompeius from Picenum would be considered good enough held him back time after time. In short, Pompey wanted someone's tata to ask him. And nobody's tata had. A thought popped into Sulla's mind, of the sort which had led him to dower Rome with a stammering Pontifex Maximus. "Do you mind a widow?" he asked, eyes dancing again. "Not unless she's as old as the Republic." "I believe she's about twenty five." "That's acceptable. The same age as me." "She's dowerless." "Her birth concerns me a lot more than her fortune." "Her birth," said Sulla happily, "is absolutely splendid on both sides. Plebeian, but magnificent!" "Who?" demanded Pompey, leaning forward. "Who?" Sulla rolled off the couch and stood looking at him a little tipsily. "Wait until I've had my nuptial holiday, Magnus. Then come back and ask me again."
For Gaius Julius Caesar his return had been a kind of triumph he thought perhaps the real thing later on might never equal. He was not only free, but vindicated. He had won a major crown. Sulla had sent for him at once, and Caesar had found the Dictator genial; the interview took place just before his wedding which all of Rome was talking about, but not officially. Thus Caesar, bidden seat himself, did not mention it. "Well, boy, you've outdone yourself." What did one say? No more candor after Lucullus! "I hope not, Lucius Cornelius. I did my best, but I can do better." "I don't doubt it, it's written all over you." Sulla directed a rather sly glance at him. "I hear that you succeeded in assembling a fleet of unparalleled excellence in Bithynia." Caesar couldn't help it; he flushed. "I did as I was told. Exactly," he said, teeth shut. "Smarting about it, eh?" The accusation that I prostituted myself to obtain that fleet is unjustified." "Let me tell you something, Caesar," said the Dictator, whose lined and sagging face seemed softer and younger than it had when Caesar had last seen him over a year ago. "We have both been the victims of Gaius Marius, but you at least are fully freed of him at what age? Twenty?" "Just," said Caesar. "I had to suffer him until I was over fifty years old, so think yourself lucky. And, if it's any consolation, I don't give a rush who a man sleeps with if he serves Rome well." "No, it is no consolation!" snapped Caesar. "Not for Rome not for you not for Gaius Marius! would I sell my honor." "Not even for Rome, eh?" "Rome ought not to ask it of me if Rome is who and what I believe her to be." "Yes, that's a good answer," said Sulla, nodding. "A pity it doesn't always work out that way. Rome as you will find out can be as big a whore as anyone else. You've not had an easy life, though it hasn't been as hard as mine. But you're like me, Caesar. I can see it! So can your mother. The slur is present. And you will have to live with it. The more famous you become, the more eminent your dignitas, the more they'll say it. Just as they say I murdered women to get into the Senate. The difference between us is not in nature, but in ambition. I just wanted to be consul and then consular, and perhaps censor. My due. The rest was foisted on me, mostly by Gaius Marius." "I want no more than those things," said Caesar, surprised. "You mistake my meaning. I am not talking about actual offices, but about ambition. You, Caesar, want to be perfect. Nothing must happen to you that makes you less than perfect. It isn't the unfairness of the slur concerns you what rankles is that it detracts from your perfection. Perfect honor, perfect career, perfect record, perfect reputation. In suo anno all the way and in every way. And because you require perfection of yourself, you will require perfection from all around you and when they prove imperfect, you'll cast them aside. Perfection consumes you as much as gaining my birthright did me." "I do not regard myself as perfect!" "I didn't say that. Listen to me! I said you want to be perfect. Scrupulous to the highest mathematical power. It won't change. You won't change. But when you have to you will do whatever you have to do. And every time you fall short of perfection, you'll loathe it and yourself." Sulla held up a piece of paper. "Here is a decree which I will post on the rostra tomorrow. You have won the Civic Crown. According to my laws that entitles you to a seat in the Senate, a special place at the theater and in the circus, and a standing ovation on every occasion when you appear wearing your Civic Crown. You will be required to wear it in the Senate, at the theater and in the circus. The next meeting of the Senate is half a month away. I will expect to see you in the Curia Hostilia." And the interview was over. But when Caesar reached home he found one more accolade from Sulla. A very fine and leggy young chestnut stallion with a note clipped to its mane that said: "There is no need to ride a mule any longer, Caesar. You have my full permission to ride this beast. He is, however, not quite perfect. Look at his feet." When Caesar looked, he burst out laughing. Instead of neat uncloven hooves, the stallion's feet were each divided into two toes, a little like a cow's. Lucius Decumius shivered. "You better have him cut!" he said, not seeing any joke. "Don't want no more like him around!" "On the contrary," said Caesar, wiping his eyes. "I can't ride him much, he can't be shod. But young Toes here is going to carry me into every battle I fight! And when he isn't doing that, he'll be covering my mares at Bovillae. Lucius Decumius, he's luck! I must always have a Toes. Then I'll never lose a battle." His mother saw the changes in him instantly, and wondered why he sorrowed. Everything had gone so well for him! He had come back with the corona civica and had been glowingly mentioned in dispatches. He had even been able to inform her that the drain on his purse had not been as drastic as she had feared; King Nicomedes had given him gold, and his share of the spoils of Mitylene had been the greater because of his Civic Crown. "I don't understand," said Gaius Matius as he sat in the garden at the bottom of the light well, hands linked about his knees as he stared at Caesar, similarly seated on the ground. "You say your honor has been impeached, and yet you took a bag of gold from the old king. Isn't that wrong?" From anyone else the question would not have been tolerated, but Gaius Matius was a friend since infancy. Caesar looked rueful. "Had the accusation come before the gold, yes," he said. "As it was, when the poor old man gave me the gold it was a simple guest gift. Exactly what a client king ought to give to an official envoy from his patron, Rome. As he gives tribute, what he bestows upon Rome's envoys is free and clear." Caesar shrugged. "I took it with gratitude, Pustula. Life in camp is expensive. My own tastes are not very grand, but one is forever obliged to contribute to the common mess, to special dinners and banquets, to luxuries which everyone else asks for. The wines have to be of the best, the foods ridiculous and it doesn't matter that I eat and drink plain. So the gold made a big difference to me. After Lucullus had said what he did to me, I thought about sending the gold back. And then I realized that if I did, I would hurt the King. I can't possibly tell him what Lucullus and Bibulus said." "Yes, I see." Gaius Matius sighed. "You know, Pavo, I am so glad I don't have to become a senator or a magistrate. It's much nicer being an ordinary knight of the tribuni aerari!" But that Caesar could not even begin to comprehend, so he made no comment about it. Instead, he returned to Nicomedes. "I am honor bound to go back," he said, "and that will only add fuel to the rumors. During the days when I was flamen Dialis I used to think that nobody was interested in the doings of people like junior military tribunes. But it isn't so. Everyone gossips! The gods know among how many people Bibulus has been busy, tattling the story of my affair with King Nicomedes. I wouldn't put it past Lucullus either. Or the Lentuli, for that matter. Sulla certainly knew all the juicy details." "He has favored you," said Matius thoughtfully. "He has. Though I can't quite understand why." "If you don't know, I have no chance!" An inveterate gardener, Matius noticed two tiny leaves belonging to a just germinated weed, and busied himself digging this offender out of the grass. "Anyway, Caesar, it seems to me you'll just have to live the story down. In time it will die. All stories do." "Sulla says it won't." Matius sniffed. "Because the stories about him haven't died? Come, Caesar! He's a bad man. You're not. You couldn't be." "I'm capable of murder, Pustula. All men are." "I didn't say you weren't, Pavo. The difference is that Sulla is a bad man and you are not." And from that stand Gaius Matius would not be budged.
Sulla's wedding came and went; the newly wed pair left Rome to enjoy a holiday in the villa at Misenum. But the Dictator was back for the next meeting of the Senate, to which Caesar had been commanded. He was now, at twenty years of age, one of Sulla's new senators. A senator for the second time at twenty! It ought to have been the most wonderful day of his life, to walk into the filled Senate chamber wearing his chaplet of oak leaves and find the House risen to its feet including consulars as venerable as Flaccus Princeps Senatus and Marcus Perperna with hands vigorously applauding in this one permissible infraction of Sulla's new rules of conduct for the Senate. Instead, the young man found his eyes studying face after face for any hint of amusement or contempt, wondering how far the story had spread, and who despised him. His progress was an agony, not helped when he ascended to the back row wherein the pedarii sat and wherein he fully expected he himself would sit to find Sulla shouting at him to sit with the men of the middle tier, wherein soldier heroes were located. Of course some men chuckled; it was kindly laughter, and meant to approve of his embarrassment. But of course he took it as derision and wanted to crawl into the furthest, darkest corner. Through all of it, he had never wept. When he came home after the meeting a rather boring one he found his mother waiting in the reception room. Such was not her habit; busy always, she rarely left her office for very long during the day. Now, stomach roiling, she waited for her son in a stilled patience, having no idea of how she could broach a subject he clearly did not wish to discuss. Had she been a talker it would have been easier for her, of course. But words came hard to Aurelia, who let him divest himself of his toga in silence. Then when he made a movement toward his study she knew she had to find something to say or he would leave her; the vexed subject would remain unbroached. "Caesar," she said, and stopped. Since he had put on his toga of manhood it had been her custom to address him by his cognomen, mostly because to her "Gaius Julius" was her husband, and his death had not changed the file of references in her mind. Besides which, her son was very much a stranger to her, the penalty she paid for all those years of keeping him at a distance because she feared for him and could not allow herself to be warm or kind. He halted, one brow raised. "Yes, Mater?" "Sit down. I want to talk to you." He sat, expression mildly enquiring, as if she could have nothing of great moment to say. "Caesar, what happened in the east?" she asked baldly. The mild enquiry became tinged with a mild amusement. "I did my duty, won a Civic Crown, and pleased Sulla," he said. Her beautiful mouth went straight. "Prevarication," she said, "does not suit you." "I wasn't prevaricating." "You weren't telling me what I need to know either!" He was withdrawing, eyes chilling from cool to cold. "I can't tell you what I don't know." "You can tell me more than you have." "About what?" "About the trouble." "What trouble?" The trouble I see in your every movement, your every look, your every evasion." "There is no trouble." "I do not believe that." He rose to go, slapping his thighs. "I can't help what you believe, Mater. There is no trouble." Sit down!'' He sat down, sighing softly. Caesar, I will find out. But I would much rather it came from you than from someone else." His head went to one side, his long fingers locked around themselves, his eyes closed. Then he sighed again, and shrugged. "I obtained a splendid fleet from King Nicomedes of Bithynia. Apparently this was a deed of absolute uniqueness. It was said of me that I obtained it by having sexual relations with the King. So I have returned to Rome the owner of a reputation not for bravery or efficiency or even cunning, but for having sold my body in order to achieve my ends," he said, eyes still closed. She didn't melt into sympathy, exclaim in horror, or wax indignant. Instead, she sat without saying anything until her son was obliged to open his eyes and look at her. It was a level exchange of glances, two formidable people finding pain rather than consolation in each other, but prepared to negotiate. "A grave trouble," she said. "An undeserved slur." "That, of course." "I cannot contend with it, Mater!" "You have to, my son." "Then tell me how!" "You know how, Caesar." "I honestly don't," he said soberly, his face uncertain. "I've tried to ignore it, but that's very difficult when I know what everyone is thinking." "Who is the source?" she asked. "Lucullus." "Oh, I see.... He would be believed." "He is believed." For a long moment she said nothing more, eyes thoughtful. Her son, watching her, marveled anew at her self containment, her ability to hold herself aloof from personal issues. She opened her lips and began to speak very slowly and carefully, weighing each word before she uttered it. "You must ignore it, that is first and foremost. Once you discuss it with anyone, you place yourself on the defensive. And you reveal how much it matters to you. Think for a little, Caesar. You know how serious an allegation it is in the light of your future political career. But you cannot let anybody else see that you appreciate its seriousness! So you must ignore it for the rest of your days. The best thing is that it has happened now, rather than ten years further on a man of thirty would find the allegation far harder to contend with than a man of twenty. For that you must be grateful. Those ten years will see many events. But never a repetition of the slur. What you have to do, my son, is to work very hard to dispel the slur." The ghost of a smile lit her remarkable eyes. "Until now, your philanderings have been restricted to the ordinary women of the Subura. I suggest, Caesar, that you lift your gaze much higher. Why, I have no idea, but you do have an extraordinary effect on women! So from now on, your peers must know of your successes. That means you must concentrate upon women who matter, who are well known. Not the courtesans like Praecia, but noblewomen. Great ladies." Deflower lots of Domitias and Licinias, you mean?'' he asked, smiling broadly. "No!" she said sharply. "Not unmarried girls! Never, never unmarried girls! I mean the wives of important men." "Edepol!" cried her son. "Fight fire with fire, Caesar. There is no other way. If your love affairs are not public knowledge, everyone will assume you are intriguing with men. So they must be as scandalous and generally known as possible. Establish a reputation as Rome's most notorious womanizer. But choose your quarry very carefully." She shook her head in puzzlement. "Sulla used to be able to cause women to make absolute fools of themselves over him. On at least one occasion he paid a bitter price when Dalmatica was the very young bride of Scaurus. He avoided her scrupulously, but Scaurus punished him anyway by preventing his being elected praetor. It took him six years to be elected, thanks to Scaurus." "What you're trying to say is that I'll make enemies." "Am I?" She considered it. "No, what I think I mean to say is that Sulla's trouble arose out of the fact that he did not cuckold Scaurus. Had he, Scaurus would have found it much harder to be revenged it's impossible for a man who is a laughingstock to appear admirable. Pitiable, yes. Scaurus won that encounter because Sulla allowed him to appear noble the forgiving husband, still able to hold his head up. So if you choose a woman, you must always be sure that it's her husband is the goose. Don't choose a woman who might tell you to jump in the Tiber and never choose one clever enough to lead you on until she is able to tell you to jump in the Tiber absolutely publicly." He was staring at her with a kind of profound respect as new on his face as it was inside his mind. "Mater, you are the most extraordinary woman! How do you know all this? You're as upright and virtuous as Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, yet here you are giving your own son the most dreadful advice!" "I have lived a long time in the Subura," she said, looking pleased. "Besides, that is the point. You are my son, and you have been maligned. What I would do for you I would not do for anyone else, even for my daughters. If I had to, I would kill for you. But that wouldn't solve our problem. So instead I am very happy to kill a few reputations. Like for like." Almost he scooped her into his arms, but the old habits were too strong; so he got to his feet and took her hand, kissed it. "I thank you, Mater. I would kill for you with equal ease and pleasure." A thought struck him, made him shiver with glee. "Oh, I can't wait for Lucullus to marry! And that turd Bibulus!" The following day brought women into Caesar's life again, though not in a philandering context. "We are summoned by Julia," said Aurelia before her son left to see what was going on in the Forum Romanum. Aware he had not yet found the time to see his beloved aunt, Caesar made no protest. The day was fine and hot but the hour early enough to make the walk from the Subura to the Quirinal an enjoyable one. Caesar and Aurelia stepped out up the Vicus ad Malum Punicum, the street which led to the temple of Quirinus on the Alta Semita. There in the lovely precinct of Quirinus stood the Punic apple tree itself, planted by Scipio Africanus after his victory over Carthage. Alongside it grew two extremely ancient myrtle trees, one for the patricians and one for the plebeians. But in the chaotic events which had followed the Italian War the patrician myrtle had begun to wither; it was now quite dead, though the plebeian tree flourished still. It was thought that this meant the death of the Patriciate, so sight of its bare dry limbs brought Caesar no pleasure. Why hadn't someone planted a new patrician myrtle? The hundred talents Sulla had permitted Julia to retain had provided her with quite a comfortable private dwelling in a lane running between the Alta Semita and the Servian Walls. It was fairly large and had the virtue of being newly built; Julia's income was sufficient to provide enough slaves to run it, and more than enough to permit her life's necessities. She could even afford to support and house her daughter in law, Mucia Tertia. Scant comfort to Caesar and Aurelia, who mourned her sadly changed circumstances. She was almost fifty years old, but nothing seemed to change Julia herself. Having moved to the Quirinal, she took not to weaving on her loom or spinning wool, but to doing good works. Though this was not a poor district nor even closely settled she still found families in need of help, for reasons which varied from an excessive intake of wine to illness. A more presumptuous, tactless woman might have been rebuffed, but Julia had the knack; the whole of the Quirinal knew where to go if there was trouble. There were no good deeds today, however. Julia and Mucia Tertia were waiting anxiously. "I've had a letter from Sulla," said Mucia Tertia. "He says I must marry again." "But that contravenes his own laws governing the widows of the proscribed!" said Aurelia blankly. "When one makes the laws, Mater, it isn't at all difficult to contravene them," said Caesar. "A special enactment for some ostensible reason, and the thing is done." "Whom are you to marry?" asked Aurelia. "That's just it," said Julia, frowning. "He hasn't told her, poor child. We can't even decide from his letter whether he has someone in mind, or whether he just wants Mucia to find her own husband." "Let me see it," said Caesar, holding out his hand. He read the missive at a glance, gave it back. "He gives nothing away, does he? Just orders you to marry again." "I don't want to marry again!" cried Mucia Tertia. A silence fell, which Caesar broke. "Write to Sulla and tell him that. Make it very polite, but very firm. Then see what he does. You'll know more." Mucia shivered. "I couldn't do that." "You could, you know. Sulla likes people to stand up to him." "Men, maybe. But not the widow of Young Marius." "What do you want me to do?" asked Caesar of Julia. "I have no idea," Julia confessed. "It's just that you're the only man left in the family, so I thought you ought to be told." "You genuinely don't want to many again?" he asked Mucia. "Believe me, Caesar, I do not." "Then as I am the paterfamilias, I will write to Sulla." At which moment the old steward, Strophantes, shuffled into the room. "Domino., you have a visitor," he said to Julia. "Oh, bother!" she exclaimed. "Deny me, Strophantes." "He asked specifically to see the lady Mucia." "Who asked?" Caesar demanded sharply. "Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus." Caesar looked grim. "The prospective husband, I presume!" "But I've never so much as met Pompeius!" cried Mucia Tertia. "Nor have I," said Caesar. Julia turned to him. "What do we do?" "Oh, we see him, Aunt Julia." And Caesar nodded to the old man. "Bring him in." Back went the steward to the atrium, where the visitor stood oozing impatience and attar of roses. "Follow me, Gnaeus Pompeius," said Strophantes, wheezing.
Ever since Sulla's wedding Pompey had waited for further news of this mysterious bride the Dictator had found for him. When he heard that Sulla had returned to Rome after his nuptial holiday he expected to be summoned, but was not. Finally, unable to wait a moment longer, he went to Sulla and demanded to know what was happening, what had eventuated. "About what?" asked Sulla innocently. "You know perfectly well!" snarled Pompey. "You said you had thought of someone for me to marry!" "So I did! So I did!" Sulla chuckled gleefully. "My, my, the impatience of youth!" "Will you tell me, you malicious old tormentor?" "Names, Magnus! Don't call the Dictator names!" "Who is she?" Sulla gave in. "Young Marius's widow, Mucia Tertia," he said. "Daughter of Scaevola Pontifex Maximus and Crassus Orator's sister, Licinia. There's far more Mucius Scaevola in her than genuine Licinius Crassus because her maternal grandfather was really the brother of her paternal grandfather. And of course she's closely related to Scaevola the Augur's girls called Mucia Prima and Mucia Secunda hence her given name of Mucia Tertia, even though there's fifty years in age between her and the other two. Mucia Tertia's mother is still alive, of course. Scaevola divorced her for adultery with Metellus Nepos, whom she married afterward. So Mucia Tertia has two Caecilius Metellus half brothers Nepos Junior and Celer. She's extremely well connected, Magnus, don't you agree? Too well connected to remain the widow of a proscribed man for the rest of her life! My dear Piglet, who is her cousin, has been making these noises at me for some time." Sulla leaned back in his chair. "Well, Magnus, will she do?" "Will she do?" gasped Pompey. "Rather!" "Oh, splendid." The mountain of work on his desk seemed to beckon; Sulla put his head down to study some papers. After a moment he lifted it to look at Pompey in apparent bewilderment. "I wrote to tell her she was to marry again, Magnus, so there's no impediment," he said. "Now leave me alone, will you? Just make sure I get an invitation to the wedding." And Pompey had rushed home to bathe and change while his servants chased in a panic to find out whereabouts Mucia Tertia was living these days, then Pompey rushed straight to Julia's house blinding all those he encountered with the whiteness of his toga, and leaving a strong aroma of attar of roses in his wake. Scaevola's daughter! Crassus Orator's niece! Related to the most important Caecilii Metelli! That meant that the sons she would give him would be related by blood to everyone! Oh, he didn't care one iota that she was Young Marius's widow! He would not even care if she was as ugly as the Sibyl of Cumae! Ugly? She wasn't ugly at all! She was very strange and very beautiful. Red haired and green eyed, but both on the dark side, and skin both pale and flawless. And what about those eyes? No others like them anywhere! Oh, she was a honey! Pompey fell madly in love with her at first glance, before a word was spoken. Little wonder, then, that he hardly noticed the other people in the room, even after introductions were made. He drew up a chair beside Mucia Tertia's and took her nerveless hand in his. "Sulla says that you are to marry me," he said, smiling at her with white teeth and brilliantly shining blue eyes. "This is the first I know about it," she said, unaccountably feeling her antipathy begin to fade; he was so patently happy and really very attractive. "Oh well, that's Sulla for you," he said, catching his breath on a gasp of sheer delight. "But you have to admit that he does have everyone's best interests at heart." "Naturally you would think so," said Julia in freezing tones. "What are you complaining about? He didn't do too badly by you compared to all the other proscribed widows," said the tactless man in love, gazing at his bride to be. Almost Julia answered that Sulla had been responsible for the death of her only child, but then she thought better of it; this rather silly fellow was too well known to belong to Sulla to hope that he would see any other side. And Caesar, sitting in a corner, took in his first experience of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus unobserved. To look at, not a true Roman, that was certain; the Picentine taint of Gaul was all too obvious in his snub nose, his broad face, the dent in his chin. To listen to, not a true Roman, that was certain; his total lack of subtlety was amazing. Kid Butcher. He was well named. What do you think of him?'' asked Aurelia of Caesar as they trudged back to the Subura through the noon heat. "More germane to ask, what does Mucia think of him?" "Oh, she likes him enormously. Considerably more than ever she liked Young Marius." "That wouldn't be hard, Mater." "No." "Aunt Julia will find it lonely without her." "Yes. But she'll just find more to do." "A pity she has no grandchildren." "For which, blame Young Marius!" said Aurelia tartly. They had almost reached the Vicus Patricius before Caesar spoke again. "Mater, I have to go back to Bithynia," he said. "Bithynia? My son, that isn't wise!" "I know. But I gave the King my word." "Isn't it one of Sulla's new rules for the Senate that any senator must seek permission to leave Italy?" "Yes." "Then that's good," said Aurelia, sounding pleased. "You must be absolutely candid about where you're going to the whole House. And take Eutychus with you as well as Burgundus." "Eutychus?" Caesar stopped to stare at her. "But he's your steward! You won't manage easily without him. And why?" "I'll manage without him. He's from Bithynia, my son. You must tell the Senate that your freedman who is still your steward is obliged to travel to Bithynia to see to his business affairs, and that you must accompany him, as is the duty of any proper patron." Caesar burst out laughing. "Sulla is absolutely right! You ought to have been a man. And so Roman! Subtle. Hit them in the face with my destination instead of pretending I'm going to Greece and then being discovered in Bithynia. One always is discovered in a lie, I find." A different thought occurred to him. "Speaking of subtlety, that fellow Pompeius is not, is he? I wanted to hit him when he said what he did to poor Aunt Julia. And ye gods, can he brag!" "Incessantly, I suspect," said Aurelia. "I'm glad I met him," said her son soberly. "He showed me an excellent reason why the slur upon my reputation might prove a good thing." "What do you mean?" "Nothing has served to put him in his place. He has one but it is not as high or as inviolate as he thinks. Circumstances have conspired to inflate his opinion of himself to insufferable heights. What he's wanted so far has always been given to him. Even a bride far above his merits. So he's grown into the habit of assuming it will be forever thus. But it won't, of course. One day things will go hideously wrong for him. He will find the lesson intolerable. At least I have already had the lesson." "You really think Mucia is above his merits?" "Don't you?" asked Caesar, surprised. "No, I don't. Her birth is immaterial. She was the wife of Young Marius, and she was that because her father knowingly gave her to the son of a complete New Man. Sulla doesn't forget that kind of thing. Nor forgive it. He's dazzled that gullible young man with her birth. But he's neglected to expound upon all his reasons for giving her away to someone beneath her." "Cunning!" "Sulla is a fox, like all red men since Ulysses." "Then it's as well I intend to leave Rome." Until after Sulla steps down?'' "Until after Sulla steps down. He says that will be after he superintends the election of the year after next's consuls perhaps eleven months from now, if he holds his so called elections in Quinctilis. Next year's consuls are to be Servilius Vatia and Appius Claudius. But who he intends for the year after, I don't know. Catulus, probably." "Will Sulla be safe if he steps down?" "Perfectly," said Caesar.
PART IV from OCTOBER 80 B.C. until MAY 79 B.C.
"You'll have to go to Spain," said Sulla to Metellus Pius. "Quintus Sertorius is rapidly taking the whole place over." Metellus Pius gazed at his superior somewhat reprovingly. "Surely not!" he said in reasonable tones. "He has fruh fruh friends among the Lusitani and he's quite strong west of the Baetis, buh buh but you have good governors in both the Spanish provinces." "Do I really?" asked Sulla, mouth turned down. "Not anymore! I've just had word that Sertorius has trounced Lucius Fufidius after that fool was stupid enough to offer him battle. Four legions! Yet Fufidius couldn't beat Sertorius in command of seven thousand men, only a third of whom were Roman!" He bruh bruh brought the Romans with him from Mauretania last spring, of course," said Metellus Pius. "The rest are Lusitani?" "Savages, dearest Piglet! Not worth one hobnail on the sole of a Roman caliga! But quite capable of beating Fufidius." "Oh... Edepol!" For some reason beyond the Piglet, this delightfully mild expletive sent Sulla into paroxysms of laughter; some time elapsed before the Dictator could compose himself sufficiently to speak further upon the vexing subject of Quintus Sertorius. "Look, Piglet, I know Quintus Sertorius of old. So do you! If Carbo could have kept him in Italy, I might not have won at the Colline Gate because I may well have found myself beaten long before then. Sertorius is at least Gaius Marius's equal, and Spain is his old stamping ground. When Luscus drove him out of Spain last year, I'd hoped to see the wretched fellow degenerate into a Mauretanian mercenary and trouble us never again. But I ought to have known better. First he took Tingis off King Ascalis, then he killed Paccianus and stole his Roman troops. Now he's back in Further Spain, busy turning the Lusitani into crack Roman troops. It will have to be you who goes to govern Further Spain and at the start of the New Year, not in spring." He picked up a single sheet of paper and waved it at Metellus Pius gleefully. "You can have eight legions! That's eight less I have to find land for. And if you leave late in December, you can sail direct to Gades." "A great command," said the Pontifex Maximus with genuine satisfaction, not at all averse to being out of Rome on a long campaign even if that meant he had to fight Sertorius. No religious ceremonies to perform, no sleepless nights worrying as to whether his tongue would trip him up. In fact, the moment he got out of Rome, he knew his speech impediment would disappear it always did. He bethought himself of something else. "Whom will you send to govern Nearer Spain?" "Marcus Domitius Calvinus, I think." "Not Curio? He's a guh guh guh good general." "I have Africa in mind for Curio. Calvinus is a better man to support you through a major campaign, Piglet dear. Curio might prove too independent in his thinking," said Sulla. "I do see what you mean." "Calvinus can have a further six legions. That's fourteen altogether. Surely enough to tame Sertorius!" "In no time!" said the Piglet warmly. "Fuh fuh fear not, Lucius Cornelius! Spain is suh suh safe!" Again Sulla began to laugh. "Why do I care? I don't know why I care, Piglet, and that's the truth! I'll be dead before you come back." Shocked, Metellus Pius put out his hands in protest. "No! Nonsense! You're still a relatively young man!" It was foretold that I would die at the height of my fame and power," said Sulla, displaying no fear or regret. "I shall step down next Quinctilis, Pius, and retire to Misenum for one last, glorious fling. It won't be a long fling, but I am going to enjoy every single moment!" "Prophets are un Roman," said Metellus Pius austerely. "We both know they're more often wrong than right." "Not this prophet," said Sulla firmly. "He was a Chaldaean, and seer to the King of the Parthians." Deeming it wiser, Metellus Pius gave the argument up; he settled instead to a discussion of the coming Spanish campaign.
In truth, Sulla's work was winding down to inertia. The spate of legislation was over and the new constitution looked as if it would hold together even after he was gone; even the apportioning of land to his veterans was beginning to arrive at a stage where Sulla himself could withdraw from the business, and Volaterrae had finally fallen. Only Nola oldest and best foe among the cities of Italy still held out against Rome. He had done what he could, and overlooked very little. The Senate was docile, the Assemblies virtually impotent, the tribunes of the plebs mere figureheads, his courts a popular as well as a practical success, and the future governors of provinces hamstrung. The Treasury was full, and its bureaucrats mercilessly obliged to fall into proper practices of accounting. If the Ordo Equester didn't think the loss of sixteen hundred knights who had fallen victim to Sulla's proscriptions was enough of a lesson, Sulla drove it home by stripping the knights of the Public Horse of all their social privileges, then directed that all men exiled by courts staffed by knight juries should come home. He had crotchets, of course. Women suffered yet again when he forbade any female guilty of adultery to remarry. Gambling (which he abhorred) was forbidden on all events except boxing matches and human footraces, neither of which drew a crowd, as he well knew. But his chief crotchet was the public servant, whom he despised as disorganized, slipshod, lazy, and venal. So he regulated every aspect of the working lives of Rome's secretaries, clerks, scribes, accountants, heralds, lictors, messengers, the priestly attendants called calatores, the men who reminded other men of yet other men's names nomenclatores and general public servants who had no real job description beyond the fact that they were apparitores. In future, none of these men would know whose service they would enter when the new magistrates came into office; no magistrate could ask for public servants by name. Lots would be drawn three years in advance, and no group would consistently serve the same sort of magistrate. He found new ways to annoy the Senate, having already banned every noisy demonstration of approbation or disapproval and changed the order in which senators spoke; now he put a law on the tablets which severely affected the incomes of certain needy senators by limiting the amount of money provincial delegations could spend when they came to Rome to sing the praises of an ex governor, which meant these delegations could not (as they had in the past) give money to certain needy senators. It was a full program of laws which covered every aspect of Roman public life as well as much Roman life hitherto private. Everyone knew the parameters of his lot how much he could spend, how much he could take, how much he paid the Treasury, who he could marry, whereabouts he would be tried, and what he would be tried for. A massive undertaking executed, it seemed, virtually single handed. The knights were down, but military heroes were up, up, up. The Plebeian Assembly and its tribunes were down, but the Senate was up, up, up. Those closely related to the proscribed were down, but men like Pompey the Great were up, up, up. The advocates who had excelled in the Assemblies (like Quintus Hortensius) were down, but the advocates who excelled in the more intimate atmosphere of the courts (like Cicero) were up, up, up. "Little wonder that Rome is reeling, though I don't hear a single voice crying Sulla nay," said the new consul, Appius Claudius Pulcher, to his colleague in the consulship, Publius Servilius Vatia. "One reason for that," said Vatia, "lies in the good sense behind so much of what he has legislated. He is a wonder!" Appius Claudius nodded without enthusiasm, but Vatia didn't misinterpret this apathy; his colleague was not well, had not been well since his return from the inevitable siege of Nola which he seemed to have supervised on and off for a full ten years. He was, besides, a widower burdened with six children who were already notorious for their lack of discipline and a distressing tendency to conduct their tempestuous and deadly battles in public. Taking pity on him, Vatia patted his back cheerfully. "Oh, come, Appius Claudius, look at your future more brightly, do! It's been long and hard for you, but you've finally arrived." "I won't have arrived until I restore my family's fortune," said Appius Claudius morosely. "That vile wretch Philippus took everything I had and gave it to Cinna and Carbo and Sulla has not given it back." "You should have reminded him," said Vatia reasonably. "He has had a great deal to do, you know. Why didn't you buy up big during the proscriptions?" "I was at Nola, if you remember," said the unhappy one. "Next year you'll be sent to govern a province, and that will set all to rights." "If my health holds up." "Oh, Appius Claudius! Stop glooming! You'll survive!" "I can't be sure of that" was the pessimistic reply. "With my luck, I'll be sent to Further Spain to replace Pius." "You won't, I promise you," soothed Vatia. "If you won't ask Lucius Cornelius on your own behalf, I will! And I'll ask him to give you Macedonia. That's always good for a few bags of gold and a great many important local contracts. Not to mention selling citizenships to rich Greeks." "I didn't think there were any," said Appius Claudius. "There are always rich men, even in the poorest countries. It is the nature of some men to make money. Even the Greeks, with all their political idealism, failed to legislate the wealthy man out of existence. He'd pop up in Plato's Republic, I promise you!" "Like Crassus, you mean." "An excellent example! Any other man would have plummeted into obscurity after Sulla cut him dead, but not our Crassus!" They were in the Curia Hostilia, where the New Year's Day inaugural meeting of the Senate was being held because there was no temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and the size of the Senate had grown sufficiently to render places like Jupiter Stator and Castor's too small for a comfortable meeting that was to be followed by a feast. "Hush!" said Appius Claudius. "Sulla is going to speak." "Well, Conscript Fathers," the Dictator commenced, voice jovial, basically it is all done. It was my avowed intention to set Rome back on her feet and make new laws for her that fulfilled the needs of the mos maiorum. I have done so. But I will continue as Dictator until Quinctilis, when I will hold the elections for the magistrates of next year. This you already know. However, I believe some of you refuse to credit that a man endowed with such power would ever be foolish enough to step down. So I repeat that I will step down from the Dictatorship after the elections in Quinctilis. This means that next year's magistrates will be the last personally chosen by me. In future years all the elections will be free, open to as many candidates as want to stand. There are those who have consistently disapproved of the Dictator's choosing his magistrates, and putting up only as many names for voting as there are jobs to fill. But as I have always maintained! the Dictator must work with men who are prepared to back him wholeheartedly. The electorate cannot be relied upon to return the best men, nor even the men who are overdue for office and entitled to that office by virtue of their rank and experience. So as the Dictator I have been able to ensure I have both the men I wish to work with and to whom office was morally and ethically owed. Like my dear absent Pontifex Maximus, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius. He continues to be worthy of my favor, for he is already on the way to Further Spain, there to contend with the outlawed felon, Quintus Sertorius." "He's rambling a bit," said Catulus clinically. "Because he has nothing to say," said Hortensius. "Except that he will stand down in Quinctilis." "And I am actually beginning to believe that."
But that New Year's Day, so auspiciously begun, was to end with some long delayed bad news from Alexandria. Ptolemy Alexander the Younger's time had finally come at the beginning of the year just gone, the second year of Sulla's reign. Word had arrived then from Alexandria that King Ptolemy Soter Chickpea was dead and his daughter Queen Berenice now ruling alone. Though the throne came through her, under Egyptian law she could not occupy it without a king. Might, the embassage from Alexandria humbly asked, Lucius Cornelius Sulla grant Egypt a new king in the person of Ptolemy Alexander the Younger? What happens if I deny you?'' asked Sulla. "Then King Mithridates and King Tigranes will win Egypt," said the leader of the delegation. "The throne must be occupied by a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty. If Ptolemy Alexander is not made King and Pharaoh, then we will have to send to Mithridates and Tigranes for the elder of the two bastards, Ptolemy Philadelphus who was called Auletes because of his piping voice." "I can see that a bastard might be able to assume the title of King, but can he legally become Pharaoh?" asked Sulla, thus revealing that he had studied the Egyptian monarchy. Were he the son of a common woman, definitely not'' was the answer. "However, Auletes and his younger brother are the sons of Ptolemy Soter and Princess Arsinoe, the royal concubine who was the eldest legitimate daughter of the King of Nabataea. It has long been the custom for all the small dynasts of Arabia and Palestina to send their oldest daughters to the Pharaoh of Egypt as his concubines, for that is a more august and respectable fate than marriage to other small dynasts and brings greater security to their fathers, who all need Egyptian co operation to carry on their trading activities up the Sinus Arabicus and across the various deserts." "So you're saying that Alexandria and Egypt would accept one of the Ptolemaic bastards because his mother was royal?'' "In the event that we cannot have Ptolemy Alexander, that is inevitable, Lucius Cornelius." "Mithridatid and Tigranic puppets," said Sulla thoughtfully. As their wives are the daughters of Mithridates, that too is inevitable. Tigranes is now too close to the Egyptian border for us to insist the Ptolemy bastards divorce these girls. He would invade in the name of Mithridates. And Egypt would fall. We are not militarily strong enough to deal with a war of that magnitude. Besides which, the girls have sufficient Ptolemaic blood to pass on the throne. In the event," said the delegation's leader suavely, "that the child of Ptolemy Soter and his concubine the daughter of the King of Idumaea fails to grow up and provide Auletes with a wife of half Ptolemaic blood." Sulla looked suddenly brisk and businesslike. "Leave it with me, I'll attend to the matter. We can't have Armenia and Pontus in control of Egypt!" His own deliberations were already concluded long since, so without delay Sulla set off for the villa on the Pincian Hill and an interview with Ptolemy Alexander. "Your day has arrived," said the Dictator to his hostage, no longer such a very young man; he had turned thirty five. "Chickpea is dead?" asked Ptolemy Alexander eagerly. "Dead and entombed. Queen Berenice rules alone." "Then I must go!" Ptolemy Alexander squawked, agitated. "I must go! There is no time to be wasted!" "You can go when I say you can go, not a moment before," said Sulla harshly. "Sit down, Your Majesty, and listen to me." His Majesty sat with his draperies flattening limply around him like a pricked puffball, his eyes very strange between the solid lines of stibium he had painted on both upper and lower lids, extended out toward the temples in imitation of the antique Eye of Egypt, the wadjet; as he had also painted in thick black brows and whitened the area between them and the black line of the upper lids, Sulla found it absolutely impossible to decide what Ptolemy Alexander's real eyes held. The whole effect, he decided, was distinctly sinister and probably intended to be. "You cannot talk to a king as to an inferior," said His Majesty stiffly. "There is no king in all the world who is not my inferior," Sulla answered contemptuously. "I rule Rome! That makes me the most powerful man between the Rivers of Ocean and Indus. So you will listen, Your Majesty and without interrupting me! You may go to Alexandria and assume the throne. But only upon certain conditions. Is that understood?" What conditions?'' "That you make your will and lodge it with the Vestal Virgins here in Rome. It need only be a simple will. In the event that you die without legitimate issue, you will bequeath the Kingdom of Egypt to Rome." Ptolemy Alexander gasped. "I can't do that!" "You can do anything I say you must do if you want to rule in Alexandria. That is my price. Egypt to fall to Rome if you die without legitimate issue." The unsettling eyes within their embossed ritual framework slid from side to side, and the richly carmined mouth full and self indulgent worked upon itself in a way which reminded Sulla of Philippus. "All right, I agree to your price." Ptolemy Alexander shrugged. "I don't subscribe to the old Egyptian religion, so what can it matter to me after I'm dead?" "Excellently reasoned!" said Sulla heartily. "I brought my secretary with me so you'd be able to make out the document here and now. With every royal seal and your personal cartouche attached, of course. I want no arguments from the Alexandrians after you're dead." He clapped for a Ptolemaic servant, and asked that his own secretary be summoned. As they waited he said idly, "There is one other condition, actually." "What?" asked Ptolemy Alexander warily. "I believe that in a bank at Tyre you have a sum of two thousand talents of gold deposited by your grandmother, the third Queen Cleopatra. Mithridates got the money she left on Cos, but not what she left at Tyre. And King Tigranes has not yet managed to subdue the cities of Phoenicia. He's too busy with the Jews. You will leave those two thousand talents of gold to Rome." One look at Sulla's face informed His Majesty that there could be no argument; he shrugged again, nodded. Flosculus the secretary came, Ptolemy Alexander sent one of his own slaves for his seals and cartouche, and the will was soon made and signed and witnessed. "I will lodge it for you," said Sulla, rising, "as you cannot cross the pomerium to visit Vesta." Two days later Ptolemy Alexander the Younger departed from Rome with the delegation, and took ship in Puteoli for Africa; it was easier to cross the Middle Sea at this point and then to hug the African coast from the Roman province to Cyrenaica, and Cyrenaica to Alexandria. Besides which, the new King of Egypt wanted to go nowhere near Mithridates or Tigranes, and did not trust to his luck. In the spring an urgent message had come from Alexandria, where Rome's agent (a Roman ostensibly in trade) had written that King Ptolemy Alexander the Second had suffered a disaster. Arriving safely after a long voyage, he had immediately married his half sister cum first cousin, Queen Berenice. For exactly nineteen days he had reigned as King of Egypt, nineteen days during which, it seemed, he conceived a steadily increasing hatred of his wife. So early on the nineteenth day of his reign, apparently considering this female creature a nonentity, he murdered his forty year old wife/sister/cousin/queen. But she had reigned for a long time in conjunction with her father, Chickpea; the citizens of Alexandria adored her. Later during the nineteenth day of his reign the citizens of Alexandria stormed the palace, abducted King Ptolemy Alexander the Second, and literally tore him into small pieces a kind of free for all fun for all celebration staged in the agora. Egypt was without king or queen, and in a state of chaos. "Splendid!" cried Sulla as he read his agent's letter, and sent off an embassage of Roman senators led by the consular and ex censor Marcus Perperna to Alexandria, bearing King Ptolemy Alexander the Second's last will and legal testament. His ambassadors were also under orders to call in at Tyre on the way home, there to pick up the gold. From that day to this New Year's Day of the third year of Sulla's reign, nothing further had been heard. "Our entire journey has been dogged by ill luck," said Marcus Perperna. We were shipwrecked off Crete and taken captive by pirates it took two months for the cities of Peloponnesian Greece to raise our ransoms, and then we had to finish the voyage by sailing to Cyrene and hugging the Libyan coast to Alexandria." "In a pirate vessel?" asked Sulla, aware of the gravity of this news, but nonetheless inclined to laugh; Perperna looked so old and shrunken and terrified! "As you so shrewdly surmise, in a pirate vessel." "And what happened when you reached Alexandria?" "Nothing good, Lucius Cornelius. Nothing good!" Perperna heaved a huge sigh. "We found the Alexandrians had acted with celerity and efficiency. They knew exactly whereabouts to send after King Ptolemy Alexander was murdered." "Send for what, Perperna?" "Send for the two bastard sons of Ptolemy Soter Chickpea, Lucius Cornelius. They petitioned King Tigranes in Syria to give them both young men the elder to rule Egypt, and the younger to rule Cyprus." "Clever, but not unexpected," said Sulla. "Go on." By the time we reached Alexandria, King Ptolemy Auletes was already on the throne, and his wife the daughter of King Mithridates was beside him as Queen Cleopatra Tryphaena. His younger brother whom the Alexandrians have decided to call Ptolemy the Cyprian was sent to be regent of Cyprus. His wife another daughter of Mithridates went with him." "And her name is?" "Mithridatidis Nyssa." "The whole thing is illegal," said Sulla, frowning. "Not according to the Alexandrians!" "Go on, Perperna, go on! Tell me the worst." "Well, we produced the will, of course. And informed the Alexandrians that we had come formally to annex the Kingdom of Egypt into the empire of Rome as a province." "And what did they say to that, Perperna?" "They laughed at us, Lucius Cornelius. By various methods their lawyers proceeded to prove that the will was invalid, then they pointed to the King and Queen upon their thrones and showed us that they had found legitimate heirs." "But they're not legitimate!" "Only under Roman law, they said, and denied that it applied to Egypt. Under Egyptian law which seems to consist largely of rules made up on the spur of the moment to support whatever the Alexandrians have in mind the King and Queen are legitimate." "So what did you do, Perperna?" "What could I do, Lucius Cornelius? Alexandria was crawling with soldiers! We thanked our Roman gods that we managed to get out of Egypt alive, and with our persons intact." "Quite right," said Sulla, who did not bother venting his spleen upon unworthy objects. "However, the fact remains that the will is valid. Egypt now belongs to Rome." He drummed his fingers on his desk. "Unfortunately there isn't much Rome can do at the present time. I've had to send fourteen legions to Spain to deal with Quintus Sertorius, and I've no wish to add to the Treasury's expenses by mounting another campaign at the opposite end of the world. Not with Tigranes riding roughshod over most of Syria and no curb in the vicinity now that the Parthian heirs are so embroiled in civil war. Have you still got the will?" "Oh yes, Lucius Cornelius." "Then tomorrow I'll inform the Senate what's happened and give the will back to the Vestals against the day when Rome can afford to annex Egypt by force which is the only way we're going to come into our inheritance, I think." "Egypt is fabulously rich." "That's no news to me, Perperna! The Ptolemies are sitting on the greatest treasure in the world, as well as one of the world's richest countries." Sulla assumed the expression which indicated he was finished, but said, it appeared as an afterthought, "I suppose that means you didn't obtain the two thousand talents of gold from Tyre?'' "Oh, we got that without any trouble, Lucius Cornelius," said Perperna, shocked. "The bankers handed it over the moment we produced the will. On our way home, as you instructed." Sulla roared with laughter. "Well done for you, Perperna! I can almost forgive you the debacle in Alexandria!" He got up, rubbing his hands together in glee. "A welcome addition to the Treasury. And so the Senate will see it, I'm sure. At least poor Rome didn't have to pay for an embassage without seeing an adequate financial return."
All the eastern kings were being troublesome one of the penalties Rome was forced to endure because her internecine strife had made it impossible for Sulla to remain in the east long enough to render both Mithridates and Tigranes permanently impotent. As it was, no sooner had Sulla sailed home than Mithridates was back intriguing to annex Cappadocia, and Lucius Licinius Murena (then governor of Asia Province and Cilicia) had promptly gone to war against him without Sulla's knowledge or permission, and in contravention of the Treaty of Dardanus. For a while Murena had done amazingly well, until self confidence had led him into a series of disastrous encounters with Mithridates on his own soil of Pontus. Sulla had been obliged to send the elder Aulus Gabinius to order Murena back to his own provinces. It had been Sulla's intention to punish Murena for his cavalier behavior, but then had come the confrontation with Pompey; so Murena had had to be allowed to return and celebrate a triumph in order to put Pompey in his place. In the meantime, Tigranes had used the six years just gone by to expand his kingdom of Armenia southward and westward into lands belonging to the King of the Parthians and the rapidly disintegrating Kingdom of Syria. He had begun to see his chance when he learned that old King Mithradates of the Parthians was too ill to proceed with a projected invasion of Syria and too ill to prevent the barbarians called Massagetae from taking over all his lands to the north and east of Parthia itself, as well as to prevent one of his sons, Gotarzes, from usurping Babylonia. As Tigranes himself had once predicted, the death of King Mithradates of the Parthians had provoked a war of succession complicated by the fact that the old man had had three official queens two his paternal half sisters, and the third none other than a daughter of Tigranes called Automa. While various sons of various mothers fought over what remained, yet another vital satrapy seceded fabulously rich Elymais, watered by the eastern tributaries of the Tigris, the rivers Choaspes and Pasitigris; the silt free harbors to the east of the Tigris Euphrates delta were lost, as was the city of Susa, one of the Parthian royal seats. Uncaring, the sons of old King Mithradates warred on. So did Tigranes. His first move (in the year Gaius Marius died) was to invade in succession the petty kingdoms of Sophene, Gordyene, Adiabene, and finally Osrhoene. These four little states conquered, Tigranes now owned all the lands bordering the eastern bank of the Euphrates from above Tomisa all the way down to Europus; the big cities of Amida, Edessa and Nisibis were now also his, as were the tolls levied along the great river. But rather than entrust such commercial enterprises as toll collecting to his own Armenians, Tigranes wooed and won over the Skenite Arabs who controlled the arid regions between the Euphrates and the Tigris south of Osrhoene, and exacted tolls on every caravan which passed across their territory. Nomad Bedouins though they were, Tigranes moved the Skenite Arabs into Edessa and Carrhae and appointed them the collectors of Euphrates tolls at Samosata and Zeugma. Their king whose royal title was Abgar was now the client of Tigranes, and the Greek speaking populations of all the towns the King of Armenia had overcome were forced to emigrate to those parts of Armenia where the Greek language was hitherto unknown. Tigranes desperately wanted to be the civilized ruler of a Hellenized kingdom and what better way to Hellenize it than to implant colonies of Greek speakers within its borders? As a child Tigranes had been held hostage by the King of the Parthians and had lived in Seleuceia upon Tigris, far away from Armenia. At the time of his father's death he was the only living son, but the King of the Parthians had demanded a huge price for releasing the youth Tigranes seventy valleys in the richest part of Armenia, which was Media Atropatene. Now Tigranes marched into Media Atropatene and took back the seventy valleys, stuffed with gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise and fertile pastures. He now found, however, that he lacked sufficient Nesaean horses to mount his growing numbers of cataphracts. These strange cavalrymen were clad from head to foot in steel mesh armor as were their horses, which needed to be large to carry the weight. So in the following year Tigranes invaded Media itself, the home of the Nesaean horse, and annexed it to Armenia. Ecbatana, summer royal seat of the Kings of the Parthians and before them, the summer royal seat of the Kings of Media and Persia, including Alexander the Great was burned to the ground, and its magnificent palace sacked. Three years had gone by. While Sulla marched slowly up the Italian peninsula, Tigranes had turned his attention to the west and crossed the Euphrates into Commagene. Unopposed, he occupied all the lands of northern Syria between the Amanus Mountains and the Libanus Mountains, including mighty Antioch and the lower half of the valley of the Orontes River. Even a part of Cilicia Pedia fell to him, around the eastern shore of the Sinus Issicus. Syria was genuine Hellenized territory, its populace a fully Greek speaking one powerfully under the influence of Greek customs. No sooner had he established his authority in Syria than Tigranes uplifted whole communities of these hapless Greek speakers and sent them and their families to live in his newly built capital of Tigranocerta. Most favored were the artisans, not one of whom was allowed to remain in Syria. However, the King understood the need to protect his Greek imports from his Median speaking native peoples, who were directed under pain of death to treat the new citizens with care and kindness. And while Sulla was legislating to have himself appointed Dictator of Rome, Tigranes formally adopted the title he had hungered for all his life King of Kings. Queen Cleopatra Selene of Syria youngest sister and at one time wife of Ptolemy Soter Chickpea who had managed to rule Syria through several Seleucid husbands, was taken from Antioch and made to live in the humblest circumstances in a tiny village on the Euphrates; her place in the palace at Antioch was taken by the satrap Magadates, who was to rule Syria in the name of Tigranes, King of Kings. King of Kings, thought Sulla cynically; all those eastern potentates thought themselves King of Kings. Even, it seemed, the two bastard sons of Ptolemy Soter Chickpea, who now ruled in Egypt and Cyprus with their Mithridatid wives. But the will of the dead Ptolemy Alexander the Second was genuine; no one knew that better than Sulla did, for he was its witness. Sooner or later Egypt would belong to Rome. For the moment Ptolemy Auletes must be allowed to reign in Alexandria; but, vowed Sulla, that puppet of Mithridates and Tigranes would never know an easy moment! The Senate of Rome would send regularly to Alexandria demanding that Ptolemy Auletes step down in favor of Rome, the true owner of Egypt. As for King Mithridates of Pontus interesting, that he had lost two hundred thousand men in the freezing cold of the Caucasus he would have to be discouraged yet again from trying to annex Cappadocia. Complaining by letter to Sulla that Murena had plundered and burned four hundred villages along the Halys River, Mithridates had proceeded to take the Cappadocian bank of the Halys off poor Cappadocia; to make this ploy look legitimate, he had given King Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia a new bride, one of his own daughters. When Sulla discovered that the girl was a four year old child, he sent yet another messenger to see King Mithridates and order him in Rome's name to quit Cappadocia absolutely, bride or no bride. The messenger had returned very recently, bearing a letter from Mithridates promising to do as he was told and informing Sulla that the King of Pontus was going to send an embassage to Rome to ratify the Treaty of Dardanus into watertight legality. "He'd better make sure his embassage doesn't dawdle," said Sulla to himself as he terminated all these thoughts of eastern kings by going to find his wife. It was in her presence for she wasn't very far away that he ended his audible reflections by saying, "If they do dawdle, they won't find me here to dicker with them and good luck dickering with the Senate!" "I beg your pardon, my love?" asked Valeria, startled. "Nothing. Give me a kiss."
Her kisses were nice enough. Just as she was nice enough, Valeria Messala. So far Sulla had found this fourth marriage a pleasant experience. But not a stimulating one. A part of that was due to his age and his illnesses, he was aware; but a larger part of it was due to the seductive and sensuous shortcomings of aristocratic Roman women, who just could not relax sufficiently in bed to enter into the kind of sexual cavorting the Dictator hankered after. His prowess was flagging: he needed to be stimulated! Why was it that women could love a man madly, yet not enter wholeheartedly into his sexual wants? "I believe," said Varro, who was the hapless recipient of this question, that women are passive vessels, Lucius Cornelius. They are made to hold things, from a man's penis to a baby. And the one who holds things is passive. Must be passive! Otherwise the hold is not stable. It is the same with animals. The male is the active participant, and must rid himself of his excessive desires by rutting with many different females." He had come to inform Sulla that Pompey was coming to Rome on a brief visit, and to enquire whether Sulla would like to see the young man. Instead of being given an audience, however, he found himself the audience, and had not yet managed to find the right moment to put his own query forward. The darkened brows wriggled expressively. "Do you mean, my dear Varro, that a decently married man must rut with half of female Rome?" "No, no, of course not!" gasped Varro. "All females are passive, so he could not find satisfaction!" Then do you mean that if a man wants his fleshly urges gratified to complete satiation, he ought to seek his sexual partners among men?" Sulla asked, face serious. "Ooh! Ah! Um!" squeaked Varro, writhing like a centipede pinned through its middle. "No, Lucius Cornelius, of course not! Definitely not!" Then what is a decently married man to do?'' "I am a student of natural phenomena, I know, but these are questions I am not qualified or skilled enough to answer!" babbled Varro, wishing he had not decided to visit this uncomfortable, perplexing man. The trouble was that ever since the months during which he, Varro, had anointed Sulla's disintegrating face, Sulla had displayed a great fondness for him, and tended to become offended if Varro didn't call to pay his respects. "Calm down, Varro, I'm teasing you!" said Sulla, laughing. "One never knows with you, Lucius Cornelius." Varro wet his lips, began to formulate in his mind the words which would put his announcement of Pompey's advent in the most favorable light; no fool, Varro was well aware that the Dictator's feelings toward Pompey were ambivalent. "I hear," said Sulla, unconscious of all this mental juggling of a simple sentence, that Varro Lucullus has managed to get rid of his adoptive sister your cousin, I believe." "Terentia, you mean?" Varro's face lit up. "Oh, yes! A truly wonderful stroke of luck!" "It's a long time," said the smiling Sulla, who adored all sorts of gossip these days, "since a woman as rich as Terentia has had so much trouble finding a husband." "That's not quite the situation," said Varro, temporizing. "One can always find a man willing to marry a rich woman. The trouble with Terentia who is Rome's worst shrew, I grant you! has forever been that she refused to look at any of the men her family found for her." Sulla's smile had become a grin. "She preferred to stay at home and make Varro Lucullus's life a misery, you mean." "Perhaps. Though she likes him well enough, I think. Her nature is at fault and what can she do about that, since it was given to her at her birth?" "Then what happened? Love at first sight?" "Certainly not. The match was proposed by our swindling friend, Titus Pomponius who is now called Atticus because of his affection for Athens. Apparently he and Marcus Tullius Cicero have known each other for many years. Since you regulated Rome, Lucius Cornelius, Atticus visits Rome at least once a year.'' "I am aware of it," said Sulla, who didn't hold Atticus's financial flutterings against him any more than he did Crassus's it was the way Crassus had manipulated the proscriptions for his own gain caused his fall from Sulla's grace. "Anyway, Cicero's legal reputation has soared. So have his ambitions. But his purse is empty. He needed to marry an heiress, though it looked as if she would have to be one of those abysmally undistinguished girls our less salubrious plutocrats seem to produce in abundance. Then Atticus suggested Terentia." Varro stopped to look enquiringly at Sulla. "Do you know Marcus Tullius Cicero at all?" he asked. "Quite well when he was a lad. My late son who would be about the same age had he lived befriended him. He was thought a prodigy then. But between my son's death and the case of Sextus Roscius of Ameria, I saw him only as a contubernalis on my staff in Campania during the Italian War. Maturity hasn't changed him. He's just found his natural milieu, is all. He's as pedantic, talkative, and full of his own importance as he ever was. Qualities which stand him in good stead as an advocate! However, I admit freely that he has a magnificent turn of phrase. And he does have a mind! His worst fault is that he's related to Gaius Marius. They're both from Arpinum." Varro nodded. "Atticus approached Varro Lucullus, who agreed to press Cicero's suit with Terentia. And much to his surprise, she asked to meet Cicero! She had heard of his courtroom prowess, and told Varro Lucullus that she was determined to marry a man who was capable of fame. Cicero, she said, might be such a one." "How big is her dowry?" "Enormous! Two hundred talents." "The line of her suitors must stretch right round the block! And must contain some very pretty, smooth fellows. I begin to respect Terentia, if she's been proof against Rome's most expert fortune hunters," said Sulla. "Terentia," said her cousin deliberately, "is ugly, sour, cantankerous and parsimonious. She is now twenty one years old, and still single. I know girls are supposed to obey their paterfamilias and marry whomsoever they are told to marry, but there is no man alive or dead! who could order Terentia to do anything she didn't want to do." "And poor Varro Lucullus is such a nice man," said Sulla, highly entertained. "Precisely." "So Terentia met Cicero?" "She did indeed. And you could have bowled all of us over with a feather! consented to marry him." "Lucky Cicero! One of Fortune's favorites. Her money will come in very handy." "That's what you think," said Varro grimly. "She's made up the marriage contract herself and retained complete control of her wealth, though she did agree to dower any daughters she might have, and contribute toward funding the careers of any sons. But as for Cicero he's not the man to get the better of Terentia!" "What's he like as a person these days, Varro?" Pleasant enough. Soft inside, I think. But vainglorious. Insufferably conceited about his intellect and convinced it has no peer. An avid social climber ... Hates to be reminded that Gaius Marius is his distant relative! If Terentia had been one of those abysmally undistinguished daughters of our less salubrious plutocrats, I don't think he would have looked at her. But her mother was a patrician and once married to Quintus Fabius Maximus, which means Fabia the Vestal Virgin is her half sister. Therefore Terentia was 'good enough,' if you know what I mean." Varro pulled a face. "Cicero is an Icarus, Lucius Cornelius. He intends to fly right up into the realm of the sun a dangerous business if you're a New Man without a sestertius." "Whatever is in the air of Arpinum, it seems to breed such fellows," said Sulla. "As well for Rome that this New Man from Arpinum has no military skills!" "Quite the opposite, I have heard." "Oh, I know it! When he was my contubernalis he acted as my secretary. The sight of a sword made him ashen. But I've never had a better secretary! When is the wedding?" Not until after Varro Lucullus and his brother celebrate the ludi Romani in September." Varro laughed. "There's no room in their world at the moment for anything except planning the best games Rome has seen in a century if at all!" "A pity I won't be in Rome to see them," said Sulla, who did not look brokenhearted. A small silence fell, which Varro took advantage of before Sulla could think of some other subject. "Lucius Cornelius, I wondered if you knew that Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus is coming to Rome shortly?" he asked diffidently. "He would like to call to see you, but understands how busy you are." "Never too busy to see Magnus!" said Sulla cheerfully. He directed a keen look at Varro. "Still running round after him with a pen and paper to record his every fart, Varro?" A deep red suffused Varro's skin; when dealing with Sulla one didn't always know how he would see even the most innocent things. Did he, for example, think that Varro's time would be better spent recording the deeds (or farts) of Lucius Cornelius Sulla? So he said, very humbly, "I do from time to time. It started as an accident because we were together when war broke out, and I was not proof against Pompeius's enthusiasm. He said I should write history, not natural history. And that is what I do. I am not Pompeius's biographer!" "Very well answered!" Thus it was that when Varro left the Dictator's house on the Palatine, he had to pause to wipe the sweat from his face. They talked endlessly about the lion and the fox in Sulla; but personally Varro thought the worst beast he harbored was a common cat. He had done well, however. When Pompey arrived in Rome with his wife and took up residence in his family's house on the Carinae, Varro was able to say that Sulla would be glad to see Pompey, and would allocate him sufficient time for a cozy chat. That was Sulla's phrase but uttered with tongue in cheek, Varro knew. A cozy chat with Sulla could turn out to be a walk along a tightrope above a pit of burning coals. Ah, but the self confidence and conceit of youth! Pompey, still some months short of his twenty seventh birthday, breezed off to see Sulla with no misgivings whatsoever. "And how's married life?" asked the Dictator blandly. Pompey beamed. "Wonderful! Glorious! What a wife you found for me, Lucius Cornelius! Beautiful educated sweet. She's pregnant. Due to drop my first son later this year." "A son, eh? Are you sure it will be a son, Magnus?" "Positive." Sulla chuckled. "Well, you're one of Fortune's favorites, Magnus, so I suppose it will be a son. Gnaeus Junior ... The Butcher, Kid Butcher, and Baby Butcher." "I like that!" exclaimed Pompey, not at all offended. "You're establishing a tradition," said Sulla gravely. "We certainly are! Three generations!" Pompey sat back, pleased. Then, noted the watching Sulla, a different look came into the wide blue eyes; the happiness fled, replaced by a wary and thoughtful calculation as Pompey turned something over in his mind. Sulla waited without speaking until it came out. "Lucius Cornelius..." "Yes?" "That law you promulgated the one about making the Senate look outside of its own ranks if no military commander could be found among the senators ..." "The special commission, you mean?" "That's the one." "What about it?" "Would it apply to me?" "It could do." "But only if no one within the Senate volunteered." "It doesn't quite say that, Magnus. It says if no capable and experienced commander within the Senate volunteers." "And who decides that?" "The Senate." Another silence fell. Then Pompey said, idly it seemed, "It would be nice to have lots of clients within the Senate." "It is always nice to have those, Magnus." At which point Pompey transparently decided to change the subject. "Who will be the consuls for next year?" he asked. "Catulus, for one. Though I haven't decided yet whether he's to be senior or junior consul. A year ago, it seemed a clear cut decision. Now I'm not so sure." "Catulus is like Metellus Pius a stickler." "Perhaps. Neither as old nor as wise, unfortunately." "Do you think Metellus Pius can beat Sertorius?" "At first, probably not," said Sulla, smiling. "However, don't hold my Piglet too lightly, Magnus. It takes him a while to get into stride. But once he finds his stride he's very good." "Pah! He's an old woman!" said Pompey contemptuously. "I've known some doughty old women in my time, Magnus." Back to the changed subject: Who else will be consul?'' "Lepidus." "Lepidus?" Pompey gaped. "Don't you approve?" "I didn't say I didn't approve, Lucius Cornelius. As a matter of fact, I think I do! I just didn't think your mind was inclined his way. He hasn't been obsequious enough." "Is that what you believe? That I give the big jobs only to men willing to wash my arse?" Give Pompey his due, he was never afraid. So, much to Sulla's secret amusement, he continued. "Not really. But you certainly haven't given the big jobs to men who have made it as obvious as Lepidus has that he doesn't approve of you." "Why should I?" asked Sulla, looking amazed. "I'm not fool enough to give the big jobs to men who might undermine me!" "Then why Lepidus?" "I'm due to retire before he takes office. And Lepidus," said Sulla deliberately, "is aiming high. It has occurred to me that it might be better to make him consul while I'm still alive." "He's a good man." "Because he questioned me publicly? Or despite that?" But "He's a good man" was as far as Pompey was prepared to go. In truth, though he found the appointment of Lepidus not in character for Sulla, he was only mildly interested. Of far more interest was Sulla's provision for the special commission. When he had heard of it he had wondered what he himself might have had to do with it, but it had been no part of Pompey's plans at that stage to ask Sulla. Now, almost two years since the law had been passed, he thought it expedient to enquire rather than ask. The Dictator was right, of course. A man found it hard enough to gain his objectives as a member of the Senate; but seeking his objectives from that body when a man was not a member of it would prove extremely difficult indeed. Thus after Pompey took his leave of Sulla and commenced the walk home, he strolled along deep in thought. First of all, he would have to establish a faction within the Senate. And after that he would have to create a smaller group of men willing for a price, naturally to intrigue actively and perpetually on his behalf, even engage in underhand activities. Only where to begin? Halfway down the Kingmakers' Stairs, Pompey halted, turned, took them lithely two at a time back up onto the Clivus Victoriae, no mean feat in a toga. Philippus! He would begin with Philippus. Lucius Marcius Philippus had come a long way since the day he had paid a visit to the seaside villa of Gaius Marius and told that formidable man that he, Philippus, had just been elected a tribune of the plebs, and what might he do for Gaius Marius? for a price, naturally. How many times inside his mind Philippus had turned his toga inside out and then back again, only Philippus knew for certain. What other men knew for certain was that he had always managed to survive, and even to enhance his reputation. At the time Pompey went to see him, he was both consular and ex censor, and one of the Senate's elders. Many men loathed him, few genuinely liked him, but he was a power nonetheless; somehow he had succeeded in persuading most of his world that he was a man of note as well as clout. He found his interview with Pompey both amusing and thought provoking, never until now having had much to do with Sulla's pet, but well aware that in Pompey, Rome had spawned a young man who deserved watching. Philippus was, besides, financially strapped again. Oh, not the way he used to be! Sulla's proscriptions had proven an extremely fruitful source of property, and he had picked up several millions' worth of estates for several thousands. But, like a lot of men of his kind, Philippus was not a handy manager; money seemed to slip away faster than he could gather it in, and he lacked the ability to supervise his rural money making enterprises as well as the ability to choose reliable staff. "In short, Gnaeus Pompeius, I am the opposite of men like Marcus Licinius Crassus, who still has his first sestertius and now adds them up in millions upon millions. His people tremble in their shoes whenever they set eyes on him. Mine smile slyly." "You need a Chrysogonus," said the young man with the wide blue gaze and the frank, open, attractive face. Always inclined to run to fat, Philippus had grown even softer and more corpulent with the years, and his brown eyes were almost buried between swollen upper lids and pouched lower ones. These eyes now rested upon his youthful adviser with startled and wary surprise: Philippus was not used to being patronized. "Chrysogonus ended up impaled on the needles below the Tarpeian Rock!" "Chrysogonus had been extremely valuable to Sulla in spite of his fate," said Pompey. "He died because he had enriched himself from the proscriptions not because he enriched himself by stealing directly from his patron. Over the many years he worked for Sulla, he worked indefatigably. Believe me, Lucius Marcius, you do need a Chrysogonus." "Well, if I do, I have no idea how to find one." "I'll undertake to find one for you if you like." The buried eyes now popped out of their surrounding flesh. Oh? And why would you be willing to do that, Gnaeus Pompeius?" "Call me Magnus," said Pompey impatiently. "Magnus." "Because I need your services, Lucius Marcius." "Call me Philippus." "Philippus." "How can I possibly serve you, Magnus? You're rich beyond most rich men's dreams even Crassus's, I'd venture! You're what? in your middle twenties somewhere? and already famous as a military commander, not to mention standing high in Sulla's favor and that is hard to achieve. I've tried, but I never have." "Sulla is going," said Pompey deliberately, "and when he goes I'll sink back into obscurity. Especially if men like Catulus and the Dolabellae have anything to do with it. I'm not a member of the Senate. Nor do I intend to be." "Curious, that," said Philippus thoughtfully. "You had the opportunity. Sulla put your name at the top of his first list. But you spurned it." "I have my reasons." "I imagine you do!" Pompey got up from his chair and strolled across to the open window at the back of Philippus's study, which, because of the peculiar layout of Philippus's house (perched as it was near the bend in the Clivus Victoriae) looked not onto a peristyle garden but out across the lower Forum Romanum to the cliff of the Capitol. And there above the pillared arcade in which dwelt the magnificent effigies of the Twelve Gods, Pompey could see the beginnings of a huge building project; Sulla's Tabularium, a gigantic records house in which would repose all of Rome's accounts and law tablets. Other men, thought Pompey contemptuously, might build a basilica or a temple or a porticus, but Sulla builds a monument to Rome's bureaucracy! He has no wings on his imagination. That is his weakness, his patrician practicality. "I would be grateful if you could find a Chrysogonus for me, Magnus," said Philippus to break the long silence. "The only trouble is that I am not a Sulla! Therefore I very much doubt that I would succeed in controlling such a man." "You're not soft in anything except appearance, Philip pus," said the Master of Tact. "If I find you just the right man, you will control him. You just can't pick staff, that's all." "And why should you do this for me, Magnus?" "Oh, that's not all I intend to do for you!" said Pompey, turning from the window with a smile all over his face. "Really?" "I take it that your chief problem is maintaining a decent cash flow. You have a great deal of property, as well as several schools for gladiators. But nothing is managed efficiently, and therefore you do not enjoy the income you ought. A Chrysogonus will go far toward fixing that! However, it's very likely that as you're a man of famously expensive habits even an expanded income from all your estates and schools will not always prove adequate for your needs." "Admirably stated!" said Philippus, who was enjoying this interview, he now discovered, enormously. "I'd be willing to augment your income with the gift of a million sesterces a year," said Pompey coolly. Philippus couldn't help it. He gasped. "A million?" "Provided you earn it, yes." And what would I have to do to earn it?'' "Establish a Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus faction within the Senate of sufficient power to get me whatever I want whenever I want it." Pompey, who never suffered from bashfulness or guilt or any kind of self deprecation, had no difficulty in meeting Philippus's gaze when he said this. "Why not join the Senate and do it for yourself? Cheaper!" "I refuse to belong to the Senate, so that's not possible. Besides which, I'd still have to do it. Much better then to do it behind the scenes. I won't be sitting there to remind the senators that I might have any interest in what's going on beyond the interest of a genuine Roman patriot knight." "Oh, you're deep!" Philippus exclaimed appreciatively. "I wonder does Sulla know all the sides to you?" "Well, I'm why, I believe, he incorporated the special commission into his laws about commands and governorships." "You believe he invented the special commission because you refused to belong to the Senate?" "I do." "And that is why you want to pay me fatly to establish a faction for you within the Senate. Which is all very well. But to build a faction will cost you far more money than what you pay me, Magnus. For I do not intend to disburse sums to other men out of my own money and what you pay me is my own money." "Fair enough," said Pompey equably. There are plenty of needy senators among the pedarii. They won't cost you much, since all you need them for is a vote. But it will be necessary to buy some of the silver tongues on the front benches too, not to mention a few more in the middle." Philippus looked thoughtful. "Gaius Scribonius Curio is relatively poor. So is the adopted Cornelius Lentulus Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. They both itch for the consulship, but neither has the income to attain it. There are a number of Lentuli, but Lentulus Clodianus is the senior of the branch. He controls the votes of those backbenchers in the Lentulus clientele. Curio is a power within himself an interesting man. But to buy them will take a considerable amount of money. Probably a million each. If Curio will sell himself. I believe he will for enough, but not blindly, and not completely. Lucius Gellius Poplicola would sell his wife, his parents and his children for a million, however." "I'd rather," said Pompey, "pay them an annual income, as I will you. A million now might buy them, yes, but I think they would be happier if they knew that there was a regular quarter million coming in every year. In four years, that's the million. But I am going to need them for longer than four years." "You're generous, Magnus. Some might say foolishly so." "I am never foolish!" snapped Pompey. "I will expect to see a return for my money in keeping with the amount of it!" For some time they discussed the logistics of payments and the amounts necessary to people the back benches with willing nay, eager! Pompeian voters. But then Philippus sat back with a frown, and fell silent. "What is it?" asked Pompey a little anxiously. "There's one man you can't do without. The trouble is he's already got more money than he knows what to do with. So he can't be bought and he makes great capital out of that fact." "You mean Cethegus." "I do indeed." "How can I get him?" "I haven't the faintest idea." Pompey rose, looking brisk. "Then I'd better see him." "No!" cried Philippus, alarmed. "Cethegus is a patrician Cornelian, and such a smooth and syrupy sort of man that you'd make an enemy out of him he can't deal with the direct approach. Leave him to me. I'll sound him out, find what he wants." Two days later, Pompey received a note from Philippus. It contained only one sentence: "Get him Praecia, and he's yours." Pompey held the note within the flame of a lamp until it kindled, shaking with anger. Yes, that was Cethegus! His payment was his future patron's humiliation! He required that Pompey should become his pimp. Pompey's approach to Mucia Tertia was very different from his tactics in dealing with Aemilia Scaura or Antistia, for that matter. This third wife was infinitely above numbers one and two. First of all, she had a mind. Secondly, she was enigmatic; he could never work out what she was thinking. Thirdly, she was quite wonderful in bed what a surprise! Luckily he hadn't made a fool of himself at the outset by calling her his wee pudding or his delectable honeypot; such terms had actually teetered on the tip of his tongue, but something in her face had killed them before he articulated them. Little though he had liked Young Marius, she had been Young Marius's wife, and that had to count for much. And she was Scaevola's daughter, Crassus Orator's niece. Six years of living with Julia had to count for something too. So all Pompey's instincts said Mucia Tertia must be treated more like an equal, and not at all like a chattel. Therefore when he sought Mucia Tertia out, he did as he always did; gave her a lingering tongue seeking kiss accompanied by a light and appreciative fondling of one nipple. Then going away to sit where he could see her face, a smile of enslaved love and devotion. And after that straight to the subject. "Did you know I used to have a mistress in Rome?" he asked. "Which one?" was her answer, solemn and matter of fact; she rarely smiled, Mucia Tertia. "So you know of them all," he said comfortably. "Only of the two most notorious. Flora and Praecia." Clearly Pompey had forgotten Flora ever existed; he looked perfectly blank for several moments, then laughed and held his hands out. "Flora? Oh, she was forever ago!" "Praecia," said Mucia Tertia in a level voice, "was my first husband's mistress too." "Yes, I knew that." "Before or after you approached her?" "Before." "You didn't mind?" He could be quick, as he was now: "If I haven't minded his widow, why should I mind his ex mistress?" "True." She drew several skeins of finest woolen thread further into the light, and inspected them carefully. Her work, a piece of embroidery, lay in her swelling lap. Finally she chose the palest of the various purplish shades, broke off a length, and after sucking it to moisten it and rolling it between her fingers, held it up to ease it through the large eye of a needle. Only when the chore was done did she return her attention to Pompey. "What is it you have to say about Praecia?" "I'm establishing a faction in the Senate." "Wise." The needle was poked through the coarse fabric on which a complicated pattern of colored wools was growing, from wrong side to right side, then back again; the junction, when it was finished, would be impossible to detect. "Who have you begun with, Magnus? Philippus?" "Absolutely correct! You really are wonderful, Mucia!" "Just experienced," she said. "I grew up surrounded by talk of politics." "Philippus has undertaken to give me that faction," Pompey went on, "but there's one person he couldn't buy." "Cethegus," she said, beginning now to fill in the body of a curlique already outlined with deeper purple. "Correct again. Cethegus." "He's necessary." "So Philippus assures me." "And what is Cethegus's price?" "Praecia." "Oh, I see." The curlique was filling in at a great rate. "So Philippus has given you the job of acquiring Praecia for the King of the Backbenchers?" "It seems so." Pompey shrugged. "She must speak well of me, otherwise I imagine he'd have given the job to someone else." "Better of you than of Gaius Marius Junior." "Really?" Pompey's face lit up. "Oh, that's good!" Down went work and needle; the deep green eyes, so far apart and doelike, regarded their lord and master inscrutably. "Do you still visit her, Magnus?" "No, of course not!" said Pompey indignantly. His small spurt of temper died, he looked at her uncertainly. "Would you have minded if I had said yes?" "No, of course not." The needle went to work again. His face reddened. "You mean you wouldn't be jealous?" "No, of course not." "Then you don't love me!" he cried, jumping to his feet and walking hastily about the room. "Sit down, Magnus, do." "You don't love me!" he cried a second time. She sighed, abandoned her embroidery. "Sit down, Gnaeus Pompeius, do! Of course I love you." "If you did you'd be jealous!" he snapped, and flung himself back into his chair. "I am not a jealous person. Either one is, or one is not. And why should you want me to be jealous?'' "It would tell me that you loved me." "No, it would only tell you that I am a jealous person," she said with magnificent logic. "You must remember that I grew up in a very troubled household. My father loved my mother madly, and she loved him too. But he was always jealous of her. She resented it. Eventually his moods drove her into the arms of Metellus Nepos, who is not a jealous person. So she's happy." "Are you warning me not to become jealous of you?" "Not at all," she said placidly. "I am not my mother." "Do you love me?" "Yes, very much." Did you love Young Marius?'' "No, never." The pale purple thread was all used up; a new one was broken off. "Gaius Marius Junior was not uxorious. You are, delightfully so. Uxoriousness is a quality worthy of love." That pleased him enough to return to the original subject. "The thing is, Mucia, how do I go about something like this? I am a procurer oh, why dress it up in a fancy name? I am a pimp!" She chuckled. Wonder of wonders, she chuckled! "I quite see how difficult a position it puts you in, Magnus." "What ought I to do?" "As is your nature. Take hold of it and do it. You only lose control of events when you stop to think or worry how you'll look. So don't stop to think and stop worrying about how you'll look. Otherwise you'll make a mess of it." "Just go and see her and ask her." "Exactly." The needle was threaded again, her eyes lifted to his with another ghost of a smile in them. However, there is a price for this advice, my dear Magnus." "Is there?" "Certainly. I want a full account of how your meeting with Praecia goes."
The timing of this negotiation, it turned out, was exactly right. No longer possessed of either Young Marius or Pompey, Praecia had fallen into a doldrums wherein both stimulus and interest were utterly lacking. Comfortably off and determined to retain her independence, she was now far too old to be a creature of driving physical passions. As was true of so many of her less well known confederates in the art of love, Praecia had become an expert in sham. She was also an astute judge of character and highly intelligent. Thus she went into every sexual encounter from a superior position of power, sure of her capacity to please, and sure of her quarry. What she loved was the meddling in the affairs of men that normally had little or nothing to do with women. And what she loved most was political meddling. It was balm to intellect and disposition. When Pompey's arrival was announced to her, she didn't make the mistake of automatically assuming he had come to renew his liaison with her, though of course it crossed her mind because she had heard that his wife was pregnant. "My dear, dear Magnus!" she said with immense affability when he entered her study, and held out her hands to him. He bestowed a light kiss on each before retreating to a chair some feet away from where she reclined on a couch, heaving a sigh of pleasure so artificial that Praecia smiled. "Well, Magnus?" she asked. "Well, Praecia!" he said. "Everything as perfect as ever, I see has anyone ever found you and your surroundings less than perfect? Even if the call is unexpected?'' Praecia's tablinum she gave it the same name a man would have was a ravishing production in eggshell blue, cream, and precisely the right amount of gilt. As for herself she rose every day of her life to a toilet as thorough as it was protracted, and she emerged from it a finished work of art. Today she wore a quantity of tissue fine draperies in a soft sage green, and had done up her pale gold hair like Diana the Huntress, in disciplined piles with straying tendrils which looked absolutely natural rather than the result of much tweaking with the aid of a mirror. The beautiful cool planes of her face were not obviously painted; Praecia was far too clever to be crude when Fortune had been so kind, even though she was now forty. "How have you been keeping?" Pompey asked. "In good health, if not in good temper." "Why not good temper?" She shrugged, pouted. "What is there to mollify it? You don't come anymore! Nor does anyone else interesting." "I'm married again." "To a very strange woman." "Mucia, strange? Yes, I suppose she is. But I like her." "You would." He searched for a way into saying what he had to say, but could find no trigger and thus sat in silence, with Praecia gazing at him mockingly from her half sitting, half lying pose. Her eyes which were held to be her best feature, being very large and rather blindly blue positively danced with this derision. "I'm tired of this!" Pompey said suddenly. "I'm an emissary, Praecia. Not here on my own behalf, but on someone else's." "How intriguing!" "You have an admirer." "I have many admirers." "Not like this one." "And what makes him so different? Not to mention how he managed to send you to procure my services!'' Pompey reddened. "I'm caught in the middle, and I hate it! But I need him and he doesn't need me. So I'm here on his behalf." "You've already said that." "Take the barb out of your tongue, woman! I'm suffering enough. He's Cethegus." "Cethegus! Well, well!" said Praecia purringly. "He's very rich, very spoiled, and very nasty," said Pompey. "He could have done his own dirty work, but it amuses him to make me do it for him." "It's his price," she said, "to make you act as his pimp." "It is indeed." "You must want him very badly." "Just give me an answer! Yes or no?" "Are you done with me, Magnus?" "Yes." "Then my answer to Cethegus is yes." Pompey rose to his feet. "I thought you'd say no." "In other circumstances I would have loved to say no, but the truth is that I'm bored, Magnus. Cethegus is a power in the Senate, and I enjoy being associated with men of power. Besides, I see a new kind of power in it for me. I shall arrange it so that those who seek favors from Cethegus will have to do so through cultivating me. Very nice!" "Grr!" said Pompey, and departed. He didn't trust himself to see Cethegus; so he saw Lucius Marcius Philippus instead. "Praecia is willing," he said curtly. "Excellent, Magnus! But why look so unhappy?" "He made me pimp for him." "Oh, I'm sure it wasn't personal!" "Not much it wasn't!"
In the spring of that year Nola fell. For almost twelve years that Campanian city of Samnite persuasion had held out against Rome and Sulla, enduring one siege after another, mostly at the hands of this year's junior consul, Appius Claudius Pulcher. So it was logical that Sulla ordered Appius Claudius south to accept Nola's submission, and logical too that Appius Claudius took great pleasure in telling the city's magistrates the details of Sulla's unusually harsh conditions. Like Capua, Faesulae and Volaterrae, Nola was to keep no territory whatsoever; it all went to swell the Roman ager publicus. Nor were the men of Nola to be given the Roman citizenship. The Dictator's nephew, Publius Sulla, was given authority in the area, an added gall in view of last year's mission to sort out the tangled affairs of Pompeii, where Publius Sulla's brand of curt insensitivity had only ended in making a bad situation worse. But to Sulla the submission of Nola was a sign. He could depart with his luck intact when the place where he had won his Grass Crown was no more. So the months of May and June saw a steady trickle of his possessions wending their way to Misenum, and a team of builders toiled to complete certain commissions at his villa there a small theater, a delightful park complete with sylvan dells, waterfalls and many fountains, a huge deep pool, and several additional rooms apparently designed for parties and banquets. Not to mention six guest suites of such opulence that all Misenum was talking: who could Sulla be thinking of entertaining, the King of the Parthians? Then came Quinctilis, and the last in the series of Sulla's mock elections. To Catulus's chagrin, he was to be the junior consul; the senior was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a name no one had expected to hear in the light of his independent line in the Senate since Sulla had assumed the Dictatorship. At the beginning of the month Valeria Messala and the twins left for the Campanian countryside; everything at the villa was ready. In Rome, no one anticipated surprises. Sulla would go as he had come and as he had prevailed in an aura of dense respectability and ceremony. Rome was about to lose her first dictator in a hundred and twenty years, and her first ever dictator who had held the office for longer than six months. The ludi Apollinares, games first staged by Sulla's remote ancestor, came and went; so did the elections. And the day after the curule elections a huge crowd gathered in the lower Forum Romanum to witness Sulla's laying down of his self inflicted task. He was going to do this in public rather than within the Curia Hostilia of the Senate from the rostra, an hour after dawn. He did it with dignity and an impressive majesty, first dismissing his twenty four lictors with extreme courtesy and (for Sulla) costly gifts, then addressing the crowds from the rostra before going with the electors to the Campus Martius, where he oversaw the repeal of Flaccus Princeps Senatus's law appointing him Dictator. He went home from the Centuriate Assembly a private citizen, shorn of imperium and official auctoritas. "But I should like some of you to see me leave Rome," he said to the consuls Vatia and Appius Claudius, to Catulus, Lepidus, Cethegus, Philippus. "Be at the Porta Capena an hour after dawn tomorrow. Nowhere else, mind! Watch me say goodbye to Rome." They obeyed him to the letter, of course; Sulla might now be a privatus stripped of all magisterial power, but he had been the Dictator for far too long for any man to believe he truly lacked power. Sulla would be dangerous as long as he lived. Everyone bidden to the Porta Capena therefore came, though the three most favored Sullan protgs Lucullus, Mamercus and Pompey were not in Rome. Lucullus was on business for his games in September and Mamercus was in Cumae, while Pompey had gone back to Picenum to await the birth of his first child. When Pompey later heard of the events at the Capena Gate, he was profoundly thankful for his absence; Lucullus and Mamercus felt exactly the opposite. The marketplace inside the gate was jammed with busy folk going about their various activities selling, buying, peddling, teaching, strolling, flirting, eating. Of course the party in uniformly purple bordered togas was eyed with great interest; the usual volley of loud, anti upper class, derogatory insults was thrown from every direction, but the curule senators had heard it all before, and took absolutely no notice. Positioning themselves close to the imposing arch of the gate, they waited, talking idly. Not long afterward came the strains of music pipes, little drums, tuneful flutes, outlining and filling in an unmistakably Bacchic lay. A flutter ran through the marketplace throng, which separated, stunned, to permit the progress of the procession now appearing from the direction of the Palatine. First came flower decked harlots in flame colored togas, thumping their wrists against jingling tambourines, dipping their hands into the swollen sinuses of their togas to strew the route with drifts of rose petals. Then came freaks and dwarves, faces pugged or painted, some in horn bedecked masks sewn with bells, capering on malformed legs and clad in the motley of centunculi, vividly patched coats like fragmented rainbows. After them came the musicians, some wearing little more than flowers, others tricked out like prancing satyrs or fanciful eunuchs. In their midst, hedged about by giggling, dancing children, staggered a fat and drunken donkey with its hooves gilded, a garland of roses about its neck and its mournful ears poking out of holes in a wide brimmed, wreathed hat. On its purple blanketed back sat the equally drunken Sulla, waving a golden goblet which slopped an endless rain of wine, robed in a Tyrian purple tunic embroidered with gold, flowers around his neck and atop his head. Beside the donkey walked a very beautiful but obviously male woman, his thick black hair just sprinkled with white, his unfeminine physique draped in a semi transparent saffron woman's gown; he bore a large golden flagon, and every time the goblet in Sulla's right hand descended in his direction he topped up its splashing purple contents. Since the slope toward the gate was downward the procession gained a certain momentum it could not brake, so when the archway loomed immediately before it and Sulla started shouting blearily for a halt, everyone fell over squealing and shrieking, the women's legs kicking in the air and their hairy, red slashed pudenda on full display. The donkey staggered and cannoned into the wall of a fountain; Sulla teetered but was held up by the travestied flagon bearer alongside him, then toppled slowly into those strong arms. Righted, the Dictator commenced to walk toward the stupefied party of curule senators, though as he passed by one wildly flailing pair of quite lovely female legs, he bent to puddle his finger inside her cunnus, much to her hilarious and apparently orgasmic delight. As the escort regained its feet and clustered, singing and playing music and dancing still to the great joy of the gathering crowd Sulla arrived in front of the consuls to stand with his arm about his beautiful supporter, waving the cup of wine in an expansive salute. "Tacete!" yelled Sulla to the dancers and musicians. They quietened at once. But no other voices filled the silence. "Well, it's here at last!" he cried to whom, no one could be sure: perhaps to the sky. "My first day of freedom!" The golden goblet described circles in the air as the richly painted mouth bared its gums in the broadest and happiest of smiles. His whole face beneath the absurd ginger wig was painted as white as the patches of intact skin upon it, so that the livid areas of scar tissue were gone. But the effect was not what perhaps he had hoped, as the red outline of his mouth had run up into the many deep fissures starting under nose and on chin and foregathering at the lips; it looked like a red gash sewn loosely together with wide red stitches. But it smiled, smiled, smiled. Sulla was drunk, and he didn't care. "For thirty years and more," he said to the slack featured Vatia and Appius Claudius, "I have denied my nature. I have denied myself love and pleasure at first for the sake of my name and my ambition, and later when these had run their course for the sake of Rome. But it is over. Over, over, over! I hereby give Rome back to you to all you little, cocksure, maggot minded men! You are at liberty once more to vent your spleen on your poor country to elect the wrong men, to spend the public moneys foolishly, to think not beyond tomorrow and your own gigantic selves. In the thirty years of one generation I predict that you and those who succeed you will bring ruin beyond redemption upon Rome's undeserving head!" His hand went up to touch the face of his supporter, very tenderly and intimately. "You know who this is, of course, any of you who go to the theater. Metrobius. My boy. Always and forever my boy!" And he turned, pulled the dark head down, kissed Metrobius full upon the mouth. Then with a hiccough and a giggle he allowed himself to be helped back to his drunken ass, and hoisted upon it. The tawdry procession re formed and weaved off through the gate down the common line of the Via Latina and the Via Appia, with half the people from the marketplace following and cheering. No one in the senatorial party knew where to look, especially after Vatia burst into noisy tears. So for want of firmer guidance they drifted off in ones and twos, Appius Claudius trying to give comfort to the devastated Vatia. "I don't believe it!" said Cethegus to Philippus. "I think we must," said Philippus. "That's why he invited us to this parade of travesties. How else could he begin to shake us loose from his bonds?" "Shake us loose? What do you mean?" You heard him. For thirty years and more he has denied his nature. He fooled me. He fooled everyone who matters. And what an exquisite revenge this day has been for a ruined childhood! Rome has been controlled, directed and healed by a deviate. We've been diddled by a mountebank. How he must have laughed!"
He did laugh. He laughed all the way to Misenum, carried in a flower decked litter with Metrobius by his side and accompanied by his Bacchic revelers, all invited to stay in his villa as his guests for as long as they wanted. The party had been augmented by Roscius the comedian and Sorex the arch mime, as well as many lesser theatrical lights. They descended upon the newly renovated villa which once had been a fitting home for Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi and teemed irreverently through its hallowed portals, Sulla in their midst still riding upon his inebriated ass. "Liber Pater!" they called him, saluting him with blown kisses and little trills on their pipes; and he, so drunk he was only half conscious, chuckled and whinnied and whooped. The party went on for a market interval, notable mainly for the enormous amounts of food and wine that were consumed and the number of uninvited guests who poured in from all the surrounding villas and villages. Their host, rollicking and carousing, took them to his heart and introduced them to sexual high jinks most of them had never even heard of. Only Valeria was left out of things, entirely of her own choice; she had taken one look at the arrival of her husband and fled to her own rooms, there to lock herself in and weep. But, said Metrobius after he had persuaded her to open her door, "It won't always be so unbearable, lady. He's been looking forward to this for so long that you must give him his head. In a few days' time he'll pay for it he'll be terribly ill and not at all inclined to be the life of the party." "You're his lover," she said, feeling nothing beyond a black, despairing confusion. "I have been his lover for more years than you have seen the sun," said Metrobius gently. "I belong to him. I always have. But so do you belong to him." "Love between men is disgusting!" "Nonsense. That's your father and your brother and all of those cousins talking. How do you know? What have you seen of life, Valeria Messala, beyond the dismally confined isolation of a Roman noblewoman's lot? My presence doesn't mean you're not necessary to him, any more than your presence means I'm not necessary to him. If you want to stay, you're going to have to accept the fact that there have been and still are! many loves in Sulla's life." "I don't have much choice, really," she said, almost to herself. "Either I go back to my brother's house, or I learn to get on amid this riotous assemblage." "That is so," he said, smiled at her with understanding and considerable affection, then leaned across to caress the back of her neck, which somehow he seemed to know ached from the effort of holding up her proud patrician head. "You're far too good for him," she said, surprising herself. "All that I am, I owe to him," said Metrobius gravely. "If it had not been for him I would be nothing more than an actor." Well, there seems no alternative other than to join this circus! Though if you don't mind, not at its height. I have not the sinews or the training for such revelry. When you think he needs me, tell me." And so they left it. As Metrobius had predicted, some eight days after the commencement of his binge Sulla's underlying ailments asserted themselves and the revelers were sent home. The arch mime, Sorex, and Roscius the comedian slunk away to their suites and hid, while Valeria and Metrobius and Lucius Tuccius dealt with the ravages his breakout had inflicted upon Sulla. Who was sometimes grateful, and sometimes very difficult to help. But, returned eventually to some vestige of tranquillity and health, the ex Dictator applied himself to the writing of his memoirs; a paean, he informed Valeria and Metrobius, to Rome and men like Catulus Caesar as well as to himself besides being a metaphorical assassination of Gaius Marius, Cinna, Carbo, and their followers.
By the end of the old year and the end of the consulships of Vatia and Appius Claudius, Sulla's regimen at Misenum was so well established that the whole villa oscillated through his cycles in a fairly placid way. For a while he would scribble away at his memoirs, chuckling whenever his pen produced a particularly apt and vitriolic phrase at Gaius Marius's expense; while writing his book on the war against Jugurtha he was delirious with pleasure at the thought that now in his own words he admitted it was his personal feat in capturing Jugurtha won the war and that Marius had deliberately suppressed this fact. Then the pen and paper would be put away and Sulla would embark upon an orgy of privately staged comedies and mimes, or else would throw a gigantic party lasting a whole market interval. He varied all these activities with others as they occurred to his ever fertile imagination, including mock hunts with naked young boys and girls the quarry, competitions to see who could come up with the most bizarre posture for sexual intercourse, elaborate charades wherein the participants were able to requisition almost anything by way of costume or trapping. He held joke parties, nude parties by moonlight, daytime parties beside his vast white marble swimming pool while the revelers watched, enraptured, the sport of naked youths and maidens in the water. There seemed no end to his invention, nor an end to his passion for novelties of every sexual kind; though it was noticed that he indulged in no practices involving cruelty or animals, and that upon discovering one guest so inclined, he had the man driven from his house. There could be no doubt, however, that his physical well being was deteriorating. After the New Year had come and gone, his own sexual prowess flagged badly; by the end of February nothing had the power to stimulate him. And when this happened, his mood and temper took a turn for the worse. Only one of his highborn Roman friends sought out Sulla's company after the move to Misenum. Lucullus. Who had been in Africa with his brother during Quinctilis, personally supervising the capture of beasts for their games at the beginning of September. When he returned to Rome halfway through Sextilis he found the city still in an uproar constantly fueled by reports of the newest extravagances at the villa in Misenum, and was subjected to scandalized litanies of Sulla's behavior. "All you who judge him, look first to yourselves," Lucullus said stiffly. "He is entitled to do whatever he chooses." But it was not until several days after the conclusion of the ludi Romani in September that Lucullus could spare time to visit Sulla, whom he found in one of his more lucid intervals, at work on the memoirs and full of glee at what he was doing to the reputation and deeds of Gaius Marius. "You're the only one, Lucullus," he said, a trace of the old Sulla flickering in his rheumy, pain racked eyes. "No one has any right to criticize you!" Lucullus said, nostrils pinched. "You gave up everything for Rome." "True, I did. And I don't deny it was hard. But my dear boy, if I hadn't denied myself for all those years I wouldn't be enjoying this present excess half so much!" "I can see where it might have its attractions," Lucullus said, eyes following the gyrations of an exquisite female child just budding into puberty as she danced naked for Sulla in the sun outside his window. "Yes, you like them young, don't you?" Sulla chuckled, leaned forward to grasp Lucullus by the arm. "You'd better stay to see the end of her dance. Then you can take her for a walk." "What have you done with their mothers?" "Nothing. I buy them from their mothers." Lucullus stayed. And came back often. But in March, his fires dead, Sulla became extremely hard to handle, even for Metrobius and Valeria, who had learned to work as a team. Somehow she didn't quite know how Valeria had found herself pregnant. By Sulla, she hoped. But couldn't tell him, and dreaded the day when her condition became apparent. It had happened about the turn of the year, when Lucullus had produced some peculiar fungi he said he had found in Africa and the inner circle of friends had eaten of them, including Valeria. In some nightmarish dream she half remembered every man present enjoying her, from Sulla to Sorex and even Metrobius. It was the only incident she could blame, and fear ruled her after she realized its appalling outcome. Sulla's temper tantrums were terrible, endless hours of screaming and ranting during which he had to be restrained from doing harm to all who strayed across his path, from the children he used as playthings for his friends to the old women who did most of the laundering and cleaning up; as he kept a company of his Sullani always by him, those who did restrain him understood full well that they imperiled themselves. "He cannot be allowed to kill people!" cried Metrobius. "Oh, I wish he'd reconcile himself to what's happening!" said Valeria, weeping. "You're not well yourself, lady." An imprudent thing to say in a kind voice; out tumbled the story of the pregnancy, and Metrobius too remembered. Who knows?'' he laughed, delighted, I might still produce a child! The chance is one in four." "Five." "Four, Valeria. The child cannot be Sulla's." "He'll kill me!" "Take each day as it comes and say nothing to Sulla," the actor said firmly. "The future is impenetrable." Shortly after this Sulla developed a pain in the region of his liver that gave him no peace. Up and down the long expanse of the atrium he shuffled day and night, unable to sit, unable to lie, unable to rest. His sole comfort was the white marble bath near his room, in which he would float until the whole cycle began again with the pacing, pacing, pacing, up and down the atrium. He whinged and whimpered, would get himself to the wall and have to be dissuaded from beating his head against it, so great was his torment. The silly fellow who empties his chamber pot started to spread a story that Lucius Cornelius is being eaten up by worms," said Tuccius the doctor to Metrobius and Valeria, his face a study in contempt. "Honestly, the ignorance of most people about the way bodies work and what constitutes a disease almost drives me to the wineskin! Until this pain began, Lucius Cornelius availed himself of the latrine. But now he's forced to use a chamber pot, and its contents are busy with worms. Do you think I can convince the servants that worms are natural, that everyone has them, that they live inside our bowels in a lifelong companionship? No!" "The worms don't eat?" whispered Valeria, chalk white. "Only what we have already eaten," said Tuccius. "No doubt the next time I visit Rome, I'll hear the story there too. Servants are the most efficient gossips in the world." "I think you've relieved my mind," said Metrobius. "I do not intend to, only to disabuse you of servants' tales should you hear them. The reality is serious enough. His urine," Lucius Tuccius went on, "tastes sweeter than honey, and his skin smells of ripe apples." Metrobius grimaced. "You actually tasted his urine?" "I did, but only after I performed an old trick that was shown to me by a wisewoman when I was a child. I put some of his urine in a dish outside, and every kind of insect swarmed to drink it. Lucius Cornelius is pissing concentrated honey." "And losing weight almost visibly," said Metrobius. Valeria gasped, gagged. "Is he dying? "Oh, yes," said Lucius Tuccius. "Besides the honey I do not know what that means save that it is mortal his liver is diseased. Too much wine." The dark eyes glistened with tears; Metrobius winked them away. His lip quivered, he sighed. "It is to be expected." "What will we do?" asked the wife. "Just see it out, lady." Together they watched Lucius Tuccius patter away to deal with the patient. Then Metrobius said sad words in a voice which held no trace of sadness. "So many years I have loved him. Once a very long time ago I begged him to keep me with him, even though it would have meant I exchanged a comfortable life for a hard one. He declined. "He loved you too much," said Valeria sentimentally. "No! He was in love with the idea of his patrician birth. He knew where he was going, and where he was going mattered more than I did by far." He turned to look down into her face, brows up. "Haven't you yet realized that love always means different things to different people, and that love given is not always returned in like measure? I have never blamed him. How could I when I am not inside his skin? And at the last, having sent me away so many times, he acknowledged me before his colleagues. 'My boy!' I would endure it all again to hear him say those words to men like Vatia and Lepidus." "He won't see my child." "I doubt he'll see you increase, lady." The dreadful bout of pain passed away, to be succeeded by a fresh crotchet. This was the financial plight of the city of Puteoli. Not very far from Misenum, Puteoli was dominated by the family Granius, who for generations had been its bankers and shipping magnates, and who considered themselves its owners. Unaware of the magnitude of Sulla's excesses let alone his many illnesses one of the city officials came begging an audience. His complaint, the message he gave the steward said, was that a Quintus Granius owed the town treasury a vast sum of money but refused to pay it, and could Sulla help? No worse name than Granius could have sounded in Sulla's ears, unless it were Gaius Marius. And indeed there were close ties of blood and marriage between the Marii and Gratidii and Tullii of Arpinum and the Granii of Puteoli; Gaius Marius's first wife had been a Grania. For this reason several Granii had found themselves proscribed, and those Granii who were not proscribed kept very still in case Sulla remembered their existence. Among the lucky escapees was this Quintus Granius. Who now found himself taken into custody by a troop of Sullani, and haled before Sulla in his villa at Misenum. "I do not owe these sums," said Quintus Granius sturdily, his whole stance proclaiming that he would not be budged. Seated on a curule chair, Sulla in toga praetexta and full Roman majesty glared. "You will do as the magistrates of Puteoli direct! You will pay!" he said. "No I will not pay! Let Puteoli prosecute me in a court of law and test their case as it must be tested," said Quintus Granius. "Pay, Granius!" "No!" That uncertain temper, shredded as easily these days as a dandelion airball, disintegrated. Sulla came to his feet shaking with rage, both hands bunched into fists. "Pay, Granius, or I will have you strangled here and now!" "You may have been Dictator of Rome," said Quintus Granius contemptuously, "but these days you have no more authority to order me to do anything than I have to order you! Go back to your carousing and leave Puteoli to sort out its own messes!" Sulla's mouth opened to scream the command that Granius be strangled, but no sound came out; a wave of faintness and horrible nausea assailed him, he reeled a little. Righting himself cost him dear, but he managed it, and his eyes turned to the captain of the waiting Sullani. "Strangle this fellow!" he whispered. Before the captain could move, Sulla's mouth opened again. A great gout of blood came flying out of it to land in far flung splatters many feet from where Sulla stood making a cacophony of ghastly noises, the last of the blood dripping down his snowy folded front. Then the next wave took hold of him, he retched hideously and puked another dark red fountain, sinking slowly to his knees as men ran in all directions crying out in horror all directions, that is, save toward Sulla, whom they were convinced was being eaten up by worms. Within moments Lucius Tuccius was there, and Metrobius, and a white faced Valeria. Sulla lay in terrible straits still vomiting blood while his lover held his head and his wife crouched in a fever of trembling, not knowing what to do. A barked command from Tuccius and servants brought armloads of towels, eyes distended as they took in the condition of the room and the worse condition of their master, choking and retching, trying to speak, both hands fastened like a vise upon Metrobius's blood covered arm. Forgotten, Quintus Granius stayed no longer. While the Sullani huddled terrified and their captain tried to get some spirit into them, the banker from Puteoli walked out of the room, out of the house, down the path to where his horse still stood. He mounted, turned its head, and rode away. Much time went by before Sulla ceased his awful activity, before he could be lifted from the floor and carried, a surprisingly light weight, away from the blood ruined room in the arms of Metrobius. The Sullani fled too, leaving the shaken servants to make order out of a dreadful chaos. The worst of it, Sulla found for he was quite conscious and aware of what was happening was that the blood kept trying to choke him; it welled up his gullet constantly, even when he was not retching. Appalling! Terrifying! In a frenzy of fear and helplessness he clung to Metrobius as to a chunk of cork in the midst of the sea, his eyes staring up into that dark beloved face with desperate intensity and so much anguished appeal, all he had left to communicate with while the tide of blood kept on rising out of him. On the periphery of his vision he could see Valeria's white frightened skin in which the blue of her eyes was so vivid it was startling, and the set features of his doctor. Is this dying? he asked himself, and knew that it was. But I don't want to die this way! Not spewing and airless, soiled and incapable of disciplining my unruly body to get the business over and done with in admirable control and a decent meed of Roman dignity. I was the uncrowned King of Rome. I was crowned with the grass of Nola. I was the greatest man between the Rivers of Ocean and Indus. Let my dying be worthy of all these things! Let it not be a nightmare of blood, speechlessness, fear! He thought of Julilla, who had died alone in a welter of blood. And of Nicopolis, who had died with less blood but more agony. And of Clitumna, who had died with broken neck and broken bones. Metellus Numidicus, scarlet in the face and choking I did not know how awful that is! Dalmatica, crying out his name in Juno Sospita. His son, the light of his life, Julilla's boy who had meant more to him than anyone else ever, ever, ever... He too had died an airless death. I am afraid. So afraid! I never thought I would be. It is inevitable, it cannot be avoided, it is over soon enough, and I will never see or hear or feel or think again. I will be no one. Nothing. There is no pain in that fate. It is the fate of a dreamless ignorance. It is eternal sleep. I, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who was the uncrowned King of Rome yet crowned with the grass of Nola, will cease to be except in the minds of men. For that is the only immortality, to be remembered in the world of the living. I had almost finished my memoirs. Only one more little book left to write. More than enough for future historians to judge me. And more than enough to kill Gaius Marius for all of time. He did not live to write his memoirs. I did. So I will win. I have won! And of all my victories, victory over Gaius Marius means the most to me. For perhaps an hour the bleeding continued remorselessly, made Sulla suffer horribly; but then it went away, and he could rest more easily. Consciousness clung, he was able to look upon Metrobius and Valeria and Lucius Tuccius with a clarity of vision he had not enjoyed in many moons, as if at the last this greatest of senses was given back to him to mirror his own going in the faces he knew best. He managed to speak. "My will. Send for Lucullus, he must read it after I am dead. He is my executor and the guardian of my children." "I have already sent for him, Lucius Cornelius," said the Greek actor softly. "Have I given you enough, Metrobius?" "Always, Lucius Cornelius." "I do not know what love is. Aurelia used to say that I knew it but did not perceive my knowledge. I am not so sure. I dreamed the other night of Julilla and our son. He came to me and begged me to join his mother. I should have known then. I didn't. I just wept. Him, I did love. More than I loved myself. Oh, how I have missed him!" "That is about to be healed, dear Lucius Cornelius." "One reason to look forward to death, then." "Is there anything you want?" "Only peace. A sense of... Fulfillment." "You are fulfilled." "My body." "Your body, Lucius Cornelius?" "The Cornelians are inhumed. But not me, Metrobius. It is in my will, but you must assure Lucullus I mean it. If my body is laid in a tomb, some speck of Gaius Marius's ashes might come and rest upon it. I threw them away. I ought not to have done that. Who knows where they lurk, waiting to defile me? They went floating down the Anio, I saw them smother the eddies like powdered cobwebs. But a wind came, and the unwetted bits on top flew away. So I cannot be sure. I must be burned. You will tell Lucullus that I meant it, that I must be burned and my ashes gathered beneath a tight canopy to shut out the air, and then sealed with wax inside a jar where Gaius Marius cannot get at them. I will be the only Cornelian to be burned." "It will be done, I promise." "Burn me, Metrobius! Make Lucullus burn me!" "I will, Lucius Cornelius. I will." "I wish I knew what love was!" "But you do, of course you do! Love made you deny your nature and give yourself to Rome." "Is that love? It cannot be. Dry as dust. Dry as my ashes. The only Cornelian to be burned, not buried." The engorged, ruptured blood vessels at the bottom of his gullet had not done with bleeding; a fresh spate of vomiting gore assailed Sulla soon after, and lasted for many hours with little let. He was sinking, having lost over half his life force, and the lucid intervals within his mind dwindled. Over and over when he was able he begged Metrobius to make sure no atom of Gaius Marius could ever touch his own remains, and then would ask what love was, and why he didn't know it. Lucullus arrived in time to see him die, though no speech had Sulla left, nor even any awareness. The strange bleached eyes with the outer ring of darkness and the black, black pupils had quite lost their usual menace, just looked washed out and overcome with weariness. His breathing had become too shallow to detect by all save a mirror held to his lips, and the white skin could look no whiter because of loss of blood than it normally did. But the mulberry colored scar tissue blazed, the hairless scalp had lost tension and was wrinkled like a wind buffeted sea, and the mouth lay sagging against the bones of jaw and chin. Then a change came over the eyes; the pupils began to expand, to blot out the irises and join up the outer edges of darkness. Sulla's light went out, the watchers saw it go, and stared in disbelief at the sheen of gold spread across his wide open eyes. Lucius Tuccius leaned over and pushed down the lids and Metrobius put the coins upon them to keep them closed, while Lucullus slid the single denarius inside Sulla's mouth to pay for Charon's boat ride. "He died hard," said Lucullus, rigidly controlled. Metrobius wept. "Everything came hard to Lucius Cornelius. To have died easily would not have been fitting." "I will escort his body to Rome for a State funeral." "He would want that. As long as he is cremated." "He will be cremated." Numbed with grief, Metrobius crept away after that to find Valeria, who had not proven strong enough to wait for the end. "It is all over," he said. "I did love him," she said, small voiced. "I know all Rome thought I married him for convenience, to see him dower my family with honors. But he was a great man and he was very good to me. I loved him, Metrobius! I did truly love him!" "I believe you," Metrobius said, sat down near her and took her hand, began to stroke it absently. "What will you do now?" she asked. Roused from his reverie, he looked down at her hand, fine and white and long fingered. Not unlike Sulla's hand. Well, they were both patrician Romans. He said, "I will go away." "After the funeral?" "No, I can't attend that. Can you imagine Lucullus's face if I turned up among the chief mourners?" "But Lucullus knows what you meant to Lucius Cornelius! He knows! No one better!" "This will be a State funeral, Valeria. Nothing can be allowed to diminish its dignity, least of all a Greek actor with a well used arse." That came out sounding bitter; then Metrobius shrugged. "Frankly, I don't think Lucius Cornelius would like me there. As for Lucullus, he's a great aristocrat. What went on here in Misenum permitted him to indulge some of his own less admirable impulses. He likes to deflower children." The dark face looked suddenly sick. "At least Sulla's vices were the usual ones! He condoned it in Lucullus, but he didn't do it himself." "Where are you going?" "To Cyrenaica. The golden backwater of the world." "When?" "Tonight. After Lucullus has started Sulla on his last journey and the house is quiet." "How do you get to Cyrenaica?" "From Puteoli. It's spring. There will be ships going to Africa, to Hadrumetum. From there I'll hire my own transport." "Can you afford to?" "Oh, yes. Sulla could leave me nothing in his will, but he gave me more than enough in life. He was odd, you know. A miser except to those he loved. That's the saddest thing of all, that even at the end he doubted his capacity to love." He lifted his gaze from her hand to her face, his eyes shadowing as certain thoughts began to swim in the mind they reflected. "And you, Valeria? What about you?" "I must go back to Rome. After the funeral I will return to my brother's house." "That," said Metrobius, "may not be a good idea. I have a better one." The drowned blue eyes were innocent of guile; she looked at him in genuine bewilderment. "What?" "Come to Cyrenaica with me. Have your child and call me its father. Whichever one of us quickened you Lucullus, Sorex, Roscius or I makes no difference to me. It has occurred to me that Lucullus was one of the four of us and he knows as well as I do that Sulla could not have been your child's father. I think Rome spells disaster for you, Valeria. Lucullus will denounce you. It is a way of discrediting you. Don't forget that alone among Lucullus's equals in birth, you can indict him for practices his colleagues would condemn." "Ye gods!" "You must come with me." "They wouldn't let me!" "They'll never know. I'll inform Lucullus that you're too ill to travel with Sulla's cortege, that I'll send you to Rome before the funeral. Lucullus is too busy at the moment to remember his own frail position, and he doesn't know about your child. So if you are to escape him it must be now, Valeria." "You're right. He would indeed denounce me." "He might even have you killed." "Oh, Metrobius!" "Come with me, Valeria. As soon as he's gone you and I will walk out of this house. No one will see us go. Nor will anyone ever find out what happened to you." Metrobius smiled wryly. "After all, I was just Sulla's boy. You, a Valeria Messala, were his wife. Far above me!" But she didn't think she was above him at all. Months ago she had fallen in love with him, even though she understood it was not in him to return that love. So she said, "I will come." The hand he still held was patted gladly, then placed in her lap. "Good! Stay here for the present. Lucullus must not set eyes on you. Get a few things together, but nothing more than will fit on the back of a pack mule. Make sure you take only dark plain gowns, and that your cloaks have hoods. You must look like my wife, not the wife of Lucius Cornelius Sulla." Off he went, leaving Valeria Messala to look at a future vastly different from the one she had contemplated would be hers after Sulla's obsequies were over. Never having understood the threat she posed to Lucullus, she knew she had cause to be very grateful to the actor. To go with Metrobius might mean the pain of seeing him love men when she longed for him to love her; but he would regard the child as his own, and she could offer him a family life he might in time come to appreciate more than the tenuous affairs he had enjoyed with men other than Sulla. Yes, better that by far than the agony of never seeing him again! Or the finality of death. Without, she had thought until now, good reason, she had feared the cold and haughty Lucullus. Rightly so. Rising, she began to sort through her many chests of rich garments, choosing the plainest and darkest things. Of money she had none, but her jewels were glorious. Apparently Metrobius had plenty of money, so the jewels could be her dowry. A hedge against hard times in the future. Cyrenaica! The golden backwater of the world. It sounded wonderful.
Sulla's funeral reduced his triumph to utter insignificance. Two hundred and ten litters loaded down to creaking point with myrrh, frankincense, cinnamon, balsam, nard and other aromatics the gift of Rome's women were carried by black garbed bearers. And because Sulla's corpse was so shrunken and mummified by loss of blood that it could not be displayed, a group of sculptors had set to work and fashioned out of cinnamon and frankincense an effigy of Sulla sitting on his bier, preceded by a lictor made from the same spices. There were floats depicting every aspect of his life except the first thirty three disreputable years and the last few disreputable months. There he was before the walls of Nola receiving his Grass Crown from the hands of a centurion; there he was standing sternly over a cowering King Mithridates making sure the Treaty of Dardanus was signed; there he was winning battles, legislating laws, capturing Jugurtha, executing the Carboan prisoners after the Colline Gate. A special vehicle displayed the more than two thousand chaplets and wreaths made from pure gold which had been given to him by towns and tribes and kings and countries everywhere. His ancestors rode, clad in black, in black and gilt chariots drawn by splendid black horses, and his chubby little five year old twins Faustus and Fausta walked amid the chief mourners. The day was suffocating and overcast, the air exuded unshed rain. But the biggest funeral procession Rome had ever seen got under way from the house overlooking the Circus Maximus, wended its way down through the Velabrum to the Forum Romanum, where Lucullus a powerful and famous speaker gave the eulogy from the top of the rostra, standing alongside the cunning bier on which the frankincense and cinnamon Sulla sat upright behind his spicy lictor and the horrible wizened old corpse lay below in a special compartment. For the second time in three years Rome wept to see his twins deprived of a parent, and broke into applause when Lucullus told Rome that he was the children's guardian, and would never see them want. Sentiment clouded every watering eye; had it not, Rome would have perceived that Faustus and Fausta were now old enough to reveal that in physique and faces and coloring they were going to take after their maternal great uncle, the awesome but unhandsome Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus. Whom their father had called Piggle wiggle. And murdered in a fit of rage after Aurelia had repudiated him. As if under the spell of some enchantment, the rain held off as the procession got under way again, this time up the Clivus Argentarius, through the Fontinalis Gate beyond which lay the mansion which had once belonged to Gaius Marius, and down to the Campus Martius. There Sulla's tomb already waited in sumptuous isolation on the Via Lata adjacent to the ground on which met the Centuriate Assembly. At the ninth hour of daylight the bier was deposited on top of the huge, well ventilated pyre, its kindling and logs interspersed with the contents of those two hundred and ten litters of spices. Never would Sulla smell sweeter than when, according to his wishes, his mortal remains burned. Just as the torches licked at the kindling all around the base of the pyre, a huge wind arose; the miniature mountain went up with a roar, and blazed so fiercely the mourners gathered around it had to move away, shielding their faces. Then as the fire died down it began to rain at last, a solid downpour which quenched and cooled the coals so quickly that Sulla's ashes were collected a few short moments after the holocaust. Into an exquisite alabaster jar ornamented with gold and gems all that was left of Sulla went; Lucullus dispensed with the canopy Sulla had asked for to shelter his remains from contamination by a stray granule of Gaius Marius, for the rain continued unabated, and no stray granules of any dust floated on the air. The jar was deposited carefully inside the tomb, built and masoned and sculpted within four days out of multicolored marbles, round in shape and supported by fluted columns crowned with the new kind of capital Sulla had brought back from Corinth and had made so popular delicate sprays of acanthus leaves. His name and titles and deeds were carved upon a panel facing the road, and beneath them was his simple epitaph. He had composed it himself, and it said:
NO BETTER FRIEND NO WORSE ENEMY
"Well, I'm very glad that's over," said Lucullus to his brother as they trudged home through the tempest, soaked to their skins and shivering with cold. He was a worried man: Valeria Messala had not arrived in Rome. Her brother, Rufus, her cousins Niger and Metellus Nepos, and her great aunt the retired Vestal were all beginning to ask agitated questions; Lucullus had been obliged to inform them that he had sent to Misenum for her, only to be told by an exhausted messenger on a winded horse that she had disappeared. Almost a month went by before Lucullus called off the now frantic search, which had included a careful combing of the shore for some miles north and south of the villa, and of every wood and grove between Neapolis and Sinuessa. Sulla's last wife had vanished. And so had her jewels. "Robbed and murdered," said Varro Lucullus. His brother (who kept some things even from this beloved person) made no answer. His luck, he told himself, bade fair to be as good as Sulla's, for he had not got as far as the day of the funeral before he realized how dangerous Valeria Messala might be. She knew too much about him, whereas he knew virtually nothing about her. He would have had to kill her. How providential therefore that someone had done it for him! Fortune favored him. The disappearance of Metrobius concerned him not at all if indeed he had bothered to think about it, which he did not. Rome had more than enough tragedy queens to stop up the gap; her theater world was stuffed with them. Of more moment to Lucullus by far was the fact that he no longer had access to unlimited supplies of motherless little girls. Oh, how he would miss Misenum!
PART V from SEXTILIS (AUGUST) 80 B.C. until SEXTILIS (AUGUST) 77 B.C.
This time, Caesar sailed to the east. His mother's steward, Eutychus (really his steward, but Caesar never made the mistake of thinking that), soft and semi sedentary for years, discovered that traveling with Gaius Julius Caesar was no leisurely progress. On land particularly when the road was as respectable as the Via Appia he would cover forty miles in a day, and anyone who did not keep up was left behind. Only dread of disappointing Aurelia enabled Eutychus to hang on, especially during the first few days, when the steward's fat smooth legs and pampered bottom dissolved into one enormous pain. "You're saddlesore!" laughed Caesar unsympathetically when he found Eutychus weeping miserably after they stopped at an inn near Beneventum. "It's my legs hurt the worst," sniffled Eutychus. "Of course they do! On a horse they're unsupported weight, they just dangle off the end of your behind and flop about particularly true of yours, Eutychus! But cheer up! By the time we get to Brundisium they'll feel much better. So will you. Too much easy Roman living." The thought of reaching Brundisium did nothing to elevate the steward's mood; he burst into a fresh spate of tears at the prospect of a heaving Ionian Sea. "Caesars a beggar," said Burgundus, grinning, after Caesar had departed to make sure their accommodation was clean. "He's a monster!" wailed Eutychus. "Forty miles a day!'' "You're lucky. This is just the beginning. He's going easy on us. Mostly because of you." "I want to go home!" Burgundus reached out to give the steward's shoulder a clumsy pat. "You can't go home, Eutychus, you know that." He shivered, grimaced, his wide and slightly vacant looking eyes filled with horror. "Come on, dry your face and try to walk a bit. It's better to suffer with him than go back to face his mother brrr! Besides, he's not as unfeeling as you think he is. Right at this moment he's arranging for a nice hot bath for your nice sore arse." Eutychus survived, though he wasn't sure he would survive the sea crossing. Caesar and his small entourage took nine days to cover the three hundred and seventy miles between Rome and Brundisium, where the relentless young man shepherded his hapless flock onto a ship before any of them could find the breath to petition him for a few days' rest first. They sailed to the lovely island of Corcyra, took another ship there for Buthrotum in Epirus, and then rode overland through Acarnania and Delphi to Athens. This was a Greek goat path, not a Roman road; up and down the tall mountains, through wet and slippery forests. "Obviously even we Romans don't move armies along this route,'' Caesar observed when they emerged into the awesome vale of Delphi, more a gardened lap on a seated massif. The idea had to be finished before he could gaze about and admire; he said, "That's worth remembering. An army could move along it if the men were stouthearted. And no one would know because no one would believe it. Hmmm." Caesar liked Athens, and Athens liked him. In contrast to his noble contemporaries, he had nowhere solicited hospitality from the owners of large houses or estates, contenting himself with hostelries where available, and a camp beside the road where they were not. So in Athens he had found a reasonable looking inn below the Acropolis on its eastern side, and taken up residence. Only to find himself summoned immediately to the mansion of Titus Pomponius Atticus. He didn't know the man, of course, though (like everyone else in Rome) he knew the history of the famous financial disaster Atticus and Crassus had suffered the year after Gaius Marius died. "I insist you stay with me," said the urbane man of the world, who (despite that earlier miscalculation) was a very shrewd judge of his peers. One look at Caesar told him what reports had hinted; here was someone who was going to matter. "You are too generous, Titus Pomponius," Caesar said with a wide smile. "However, I prefer to remain independent." "Independence in Athens will only give you food poisoning and dirty beds," Atticus answered. The cleanliness fanatic changed his mind. Thank you, I will come. I don't have a large following two freedmen and four servants, if you have room for them." "More than enough room." And so it was arranged. As were dinner parties and tourist expeditions; Caesar found an Athens suddenly opened to him that demanded a longer stay than expected. Epicurean and lover of luxury though Atticus was reputed to be, he was not soft, so there were plenty of opportunities to engage in some rough scrambling up cliffs and mountain shoulders of historical note, and good hard gallops across the flats at Marathon. They rode down to Corinth, up to Thebes, looked at the marshy foreshores of Lake Orchomenus where Sulla had won the two decisive battles against the armies of Mithridates, explored the tracks which had enabled Cato the Censor to circumvent the enemy at Thermopylae and the enemy to circumvent the last stand of Leonidas. Stranger, go tell the Spartans that here we lie, obedient to their command,'' Caesar read off the stone commemorating that valiant last stand. He turned to Atticus. The whole world can quote this inscription, but it has a resonance here on the spot that it doesn't when read off a piece of paper." "Would you be content to be so remembered, Caesar?" The long, fair face closed up. "Never! It was a stupid and futile gesture, a waste of brave men. I will be remembered, Atticus, but not for stupidity or futile gestures. Leonidas was a Spartan king. I am a patrician Roman of the Republic. The only real meaning his life had was the manner in which he threw it away. The meaning of my life will lie in what I do as a living man. How I die doesn't matter, provided I die like a Roman." "I believe you." Because he was a natural scholar and very well educated, Caesar found himself with much in common with Atticus, whose tastes were intellectual and eclectic. They found themselves with a similar taste in literature and works of art, and spent hours poring over a Menander play or a Phidias statue. "There are not, however, very many good paintings left in Greece," Atticus said, shaking his head sadly. "What Mummius didn't carry off to Rome after he sacked Corinth not to mention Aemilius Paullus after Pydna! have successfully vanished in the decades since. If you want to see the world's best paintings, Caesar, you must go to the house of Marcus Livius Drusus in Rome," "I believe Crassus owns it now." Atticus's face twisted; he disliked Crassus, colleagues in speculation though they had been. "And has probably dumped the paintings in a dusty heap somewhere in the basement, where they will lie until someone drops a hint to him that they're worth more than tutored slaves on the market or insulae bought up cheap." Caesar grinned. "Well, Atticus my friend, we can't all be men of culture and refinement! There's room for a Crassus." "Not in my house!" "You're not married," said Caesar toward the end of his time in Athens. He had his ideas as to why Atticus had avoided the entanglements of matrimony, but the statement as he put it was not insulting because the answer did not need to be revealing. Atticus's long, ascetic and rather austere face produced a faint moue of disgust. "No, Caesar. Nor do I intend to marry." "Whereas I have been married since I was thirteen. And to a girl who is still not old enough to take to my bed. That is a strange fate." "Stranger than most. Cinna's younger daughter. Whom you would not divorce, even for Jupiter Optimus Maximus." "Even for Sulla, you mean," said Caesar, laughing. "It was very fortunate. I escaped Gaius Marius's net with Sulla's active connivance! and ceased to be the flamen Dialis." "Speaking of marriages, are you acquainted with Marcus Tullius Cicero?" asked Atticus. "No. I've heard of him, of course." "You ought to get on well together, but I suspect you may not," said Atticus thoughtfully. "Cicero is touchy about his intellectual abilities, and dislikes rivals. You may well be his intellectual superior." "What has this to do with marriage?" "I've just found him a wife." "How splendid," said Caesar, uninterested. "Terentia. Varro Lucullus's adoptive sister." "A dreadful woman, I hear." "Indeed. But socially better than he could have hoped for." Caesar made up his mind; time to go, when one's host was reduced to aimless conversation. Whose fault that was, the guest knew. His reading of this Roman plutocrat in self imposed exile was that Atticus's sexual preferences were for young boys, which imposed upon Caesar a degree of reserve normally foreign to his outgoing nature. A pity. There might otherwise have grown out of this first meeting a deep and lasting friendship. From Athens, Caesar took the Roman built military road north from Attica through Boeotia and Thessaly and the pass at Tempe, with a casual salute to Zeus as they rode at Caesar's remorseless pace past the distant peak of Mount Olympus. From Dium just beyond the party took ship again and sailed from island to island until it reached the Hellespont. From there to Nicomedia was a voyage of three days. His reception in the palace at Nicomedia was ecstatic. The old King and Queen had quite given up hope of ever seeing him again, especially after word had come from Mitylene that Caesar had gone back to Rome in company with Thermus and Lucullus. But it was left to Sulla the dog to express the full extent of the joy Caesar's advent provoked. The animal tore about the palace yelping and squealing, would leap up at Caesar, race over to the King and Queen to tell them who was here, then back to Caesar; its antics quite paled the royal hugs and kisses into insignificance. "He almost talks," said Caesar when the dog finally let him sink into a chair, so winded that it contented itself with sitting on his feet and producing a series of strangled noises. He leaned down to give the dog's belly a rub. "Sulla, old man, I never thought I'd be so glad to see your ugly face!"
His own parents, Caesar reflected much later that evening, when he had retired to his room and lay unclothed upon his bed, had always been rather distant figures. A father rarely home who when he was home seemed more intent upon conducting some sort of undeclared war upon his wife than in establishing a rapport with any of his children; and a mother who was unfailingly just, unsparingly critical, unable to give physical affection. Perhaps, thought Caesar from his present vantage point, that had been a large part of his father's inexplicable but patent disapproval of his mother her fleshly coolness, her aloofness. What the young man could not see, of course, was that the real root of his father's dissatisfaction had lain in his wife's unstinting love for her work as landlady work he considered utterly beneath her. Because they had never not known Aurelia the landlady, Caesar and his sisters had no idea how this side of her had galled their father. Instead, they had equated their father's attitude with their own starvation for hugs and kisses; for they could not know how pleasurable were the nights their parents spent together. When the dreadful news had come of the father's death borne as it had been by the bearer of his ashes Caesar's immediate reaction had been to take his mother in his arms and comfort her. But she had wrenched herself away and told him in clipped accents to remember who he was. It had hurt until the detachment he had inherited from her asserted itself, told him that he could have expected no other behavior from her. And perhaps, thought Caesar now, that was no more than a sign of something he had noticed all around him that children always wanted things from their parents that their parents were either not willing to give, or incapable of giving. His mother was a pearl beyond price, he knew that. Just as he knew how much he loved her. And how much he owed her for pointing out to him perpetually where the weaknesses lay within him not to mention for giving him some wonderfully worldly and unmaternal advice. And yet and yet... How lovely it was to be greeted with hugs and kisses and unquestioning affection, as Nicomedes and Oradaltis had greeted him today. He didn't go so far as to wish consciously that his own parents had been more like them; he just wished that they had been his parents. This mood lasted until he broke the night's fast with them on the next morning, and the light of day revealed the wish's manifest absurdity. Sitting looking at King Nicomedes, Caesar superimposed his own father's face upon the King's (in deference to Caesar, Nicomedes had not painted himself), and wanted to laugh. As for Oradaltis a queen she might be, but not one tenth as royal as Aurelia. Not parents, he thought then: grandparents. It was October when he had arrived in Nicomedia and he had no plans to move on quickly, much to the delight of the King and Queen, who strove to fall in with all their guest's wishes, be it to visit Gordium, Pessinus, or the marble quarries on the island of Proconnesus. But in December, when Caesar had been in Bithynia two months, he found himself asked to do something very difficult and passing strange.
In March of that year the new governor of Cilicia, the younger Dolabella, had started out from Rome to go to his province in the company of two other Roman noblemen and a retinue of public servants. The more important of his two companions was his senior legate, Gaius Verres; the less important was his quaestor, Gaius Publicius Malleolus, apportioned to his service by the lots. One of Sulla's new senators through election as quaestor, Malleolus was by no means a New Man; there had been consuls in his family, there were imagines in his atrium. Of money, however, there was little; only some lucky buys in the proscriptions had enabled the family to pin their hopes on the thirty year old Gaius, whose duty was to restore the family's old status by rising to the consulship. Knowing how small Gaius's salary would be and how expensive maintaining the younger Dolabella's life style was going to be, his mother and sisters sold their jewels to plump out Malleolus's purse, which he intended to plump out further when he reached his province. And the women had eagerly pushed on him the greatest family treasure left, a magnificent collection of matching gold and silver plate. When he gave a banquet for the governor, the ladies said, it would increase his standing to use the family plate. Unfortunately Gaius Publicius Malleolus was not as mentally capable as earlier men of his clan had been; he possessed a degree of gullible naivete that did not bode well for his survival in the forefront of the younger Dolabella's retinue. No slouch, the senior legate Gaius Verres had assessed Malleolus accurately before the party had got as far as Tarentum, and cultivated the quaestor with such charm and winning ways that Malleolus deemed Verres the best of good fellows. They traveled together with another governor and his party going to the east: the new governor of Asia Province, Gaius Claudius Nero; a patrician Claudius, he had more wealth but far less intelligence than that prolific branch of the patrician Claudii cognominated Pulcher. Gaius Verres was hungry again. Though he had (thanks to prior knowledge of the area) done very well out of proscribing major landowners and magnates around Beneventum, he owned a genuine passion for works of art which Beneventum had not assuaged. The proscribed of Beneventum had been on the whole an untutored lot, as content with a mawkish Neapolitan copy of some sentimental group of nymphs as with a Praxiteles or a Myron. At first Verres had watched and waited for the proscription of the grandson of the notorious Sextus Perquitienus, whose reputation as a connoisseur was quite unparalleled among the knights, and whose collection thanks to his activities as a tax farmer in Asia was perhaps even better than the collection of Marcus Livius Drusus. Then the grandson had turned out to be Sulla's nephew; the property of Sextus Perquitienus was forever safe. Though his family was not distinguished his father was a pedarius on the back benches of the Senate, the first Verres to belong to that body Gaius Verres had done remarkably well thanks to his instinct for being where the money was and his ability to convince certain important men of his worth. He had easily fooled Carbo but had never managed to fool Sulla, though Sulla had not scrupled to use him to ruin Samnium. Unfortunately Samnium was as devoid of great works of art as Beneventum; that side of Verres's insatiably avaricious character remained unappeased. The only place to go, decided Verres, was to the east, where a Hellenized world had scattered statues and paintings literally everywhere from Alexandria to Olympia to Pontus to Byzantium. So when Sulla had drawn the lots for next year's governors, Verres had weighed up his chances and opted for cultivating the younger Dolabella. His cousin the elder Dolabella was in Macedonia a fruitful province when it came to works of art but the elder Dolabella was a hard man, and had his own aims. Gaius Claudius Nero, going to Asia Province, was a bit of a stickler for the right thing. Which left the next governor of Cilicia, the younger Dolabella. Exactly the material for a Gaius Verres, as he was greedy, unethical, and a secret participant in vices which involved dirty smelly women of the most vulgar kind and substances capable of enhancing sensuous awareness. Long before the journey to the east actually began, Verres had made himself indispensable to Dolabella in pursuing his secret vices. Luck, thought Verres triumphantly: he had Fortune's favor! Men like the younger Dolabella were not many, nor on the whole did they usually rise so high. Had not the elder Dolabella proven militarily helpful to Sulla, the younger would never have gained praetorship and province. Of course praetorship and province had been grabbed at, but the younger Dolabella lived in constant fear; so when Verres showed himself as sympathetic as he was resourceful, Dolabella sighed in relief. While the party had traveled in conjunction with Claudius Nero, Verres had metaphorically bound his itching hands to his sides and resisted the impulse to snatch this work from a Greek sanctuary and that work from a Greek agora. In Athens especially it had been difficult, so rich was the treasure trove all around; but Titus Pomponius Atticus sat like a huge spider at the center of the Roman web which enveloped Athens. Thanks to his financial acumen, his blood ties to the Caecilii Metelli, and his many gifts to Athens, Atticus was not a man to offend, and his condemnation of the kind of Roman who plundered works of art was well known. But when they left Athens by ship there came the parting of the ways with Claudius Nero, who was anxious to reach Pergamum and not by nature a Grecophile. So Claudius Nero's ship sped as fast as it could to Asia Province, while Dolabella's ship sailed to the tiny island of Delos. Until Mithridates had invaded Asia Province and Greece nine years earlier, Delos had been the epicenter of the world's slave trade. There all the bulk dealers in slaves had set up shop, there came the pirates who provided the eastern end of the Middle Sea with most of its slaves. As many as twenty thousand slaves a day had changed hands in the old Delos, though that had not meant an endless parade of slave filled vessels choking up the neat and commodious Merchant Harbor. The trading was done with bits of paper, from transfers of ownership of slaves to the moneys paid over. Only special slaves were transported to Delos in person; the island was purely for middlemen. There had used to be a large Italo Roman population there, as well as many Alexandrians and a considerable number of Jews; the largest building on Delos was the Roman agora, wherein the Romans and Italians who conducted business on Delos had located their offices. These days it was windswept and almost deserted, as was the western side of the isle, where most of the houses clustered because the weather was better. In terraces up the slopes of Mount Cynthus were the precincts and temples of those gods imported to Delos during the years when it had lain under the patronage of the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria. A sanctuary of Artemis, sister of Apollo, lay closest to the smaller of the two harbors, the Sacred Harbor, in which only the ships of pilgrims anchored. Beyond this, going north, was the mighty and wonderful precinct of Apollo huge, beautiful, stuffed with some of the greatest works of art known. And between Apollo's temple and the Sacred Lake lay the white Naxian marble lions which flanked the Processional Way linking the two. Verres went wild with delight, could not be prised from his explorations. He flitted from one temple to another, marveling at the image of Ephesian Artemis loaded down with bulls' testicles like sterile pendulous breasts, astonished at the goddess Ma from Comana, at Sidonian Hecate, at Alexandrian Serapis, literally drooling at images in gold and chryselephantine, at gem studded oriental thrones on which, it seemed, the original occupants must have sat cross legged. But it was inside the temple of Apollo that he found the two statues he could not resist a group of the satyr Marsyas playing his rustic pipes to an ecstatic Midas and an outraged Apollo, and an image in gold and ivory of Leto holding her divine babies said to have been fashioned by Phidias, master of chryselephantine sculpture. Since these two works of art were small, Verres and four of his servants stole into the temple in the middle of the night before Dolabella was due to sail, removed them from their plinths, wrapped them tenderly in blankets, and stowed them in that part of the ship's hold wherein were deposited the belongings of Gaius Verres. "I'm glad Archelaus sacked this place, and then Sulla after him," said a pleased Verres to Malleolus at dawn. "If the slave trade still made a hive of activity out of Delos, it would be far harder to walk about undetected and do a little acquiring, even in the night marches." A little startled, Malleolus wondered what Verres meant, but a look at that perversely beautiful honey colored face did not encourage him to ask. Not half a day later, he knew. For a wind had risen suddenly which prevented Dolabella's sailing, and before it had blown itself out the priests of Apollo's precinct had come to Dolabella crying that two of the god's most prized treasures had been stolen. And (having remarked for how long Verres had prowled about them, stroking them, rocking them on their bases, measuring them with his eyes) they accused Verres of the deed. Horrified, Malleolus realized that the allegation was justified. Since he liked Verres, it went hard with Malleolus to go to Dolabella and report what Verres had said, but he did his duty. And Dolabella insisted that Verres return the works. "This is Apollo's birthplace!" he said, shivering. "You can't pillage here. We'll all die of disease." Balked and in the grip of an overmastering rage, Verres "returned" the works by tossing them over the side of the ship onto the stony shore. Vowing that Malleolus would pay. But only to himself; much to Malleolus's surprise, Verres came to thank him for preventing the deed. "I have such a lust for works of art that it is a great trouble to me," said Verres, golden eyes warm and moist. "Thank you, thank you!" His lust was not to be thwarted again, however. In Tenedos (which Dolabella had a fancy to visit because of the part the isle had played in the war against Troy) Verres appropriated the statue of Tenes himself, a beautiful wooden creation so old it was only remotely humanoid. His new technique was candid and unapologetic: "I want it, I must have it!" he would say, and into the ship's hold it would go while Dolabella and Malleolus sighed and shook their heads, unwilling to cause a rift in what was going to be a long and necessarily closely knit association. In Chios and in Erythrae the looting occurred again; so did Verres's services to Dolabella and Malleolus, the latter now being steadily drawn into a corruption which Verres had already made irresistible to Dolabella. So when Verres decided to remove every work of art from the temple and precinct of Hera in Samos, he was able to persuade Dolabella to hire an extra ship and to order the Chian admiral Charidemus, in command of a quinquereme, to escort the new governor of Cilicia's flotilla on the rest of its journey to Tarsus. No pirates must capture the swelling number of treasures! Halicarnassus lost some statues by Praxiteles the last raid Verres made in Asia Province, now buzzing like an angry swarm of wasps. But Pamphylia lost the wonderful Harper of Aspendus and most of the contents of the temple of Artemis at Perge here, deeming the statue of the goddess a poorly executed thing, Verres contented himself with stripping its coat of gold away and melting it down into nicely portable ingots. And so at last they came to Tarsus, where Dolabella was glad to settle into his palace and Verres glad to commandeer a villa for himself wherein the treasures he had pillaged could be put on display for his delectation. His appreciation of the works was genuine, he had no intention of selling a single one; simply, in Gaius Verres the obsessions and amoralities of the fanatical collector reached a height hitherto unknown. Gaius Publicius Malleolus too was glad to find himself a nice house beside the river Cydnus; he unpacked his matching gold and silver plate and his moneybags, for he intended to augment his fortune by lending money at exorbitant rates of interest to those who could not borrow from more legitimate sources. He found Verres enormously sympathetic and enormously helpful. By this time Dolabella had sunk into a torpor of gratified sensuality, his thought processes permanently clouded by the Spanish fly and other aphrodisiac drugs Verres supplied him, and content to leave the governing of his province to his senior legate and his quaestor. Displaying sufficient sense to leave the art of Tarsus alone, Verres concentrated upon revenge. It was time to deal with Malleolus. He introduced a subject close to the hearts of all Romans the making of a will. "I lodged my new one with the Vestals just before I left," said Verres, looking particularly attractive with the light of a chandelier turning his softly curling hair into old gold. I presume you did the same, Malleolus?" "Well, no," Malleolus answered, flustered. "I confess the thought never occurred to me." "My dear fellow, that's insanity!" cried Verres. "Anything can happen to a man away from home, from pirates to illnesses to shipwreck look at the Servilius Caepio who drowned on his way home twenty five years ago he was a quaestor, just like you!" Verres slopped more fortified wine into Malleolus's beautiful vermeil cup. "You must make a will!" And so it went while Malleolus grew drunker and drunker and Verres appeared to. When the senior legate decided Dolabella's foolish quaestor was too befuddled to read what he was signing, Verres demanded paper and pen, wrote out the dispositions Gaius Publicius Malleolus dictated, and then assisted him to sign and seal. The will was tucked into a pigeonhole in Malleolus's study and promptly forgotten by its author. Who, not four days later, died of an obscure malady the Tarsian physicians finally elected to call food poisoning. And Gaius Verres, producing the will, was surprised and enchanted to discover that his friend the quaestor had left him everything he owned, including the family plate. "Dreadful business," he said to Dolabella sadly. "It's a very nice legacy, but I'd rather poor Malleolus was still here." Even through his aphrodisiac induced haze Dolabella sensed a touch of hypocrisy, but confined his words to wondering how he was going to get another quaestor from Rome in a hurry. "No need!" said Verres cheerfully. "I was Carbo's quaestor, and good enough at the job to be prorogued as his proquaestor when he went to govern Italian Gaul. Appoint me proquaestor.'' And so the affairs of Cilicia not to mention Cilicia's public purse passed into the hands of Gaius Verres. All through the summer Verres worked industriously, though not for the good of Cilicia; it was his own activities that benefited, particularly the moneylending he had taken over from Malleolus. However, the art collection remained static. Even Verres at that point in his career was not quite confident enough to foul his own nest by stealing from towns and temples in Cilicia itself. Nor could he at least while Claudius Nero remained its governor begin again to plunder Asia Province; the island of Samos had sent an angry deputation to Pergamum to complain to Claudius Nero about the pillaging of Hera's sanctuary, only to be told regretfully that it was not in Claudius Nero's power to punish or discipline the legate of another governor, so the Samians would have to refer their complaint to the Senate in Rome. It was late in September that Verres had his inspiration; he then lost no time in turning fancy into fact. Both Bithynia and Thrace abounded in treasures, so why not increase his art collection at the expense of Bithynia and Thrace? Dolabella was persuaded to appoint him ambassador at large and issue him with letters of introduction to King Nicomedes of Bithynia and King Sadala of the Thracian Odrysiae. And off Verres set at the start of October, overland from Attaleia to the Hellespont. This route avoided Asia Province and might besides yield a little gold from temples along the way, even if no desirable art. It was an embassage composed entirely of villains; Verres wanted no honest, upright characters along. Even the six lictors (to whom as an ambassador with propraetorian status Verres was entitled) he chose with great care, sure they would aid and abet him in all his nefarious undertakings. His chief assistant was a senior clerk on Dolabella's staff, one Marcus Rubrius; Verres and Rubrius had already had many dealings together, including the procurement of Dolabella's dirty smelly women. His slaves were a mixture of big fellows to heft heavy statues around and little fellows to wriggle into locked rooms, and his scribes were only there to catalogue whatever he purloined. The journey overland was disappointing, as Pisidia and that part of Phrygia he traversed had been thoroughly looted by the generals of Mithridates nine years before. He debated swinging wider onto the Sangarius to see what he could filch at Pessinus, but in the end elected to head straight for Lampsacus on the Hellespont. Here he could commandeer one of Asia Province's warships to act as escort, and sail along the Bithynian coast loading whatever he found and fancied onto a good stout freighter. The Hellespont was a small slice of No Man's Land. Technically it belonged to Asia Province, but the mountains of Mysia cut it off on the landward side, and its ties were more with Bithynia than with Pergamum. Lampsacus was the chief port on the Asian side of the narrow straits, almost opposite to Thracian Callipolis; here the various armies which crossed the Hellespont made their Asian landfall. In consequence Lampsacus was a big and busy port, though a great measure of its economic prosperity lay in the abundance and excellence of the wine produced in the Lampsacan hinterland. Nominally under the authority of the governor of Asia Province, it had long enjoyed independence, Rome being content with a tribute. There was as always in every prosperous settlement on every shore of the Middle Sea a contingent of Roman merchants who lived there permanently, but the government and the major wealth of Lampsacus rested with its native Phocaean Greeks, none of whom held the Roman citizenship; they were all socii, allies. Verres had diligently researched every likely place along his route, so when his embassage arrived in Lampsacus he was well aware of its status and the status of its leading citizens. The Roman cavalcade which rode into the port city from the hills behind it caused an immediate stir almost verging on a panic; six lictors preceded the important Roman personage, who was also accompanied by twenty servants and a troop of one hundred mounted Cilician cavalry. Yet no warning of its advent had been received, and no one knew what its purpose in Lampsacus might be. One Ianitor was chief ethnarch that year; word that a full Roman embassage was awaiting him in the agora sent Ianitor flying there posthaste, together with some of the other city elders. "I'm not sure how long I'll be staying," said Gaius Verres, looking handsome, imperious, and not a little arrogant, "but I require fitting lodgings for myself and my people." It was impossible, Ianitor explained hesitantly, to find a house large enough to take everyone, but he himself would of course accommodate the ambassador, his lictors and body servants, while the rest were boarded with other households. Ianitor then introduced his fellow elders, including one Philodamus, who had been chief ethnarch of Lampsacus during Sulla's time there. "I hear," said the clerk Marcus Rubrius low voiced to Verres as they were being escorted to the mansion of Ianitor, "that the old man Philodamus has a daughter of such surpassing beauty and virtue that he keeps her shut away. Name of Stratonice." Verres was no Dolabella when it came to bodily appetites. As with his statues and paintings, he liked his women to be pure and perfect works of art, Galateas come to life. In consequence he tended when not in Rome to go for long periods without sexual satisfaction, since he would not content himself with inferior types of women, even famous courtesans like Praecia. As yet he was unmarried, intending when he did to own a bride of splendid lineage and peerless beauty a modern Aurelia. This trip to the east was going to cement his fortune and make it possible to negotiate a suitable marital alliance with some proud Caecilia Metella or Claudia Pulchra. A Julia would have been the best, but all the Julias were taken. Thus it was months since Verres had enjoyed a sexual flutter, nor had he expected to find one in Lampsacus. But Rubrius had made it his business to find out the weaknesses of Verres aside from inanimate works of art and had done a little whispering in any gossipy looking ears as soon as the embassage had ridden into town. To find that Philodamus had a daughter, Stratonice, who was quite the equal of Aphrodite herself. "Make further enquiries," said Verres curtly, then put on his most charmingly false smile as he came to Ianitor's door, where the chief ethnarch waited in person to welcome him. Rubrius nodded and went off in the wake of the slave to his own quarters, less august by far; he was, after all, a very minor official with no ambassadorial status. After dinner that afternoon Rubrius reappeared at the house of Ianitor and sought a private interview with Verres. "Are you comfortable here?" asked Rubrius. "More or less. Not like a Roman villa, however. A pity none of the Roman citizens in Lampsacus ranks among the richest. I hate making do with Greeks! They're too simple for my taste. This Ianitor lives entirely on fish didn't even produce an egg or a bird for dinner! But the wine was superb. How have you progressed in the matter of Stratonice?" "With great difficulty, Gaius Verres. The girl is a paragon of every virtue, it seems, but perhaps that's because her father and brother guard her like Tigranes the women in his harem." "Then I'll have to go to dinner at Philodamus's place." Rubrius shook his head emphatically. "I'm afraid that won't produce her, Gaius Verres. This town is Phocaean Greek to its core. The women of the family are not shown to guests." The two heads drew together, honey gold and greying black, and the volume of the conversation dropped to whispers. "My assistant Marcus Rubrius," said Verres to Ianitor after Rubrius had gone, "is poorly housed. I require better quarters for him. I hear that after yourself, the next man of note is one Philodamus. Please see that Marcus Rubrius is relocated in the house of Philodamus first thing tomorrow." "I won't have the worm!" snapped Philodamus to Ianitor when Ianitor told him what Verres wanted. Who is this Marcus Rubrius? A grubby little Roman clerk! In my days I've housed Roman consuls and praetors even the great Lucius Cornelius Sulla when he crossed the Hellespont that last time! In fact, I've never housed anyone as unimportant as Gaius Verres himself! Who is he after all, Ianitor? A mere assistant to the governor of Cilicia!" "Please, Philodamus, please!" begged Ianitor. "For my sake! For the sake of our city! This Gaius Verres is a nasty fellow, I feel it in my bones. And he has a hundred mounted troopers with him. In all Lampsacus we couldn't raise half that many competent professional soldiers." So Philodamus gave in and Rubrius transferred his lodgings. But it had been a mistake to give in, as Philodamus soon discovered. Rubrius hadn't been inside the house for more than a few moments before he was demanding to see the famous beautiful daughter, and, denied this privilege, immediately began to poke and pry through Philodamus's spacious dwelling in search of her. This proving fruitless, Rubrius summoned Philodamus to him in his own house as if he had been a servant. "You'll give a dinner for Gaius Verres this afternoon and serve something other than course after course of fish! Fish is fine in its place, but a man can't live on it. So I want lamb, chicken, other fowls, plenty of eggs, and the very best wine." Philodamus kept his temper. "But it wasn't easy," he said to his son, Artemidorus. "They're after Stratonice," said Artemidorus, very angry. "I think so too, but they moved so quickly in foisting this Rubrius clod on me that I had no opportunity to get her out of the house. And now I can't. There are Romans creeping round our front door and our back door." Artemidorus wanted to be present at the banquet for Verres, but his father, looking at that stormy face, understood that his presence would worsen the situation; after much cajoling, the young man agreed to hie himself off and eat elsewhere. As for Stratonice, the best father and son could do was to lock her in her own room and put two strong servants inside with her. Gaius Verres arrived with his six lictors, who were posted on duty in front of the house while a party of troopers was sent to watch the back gate. And no sooner was the Roman ambassador comfortable upon his couch than he demanded that Philodamus fetch his daughter. "I cannot do that, Gaius Verres," said the old man stiffly. "This is a Phocaean town, which means our womenfolk are never put in the same room as strangers." "I'm not asking that she eat with us, Philodamus," said Verres patiently. "I just want to see this paragon all of your Phocaean town talks about." "I do not know why they should, when they have never seen her either," Philodamus said. "No doubt your servants gossip. Produce her, old man!" "I cannot, Gaius Verres." Five other guests were present, Rubrius and four fellow clerks; no sooner had Philodamus refused to produce his child than they all shouted to see her. The more Philodamus denied them, the louder they shouted. When the first course came in Philodamus seized the chance to leave the room, and sent one of his servants to the house where Artemidorus was eating, begging that he come home to help his father. No sooner had the servant gone than Philodamus returned to the dining room, there to continue obdurately refusing to show the Romans his daughter. Rubrius and two of his companions got up to look for the girl; Philodamus stepped across their path. A pitcher of boiling water had been set upon a brazier near the door, ready to be poured into bowls in which smaller bowls of food might be reheated after the trip from the kitchen. Rubrius grabbed the pitcher and tipped boiling water all over Philodamus's head. While horrified servants fled precipitately, the old man's screams mingled with the shouts and jeers of the Romans, forming up to go in search of Stratonice. Into this melee the sounds of another intruded. Artemidorus and twenty of his friends had arrived outside his father's door, only to find Verres's lictors barring their entry. The prefect of the decury, one Cornelius, had all the lictor's confidence in his own inviolability; it never occurred to him for a moment that Artemidorus and his band would resort to force to remove them from before the door. Nor perhaps would they have, had Artemidorus not heard the frightful screams of his scalded father. The Lampsacans moved in a mass. Several of the lictors sustained minor hurts, but Cornelius died of a broken neck. The banquet participants scattered when Artemidorus and his friends ran into the dining room, clubs in their hands and murder on their faces. But Gaius Verres was no coward. Pushing them contemptuously to one side, he quit the house in company with Rubrius and his fellow clerks to find one dead lictor sprawled in the road surrounded by his five frightened colleagues. Up the street the ambassador hustled them, the body of Cornelius lolling in their midst. By this the whole town was beginning to stir, and Ianitor himself stood at his open front door. His heart sank when he saw what the Romans carried, yet he admitted them to his house and prudently barred the gate behind them. Artemidorus had stayed to tend to his father's injuries, but two of his friends led the rest of the band of young men to the city square, calling on others to meet them as they marched. All the Greeks had had enough of Gaius Verres, and even a fervent speech from Publius Tettius (the town's most prominent Roman resident) could not dissuade them from retaliation. Tettius and his houseguest Gaius Terentius Varro were swept aside, and the townspeople surged off in the direction of Ianitor's house. There they demanded entry. Ianitor refused, after which they battered at the gate with a makeshift ram to no effect, and decided instead to burn the place down. Kindling and logs of wood were piled against the front wall and set alight. Only the arrival of Publius Tettius, Gaius Terentius Varro and some other Roman residents of Lampsacus prevented disaster; their impassioned pleading cooled the hottest heads down sufficiently to see that immolation of a Roman ambassador would end in worse than the violation of Stratonice. So the fire (which had gained considerable hold on the front part of Ianitor's house) was put out, and the men of Lampsacus went home. A less arrogant man than Gaius Verres would have fled from the seething Greek city as soon as he deemed it safe to leave, but Gaius Verres had no intention of running; instead he sat down calmly and wrote to Gaius Claudius Nero, the governor of Asia Province, steeled in his resolve not to be beaten by a pair of dirty Asian Greeks. I demand that you proceed forthwith to Lampsacus and try the two socii Philodamus and Artemidorus for the murder of a Roman ambassador's chief lictor," he said. But swift though the letter's journey to Pergamum was, it was still slower than the detailed report Publius Tettius and Gaius Terentius Varro had jointly provided to the governor. "I will certainly not come to Lampsacus," said Claudius Nero's reply to Verres. "I have heard the real story from my own senior legate, Gaius Terentius Varro, who considerably outranks you. A pity perhaps that you weren't burned to death. You are like your name, Verres a pig." The rage in which Verres wrote his next missive added venom and power to his pen; this one was to Dolabella in Tarsus and it reached Tarsus in a scant seven days, couriered by a petrified trooper who was so afraid of what Verres might do to him if he tarried that he was fully prepared to do murder in order to obtain a fresh horse every few hours. "Go to Pergamum at once, and at a run," Verres instructed his superior without formal salute or evidence of respect. "Fetch Claudius Nero to Lampsacus without a moment's delay to try and execute the socii who murdered my chief lictor. If you don't, I will have words to say in Rome about certain debaucheries and drugs. I mean it, Dolabella. And you may tell Claudius Nero that if he does not come to Lampsacus and convict these Greek fellatores, I will accuse him of sordid practices as well. And I'll make the charges stick, Dolabella. Don't think I won't. If I die for it, I'll make the charges stick."
* * *
When word of the events in Lampsacus reached the court of King Nicomedes, matters had arrived at an impasse; Gaius Verres was still living in the house of Ianitor and moving freely about the city, Ianitor had been ordered to notify the Lampsacan elders that Verres would remain right where he was, and everyone knew Claudius Nero was coming from Pergamum to try the father and son. "I wish there was something I could do," said the worried King to Caesar. "Lampsacus falls within Asia Province, not Bithynia," said Caesar. Anything you did do would have to be in diplomatic guise, and I'm not convinced it would help those two unfortunate socii." "Gaius Verres is an absolute wolfshead, Caesar. Earlier in the year he robbed sanctuaries of their treasures all over Asia Province, then went on to steal the Harper of Aspendus and the golden skin of Artemis at Perge." "How to endear Rome to her provinces," said Caesar, lifting his lip contemptuously. Nothing is safe from the man including, it seems, virtuous daughters of important Greek socii. "What is Verres doing in Lampsacus, anyway?" Nicomedes shivered. "Coming to see me, Caesar! He carries letters of introduction to me and to King Sadala in Thrace his governor, Dolabella, has endowed him with ambassadorial status. I imagine his true purpose is to steal our statues and paintings." "He won't dare while I'm here, Nicomedes," soothed Caesar. The old king's face lit up. "That is what I was going to say. Would you go to Lampsacus as my ambassador so that Gaius Claudius Nero understands Bithynia is watching carefully? I daren't go myself it might be seen as an armed threat, even if I went without a military escort. My troops are much closer to Lampsacus than are the troops of Asia Province." Caesar saw the difficulties this would mean for him before Nicomedes had finished speaking. If he went to Lampsacus to observe events on official behalf of the King of Bithynia, the whole of Rome would assume he was indeed on intimate terms with Nicomedes. Only how could he avoid going? It was, on the surface, a very reasonable request. "I mustn't appear to be acting for you, King," he said seriously. The fate of the two socii is firmly in the hands of the governor of Asia Province, who would not appreciate the presence of a twenty year old Roman privatus claiming to be the representative of the King of Bithynia." "But I need to know what happens in Lampsacus from someone detached enough not to exaggerate and Roman enough not to side with the Greeks automatically!" Nicomedes protested. "I didn't say I wouldn't go. I will go. But as a Roman privatus pure and simple a fellow who chanced to be in the vicinity and whose curiosity got the better of him. That way the hand of Bithynia will not be seen at all, yet I'll be able to provide you with a full report when I return. Then if you feel it necessary, you can lodge a formal complaint with the Senate in Rome, and I will testify." Caesar departed the next day, riding overland with no one for company save Burgundus and four servants; he might then have come from anywhere and be on the road to anywhere. Though he wore a leather cuirass and kilt, his favored apparel for riding, he had taken care to pack toga and tunic and senatorial shoes, and to take with him the slave whom he employed to make new Civic Crowns for him out of oak leaves. Unwilling though he was to flaunt himself in the name of King Nicomedes, he fully intended to flaunt himself in his own name. It was the very end of December when he rode into Lampsacus on the same road Verres had used, to find himself unnoticed; the whole town was down at the quay watching Claudius Nero and Dolabella tie up their considerable fleet. Neither governor was in a good mood, Dolabella because he writhed in the grip of Verres permanently, and Claudius Nero because Dolabella's indiscreet activities now threatened to compromise him also. Their grim faces did not lighten when they learned that suitable lodgings were not to be had, as Ianitor still housed Verres and the only other commodious mansion in Lampsacus belonged to Philodamus, the accused. Publius Tettius had solved the problem by evicting a colleague from his establishment and offering it to Claudius Nero and Dolabella to share between them. When Claudius Nero received Verres (who was already waiting at the commandeered dwelling when the governor arrived), he learned that he was expected to preside over the court and to accept Verres as organizer of the prosecution, as a witness, as a member of the jury, and as an ambassador whose official propraetorian status was unimpaired by the events in Lampsacus. "Ridiculous!" he said to Verres in the hearing of Dolabella, Publius Tettius, and the legate Gaius Terentius Varro. "What do you mean?" Verres demanded. Roman justice is famous. What you propose is a travesty. I have acquitted myself well in my province! As things stand at the moment, I am likely to be replaced in the spring. The same can be said of your superior, Gnaeus Dolabella. I can't speak for him" Claudius Nero glanced toward the silent Dolabella, who avoided his gaze "but for myself, I intend to quit my province with a reputation as one of its better governors. This case will probably be my last major one, and I won't condone a travesty." The handsome face of Verres grew flintlike. "I want a quick conviction!" he cried. "I want those two Greek socii flogged and beheaded! They murdered a Roman lictor in the course of his duty! If they are allowed to get away with it, Rome's authority is further undermined in a province which still hankers to be ruled by King Mithridates." It was a good argument, but it was not the reason why Gaius Claudius Nero ended in yielding. He did that because he had not the strength or the backbone to resist Verres in a face to face confrontation. With the exception of Publius Tettius and his houseguest Gaius Terentius Varro, Verres had succeeded in winning over the entire Roman contingent who lived in Lampsacus, and had worked their feelings into a state which threatened the town's peace for many moons to come. It was Roman versus Greek with a vengeance; Claudius Nero was just not capable of resisting the pressures now exerted upon him. In the meantime Caesar had managed to find accommodation in a small hostelry adjacent to the wharves. As dirty as it was mean, it catered mainly to sailors, and was the only place willing to take him in: he was a detested Roman. Had it not been so cold he would gladly have camped; were he not determined to maintain his independence, he might have sought shelter in a Roman resident's house. As it was, the harborside inn it must be. Even as he and Burgundus took a stroll before what they suspected was going to be a bad supper, the town heralds were abroad crying that the trial of Philodamus and Artemidorus was to be held on the morrow in the marketplace. The morrow saw Caesar in no hurry; he wanted everyone assembled for the hearing before he made his grand entrance on the scene. And when he did arrive he created a small sensation a Roman nobleman, a senator, a war hero and owning no loyalty to any of the Roman participants. None of these knew his face well enough to assign it a name, especially now Caesar was clad not in laena and apex, but in a snowy toga with the broad purple stripe of the senator on the right shoulder of his tunic and the maroon leather shoes of the senator on his feet. Added to which, he wore a chaplet of oak leaves upon his head, so every Roman including both governors was obliged to get to his feet and applaud Caesar's advent. "I am Gaius Julius Caesar, nephew of Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator," he said to Claudius Nero guilelessly, holding out his right hand. "Just passing through when I heard about this fuss! Thought I'd better turn up to see if you needed an extra man on the jury." The name brought instant recognition, of course, more due to flamen Dialis than siege of Mitylene; these men had not been in Rome when Lucullus returned, did not know the fine details of Mitylene's surrender. Caesar's offer of jury duty was declined, but he was accommodated on a chair hastily found for one who was not only a war hero, but also the Dictator's nephew by marriage. The trial began. Of Roman citizens to serve as jurors there was no lack, for Dolabella and Claudius Nero had brought a large number of minor officials with them as well as a full cohort of Roman soldiers from Pergamum Fimbriani who recognized Caesar at once, and hailed him joyfully. Yet another reason why neither governor was pleased to have him sitting there. Though Verres had organized the prosecution, the actual role of prosecutor was taken by a local Roman resident, a usurer who needed Claudius Nero's lictors to extract money from delinquent clients and was aware that if he did not consent to prosecute, the lictors would cease to be forthcoming. All of Greek Lampsacus congregated about the perimeter of the court, muttering, glaring, shaking an occasional fist. Despite which, no one among them had volunteered to plead for Philodamus and Artemidorus, who were therefore obliged to conduct their own case under an alien system of law. It was, thought the expressionless Caesar, a complete travesty. Claudius Nero, the titular president of the court, made no attempt to run it; he sat mumchance and let Verres and Rubrius do that. Dolabella was on the jury and kept making pro Verres comments in a loud voice, as did Verres himself, also on the jury. When the Greek onlookers realized that Philodamus and Artemidorus were not going to be allowed the proper amount of court time to conduct their defense, some among them began to shout abuse; but there were five hundred armed Fimbriani stationed in the square, more than a match for any rioting crowd. The verdict when it came was no verdict: the jury ordered a retrial, this being the only way the majority of them could register their disapproval of the cavalier proceedings without bringing down a Verrine storm about their heads. And when he heard the retrial ordered, Verres panicked. If Philodamus and Artemidorus did not die, he suddenly realized, they could indict him in Rome with a whole indignant town to back them up and possibly a Roman senator war hero to testify for them; Verres had gained the distinct impression that Gaius Julius Caesar was not on his side. The young man had given nothing away by look or comment, but that in itself indicated opposition. And he was related to Sulla, the Dictator of Rome! It was also possible that Gaius Claudius Nero would regain his courage were Verres to be tried in a Roman court inside Rome; any allegations Verres might make about Claudius Nero's personal conduct would then sound like a smear campaign to discredit an important witness. That Claudius Nero was thinking along the same lines became apparent when he announced that he would schedule the retrial for early summer, which probably meant a new governor in Asia Province and a new governor in Cilicia. Despite the death of a Roman lictor, Philodamus and Artemidorus suddenly had an excellent chance of going free. And if they went free, they would come to Rome to prosecute Gaius Verres. For, as Philodamus had said when he had addressed the jury, We socii know that we are under the care of Rome and that we must answer to the governor, to his legates and officials, and through him to the Senate and People of Rome. If we are not willing to lie down under Roman rule, we understand that there must be reprisals, and that many of us will suffer. But what are we alien subjects of Rome to do when Rome permits a man who is no greater than a governor's assistant to lust after our children and snatch them from us for his own evil purposes? My son and I did no more than defend his sister and my daughter from a wicked lout! No one intended that any man should die, and it was not a Greek hand struck the first blow. I was scalded by boiling water in my own house while I tried to prevent the companions of Gaius Verres from carrying my child off to pain and dishonor. Had it not been for the arrival of my son and his friends, my daughter would indeed have been carried off to pain and dishonor. Gaius Verres did not behave like a civilized member of a civilized people. He behaved like the barbarian he is." The verdict of a retrial, delivered as it had been by an all Roman jury loudly urged by Dolabella and Verres throughout the trial to do its duty and convict, emboldened the Greek crowd to speed Claudius Nero and his court out of the marketplace with jeers, boos, hisses, angry gestures. "You'll schedule the retrial for tomorrow," said Verres to Claudius Nero. "Next summer," said Claudius Nero faintly. "Not if you want to be consul, my friend," said Verres. "I will pull you down with great pleasure never doubt that for a moment! What goes for Dolabella goes for you. Do as I say in this or be prepared to take the consequences. For if Philodamus and Artemidorus live to indict me in Rome, I will have to indict you and Dolabella in Rome long before the Greeks can get there. I will make sure you're both convicted of extortion. So neither of you would be on hand to testify against me." The retrial occurred the day following the trial. Between bribing those members of the jury willing to take a bribe and threatening those who were not, Verres got no sleep; nor did Dolabella, compelled to accompany Verres on his rounds. That hard night's work tipped the balance. By a small majority of the jurors, Philodamus and Artemidorus were convicted of the murder of a Roman lictor. Claudius Nero ordered their immediate dispatch. Kept at a distance by the cohort of Fimbriani, the Greek crowd watched helplessly as father and son were stripped and flogged. The old man was unconscious when his head was lopped from his shoulders, but Artemidorus retained his faculties until his end, and wept not for his own fate or for his father's, but for the fate of his orphaned sister. At the end of it Caesar walked fearlessly into the densely packed mass of Greek Lampsacans, all weeping with shock, beyond anger now. No other Roman went near them; escorted by Fimbriani, Claudius Nero and Dolabella were already shifting their belongings down to the quay. But Caesar had a purpose. It had not taken him long to decide who in the crowd were the influential ones, and these men he sought out. "Lampsacus isn't big enough to stage a revolt," he said to them, "but revenge is possible. Don't judge all Romans by this sorry lot, and hold your tempers. I give you my word that when I return to Rome, I will prosecute the governor Dolabella and make sure that Verres is never elected a praetor. Not for gifts or for honors. Just for my own satisfaction." After that he went to the house of Ianitor, for he wanted to see Gaius Verres before the man quit Lampsacus. "Well, if it isn't the war hero!" cried Verres cheerfully when Caesar walked in. He was overseeing his packing. "Do you intend to take possession of the daughter?" Caesar asked, disposing himself comfortably in a chair. "Naturally," said Verres, nodding at a slave who brought in a little statue for him to inspect. "Yes, I like it. Crate it." His attention returned to Caesar. "Anxious to set eyes on the cause of all this fuss, are you?" "Consumed with curiosity. She ought to outdo Helen." "So I think." "Is she blonde, I wonder? I've always thought Helen must have been blonde. Yellow hair has the edge." Verres eyed Caesar's thatch appreciatively, lifted a hand to pat his own. "You and I ought to know!" Where do you intend to go from Lampsacus, Gaius Verres?" The tawny brows rose. "To Nicomedia, of course." "I wouldn't," said Caesar gently. "Really? And why not?" asked Verres, deceptively casual. Caesar bent his gaze to study his own nails. Dolabella will bite the dust as soon as I return to Rome, which will be in the spring of this year or the next. I will prosecute him myself. And I will prosecute you. Unless, that is, you return to Cilicia now." Caesar's blue eyes lifted; the honeyed eyes of Verres met them. For a long moment neither man moved. Then Verres said, "I know who you remind me of. Sulla." "Do I?" "It's your eyes. Not as washed out as Sulla's, but they have the same look. I wonder will you go as far as Sulla?" That is on the laps of the gods. I would rather say, I hope no one forces me to go as far as Sulla." Verres shrugged. "Well, Caesar, I am no Gaius Marius, so it won't be me." "You are certainly no Gaius Marius," Caesar agreed calmly. "He was a great man until his mind gave way. Where are you going from Lampsacus, have you decided?" "To Cilicia with Dolabella," said Verres with another shrug. "Oh, very wise! Would you like me to send someone down to the port to inform Dolabella? I'd hate to see him sail off and leave you behind." "If you wish," said Verres indifferently. Off went Caesar to find Burgundus and instruct him what to tell Dolabella. As he returned to the room through an inner door, Ianitor brought in a muffled form through the door onto the street. "This is Stratonice?" asked Verres eagerly. Ianitor brushed the tears from his cheeks. "Yes." "Leave us alone with her, Greek." Ianitor fled. "Shall I unveil her for you while you stand at a suitably remote distance to take all of her in at once?'' asked Caesar. "I prefer to do it myself," said Verres, moving to the girl's side; she had made no sound, no attempt to run away. The hood of her heavy cloak fell forward over her face, impossible to see. Like Myron anxious to check the result of a bronze casting, Verres twitched the cloak from her with a trembling hand. And stared, and stared. It was Caesar broke the silence; he threw back his head and laughed until he cried. "I had a feeling!" he said when he was able, groping for a handkerchief. The body she owned was shapeless, poor Stratonice. Her eyes were slits, her snub nose spread across her face, the reddish hair atop her flat backed skull was sparse to the point of semi baldness, her ears were vestigial and she had a badly split harelip. Of reasoning mentality she had very little, poor Stratonice. Face scarlet, Verres turned on his heel. "Don't miss your ship!" Caesar called after him. "I'd hate to have to spread the end of this story all over Rome, Verres!" The moment Verres had gone Caesar sobered. He came across to the mute and immobile creature, picked up her cloak from the floor and draped it about her tenderly. "Don't worry, my poor girl," he said, not sure she could even hear him. "You're quite safe." He called then for Ianitor, who came in immediately. "You knew, ethnarch, didn't you?" "Yes." "Then why in the name of Great Zeus didn't you speak out if they wouldn't? They died for nothing!" "They died because they elected death as the preferable alternative," said Ianitor. And what will become of the wretched creature now?'' "She will be well looked after." "How many of you knew?" "Just the city's elders." Unable to find anything to say in answer to that, Caesar left Ianitor's house, and left Lampsacus.